"transcontinental" poems
Glances in passing and nothingness,
I'll drop out and take up gardening.
And you are so cool, all German bred,
and sometimes braided. I see you, so
well-read and rather regal. ***** blonde
nuclear, alabaster, aluminum rods -
electricity dripping from the soles of
your shoes. This classroom, my own
ink blotted incubator, the radiator sits,
flatlining. Your jaw as two razor blades,
your shoulder blades, broad, gentle.
I wonder how you look in the morning,
How you look at yourself in the mirror.
Do you practice smiling, and
how often do you wash your hair? Oh,
you exist in glass, and I will not try to
know you. Leaving this poem limited,
and yet. Your jam drop mouth houses all
well-spoken soliloquies, radical requiems.
So, what would happen if we brushed
shoulders in passing? Your little accent.
Accident, we appeared in the same
huddled mass. Literary plugs in the
drain, and your new American. So,
why don't we just go walking on
airplane wings? Some transcontinental
affair. Frequent flyer ******* stranger.
Feb 27, 2017
Feb 27, 2017 at 5:48 PM UTC
~for Steve R. & Stephen Y.~
*"two regrets are mine -
not finding you earlier in life when...words would have carved for me a better road, and...not hand-ing you a touch, the perfect tightness-shake of one's hand reserved for fondest friends and the light press on one's back deserved for dearest brothers!"
~~~*
the light press surety of five fingers on one,
oh, what messages it composes, oh, what duty weighty it transmits
dear brothers:
tho this hands-on handoff, this fly-over, is still a
mission unaccomplished,
yet no regrets, please!
men don't overuse superlatives,
what you lovingly uncover in my rocket-verbal Mars probes,
is more telling, more revealing of who you are,
than any hand-tightness shake,
any touching grasp, could e'er convey
yet I promise, forsworn upon the cross
of the north west Pacifico latitude and longitude
a latitude that just happens to intersect
my olden, new english state,
knowing that Interstate 90
a straight transcontinental shot,
and the car keys just an impulse grab away
to tell your arms, your face, your back, our hands,
that when you love my poetry,
you love me,
you friends,
are an affirmation of Pablo Neruda's words:
***"whoever discovers who I am
discovers who you are"***
fondness is not distance constrained,
touching grasps pay no obeisance to time,
the honor of your affection permanent
affirmed and enflamed,
all mine, sublime, to lead my heart,
where to lay hands upon your back,
to realize even more
our single united rhyme
Nov 7, 2015
Nov 7, 2015 at 4:58 PM UTC
Back to try our luck at the American dream
With three suitcases full of fading memories
Stories you don't care to hear
With people once near and dear
Now they've disappeared.
I left a Sydney summer romance
For a transcontinental breakup
In the dead of winter
I'd convinced myself I'd get back what I'd lost
In the lime-light
No where feels like home
But the open road
I'll go at it alone
Through deadzones
Through timezones
I say I'm finally home in Philly
But I say **** I don't mean
They said that's not where you're from
I say I'll start where I am
But I won't end up here.
So I flew out to a West Coast Christmas
To smoke some **** in the sun
But global ruined wrecked my fun
No where feels like home
But the open road
I'll go at it alone
Through deadzones
Through timezones
Now it's always sunny in Philadelphia
And raining in L.A.
The world has took a 180
What else can I say
I can't help thinking that I've done it all wrong
Traveled the world and back
Seen everything there is to see
And I have nothing to show for it
Besides the stolen sand in my suitcase
And faded summer dreams
No where feels like home
But the open road
I'll go at it alone
Through deadzones
Through timezones
May 24, 2017
May 24, 2017 at 5:04 PM UTC
I haven’t always been the best lover, daughter, sister, relative, friend, coworker, student, individual. But my intentions, for the most part, have always been good. My heart is many things; conflicted, light, heavy, dizzy, a transcontinental road map, oozing liquid, electric, pure. Kind and pure. I can't confidently say that about many of me, but of this one thing I am sure. In my lifetime I've positioned myself to be the one who gets hurt and not be the one to cause it. But taking it for how it is, it doesn’t always work out that way. It rarely, actually, has ever or will ever work out that way, not always at least.
I’ve hurt you, and I’m sorry. I’ve broken you, parts of you, and I’m sorry. I’ve let you down before, and I’m sorry. You have hurt me, and I forgive you. My heart is broken, but I do not hold it against you. You’ve let me down, and it’s okay. This is the part of existing we didn't sign up for. Yes, I realize the whole "sign up for" analogy is ****** and weak, I can do better than that, I know. But it's just, what I'm trying to get at here is that this is the part of being I am no longer wrecking myself over trying to understand anymore. We are fleshed boomerangs of disdain and consolation, martyr and martyred, antonym and synonym. Take me for who I am and who I have the potential to be. Take you for who you are and your potential just the same, resent and mend, just the same. Let go of your expectations, take it for how it is.
Sep 3, 2016
Sep 3, 2016 at 2:26 PM UTC
The girl from Moscow
wants to hear, my
voice.
She is in love already,
with another,
but
is so beautiful,
do I really have, a
choice?
I call her,
using the international
connection line,
called Facebook.
I can hear her
but
she cannot hear
me.
I enable video,
and wave, but
she covers her
face, with her
hand.
Am I being mislead,
biting at the transcontinental line,
or
as they say,
cat-fished?
Dec 2, 2015
Dec 2, 2015 at 8:18 AM UTC
I can handle this, truthful is far less salty than drowning in ocean-wave beauty of painful forgettable oaths uttered, meaningless.
Have your affection, I will cherish every virtual moment shared
Feelings combine within me and a calming of the water is good
Let me be the warm summer rain and chill breeze across the moor
i will be the cool ocean on hot days
the steamy shower after cold nights alone
I am the glass of sweet liquid parching every inner thirst
I am the surprise: fudge interior to the cupcake kiss
Jul 13, 2014
Jul 13, 2014 at 5:54 PM UTC
the transcontinental railroads
embedded with barbed wire on my skin
I hope you travel it one day
and cut the noose around my neck
and caress my persistent demons into hibernation
before my body decomposes
into nothing but meaningless flesh
and scarred bone
I want to spend a night
beside you
in the burning of an embrace
that is your reluctant arms
and jaded smile
severing life lines
strangling your ability to breathe
suffocating yourself with tainted air
and choking on your words
you will spill
hopefully beside me.
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 8:16 PM UTC
Why you...angel--why you...to peep through
the finality of white walls?
To overspread the concussed skull that bangs
against them to keep time...why you?
Why were you born against a spillage of air
in a freefall of wings?
Nothing...absolutely nothing... between your
wings, save for what you will embrace in that
freefall...why you?
Schooners rounding earth's violet aura--
dissolving into the transcontinental bestiary
of souls...why you?
You are what shone through the breakage
of humanity--you are the emanation of our
breakage...why you?
You...legions of you...fence the Romantic's
chimerical stead...only to retain the character of
what implants itself face first...as so you.
Oct 11, 2012
Oct 11, 2012 at 1:05 AM UTC
flying over Harrisburg (Seat 8C)
transcontinental traveller this day,
from a city island onwards to a city by the bay,
the mileage sum greater than a lifetime of M31 bus trips,
but the in-transit poem-notion-potion elixir in blood stirring,
when a seated poet greets the jet stream
motion turbulence
,
one more rightful writ to the
flying poem chapter,
additive motivated and self-commandeered
airborne in the selfsame real clouds
where the poems are plucked from,
their distance to my body’s poem functions,
vastly abbreviated so they arrive more wet, chilled and urgent,
we become heated tango paired
already approaching Indiana, crossing Ohio,
over whose living souls have I traversed,
over whose stored poems have I flown through,
ruffling their crinkled white wrapper covers, the decorative ribbons,
whose hand waves have I discerned,
and whose cheeks have I gently kissed?
this land is my land, this land is our land,
and from the soft cream of moisture white,
stumbled on my long lost and well forgotten poems, thereby
freshly creasing and dampening yellowings
with the renewable tears when greeting old friends
of the who and when poetry was a secret garden
where I hid and withdrew and transpired the essential oils
of my deconstructed constitution
see this poem is more me just checking in on you below,
you up ahead, and those in arreared reared view mirror,
and on me, composing at an altitude of 31,824 feet to
strings of violins, my one true plane
as compensator for this ramble unfocused I gift you this:
*conscripted by the thin atmosphere,
constricted by my failings, my limited stock of words,
my extra clouded judgement, my heartbeats rapido speak,
telling me to tell you my brothers, my sisters,
mine own adapted children,
we have never been closer than we are today,
until that day I knock and grinningly embrace and erase
that tiny space between our ******* and in unison breathe*
8:50am EST entente
entering into Illinois
Mar 23, 2018
Mar 23, 2018 at 9:16 AM UTC
tie a rope around my heart and pull it from the west coast to the east and when you find out whether or not there’s enough rope to stretch across the states, send me a text letting me know you got home okay
Nov 19, 2015
Nov 19, 2015 at 7:23 PM UTC
every bad man thinks that he can love her better
and every good man thinks that he can love her more
but the truth of it is
that her love is a fizz
just a foam that retracts from the shore
see, she never was too real to any
something like the wind, with a little more weight
just some womanesque vapor to many
'til the tides of the times called her fate
she wasn't as light as the ocean breeze
but she wasn't as real as the wave
I wish I'd evaded her motion, her tease
but fell down for her hard, I bowed down like a slave
then as soon as that femme and foamy omen
had tickled my senses so gentle
all the strength of a man that I had she took with
back to sea, to the stop of some transcontinental
Apr 6, 2017
Apr 6, 2017 at 4:39 AM UTC
the rain
is falling from a great height
and i might get cancer in
my transcontinental
drift.
you might be Wednesday. but who the hell are you ?
are you the last thing in my room for improvement ?
why do you Thursday
on a Friday
that i can't
remove ?
why do you
Life ?
Jan 9, 2013
Jan 9, 2013 at 2:04 PM UTC
My dad always had a belly
from the back you wouldn’t have thought he was fat
but once he turned around
you noticed he carried boulders in his beer gut
and it made the best pillow a 4-8 year old boy could ask for
I told him that at night before bed
my head on his belly
we used to drink apple tango when we went and walked our dogs together
every weekend morning
Daddy wasn’t a rolling stone
but he was a man of business class transcontinental flights
important Dr. Baxter
he helped with my homework
because his patience ran deeper than most
but he was a volcano of suppressed emotion
one small **** up away from erupting
back when we were kids it was scary for my brothers and me
now we laugh about it
we’re all taller than him now
But I still remember living at the Sheridan for 3 weeks
all of us ganging up on him in the pool
the way he picked us up and tossed us with ease
a 5’6 210 lb man
and I remember all the fights
the last minute flights
me hiding in my bed with my hands covering my ears
him so quiet and rational
my Mum so explosive and passionate
I remember her crying on Christmas eve
when I was sneaking outside for a smoke
I remember anger and numbness
I wrote him a letter once
I never sent it
I remember how friends and family used to tell me how alike we were
how that went from a good thing to a bad thing
I remember meeting his dad for the first time
the other Harry Baxter
and I remember not liking him
I remember when he stole all of our money and left my Dad for a second time
I remember wanting to beat the life out of that old man
I’m still hoping for the chance
I don’t remember the boarding school he went to
or the brothers and sisters he never got to grow up with
or how his mother called me “the boy” until I was old enough to read
I remember being so angry at myself for not being able to be angry enough
but It’s been a while now since all the drama
and I’ve had time to think and cool off
and God **** being a Dad has to be a tough gig
but he was always there for us in some way
maybe not to talk about heartbreak
or life long dreams
but my life has been relatively easy
and I never found myself wanting
He is a strange, quiet man
nobody is harder to shop for
Mum always used to say his hobby was his children
and I get that
I mean, I’m still here
and I think that means he did something right
Feb 12, 2014
Feb 12, 2014 at 11:20 AM UTC
And
Also,
YOU
•••
(How
"Hidden"
Came to mean
"Safe"
Is the story of our lives)
••
We walk thru WARS
Disquised as city streets
And see
"Madness"
Encased in semblances
Of Human Beings
••
We cry out for
SUBSTANCE
••
We get
DEATH
••
••
Well well well!
••
///
///
///
A flower child grows unto love and I go there
(I have no pretensions )
only a
"Perhaps"
Only a hint of
"Possibility"
•••
I come for
YOU
In the center of town
---The Heart----
•••
"Hidden"
In the virtuosity of love making
Fondling
Kissing
Pawing
At the fringes of morbidity
•••
(In the Modern Manner)
•••
Love
•••
///
///
///
We know of truth but we got no money
The Class Wars are here
••
We are scheduled to die
And
Soon
•••
(I have no prensions)
•••
We are
OF THE PAST
We are
ERASED
•••
Yet, still
I would like to express
MY LOVE
As something
GOOD
•••
The flower child!
Her Eyes!
The stray cat song in the night!
••
The lonely lovely
ETERNAL POET BOY
••
We shall survive
••
I don't know how
Only
WHY
Oct 18, 2013
Oct 18, 2013 at 2:27 PM UTC
in paris, you loved me, life was amorous
in the maldives, you desired me more than you ever had before, i don't think the bed every stayed tidy
in rome, you told me I was a masterpiece greater than any of Da Vinci's
in new york, you screamed, even the sound of the taxi cabs couldn't drown out the sound of you saying you hated me
in london, you left me stranded, broke my heart and bolted,
back to paris when this mess of a romance started, where you said you loved me.
Nov 24, 2017
Nov 24, 2017 at 9:56 PM UTC