Category: Poetry

Posted on

The Dancing Devils’ Eve

  
Three sports minded looking (shorts, windbreakers, running shoes) 

men in their late sixties, early seventies in fine fit shape, 

eating frozen yogurt and chatting about American Idol, 

debating which singers touch their hearts rather than 

merely their ears and how Adele, who has a powerful voice,

sings the same sounding songs all the time while outside

the kidlets also dressed in shorts, tennies and windbreakers,

 well they just spin and run and chase and throw caps to the floor

“Pop!” and squeal and drag little sisters and brothers by the hand.

As I in my cloud of sleepless fuzz watch behind a counter through 

the protective pane of legitimacy, bleary eyed, she who cannot

help but listen and let the wordy notes of lilting song and sting

float in and out of me, touching my nerves in a gentle buzz and click,

anodizing the metal of my thoughts to clumping the hours abiding.

A glance at my bloody finger, cuticle ripped down to the root, reminds

me the angst trembles beneath the calm veneer–tomorrow’s near,

and the dancing devils and retinue request (demand) my presence. 

Posted on

To the Thief Who Stole a Teacher’s Textbook

bae

I wish no ill will

if to steal will fulfill

a desire to learn–

a worthwhile return–

in literary taste

as is truly the case

in so fascinting a text

“What happens next?”

The suspense never ending

in essays mind bending

priced at a mere 100 bucks

which to you probably sucks

because you obviously can’t pay

so keep it and have a joyful day.

Oh, and the essay on morality

skip it lest it damper joviality

at having stolen a book

to resell to some schnook

who’ll think he struck gold

at this collection re-sold

replete with scribbles galore

like none sold at the book store

but good luck deciphering words

gifts as intended but to  fools, absurd.

 

Posted on

In Patience…

death

…We wait.

For doctor calls,

nurse triage,

pharmacy fills

hospital beds

pressing 1,

then 3,

then 0,

then more numbers

and more

and more

and more

and then a voice

another voice

and then

a dead end.

Start over.

A doctor,

we need

a doctor

but

the wall

of admins

like fortresses

hide them

protect them

in gall.

Fighting

to live

beyond the

chains of care

of health-

no-

one-cares.

 

credit: thehealthcareblog.com

 

 

 

Posted on

In the Key of Hate

wp-1459816977939.jpg
The trump-er grown loud in palsied anger

defeaned himself to the mad deranger 

While…

One penless poet in an inkwell stared

down letter-less pages of his dreams bared

For…

The world’s gone bonkers at last I tell you

rightside up is sideways blowing up truth

As…

When growing rich means exploding idols

and viscous real estate steals upturn skulls

So…

Time then once and for all to scrap the deal

that fear-stuffed progress regressives pig squeal.

End.

Hate. 

Coda:

 

 

Posted on

Magic Cure

  
“Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.” Hippocrates

In Greece, Hippocrates freed medicine from magic, 

deigning it dignified as the rational science.

Logically, medicine delivers cure, but

she’s sick again, for too long now.

No longer believing in time,

no hope sustains her.

We need magic. 

Posted on

Cardiff by the Sea

image

When the blue of sky and sea meet on the sun’s canvas, the world’s ills dissipate like wave vapor, crashed,  floated and sprayed, melding with motion, recycling life for us who pass through.

Buffoonery and lies flee then, preferring cyber print to airy flights and icy dives in the Earth’s teal liquid split from firmament in places and times like these: the road peeled back revealing popped village pockets like blisters.

Here, when the blues of stinging seas sob seabird song, throngs of the foolish schools of the unschooled turn to the sun, seeking to bleach wrongs white or pure golden.

No trace,  no nothing’s wrong here, the luscious hues just right for jog by smiles and sweet sweaty necks peeking through white pressed cotton tees tucked in creased linen tennis shorts.

A former Welsh fortress by the ocean free stands no longer firm, gone now but for those unaffected running on, keeping the tepid in and the cracked walled out, improbable as a teapot set sail on a vapid cup of tea.

Cardiff by the Sea breezes by me now and blushes me bright with springy lies of lucky losers and terrible saints, infamy tamed palatably blue, the color of infinity.

Posted on

No one looks through the window…

jordyn            jordyn                                                                                                                         jordyn             jordyn

No one looks through the window with my eyes; no one sees my vision nor thinks my thought. Banal but true, each of us is uniquely combined.

My grip on daily do’s is looser or tighter than others’ but my hands are singularly mine. Touch sense cannot be duplicated–just exactly mine, touching you or you, me.

I am me, the way I shave, for instance–some parts meticulously, rather obsessively like lower legs and big toe knuckle, pits and “v” of the sparsely endowed V.

Everywhere else, I pay no mind, just like brows, a sometimes clearing, or second toes but never my thighs or head, the latter which has grown with abandon for 15 years or more.

My hair curls more on the left than on the right, and I walk straighter if my hair is parted on the left, my face aligned with a hidden equilibrium too far from even inner sight.

Or the way I write for me and you, unconsciously and consciously, using the words historically poured into me, picked at and ingested, belly caressed and gut tossed.

My marks, my dots and tees, my birth, tragedies and strung notions like beads on a broken string these days, cannot deliver you, not even reach you mostly.

Busy peering through windows with your own eyes blue-green-brown just so, retinal glow reversed like everyone and no one else projecting images archetypal yet speckled new.

No glory gained or praise due for the aggregation I am, you are; simply being the being hatched in space-time warrants no celebration in the just-is-ness of all seers.

 

 

Posted on

It’s a Soul Thing

  
I think she’s right about that. It’s a soul thing.

She was my best friend in elementary school until teachers and distance separated us. 

I lived in a town that had four junior high schools: north, south, east and west. 

I went South and she East.

But before then, she was a beloved friend, one to laugh with, mostly laughing.

Not much intellectualizing in fifth grade.

But she also bristled at pain and injustice, felt empathy.

Like the time the fourth graders unmercifully tore into the acne-red-faced substitute 

teacher, Mr. Ebert.

They found his weakness, his vulnerability, and dug in. 

They cried and outraged, accused him of something I have forgotten.

And he shook and stammered and reddened until I thought he would burst into flame. 

Until he was fired.

They were vicious. We, my feeling friend and I, were mortified. But no one else seemed to be.

Just us, two angst-ridden misfits–maybe that was just me, though.

The singular, coded, inside jokes and kinetic joy we shared was neural blazing.

The inarticulable closeness–intuited–that we took for granted was the glue, 

what made us seek each other out in our memories, in the halls of high school, and finally on facebook.

And as if 43 years had not passed, we laugh.

The sensation of spun years, like a casino slot’s triple 7’s whizzing past round and round, 

experienced as static motionlessness catches my breath, pricks hyper-notice.

An arm reached, a stretched connection folded across time flattened into special relativity

–the train’s caboose merged with the engine.

Special relating. It’s a soul thing.

Posted on

The desert speaks legends

wpid-73_1joshua_tree_national_park.jpg
Through a desert with sun settling atop the mountains and semis providing relief from the piercing glare while traffic crawls, except for those lawbreakers riding the emergency lane, speeding the sides dangerously, we travel, mother, father, daughter, and teammate. The weekend of games has ended. Reality drags itself in like a legless dog, leaving a flattened path in the sand behind it. Tumble weeds pass us by deriding us with snarly twigs of derision. “Ha, ha lemmings.” 

Traffic breaks, we speed on, and I keep my eyes on the passing blur of joshua tree and sand.

The landscape whirs with murmurings; the desert speaks legends.

Mountain silhouettes remind me that space is illusion as the peaks look like painted playing cards.

How many times have I passed through Baker?  Have I seen the signs with cowboy aliens before?

Aliens on horseback, now that would be a thrill. 

Perhaps they’ve already passed through,

nodded and kept on going to greener pastures.

 (A writer sighs and no one looks up–eyes glued to phones)

“We should have known,” his parents ruefully remarked to the reporter (I say out loud). 

“He always insisted on painting the moon brown. His teachers complained, tried to steer him right, but he insisted on brown. He was 8. He should have known.”

Daughter glances up at me and grunts, “Huh? You say something?”

I shake my head.

The rising moon face winks.

Posted on

A Mistress Song

Marked by forever embrace

arms to mind

nose to heart,

I will never recover

a touching scent like you;

no other lover 

rapes pelvic thoughts

musks up a spell

pushes my deep

and levels a deadly wrench kiss

like hammers

to pulpy plum; 

in your leave

I hollow gourds of song

await the pine needle drop

and hum Jesus and rum.

Blog at WordPress.com.