February 2012
15 posts
The Bar at the beginning of time
.
He chose his words carefully; His limited vocabulary offered little choice. But after drinking the courage to use them, They got lost in the slur of his voice. He couldn’t have known it didn’t matter; That she had already made up her mind. It wasn’t his words she was after. He could tell her another time.
The Park Bench
.
When I am old, how will I know
if the similarly-aged stranger
sitting next to me on the park
bench was not once a childhood
friend; although, by then, I am
sure I will have forgotten most
things and my curiosity would
have long deserted me.
But what if he was. What if
the stranger smiles a knowing
smile, and lays his hand upon
my arm before asking how I am?
Did I get married, have...
The overturned poem
.
Words from an overturned
poem lay scattered across
the floor this morning; the
limbs of verbs, and nouns,
and adjectives entangled
with metaphors and similes.
The outstretched hand of
memory reaches from the debris;
it’s fingers stained yellow
from the company of cigarettes.
Trapped beneath a chalice
moon: a woman’s breath,
and what’s left of an ending.
Beauty, desire, and...
The speed of sound
.
Not far from here is a deserted street
where leafless trees, burnt-out cars, and
the end meet beneath a rusting sky.
Beyond what’s left of a fence, a skeleton
of a sleeping dog guards an abandoned
factory. On the second floor, at the end
of a corridor choking with decay, is a
room where red paint curls from the
walls and old wind groans as young
playful wind snakes through the
...
Naked
.
The artist, whose apartment she lay awake in,
hung naked on a hook in the corner of the room.
His body mutilated: Unfinished. Synthetic.
She screamed. She screamed again when the
artist’s roommate, whom she had never met,
approached the bed wearing only a small,
flowery towel around his waist.
When the hum and breeze from an August fan
moved across her flesh, she realized she was
...
Résumé
.
A life spent wrestling ideas
into real ideas which wrestle
the world that wrestles me.
A life spent tying a rope to
the branch of an overhanging
tree at the perfect swimming
hole on a perfect day.
The Posthumous Affair
.
When I think about you,
I don’t miss you at all.
It’s when I don’t think
about you that I do.
It seems you were right,
when you said I would
miss you when you were
gone - after all.
shake
.
Shake me from this duvet and out of this bed
Shake the plastic squirrels from the fire escape.
Shake the singing birds and the buds from
the branches of the plastic trees.
Shake the young couple out for a ride on
their plastic bicycles.
Shake the daffodils from their flower beds.
Shake the little plastic dog with the bouncing legs.
Shake the whistling mailman away from my door.
Shake...
The afternoon nap
.
I fell off a cliff tonight,
and on my way down to
a crashing sea and certain
death, I saw myself in a
photograph of a man falling
from a cliff hanging on
the wall of a gallery.
In front of the photograph,
a mother with a tilted head
stood crying as a young boy,
with the sun on his face,
looked up at a man flying.
in the cut
.
Lately, I have been thinking
too much about meaningless
things and making too much
of the meaning of this; when
I really should be looking for
meaningless sentences and the
scissors to cut them out with.
The lady in Blue
.
Today, the weight of
the world looked me
in the eye. Carved in
her skin: the lies and
disappointments, the
wrong turns, and every
man she ever had; while
at the lipstick end of a
cigarette, blue smoke
lay across her lips,
waiting to see if I had
anything to add.
Reading into it
. A man tries hard
To write a poem.
A poem tries hard
To right a man.
The Expedition
.
This story might take some time to warm up, as I am just awake, and it is too cold to write anything other than stories about explorers and men with packs of dogs pulling them across the ice. Alas, the subject has been written about so many times that if I were to embark on such a tale, I would not be the first and, of course, in the spirit of discovery I must be the first; if only, that when I...
1 tag
Thirty Percent
.
I was early. I found a seat at the bar and ordered a drink.
Several napkins later she walked in. She was beautiful.
The bartender rattled some ice in a tall glass and made
a display of how good he was at making whatever it was
but she couldn’t see him - he was the wrong side of the bar.
After he set the drink down on one of my better napkins,
she turned to me and said...
the surprising
.
.
While the city sleeps above empty
streets that soon will fill with the
sounds of impatience, I wonder
if the grazing herd of cows in my
living room are caught in the web
of a half-dream or if the men
painting clouds on the morning
sky know that I can see them.
In the kitchen, the man who lives
on the second floor, is playing fetch
with his floppy-eared dog, who chases
the ball out...