Tuesday, May 27, 2014

cherry pie

red juice drips on the white tile counter.
it was his idea but he lost interest
so ants scurry between the tiles
awaiting eventual entombment in grout.

the crust's got a hole in the bottom
and a slice without an outer. the cherries
are fresh, though canned makes a better pie.
their mangled flesh cleaves to the pits
proving a tendency to tartness. she's sure

there's not enough sugar or time
to turn this into desert before
the rattle of her muffler announces
the end of the poem.

because you're a masochist he said

slowly the story is revealed, not in shades of grey
but reds. the whites of his eyes, the volume of his voice
the heart ripped down the middle or with an arrow through it.
she just waits for the tear to be complete. dear abby
it might begin i've met a wonderful man we get along great
all the stars are aligned, we ease each other's pain there's
just this one small problem we've been fighting over lately
and this morning he stuck his finger in my mouth and forced me to bite it.
i held out, not biting as hard as i wanted to while he yelled
obscenities and afterwards his hands were clenched two inches
from my neck do you think this means he might
be one of those people who will snap and carry out the murder suicide plan
we always promised each other if one of us was terminal?

















^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

brick a brack attack. it was fun being out of reality
for a while, thinking nice things
were mine to enjoy, not fretting about
someone else's illness, not indulging my own.
but he knew me well enough
to say it early on this time around
just so he could say i told you so when
the cuts got steadier, more potent,
when the bleeding out begins.
hah, i showed him. unfriended him
before the crucial moment.now he can guess
right along with all the other fb friends. but he
stopped caring so long ago it's not even
a viable memory anymore, that feeling
we shared so anyway, funny that's what he remembers.














*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*











i will not walk on eggshells. write it fifty times.
i'm stomping those motherfuckers into grits
you can kneel in while begging my forgiveness
or walking out of life. i have bitchslapped more than one
sulfurous relationship out my door
and if that time comes beware the masochist flip.
i prefer to believe, for the nonce, in sanity.















*)(*

so i proceed with more caution
as i note that slowly you reveal
the other side of that fiber optic
bifurcation into the past. you stuck
your finger in her face, most probably
in her mouth. she left her husband
and moved to your city and you
stayed married. you lost your job
she supported you . that killed it
even if she didn't care about money.
you have no idea how to be a slave
and you don't want me to show you
you just want me to keep at it
so you don't have to. i can't fathom
the privilege you men apply
to your selves i was raised
a woman and god damn
the repo man.

i hear there are good men out there.
i think i've met a few. just
none of them were ever  my lover






























&^%%


which leans me to the ampersandly obvious
conclusion. i do not know a thing
about how to be in a good relationship
or what to look for in a man. like ms bitch
told me long ago, you're fucking up
chasing that cock. it wants to chase you.
it's funny, though i feel i was born in the wrong era
i never felt i was born in the wrong skin.



reality bites

sorry that you masters in training
don't see the world for what it is.
you are not the hero. you can't even
make yourself the hero. it's not written
that way. and i don't believe in
predestination, i believe in evolution and chance.
reality seems to fit that model.
sure you can have good genes but if you're born
in a toxic sludge the only
 thing that gets you out
 is chance. and if she don't
 smile at you, brothersister,
 you are fucked. sometimes in the story
grace takes pity and bestows a favor
in some unrecognisable form. naturally
it is ignored in the course of the play
if the play requires an anti hero.
that role is well played by any number of
voluntteers. yes it's a cynical outlook.
a slow cyanide capsule. thnaksfully
to the fact that hey, it's only my reality any way.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

backwater

let me describe a day in paradise
the sun shines, the temperature just past hot
so the cool water shocks and soothes
once you gladly step into the clear water
it may be this time you are at the community pool
the older kids dominate though there are still
a couple under ten with sitters in tow.
you get the feeling the older kids have somehow been
left in charge and they don't quite know what to do with that power
so they play volleyball beside the lounge chairs, lunging
with wild summer brown arms at the disney princess
pink and blue ball which at some point inevitably hits
the old lady in a ron jon surf shop fishing hat
right on the head .
 if she didn't look like a white witch
in black swimsuit , black glasses, black hat,
even her toenails were black the boys might have busted a gut
laughing and making fun of the way the ball bounced
in  a classic pele head shot off her head
 glancing left just enough
to keep it from going over the safety fence
quite unitentionally, which will made bank
on america's funniest home video and since there's cameras
at the pool you know someone's gonna profit
and she says to the boys, excuse me  boys
and she pauses for effect
letting it sink in that they are boys
  in the pool area without adult supervision
and it may be a long time since she was their age
but she knows it's not the fourteen that's posted
on the rules, she says if you want to play ball for real
take it out on the playground, otherwise, get in the pool
like you're supposed to be. she doesn't yell.
 she doesn't need to.
bruja!echoes  as blackbirds
 caw  from the peak of the clubhouse
and  the  playground's  basketball hoops
nonchalantly waiting   for cheetos to drop
 from the chunky kids' fingers
 as they emerge from under the porch's cover.
a little blonde haired girl in a pink and black minnie mouse
swimsuit pulls her goggles over her eyes, she couldn't
be more than four, heads right for the edge of the pool.
she waits for a break in the ball playing and dives .
the older boys are teasing matthew who just
wants to hold the ball he doesn't know he's
monkey in the middle, four sixteen year olds
two boys, two girls huddle at the four foot corner
where the pool is still wide
but deeper, playing spin the football. a young mother
and her baby watch from the side
yells leave him alone he's only seven.
the little blonde girl kicks water
on one of the teens in the corner. he
turns the other way. this isn't a tale
of drowning or fights. the three juveniles
throwing, now, a tennis ball, two in the water
one on the deck, taunt each other
with expletives. the woman in black rises
from the lounge chair, walks to the edge, slips in.
she has her hat and glasses on. one of the tweens
in the pool hangs on the shoulders of the other proclaiming
this is my best friend, we're best buddies the third
on the deck, throws the ball, and the buddies struggle
to catch it , keep it from the other.
the water is cool. the sun is hot. the wind is gentle.
there is laughter, shouts, a couple kisses
on the ladder in the deep in where the woman in black
 paddles in one place head turned to the shallows
watching the little girl in the pink and black swimsuit
swim toward her. .

Saturday, May 03, 2014

caught in a meme

if i could tell you about my cl forays
i'd let you know of the woman who's looking
for a guy your age to take care of. preferably
needs a home and has some addiction she could feed.
she loves to cook.
instead i clamp down the urge to supply
you with different cigarettes, the need to question
  the ownership of the mix i smoke. you're off

in some well traveled city, in a mid rise suite
pasting together words in a way i envy without malice
and yes there should be a word for that , but admire
doesn't carry the requisite pain. i skim those phrases
looking for signs of recollection or remorse. the latter
exists in droves throughout all our writings.

i tend to flex my muscles at the wrong time,
arrive at the table after the candles are extinguished, apologising
once again for something i'll continue to do.
still, we enjoyed the time together didn't we?
and it makes sense you arrived this late given
the inherent tardiness we share. so i'm not whining
as such. interrogating, railing, piqued with softness abit
but not whining. when comfort food's on the menu
i'll eat it cold if there's any left.


late last season,   we wondered if we'd
make it past those dim short days into the wild
winds of spring. you held me, epic
in declaration, bristling with intention. now
tornadoes pepper the midwest,
the roads infuse  with glacier , flowers
 bloomed too early, drown. still i see beginnings
i see opportunity in the mud and slick and  straw.
what you see is the sky grayed over, wan sun lighting
tips of clouds you can barely make out but they sing
of summer , on ice, with a lemon twist sipped
by a red headed woman whose emerald eyes
make impossibilities your stuff of dreams.
how once you had that, you could never go back
how once back, you thought deserve
was the same thing as to have.
no wonder you couldn't sleep on the bare rubble
of my bed, the stacks of cracks filled with slack lack
and mandible mornings.  dissapointment dossiers,
i have a stack of them on my dais. let's
compare notes. fake the statistics till they tell
us what we want in three studies or less.
that's the kind of career to build in the twentyfirst century
ano dominea, and really, what more could you expect
when elegance and simplicity trump the complications
of a mandlebrot with broken syntax.


now the band is on its way. pinks peek from
hazy blue eyes, which close themselves
held in by the coming dark. there's an orange
cat curled up in the sink. he's been there all
day, with his paws over his eyes. ashes on the floor
remind me i'm a writer. you come in to talk
but i'm looking for the voice of my grreat grandmother
to hop into this mechanism and hold my hand.
i'm looking for the music that even syphillitic
philosphers understand make life livable.
alelujah, we sing. together as one.


now summer will have no shade
so it

Friday, May 02, 2014

pot gods and parrots pacing dro markets

i retrace the wrong turn on googlemap
(it's ok to use the brand, im a subscriber)
the point where ninety degrees became
an extra hour twisted along the banks
of north meets occluded sun.

i found out today some not so distant
grandmother, maybe great or great squared
was native american and it struck me that's where
the difference arrived, a spark of red skin revealed
on a beach,,my son's razored hair growing in
   straight t as arrow
strange to me it's on grampas side, cuz i remember
gramma's exotic hands, high cheekbones.
was her hair curly or did she get a perm

you wrestle with demons best vanished in the dim
past of misty hills alive with roatsted coffee beans
and i'm left to wonder how a north carolina indian
got buried in the old graveyard in polk city.

the sweet bud you show me on craigslist
is in washington. i'm all for moving there since
global warming's changing all the rules
in a few years here, maybe even the weather's.


i'm all for using the twisty neuronic paths to prove
cold is only a state of mind. if resonance holds true
we'll warm each other just like a fireplace.