Thursday, April 28, 2011

more of 2006

Loving yourself: it's about time.
Look around. How beautiful do you feel? Take a minute to think about all the gifts that you have in your life. A computer. A home. A Friend. A Family. People who love you.

These ideas are the things that bring smiles to my face. And you know when you are smiling, you are looking beautiful.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Oh Well

Once I fell down into a well
that some might call adulthood,
and I knew this well was coming
but I didn't protect myself

no no, I knew what to
expect, that I couldn't
get out of it, yet that
prospect never bothered me

I will soon die in the
dank darkness, alone
on a blind journey
stubornly digging to China

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Rough

Editors, with colored pens,
bring your swoops of red
down on me

I won't move a muscle,
I'm here to stay and
your clinical strokes

those hands that have
come to tie my shoelaces,
won't reach this time;

it's clear, right here
that you might be writing
"WORD CHOICE" or "REDUNDANT"

and I won't come fighting,
no, this battle was over
long before you were born

and the wrong side won,
so honey bun, just set
down that pen

put on some music,
let down your hair,
and run, honey, run.

DFW

Something points him
toward you, his fingers
flippping fast enough

to underscore that seat
you held with underlines
Roy E. Disney

what a joke was
played on all of us
your universe imploded

on the page, and friends
and loved ones come close
to hold the light up to

your acned face,
let him rest in peace
david, let him rest.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

My First Poems (2004)

Two Broken Windows Intact

I’m sitting snugly in a plush two thousand
and three plastic chair. Three fingers for
one hundred and thirteen keys. To my right
giant panes of glass that are double thick

sleep coolly and jealous. Six are motionless
but two are shattered, designing their visions
as they choose. Showing everyone what they
are thinking. How they have decided to let

me see the oak or the green sidewalk or
the brown grass or the opaque figure of
a child holding a balloon in one hand
and his mother’s heart in the other, so

careless with both. He’s like the driver
who moved his cart into the building
claiming the full walls of glass as his
own. He didn’t know if he hit them just

right, he could give them life, where they would
stay up and let everyone see through them in the
prettiest way. Soon, without explanation
they will be replaced, with new transparent panes

just like mom. She won’t understand when he
leaves for school or falls in love. She longs to
hold him and tell him stories, just as the two
panes have done for you and me. If the child,

or the mother or the balloon could see me at this
moment, would they feel like we do? Would they
sing a lament for these poor and happy windows
and pray that the repair men would take an extra week?


Happiest Place on Earth

Have you ever paid to wait in line?
Paid to park, to pay to wait in line?
How about paid for food
After paying to wait in the restaurant?

Ever seen the look on a child’s face
When they step foot inside this façade for the first time
Where puffy bricks and screaming doorbells, clinch hearts
As tight as my grasp on your over-used hips

Thousands of them without cares
Warming our souls into a metallic glow
So our cold copper-plated core
Can give off warmth just for today

Just for tonight, you love me
You could be my Fiancé coming in from 3-days in Chicago
Or a high school sweetheart ran into at a bar
“Funny seeing you here, Façade. It’s me, Child,
Can I buy you a drink?”



Nineteen sixty-nine Gibson SG; white

Her skin has turned from pearl,
to a translucent tan smear of age and regret.
My lover for all of my days.

Waiting for me.
Why has her hard shell broken down with time?
Once so beautiful and shining
a metallic smile
radiating love
silently.
She always cherished playing,
and when she was young, she sang bright

louder than church bells
sweeping the countryside.
So soft and strong,
still singing the same songs
of youth,
but her tongue
has become the bridge
between her missing teeth.

Her missing years.
A rusted character and
hidden glow covered
with smudges of being used and neglected.
Her warn body screams
“why not love me like you did?”
Neck curved from tan to bruised black
since my hands squeezed so tight.

And when the fists release their clutch
from her slender neck for the last time,
she will never breathe again.
unstrung,
unplugged,
lifeless.
Carried in a beautifully
padded box to lie
above the ground.
In an attic, forgotten.
Until a garage sale
or when we move house.
to be thrown away once more.



Sunsets Reexamined

This twenty-third night of
Watching a firefly boogie. He has the net
And the jar and the high hopes. He has the tools

And the ability. He just can’t catch it.
He can’t hang on. And she will never
Know that she’s stretching his soul

For the chance, just a chance to
Get it. Always dancing in circles
Around his head, lighting up the night.

In a ballroom evening dress of gold
That coats and heaves at every man’s
Heart in the room, taking a piece from each

His hand twists the small neck hairs below the hairline.
Searching and reaching for the sound of capture
For the music and the gold and the body.

Now I know what your thinking,
But this is different. I can see him
Sitting at his desk, with a book in front.

This is key; this moment is imperative
What he doesn’t know is that he is brighter
Than the brightest fire fly, bringing her closer

The sun is attracted to his light and now
He caught it, and wrapped it up
And I watched him hold the sun.

In his arms while it bled to death.
She grew so pale next to him.
The world is so pale next to him.



Driving To Kinko’s To Bind My Final

Old sky, grey and close
tapping at my windshield.

It’s raining soft and windless like a pretend sick
day, where a “soar throat” would win
for 14 hours. I lay under the yellow
blanket grandma knit. Snug with the sound
of rain and warm with contentment and cherry
cough drops.

For an instant, it seems like the stereo and the wipers
and the rain are all drumming together.
Cha Cha Cha Clap

With my eyes closed, that old blanket reappears below my chin.
In comes the smell of my first home.
From ten years of sitting on the back shelf of my mind.
Sweet and crisp.
Full of lavender and the window’s orange tree.

There is this place
between the buried and me,
that’s different for everyone.

When my ride comes,
I hope it’s raining out,
so I can breath this in again.

Metonymy

Would it be weird to dance
on Broadway, in front of the
Roebuck store,

Or move to California
and find what Hollywood
is for?

Or fly to Washington Dc
and sit on top
of the hill

and think of hills
in LA, so far from
white house kills;

Like Frankenstein's
waddling mumble,
his unrecognizable tongue

the queen of the hive's
buzzing bumble,
the workers will feed her their young,

I don't mean that
Westminster's worthy
to represent blue-collar taste

the sweat of the laboring
hurried, to feed bears
on Wall Street in haste.

3rd Annual Poetry Night

Hello Students
Tonight is the Night
where we will laugh
and cry and golf-clap

intention, direction,
rhyme and meter don't
matter here, they
dance on 18th century

tongues, bourgeois
but no, not us kids
we will be free he he
letting go of all form

and the need to appear
like poets in language,
just wear black and
sound deep, deep, deep

all the little birdies
sing deep deep deep
like underwater diver's
rental suit. cheep cheep cheap.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

On Letting Go

This poem would be
much longer and more
substanital, like a meal,
if I didn't have to pee

you know, urinate; that
thing you did this morning
and around lunch and and
all the damn time

the thing that reminds us
that we are all animals
with pregnant skulls,
our physical needs, our gentiles,

well I planned to write
a poem about transcendence,
about forgiving and renouncing,
about acceptance, compassion;

my image, the image is of
myself as a child, on a
San Francisco trolley car
releasing the leather strap

that I had held so tightly
and trusting in gravity's
maternal grasp and in my
own inner-ear and knees, my feet

but I have no time for such
imagining - not when the white
office urinal speaks, it beckons,
it pleas: Pee! Pee! Pee!

Guilt

I'm a horse
that Bukowski
bet on, in some track
like Santa Anita long
after they had Japanese
interment

and, as that horse,
I feel earth pulling
past fast and I only
see tails and dirt
airborne dirt flying,
push push

so the old and young
the white and fat can
get drunk, can drink,
and swear and spend
and I won't understand
a single word of it.

On Deception

I lied today
to tell the truth,
I called you, Melissa,
after 3 months and

told you that I'd
written it late
that I didn't
mean it, that

I'd made a mistake
and then I called you
back. I called you
back to tell the truth

and you laughed at me
in your surprise, and
I have the feeling that
this, all of this, will

trick trick trickle down
and get me fired.

Food Is Sex

Blood
Blood Orange
Orange Soda
Soda Pop
Popsicle
Otter Pop
French Fries in Ketchup
Mustard
Chicken Wings
Lemon Meringue
Huckleberry Tart

Beef
Hot Stewed Beef
Game Hen
Sorbet
Watermelon
Dark Chocolate
Melted Cheese Sandwich
Toast w/ Butter and Jam
Navel Orange
Blood Orange
Blood

Frown-Smile

Back in 2011, today
we had these tabs
that sat ontop of
our web browsers

mine read as follows
facebook
crescent moon
heygirlfriend

www.unchangi...
write space
Diva's departm...
The 50 best fo...

Blogger: The F...


NOW. You might know what
this all means, you might
understand why I've told you
or this might be so far in the

future that words like browser
and blogger sound like buggy whip
or flapper, like parchment or scroll,
but that's only if I've done my job.

Monday, April 11, 2011

While Waiting to Sleep, I Lean Over and Say

I don't think adults
are smarter than children,
they just have more
practice at being alive.