By all the wrong numbers

By all the wrong numbers
(published in Gloom Cupboard's May 2011 edition)



I’ve been painted by
all the wrong numbers
and my lousy reputation
grows like wily tufts and tusks
from out of the hide
of some newly feral sow.
All these friendships,
still fresh in their decay,
in their state of disrepair,
they are mine to heal.
When I hear Patsy Cline,
I fall to pieces,
and like a damned fool,
I think I need this.

A Shadow with Wings

Depending on your shores; she is Death, fickle as her feathers in the wind;
she is the thief of light, the bearer of battle cries and shattered shields. 

With meticulous beak, she waits to break bones inside their frail containers.
She is the overseer of gain and destruction, soaring above burning fields and warring factions,
and as they die and bury their dead, she blinks and turns her wayward head to the sky.

Unflappable in her inaction, she is the stare of indifference perfected.

A shadow with wings, the black-eyed beast that heralds in a long resisted truth,
bringing to our  dear Edgar Allen the nevermore and darker news.

She is mischief in the flesh, an eternal Loki running on the wind or just above the water,
keeping always half a step ahead of Thor and smirking all the while.

She will let you watch her tumble there all day, halting, turning, again and again,
falling through the sky like some young Icarus, without the human trait of foolishness.

She captures life with all the sheen of her gaze, with the slick second of a silver flicker ripped
from the folds of a thrifty mind, out through the onyx sliver of her clever pupils and into my mine,

into my soul, that thing that jolts me there in my restless sleep where I lay dreaming of the Raven.

Wheel to rail

Wheel to Rail

PUBLISHED IN THE COPPERFIELD REVIEW: Volume 10 Number 4 AUTUMN 2011 Edition

 

Wheel to Rail

The day grinds to dusk,

metal to metal, wheel to rail.

We sit across from each other,

her and her green or blue or hazel eyes,

shimmering like the slanted view

of oil spots left in empty parking lots,

millions of years in the making

and mill-stoned to perfection.

Some double helix flipped a switch

and Chance, like water and sand,

gleams best under pressure;

her pupils stained with more

than the so-so hope of the world.

In a New York City subway,

in between all the potentials

and on the other side, we sit alone,

one hello away and unreachable,

caught unaware while

picking the shallow wet

for smooth rocks, our dreams

like perfectly chipped seashells

stretched across a shore

of rust and hard plastic.

Frank O'Hara, I have sardines and oranges

I see that not everyone is snip-snapping poems into paperclips,
holding memories in their place, quietly tucked away in manila envelopes,
chapbook still-frames stuck on display behind the plastic pages of photo albums.

I have stolen paperclips to keep my life in place,
and the rough arc of my back continues to pierce me through
with possibilities and my right eye twitches, clearing up the vision
of what I once thought was slobbery at best. 

Frank O'Hara was tireless, talking about truth and sardines and oranges,
burning twice as fast and he cannot be wrong because he was there.
I am here and I have sardines and oranges too and there is something, I think,
behind all these paperclips, I'll tell you that much, so listen up...

but first, I have bottles to recycle and battles to squeeze
into weekend boxes that mark the margins of my calendars. 
I'll be busy with fluids for a while, with my manila envelopes
and my photo albums where my memories obey me.

I'll be picking up scraps of music to help me disengage
from the throes of birthing yarns and idles, until tomorrow,
when the hard part is done, when Frank O'Hara and I can
stand to look at each other all over again, and I'll tell him,
"Frank, I've lost my sardines and oranges. Can I borrow yours?"

Everywhere I go

I prefer the taste of the preterit;

--the smell
of sugar melting
on top of oatmeal,

dissolving
at the bottom
of a steaming 
cup of lemon tea.

A 1980's
winter morning
watching Mama
stand over the stove
in her bathrobe,

Sunday
with the windows
frost-caked over
like a frozen desert.

She stood in silence,
stirring the farina for
her three squabbling boys,

she,
the strongest woman I knew,
there, in the kitchen,
here, everywhere I go.

Click and move--Chosen as #1 Reader's Choice Finalist with GSLR-2011

Click and move--
Nominated for Pushcart Prize 
by Golden Sparrow Literary Review, 2011

Click and move

In the mean while
I learn these little programs,

Click and Move.
Click and Move.

I have been
told that this
will help my resume
to out-shine all
the others and
well, self reliance,

self reliance
as Emerson knows,
makes a man
into a star

so that he may wiggle
brightest in the evening sky.

I like doing these tiny tasks, I suppose.
I’ve been told that I cannot help
but like the thought of progress..