On The Matter of Christmas

A tree stands in the window

Fluffing out its branches

Like the jiggly cellulite arms

Of an over perfumed female relative.

Underneath, presents as colourful

As little girl's clothes

In a Goodwill.

Hanging close by, stockings

More pregnant 

Than any vice president hopeful's daughter.

On Having Food Poisoning

Shivers run up and down my spine

Like people in a marathon 

While shot puts

Get heaved across my stomach.

Javelins fly through my intestines

Like birds-

Determined to go south for the winter.

And you stand in my door way-

Apology smeared on your face-

Like that chicken had been smeared in disease.

Dear Bukowski-

You're an ass

But you're brilliant.

Your voice is a leathery wet paper bag-

Torn so easily

But so tethered.

You sound like a beer being opened

Like a cigarette being lit.

You speak like the smoke floating up

In the air

After one good smoke

After one good lay-

You linger in the air.

You're never frozen,

But always lukewarm.

Your face is a road map

Of heartbreak, but the best kind of such-

Heartbreak that doesn't care as much.

Heartbreak that knows it's how it's gonna go.

No, no, maybe,

We have everything,

And we have nothing,

You say.

And it's so...

You.

Bukowski.

You are so beautiful, he says to her With eyes made to make people weep. And indeed they are- Willows dance in your eyes Trees careen in your soul. You are the sun through the flowers The wind through the wheat. My fingers float through the dust, Scrambling for that last bit of earth, Trying to revive you, revive us. You are the Isabelle to his Columbus, The Izzy to his Col. We are all the tree, The fountain... Inspired by Daren Astovonsky's film, "The Fountain".

There was something gorgeous in the way

We lay on your bed

All three of us intertwined.

We kind of looked like a Renoir painting--

All of us connected.

The room light was golden

With laughter

Blushing

Giggling

And just enough tension to dance around the walls.

We traipsed outside under the young moon

So you both could smoke cigarettes

While I missed my human addiction--

We are all beautiful

In love

with life.

...when that one famous poet

wrote that particular famous poem--

the one about dying of lights--

i think his frantic brain

was on the shore

watching the sun set...

he must have-

with his metaphorical mind-

been regarding the sun

sink below the water...

how swift it happens-

he must have thought--

how quickly it all goes...

and by it- i mean-- of course--

not the sun

with its dying glow-

but life-

with its crying infants

turned old

in a wind blow...

so continue to rage against that death-

that death of ever circularity...

A bit morbid...

For Squid

You sat, making yourself beautiful by

Holding a wedding bouquet far too early

And your brown curls

Echo profound thoughts that

I'll never know completely

(Though we are strangely connected).

You'll always be the Charles Wallace to my Meg,

The Jane to my Lizzie.

You make everything make sense

In a world that spins crazy fast.

Inspired by Woody Allen's "Annie Hall"

You wanna hear a joke,

You ask, and we infer-

A joke that really isn't funny

And will make us slightly depressed

But leave us in a profound mood.

You'll hit us with cute

Romantically dressed

Characters and quippy lines

Of cynicism.

You'll break the fourth wall

And also bend reality.

But, while doing this, good sir,

While presenting us with

Spiders, Mashed Yeast, and

Houses located under roller coasters:

You present us.

In a ridiculous, almost eerily...

...RIGHT...

... ACCURATE...

... form.

What I would like to know

(And save your jokes for later)

When you broke the fourth wall,

Did you break into my mind as well? 

They played the game of deepest, darkest secrets today-

He moved his knight to A7

And checkmated her soul.

The only move she has left--

There's one secret she hasn't told him,

One unnoticed pawn in the corner.

 

And that silly token means everything- 

But here it is.

All her heart wants is to

Know that deepest darkest romance.

She wants to be as Heathcliff and Kathy,

Ross and Rachel,

Darcy and Lizzy.

 

Pick your famous couple from pop culture--

she envies them.

It's not the dreamy perfect man

With alabaster brow that she longs after.

It's fitting with someone so utterly.

So perfectly.

That she cannot breathe.

 

So, gentle boy, take her pawn.

Take it, but remember, this one has wishes.

You confound me-

You are so interestingly fresh

Like a pair of new shoes.

I put you on, and you squeak a little.

My heels hurt, but only until

We both find a middle ground in the toes,

Or right between them.

(Matters like this are always *that* precise.)

And it feels just so right to wear you,

Like you fit me,

Or at least for this time.

If you were shoes, you would be a pair of sandals-

Something I can feel summer air through

Something the sand can slip into

Something I can feel real about.

Something, someone.

Or at least....

The possibility.

I remember laughing with you about pregnant women-

Your long, lithe finger poked through a hole in my high school weary jeans.

You told me that when I was pregnant with my own kid-

You wanted a portrait painted of me

And my rotund middle.

I wonder what would happen when I'm actually pregnant...

And sent you a picture of my stomach...

After we haven't talked for five years?

Attempting to write prose

Is like catching Carroll’s snark-

It’s an elusive little beast

Though Erwin may call it a beauty

Like he does with alligators-

We writers know better

Prose is the hardest beast to tackle.

Are we just poets because we are cowards?

I wonder.

It’s just as well-

The tacky khaki shorts one wears on safaris

Don’t look good on me anyways.

Ice Cream Sandwich

It's the soft in between moments that I think of you-

You have become the melted ice cream in between two

Stale cookies of happiness.

I'll be enjoying my day, not remembering you-

Not even thinking of you-

And then, a drop of you will fall onto the side walk in front of me.

You make everything in my life sticky,

Inconveniently uncomfortable.

Hopefully, some day, after you've been in the freezer of forgetting for some time-

I can take you out again and smile.

Here there, little man

Watcha doin here

On the dusty roads where

Pick ups and bajos

Are king?

Take back your Armani suit-

It don’t mean nothing here.

===

She sits, dreaming of places yet to be

Paris, Mali, Verona, Madrid.

Perfectly oblivious to the fact

That the sun is shining on

Her too-young face

And the brick before her

That was hand carved.

====

White dust bunnies descend

Through the sunlight,

Dodging between the brackets

Of a white window blind.

This is the only kind of

Snow you’ll see in Florida,

I whisper to myself

As I stare at the negative space

Between me and the clothes you threw on the floor.

====

The wine dark sea

Envelopes you, Penelope.

Your sweat drenched back

Gathers grains of sand

And they become your diamonds.

Ithaca cries for you, lady,

You half window,

Un accepting of suitors.

“Do you not understand,” they say

“That your husband is gone?”

You have no reason for diamonds.

You deny all suitors,

Content with laying yourself into the sea,

Whispering his name into the wind.        

__