Frost

I want to fight the frost away
and savor the taste of licorice summers.
Candy apple plastic still scorches
on playgrounds in afternoon glow.
There are golds and yellows somewhere

but here glass fogs from the humidity of shocked lungs.
They remember the easy breathing of warm air
and miss the nose filling breezes of June
and its freshly cut grass.

The spirit of the year is broken,
and, pathetically, all we can do
is lament and watch the bitch die.
She was a flapper draped in a happy pallet,

but all women outlive their charm
just as all men outlive their utility.

I want to fight the frost away
but there is comfort in its necessity.

Telling Dr. Wayne about the Mouse Again

“...Hickory Dickery, Doc;
The mouse whose clock I stopped...”

“He stuck his head,
Into my bed,
So I took the time to name him:
(Though I knew he was dead)
Hickory Dickery, Doc.”

Sleep

My eyes burn from the want of sleep,
And while I stumble through consciousness
Because of ignored obligations,
The beguiling vision of rest is conceived within me.

Should I focus on the work, mandating completion,
Or on the hours, dying while not slept?
What beauty is there dreaming of completion
When, still, the work is left piled afterwards?

Your Velvet

Through the thick velvet lies you cast
Over me, and their softness,
I can sense a hint of hesitation;

You’d rather I not find comfort in them.
But they are so lovely,
And why adorn me

If you didn’t care how I’d wear them?
I am beautiful in your wraps,
They are your love, gentle and hateful,

And proof you do have feelings,
And proof you do have aforethought,
And proof you do have a conscious.

Why else drape over me
Your velvet sanctimony?
It’s not as though you reign over the truth,

I know the fabric and accept it as it is,
An unintentionally perfect gift.
All you have conquered through

Your banal sort of material flattery
Is my heart, because your affection
(Your lies and half truths)

Is unbeknownstly velvet,
And I wear it as a shawl.

The Portrait

The portrait’s glass cracked in the frame
After it fell off the nail in the hallway.
There was a pale rectangle
In the portrait’s place; I ran
My fingers over it, but it felt
Just like the rest of the wall.
I picked up the portrait, hazed in cracked glass,
And took it into the living room. It would stay
Against the couch for a week before I
Would get the glass replaced and rehang it.
I kept the same nail, just for posterity,
And for the chance of a second fall
So I could see the pale wall rectangle again.

The Skeleton Inside

I mock the leaves for crumbling
And aging is my penance.
I will snap from the tree of youth,
Though I fade not from ivy to amber.
I was once pink, now peach, then gray.
As if the spring of my age marches toward autumn,
I will rustle as I scoot along the pavement,
Just like the leaves I mock.

There is a lesson when the skeleton inside
Aches and wretches with every bend and jerk:
That the hardened veins of leaves outlast
The browned, ashing bits of skin attached.
I, too, will make a beautiful corpse.

Concrete Tomorrow

I emerged from the gravel pit of yesterday unscratched,
Though my colors were stolen in the chunks of gray.
I fought for as long as I saw fit,
But the lure of a concrete tomorrow has a sturdy grip
And I lost my rainbow pallet.

The concrete tomorrow has no hope for hue,
But at least the onward is smoother now,
Less caked in ruble and discursive stone
So willing to steal away personality.
Everything seems better in a concrete tomorrow.

The Studier

Stacks of books eventually destroy interest
and studying in heat is oppression.

Finally distracted, the studier presses
his sweating hands against the table hard.
When he retrieves them
The dregs of his hands stay:
Sweat, oil, and hints of prints.
The specters on the wood command a halt,
with palms open,
but vanish quickly into the auburn varnish.
He puts his hands to his face and takes them away,
leaving that same human residue there.

They are permanent.
His hands are permanent.
Just as he himself is permanent.
He will not fade into conquered wood
but fall into the course of time
at exactly his spot, there forever.

"There is only the moment,
there is only the present moment!"

Stacks of books are gifts from history;
they prove his point so the studier starts again,
less conscious of the heat and death.

creation

after i drained all the water from the bath
i decided to shave again; its relaxing,
but I ripped my face with the blade, small and deep,
on the corner of my thin upper lip.
a shocked red tide dribbled down.

had the bath not yet drained, the red plasma,
after finding the still steaming water,
would have mystified: it is a nebulous galaxy,
swirling, forming, and dazzeling in the water, created
from nothing but me. i smiled with the thought
of the universes inside of me.

that is when the blood pooled between
the novelty of my god lips
and warmed the cosmic winds there.

heaven is a daydream of mine,
and hell is nothing but a razor cut,
in every one of my universes.

i drew another bath. today i create.
tomorrow, I will shave again.

The Barrel of a Shotgun

I am as calm as the barrel of a shotgun.

Smooth, firm, and steady
In my dark, steel length.

I am simple and stated in my own presence
Without words but their meanings.
My power is witnessed within itself.

There is simply me and the looming threat
That I’ll never speak of,
Because everyone to know me
Hears it as soon as them see me.
It’s as loud as scatter shot
Rupturing into a dove
On the dawn of a prairie’s morning.

I am as calm as an empty chamber.

I am as calm as the barrel of a shotgun.

A Night Giggle

The moon stared back
through the window
into my study and me,
pressing on the glass
so hard I thought
the panes might shatter.

The shards would be so lovely,
cutting through the twilight,
that I giggled at my desk
from thinking about them,
then the floor,
and how it would look
to clean up

with the moon still
staring, and now smirking,
down at all it had done.

Rough

When
that sandpaper sleep
rubs your rough to calm
you will awake in the morning,
but not Fresh:

You are not a new-bloomed flower
Or a shock of cold water.
You are stale bread with butter,
still edible, but barely,
and preferable to none.

Not, So Much, News

The self important papers,
The small and local drivel,
Make for better insulation
Than they ever could news.

Iron Sun

No bit of slippery somber
Could steal away this iron sun,
And I swear on the slivers
of the noon moon
That I'll keep this gift
'til day's done.

The Fire

When the fire catches up to us
In this infernal race against it
I refuse to let the flames consume
And instead will run further out.

Somewhere past the constant horizon
I will fall short of breath and strength,
Fatigue will strangle my last bit of hope
And those great flames will devour me.

But while I am able and steady: I run,
And deny my legs the empty ending;
It makes little sense and takes more time
To explain that running, altogether, is

Pointless.

A New Absurdist

I looked out the window
Unto all the silly things:
The busy people,

Each with their own
tangled, growing mass
Of knots on lengthening
And fraying little strings.

Then I stopped, thoughtfully,
Because I knew that I,
Inside, staring, and noting,
Was exactly like them.

‘To each their own’ is a
Nasty universal. Sad, then,
That it is so damn true.

Portrait of a Morning

The faucet woke up angry,
vomiting auburn sludge
across the pearl basin
and down the sterling drain.

The rotten cusps curled up
the concave walls of white
as the garbage surge dimpled the pool,
pushing the settling edges higher.

I stood and stared disappointed
into the sink. The crushing morning
bled in my eyes, my distant
face hollow but solid in the mirror.

The burnt rubber of my mouth
would overpower the sulfur
or perhaps copper tinges in
the browning dirty water;

I welded my eyes shut with
the remaining crusts of sleep
before I dragged the brush along
my teeth, cleaner from the grit.

Spitting into the sewer was relief
And I killed the flow to help end
the smell that had begun attacking
what was left to enjoy of the morning.

I staggered to a closet
to rummage through wrinkled ghost
reminders of late nights.
I wouldn't take the chance of a shower.

Waiting in Space

When the room is crowded—
dozens of eyes searching
every wall and corner
or just sitting and

filling the softness
of the somber used space—
I feel so separate
and alone: away from

the breathy atmosphere.
But the lost emptiness
fades around each body
and in receiving the

secrets of the room
I am closer to the
four walls and floor
than any other set of eyes.

I am not above them
or alone, I am below,
waiting with the space
until, again, it is relaxed.

The Victor

I sit quietly withdrawn
covered in the tattered blanket of victory
after an argument with you.

I made my points and threw my logic confetti
all over your clean floors,
and I laughed so deviously
as I watch you sweep it up, slowly,
fuming and fading into contempt.

I wounded you with my wisdom,
and though you waited so patiently
to make your false points,
no order you could conceive
was stronger than my razor wit
and bellowing broad sword.

But now that the war is won
and the spoils are mine,
I sit alone—draped in the winnings—lamenting
my selfishly foolish crime.

Triumph, at such cost,
for an assuredly correct mind.

Hiding

I was young when I would hide myself,
sitting against the cold frictionless,
white wall of the washing machine.
I would cradle my legs and nestle
my chin on my knees, eyes keeping vigil
on red ant processions,
red streaks near the side door
to the laundry room
hunting for food or on the move,
but always in collective lines.
When the red dot ants stopped beguiling my eyes,
I would pick at the curled lips of pealing linoleum tiles
that stayed mild in the summer.
I wasn't hot went I hid myself when I was young,
Even though that suffocating Georgia humidity
Laughed at anyone who happened outside.
And outside was so close with the side door,
True escape if I could ever muster the need,
Hiding with the washing machine beside me.