Posts for June 16, 2017 (page 3)

We all watched as you painted yourself in a corner

You wore my clothes to work
And now I’m wearing the dress
of last night’s skin you shed, and left
on my living room floor this morning

When I talk about us
I always end up saying again, again
Because I’ve met my living proof of
those ride or die friends
people are always talking about

It’s really just been one sweaty,
rain-soaked, blanket-clad, beer sticky
sweeping embrace
standing on a porch, shouting in a thunderstorm,
hiding out on the couch

What do you call the opposite
of a fair-weather friend?
We’re the daily shit storm forecast
Brought to you by: mutual existential dread
a fierce loyalty, and a splash
of the ole razzle-dazzle

Tonight you locked my door behind you
with the key you’ve saved me with twice
I go to bed without checking 
thinking maybe it’s just about practice
in reaching out and holding on.

That word
The MVP of so many great pop songs
It caputres the freewheeling immediacy
Inhibition and mystique
That a good high will provide
Or at least the promise of one

For three and a half minutes
The world turns its collective attention
To you
Screaming into the void
Bleachers line the shoulders
In the highways of your mind
As you recklessly speed by
Bathed in the humid neon glow
Of a perfect summer eve

Some feel the need to tack the word
“Guilty”
Onto their pleasure, feeling unclean
Well, I feel bad for you son
I’ve got 99 problems
But tomorrow ain’t one

Have you ever met a day 
that seemed to stretch itself
across the whole month? 

I am tired
of reminders. 

Called Back against my will to face
Facts of who I was and now not am. 
Accusing kin with forgiveness smiles
Clucked behind weathered hands.
The prodigal returned, after the burying. 

Little Jake told me the story I missed
With the blow out and rock slide on the
Old road to where I didn’t’t want to go.
The telling honest as the child himself. 

“Mama kept us more or less off to ourselves,
But that day somebody was in a long gray box in the front room. 
That was why ever’body I know and most I don’t crowded 
The porch as if we were having a big old shiveree. 

The women kept pulling handkershiefs from their sleeves
And taking a swipe at every kid who came too near.
No one had caught me yet, onec’t Aunt Sudie come close.  

The guns were leaning aginst the maple tree, just a sapling.
Since I was running from Sudie that tree looked like a hidin’
Place with its pinwheel of rifles and a bit of shade. 
As I was ducking behind the carbines, I kicked a forty ought
And the blast scattered buckshot right at the chicken house. 

No one ran that distance from the porch to me faster than mama,
Yelling and grabbing and swinging. I might of died right there, 
But Uncle Ray grabbed me and Granny grabbed mama. 

‘Boy, there’s been enough guns lately. Get in the house
And set with your pappy. You’ll never see him again.’
I felt Popaw fall to pieces like a china cup had dropped
On a rock. I hate porches and kin and that long gray box.” 

I reached to comfort him but he darted away
Aiming to hide in in the dark barn, his sanctuary. 
Wonder if there is room for two? 

K. Bruce Florence 

Would you ask a violinist “how much do you practice?”
or a ballerina about her grueling daily dance routine?
Everybody writes. The poet writes like she prays, with passion.

Athena emerged fully-grown from the head of Zeus.
She saw everything and knew everything.
To be born, the writer enters a state of curiosity,

waiting for the moment when
the poem opens up and tells her
what it wants to be about.

No thrills of discovery for the goddess.
Miles Davis said, my future
starts when I wake up every morning.

One more journey,
my failsafe illusion;
if she hurts me
you and I will be ready.
Another star
to drag the night,
one more prodigal
return to safety.
Will you see me
and set preparations,
fatter calf
communion feast?
Just believe
poor man’s redemption,
designed for death
of already dead soul.

Passing trees
amid the hot concrete
going 75+: 

Air is hot, humid
My lungs fill with cicadas
its that time now. 

Every year when they come,
I remember my sister
Innocence has been lost
since they last
descended. 

     
       I’ve kept this bubbly
       I’ve kept it bright
       Do not want to go
       Where there is no light

       They make me sad, those dreadful places
       Unrequited love – moons without faces

       See, one can deal with ‘fluffy’ for so long
       Then the gargoyles start to sing me their song
     
       “Come hither, come hither, you lack luster fool
       grab a hammer a shovel or some kind of tool
       and dig yourself out of the spot you got in
       you might need a beer or a bottle of gin”

       Stop trying to go back to a time most forgot
       Best left unopened, that door that you locked

       That you brushed against it, is not questioned here
       the dark evil place void of light and all cheer
       It was an accident – you don’t want the past
       Keep that door shut – run away very fast

       Why did you even want to go there?
       It’s scary, it’s evil – there’s no one to care
       They wait for you – those gargoyles that drool
       They want you back – their delight is in cruel

       Write down your thoughts, your feelings your fears
       Don’t try to relieve them – that puts you back years
       Do not uncover those times that were raw
       You’re not the same person – No, not at all.

       Let your deepness within, come out with a pen
       You lived it all once – don’t go there again!

The boxer is the poet of the flesh.

Home is my mother’s voice.

Words marinate in this sweet air.

Tangle up with me like bramble. I leave marks.

Neighbors idling at property lines, smiling, bags of dogshit swinging like scrotums​.

Laugh at the storm while preparing for it.

The poet is the boxer of the soul. 

Leave nothing behind but a scent people want to keep.