bearing children
bearing scars
bearing pain
bearing bad news
Today I’ve borne about all I can stand.
One thing pulls at my heart
while another pushes on my chest.
Bear with me, it’s all
more than I can bear right now.
I’ll take quality of life
Over followers and likes.
No matter what the mood the bounce
in my step is produced by the music
running around in my head.
Know pain; no pain.
Grown men still piss on the seat
and shit where they sleep.
Bringing beliefs to a fact fight
is like trying to light the whole horizon
with a flashlight.
Sometimes you just drift apart
with distance, indifference,
disdain or cats on your couch.
If a man snuffles and snorts
between snuggles,
it’s over before it’s begun.
Perhaps you’re misaligned in temper,
tolerance, trait — he likes country, you like jazz,
or he alleges a character flaw.
A lover once shouted
You’re entirely too rational!
as he charged out the door.
Betrayal money violence death,
no matter the cause,
the relationship ends.
In his wildest dreams
could Beardsley have conceived
of this blue the blue
of her gown like cobalt
gone soft trying to blend in
with the hydrangeas behind her?
She walks among them
her bobbed hair with its straight
bangs the color of sun
struggling through fog.
Her porcelain face looks over
her thin shoulder wary imperious—
she has not invited the viewer
to come closer but she makes them
want to.
~inspired by a photograph of a model dressed and posing like an Aubrey Beardsley illustration
Searching Google Earth
for something I remember
eyes traveling down Mule Shed Lane
to Bogey Mill Road which disappears
often in fence-line overgrowth
following the long green serpent
of Silver Creek through overhanging canopy
along the way, I find scatters of stones
but not the ones lodged in memory
vast fields and many treed hills belie
the nearness of suburbia
reaching the Kentucky River
and looking over into Garrard
I know I have gone too far.
( I’ve already had my rant poem this month . Now here’s my disgusting one)
God is constantly telling me jokes
some of them just a few seconds long
one where the punchline took 50 years
(and that’s just the record so far)
I was spending the night with a new school friend
who was smart and funny and out of control
and when it was time to turn in it was like
he turned into a kid with a brand-new toy
bringing it out and proudly demonstrating
his recently acquired magical ability
we were thirteen and some of us
had lead in our pencils and some of us
hadn’t quite gotten there yet I was
thoroughly amazed and a little creeped out
having never seen this kind of display before.
Thirty years later my knowledge of punk rock
could have been described as minimal
being busy with raising kids at the time
I was vaguely aware that he’d moved to New York
and that his last name had gone to Hell
I had no idea he’d inspired the Sex Pistols
and was the first person Legs Mcneil
had seen shooting up.
So I’m thumbing through some
music down at CD Central
when I stumble onto Blank Generation
and everyone turns as I burst out laughing
when I see the first song is titled
“Love Comes In Spurts”
(Richard we were only in the eighth grade
together so I didn’t expect to be mentioned
in your book and I understand why you
still remember Mimi because after half a
century I still do too.)
I truly believe that if I had a
perfect memory and paid
enough attention all of the time
God’s jokes at all speeds would
come at me so often I would
probably die from laughing.
sugar without
tinted rim vows
a luscious inside
Some fluff
tires the jaw after weeks
of dense cake-chewing
to an empty center
Marred treats ooze goo
line stick on the table
drip the floor
pink the hardwood
Stains belie the promise
of the one
bite
sugar cake gel
