Posts for June 17, 2018 (page 5)

sometimes i forget
how much i love to dance.
how i’ll stand right up against
a stack of speakers taller than me
and let the vibrations
tear through my body, happily.
sometimes i forget
i’m not just going barefoot
on gravel kind of tough.
i’m sliding out of my heels

on the street in east St. Louis
and sitting down
for a curbside cigarette
kind of tough too.  
i’m a country mouse
whose seen The Cramps.
and i can’t resist a rousing call
for cornfed dames.
even when it means
a Tuesday night in town.

i am not sending you a card
or calling you
or messaging you 
i’m not wishing you anything

(okay well maybe i am
but it’s not anything nice)

maybe this will be the year
that i succeed in not being
angry sad bitter wistful wanting

maybe not

Find beauty in the once buoyant ship, now sunken ship, that I am 

I don’t know
what scrapple is

I don’t want to know
what scrapple is

however many years
it’s taking off my life
I’m gaining in delight

the waitress seems
to think I’d want syrup

syrup on scrapple?
is she messing with me?
is she testing my mettle?

I eat my scrapple plain
I’m for simple pleasures

there’s a note on the window
on the window that reads
“CALL Mike when we
have fried oysters again”

can you believe it?
on the same menu,
fried oysters and scrapple!

on a bed of daisies pink
the fuzzy blonde dreamer
holds elephant in one arm
and dolly dear in the other

oh to peek
into her sleep
what other friends and faeries
we might see her holding near

The year I
couldn’t stop puking. My heart
became a weeping thing. The year the world folded itself over
like a piece of paper. Surgery year. Resign. Wait.
How can I describe the year? A sort of emptying

The class clown wakes
from his 6th period coma,
the school bell becomes
a novelty clock in his hands,
he trips over his Chemistry notes
as if he were drowning
in the wonders of Hesdin.
What strange transportation
he brings to the corners of mouths.
Up we all go like a fountain!

Always by my side
caring, loving, role model
My Daddy is the best

I don’t want to survive this tragedy 

I think this chapter ends for me.

I have spent 148 dog years reciting these tired lines 

So just leave this old pup wrapped in these neatly fashioned vines 

And wait for my curtain call, a final monologue 

I don’t want you to remember me, I just want to be set free 

I laughed so hard
when he held
a cold can of Coke
onto his daddy’s neck,
It was so funny
up until the time
he uttered the words,
“My grandaddy taught me that.”