Posts for June 29, 2018 (page 4)

It’s raining in the 9eme arrondissement, with winds so hard as they bounce between buildings the umbrellas of even the hardiest souls are useless or destroyed. Few paying customers have been drawn to the cafes along the rue Saint-Lazare, so the manager of one took pity on my drenched state and covered a bowl of hot soup for me to take back to my tarp-covered packing crate in an alley near where Giselle and I would pass an afternoon before my wife learned of us. Tomorrow, perhaps, the sun will shine, and I will wander along the Seine while contemplating the leap from bridge to water as a solution to my changed situation. For now, though, I’ve donned my other, dry clothes and surrounded the soup to my belly’s delight, so even the endless rain can’t dampen my spirits.

yellow-black streaks past
goldfinch pair flies flamenco
castanets on wing

It seems like they here, though
if they here, they somewhere.

The stories I told for two hours
run barefoot over broken glass
southern greasy peanuts, rust
unctuous old red clay roads,
straight yellow pine galleys,
dollar general in cotton houses
every bicycle meth white misfit
south georgia tractor salesman
brought me a necklace
fingering the clasp with a scythe-sliced knuckle 
when we ramshackled into town. 

She’s buried by a highway in the gravel
a chain link fence
trumpet vine shroud
pennies on a tablet stone 
No one knows her
at the ihop, or the shoe carnival, or the cash express
we took pictures of magnolia trees pretending
live oaks hanging with dusty fungus
yucca plants and lilies, peafowl in the cradle

Catholics with a spent wedding cigars 
waved at us from the sidewalk outside
sacred heart and a line of georgia cheerleaders
with big mommas in tights & tunics jaywalked
across greene street where up in the balcony
bedroom she prayed, God, let me be famous writer. 

Here was a sacrament
here the problem of belief
a cracking white column
without sentiment, hookworms
here the dark barn, the cattle pond
here crutches and bottles,
the sword, the stinger
and then jubliee

I’m sorry, little bird. Did you know
that I still think about you, at least once a 
week? I think about that winter when it snowed
a foot and I walked to the dollar store around the
corner in my snow boots. I think about seeing you
there on that low branch, snow dusting your back.

You were so still trying to outlast the cold.
I said to my friend, “Look at that bird?
It must be so cold. Poor thing.” 

I think about what I should have done.
picked you up
put you in my coat
(looking back you would have let me- I’m sure of it)

I think of the cage in the top of the closet that you
could have stayed in while you
rested in the warmth of my small
apartment. I would have let you go as soon
as the snow melted and the world returned.

I’m sorry I didn’t stop. I’m sorry I kept walking to
buy Oreos. I still remember you, little bird.
I remember how you looked- dead-
on the ground the next day-
fallen beneath the branch you
clinged to the day before-
frozen to the bone. I’m sorry. 

It’s not as they said.
All the nobility’s faked.
We need a new start.

Office Chair Mastodon
Ergonomic horse
Hip helper sit upon

Computer Keyboard Skin
Touchy feely
recorder of men

Microphone One Ear
Voice receiver diaphragm
Waves back all year

Printer Big Mouth
Eats blanks
Spits bullets out

Hard Drive Skull
Keeper of memory
Long live recall

 There was a day when you might
Have been my friend. Your wit,
Your look, your hello smile.  

Years separate generations, refuse
Friendships that with some fewer
Numbers might have enjoined us both.

Angry Candy.
Dangerous Visions.
Deathbird Stories.
The world woke
a little poorer today.
The bellicose dwarf,
torcher of gates,
has passed the final boss challenge.

I will paint my face
and repeat repents
to the Tick-Tock Man.

Goodbye Harlan.

when he said
“everyone is an artist”
i felt
both
part of the club

and
lost in the crowd

I hide my surprise at the shine in your eyes
as you dress to go out without me.
Just one of those things, unfolding your wings
I have to just let it be
but you’re brushing your hair as if I’m not there
I wonder if you can still see  

what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming –

our comfortable nest, the kids, all the rest,
a project we pledged to the grave.
However you cook it, your halo’s gone crooked,
your finger’s ring-less when you wave
goodbye. Who’d have guessed that someday you would test
those boundaries, but I’ll be brave
as you disappear, leaving me here
alone in the darkness to save  

what so proudly we hailed in the twilight’s last gleaming.  

You give me a grin when you stumble back in
acting like it’s no big thing.
Your hair is all tangled, you’re talking at angles,
you’re burning our flag for a fling.
Something inside is saluting goodbye
but in dawn’s early light I still cling  

to what I still hail in the twilight’s last gleaming.