haiku #1
young man wrecks bike
bloody kneecap and thumb
hide it from mother
heart after heart
used once before
along with you-
some may use
help over time.
keep some taken
from the heart-
as often as
your blood hard
walls may need.
Twenty eight oil cans:
I’d wipe each down and stack them
one by one, offset,
so that the can above
was supported by two below,
first a row of seven, then a row of six,
then five, and four, and so on
until I placed the last can in the apex position.
A break to smoke, or fill up with leaded,
wash a windshield, carefully uncork
a scalding radiator cap,
draw a dipstick from its slender sheath,
or pace the lanes like a sheriff on patrol,
the heavy coin changer hanging from my belt,
the big bell’s double-ring
with each car that came and went
like the bell telling boxers when to fight
and when to quit,
admiring through the plate glass window
this monument
to big oil and minimum wage,
chevrons all aligned, checkmarks
on the ledger of my dull but earnest labor:
I thought that it would last forever.
Out on the fence line, hot work
She brings me water
Water, they say, is life
Precious, natural, resourseful
She brings me water
Water is thicker than blood
And indeed, the covenant of marraige
Outweighs family
She brings me water
Water is polar
Charged positive and negative
Manic and stoic
She brings me water
Water is wet
Not alone but as a companion
Takes two, a wetter and a wettee
She brings me water
Water is blue and cool
A balance for red and hot
What she is and I am not
She brings me water
She brings me balance
She brings me companionship
She brings me love
She brings the outer edge
She brings a covonant
She brings life
She brings me water
One night each year
the celebration sounds
like a war zone. Swaths
of four-legged refugees flee
fields filled with ear-splitting
squeals and bright booms.
To escape, they infiltrate
the subdivision.
The young buck panics
stilt-legged down a driveway.
A frenzied fox pants wild-eyed
on a landscaped lawn.
Poor fellas.
One neighbor has the gall to call
animal control, but God
bless the USA, they are closed
for the holiday.
The day I turned 13, my guardian angel went out for a smoke. I like to imagine her as the dark-haired girl painted on the Amazing Grace pillow my mother has shamefully hidden under the work-desk in the garage. I named her Olivia. One cigarette turned into two, then 3, then 4, and then 20. She smoked the whole pack. I like to imagine she walked the 1.1 miles to the Speedway and bought a second. Then as she pushed the door ever so softly, some realization that is still beyond me made her take a step back. She walked back up to the cashier and bought the whole carton. Marlboro Golds. I think she likes the little yellow halo on the rim between filter and tobacco. It reminds her of something she misses. Something Holy. She walks out, 220 cigarettes in their individual soft packs, waiting to be unboxed and pressed between her thin white raspberry lips. All they want is a taste of something divine.
Olivia craves for something beyond me. Something that will heed her warnings and not just crawl back like a little dog at the front door whimpering that realized the world was bigger than it thought. Olivia craves God. Olivia presses her hand to the glass at those purple-pink sunsets because it’s the only time she gets a peak at the world she knew before me. Olivia misses her wings and can’t help but touch the open wounds on her back from where they were ripped off by the Lord she revered more than anything. Olivia knows it hurts to touch these ever-bleeding scabs, the merlot color dripping between her fingers. Olivia doesn’t mind it. She just keeps smoking.
there are no words
Make for blindness
grinding glass to scrape our eyes
with tinctures of quicklime
and boiling sand.
Snuff out the luster that colors our acts,
the speech of the elder tribe–this
sainted word that edges true lights out.
Make for death without fanfare or joy,
without the promise of comfort or plainsong,
without the wit of grave men who judge the shadows of the past.
Make a pact to wash our hands in ash and walk the waves.
The past is a bloody obstacle,
a dead weight,
a dry oblivion.
Author: Rafael Alberti
Translator: Manny Grimaldi
you could call me translucent
will say hello if spoken to
will share notebooks if you’re curious
mostly just utter
yes
another beer
please
thank you
mostly just watch
people shooting pool
people karaokeing
people drinking shots
people coming in
with other people
i almost invited a friend
kinda didn’t want
to risk what solitude offers
I love pens, poetry
collecting ideas from laughter
from eavesdropping stories
from the words of others
read from the phone
still
to share these hours with another special other
could be my eluding fulfillment
paper is longevity
you could be escape
or more
than anything else in my world
or so I dream
from statue station
amid the bliss
of stardom strangers
this night is everything it needs to be
if not everything it could be
contentment is a state of mind
of existence
i will appreciate all that life gives
even as i clamor for more
