Floating on the dirty water
The sun beaming on my skin
His smile almost just as bright
Digging through rocks
Trying to find the perfect blue
To match his ocean eyes
My cheeks hurt from laughing so much
Cold beer takes my nerves away
He kisses me on the forehead
A painting of Italy hanging on the wall
The sun starting to fall
My walls along with it
Oh, how it feels to finally have
Someone look at me
The way I look at them
Billie is still there
slumped over
sitting on the sidewalk
under the Memorial Mural
honoring the street cat, “Killer”
The wall just barely
holds Billie upright
where he lingers sometimes
for long stretches of time
with his chin on his chest,
a man somewhere in his 60’s,
weathered skin, close cropped gray hair,
things strewn all around
marking his campsite
Now that the weather is fair again
for many random days and nights
Billie crumples down under Killer
He slept through a day-long
Street Festival last Saturday.
People walked by seeing and not seeing
some thought he was dead
Police and Homeless Services
never get anywhere with him
when they ask—-he just says he is resting
and has only stopped to fold his laundry,
like nothing is wrong
When he decides to stretch
he always leaves behind
his newspaper mattress
mixed with stray papers
and rolling around cups
His walk is a fast shuffle
with short quick steps
moving hurriedly at an angle leaning forward
as though he is escaping something
but he always ends up back here
maybe with a new bag,
wearing new clothes,
though ill fitting
from the church
They say he was born here
in this neighborhood
and that he will never leave
this is his home
This is where his first dreams began
now drug dreams
lull him to sleep
with “Killer”
his only
companion
For Tony
You came to America twenty-six years ago as a student who knew very little English. You did not choose to mix politics with remaining in your new homeland. In English, you asked a Kentucky lady how much she would take to marry you? Her answer was: five thousand, laddy, confusing Israel and Ireland. You take up her offer and marry her. You endure the sham for five years, before you can legally get your divorce, and remain in America. In the court, your worst fears came to pass. You get nothing, she gets everything but America, your dream.
Two lanes and lost in tunes
turned up to drown out whirring
tires, right along with all the time
in this world—give me those days
again, those miles of dreams,
those backroads curled as smoke
against the hills, fading lines
in rearview sunsets. Keep the pedal
locked in motion, speed racer,
crack the windows and trust the wheels
to read signs as they come—
Stop
Caution
Yield
we pass back & forth
the white leaves,
taking turns reading their etchings
until we set down the pages
& kiss, & then
we are still
there’s no time
to write a good poem.
I have ideas
but I don’t know how to say them
poetically.
it’s giving fraudulent behavior :-/
i’m sorry
When I was a kid
I wanted to hear the rest of “Sister Golden Hair” so bad
I watched those ’70s-themed infomercials with the giant CD packs
I wanted to be those people
I couldn’t find the song anywhere so when the commercial came on
I lost my ever-loving mind
Screaming, “America!”
I wanted to look like them
Dance like them
Play guitar like them
God damn, I still want too
I would turn on classic radio and just wait all day
To record every song I loved
On my cassette tape
U R…
U.
B U…
…always.
It’s cute.
It’s a positive message.
It’s like one of those “Instagram Poems.”
But I don’t speak Portuguese.
So it probably means something totally different
To someone else.
Like light on the water,
a thrill is always closer than it should be,
the buzzing blindness of wings beating just overhead
As light, as sure as a taste
a wren touches down lower than it should be,
tossling the ruffled-feather tops of blueberry bushes
Its pinched flight beneath the net now a nervous, jerky chore,
now fully stuck with what it’s stolen.
