Category: Poetry

there used to be

poems
for every
pavement crack

ballads
for every
boy with
stained sleeves
and a hole in his chest

couplets
for every
gambler with a broken dream
losing fast on a threadless seam

elegies
for every
father who lived
too short
and died too
long

epics
for every
Madiba-shuffling
Ghandi
with his face on a t-shirt
made in shanghai

ghazals
for every
lover so loving
love itself could not requite

odes
for every
sunset
burnt behind an
eyelid

but now
my verse
is
blank.

A treat
for Women’s Day;
manicures for all the girls.
How nice to have one’s hand
wrapped in another’s;
soothing
exfoliating
grooming.
A drive
to the shops after
and there’s a woman
at the robots,
her baby growing on her back.
Her hands hold out
a small bowl.
Window wound down,
buffed and filed fingernails
bounce off sunlight
as coins hit plastic
with the cadence
of impotent guilt.

this static

is the grey-horrid
that makes
mash of minds,
lint for flint.

a muse out of
commission,
rehab/probation,
one forgets
what she’s off of now.

I want to spew genius!
but all I bring up
is other people’s corn.

sun scalded eyes-
bones blasted by
the fourteenth pothole-
another
fucking taxi driver
who can’t fucking indicate-
head heavy with the pain of sunset-
what is this crap they play on the radio these days-
clutch cramp-
no Sir, I don’t have any change today-
dead traffic light-
tag on another half-hour of crawling up
the bum of the car in front of me-
mental congestion.

but you know

I’d drive
another thousand minutes of this
for coming home to you.

A piece of me
is on a plane to China,
shifting awkwardly in
economy class.

His ipod dreams
I seek to punctuate,
with the missile missives
of a mad woman.

He calls me crazy,
though he knows,
we’re in this madness
together:

Where we no longer
have the spaces of ourselves
but this sea of
something.

It’s our joke
that we can’t swim,
but see how well
we float.

I used to ask God
for silly things.

He had the Omniscience
to ignore me.

I also asked for the ability
to know Love when I found it.

I’m glad He didn’t think
you were silly.

amid the conversations
of your eyes.

never thought
it would
be

a hometown boy

finding his
home with
me.

I fell in love with you
in Paris.
At the foot of that tower,
over the cityscape.
the steps at Montmarte.
The man outside the postcard shop
played our song.
and it was the first time i heard it.

I fell in love with you
in Florence,
There were sunsets over bridges,
a river in every town,
and an artist in Rome,
who may have been
you in your thousandth lifetime.

I fell in love with you
in Jungfrau,
the snow melting into
poems on my palms,
while the mountains stood
stubborn as you sometimes do.

I fell in love with you
in Amsterdam,
Tracing Sunflowers and a mad genius
with my senses,
Dodging bicycles and clouds,
laughing at things you said
miles ago.

Miles ago.

I look back at you miles ago.

whisper by breath,
praying the missives of a child,
catching the wind in the net of my fingers,
pushing my supplications to meld with the air.
Blowing away this spirit bolus to find you.

I fell in love with you.
In the Piazzas, Platze and Pleins,
up the stairs of millenia and down the slopes of
a warm hill in Beaujolais.

I fell in love with you.

Miles ago.