Strut
Jo shows the photos
of her house, and what
can I say, it's big
especially for her and Mark childless
with cats and a dog on the way
it's tastefully decorated, every room,
as befits a graphic designer,
it's perfect for what it is,
and when the photo display is done,
I am left somewhat empty
because I have nothing
of my own to strut, nothing
I can photograph. I could tell her
of a lifetime building an interior,
from a shambles to just this slightly
less,
but to be proud of that
I will not allow, for reaching God
is where I started, and I will not
prop myself on the search.
I will not take the photo.
What I have I whisper here in a poem,
and I am uncomfortable
even with that. May it go unread.
Here, let me show you
a photo of nothing.
In it you may discern a face.
What's your birthday?
Show me where you live.
Sonata: My Fault
I love you, the world crashed
on my steps a busted
piano pregnant with music.
And smashed, it challenged me
to play on. I looked into a million
black lacquered pieces.
I saw myself
like a lonely magician,
dissonance in the eyes,
tinkletoeing, panicked at not knowing
half the ivories. I saw today,
the piano halted.
I saw yesterday
playing in a puddle. The shadow
of a piano. I heard music
and squinted to see tomorrow.
I saw "I love you," written
on something fragile and shattered,
and a fool
pulling out all the stops
in the incessant quest for melody,
surfing something
less than infinity,
cresting with death..
Drinking On BuSpar®
One Killer Anti-anxiety Medication
It's less a compulsion
and more a matter of fact.
You're watching yourself do it.
There's no denial.
It's as if the liver
has a say in this too.
And the brain, leading you
through a light fog to where this began:
To make things seem reasonable.
Just as there's no "right" time
to have a child, but people do,
you have the beer
at all sorts of wrong times,
but somehow its all right
because you nurse it. And it grows
slowly in its intricate spiral,
a spirochete in the brain of a syphilitic,
a cagy circle dance around reality.
You dodge in and take the knife.
Clubbed by the gun butt
but not shot, you escape the melodrama
of
"Man takes a drink, drink takes a drink,
drink takes a man." That's urban
legend
for suburbanites. You used to drink
to make other people interesting.
Now you drink to make yourself interesting.
******
Sipping a pale ale, watching the walls
lovingly licked by the black-and-white
flickers of Werewolf of London on TV,
sixty-three years ago's film lurking for
you,
since childhood when it scared you
half to death. You consider the
hush of 4 a.m
tiretreads going everywhere you're not,
how you've learned
or had your brain chemistry altered
to achieve simple patience, the satisfaction
with the gray shadows, the pretend horror,
the beer that lasts forever.
Your workmates were bubbling Monday
excited about a weekend of going to new
movies.
You silently remembered setting the alarm,
sleeping until the wee hours, waking
to watch your TV with BuSpar and beer,
and you knew you were crazy
and didn't care.
Watching Werewolf Of London, 5 a.m.
A singular flower. The stiff British
aristocracy. Furry claws grasping
at the grating beneath the balcony.
The tiny hairs, the eerie rhizomes
of irrational fear - it's only a movie
-
a sudden awareness
of the intricate filigree
that makes this moment
distinguishable from the next.
For now, and until we change,
until the beast sighs its way
to sleep, into another uterus.
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