Category Archives for Poems

Scientific Inertia

Mustache

Mr. Bachenstein was quite fine

walking home from work,

a light stroll until he suddenly
flew into the air and sped like a rocket

head first

into the bottom of a dangling piano

nine floors above.
And birds, well… they just had to

learn to eventually fly upside down

and build their nests on the underside of the branches.
And fish, well… they rode the largest

blue flying amoeba ever to the exosphere

where the oceans splashed against nothingness

and formed a blurry prismatic shell for those of us

clinging to lamp posts and

clustered, confused on ceilings.
And Remi and Ted’s Pinto

lifted off like at the end of Grease

but they weren’t singing,

just screaming for some long minutes

until, as they suffocated slowly,

they saw a tidal wave coming to swallow them whole.
And so with differentiation at work again

we’re all finding it hard to breath

and so if you find this note in a bottle years from now

know this: it was dropped by a scientist from the doorway

of a lab in Switzerland into the seas above

and we found the Higg’s boson

and we are sorry about the Gravity thing.
In our defense, it was an outlier, you know.

Will Power

I am craving a fudge bar

but I shouldn’t eat one.
So MANY Calories.
I should have a Popsicle,

and I stare at Lucille Ball

some more

driving away the craving

with bungling, Red Head antics

but a sudden commercial

makes me ravenous

and I wrestle myself

Inside

as I often do

and lose

and get up

and go to the laundry room

and open the floor freezer.
I’ve put the highest

Calories

under Megan

where they are much

harder to get

thinking

my laziness will

prevent my obesity

but I dig my arm

around under Megan

until out comes a fudge bar.
It sticks briefly to her

skin, and I pull it free

but she doesn’t make

a sound

because I told her not to.

She’s just an Embryo-shaped

cicle, all shivery.

There’s no head movement

when she looks out the corner

of her eye at me

and I see fear,

and I feel guilty

because I know she

is afraid of my

Lack of Will Power.

Uniform

the dead soldiers’ Uniforms are dusty

muddy and

shrapnel bitten,

chewed by the grenade

bayonet, puncture wounded

and dyed crimson, signed in the color of a setting sun

by an unwilling author.
bloated gray bellies

distend the carefully sewn cotton

they are camouflaged

but visible just the same

i snap the picture for posterity

and think of scratch-n-sniff ads

and methane putrefaction

and wonder if a mom or dad

will point at the picture in the paper

with prideful recognition like they did when

their son of three made the post for halloween.
the family will look upon a mouth sewn shut

eyes closed

body smooth and painted

and wrapped in his sunday’s best,

but I have seen the blender,

eyes wide with horror

mouth agape, twisted.

add soldiers, pulse for 20 seconds, cloths on, spread gently on the grass.
war is not a Three Piece Suit.

A Supposedly Good Poem

Filos_segundo_logo

 

There’s that point
in a poem
where imagery breaks down
and the words don’t even know each other
and even if they did,
even if they introduced themselves
like strangers at a party
and then talked for hours
and got tipsy
and shared stories from their childhood
and then slowly established a friendship through the years
and were best friends
and one of them got married and the other one didn’t
and then they grew apart as they got older
and eventually moved away from one another
and only sent letters once a year in the end,
even then
the poem wouldn’t make any fucking sense.

Life is . . .

Maidu_hut_recreation_-_Maidu_Interpretive_Center

 

I am standing naked on a

smooth, round Earth.

There is nothing here but me.

No objects and no people.

I am tired, so I look and see a chair

is behind me.

I sit.

 

I am young and time passes

slowly and there is

nothing to do.

I am bored.

I get old and then

I die.

What was the point of all that?

 

I am young and time passes

slowly and there is

a ball in front of me

RED

against all this whiteness

and I think that’s neat.

I play with the ball and

it bounces and bounces and it is

sometimes hard to catch.

Years pass and

I am bored.

I get old and then

I die.

What was the point of all that?

 

I am young and time passes

slowly and there is

nothing to do.

There is nothing here but me.

No objects and no people.

I am tired, so I look and see a chair

is behind me.

I sit.

There is a noise to my left

and I look to see a PERSON

We are a little nervous,

two people in two chairs and

no other people anywhere and

what in this glassy white world is

there to say?

But we speak

We get to know each other

and have long talks and

smile sometimes and

when we get older we find

a bouncy red ball and

laugh together at the fact that just

bouncing it back and forth to each other is

so much fun.

Years pass and

we get old and then

we die.

A sad ending, but… worth it.

 

I am young and time passes

slowly and there is

nothing to do.

I look down and there is GREEN grass

beneath my toes.

I wiggle my toes and smile and

look behind me and there is a small hut.

Water starts to hit the top of my head and

it is cold so I step into the hut and look back out

and marvel at the water as it

leaks slowly from the grass onto the

Earth’s white surface.

There is a door, a window, and a bed in my hut.

I am happy to lie down and rest in my VERY OWN hut.

Years pass and I walk out of my hut and there is a large

HOUSE sitting just a red ball’s throw away.

It is the size of twenty of my huts.

It has grass also but it looks a little…

greener.

And there is a large, majestic gate

surrounding it and there are tons of RED balls

on the grass.

Some red balls are very LARGE.

I walk over to the gate and press a GOLD BUTTON

and I am excited to hear another person’s voice.

“Yes?”

They are nervous like me but that’s ok.

“Hi, would you like to play ball?”

I am smiling.

“NO,” they say. “I don’t know you. Please go away.”

Now water is falling from my head as I

go back to my LITTLE hut.

I grow old and bored and I can only

look at all the other balls in the green, green yard

with the mean gatekeeper.

I am lonely and angry and mad and so I

throw my red ball at a window in the big house

and it breaks and I am scared but happy as I

run back to my hut.

No one ever comes out.

Years pass and

I am bored.

I get old and then

I die.

What was the point of all that time

I had to spend not getting the things I wanted?

 

I am young and time passes

slowly and there is

nothing to do.

I look down and there is GREEN grass

beneath my toes.

I wiggle my toes and smile and

look behind me and there is a LARGE HOUSE.

I walk across the most wonderfully colored grass

to my VERY OWN house and smile and fall asleep

on the softest bed ever.

When I awake, I look out my window and there is

a small little hut across the way.

I am worried at what kind of creature could

live in a hut that small.

It could come out and take one of my balls from

the grass and so now there is a large gate

wrapping around my house.

And a good thing too because sure enough

someone has come from that small little hut

and is trying to get at my grass and red balls and

maybe they even want to come and take my

house away.

They walk over to MY gate and press MY GOLD BUTTON

and I can hear a crazed excitement in their voice.

“Yes?”

I am nervous because I do not know if they

can get in.

“Hi, would you like to play ball?”

I am frowning

and I knew they wanted to take my red balls

from MY grassy yard.

“NO,” I say. “I don’t know you. Please go away.”

Now I cannot leave my house

or they will come in and take my things

and so I am trapped here forever.

Years pass and

I am bored.

I get old and then

I die.

What was the point of all that time

I had to spend trapped in my house?

 

I am standing naked on a

smooth, round Earth.

There is nothing here but me.

No objects and no people.

I am tired, so I look and see a chair

is behind me.

I sit.

Anything can happen now

I guess.

 

 

Check out my project on Kickstarter.

Sorry, Charlie on Kickstarter

 

 

 

The Perfect Couple

perfect couple

 

Me and my wife have seen

the perfect couple.

 

We’ve seen them dating with their

hands in each other’s back pockets

and smiled when they’ve shown us

their expensive chains and lockets.

 

We’ve seen them in the gym

forty minutes on the treadmill

keeping in shape and staying trim

each with quite the zeal.

 

We’ve seen them at their weddings

singing songs of love and crying

as they recite their vows with joy

and sanctify the knot they’re tying.

 

We’ve seen their network of friends

spanning far and wide

and a new car every year

’cause their friends enjoy the ride.

 

We’ve seen them at the restaurant

never arguing, that’s true

and attending all events

and laughing right on cue.

 

Me and my wife have seen

the perfect couple.

 

We saw one just last week

they weren’t together anymore

“- separately quietly,” she said

but they were still tied up in court.

 

It seems that after all

they both still had their flaws

but they looked so good together

through all the hems and haws.

 

An hour ago we fought,

something mundane and silly

and making up was quick

just a simple kiss really.

 

We haven’t been the perfect couple

for over twenty years

and toiled a little here and there

with blood and sweat and tears.

 

And here we are still

with all love has to broker

and happy as a lark

to be a couple mediocre.

 

Don’t forget to check out my project on

Sorry, Charlie on Kickstarter

Ego

Frowny-man1

 

I am a raging poet,

my inked hatchet

flesh wedging a spray of bloody

word foam onto the triage

of paper,

bending

folding

spindling

mutilating

a torrent of liquid emotion,

wrenched thought spasms

corrugated prisms of mind swell,

and when I have wrought and reaped,

stretched my filigree soul over

a brittle weave of yellowed paper,

soaked the pages with philosophical blood,

crimson views of humanity, caramelizing

the sticky pages together,

a pungent weld of glory and desperation,

my wife looks it over and says,

“Yeah, cool.”

 

Don’t forget to check out my project on

Sorry, Charlie on Kickstarter

 

Inspiration

Iceland_Dettifoss_1972

 

Iceland

 

There are words out there

waiting to be thought

in a perfect sequence,

rushing forward like a train

from a spit of inspiration

slamming to a halt,

crashing headfirst into a

terrible stab of punctuation  .

It slices apart the thoughts

the inspirations

the waterfall of letters

tumbling down

to the stagnant paper and

flowing across the page

haphazardly, like the first draft of

Creation itself.

 

 

The Salty Pale

Demon_hand_from_Tales_of_the_Enchanted_Islands_of_the_Atlantic_1899

 

Demon Hand

 

His cracked skin glows orange,

a pulsing ember,

eyes white and sunken in the black corner.

 

toenails that shard Indian Yellow

bone, brittle chitin exposed on toasted concrete,

bitter hair, wet from the dew and mud and clover

and wounds,

open and glistening and freshly pouting their

concerns via glossy, crimson madness.

 

The sulphurous ascent

rubs the scratchy bricks as the cottage exhales

to the clear night a

spoiled sooty breath of exhumed earth

and ghastly flesh.

 

The figure hunches,

blind in one swollen eye

and wets the floor with amnesiac piss and chatters

incoherently to a room full of people

who are not there.

 

He imagines choking whispers

and glitter in the lung.

 

He invents a tale

where a madman was drown by a village

and withered to a stick

and gutted sick

burned

disemboweled

chucked over the Starboard

and forgotten in the salty night.

 

A tale where a siren sings his gullet shut

and a mermaid smooths his skin

and a witch tallies her threads

and a swell of froth and jetsam,

malevolent and cursed

washes away all humanity

save a mythical yarn.

 

And his cracked skin grows pale,

a dying whale,

eyes white and sunken in the black corner.

 

 

What is mine

She glides toward

and my ego

sloughs,

a dripping slug down my thigh

and pools,

amoebic at my feet

 

She glides by

salty heels piercing

breaking the surface

sloshing through my puddled soul

and almost slips like Freud

from my pedestal

 

She sways through

hypnotizing

like watching the ocean

a metronome of silken hair

with my ego trailing awkwardly

from her heels

 

She speaks

the crowds sways

spellbound

voice like honey

reverberating every cell separately

in perfect harmony

in perfect rhythm

 

She is done

it is done

people mingling and

I turn

and she is there

in front of me

my mouth opens and is silent

 

She smiles and turns away

I panic and –

‘Excuse me, could I have my ego back?”

 

Her perfect smile interrupted

by my insecurity

and after a four hundred year second

her smile returns

and she restores             what was mine          what was me.