She was All That Jazz, and then some

The onimous ambiance of your eyes,
sharp and sleek,
jazz and the Late Late Show with Tom Snyder.
You could paint this town tender, my darling.
Your skin--cleaner than the cover of Life magazine,
better in black than the man himself.
Is that an Acura, or an Aston?
Don't tell me, just
give me that look you give...
Trust me, I'll be staring,
lost with, within and without you.

Poetically-challenged

Driving through Colorado, lost in the Tumblrverse,
that'll be the opening to my memoirs, believe it.
I should probably continue with that thought, it sounded interesting,
but I can't, because I'm, well,
poetically-challenged.
It comes with the territory, and no,
I'm not going to tell you what that territory is.
Did you know it's Thanksgiving? Probably not, given that
there's little to no timestamp on this kind of thing.
But if you did, well,
then you're a poet
(Did you know???).
A few rules, then:
a dream does not a poem make,
Cherie Currie a happy man make,
dreams about Cherie Currie/I don't give a fuck about poems anymore
and I've always sucked at endings
anyway.

(Untitled)

Why can't I dream? Where's my imagination?
My writings have been reduced to opinions on facts
and facts about opinions.
What happened to the in-betweens?
It seems I no longer dream of what I desire,
just desire to dream.
What does that say of my desires?
Fulfilled? Ha,
I wish.
Am I really to grow old so fast,
or just grow tired?

The Wildcard

Looking for a light to sneeze in, I turn to
YOU, VOILA! and ricochet snot all the way back
Jackie Kennedy's plot, rest his Seoul.
My microwaved brains served up on a platter,
I frequent the salon trying to cut out
the ache, the headache
that I have for you.
You know, I, I just couldn't help myself.
That line—I didn't want to write it, honestly,
I didn't want to take this direction.
It wasn't even my idea, really,
rather, it was planted in my head
by a mutual aberrance,
liek inception.
You see, I don't write love poems anymore,
I just don't; love, to me,
is but evol spelled backwards.
"Tony Banks, would've led them, to the wildcard," I explain,
"Now, will you, give me that chance,
the wildcard?"

Castle in the Sky

Branched off from home, a little girl
kidnapped, displaced, falling, always falling on a
rollercoaster which gives any trajectory the aura of gravity.
Friends, enemies,
the hurtful and the helpful,
swapping and interchanging—
a perpetual whirlwind tag-team.
The weight of the world rides with her on this
journey, the journey, winding
onto itself...

Family? A heirloom?
She follows the road home
until finding that home is a dead one...
So she makes a new one,
and finds family in her friends.
The sun setting on mad adventure,
rising to a new morning

Meditations

If you karate chop the world, will it break?
Is it fragile? Will the chards fall into the place
of a giant chess set, fighting for whatever sanity still exists?
Look for me,
(there, when it happens)
I mean,
what I meant to say was
look at me...
Making nonsense since 1987,
the
WOMB WAS WRONG,
for having me... MY MOTHER,
fed me skim breast milk.
I AM, but a sterile, cold man,
tasting only good with cereal.

Misdirections

I've been out in the world,
seeing how out I can go,
learning and globe-trotting—
looking for the shortcut to the scenic route
and the scenic route
home.
Life, that strange thing,
it leads you on...
Life is neither art nor expression; rather, it's something more.
Life is the midnight snacks, the better-to-have-than-not-at-all's,
life is the woman that runs yours,
life is waking up in the morning,
you can plan for the twists,
but the turns will creep up on you
and turn the tables
into something else entirely.
You spend your life in a zoo,
and don't find love until the retirement home.
This place is a zoo, I want, I deserve
better.
Are you better? Or are you just trying to get there too?
All we get are misdirections but sometimes
that's the fun of it.

(Untitled)

I used to write poetry, oh! how I was good at it.
I used to write poetry for you.
And through it wasn't good, I was good at writing it.
I was very good.
I used to talk about this poetry
with my old friend, Shaun, oh!
the times we had...
how they were mostly slow
but pleasant.
They bombed Japan in the shape of a smile,
our times, they did.
I used to write poetry, oh!
how I was good at it,
I used to write poetry for you.
And through it wasn't good, I was good at writing it.
Oh, I was very good.

Change

Here come the realizations:
haven't done this, forgot to talk to her,
still looking for that breakaway-burn to a
home away from home.
I've been overusing the word "feel" in the place of others...
Finally now looking in the thesaurus:
Impression, sentiment, aura,
semblance, bearing, tone,
presence.
From the Walmart in Hermantown, MN,
to the Target in Hollywood,
it's a river with no beginning.
Bookend jungles reframed and jet-set
by my supposed conscious,
I want
...well, I don't know.
I want
(something new?).
I want
a waitress with body like a K-10 stepside.
I can see the wind, but I can't feel it,
I can't feel it.

Dirt

She's in the backyard, now,
close.
Under shady canopy, the debris-y grass,
rustling in the bushes
where hideous insects pray to old toys in the dirt...
Castoffs from a previous civilization, I suppose...
Like me.
She's going to find me, it's inevitable.
Will I be revered? Will I be feared? Or shall I
be passed by, in all ways unspectacular, confused
with the very dirt from which I birthed?

CC

There's a rich legacy in the cold weather trees,
the dried mud, the worn tennis shoes,
the stormy Autumn and the even stormier
fall...
Golf courses clutching onto their green,
white clouds stained with rain.
Cars lining curvy roads, parked and backed up
for miles...

There's a narrow, winding tributary
winding through the Midwest.
A travelling circus, a ribbon in the wind.
You might miss it;
keep your eyes peeled.
It could be
right around that corner,
or getting on the bus to go,
or all around you; dense, in the air, completely engrossing and enveloping
not fully realized until it's fully
gone...
So go.
Go for a walk down the track,
do it while you still can—
before you know it, it'll slip out from under you, gently
in the night,
finding a new life to light up,
and new stretch to
wind down

Out of hand

Roads? Where we're going we don't need
limits? Where we're going we don't need
THE NIMITZ? Where we're going we don't need
the Nimitz.

Wicked Sunlight

My brain is grains of sand
slowly seeping out my ear-
filling up the shoreline
of this public beach,
as root beer colored waves
glide slowly, ever closer
to my toes- basking
in the wicked sunlight.

Seagulls squawk and craw
fighting over meager bits
of potato chips and the
end of a hot dog bun,
upon a paper plate,
blown askew by the wind-
which cools my skin
beneath the burning
wicked sunlight.

Mosquitoes move around my head
hovering with lust,
craving my blood as they
buzz their attack song,
flying to my tender flesh
jabbing their terrible spears
into my bicep, ear, and neck.
They suck their pilfered lunch
through straws, all beneath
the blazing wicked light.

My hand is a lethal weapon
trained to kill on contact:
swatting furiously at my
bright red, inflamed arm
swiftly missing mosquitoes,
and bringing out massive
screams of agony
beneath the burning, blazing,
wicked sunlight.

May

My stake, my regrets, made
of blood, sweat, and nostalgia, adrenaline
rush/blast from the past
running along
side
the track, cross country
leaves and fall, green golf course grass
cold wind, dead trees, people
everywhere...

Do I go out searching—a past that never was—
or do I let bygones bleed
where they bleed
and the wind on the water take me
where it may?

Fairy Tales Stacked up like Comic Books

I am
the silver lining of the silver screen...
Life, there it is,
there it goes,
whoa...easy
does
'er,
"Flushed with apprehension, struck by fear,
I dashed out of the control..."
Yeah, I wrote that once.
Flemtrails in the cesspool, spinning pretty.
Anger + agony = angorny.
I'm the made-up word they haven't
thought of yet.

Snowhere

Cold, winter,
Middletown, Minnesota, Midwest.
It's evening, the sun's on a short leash.
There's a sharpness in the air,
an almost Roman cleanliness,
Up in the Air and all that jazz.
I know I've written about this before, she's taken
pictures, images—literal photos of something like my childhood.
Nostalgia overload, leading to a false sense of it,
a love there never was,
but was to lose.
She's All-American, all the good things about it,
I can see her through her photos; an experience.
Sparse perceptions of sparsely-mutual experiences,
the richness of her skin hampered by the cold winter...

Dad's basement and mom's living room

Winter...always
made everything white,
you'd walk into a room,
and the white would be coming through the woodwork,
it'd be in the air, riding the heat,
creating a
cool, dull, and dry
atmosphere that made a home
that much more homey.
You'd be stuck inside...
playing with toys, or on the computer,
sitting around with the cat
or a friend
or just mom.
Winter brings people together, in from the cold,
I miss winter, or at least meaningful
ones

Familiar

Big dark city, lost on the avenue—wrapped
Between a freeway and a Venice canal,
Walked down the sidewalk;
Chitterings and chatterings, fragments
Of lives and livelihoods from behind closed
Doors,
Found a phone, three other things,
Shampoo, I think,
I don't know,
Sitting on a marred little square of grass,
Listened in on a phone conversation,
Something familiar
But only barely,
Something freshly familiar,
Not really familiar after all,
Just scary.

This Pear (rough draft)

This pear is pale, pale green-
cubed up and captured inside
the gelatinous embrace of
a fruity side dish,
next to the tuna salad
and the tray of vegetables-
with dill dip,
placed on top of the picnic
table my grandpa made
one summer underneath the shade
of the tree that this pear
came from.
He sawed the boards by hand
with long smooth strokes
and a firm grip,
even with arthritis.
He had a determined calm
that seemed to guide
the weather that week.
Nimbostratus storm clouds
tip toed away
when it was time to paint
the wood cardinal red.
And puffy cumulus clouds
meandered in when
I watched paint dry with him
and we ate pears like this pear,
In the fruit salad
next to the tuna and veggies
placed on top of the picnic table-
where everyone is standing around
in suits and long dark dresses
heaping food onto paper plates
that have a decorative border:
sunflowers, butterflies.
Conversations fill the air like gnats-
impossible to swat away
no matter how hard you try.
I catch out of context sentences
in my hand and
try to make sense of them,
but I can't figure out why
Aunt Carol being a bat
has anything to do
with Uncle Steve leaving
his tie at the funeral
Home.
Soon my ears are
overpowered with the noise.
I look up and watch puffy
white clouds wander in
while sliding a spoonful of salad
onto my tongue. The jello glides
down quickly, and I savor
sweetness for a moment.
Grandpa would have loved a pear
as good as this pear

Seeing you in person

I stood there,
Halfway in the door of the La Salsa in Brentwood,
The door that you were holding open for me,
I had just heard that voice—that deep, raspy, sexy
Voice, and now I was looking in the eyes that
Went with it,
You, Yancy Butler, actress
That I had fallen madly in love with,
Celebrity crush to the XOXOXtreme,
Where was this universe that had been against me for so long?
I don't know if I was talking to you
Or to it when I clearly and confidently said
"Thanks!"
Squeezing it out of my butterfly-swept frame,
Taking your place in the store mindlessly...

I looked over, to the right,
Out the window, and
Watched you and your womanly rear
Walk off down the avenue,
You and your girlfriends and your takeout-Mexican,
I couldn't fucking believe it!
I looked back at the clerk, and then at everyone else
In the place,
And all I could think to say was
"Fuck!"

My Neighbors Ate the Zombies

Should I be nervous about this?
I didn't even think
To call anyone else,
They just,
Grabbed them, right off the sidewalk,
And went inside and butchered them,
I thought this was all in good sport, you know,
Killing the oncoming undead horde and all,
But then they had a grill out later,
Is this cannibalism?
No, but it's a damn shame
We weren't invited

A real-life videogame

Black, muddy,
Stormy night, the lot behind
An abandoned superstore,
Trucks, cars, and crotch rockets,
I drove back across the Midwest for Thanksgiving,
They were all leaving,
I had chased some,
Across the mountains of New Zealand, Ireland, something
Between the two, Iceland, perhaps,
This was the end of my journey,
But I was going home,
Hero's clocked out,
Some rain, trees in the wind,
I was going home,
I was going home.

My days are numbered, my numbers are days!

A moment of madness, I said:

[in response to looking at a photo of my
cousin's Hispanic boyfriend who she
met in Japan and who I was once very
attracted to...she looks exactly like Julianne
Moore, her not the Mexican, dammit, I
wish my prose had just a shred of sincerity,
just a shred of that which I held in saying
the following:]

"He looks like a really nice guy...
Too nice,
That's why we have to kill him!"

Shook my fist and proceeded to laugh
Uncontrollably until I
Wrote this.

Pilot of the mysterious glowing UFO near her crotch

That's right, that's me,
I flee when her boyfriend comes around,
But most of the time I'm okay,
She doesn't notice,
I'm like a fly, a fly on the wall,
Except I'm hovering around her crotch,
One of these days I'm going to inform her in this,
Maybe in a poem,
Or at least an excuse for one

My Father in their eyes

Fifteen-some birds, big, black-winged, eagles—
Bald eagles, swarmed around an animal carcass
On the side of Pequaywan Lake Rd.,
Roaring up in the Sherwin van, I was running
From Duluth trying to eat me up/alive,
This hour and a half tangent down memory lane
That had put me here was
Almost over,
A real-life nightmare,
Somewhere between my actual memories
And the defense-mechanisms of my dreams,
These eagles, these freeform gatekeepers
Dazzlingly came into the fray,
Majestic and regal, sown of God-fear,
They converged upon the van, part in defense of their prey,
Part to find anew,
I looked up at them looking down at me,
Flapping, talons tickling the wind
The van a soulless vehicle to see me through,
Where was I going? Why didn't I stop?
How could I feel their hunger so closely?


Note: A close friend's father recently passed away, and I was both shocked and saddened by the news. Over the years, I've written several poems about my own father's passing, and this was the most recent, right before I moved to L.A.... Per usual, it's very personal and shrouded in those personal details, but it's also firmly based on reality—something that actually happened to me—and I think I present a pretty clear, concrete picture. Either way, for what it's worth, I'm posting this poem in his memory. He will be missed.

Germany

I was in Germany again for a moment, just for a moment.
Something in the lighting, the wind on the dark
curtains, the cars driving by outside,
the knowledge, that there's green out there,
but I can't see it,
Germany, I need more places like you
to dayscare me like this.
Please, tell your friends, have them
invite me to their parties,
so that when I come home I won't remember anything
until I remember to

Bewildered

People I love and strangers I would,
Coming together in a great gathering hall, warm and
All-inviting,
These vague terms serve the purpose of a template,
A dream, a good dream,
Repeated in its many variations…
How does one configure, how does one trigger
These good dreams?
Good dreams spawned from bad days? Is it really so simple?
Bewildered days spent writing about them.

Blizzard Inside Out

[Note: posted on behalf of Cal]


day 1
outside the window, December’s
iced snow slips and slices
into angled crooks and cracks
and old holes, tight
as dried Elmer’s Glue.
inside, the soft human thighs
and toasted buns settle
into overstuffed couch pillows
plump fingers caress
the dark glass cylinder
of cold Black Toad ale
as he watches a crow’s icy claws
grip a frozen branch,
while it hunches and reshuffles
and cocks its head watching him.

day 2
snap snap she cuts the carrots
onions and squash into wheels
to make a soothing chicken soup
from frozen free-range chickens.
below-zero sunshine warms squared
sections of the slate floor,
the radiator ticks its copper
into heating and its cooling clicks.
outside the broad garage roof
thatched with smooth deep snow
the walks and gardens and lawns
puffed with portly drifts
heavy with frigid caps of ice
for me to admire from inside
while i eat in sunshine by the window
my steaming bowl of chicken soup

day 3
through the kitchen window,
the morning sun slides quietly
illuminating the breakfast clutter
from the start of a new day
of a new year, in a new decade,
at minus 5 degrees. fresh with hope
a hungry pileated woodpecker
dismisses an unresponsive birch
with mounds of iced snow
on boughs on wintry branches;
it flaps to the roof of my house,



but i don’t hear any knocking.
my old X-country skis
loll under the roof in the garage,
no longer expecting
to break through crusts of new snow

day 4
carrot soup burbles on the stove
early for a Sunday morning
curry cardamum and cumin lift
into the air with chicken broth.
the radiation tic tocs and the rafters
snap to prepare for the day.
casey grooms her long cat fur
and tiger mouths a wide cat yawn
Sunny stretches on the couch
pillows and settles in again,
warm air spills from the fireplace’s
evaporating Chinese-red logs,
but now i have to pull to my feet
to stir about going out,
leaving this poem unattended
for the tension and chatter of church


[written 1-3-10]

She Likes Monster Trucks

She likes Monster Trucks,
She’s just a passing phase, I tell myself,
Looking at a picture of her
Running,
A whole lot of woman in half the package,
Tracy Ullman with running shoes,
Where is she running
Anyways?
Can I run into her
There, wherever there is?
Her name’s Maren, that cute, rare name
That catches your attention
Like fall trimming summer
Out of the equation,
How? Connections of connections
That I haven’t talked to in years and
Never talked with much to begin with,
When? Never.

Holding On

The faces,
Warm moments captured in the cold,
The ritual awkward startups and goodbye hugs,
Home is the relationships that make your world
Spin, and mine is slowing to a stop,
You guys are so special
To me, I don't know what I'm doing without you,
Knowing that might not see you again
For a very long time,
Life is so big, it's so long,
And so fragile,
You've got to hold onto what you have
And hold on
So you can have it,
I'll hold on to you, for you, for me, for us,
For life.