Sending poetry to the world
By the bay,
on cement cracked by weeds,
people sit like gulls fishing in dying daylight.
Fish bite, get taken, tossed, have one last
gulp and die.
Watch fish startled by air. Watch weeds bend beneath thin legs.
Watch gull-like people throw another line,
drown another beer,
unfazed.
Saturday red nails,
smell of rain moving in. but not now.
not on us, chosen
ones who crawl our way through
cobbles chipping nails
looking in the late night
always,
constantly,
looking.
what we want is here – but we are not
to make a sound
while we circle it
scratching nails in the dirt. we are not
to make a sound.
you call me weed,
growing between the bricks
below your suede, square feet
i am actually compulsive pushing,
insistent shoving
pest,
but long after you’re gone
(taking all your
small-minded robots with you)
i’ll remain. and i’ll reclaim
what was mine all along.
paper thin wings grow in fantastic colors
behind my shoulder blades.
eye spots deepen on the tops of each
and wink when i fly.
settling quietly on a leaf in a forest in old Russia
there is a sudden net upon me,
Nabokov! oh how he
drains my life, pins down my wings …
and with quiet precision,
i am immortal.
full moon, we shall have no w o r d s
tonight, all inhibitions obfuscated by your
veiled threats of rain
don’t brush them off
keep certain eyes off long legs clicking on heels down the cracked city
sidewalk, look past
all these unforgivable glances
between us shadowy figures swapping sips behind the
loading dock, us strangers
stretching by a brick wall
new hands tingling under a cloak of
hazed obscurity
in the way a pumpkin rots
from the inside out
pulp soft and weak
thick orange walls caving
in upon itself
such is my girl putting on her makeup slowly just inches from a mirror seeing only
more spots to cover
such is my girl
put out on a curb
thick skin unaware
His walls are thick with ivy,
and the stuffy immutable breaths of zealous opinions
climb contentedly, free from predation.
There is no new love here save
how aging fingers dig in deep rich soil to grow tiny
seeds, coaxing gently, more eager vines.
the me in gasoline on water is a rainbow
of potential sliding around, skimming the tops, spreading then
unraveling with every
exhale of the Bay
shape shifting like a scream
my perplexed smirk distorted then tortured
and mad in the only possible way
the slick bird above me
purple to orange to blue to barely discernible shine –
oh shine on, you gull, shine on
free from such thin and colorful prisons as this.
Boston’s Back Bay
gets left behind –
(how easily this train takes to its track
how slippery this movement through time)
Imagine Back Bay
in its watery wet past – we were there once (wistful) in a deep blue green bay full of life.
Such current land fill suffocates
makes all us fish happy to leave.
if our whole lives
spun off like a voyager into
the deepest frozen
fingers of space
i would still… i still would
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