Category Archives: poetry

North Platte

I wrote this in a motel room very late (or early in the morning) after a long day of driving across Nebraska (towards the end of a cross country road trip with 3 college friends). We had arrived in North Platte in the middle of a great thunderstorm, lightning striking everywhere and tornado warnings on the radio (sadly my friends would not let me chase them). The hallways of the motel resembled a scene in The Shining, and I think all the traveling had really started affecting my brain – especially since I had left MD weeks earlier knowing that I would never see my great aunt ever again (she died of cancer just a few days into the trip). So was born the following….

North Platte

My stomach knots
and this hotel room smells familiar
and my clothes for tomorrow
will be the same as a few days ago
and my big thrill at two in the morning
will be brushing my teeth and showering.

I have the comfort of not caring—
outside the wind stops
and the moon slowly dissolves into shadows
and a mountain lion slips across an asphalt road
staring at the headlights of an intrusive car.

My friends will travel out in the morning,
but I will have slipped away,
Finding a way to grow a flower
in a littered empty coffee cup,
Kicking desert dust up under flip flops
Running towards away,
away to oblivion,
Taillights dimming around a curve
and my friends forgetting to wave goodbye.

Somehow in the dark
I can see my past clearly like my great aunt’s eyes
that stare from the coming sunbeams
and the white clouds and the dark clouds that
flash streaks of splitting lightning
and I grow older and older.

Just yesterday I was a fire ant
marching beside our tent
by the side of some Colorado river and cliffs
in some Colorado valley
where an old fashioned cowboy’s voice sang modern country
to a fading full moon
and ranch workers drunk around a bonfire
who went to sleep sometime.

My friends sleep—they breathe in and out
like the stale hotel room is alive.
But me, I am spitting up blood until dawn
till there’s no more left and I can look forward
to being the skyscrapers of bright city skylines
and the sharp cliffs of national parks.
Tomorrow you’ll hear my relief
exhale across the plains.

Upon Reading Nabokov’s "An Invitation to a Beheading"

I know I know—
Yet there are these
Times when the imaginary
Characters seem to have complexities
Beyond their capabilities,
When the sky
Seems to have shades of meaning
Invisible to the ordinary eye.

That other self says, I know I know—
It is the shadow that throws
My will to live against the wall
And watches it drip off like a smashed
Spider clinging to the web after death;
It is a puffed prison warden who says
To sit still and listen and that soon enoug
It will all be over, justice served.

I must know this; I can feel the cold breath—yet,
The lessons in the book say,
Stand up. Just simply stand up and
Leave.

Feel alive

When clouds have slid into
Indistinguishable strands of silk as a veil
On the smile of the sunset,

You will take a deep breath
Air will fill your nose, smell sweet,
Settle into your lungs with a sigh.

Feel alive then.
The sand is between your toes and there is
A gentle rockabye song
Playing over your mind; one wave, two wave.
Crash softly, pull back out to the expanse of ocean,
Crash softly.

You will breathe out
Knowing one day this too shall pass. This too shall
Belong simply to your children.

white-out conditions and memories

There are white-out conditions outside my window! Heavy gusts of snow so that I can barely see the townhomes across the street (with their classic Baltimore marble stoops now completely buried again). Not much to do but remember the past. As you will grow to notice, I have many “RIP” poems. It seems I’ve said goodbye to many; some might say too many for a person my age. But no one gets to choose. I just try to write my memories so I have them for later (perhaps sunnier) days.

To Shawn:

When you were riding,
You could feel the day’s warmth
Easing into the night sky
Dissipating like a quick sigh of resignation.

Dust to dust.
You sped down the highway,
The smells of the road and Maria’s pizza
And the summer’s last cut grass
On the wind in your face.
Ash to ash.
In the headlights you saw it all and
Then the realization:
A lifetime’s worth of dreams and thoughts
And love
Shattered into a thousand colorful pieces
On the asphalt.

(9/20/07 RIP Weasel)

Remembering Spring Break 2002

South of the Border coffee
during the bleary night time morning, we
lost a bumper along 95
and sped our way like fast and furious
rebel riders. We were,
with walkie talkies, heading
to spring break.

Salty breezes
and some fat keyboardist with
fuzzy beard peppered gray
singing political satire and no one cared.
Dane, you, and I were
sitting sipping ritas in sloppy golden
honey sunshine famous in Key West.

Cool night, we
drank grain alcohol from odd angles
for prized smiles of being cool amongst
all our shiny beaded friends.
Your naked moments won us
a free frozen drink koozie
and jet ski ride we never took.

Long hours after the karaoke,
you and Sush found a credit card and brought home cold waffles at 5 am.
I sat in the trailer writing frantically, high on caffeine pills and palm tree fingers:

the blurry street lines, the charcoal miles, the hot rum, the mac and cheese, the seafood buffet, the southern girls, the scooter scars, the trailer smell, the Chicago gospel, the Hemingway cats, the frantic hunger, the ephemeral buzz….

Your car gasped for air when the week ended but there was none;
we were overheated, belly-up fish in Miami rush hour.

Sunburn behind and
and dark interstate miles ahead,
we sat on the dented hood.
Our sweaty hungry friends
waving at prudish traffic
a “honk if you’re horny” sign,
reminiscing and waiting to move on.

(r.i.p. Sekula 2003)

Sip n Bite

While I should be job searching, instead I’ve been reading back through a lot of my old writing. It is an interesting journey. Almost like reading someone else’s diary (were those really my words? did I dream those things or live them or a combination of the two?). For those who don’t know me, I used to be a bit of a “night crawler” … Late nights live music drinks friends who also couldn’t sleep like me… There are many under this category. Here is just one, more to come.

Sip n Bite

Florescent haze on our
two booths with an aisle between
the seats dressed in
that scrappy orange color
famous in diners at 3am.

You breeze
through the door and effortless
slide into the booth across
from our crowded one,
and instantly the waitress
with the long dark ponytail
and chocolate brown sweat suit
divines that you want coffee.

What else
does she know? Does she know
I want to sit over
next to you
and stroke the tan corduroy covering
your legs?

Seems not.
She is dealing with the drunks at the
counter, one a dirty-minded man
in a sweater of wine, whispering
in a public voice
his intentions for her.

Eggs arrive that match
the florescent pale that has seeped
into my eyes and hair.

We nibble on our separate islands
and reminisce the night across the
sullen pale tiles. Our words
make sense in this insipid lighting, at this
domestic breakfast
Rockwell would have understood
had he enjoyed Fells Point as much
as us.

Leaned back, full, I see you freely gaze
at my collarbone in the comfort of your sunglasses.
It sends a shudder
racing through the blues of my veins.