Pink Broken Sky

Pink broken sky
Sleeps into storm fronts
Bedroom water glasses
Condense into falsehoods like:
It will go on forever
It will end tomorrow
Like nothing else but hope and hell
It almost as if
Someone doesn't want it to be named

August 4, 2007

The Family

They traded in history for the colors
The colors for the rare books
The fishing trips were memorable
The creek beds dry, from the accident
They were the kings of the subdivision
That hadn't been subdivided
Yet, though it was scheduled to

They built a border around the woods
Turned it into a ridge and a valley
The vacation days piled up slow
They went to Arizona in winter
Switzerland in summer, the city never
The city was for government services
And that part of life was over

Today they each sit near umbrellas
Thirty feet away, twenty-five if you're tall
The umbrellas cover the darkness
On the longest Saturday of the year
Sunny like someone declared it and dared it
The umbrellas are different, one is in the suburbs
The other two in a magic city

They boarded a plane in the ancient world
Got off near where the seagulls ate garbage
The seagulls looked like tiny people
Flapping and surging, ignoring the jet fuel
The family lived in a room in New Jersey
Then two rooms, then three, and finally six
Suddenly it ended, black sheep strewn

June 16, 2007

Zero Comments

Zero comments
I get zero comments
On my poetry
Why do I continue to post?
Even haphazardly
Intermittently
Is it all worth it?
Or is (are) my reader(s) shy?

You'd think Dirty Brea would get some attention
Or the Leonard Cohen poem, or the one about the Cities Of America
But all I hear are heartbeats
And all I feel is fleeting
As modern poetry
Falls on deaf ears
Or no ears

Zero comments

July 18, 2007

The 3

I'm 3 weeks behind... so here are 3 poems from the first two days of July 1998:

Plural

by making the singular thing
plural
I increase its value
I make it seem
that some things happen twice
when really
something only happened once
the “s” at the end
is a very good friend
to me

July 1, 1998

You Like

I can’t help but
eke out a
day or two
all about you
dreaming who
you look like
you smell like
you feel like
you like

but all in all
fantastical songs
make me winged
and dreamlike
dreaming who
you love like
you look like
you smell like
you like

July 1, 1998

Four Colors

brand new pair of blue black sandals
hair of red and gold and missionaries
this is the thought that I hold
as I wait for the better shoe
to drop, all along, I’ve waited
and true, you only have to die
once
but you have to live in fear of it
every day of your fucking life
so raise a hand
to more easily understand
the cryptic message waves
as your slick hibiscus fades
from view

July 2, 1998

Elevators

Freight elevators
Drive slow, sluggish, surging
Up, so that wasn't the problem
Strained looks into digital lenses
Friends of mine notice the difference

Rayguns and metal legs
Kick in doors and dazzle
The night sky, the river lights

There is no order
In the disarmed city
Disorder, old, incapacitated

Hotel elevators
Are smooth like silk
On a baby baby seal

Actualization, mortification
Case study in apples vs. oranges
Lemons in the dirty city of Brea
Mangoes in Los Angeles
Blueberries in Olmstead County
That's enough for now
Hunger is relative

Then the photographer leans in
There's a vision there, somewhere
Close-ups show blemishes
Panorama City is the nexus of the Valley
News to me

Pod elevators, blue and white devils
Had enough of them

She showed me the pictures
Of house by the ocean
I would live there in a heartbeat
Thumping between each wave's crash and spill
I'd change the curtains

I love her pictures
Love her in elevators
Cameras in elevators
She flashes a smile
From across a living room
And I'm in it again

June 13-14, 2007

Visible

I want to feel my hand
On something stark and soft
I want to cure my pain
Break my back in half

Sullen, soldiering on
Soldier, shrugging at dawn
Rain covers the sun
I sleep until it's over

The arch pulled me up
I bent, then I broke
I got back up in California
I'm invisible, then I'm seen

Bought the new car
Easy as nothing
It won't kill me
Keeps me stronger

I want to run outside
Don't want to say a word
I say too much as it is
I leave, I look away, I love

June 12, 2007

Under The Rug

I've had to sweep the narratives
Under the rug that isn't there
(sold it, didn't want it, want a new one)
I tell familiar stories
Can't say I'm wrong but I'm bored
They could be bitter
Go in new directions
Cross the unwalked intersections
These aren't the stories I write
They're the ones I tell, I sell
Under pressure, no paper, no tiny keys
Just a mouth and a heart and eyes that seem
Too red when I wear orange

May 28, 2007