On the Spit
We dont know how to be
out in the world anymore. Aching
with too much love
or not enough, I feel obliged
to ogle a skinny young woman
in a pair of low-cut designer jeans
as she squats down and sifts
through a plastic bucket
for clams. I am the only man
around. Her long, dark hair shines, but
without my glasses,
I cant make
out her face.
I jot down words
in a beat up journal with my back
against a beached drift log. My wife
rides another
sidesaddle, scrounging for stones
and seashells. Is she pretty?
I ask.
Very pretty, she teases
in her little-girl voice. She may even
mea
you took to Europe to forget.
oblivion in the cathedrals, in the Berlin skyline,
each train seat as it sticks to your legs a token,
the fields rushing through your chest.
a fiancée who kissed a seventeen-year-old girl;
you hit the floor of a Florence bar, dancing.
a father dead from an excess of choice;
every stained glass window abandons you.
this is how it is, now.
one of us is silent;
the other simply runs.
four poems about being tired by completeaccident, literature
Literature
four poems about being tired
for me
I.
Well, there's not much meaning to Life
just now. She's very busy
doing life things, doing dishes and
laundry, keeping things in the pantry
and finding the floor sometimes
in everything else.
The sun comes out, sometimes,
so she recharges while she can, and then
maybe she has a little less dusting to do.
One less hobo freezing on the corner.
She schedules coffee breaks,
and misses them, of course, but she makes up
on the weekends, drops a couple balls down
the quarter slot and calls it good.
She's oversexed and everyone loves her too much
on Sundays when the moon isn't too full.
She thinks sleeplessness tastes like
eight
I remember collapsing
with the weight of comprehension
on top of Suzuki volume three.
curled on the beige sofa
clutching a half-sized rental.
suddenly realizing
the power of pure harmony.
ten
I played for men in scrubs
who had come to fix my grandfather
to blinking machines.
it was the only thing I knew how to do.
my mother told me to stop. The noise was distracting
the ambulance staff.
I hid in my room until they left.
twelve
I remember thinking
why can't I be first?
they're all so much better.
so I asked myself
if I would be happy
without being the best.
fourteen
I watched my reflection in a window.
Bach A Min
I heard a song and a sip
of tea too strong for me,
But I took it anyway
The way bells ring
sometimes only
in the West
I'd like to think time
would wait for me in the
cloud pockets like bags
collecting mail, slow this
down slow me down
So I can feel this
My skin never dries
under the paper raincoat,
And she says, "Well at least
when its wet it can't cut
you" but she doesn't know
She doesn't know that I
would love to bleed
Some colour in the
grey, some ice cream
sandwiches and peanut butter
Some light caught in the leaves
The green
I need some in me
But the paper just molds
to me and tears and makes its
way towar