A Poem I Can't Write

Eyes closed
like the scribbled notebook
resting on my chest
pressing me deeper into leather armrests
under the growing weight
of the half formed poem inside.
Inside the notebook or my mind?
Both, hopefully.
Neither, maybe.

Half drowned and soggy,
soaking in stale lines,
sinking lower with the light outside,
downing, bowing to the
dusk rising higher
while the sky ignites in crimson fire,
blushing with secrets in a choir or rhymes,
hushing, hiding inspired lines
tumbling, jumbled inside my mind
like thoughts without static cling
about life-cycles and streams,
grammar and beauty
sparking briefly
before dying in the embers of the wood burning stove
warming my toes
and suddenly sprouting a shrill
escape of vapor
whistling through a fuming buoy,
a bare old kettle heralding
me to tea
and the poetry
I've been blinded from,
fighting to write the right lines
while I'm inside
a better poem,
the real poem.

How to put emotion on paper...

Stop-
drop your stained eyes,
ears strained, stayed
to a faint whisper
hissing softer, shifting swifter.
Sift it smaller,
smaller,
stop.

Hold your breath and
dive down
digging,
ripping,
tearing.
Stop.
Pull it out carefully.

Cradle it in your hand.
Let the wind batter it's sides.
Watch as the stories topple to sentences,
crumble to words,
flake in your fingers
lingering only as an awkward thought
rocking back and forth
alone,
cold and folded.

Hold it close
mold it between your sweaty palms
roll it's edges dull,
wedge it in your closed fist
and wait
till it's full weight is felt
melting through your fingers,
dripping through it's burning cage,
dropping, pouring on the page,
stopping only
when the last of the mashed lead letters
etch the end of a wrecked echo
banging inside the six sides
of your Dixon Ticonderoga.

Matron of Suburbia

She walks through the valley of the shadows of lives,
she fears no evil through American eyes,
for thou art with her, upper middle-class wives.

Mediocrity is the lock and key
into her stock and taste-free
suburban asylum.

Live above your means but below your dreams.
Success is the shade of greener grass,
failure is the neighbor’s bigger boat and higher class.

The pressure is sure to press her
into the shapeless mold of her Mary Kay club,
leaving the left-over scraps of “the woman he married”
to be shaped by his new expectations
based on desperate housewives,
occasionally overflowing into
verbal abuse, bulimia,
and fresh Gerber daisies in the front planter.

Her children fill the role of
the whipped dog put down because of heightened allergies.
They tiptoe over starched carpets,
not touching the antique furniture
on the way to their antimicrobial rooms,
complaining of today’s high pollen count
and polluting their minds with Playstation III
as their muscle tone begins the long atrophy
towards festering bed sores.

Hold your head high when you step outside.
Scoff the weak, scorn the wealthy.
Adorn the drab and worn fads and forms
from former issues of celebrity magazines.
Disguise your guise, hide your lies
(naivety is your creativity).

Despise the wise.
Embrace folly for a taste of imitation fortune,
like a prime-cut filet
marinated in Natty Light
and served in a fancy bowl of A-1.

The Impressionist

“Hello, yes,
I can't believe I'm actually meeting you,
I'm such a big fan.
Hahaha,
isn't that wonderful!
Hmm, well, you don't say.
Wow, uh-huh, how interesting,
you are very important,
very beautiful.

No, no, keep talking,
I just need you to stretch a blank canvas
over my face.
That's it, keep stretching till it's tight
around my head
and I can't breath anymore.
Wow, you're very good, you must do this often.

No, keep talking, just another minute
till I suffocate.
There we are, that old face is dead,
it gets less painful each time.

Now you have a blank palette
to paint me exactly the way
others have painted you
for everyone to see.
No, I don't care,
I'll be whoever you want me to be.

My, you have such a big, important brush
and bold strokes.
Your colors are so bright and vibrant,
easy for others to smear and fade into.
Wow, that is so beautiful, so unique,
just like every other canvas in the mob
following your every step.”

Not Another New Poem

I tried to come up with a new poem today

about roads travelled and bricks being laid down in your path

or something like that

but the topic has already been abused

by people much duller than me

and now my wife just got home from work.

Value Menu

I gave this guy a dollar

and asked him to play a little

Ornette Coleman or Sonny Rollins.

He said he was the next

John Coltrane

before he started playing some Charlie Parker.

The summer heat swelled his cheeks

and bellowed through his brass sax,

while the passion and fury of angry jazz

and a life of cheap purgery

of dollar renditions

of tired supermarket compositions

bulged in his ballooning eyes,

making Charlie Parker turn in his grave

and me tuck tail and run

before turning back and yelling

"That's a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger man!"

Summer Haiku

Summer springs youth bloom

beneath faceless mass, unless

all they know is "no".