Singing along extra-loud to the “I’m a joker, I’m a toker, I’m a midnight smoker” line in that one goofy Steve Miller Band song
Subtly flexing his arm anytime a woman touches it for any reason
All tagged Poetry
Singing along extra-loud to the “I’m a joker, I’m a toker, I’m a midnight smoker” line in that one goofy Steve Miller Band song
Subtly flexing his arm anytime a woman touches it for any reason
Carry yourself now to a room with no windows.
These are your instructions. You must wait
in the dark. You were not prepared before;
what could they tell you?
Blood is only a metaphor
for other blood. Estimate
the platelets on the earth, count
the plasma. You think you can turn
this talk into stars or sand, but blood
is at hand, sir, do not waver.
You believe that it is stealing to spend more time than allotted at lunch or on a break.
You believe that it is stealing to spend a few moments goofing off at the desk.
You believe that it is stealing to be a little octopus dawdling beneath the waves of the ocean.
You believe—wholeheartedly!—in the saxophone solo in Bruce Springsteen’s “Bobby Jean.”
You're dropping bombs on a bridge to stop
the Russians from following your friend, Art Malik,
the Oxford educated resistance leader who has far
more screen presence and sex appeal than
droopy-eyed you.
Your memory said that rusted fragments preserve
the wholes of our shattered lives.
When you addressed Hamlet’s skull, returning
to the Berlin battlements that sheltered your childhood,
the whole was emptying out, entire populations lost.
I tell her, and she looks up, pleased and
serious, and I think of our first glimpse
of her: the grainy sonogram, the only
clear things one white, spread-fingered hand
Unsunned
boys with their serious
boy films. More important
than ours, their toys: NYU
film school, CBGB, Harvey
Weinstein’s money.
pretender to an animal kingdom, this small throne,
this small peace. The sighs of animals,
waiting.
we sleep head to head on each side of our common wall
trot up and down our conjoined staircase at predictable times
smile over the backyard fence, friendly
over our skewed densities, eight of them to one of me.
but this conversation was different;
I had empathy for the listener,
or maybe I was just trying to follow some protocol
by not asking for what I wanted.
Rather, I requested “Help me trust you.”
In June, it’d be an emergency. Now, it’s a nuisance,
One that merely fogs my windshield of hope.
in the clipped wind, no place
headed to.
Brother sun, sister moon, can
uncle deer hear me?
One taking the other’s hand and leading delicate
as dandelion seed heads dispersed by a light wind
to water’s carnal grip
Start with a stream. No, a river, a rush of water, turning rocks into sand. A river wearing away its edges. A river sometimes sweet and meandering, sometimes deadly.
I'm dead. now the cat can jump up onto
the counter and drink the smoothie, but
I'm not mad about it (because I am dead
and because everyone who is dead is at
peace I am OK with it all.
who he is besides this stranger
in my house, who I have to help
by informing him the chimes he
hears are real, and the white noise here
About war, they say, there is nothing new to support. It is as common to wear braces to hold up one’s pants, as it is to wear one’s pants outside one’s trousers.
When the man that is so mad comes out more frequently my caring
feels like an apology.
It is a balance like hanging your toes
off the edge of a concrete bridge.
Please don’t lose your patience with him. Try
and let him act it out, lay down and close his eyes,
make up a prayer, even if it’s silly and it rhymes,
even if it’s just crib talk