Monday, April 21, 2014

dead geraniums

                              a few years back
                              not recalling exactly when
                              within Halloween's fiery hearth
                              an acrylic moon hung all
                              jacked up on the right
                              suburban roads paved in euphoric evening
                              sidling windward
                             down residential streets to a main st. pub
                              to be with myself
                              nothing had me
                              in its fervent grip
                              clutching paper napkins
                              swaddled in
                              fluorescent orange orangutang fissures
                              pumpkin ornaments
                             drearily disheveled
                              spread out cross
                              the local whiskey counter
                              six pack family station wagon imagery
                               this location
                               this wretched county
                               kindled my bitten fingernails
                              along crescent full-time noons
                               it all led up to melancholic memories
                               of you in Brooklyn
                               being read Faulkner
                               by a middle-aged man in khakis
                               in some art village gallery
                               where poor bohemians waste all
                                their time and money
                               attempting to impress the impressionable
       
                               I walked home flattened
                               discouraged
                               throwing up imported
                               beer on
                               the dying geraniums
                               behind your mother's
                               old nail salon
                               back at my apartment
                               I recalled
                               why exactly
                               you
                               moved to Brooklyn
       
                               
        
                           
                             
                              

Friday, April 4, 2014

retrospective seasons

                       afternoon presented itself innocuously at one point in time
                       golden days scattered into seasons
                       a frivolous sun settled down upon
                       swaying trees gently pressing against an auburn sky
                       something happened to me
                       memories came crashing down
                       as decade old crystalline chandeliers in
                       drunken barroom brawls 
                      
                       artificial light radiated sharply
                        once in each others presence
                       til a familiar gasoline burnt down
                        continuing running on decrepit fumes
                        much too long
          
                       your nose has been running lately
                       but where's it going?
                       where it all goes
                        down the human waste-pipe of intellectual futility
                        our past is as an old rustic shoebox
                       desolated through bland epochs of pointless history
                        among sordid
                        personal pathos
                        and embarrassing marketing logos
   
                        Friday night on the blanched hems of the city
                        you, the bathtub boy and an inexpensive bottle of plastic gin
                        run-on mornings in cheap motels
                       surrounding nightly phone calls
                       to a middle-aged woman in Massachusettes
                       that lectures you
                       "learn to control your emotions before they control you,
                        find a way to curb your lust and desire
                       before you wake up in the local holding tank
                       with the gutter queers you know all too well"   
           
                       My youth has faded beyond any possible recognition plus
                       what's the point of holding on to it?
                       When all you got anymore is all you have learned
                        to wake up every morning and try not to kill anyone
                        including yourself