Tag: poem

Somewhere Really Good

A woman, maybe not even,
pretending, trying to get there
in a hurry.
Now that I think about it–
it’s a classic story.
Puts on some makeup
lying around,
slithers into a narrow hole
of a dress, and starts dancing,
beckoning. We just assume
they learn it
somewhere really good
because they pick up
so easy and it’s always

exactly

what we want.

Night

A lone lamp post

fends off the darkness
on a street corner.
Nothing moves.
The light scorches,
the wings of roaches

glimmer
in the mouth of a sewer.

Thinking About Christmas

A kid tears
boxes open
knowing 9 out of 10
are not it.

An old man
tears
boxes open
knowing
it isn’t there.

Oblivious

What would I do if I caught your eye?
I’d think too much of nothing you’d ever think.
There’d be a pause when people would shrink.
Of course, I’d look away just as quickly
because I’d never want to see you peek,
not a second fleetingly.
And I’d make a great show of walking,
whistling a tune in my head and prancing.
You’ll go about your business, as you should,
because you won’t give a hoot
even if you could.

The Moon

Teetering between now and tomorrow,
wanting to do nothing,
nothing worth wanting.
Then you appear in the center
of a busy square
of Tuesday,
all the scrambling about, flying emails,
and one-hour something lunches,
plans to get fit, tangled cords
and someone’s dry, thin hair strands
on the floor.
You’re spinning them,
they’re tied to you
almost strangling

your long,

beautiful,

creamy

neck.

And I’m hopping about
from rock to rock
around this asteroid belt of
pessimistic
pandemic
productivity.
I remember my college Physics
professor who told me
the moon is forever
trying to fall but failing.
Aching to
SMASH
the Earth
but missing,
so it ends up
always being back
where it used to be,
each time more consumed
by a maddening
desire
to be one.
Fuming to corrupt.
Erupt.

Oh, God will rue the day
the moon drops
because that will be the night
I just stop
the nonsense
of a good pay,
a good life
for the greatest
fuck.

Last night it rained like it hasn’t rained
in a long time. Innumerable long wet needles that stretched
into spears pierced the ground
almost sideways thrown by the heavens–
maniacally–as if somebody up there was aching to punish
someone down here.
I looked down from the balcony as if expecting to see
something. Something new, something wild,
something different but there wasn’t any,
there hasn’t been any since we shut ourselves in.
But there was the storm, at least. It reminded me
of something
drowned in the deep well
of memories, floating half-seen, glinting in the dark.
I may have left it there or someone did,
someone’s always responsible for something
that should be accounted for when you least expect it
some time.

And it peeks and it glints when it rains.

Last night the cold let itself in
because it didn’t need any permission from us.
Lord and master, it strode across the room and sat
cross-legged in the only serviceable chair, waited
to be served and revered and we did whatever it wanted us to do,
anything.
I shivered and shrivelled as it filled the four corners,
hinting at something dark that we should prepare for,
like it was ever really possible to get ready for the future.
It was a joke, really. When anything could happen
any day,
like rains we don’t deserve or ask for,
people we could have really gone without or live for,
hell I could have maybe not known half the things I knew
and I would be more dumb and purer and true but,
anyway,

it was time to close the windows and sleep, listening.

In Taiwan we rode one of their old trains that felt like they chugged
even though they didn’t. The trip was long and shared
by people who acted their best as if they didn’t care
about us although I had this nagging suspicion
that they really didn’t. And that’s sad.
And as it pulled away from the main cities where dreams
were weaved in shiny glass buildings, I
saw life cropped by the train’s windows replaced
by old shops of strange brands that reminded me of home
and allowed me to forget it at the same time. Old.
Just old. Oldness that waves goodbye.
Like it knew me. I almost winked at it. Blew it a kiss.
But soon the train reached its destination
and up to now I’d still like to utter the name of that station
if I could remember it but I don’t want to, not
exactly; I want it relegated to that room in my head
where half-remembered things form a thick ghostly smoke
of mundaneness that some nights turns into free,
wondrous dreams. So we stepped outside that train that chugged
and looked around us in this platform in the middle of nowhere,
this platform so old. Just old. Oldness that gives you
an unwelcome hug. And I just died. I mean
what killed me was that this was the end of the railway
and yet people looked as if this was exactly the plan.

The golden light falls upon concrete
like silk in air or angels’ hair painfully
trapped in a simulation of forever.
I think of faces–sweaty, round faces–gleaming,
and I miss them so much even though I have been nothing
but a rock on a roadside peeking from a cloud
of dust. How could one love this much
and be so helpless? We turn their smiles
over and over in our heads as if we can squeeze out
their juice and sustain us, as we trudge along
this desert in a rickety chair. And the golden
light descends a microsecond still, steals
the day away and whispers to the trees to shed
their leaves and break their bark and snap
their branches as the ground gets buried in an unbearable
heap of decay. We lay there watching the new flowers.
But we’re not part of it. We have been secluded
from this renewal because realizations by
their very nature are always too late
and our luck is running out.