Furious Energy I Can't Explain

Another poem written on a napkin, using a Bail Bonds pen (you know what I mean) in Leadbetter's. Around 1:30 am this morning.

Furious Energy I Can't Explain

Like the flame that kept burning
It's two AM and I'm still drinking.
I'm on my sixth beer and awake and alert.
Maybe more than I was to start; there's a
Furious energy I can't explain making my heart
Beat twenty times a second. And the yells
From the crowd excite me like they're
Shouting in my brain; the same loud
Thoughts are thundering and keeping me awake!
Standing at the bar like I'm running in place
Breathing through my teeth, rictus in my face,
And all I think is one more
Song! And this place will
Break!

Fifty Minutes

One of two poems written last night at Leadbetters around one am. I love Leadbetters.

Fifty Minutes

You could set the clock forward fifty minutes
And everyone would thank you for doing it;
It's one now; closing time is two in this town;
We're all marking time and looking for excuses.

The singer's drooping in exhaustion, her voice broke
And she's coughing, the barflies can only hear
Each other laugh, looking at the same familiar face;
The girl and her date, each waiting for each other
To ask, would love a chance to walk home in the rain.

The billiard players are swaying on their feet
The business men, watching the tv, don't even
Know the score; they can feel those pillows now
Thinking about another hotel night alone;

And that's how we drink another
Sullen August Thursday here in Baltimore.

Driving

Driving

Driving to work
Not watching the road,
I floated, dreaming,
A cloud in shadows
With just a corner
Of my mind in my car

And the rest of
My thoughts following
The corner of your mouth
Passing the quirk in your brows
Circling the warm brown
Oval of your face-

And just as I reached my space
A car pulled in and missed
Me by inches,
As if to demonstrate what
Incredible fortune this is.

Green Places

Zelda's exercise tonight: something about green places, or the most frightened you've ever been, or I don't know, a whole host of other things. Anyway so I went with 'green places' because I remembered this image.

Green Places

At altitudes you find
Suprises; there was a burned copse of
Trees we hiked around, a swath of
Ash, juniper skeletons poking through
Like dead men's fingers, and then
Around the corner we saw
A tiny patch of wildflower strewn
Meadow, soft green and gold penned in
By granite, the most vibrant shades
Rembrandt could never paint
In the autumn-crisp air
And I knew I could never own a
Camera, never capture this,
But always would have the
Afterimage when I think of
Climbing high into the mountains.

Coming Home

Coming Home

Before I slept in your arms
I had never been home.
Before I made breakfast
With you I didn't know
How it should taste.

But now you're gone, and
I'm here, and I've been
Tasting you all day.

And I can't stop my face from smiling,
Thinking of you, wherever you are,
Thinking occasionally of me.

iPod

iPod

Until you came along I
Never knew what that jack was for; and now
The heartbreaking sound of Nina Simone,
Breathing through my speakers, merges
Gently with your sexy classical playlist:
Making out to Mozart, Shacking up to
Chopin- and I never could have guessed
This music lived in my little stereo!

Waiting

Waiting

Even by the sea,
This heavy air barely
Moves at all.

I'm waiting here for you
As I'm always waiting:
choking on my own hot breath,
Crab in a puddle, left behind
By the tide, thirsty for new water.

Couples walk on the cobblestones, passing me.
My body's wires and pulleys, slumped
Against this wall.
What I have is a red stain
On my rags; it's been wrung out now.

Yet once if you said one word ah then
If you but looked at me that way
As you used to do, or smiled at me,
Or called me in that old familiar way
Blood would spring from the stones
In my heart and this puppet
Would dance-

the Other

the Other

I heard "camera" then saw one in your hand
A little old Minolta with a shiny lens
Even asked you about it, when you said it
Wasn't there I couldn't believe you for a moment.

We all see what we want to see, need what we have to need,
And when there's someone else we see
What we want to see in them.

A little while ago I thought you were my life
Saw stars suspended around you
Air move - just a trick of the light.
Funny what tricks the mind can play with hope,
A small diversion for you, for us both.

Die, You Maggot!

The Zelda's exercise was random sentences from random nouns and verbs. This is dedicated to Mike Monroe because of the first sentence (which recalls a lot of his work). Also I think the title is cribbed from Jodie or Suzanne.

Die, You Maggot!

Guitars breathe through this wreck of a city,
Shouting our elbows rub out smiling sentences in the margins.

Riding men, riding women, the fire follows love igniting the trash-strewn street.
Urinating gasoline, I turn the floor to ice and diamonds.

Swinging glass hangs in shards, reflecting us in detail.
Ice cooks in your gaze.

The chair wakes as I pass, the table dances.
My song is blood through icy gasps,
Ripped fabric fluttering,
Screeching violins in chalkboard chorus.

I'm shedding monstrous visions that infect the atmosphere-
tiny horror-waves climbing into ear canals and optic nerves-
Soon you will breathe the pulse of my madness

And I will sing of cockroaches
Crawling on the edge of the planet
Breathing through their glossy black carapaces,
Surviving.

Here Comes the Sun

This is more like a blog post than a poem, really. Well luckily this is a blog.

Here Comes the Sun

One time - one Halloween at school-
I was feeling down, as I usually do,
Went into a building and came out a few minutes later
With 'Here Comes the Sun' playing in my head.

Not sure how it got there. Maybe the sun had come out.

Anyhow when I walked in I was down, when I walked out I was up.
If I walked back in again, would it have reversed again?
What does it say about us, when our moods change so easily?
A shift in the weather, a little comment from a friend, anything-
And so many times this has happened to me.

Unforced Errors

As I recall (and this was a while ago) the exercise that day was to write about our mystical experience. Well folks, this is about as mystic as I get.

Unforced Errors are my Mystical Experience

We're a noisy, stumbling crowd,
Part beast, part god,
Funny in our slapstick way -
Ricocheting in the
Narrow space we make -
Striking together hard
Enough to see sparks.

Blind creatures living in the dark.

And when I see him, see his face,
I know he will lie to me
Again. After the lightning
Comes the rain; we are born to
Pain and live in pain.

What am I searching for?
Why do I scrabble and scrape?
There's a spirit in each of us
That yearns unknowing for its source.

Been Writing, Honest

I've been writing and not posting, lately. Too busy? Maybe.

In any case, I'll post a few poems tonight, I think.