Category: Book o’ Verse

  • Bedtime

    She slept in the bed
    while he slept on the couch
    so he could hear their sick daughter
    and her three-day-old cough.
    And in the morning
    while she moved around the kitchen
    and the kids watched too-loud TV
    and coughed a little more,
    he crept back into the bed,
    curled up in the body warmth
    she’d left behind
    and they slept together
    separated
    only by time.

  • Slowly

    Just because you turn
    slowly slowly
    to check her out
    slowly
    as she walks past
    doesn’t mean
    that she don’t notice.

  • Culturally deprived

    “Snow!” he shouted
    tossing clouds of
    thin, white sand at the beach
    making snowmen
    out of sand
    with their heads
    lying down
    and their arms are wet planks
    and their toes knotted kelp
    and they never melt
    until the sun explodes.

  • Different

    I must be someone very different to him
    than I am to me.
    Maybe I'm some fast-talking jack-ass
    some know-it all jerkweed
    some high-maintenance poindexter.
    If he saw me in a bar
    he would hate me in that bar.
    I hope god doesn't see me through his eyes.
  • Plastic cups

    You could find us
    by the smell of cheap wine
    in open-air plastic cups.
    See, we'd walked into this sunny summer party
    unguarded booze
    them all in college
    us two in high school.
    Strolling the lawn with our big red cups
    held chest-high
    both hands.
    We were alert and amazed.
    Thick-haired and thin-faced.
    Bobbing along
    like tipsy rowboats.
    Sipping small sips.
    Invisible.
    But not odorless.
  • Bacon

    My son wants
    bacon made out of coffee
    for me and
    bacon made out of orange juice
    for him.
    Leave those pigs alone!
    But keep the bacon coming.
  • A thing

    A thing a day a written
    thing a thought a memory
    a day it's not
    too much to
    ask too much to
    do.
  • In Florida

    In Florida,
    the land of the dead for me.
    All those memories of bouncing on
    airboats through swamps, and
    wandering around exotic bird parks,
    and listening to King Crimson
    on the wide lawn
    under the wide sky
    by the reflecting lagoon.
    And sometimes driving, sometimes walking
    over to my great aunts, and uncles, apartments
    for bowl snacks and conversation.
    There was that one time --
    Meyer borrowed our walkman.
    Suddenly
    volume spun all the way up,
    all the way up
    he could hear again.
    Oh my god such a smile.
    All gone now, that gang.
    There were two Irvings.
    And all alligators gone.
    All tennis courts gone.
    All rec centers gone
    with miles of immaculate green felt pool tables.
    Key West too.
    And Florida is for me.
    The land of the dead for me.
  • I want to build a house

    I want to build a house
    with Richard Brautigan
    up on the third floor.
    Looking out a large window
    at open land
    hands on the windowsill.
    Wearing that old hat
    that old vest
    those old glasses.
    He looks good.
  • Bad-ass astronomer

    Do you know how many
    stars up there  --
    how many of those
    nighttime naked-eye stars-that-you-can-see
    are part of our local little galaxy?
    Not off in the broader universe
    representing some distant cluster.
    Just local twinkle.
    Milky Way shine.
    Do you know?
    Do you?
    Do you?
    How about all of them?
    Motherfucker.