Category: Book o’ Verse

roomward covering
corners
carrying photos of tadpoles
large eyes and feathers and whatnot
while painting the scene with shades of
frog
hopping
feathers
sentiment
burp

wriggle of morning thought.
Something to hold on to. To pull him out. Sharp. He bites–
Hold on! Hold on!
Tight jaw, reeling in,
line stretching, water shake. There’s a
bend and a swing.
with the whole scene
swirling past too fast then he’s
flopped over and
down onto the plankety
board bottom of the shiver boat.
Standing above himself now.
Wide awake.
Cold.

Subway ride through a newspaper, flutter
express stop and cooked air at the sports section
with the concrete pressed straight cold against your feet
like there’s no shoe there at all. No shoe to separate
the ligatures that spell out
the times of the day, the subway times you’re zipping through. The
business, life, nation, op ed, crowded, closing metal metro doors
and gossip too. And there’s you, subracing through in
flip-flops made of newsprint and cold-pressed shoe.

A red-cabbed rig
flying just above the spires of Golden Gate Bridge.
What the hell — right? A truck, aloft? Sort of lovely
though for the moment, looking around. There’s
a nice stereo and tapes and a bed tucked in
behind the driver’s seat.
The problem’s his trajectory.
He’d hoped he might line up
with the road below, touch down, head on over to
Sausalito for a movie. But there’s too much
sideways momentum and the truck flew west.
Flew past. Drifted.
Over. Out.

dirty gray, piled high like
handfuls of baby sheep
stacked and teetering.

the air
sharp with cotton candy
drift

that leaps toward
the understanding part.
you can’t hold it back.

a pillow
he’s reaching for it now
to prop up all
those teetering stacks,

to ease his way into
a dream of sharp fluff.

Forget not the mud caked juice box,
those traces of familiar sweetness locked in
hannukah gelt coin coverings dented
dirtward

next to
a plate or two of shaded eggplant parmigiana.

There was a party here. There were frightened
earthworms. Thunder. Gray light. And children being
irresponsible.

been thinking about
my great-grandfather’s beard.

I can’t compete with that.

Puffy-white sketched
lawyer-still.
Coffee, ironed tablecloths, small spoons.
Not one drop swings
loose.

Cigars for all. Corona de Luxe
smoke drifts
over old Europe squares.
Sons in perfect pose. Even the camera man
had his act together.

driving home late telling my eyes
it’s just about time to open
wide, let in a few headlights
reveal the back
of my head.
clang noises clanging back there
still clanging away let
the headlights
shine on in.

it’s a matter of asking
that tape recorder, are you gonna
spool this? Do you want to take a sec?
hold a sec? paste that moment
across some plastic?
Cuz I don’t wanna let you go, sec.
I want to throw you in a drawer next to
some passports and
a picture someone
drew of me
when I was 17.

His pals don’t need much, ya see.
They wear snappy hats. Elbow each other
at the sight of something, hey!
Hey look at that snappy hat!
All they want is a patch of dirt
to trash. To take off their hats.
To scrum.
They’ve got cleats, ya see. Underneath
them fancy pants. And
cleats
beget
traction.