The kitchen table
smells like carving

Isle Nine

Someone
wrap me
in
an egg carton.

Compost

She and I
are patched
together

from scraps
of rotting
food,

Someday
the worms
will have made
us rich again.

In the drawer
that I never open
is a card I never sent.

Above my head,
a fly spirals

towards a piece
of watermelon

gushing juice
upon my chin

My heart keeps pace
to the jumps of a grasshopper.

We both share
the fear
that the other
might stop.

Loose Socks

I can smell the over-ripened bananas.

The windows are open. From the outside one can hear her. There she is in the window, spreading her knife across the table, packing brown bags full to the brim, and whistling over her works. Whistling and smiling she knows they will grow to be happy.

I can see the way they are packed so tightly.

She walks away twinkling, being done, things packed tightly away in brown paper bags. Soon they are off to school, and over and over the work she still whistles. Glittering and Pounding away.

I can hear the crumpling of paper bags and doors that slam against the frame.

But what is that smell?

That awful, awful smell.

She pauses and the quickly, up the stairs she goes, climbing higher and higher as the air gets thin, faster and faster. What is that smell? And through a door, a giant door, lay the smallest of all, covered in blankets, warmly snuggled in the crib, there's a cold and rotting baby.

Oh it's only that, she says.

Reminders

Not sad.
Not sad.

No, I'm not sad.

She fries my love
in a greasy non-stick pan
and seasons
it with fish sauce.

She builds a tortoise
out of bundled hairs
and pancake batter.

Fish guts explode in a brain.
One thousand gills
breathing
against my forehead.

Porch Lights

Lightning bugs
flicker
like hope.

She drags herself
through the day
on the very same thing.

Tech Support

The computer
hangs up.

My son asks,
on who?

Slime of morning
oozes through
window pane

Assisted Living

An old woman
rests in bed
like uneaten
food.

Slipping in and out
through bedsores
and the changing
of diapers,

a background
of television noise
washes her clean.

Inspired by Rusell Edson

The poem is digusted
by language -

the sights and sounds
of itself

distorting image through words.

The teacher spews
tiny unseen
particles of failure
into the classroom.

Cowboy Antics

A man swings his umbilical cord
in widening circles above his head
as he tries to lasso in his innocence.

Milky Way

I poor myself a bowl
of tiny hearts

No arteries or veins.

Everything just spurts upward
out of tiny aorta.

From a Hill

An orange tumbles
into the grass.

A single blade
slices open
the aroma
of dusk.

The companionship of tragedy -
I hear her breaking glass
in the kitchen again.

The king of toads
waits for her
in a pond
of grieving mushrooms.

She croaks
from beneath the muck.

A tiny drum carries
the rhythm of worry.

I listen to the sounds
of fingers
as they roll
across her belly.

Russell Edson

I wanted to share an interview that I found online with one of my favorite poets:

http://www.webdelsol.com/Double_Room/issue_four/Russell_Edson.html

A man came home,
and cried into his hands .
He took them to his wife
and said as he threw them,
I return to you
the only things you ever gave.

New Blog!

For whatever reasons, I am trying to organize my poetry on this blog into collections. I have started a new blog called Bside Poetry, which reflect my attempts at this endeavor. Check it out. While on this blog (brief poems), I love to get comments and critique on individual poems; I would prefer at Bsides to receive comments and critique about the collections as a whole.

Anyway, I thought this was a new and interesting way to force me to go back and look at old poetry, and concern myself with poetic work even when I am uninspired to write anything new.

Weather

The forecast calls for rain,
but none will fall.

From my window I can see
that the skies are filled
with a dry sorrow.

Pendulum

A child flies high
in an empty swing.
The risk of pretending
there was ever more.

The Carpet Burner

She watches him drag
a heart along the floor,
rubbing out the stains
which were left behind.

Indices of Refraction

The space
which holds you
is warm,
such that
the light bends
ever so slightly
around you.

Stifled by saliva and cookies
the old man chokes
to death.

She blogs on and on about it...

Inside and Out

The potato man
carries me around
in a container
made for french fries.

The things you left behind
are growing.

The pantry is emptying
itself into the kitchen.
I watch as my
stale-bread of hands
crumble to the floor.

Once stirred,
the batter of you
thickens.

Stuck between my teeth -
the ovary of an apple tree

The dreaming of murder
again and again.
One flower peeks its head
above the leaves.

The homeless man with blond hair,
who passes by our window,
he is screaming at his own screaming
again and again.
The echo of a siren,
the cry of an ambulance
carrying ghosts through the city.

Lifting her higher and higher
all I could see was her smiling.
And then,
she was gone,
leaving me with arms outstretched
and the wind in my hands.

Suffering walks along a road,
shaking hands with passersby
and smiling at tiny faces in strollers.
He pretends he is not unwelcome.

Seeking refuge in my mind,
we drill in hopes
of finding something alive.

Seawater rises and falls
as a crusty line of salt
moves up and down her calf.

8 poems in 4 minutes...

The forest spills over
into the child's mind.
---------------
So rotten I've become
in the bath of bananas
-------------------
Sour hilltops rest above her.
She sings facing downward.
---------------------
I spotted a cow in the hill.
Clouds collapse upon us.
-----------------
She bashed his skull
and let brain juices ooze
like rice-crispies and milk.
--------------------
She waits for me across time
like the slicing of one's internals
with a knife made of bread.
-----------------
Silly panda bears
have entrapped the cage,
and keep it hostage
so diligently.
-------------------
The morning hangs
like a bug in a web.

I saw a parade today,
and the patron saint of crumbling
visiting scattered homes
around New Orleans.

An empty
coat rack
creaks its
witchy fingers

A dash or two

Softness mashed into a pot -
We lie silently in bed.
----------------------------
Under the cover of rain -
we drip upon each other
with our eyes closed.

Perhaps
this evening
when the cleaning lady
makes her rounds,
she will say a prayer
before disposing of me.

Cell-less

Like a clown performing
a disappearing trick,
I lose my phone at the circus.
Honk Honk! (but no ring)

Summer Romance in the City

The concrete is warm.

A man is swinging a woman by her feet,
breaking her against a pole.
She sighs calmly
and waits for the fit to end.

Somewhere around the corner,
a small dog dry humps a leg.

A foggy patch
in a bend of road.
Unfocused, my mind
turns to her instead.

Everything is the same.

[Rewind and play again]

Everything is the same.

Light from underneath the door
shines in the place you once were.

Twice

Walking the dog along the same path
tonight that I did this morning.

I abandoned you once by leaving,
and then again by my making you go.

She calls,
but the ring just echoes.
A bird mourning in an empty barn.

I saw a single leaf fall
or maybe it was two,
yet the yard
is covered
orange, brown, and yellow.

She stands like a stone
at the top of the stairs,
and I look up to her
across rows and rows
of horizontal slats receding.

The phone screams,
and under the bed
I go, again.

Life and Death

I suppose
if I had worn you
more like a jacket,
than it would be easier
to just slide you off my shoulders,
and walk out of the room.

But I wore you like a tumor
rooted deep in vital organs.
Something that I might have cut out in chunks,
but remains despite my best of efforts.

Falling off the edge of a cliff
like falling up a wall.
She flirts with a disastrous turn around,
and sinks deeper into the ground.