Cold as Irish Green

March is cold
Irish cold and green.
Lace curtains, stank
cabbage; hard sunlight, bitter wind.
Skeleton trees sunk in grass
Grass like greenyellow crayons.
March is a cold month
Cold as Kelly green
White sweaters, warm beer; dirty
snow, heavy rain.
It remains in the grooves of your soles
Like sandy sidewalk grit.
March is cold
Cold and Irish green
Guiness Stout, Blarney Stone; muddy
pools, curbstone rubble.
In Ireland they throw rocks
In Boston they toss back stout
And piss in the streets on St. Paddy's.
March is a month of cold
Kelly cold and green
Celtic cross, gin blossoms; rusted
metal, gutter rivulets.
Even the graveyard seems cozy
On the most Irish of AllIrish Eve.
The month of March is cold
As cold as Irish green.

Repair the World

We lie down together
and drift through streets
I’ve never seen before,
shoes hanging from power lines,

and when we’re done,
and the bed is as rubbished
as a rowdy dive bar,
it’s still only the afternoon,

and a kind of prisoner swap
has secretly taken place,
our pale winter bodies returning
believing in rumors of spring.

Last Night on the Town

The one who was
going to die was
propped against the bar
by an artificial
limb. It was strange
watching that last
act, especially since
he was buying all
the losers drinks,
leading a show which
would end up a black
suit affair; not that
any of these guys
knew what a suit was.
Most bar guys would be
bummed when he went
but I wasn't: I'd
been called Dr. Death
before. These things
always seem to happen
on my shift; after
awhile you almost
get used to it.
I thought I was nice
person once upon
a time, but looking
into the eyes of dead
people does things to
you, I’m warped now,
broken, and nothing is
going to change that.

No longer that girl

Contrasting the verse that I now pen on smiley
face topics, like leaves birds and butterflies,
slipped in a notebook, stuffed in a drawer along
with the jeans that got tight now, are dozens of
them, of decades thematic of times when I'd
"loved" with a slice of my spleen, poetry musings
on "dirtbags" I'd known, when wayward and dirty
and destined for therapy.

And once in the while I take a peek back at
that younger girl, the one in contorted
positions with "jerks" at a rest stop, overlooking
the Grand Central Parkway and wonder..

**
to where go these poems
when I'm miles past that lifetime,

to where go these poems
when I'm no longer that girl.

Any Sort of Fun Flash Becomes the Past  

 
Turn it all off.  
Shut it down.  
This world will huff 
And it’s full of clowns.  

Keep that vision  
In your eye.  
Leaves decay.  
Toe prints  
Get eaten by the tide.  
Time deteriorates;  
You're gonna die. 

Not Cupid's nor Your Father’s Moon
                     ....wetter than previously thought—NYTimes
 
Your dad’s old goddess has fallen asleep
in her retro waterbed of arid arroyos found
under the Sea of Tranquility, dust steeped
in invisible acquifers of space that gave ground
long ago. Does that make the moon more a love
symbol, or less? Wetter means it may endure
like a faithful old nun and yet prove
sultry. For these unfeathered hopes, no cure
but another heavenly body, less wet and cold, fired
in the kiln of another galaxy or the fresh breast
of an as-yet-uninvented temptress desired
by some poor mortal like me, a guest
here under the cheesy ph(r)ases, the liquid lies
of myth like tears in your dying father’s eyes.

In the Spirit (of Kentucky Photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard)

Back when the world was black and white, 
folks had no use for Halloween.
Any occasion sufficed. 

People of all ages apparently 
went everywhere wearing nightmare masks.

A one-armed man at the end of his long workday
would pose beside a headless mannequin in lingerie.  

To impress friends or on a dare, a child wearing a dress jumped
from a granary or icehouse loft in a blur.

This optician made his unusual name
taking these oddly mystical pictures
mostly to amuse himself. 

Faith is weird that way.

GETTING TO TOMORROW


Grass poking through snow.
Countless chickadees and titmice

at the feeder, shower seeds
on a fat blue jay below. The sun drags

its long fingers along a pine fence.
A sleepy St. Bernard heaves a sigh.

A man with knuckles raw
from beating his steering wheel,

raises bloodshot eyes to a winter
night’s first few pinprick sparks.




WORK EXPERIENCE

 
Snow falls
in street lamp
light
on the windowless,
fire-gutted
mill
where my uncle,
fresh
out of high school,
lost both thumbs
in a metal press—
his first day
on the job.

 

You Appear Tentaculoracular

i see you thru the window of your motions
calm down maya i’m like fuck you
jellyfish juice in my knee stings
and suddenly i’m with you
again for ever and
ever as an ocean
is quiet is quiet
as all the ways
you come to
me only as
i’m fever
wild
passion
i say i am but
you wouldn’t say 
would spontaneously
combusust unless you
appear tentaculoracular
would you piss on my wound
if i ask without remorse to dull
the poison and pain of the stung
pumps into my heart i’ll remember
this the clappers and steel drums one day
i’ll remember you suddenly down broadway
when life’s one long hourglass and lightning splits     

     t h e   m i d d l e
      s i f t i n g   o u t
           m e a s u r  e s
      o f  m y  p a t i e  n ce
     s  p  i  l  l  i  n  g 
o u t  o f  p a t i e n c e

“imagine the magnificence wash invisibly away”

a n c i e n t   r e a l m 
      o f w a v e  r h y m e s 
i n t i m e ’ s n o m ea s u r e

eyes


there’s a dying ember of tomorrow
smoldering in her once brilliant
one electric blue
now red watery despondent eyes

she can almost remember a time
when everything mattered
when all of this was nothing
and everything else
all of the outside of these hours
was much more than simply
something to get through

get through to get where
here
this

this seems less a destination
less a reward
more a prison
constructed by careless frivolity
and inevitable desperation

there’s a nagging silent hope
that sometimes claws at the
back of her brain
but she’s gotten good at
drowning it down

every time she comes in the door
her self hatred grows a little stronger
She doesn’t know she’s thought of this
but she has
and maybe if she’s lucky
someday she’ll realize it

tears threaten to burst
every time she motions
for another
mile marker to familiar blackout

some people are so broken
you never have to share a single word
you can find their whole story
suffocating in their eyes