The Versery

today's poem is brought to you by the letter 'f'

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:51:00 -0400

foolings fulfilled from far
are foolings not fit for the flag
fool

any fool can fool with tools
true foolers fool the fooled
face-to-face

it is always there but i often don’t hear it ticking life away

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:28:00 -0500

it is always there

but i often don’t hear it

ticking life away

WHAT MYSTERY IS A POEM'S COMING

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:27:00 -0500

it always comes at worst of times
& never when pen in hand
& seated at an antique table
grandpa used to woo with words
his heart’s betrothed inspired by trout’s
brook bubbling on to finally rest
like glass reflect perfect world
back through this window to
parchment perched atop aged
mahogany its scent hugging me
& dad’s old chair creaks waltz with mockingbirds
while poems pour from endless fountain

amusing how the poet’s muse
pricks where paper’s weight
cannot be born as hands
bear dinner to a wife
for whom words were made
to speak what can’t be spoken
for emerald & eclipse were
fashioned from her eyes before
they cleft the maker’s mold
& in my head a verse unfurls that
falls forgotten onto pavement
long before a year would pass
between this work & the last

& even then i lamented the
time that disappeared to quick
& stole each poem that
was to be a piece of me that
lived in words imprinted
but now a boy who bears my
name shall carry what of me
is unique & some of that which isn’t
like the need to write & struggle
with each line & learn not
how to be a poem’s master

a poem never comes when poet
solely inward turns to pull
one out like unwanted dandelions

a poem cannot come from wrestling
its heels & pinning it with pen nor
by will or might can it be summoned
or stirred form its waiting to pierce hearts
& a poem cannot come when it’s
expected like a 5:10 bus

a poem never comes from
insistence rather savoring existence
& from colors & smells &
sounds & cassettes & funeral homes
& undisguised stares & from rocks
& trees & birds in the air

it is not a thing taken but one given
& belongs not to the poet &
it lives unshackled by scholar’s
chains or historian’s veins

it lives by those who breathe its
syllables & syntax & story
& survives through those that leave
what they think they know
& explore what they know they
don’t know but know might be

to them a poem comes
& they are poet

EXCUSE ME!

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:02:00 -0400

excuse you! i heard him snip
after my failure to deliver
train-car-hip-check-box-out
gave away last open seat
and i left myself that moment
to watch me unleash
rabid explicatives blushing
even Carlin’s dead cheeks
and squeal how not one
fucking guy has yet
lifted lazy ass from subway
bench and offered my bulge-
bellied wife respite for
wearied human-making bones
as train cars herk and jerk
bride and baby like raggedy
mom and ann/andy (its
gender remains mystery until
midwife waves salts
under swooned noses)
while tons of recent gym time
and tiny elements of surprise
suggest i beat propriety
into men unregenerate and
hand out whoopings
aloof fathers should’ve
long ago for chivalry’s
sake yet instead sat
fattened keesters on couches
scotch and seven in left
cigar in other hand and watched
Archie verbalize Edith and laughed
through chauvi-misogynistic teeth
with little regard for the day
their kids would sit and stare
at mine still scrunched in utero
while great-with-child legs labor
to hold balance round curves
and i now back in body see
i’ve done no such things
maybe out of fear or
christian restraint or
gleams in lover’s eyes
begging me don’t

NOISE

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0400

it never ends now the
music in my head an
ostinato senza cesura
drowns out
me
and epiphany so my existence
persists in that twilight where
desires seek satiation and
i no longer know what wait
means as i am overrun
by access and wishes granted
and touch or tap or slide
a single finger to have
what for that moment i
think i lack though all
i need is stillness and
a silent mind or a nothing
between just one crossfade
between stop and play
when plastic sounds mean
a cassette thumbed to b-side
is all that is and it makes me
pause
and in those seconds
hear my own song which
betrays an unquenched longing
for limitation as gift
which gives me me again
when whims see not limits
cravings pursue satisfaction
by tireless shuffling for
perfect quaffs which have not
come and will not until
i awake to remember that
what is next is vaporous if
i pass over what is here
and cannot find peace in
hearing a tape deck click

THE HOMELESS MAN SPEAKS

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

i wish i would read the new yorker
on the subway and appear as smart and
savvy as she next to me from whom
i hide these words as i write

(tilting my notebook leftward
with an ever-increasing incline
forcing pen ink to defy
gravity to stick to the page)

as i write
about her and her reading habits and savviness
while a homeless man delivers his verse
in the land of the blind

In the land of the blind
no one sees the forest for the trees
so they’re all cut down in the name of safety

delivers his verse with all the panache
of a homeless man

In the land of the blind
a haystacked needle pricks before its found
and that fleshy pound might be two or three

of a homeless man singing
poems on a subway car

In the land of the blind
people still get on their knees to worship their celebrities
and broken eyes stare at tvs anyway

and i wonder if my verse

In the land of the blind
stars go ungazed; plays unplayed and
trails will forever be unblazed

if my verse will one day be read

In the land of the blind
crooked and straight seem the same and
every leader leads mankind in vain

be read by the smart and savvy

In the land of the blind
every cry for help is words and everyone
is unsure if the suffering they heard is true

or heard by another young stealth poet
as i beg

But in the land of sight
these things are plain and we all see who is lame
and hear me asking “brother, spare some change?”

PLEASE TOUCH

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

exiled from your brethren
and your maker by
those who hate your voice

i almost didn’t find you this time

banished there to rusted
desolation under dying tree
a single leaf falling
brings no life to your iron stillness

though you still call
come and sing with me
take hold of me and ring
for do not touch does not apply

a less naked shade might conceal
your song more to their liking

but winter is my friend

i move in that barrenness
toward slivers of cold sunlight
cutting cross your name

for chris 2004

i am chris now

my hands drag fraying rope
and the tolling sprints
over brittle grass acres
to fill their ears
with rebellion’s sound
a triumphal siren that
drowns protestant screams

WOULD IT BE BETTER

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

if i took a rational
only-fools-think-people-rise-from-the-dead
position

if there had been objective witnesses of the
disinterested-in-the-deadness-or-aliveness-of-the-party-in-question
variety

if paperwork had been filed by an authority of the
professionally-certified-to-confirm-death-and-or-life-remaining
type

like for Jarod who
hangs an official certificate
written by a paramedic
above his desk
a souvenir of his resurrection
from a three minute absence and a death cheated

to have been gone three days and
then at supper sunday evening
would mean he’d have killed death and
taken from it keys to (dare i)
eternal life

that is a hope far too great
for the rational
only-fools-think-people-rise-from-the-dead mind

POETS WANTED

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

are you

abandoned abused bitter
broken depressed desperate
gay lonely poor
self-loathing spiteful
tragic troubled

yearning for change
discontent dejected
rejected injected
insane (though only a little)

egotistical egomaniacal
pyromaniacal nymphomaniacal
or otherwise sex-obsessed

abhorred by
culture church family
or struggling to function
in society at large

if so

send in a lifetime’s expression
of inexpressibles and wording wordlessness
send in your soul carved
black blue red and
bringing life to sheets of dead tree

and languish on poet

(happy people and lumberjacks need not apply)

A(THANK YOU)CROSTIC

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Kitchen’s
Ambrosial
Refreshment
Ever
Needed

Bellies

Languish
Amid
Cookie
Yearnings

Silken white buriesA darkness we want hiddenCome snow, clean our world

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Silken white buries
A darkness we want hidden
Come snow, clean our world

Each fragile snowflakePlots to pile its beauty’s weight‘Til I surrender

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Each fragile snowflake
Plots to pile its beauty’s weight
‘Til I surrender

Acrid and saltyI remember mother’s wordsDon’t eat yellow snow

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Acrid and salty
I remember mother’s words
Don’t eat yellow snow

THE BIOGRAPHY OF KEVIN G

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400

there once was a gent from up north,
who to kansas for college went forth.
he got some degrees
in saxophonese,
and moved with his wife to new york.

DREAM FROM THE SILENT PLANET

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0400

that we sailed from
all known things to
bathe in hues beyond
the visible, is now to you
indomitable grayness

years can’t be trusted to
remember how long i waited
for repentance to bow your
steely denial, ever-hardened by
my molten acceptance

waking doesn’t end the cascade
fantastical re-sensations
crash upon themselves
with a vividness reserved for
God and the young

light honey-thick swims
down my cheek and
peace patience gentleness
(unwithering fruits on undying trees)
pray i taste and share

i now more real than myself
offer as you fade from view
no longer solid enough to hold them
and soon it will be true
that you were never here

PORTRAIT OF FRANK

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400

fixed on each step their
eyes unblinking dare not miss

the dry, cracked boardwalk
bows from the weight of a
man-made glory

in the moment so close to you
bikinis and boardshorts don’t
hinder their worship

as though before them now
walks the risen Christ
his brother and the three

SHE, THE NEW YORKER, A HOMELESS MAN, AND ME

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400

i wish i would read The New Yorker
in a subway car and appear as smart and
savvy as she next to me from whom
i hide these words as i write
(ever-so-greatly tipping my notebook
leftward making the ink in my pen defy
gravity to get onto the page)
about her and her reading habits and savviness
while a homeless man declaims his verse
in the land of the blind with all the panache of a
homeless man shouting poems on a
subway car and i wonder if my verse will
one day be read by the smart and
savvy or heard by another young stealth poet
as i beg

CENTRAL PARK

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400

the sheep meadow is not the place
especially on sunny days
to come to find a brief escape
and undisturbed meditate
in hopes that i might generate
a verse you would appreciate
but i can’t seem to concentrate
with all this hairy PDA

TOTAL DEPRAVITY

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400

sometimes on my way to
church or bible study i feel
guilty for turning up my ipod and
pretending i didn’t hear that
crippled old man ask for change

COFFEE SHOP

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400

microeconomics and the Chinese
airline industry go well with a
biscotti and a redeye on a
frigid monday afternoon
though i’m not sold on Haydn