welcome home

Sobbing shadows
Casted by moonlight
City lights blur together
A neon wet spot
I will be fine
If I can just make it home
Before the tears
Pool down around my ankles

A little dizzy
Faces kaleidoscope past
Leaves argue with a breeze
Hands in my pocket
Flashes of color
Dance behind my eyes
A bladder leaking
Down my face
But I’m almost home

Ring the buzzer
Enter the fluorescent hallway
Green with sickness
A neighbor’s argument
Seeps under the door
But I am home
To float peacefully
Salt water stains
On just washed linens

Drift off, drift off
Fall asleep,
Rush to slumber
sobbing shadows
Pirouette on the walls
Eyes closed –heart shutting down
Stymied beats,
skipping rope with death

Untitled.

Winter welcomes
Chapped skin
& cold fronts

Summer melons
Decay into pumpkins
Rotten toothed jack-o-lanterns

Until Thanksgiving
Reminds us
There is a poinsettia
Waiting to wilt
Just around the corner

Untitled.

I better fall in love this winter
Like I tried to last spring
With another poet,
Who might understand
The days I can’t climb out of bed
Afraid of the teeth lining the doorways.
Or the phone calls that are always trouble.
Or maybe it’s the fangs, hiding on the toilet seat
Causing venom to run down my legs.

& I promise I was learning
To love all of him last spring-
The late night noises
Of stirring in his sleep
And moving closer toward me
Patting the blankets to make sure
I am still there
Rubbing my back,
Because it needed to be done.
Yes, I knew he watched me sleep.
I will be there in winter
But will he?
Nestled closer to me
Than the butcher knife I hide
In between the mattress & box spring
Which is only for ‘just in case’
& maybe to protect my heart
from the shadows crawling up my blankets.
Who will lie beside me,
To curb the drinking,
Discourage the thinking
That I deserve to be alone?

&if I don’t fall in love this winter,
& bare no bloom this spring
I will fade just like his love of me
& it won’t matter by summer
If my branches are still bare

minor details

I can’t explain you.
& if asked to recap your details
You might find my description lacking
key elements of your make up.
But my heart, would know clearly
What I mean.
& though I fidget when you sit down
Next to me, I could just as easily
Loosen your fly
With my teeth
So you might feel the way a man should
When in the presence of unyielding
Devotion- selfless care,
Like parent to child;
Seeking no gain other than your
Well being
&maybe you have noticed
Some of these
POEMS
Must be about
YOU
&yeah I would confess
If you ever asked what it is
That gets my pen moving…
& you said next time
You will try falling in love
With a friend
First.
&being who I am
I couldn’t just sit there,
Next to you &nod my head
&I couldn’t leave
because we were at my place
So I picked up around the house
To break the tension of a moment
Only I could feel.
& I couldn’t tell you about your effect
On poets like me just using subtext
Since I see you as an embodiment
Of beauty in motion…
Wait- this sounds contrived
I should let it flow; don’t try so hard
Don’t try:
To love,
To be happy
Just be
here, next to you .
&I can dig it, that you can’t
Love me the way my
father loves my
mother but I must admit
I understand my
Father’s motivations
Better now, since I met you.

Haiku for D.A. Levy ( Wish I could have known you)

Ashes, just ashes
Remain I am hallowed out
Husk dry by winter

27 years,
And I am ready to leave
But where will I go?

I cant fight the tears
That do not come, no relief
If I die, what next?

I wrench and ache and
Most times getting through the day
Is my only goal

Or finding the strength
To not cut myself this time
When the razor sings

Or when wine flirts
With me: “have another drink”
“Sip a little peace”

And I can resist
Most days; the songs dead
Children sing to me.

Their ashen voices
Calling me to them softly
I want to listen

To the popping of
Burning coal and breaking leaves
It is my heartbeat

But first, rent is due
And the back taxes to pay
Which I never paid

Because I didn’t
Think I would have lived this long
Again, I was wrong

Another topic
To write about. No eyes though
To read about it

& I wonder if
When all is said and done
Will my art live on

& I wonder if
When all is said and done
Will I be at peace

Or will I become
Just another song for the
Dead children to sing

Song for the lonely to sing

Come and make a man of me tonight
(Come and make a man of me tonight)
Come and make a man of me tonight

From the top of you
To the tip of me
want to wrap our minds-
feel us think
bout the thoughts I hide,
The lies I speak
To the smiles we share
Nervous clamor in my feet
It’s not as simple as a kiss
Or could it be?
Shit I’m so confused-
Baby wont you stay here with me?

But its time for you to go;
My world dulls to gray
Floating tears on my horizon
I leave it for a rainy day
Lying in the park,
I watch the children run by
Lazy birds cradled by the wind
I’d cradle you deep inside…
Times move forward;
& I’m stuck behind
Bruises from my battles
But the scars I can hide
Your cousin said you’re in town…
I let out a sigh
Baby wont you just stay with me tonight?


Missing you –
Wanting to build a life.
Tried for a new love-
But it don’t seem right
Need you here
Come and be by my side
You are my joy
Don’t you realize?
But it’s harder now
Right and wrong aint so clear
We go round & round
This passion won’t disappear
Are you down &Out,
Why won’t you come near?
Im in the background
It’s all as I feared.
So why why why
Baby cant we make love tonight?

Come and make a man of me tonight
Come and make a man of me tonight
Come and make a man of me tonight

Summer ends
And were back again
Saying things
That mean more than friends
Looks like we’ll break
I’ve learned to bend
But that don’t mean
My heart can mend
I feel the ache
Im sufferin’
You’re my air
Im smotherin’
I ask if you love me
You say
It depends
&Maybe you’re right
Come and make a man of me tonight.
Come and make a man of me tonight…

Haiku about Opportunity

I wanted to know
If it could amount to much
But I lack the will

I’m not very good
At very many things but
I got this poem

So I live stanza
by stanza, Just another day
Words to keep me sane

Since nothing changes
Nothing is holding me back
But me, stanza by stanza

And did I mention
Even Obama did coke
Though I prefer weed

But am willing to
Give it another try since
He is Precedence

He is president-
Enough about politics
This is about me

Me and that same loop;
Wake up; fear; work; poems; sleep
Don’t forget to eat

And somewhere in there
Let’s see if we can find love
Clenched in lonely fists

Clenched tight to the chest
Like the heat of a fine wine
Which I can’t afford

Since all I got are
These empathically received dreams
Of friends dead and limp

It creates in me
Another stanza, priceless
Another heartache

It must be Wednesday
It’s hard to tell anymore
The calendar lies

It only reflects
Numbers. I am a poet;
I am better with words

But am not better
With very much else, unless
You count the drinking

Because it adds up
A coping mechanism
Much like this poem

Which may never be
read aloud, or read at all
skimmed through at best

but it won’t matter;
Wake up; fear; work; poems; sleep
Don’t forget to breathe

All my days, alone
Living stanza by stanza
Words to keep me sane

Haiku about closure

It was easier
Than I think it should have been
Handing you your things

Our History
Summed up in a yellow bag
T-shirts, shoes and books.

Those things held on to
Nothing is ever ours
Fashions change yearly

Books lay silently
Pages filled with pressed flowers
From first dates, kisses

But where is the man
Who knew better than to love
That which is fleeting?

An observation;
Everything comes apart
Again and again

Its constant repair
Pushing the boulder up hill;
God can move mountains

But we are only ants
Trying to do the right thing
One stone at a time

And I don’t blame you;
collecting your artifacts
and closing the door

and though its subjective
I can read you like a book
From first dates, kisses

And there in your head
Is the quality I miss
A beautiful mind

Bittersweet at best
Simpler than it should have been
Forgive and repair

Jackson to Chavez, it dont make a difference

“I am the Jackson square poet.”

Jackson square:
A shopping center in the Deep South somewhere
A Piggly-Wiggly; I-Hop;
Big Ray Rays’ BBQ (closed until further notice);
Johnson Bail Bonds; vacant store fronts.
Greasy burger wrappers; makeshift toilet paper
An adjacent alley the homeless shit in.

“Ah man, gimme some change &I will enlighten you.”

He says from his wheelchair
He says from his home-
Smoothing out the folds of fabric
Where his legs used to be
Smoothing out the fabric,
he is caught in memory.

“I am a buffalo soldier-by way of Louisiana,
Where the brass bands have rusted to scrap metal;
Where the tide is high and patience is low…
My shack turned into a fish tank.
So gimme a dollar- I can find a place to go.”

“I am the Jackson square poet
A pawn of important wars;
I was dropped from a metal stork
Onto the beaches of Vietnam
among faces slack with death …
The skies were subtle bruises;
Swollen, purple, bloated
like my legs after the Gangrene
introduced itself-I mean terror
A terror revisted
when the storm dropped me
Onto the broken beaches of N’Orleans…”

“Tell you what brotha; I’ll recite a little piece;
Do you want it gritty or smooth?
Do you want it gritty or smoooooth?”

I see him occasionally
Down on J street- or near the Capitol
In an old hospital wheelchair
A gift from the V.A
Using its I.V harness
To hang his leather hat;
This is his mantle, the hearth of his day.

“I’m the Jackson square poet”

Sitting in Cesar Chavez Park
1900 miles away from former beaches
where the water made mud of dreams
&I give him some change
To honor his title;
The Jackson square poet,
smoothing the folds of fabric,
that later will be his blankets

Waiting for the next storm
to carry him away.