If Someone Must Die after Claude McKay If someone must die, let it not be like cowards, Consigned to our houses watching late night TV And the news all day, while the rains ease forward Through the golden gates, wrapped with stupidity. If someone must die, let it be the elderly, the poor, The faded … Continue reading a poem in the style of Claude McKay
Category: poetry
Congress Reaches $2 Trillion Deal Congress reached a deal! I’ve been reading the news compulsively and this morning I woke up and did the same while drinking my coffee and smoking my cigarettes coughing and hoping it isn’t the literal plague how strange all of this is how devastating as the sun hides behind clouds … Continue reading Two Poems in the style of Frank O’Hara
Suppose disintegrating into the soil is the best next place to be, surrounded by dirt and its worms chomping through. It's more there to me than it is to a student of suits. Yet in an encompassed environment, stemming wood from its fruit, we go laughing and brimming all cute. Still disguise yourself, child. The … Continue reading I Am a Patchwork Quilt
1. Interestingly, as the year begins to turn over, and winter is beginning its five-month grip on the weather, I am in no more trouble than I could be. My mood is beginning to waiver, yes-- I have to better watch my temperament. My shoulders ache, hunched against the wind cold and biting. My hands … Continue reading Balderdash
It is tempting to be partial to a wicked nation, elated as a worshiper of tilted things. I cover up the margins with a splendid partner who aches for glinted wings. Forever tossing between lightness and weight, plunged through painted waterfalls, my armor slips off my body and I am prodded. I am stuck. So, … Continue reading It Is Tempting
It's in the space between the notes that you go caulking up. I fear it is the only thing you truly know to do. You fill in every nook and cranny. The air is trapped inside. Be careful as you do your thing. The whole thing could implode. And yet, there is a fire in … Continue reading Caulk
When it rains, I can hear children cry when can we go outside and play? When it rains, I see the shipyard's masts gone from their aching sails. When it rains, there are mudslides, but not where I'm from. Where I'm from, the fields go thick with ponds, spreading. When it rains, the bales of … Continue reading Summer In the City, Now
So this is a marriage! Lightness and darkness intertwined with caustic wit, erasing all that dangles by a golden thread. So easy what is thine to duck into a world of mimes never singing at all or even nodding along in time. So this is October! Leaves slipped from once-green canopies drifting down from their … Continue reading Autumnal
It is irritating to recall my hometown. Like a cause and effect puzzle-- Where were you when, and then What happened? Rural Ohio isn't much to discuss. It is open fields of soy and sod, It is gamesmanship with guns. It is a small child, Who looks younger than his age, Learning to shave at … Continue reading Rural
When you turn to me, I sense a draft upon the acres. I see a fragrant mirror across the lake. When you turn to me, there is a structure. I can't begin to glance its shape. When you turn to me, my eyes go drifting, Sifting through the rakes. And when you turn to me, … Continue reading When You Turn To Me
When it rains, I can hear children cry out Wondering when they can go outside and play. When it rains, I see the shipyard's masts Gone from their aching sails. When it rains, there are mudslides, But not where I'm from. Where I'm from, the fields go thick with ponds, spreading. When it rains, the … Continue reading When It Rains
It makes me sad to look up at the crest of a building and see washed out names. Like the tug of the past is only too faint to make out. Squint if you can at that worn lettering, and imagine a past with glamour and bombast. Was it a ballroom? A jazz club? A … Continue reading First Lines II
For the sake of my Father, certain things must be done in a certain way. Certainly not carefully. He was never as careful as he could be. I make it a point these days to be so. But I can only be careful for so long. In intermittent droves, my canceled plans go drifting, and … Continue reading First Lines
Oh, with fantastic shivers, run Beside a candle dripping upon The table 'neath the shelf above A chair you sit, too dear It's backward, yet sincere And for the forgotten, it's been said There's nothing more to distinguish in it A portion of reconciled air Of putrid soil and debonair Stares You whittle off a … Continue reading To Havens Racked
Tripped up, forgotten, begotten all plumes for a way into a sinister land of lagoons, to be placed in preparedness, caustic and choosing no hope for a handgun--peace is our rule. And laughter is switched by a birth of insanity playing about a version of Sean Hannity. Plucked and bruised is my thoughtfulness, plain. You … Continue reading A Trick of the Mind
