I would like you to know

a thing I would like you to know
is that I put the cream and sugar
in my mug
before I pour in the coffee
when I am at work -
it's so much more efficient.

you wouldn't know this about me
and never will because
I won't bother telling you
amidst all the other things
you won't know about where you
came from.

Reading

Pat O'Brien's is closed
and it's late
even in the Big Easy -
the one we all knew once,
or imagined.

We're down by Jackson Square,
finally away from the beads
and beer stands -
the kids with coffee can lids
nailed to their sneakers
shuffling a few
tap-ti-taps,
shucking each other,
then at it again,
too young to have talent.

We all want to be the Fool
stepping out lightly from the cards,
she says,
leaving behind the Devil
and the Hierophant.
And the Eight of Wands too,
she adds, after a while.

The other tarot readers
folded their decks
and chairs hours ago.
The guy with the mythically
golden boa wrapped around his neck
and his girlfriend with the pointy pink hair -
are nowhere to be seen.

She smokes a clove cigarette
and resting one loose arm
on the wrought iron fence.
I sit on the curb, spent.
Neither one of us is sure
why we're still here
as the street sweeper whirs
and clatters by,
yellow lights flashing
"caution".

**

Published in The Maynard

Audio:

YouTube: 

Tonight, again

I keep the rum
in the back of the cabinet
because it tastes like pain.

The beer tastes like poker
or dominoes;
the wine like the children
have gone to bed early,
and the dishes are done.

The rum pours into any glass
when I shove aside the amaretto
(which tastes like romance)
and the sambucca
(which tastes like history),
clinking the bottles
to draw the rum
from where it has been banished
since last time.

paper boat

come aboard my paper boat
because today I am a captain,
and tomorrow we may be swimming again.

let's not talk of expectations,
let's not talk of dreams.

instead feel the breeze off the water
and the sunshine on your hair.

are we riding up the well
of broken history?
or the river of despair?
perhaps it is the ocean of loneliness.

it doesn't matter right now -
because right now
the swells are beneath our feet,
and at this very moment we are dry.

Those Small Bones

seventeen years old -
dancing barefoot on the concrete
in spite of all those small bones.

your hand in mine -
all those small bones.

**

Published in The Maynard

Audio: https://anchor.fm/honest-chaos/episodes/those-small-bones-ev9vg8 

YouTube: https://youtu.be/HAdTepRuMik

This Isn't Another Poem about Writing Poetry

If it were another poem about writing poetry,
and I'd slipped it onto your dining room table,
right about now you would be realizing
how you had been tricked.
Right at this moment
you would find yourself dashing through the kitchen
and out the side door, comprehending that the screaming
you are hearing was coming from your own throat.
Seeing a windfallen stick next to your carport,
you would snatch it up, snap it over your knee
and jam the jagged point directly into your right eye.

With the stick still lodged in your skull,
you would return to your breakfast, now able to finish
in peace. Shaving would be a little complicated,
but luckily you had already pulled your T-shirt
over your previously stickless eye.

Waiting at the train station, people would give you
an occasional glance. You would nod, the stick
exagerating your motion, and keep reading the free
newspaper with your one good eye.

Some dude might sally over and say knowingly,
"Catch a little Dr. Phil this morning?"
You'd say, "No, someone slipped me
a poem about writing poetry."
"Dude" the dude would respond,
"You can't trust anyone these days.
Someone slipped my brother-in-law one of those -
he ran right through the sliding glass door,
jumped off the deck into the hydrangeas
and hasn't been seen since."
He would clap his hands together as if landing
in hydrangeas would have made a smacking sound.
Or perhaps it was to emphasize the speed
with which his lost brother-in-law
had made his escape.
You would be indifferent to this physical metaphor,
but grateful to have survived your own scrape.

"Sorry for your loss," you'd feel compelled to say
as the cars rattled to a stop.

You'd find yourself turning to the right a bit more
as you entered to scan for wayward pieces of paper
with courier font in choppy lines
before you sat down again.

Magic (published in Moon Drenched Fables)

Those who lack magic in their soul,
who instead have clocks for hearts
and gyroscopes behind their eyes
who never misplace time
or lose their balanced walk

use words like "depression",
"bipolar", or "schizoaffective disorder"
and "disorganized speach and thinking"
resulting in
"significant social or occupational dysfunction"
to describe those who live their lives
at the tails of the consensual,
far from the mean,
or the small.

It is exhausting to have liquid light
flowing through your veins,
you can try to explain.
But the fact is lost
as the clocks tick and the gyros spin,
pens scratching down notes
classifying this as a metaphor
or worse.

Sometimes it is just easier
to go along and pretend
that it is not possible
to speak in colors
or to lift up the rug of reality
and peer deep into truth.