Stood out on the porch

I’ve got this idea
Brewing
Tell me, what are you
doing for the next millennium?
Would you want to choose a better
life, the right life
for a liver
Would you embrace it
or would you quiver
and stay right where you're at
Join me on a journey
come Explore
Want more
Let’s get a car
wait, no
a bike
instead of leather
we’ll use eachother’s skin
to protect us from the wind
I’ll clutch my hand against
your hand
pressing
on the clutch
and I can be your kickstand

Would you do it?
uproot and choose it
Say yes to my request
follow through?
Look past what they expect
don’t become that old man
with regret

If we get out there
and you decide
that the timing
the rhyme is just not right
That the chorus and verse clash
and I drive much too fast
then you can go
Slow, or leave
me
But at least you ventured
Just to see

Steal This Poem

Steal this poem
Touch it twerk it
Negate, reverse it
Bit and piece it, abduct
Release it

Dissect or
Cure it, kiss it
Invade, infect
Try it, deny it
Skim, delve in
Purloin it praise
Destroy it blaze it
Add, subtract
Clarify, refract
Sip or gulp it
Toss it back

Rummage through it
Discard debris
Stare and see it
Poke some holes
Patch it up
Throw it catch it
Fasten or Unlatch
Quick it slow it
Come it, go it

Con it pro it
Yes it, no it
Adjust it, keep it
Hide, reveal it
Use it, own it
Kill, condone it
Remind, forget it
Love, regret it
Pretty it, destroy it
Learn it listen
A choice you’re given
To absorb and live it
Like it or fake it
You can have it
Go on-
Take it.

The Tiramisu Solution

Today hurt
I steamed up some soy milk
Cappuccino, frothy
closed my eyes to sip delicious
but upper crater of mouth rejects
tongue does not taste what it expects
a flow of lava smoldered inside
Sucked it up and swallowed
Because John is watching from across the counter

Later, sat on a sideways milk-crate
and painted the back of my jeans
with raspberry juice- mixed with cranberry,
I believe

Slammed my pointer finger
in the pastry car door: display case slider
Striped a cake unintentionally
with my two longest fingers
and shook the phalanges
as if it would shake away the pain
I paced the 32 tiles of my coffee station
searching for a solution
to my pounding fingernail
Found a tiny Tiramisu, unworthy
of display case frame
So I stick my finger
straight down into the soothing
mousse-y treat:
A new remedy

We're mostly made of hair

I like myself smooth, or unshaven relaxed
I like myself skinny, six-packed, even fat
Well fat for me, at least
I can’t say I’ve ever been obese
I like myself mascara-ed
I like myself pure
I like when my hair’s up
but also the tussled allure
I like when it’s straight
or curly or messed
but really I like it
when I’m with you the best.

Blizzard, Oh Six

She’s got snow dreads, bangs dangling like melted comb teeth
A disastrous combination: one with passivity and one without plans
A woman slips on the hidden decline from the sidewalk, with a shriek
Touches the street with her leather gloved hand
Her petticoat man wrapped in scarves and mittens kneels
Eye-level and looks to see
If she is okay.
She is okay. We are all “okay”.

Us two, we too are okay. We made it this far, Bleeker and 3rd
Lost in this swirling, snowy world- signs hide behind
thick white sheets of powder
We didn't check the other side
And thus, got lost on the Lower East side
What once was a square-grid of city streets was
now a full circle, circumferentially scanned by us

Upon arrival, long-hairs and hunched pocket boys
line the Mercury Lounge pane of glass
lionizing Dax Riggs and Tessie Brunet
a guy with a stolen grocery basket, rides
alongside the line
crying "Sold Out, too late, let's go"
Our shoulders hump, hands slip into our pockets in
complete depletion
Turn solemnly, newfound hollowness, cold
and search for Indian for Samosas

Across the street a microwave heated curry
with chicken bones and mango juice
soothes our chilly skin
The woman pounds out a fresh nan
too late to eat with our food
so we take it to go
to distract our heads from the wet snow

Hop a train, think of lines to take to not walk from Jay
The J, to Canal then transfer to Q, we'll wait
but underground away from slush
Steph touches her head against the tile wall
and seems to think it's warmer than the air
Her surrogate fireplace

Canal was up, not down and we're crossing a bridge
and crossing our thoughts and crossing our eyes
and lost
Bridge to Brooklyn, but wrong about both
Williamsburg bridge to Marcy Ave
Our souls are cold, our minds are numb
Whatever happened next was zombie but fun

A night that didn't end
because it never began
A trip to go see Deadboy & the Elephantmen

In Milan

Why when we try
We’re nothing we push
against the current

When you were
Yesterday, here
things were great
Because I wasn’t aware

While you were away
I would stay
close to heart because
I felt we’d win
Make it through

But while you were weaving
I curved, stirred
fell in love
with my life

Lettre Subliminale a Vous

This surge of warmth
quickly develops in my throat up
to the back of my eyes
and a response of passionate
attention suddenly
cramps my mind
into a little corner
where all my thoughts are
disagreeably focused
on a sweeping past, overwhelming
despondency which I felt
I had conquered and killed already
but I am poignantly reminded
that it’s still hear
and it’s real and I’m weak
and I want to scream out a lie
to make you feel bad
to make you feel as I do, to put you on my
level and lie that I don’t need you
lie that you have lost me
lie that I am gone and you missed you’re chance
with the best thing that would ever
happen to you.
But I can’t, just like
I can’t
have you.

Maria Gabriella

"Darling, how arrre you?" she
stresses the are like a haughty pirate,
slightly bowing her head and unbuckling
her knees ambiguously
Connection explodes between her
twinkling blinking chestnut eyes
and Fab's high eyes
We placate with awkward half smiles
Fab stares in resistance
refusing to put on her lab coat
and assist in strapping up Gab's
straight jacket.
"She has the touch of a mother"
but Fab caresses her arm, around, up
twisting toward her shoulder
Gabriella's eyes flutter into spasm
and her entire body twitches back
into her seat- defeated
I nibble my litchi from
my vodka vermouth martini
"We'll take another asparagus"
I tell the Garden State waiter
Brazil is flailing, wincing at
her scotch sip
She's old money
She's 54
She is painted on the face, splashed brain
and withering inside.
"Do you know who I yam??"
I just keep hearing Yam, as I
wait for my sweet potatoe blackened
catfish and
stare into her wet eyes, trying to get
her mask to crack
Nothing.
She just curses me out more
"Well, fuck you then- fuhhh Q!
How old zar you?
Do you know who I yam?"
Mmm yams...

Roark

under dim pink lighting
one can spelunk the caverns
of his mouth
caricature feature - his back
throat punching bag
vibrating, rocking
and rolling to the tones
of his own
He's a black Banana Republic sweater
blue-eyed package with
dirty jeans and
surreptitious seduction
He's ten saffron words working
down the page
Thirty-seven on a good day
witty, knows his humor
Caterpillars through but
always ends in aviation

Subway Scrawl

"How late the daylight edges
toward the northern night
as though journeying
in a blue bat, gilded in mussel shell
with, slung from a mast, a lantern
like our old idea of the soul"

KJ62

Caroline

Caroline
I’ve seen her lift that ton
bucket of sugar that I can
barely slide

I’ve tried to unlatch the
cappuccino cap after
she brewed a double shot
always caught so tight, I
try and fight
left, loose
but still- it’s stuck

I’ve noticed her teeth,
their grinding features,
snarl when she smiles

The style of her
thong, so wrong to be showing
Pulled so tight up her back, must
be why she’s uptight and
cracks when the crumbs collect
on the fridge’s ledge- she
needs to relax

I’m scared to scoot by her
belly or butt
with only tiles
length space

When she’s cutting
lemons or cake
the knife mocks,
stares at me
as it rocks back and forth
across the cutting board-
teetering in her hand, far away
from my face
but the mirage
makes the movement
fast

I cast a glance
toward her
eyes, catch a devising grin
on the lower rim
of her brown
pupils
She is stupid but
skilled at scaring
the wits out of
me.
I hope she doesn’t cut me.

Coffee Sleeve

Caution! Brown warning
A stop before you sip sign
hugging the mug
for customer convenience

Milkcrate

standing on a milkcrate
staring at the boxed cake
baskets hang the ceilings
sporadic misdealings
angry old man fights
Semolina Twist- not sliced!
"Last one, sir"
Grunt, scoffs "Failure"
Gone, back Nora's on
singin' me my soothing song
"sunrise, sunrise looks like
morning in your eyes."
I'm back atop my milkcrate

Plasma Orgasm

Is nothing natural anymore-
what can we look forward to?
The foragers woke up to beams
of fresh sunrise
We, to fake rooster calls
and trucks backing up
They retrieved their
berries, captured their
protein
We dial out for delivery
They fell asleep to timber howls
green leaf-bed
We never fall asleep
We fake or force it

Ornamental Serviette

Today I surreptitiously
pecked the sunflower seeds
off a lonely loaf
I peeled apart doilies
for the entire shift
Except the last seven hours

Separating doilies reminds
me of you
A person I am constantly
writing subconscious poems to
To tell you of my days
the time spent
or wasted away
from you
and your films
and your musicality
and your touch
that I mentally caress so much

Yet back to the bread
the customers’ call
and leave me back here without you
with withdrawal

juncture

Sitting on a crowded Q
in a stolen subway chair
(acquired by beating the frumpy man
to the chinese woman's
vacant seat)
on the east, furthest from
the city -
the horde of heads
all turn in reverie toward
the 5 o'clock skyline
creating their own curved
and crooked line of sky
with their tall squat short
thin figures blocking
the sunset backdrop.

I bob my head
to catch a glimpse but the people
structures barely blink long enough
to wince or shrink for me to see
they're packed too densely, immensley
blocking my view
A man moves left
just enough to leave me
a keyhole peek -
the tail end of the
Brooklyn Bridge slithers
into sight with the Watchtower
sitting still behind it.

I hunch my shoulders in
despondance and scribble down
this internal correspondence.

C.O.

Some confessions are meant to be kept
slipped snuggly in the back pocket
scribbled on Ivex pastry paper.

The thought could not escape you,
but the words to capture, could.
The mood might nearly rape you
from all you’ve understood.
He’s not acquainted with your secret,
you’d tell him but the truth:
you cannot disclose this emotion
in an explicitly expressive fashion.
It’s un-revealable
because it’s inconceivable
to the common mind.

You continue to keep the secret
because you want to conceal the conundrum
that his mind might also be frequent.