Three miles down country road 402
smiled Satan
His face was painted four meters tall
on the front side of a white water tower
hovering over the largest building in town,
the firehouse
as we left a sign drifted into the rearview mirror
welcome to Fyffe, Alabama
Home of the Red Devils
Where the volunteers shoulder the burdens
of Hell’s Firefighters
I rode to the end of the last ocean
it does not satisfy me
The wind nudges me backward
to the top of Cherry Hill
Where my Huffy with a broken kickstand
lays beside my skyward stare
Two hundred feet above Oak Street
hunger rises in the dark
I reach my destination and knock
on a black door of space
and ask the stars to grab their bikes
Instead I enter, it is too
late for them to come outside
I am a corkscrew at dinner, writhing
to open a fine merlot
I spill it
Red life runs across whitenoise tablecloths
staining the chaos
I sit in a coriolis chair
legs hang derelict above the floor
My expanding iris inhales
the faded magenta that still spirals
through gouges in the balsa wood
dripping off leaves, added
to the table, when guests join the feast
in that dysfunctional house
Filled with dusty probability
from which the comets still yield calculations
and the brown earth trembles
like winter children before the weather forecast
I liked the whole poem, but the line above made me smile.
That poem holds a special place for me because I don't think I've ever tried to write when I was that drunk any other time. But different perspectives lead you down different roads -
In the middle of an Alabama forest
we needed firewood,
so we bought an axe,
and chopped the fallen oak
until the blisters on our hands bled.
But we are no boyscouts,
we used a starter log to begin the burning.
As the sky darkened,
the forest closed in
on our small campsite,
the fire grew as it ate.
We rose from our chairs only
to poke the loose wood,
sculpting the flame.
Wicked faces appear in the center
of the fire’s stone enclosure.
Not the faces of torture,
or the eyes of pain,
but the open mouth of hunger.
For four hours we stared
into our creation,
unwilling to let it die
but knowing how little it cared
who had made it.
When the profits of our axework
were spent, we played tic-tac-toe
in the black and orange embers.
On country route 402 I saw the frame of an old house,
black and scarred.
Five brick pillars survived,
standing with dark plaster at their peaks,
fingers through which the burning roof
had fallen like loose sand.
That poem holds a special place for me because I don't think I've ever tried to write when I was that drunk any other time. But different perspectives lead you down different roads -
his suit was an irreplaceable appendage;
his personal foliage of dusk,
it absorbed the morning glare on the walk to work,
and refused the illumination of street lights on the way home.
In between was reserved, the sign on his breast said,
do not disturb.
His personal religion was the quietude of numbers,
he has almost no memory of names and faces,
only voices attached to phone numbers.
His mind has no room for solstices
the year is broken into a chain of opening days,
he has an empty seat reserved in every tri-state stadium
he gives away season tickets all year, just in case
they make the playoffs.
These are the trap-doors from tedium,
he has no time for hatred,
existence and sanity require no more
than his minds empty space of ambivalence.
He loved a woman once;
and he was very honest with her,
she was a close friend for 3 years,
and a voiceless stranger for 17,
but their marriage was comfortable for 20.
His children were just graduating from college
they have never even asked him his middle name.
Stanley
They found it through wet, blurry vision,
etched into a granite slab,
above an empty coffin,
above an empty grave,
two months after a 747 crashed into his corner office.
as dusk enfolds the trail.
She climbs until starlight melds
with the canopy, and severs
flashlight spectrums into silver coils
that bathe bare oak limbs.
Her foggy breath became memories
of skinny suburban kids
camping in backyard sing a’ longs
chanting guns and roses to an audience
behind sliding glass doors,
where smiling parents swell with lemonade
waiting for children’s dreams to reach murky fruition
in college dorm rooms, energized with hormones,
slaves to unknown thoughts that cling
like beer stains to white shirts.
Before professional entropy grips
that cubicle of the mind,
she sings in the shower to sold out crowds.
Imagined audiences scream her name
in voices that rise and fall to the stage,
rolling like quiet waves at a vacation getaway,
dancing in the air, like
the five pointed oak leaves that glide,
playfully to the grass,
outside her window.
I really like this one ETF. It is very good! I really like the variety of what you write. That you cover so many topics. Thanks for the good poetry!
Our love must not be just words, but True Love, which shows itself in action,
No one needs a smile more than someone who fails to give one,
After you die...you know how to LIVE!
Very moving piece, ETE!!!! Wow! You really made me feel for Stanley and the fact that he just coasted through his days, in drone mode and then, all of a sudden, one tragic moment and he's just snuffed out! Well, kinda leaves me feeling like my life should be lived to the fullest every day I'm blessed to be gracing this planet. Very sad stroy and just fantastic, IMO. I'm glad you want to publish your work, ETE, it really is great!
Forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. - Leonard Cohen
ETF - Stanley is just so touching. I agree with BE on this one. I just love how your poems give a glimpse and sum up someone's life. Good writing.
Our love must not be just words, but True Love, which shows itself in action,
No one needs a smile more than someone who fails to give one,
After you die...you know how to LIVE!
In Tuxedo a broken furnace smolders,
like a pile of ash molded into the shape of a tree.
Wood braces straddling the façade
have started their slow decay.
Its surface is pockmarked by missing stones,
chiseled away by age and indifference
A cross of steel poles block the sagging entrance,
a forgotten offering to the gods of manufacture.
Stones tumble to the earth in front of me,
and I hear the echoes of boots, of processions like
corduroyed funerals, praying with those
blasted workman’s hands.
black footpaths wind around the base,
raked with shards of coal.
I imagine the people who worked here
piling loads into the mouth of a monster;
as some find themselves shoved
into the dark rectangles of the earth’s hunger
to help compensate for those displaced chunks
of black rock.
Vast tarps cover the roof, a shroud
the sparrows kneel on to pray,
to chant their hymns to the forest
that overfed a demon until it died.
If this furnace were a history book
it would bleed, the dark words of
leaking from chapter to chapter.
I roll out of bed when remnants
of dreams pull like an aching
lover back to the sheets.
There I remain speeding
down moonlit highways
on motorcycles I’ve never learned
to ride.
I pass cars with vanity plates that
will never exist, filled with tired
motorists going to dream vacations
that will never end, but never began.
As I put my feet on the ground
and tear away tapeworms
of nerve impulses,
I do not feel a violent
disruption of worlds colliding.
One world fades slowly,
like a depressed swathe of Earth
rising to meet the mountains,
after the weight of a glacier recedes.
As the spray of a shower
splashes my face, I begin to lather
my body, my eyes remain closed
and the world of sinks and toilets
disappears for another fifteen minutes.
My body finds itself among the
tropical fish, blindingly colorful.
When I peak my head out of the water
and swim onto shore to towel
off, I find myself dressed in winter
clothes on the sandbar, and from that
beach always drive impossibly
back to class, on a cold day
in upstate New York.
I roll out of bed when remnants
of dreams pull like an aching
lover back to the sheets.
There I remain speeding
down moonlit highways
on motorcycles I’ve never learned
to ride.
I pass cars with vanity plates that
will never exist, filled with tired
motorists going to dream vacations
that will never end, but never began.
As I put my feet on the ground
and tear away tapeworms
of nerve impulses,
I do not feel a violent
disruption of worlds colliding.
One world fades slowly,
like a depressed swathe of Earth
rising to meet the mountains,
after the weight of a glacier recedes.
As the spray of a shower
splashes my face, I begin to lather
my body, my eyes remain closed
and the world of sinks and toilets
disappears for another fifteen minutes.
My body finds itself among the
tropical fish, blindingly colorful.
When I peak my head out of the water
and swim onto shore to towel
off, I find myself dressed in winter
clothes on the sandbar, and from that
beach always drive impossibly
back to class, on a cold day
in upstate New York.
Very nice ETF...I just love your poems!
Our love must not be just words, but True Love, which shows itself in action,
No one needs a smile more than someone who fails to give one,
After you die...you know how to LIVE!
Well thankyou - there's one line in here I particularly like, it's based off of a geological principal called isostatic rebound - essentially the Earth bounces back up after it's pressed down by a glacier
my destiny sits between
two slices of bread in
a half eaten bologna sandwich
sobering up behind coffee beans
in a shower of hot mustard
piled in front are my
mashed potato poems
in a tupperware square
but they were too milky
and were forgotten
pinned under my sister’s
crying bowl of peas, garnished
with a second place medal
in the 400 meter relay
fantasies of epic verse
crescendo in a squarish
piece of aluminum foil
from a two week old
second helping of tri-tip
steak, which was overcooked
left in the oven an hour too
long because the recipe was lost
in a romantic cookbook
a broken finger which
stole my baseball career
was piled under stuffing
preventing my curveball from
slipping out of the strike
zone, and the bastard
took it over the left field wall
my father’s retirement fund
wades through cranberry sauce
sinking in coagulated slush,
like the shores of new jersey
so far from his beloved
Caribbean beaches
a spot shines on a grandfather
of a turkey leg, slowly dissolving
the meat into a hard inoperable
growth, not fit for the dog
we threw it in the incinerator
where the ashes scattered over
mounds of garbage
When we were finished she rolled over
and fell immediately asleep. My maroon
cotton sheets separating her naked body
from my sweat covered eyes, which
formed tears, like those forced from peeled
onions. Was it that bad?
“No,” she said, “It’s just like vacuuming.”
It’s not the size that counts I thought, it’s
how you vacuum. From that night on
all I can think about during sex is my
penis rolling around the carpet, picking
up dirt, but my room’s still always a mess.
Were my kisses just dustbusters? My backrubs
a lint brush?
When we grinded to Sean Paul, or Cisco all
I could think about was a night of passion with
me, her, and my 8 pound Orec. It fits under the bed
when you’re done, no bags, no mess.
So now I’ve moved on, onto tiled bathrooms and a
hardwood foyer and living room.
I figure when I get old enough, all I’ll be doing
is mopping anyway.
The white drains out of your eyes
and hazel fills the void.
Pupils flare like a drifting lunar
capsule a hundred thousand miles from your smile,
crest white, oxidized teeth glow in
harmony, arm & hammer gums resolute
against the backdrop of plaque armies, roaming
across the wasteland of pancakes and bacon
on your tongue.
Which lashes your upper lip, tastes remnants
of Mrs. Butterworth and greedily slops it up.
Your lower lip covers the top and the top covers the
bottom, facial tectonics drive the continents
of your cheeks, momentary valleys of dimples
emerge and disappear.
Cool crumbs attach to moisture and fall like
boulders into an earthquake.
A glass of milk vanishes, it bumps
your adam’s apple out an inch
on the way down to your dark stomach.
The smell hangs in the air, from the empty
plate on the table and the taste in your mouth
into the cobwebs of your nostrils. How your face contorts,
those hazel ships shut their airlocks,
while lips twist into a smirk
Lines gather around your nose and the corner of your eyes,
and the room fills with the sound of your inhaling,
drawing in the lingering scent
of the best god damned breakfast you’ve ever had.
And how your face changes when you sit up,
to the sound of chains rattling.
How your eyes fall to the floor, when the key turns the bolt.
How your lower jaw hangs like a derelict ship after a squall,
when the priest begins reading the litany.
How the stubble on your face, hidden in the ecstasy of breakfast, is now clear,
like the growing shadow behind as you stood up, blocking the room’s single light.
How the echo of your footsteps down that long corridor, are the only thing I’ve ever
seen bring tears meandering like drunk drivers down your cheeks.
How the proudest man I’d imagined myself to be walks back bent, defeated so utterly, and right after breakfast.
Stale pictures fill are these the best words?
the pavement
between glimpses of the road, stolen
from the storm by windshield wipers
at high speed. And I drive through it. redundant
I drive through the rain picking this verb should mirror previous action
through memories
scattered like high beams in the evening fog.
She twirls through those memories, By including “She” in this paragraph it distances the reader. If “She” is written in the next paragraph to start “She” would have more importance. Depends on how you want “She” perceived.
a parade of cameos in a silent movie, black and white should these three words be after silent?
,
grainy as the songs that flicker at the edge
of the broadcast signal’s strength. Classic rock,
classical symphony, and a talking head playing
the rusty strings of Bible verse, all fight for clarity. and She, too?
And in that static XXX song plays, I couldn’t figure out this line for a while. Did you want pauses?
booming down the rails on a genetic word seems forced train
straight from childhood wonder good
through the still quiet redundant/need opposite of wonder or near opposite?
of fatherhood.
She sits with our child wrapped
in the ambiguous white linens,
smiling a full-toothed smileadds an animal-esque element, even though I know it is meant to mean joy.
,
a cobblestone path to my our?
little girl,
who hoola-hoops around guard rails
and hop-scotches over the double yellow,
and do you need this word?
I follow her.
I follow her Reebok puddle jumps until good
footfalls fade into dry pavement.
My windshield wipers hum, need the comma?
against the blonde strands of dawn
kneading shadowy rainbows into the clouds,
as and?
she fades into the distant mountains. first time we read of mountains.
The Drive
Old photographs fill the pavement
between glimpses of the road, stolen
from the storm by windshield wipers
at high speed. And I drive
through the rain picking through memories
scattered like high beams in the evening fog.
She twirls through those memories,
a parade of cameos in a silent movie, black and white,
grainy as the songs that flicker at the edge
of the broadcast signal’s strength. Classic rock,
classical symphony, and a talking head playing
the rusty strings of Bible verse, all fight for clarity.
And in that static one song plays,
bursting through the mind’s photo album
straight from childhood wonder
into the still quiet of fatherhood.
Where my wife wraps her
in the ambiguous white linens,
smiling a full-toothed smile,
a cobblestone path to my little girl,
who hoola-hoops around guard rails
and hop-scotches over the double yellow.
and I follow her
Reebok puddle jumps until
footfalls fade into dry pavement.
My windshield wipers hum
against the blonde strands of dawn,
kneading shadowy rainbows into the clouds,
as she fades into the distant mountains.
Old photographs fill the pavement
between glimpses of the road, stolen
from the storm by windshield wipers
at high speed. And I drive
through the rain picking through memories
scattered like high beams in the evening fog.
She twirls through those memories,
a parade of cameos in a silent movie, black and white,
grainy as the songs that flicker at the edge
of the broadcast signal’s strength. Classic rock,
classical symphony, and a talking head playing
the rusty strings of Bible verse, all fight for clarity.
And in that static one song plays,
bursting through the mind’s photo album
straight from childhood wonder
into the still quiet of fatherhood.
Where my wife wraps her
in the ambiguous white linens,
smiling a full-toothed smile,
a cobblestone path to my little girl,
who hoola-hoops around guard rails
and hop-scotches over the double yellow.
and I follow her
Reebok puddle jumps until
footfalls fade into dry pavement.
My windshield wipers hum
against the blonde strands of dawn,
kneading shadowy rainbows into the clouds,
as she fades into the distant mountains.
Any better?
I like it either way.I feel as though a poem can work,if the reader has the thought conceived of the poets job during the reading of the poem,which naturally should take place.If these words ,which seem as though they don't necessarily FIT, are read aloud with emphasis,the poet's piece could work.
Poetry isn't so much just written word TO ME,it has to do a lot with the individuality of the writer him or herself-looks given while read,appearance, and where the poet can lead you.But THATS JUST MY OPINION>I only had highschool poetry and chapbook publishments and 1 creative writing class.
I am by far no expert,but thats just my opinion by seeing street poets,classical poets, and educators recite-??????:)
allison vigh
A whisper and a thrill
A whisper and a chill
adv2005
"Why do I bother?"
The 11th Commandment.
"Whatever"
PETITION TO STOP THE BAN OF SMOKING IN BARS IN THE UNITED STATES....Anyone?
When I turn on the TV,
I see black smoke
billowing from the North Tower.
It is the first time I felt
all of my senses attune
to a single object
and my mind blanket itself
in thoughtless dark.
My hands do not fidget,
and no words emerge
from the crevices
of my subconscious,
to plume like fires that burst
from shattered windows.
I am distantly aware of screams
kneading themselves
into the blank walls around me.
As my mind begins to thaw
with the realization that my building,
the South Tower, was unscathed
the second plane hit.
College life is beginning to set in,
but I know that my life begins
at this moment
and I would meet it
in the position I find myself now.
Helpless,
and on my knees.
II. Severed Elevator
I rolled from my bed as the coffin of night slowly raised its lid.
The sun always hit the windshield dead on,
for five minutes of the drive to the train station.
I parked far from the platform,
because the 6:50 is the third train of the morning.
Michael Asher, Jeremy’s father, also took the 6:50,
also worked in the World Trade Center.
We sat together and talked or slept through the ride to work.
He spoke to me one morning of abandoned mines
he had explored with his girlfriend in California,
the shafts filled with cold water and the debris
of miner’s lives. That girlfriend became a wife,
that wife a mother of two.
He worked in the north tower, I in the south.
We departed at the foundations of rock and steel
to go to our separate elevators.
We met occasionally on the ride home,
we talked about our jobs and
our love of hiking and steaks.
Two weeks after my summer job had ended
I stare at a TV, when I flip the channels the
smoke and fire follow me.
I call Jeremy’s cell phone,
because his father’s tower was hit first.
The answer to my question is the one hundred and first,
for a company called Cantor Fitzgerald.
The girlfriend is now a widow, and the phone
falls from my hand when a small piece of metal
is replayed in slow motion
crashing into my office.
III. Funeral for a Friend
A week later we are at Adam’s funeral.
His wife is besieged by breast cancer,
the growth that will not stop
swallows her complexion,
and her smile.
It is here I meet the friends and coworkers
who are left, and embrace each one
to prove they are still alive.
Adam also made it out of the building,
his was one of the few bodies recovered,
crushed under the rubble outside the front door.
The casket is closed.
At the end of the service music plays above us.
A voice that everyone in the room recognizes
but would never grace the airwaves.
It is Adam’s voice, in the band he led before
the business world stole him away.
His words slowly tear down all the walls the
crowd had erected, all the breakers erode
before the squall of those songs.
There is a dinner after the storm subsides
At some point I notice my father is not at the table.
I walk awkwardly outside, to take a break
from the intensity of dinner eulogies.
I see him by the car, his face is flushed.
I have never hugged anyone as hard as I hug him then.
It is the first time I have ever seen my father cry.
IV. To those who fell from the 84th floor
I lie in bed, rolling from side to side, staring from wall to ceiling,
unable to blink,
or conjure up any empty space,
because I am afraid.
Not the usual fear of heartbreak or mortality,
but the fear of memory.
The simple act of blinking floods my sight with faces
a new one every blink, every second of darkness is someone
who burned or fell.
With every blink, and every face, an eternity flashes forward and I
can’t keep up.
The same people who shared Chinese food and cubicles make me afraid
to close my eyes.
I lie awake with the lamps on,
but there is no comfort in white walls and dark windows.
I am waiting for tears while denying they will help.
The memorials are short, but empty caskets fall nightly into the void of my eyelids.
The sun appears through the half drawn blinds
I am sweating
I pull off my covers as if they were the death mask of some decaying pharaoh.
I don’t know how to live anymore
with the knowledge that so many lives have gone unfinished
V. August, 2004
For a while it was hard to take the ferry
past those two holes in the sky.
I was convinced the downtown smog
would avoid that patch of air.
A memory that exists
like the clarity of immediate space
around cars that drive through the night fog.
And now I take the subway,
like walking through a cemetery blindfolded.
The train buckles as if driven on rails of shame and corpses
This concrete hole in the city shivers
it is the womb of modern history
A dream played out on the eyes of a coma patient
Footsteps echo through the nearby office buildings
who have for the first time seen the sun.
What is a fit tribute to the ghosts who stumble in the dust of public records?
Any park, any place of forget and remembrance calculatingly mixed
serve only as a wilted bouquet in the terminal wing
a reminder of life for that fleeting moment
between a memory of a dead relative
and a drop of moisture pressed from the brain
to the ducts behind the eye.
All around those concrete stumps are the carrion and vultures
of tragedy
VI. Tiny Strings
I am at my most vulnerable falling asleep.
When memories drift like mist over a graveyard,
filling the black closets of thought with
colors and figures I can imagine, but cannot see.
I remember watching a bus burn.
During a clear afternoon in October
I saw one of London’s double-deckers
stop in the middle of the street,
with black smoke rising from its engine.
I saw people scurry out in waves
like rain water from a gutter.
Flames followed the smoke
and I was so awestruck, that it didn’t occur
even if I’d had a phone, to call for help.
The bright red paint darkens on the bottom
and fire fills the windows at the top of the bus
A brightly glowing tumor on Tottenham Court Road.
All of the emergency training that life affords
shimmers between eye blinks and vanishes
somewhat like dead farmers
who capture the fury of tornados in their camcorders
before their homes are sucked into the maelstrom.
I think perhaps we cannot blame those who strive
for destruction.
Who consume themselves in explosion
Maybe we should share the blame
Didn’t we create government to shelter us
from the beauty of panic?
How long is it since we forgot that the world is sewn
with the strings of spider’s silk?
Very moving, indeed. I like that this one is more of a personal account, it hurts more reading it.
Forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. - Leonard Cohen
I like it either way.I feel as though a poem can work,if the reader has the thought conceived of the poets job during the reading of the poem,which naturally should take place.If these words ,which seem as though they don't necessarily FIT, are read aloud with emphasis,the poet's piece could work.
Poetry isn't so much just written word TO ME,it has to do a lot with the individuality of the writer him or herself-looks given while read,appearance, and where the poet can lead you.But THATS JUST MY OPINION>I only had highschool poetry and chapbook publishments and 1 creative writing class.
I am by far no expert,but thats just my opinion by seeing street poets,classical poets, and educators recite-??????:)
allison vigh
It's definately true - but some poems only get their grace and power from the emphasis of a reading - slam poetry is almost impossible to follow on paper alone - but most of my stuff is decidedly more focused on being good poetry on paper - head poetry I like to call it - and as such I spend a lot of time tweaking this line or that - where it might not make too much of a difference spoken - you only hear it for a second - it can be the difference between remembering a piece of poetry twenty years from now or letting something you read fall into the obscurity of everything we see and forget.
Very moving, indeed. I like that this one is more of a personal account, it hurts more reading it.
This one took a lot out of me - the first few times I read it out loud I barely got through it - I'm glad it can be moving for others - I like to think the message is more important than the pretty words of a poem
The snow drops from salt shaker clouds,
the last ingredient of a landscape.
Invisible in the darkness
until it reaches the swathes of light
cast by the tall lamps
above an empty parking lot.
Snow covered bats race between flakes
like the blind doves of winter.
Each flake unique
until it joins the gathering mass.
Crystals break and re-form, melt
and freeze, and surf the currents
of a winter breeze.
They fall to the rythm of my snow shoes,
trundling through the suburban night,
to a melody of thoughts, breaking
and re-forming with the Rorschach
of my foggy breath. Cartoon bubbles
that I have no words to fill. I can
only offer the snow my footsteps,
the lonesome song of my white noise.
I like it either way.I feel as though a poem can work,if the reader has the thought conceived of the poets job during the reading of the poem,which naturally should take place.If these words ,which seem as though they don't necessarily FIT, are read aloud with emphasis,the poet's piece could work. Poetry isn't so much just written word TO ME,it has to do a lot with the individuality of the writer him or herself-looks given while read,appearance, and where the poet can lead you.
I agree with Ali. Good poem ETF, I liked it alot. Either way I could envison it easily.
Our love must not be just words, but True Love, which shows itself in action,
No one needs a smile more than someone who fails to give one,
After you die...you know how to LIVE!
Comments
Three miles down country road 402
smiled Satan
His face was painted four meters tall
on the front side of a white water tower
hovering over the largest building in town,
the firehouse
as we left a sign drifted into the rearview mirror
welcome to Fyffe, Alabama
Home of the Red Devils
Where the volunteers shoulder the burdens
of Hell’s Firefighters
A collection of spent cigarettes
gathers in a basement corner.
They whisper to each other
in a language of ash and footprints.
They speak as small brothers of volcanoes.
They join a conversation
in the bubbly tongues of beer caps,
a language beyond five cent redemption.
The cigarettes are convinced
in the absence of God
when they build their lecture halls
of dust.
They writhe like severed fingers
among the mold,
under the savage death throes
of boilers and aging pipes.
The bottle caps grow restless
and steal away cigarettes for axels.
Two caps joined by a cigarette
roll slowly away,
metal against concrete.
Some made pacts with the bloated spiders.
Others fed eternally,
on their reflections in the puddles
dripped by the water pipes.
They lived immune
to the bursts of dawn outside.
While weeds and vines crept
through the crevices of civilization
they passed stories,
in the languid dialects
of creatures unhinged
I rode to the end of the last ocean
it does not satisfy me
The wind nudges me backward
to the top of Cherry Hill
Where my Huffy with a broken kickstand
lays beside my skyward stare
Two hundred feet above Oak Street
hunger rises in the dark
I reach my destination and knock
on a black door of space
and ask the stars to grab their bikes
Instead I enter, it is too
late for them to come outside
I am a corkscrew at dinner, writhing
to open a fine merlot
I spill it
Red life runs across whitenoise tablecloths
staining the chaos
I sit in a coriolis chair
legs hang derelict above the floor
My expanding iris inhales
the faded magenta that still spirals
through gouges in the balsa wood
dripping off leaves, added
to the table, when guests join the feast
in that dysfunctional house
Filled with dusty probability
from which the comets still yield calculations
and the brown earth trembles
like winter children before the weather forecast
That poem holds a special place for me because I don't think I've ever tried to write when I was that drunk any other time. But different perspectives lead you down different roads -
In the middle of an Alabama forest
we needed firewood,
so we bought an axe,
and chopped the fallen oak
until the blisters on our hands bled.
But we are no boyscouts,
we used a starter log to begin the burning.
As the sky darkened,
the forest closed in
on our small campsite,
the fire grew as it ate.
We rose from our chairs only
to poke the loose wood,
sculpting the flame.
Wicked faces appear in the center
of the fire’s stone enclosure.
Not the faces of torture,
or the eyes of pain,
but the open mouth of hunger.
For four hours we stared
into our creation,
unwilling to let it die
but knowing how little it cared
who had made it.
When the profits of our axework
were spent, we played tic-tac-toe
in the black and orange embers.
On country route 402 I saw the frame of an old house,
black and scarred.
Five brick pillars survived,
standing with dark plaster at their peaks,
fingers through which the burning roof
had fallen like loose sand.
Very true.
Thankyou sir, the best parts are usually the endings- I try to tie most of the endings into the title
his suit was an irreplaceable appendage;
his personal foliage of dusk,
it absorbed the morning glare on the walk to work,
and refused the illumination of street lights on the way home.
In between was reserved, the sign on his breast said,
do not disturb.
His personal religion was the quietude of numbers,
he has almost no memory of names and faces,
only voices attached to phone numbers.
His mind has no room for solstices
the year is broken into a chain of opening days,
he has an empty seat reserved in every tri-state stadium
he gives away season tickets all year, just in case
they make the playoffs.
These are the trap-doors from tedium,
he has no time for hatred,
existence and sanity require no more
than his minds empty space of ambivalence.
He loved a woman once;
and he was very honest with her,
she was a close friend for 3 years,
and a voiceless stranger for 17,
but their marriage was comfortable for 20.
His children were just graduating from college
they have never even asked him his middle name.
Stanley
They found it through wet, blurry vision,
etched into a granite slab,
above an empty coffin,
above an empty grave,
two months after a 747 crashed into his corner office.
I really like this one ETF. It is very good! I really like the variety of what you write. That you cover so many topics. Thanks for the good poetry!
No one needs a smile more than someone who fails to give one,
After you die...you know how to LIVE!
BE - if you think that one is sad you should read the big one on page 2 - and I was working on one last night that might hit you pretty well -
No one needs a smile more than someone who fails to give one,
After you die...you know how to LIVE!
In Tuxedo a broken furnace smolders,
like a pile of ash molded into the shape of a tree.
Wood braces straddling the façade
have started their slow decay.
Its surface is pockmarked by missing stones,
chiseled away by age and indifference
A cross of steel poles block the sagging entrance,
a forgotten offering to the gods of manufacture.
Stones tumble to the earth in front of me,
and I hear the echoes of boots, of processions like
corduroyed funerals, praying with those
blasted workman’s hands.
black footpaths wind around the base,
raked with shards of coal.
I imagine the people who worked here
piling loads into the mouth of a monster;
as some find themselves shoved
into the dark rectangles of the earth’s hunger
to help compensate for those displaced chunks
of black rock.
Vast tarps cover the roof, a shroud
the sparrows kneel on to pray,
to chant their hymns to the forest
that overfed a demon until it died.
If this furnace were a history book
it would bleed, the dark words of
leaking from chapter to chapter.
I roll out of bed when remnants
of dreams pull like an aching
lover back to the sheets.
There I remain speeding
down moonlit highways
on motorcycles I’ve never learned
to ride.
I pass cars with vanity plates that
will never exist, filled with tired
motorists going to dream vacations
that will never end, but never began.
As I put my feet on the ground
and tear away tapeworms
of nerve impulses,
I do not feel a violent
disruption of worlds colliding.
One world fades slowly,
like a depressed swathe of Earth
rising to meet the mountains,
after the weight of a glacier recedes.
As the spray of a shower
splashes my face, I begin to lather
my body, my eyes remain closed
and the world of sinks and toilets
disappears for another fifteen minutes.
My body finds itself among the
tropical fish, blindingly colorful.
When I peak my head out of the water
and swim onto shore to towel
off, I find myself dressed in winter
clothes on the sandbar, and from that
beach always drive impossibly
back to class, on a cold day
in upstate New York.
Very nice ETF...I just love your poems!
No one needs a smile more than someone who fails to give one,
After you die...you know how to LIVE!
Well thankyou - there's one line in here I particularly like, it's based off of a geological principal called isostatic rebound - essentially the Earth bounces back up after it's pressed down by a glacier
my destiny sits between
two slices of bread in
a half eaten bologna sandwich
sobering up behind coffee beans
in a shower of hot mustard
piled in front are my
mashed potato poems
in a tupperware square
but they were too milky
and were forgotten
pinned under my sister’s
crying bowl of peas, garnished
with a second place medal
in the 400 meter relay
fantasies of epic verse
crescendo in a squarish
piece of aluminum foil
from a two week old
second helping of tri-tip
steak, which was overcooked
left in the oven an hour too
long because the recipe was lost
in a romantic cookbook
a broken finger which
stole my baseball career
was piled under stuffing
preventing my curveball from
slipping out of the strike
zone, and the bastard
took it over the left field wall
my father’s retirement fund
wades through cranberry sauce
sinking in coagulated slush,
like the shores of new jersey
so far from his beloved
Caribbean beaches
a spot shines on a grandfather
of a turkey leg, slowly dissolving
the meat into a hard inoperable
growth, not fit for the dog
we threw it in the incinerator
where the ashes scattered over
mounds of garbage
When we were finished she rolled over
and fell immediately asleep. My maroon
cotton sheets separating her naked body
from my sweat covered eyes, which
formed tears, like those forced from peeled
onions. Was it that bad?
“No,” she said, “It’s just like vacuuming.”
It’s not the size that counts I thought, it’s
how you vacuum. From that night on
all I can think about during sex is my
penis rolling around the carpet, picking
up dirt, but my room’s still always a mess.
Were my kisses just dustbusters? My backrubs
a lint brush?
When we grinded to Sean Paul, or Cisco all
I could think about was a night of passion with
me, her, and my 8 pound Orec. It fits under the bed
when you’re done, no bags, no mess.
So now I’ve moved on, onto tiled bathrooms and a
hardwood foyer and living room.
I figure when I get old enough, all I’ll be doing
is mopping anyway.
The white drains out of your eyes
and hazel fills the void.
Pupils flare like a drifting lunar
capsule a hundred thousand miles from your smile,
crest white, oxidized teeth glow in
harmony, arm & hammer gums resolute
against the backdrop of plaque armies, roaming
across the wasteland of pancakes and bacon
on your tongue.
Which lashes your upper lip, tastes remnants
of Mrs. Butterworth and greedily slops it up.
Your lower lip covers the top and the top covers the
bottom, facial tectonics drive the continents
of your cheeks, momentary valleys of dimples
emerge and disappear.
Cool crumbs attach to moisture and fall like
boulders into an earthquake.
A glass of milk vanishes, it bumps
your adam’s apple out an inch
on the way down to your dark stomach.
The smell hangs in the air, from the empty
plate on the table and the taste in your mouth
into the cobwebs of your nostrils. How your face contorts,
those hazel ships shut their airlocks,
while lips twist into a smirk
Lines gather around your nose and the corner of your eyes,
and the room fills with the sound of your inhaling,
drawing in the lingering scent
of the best god damned breakfast you’ve ever had.
And how your face changes when you sit up,
to the sound of chains rattling.
How your eyes fall to the floor, when the key turns the bolt.
How your lower jaw hangs like a derelict ship after a squall,
when the priest begins reading the litany.
How the stubble on your face, hidden in the ecstasy of breakfast, is now clear,
like the growing shadow behind as you stood up, blocking the room’s single light.
How the echo of your footsteps down that long corridor, are the only thing I’ve ever
seen bring tears meandering like drunk drivers down your cheeks.
How the proudest man I’d imagined myself to be walks back bent, defeated so utterly, and right after breakfast.
The Drive
Old photographs fill the pavement
between glimpses of the road, stolen
from the storm by windshield wipers
at high speed. And I drive
through the rain picking through memories
scattered like high beams in the evening fog.
She twirls through those memories,
a parade of cameos in a silent movie, black and white,
grainy as the songs that flicker at the edge
of the broadcast signal’s strength. Classic rock,
classical symphony, and a talking head playing
the rusty strings of Bible verse, all fight for clarity.
And in that static one song plays,
bursting through the mind’s photo album
straight from childhood wonder
into the still quiet of fatherhood.
Where my wife wraps her
in the ambiguous white linens,
smiling a full-toothed smile,
a cobblestone path to my little girl,
who hoola-hoops around guard rails
and hop-scotches over the double yellow.
and I follow her
Reebok puddle jumps until
footfalls fade into dry pavement.
My windshield wipers hum
against the blonde strands of dawn,
kneading shadowy rainbows into the clouds,
as she fades into the distant mountains.
Any better?
Poetry isn't so much just written word TO ME,it has to do a lot with the individuality of the writer him or herself-looks given while read,appearance, and where the poet can lead you.But THATS JUST MY OPINION>I only had highschool poetry and chapbook publishments and 1 creative writing class.
I am by far no expert,but thats just my opinion by seeing street poets,classical poets, and educators recite-??????:)
allison vigh
A whisper and a chill
adv2005
"Why do I bother?"
The 11th Commandment.
"Whatever"
PETITION TO STOP THE BAN OF SMOKING IN BARS IN THE UNITED STATES....Anyone?
Very moving, indeed. I like that this one is more of a personal account, it hurts more reading it.
It's definately true - but some poems only get their grace and power from the emphasis of a reading - slam poetry is almost impossible to follow on paper alone - but most of my stuff is decidedly more focused on being good poetry on paper - head poetry I like to call it - and as such I spend a lot of time tweaking this line or that - where it might not make too much of a difference spoken - you only hear it for a second - it can be the difference between remembering a piece of poetry twenty years from now or letting something you read fall into the obscurity of everything we see and forget.
This one took a lot out of me - the first few times I read it out loud I barely got through it - I'm glad it can be moving for others - I like to think the message is more important than the pretty words of a poem
The snow drops from salt shaker clouds,
the last ingredient of a landscape.
Invisible in the darkness
until it reaches the swathes of light
cast by the tall lamps
above an empty parking lot.
Snow covered bats race between flakes
like the blind doves of winter.
Each flake unique
until it joins the gathering mass.
Crystals break and re-form, melt
and freeze, and surf the currents
of a winter breeze.
They fall to the rythm of my snow shoes,
trundling through the suburban night,
to a melody of thoughts, breaking
and re-forming with the Rorschach
of my foggy breath. Cartoon bubbles
that I have no words to fill. I can
only offer the snow my footsteps,
the lonesome song of my white noise.
Ok, this should come as an improvement
No one needs a smile more than someone who fails to give one,
After you die...you know how to LIVE!