best viewed with stylesheets
I have many poems in my notebook. Some are obviously better than others, some are conceptual, some are rhythmic, some are highly contextual and consequently not easily understood by others. Here is a selection. (You can also view selection #1 , including a reading of slow .)
Silence is Ignoble
Silence is Death
So I Speak
And Embarrass Myself
Ivory twigs, covered in red hamburger
A path of twisted blue veins
Subtle leather, grown to fit
Wonderful...
Yet...
The tendons don't anchor
The knuckles burn
The spirit churns
Here in brass is a frame
To hold the golden light
That falls from my own eyes flame
When kindled by your sight
So on white winter days
Tarnish the golden brass
Allow my heart's purest rays
To touch your shadow and dance
Ebony's carrion eaters in numbers untold,
Eclipses the monotone grey;
Returning by call of cold, to the fold
To sleep away the dead winder days
Becoming dark leaves of barren trees
Or heavenly phantasm without hold
Filling firmament with frightful beauty
As I gaze up in enthralled vertigo
I wonder how many years past, and
how many years future do they return?
Or perhaps their black shall eternally span
Each winter's, decades' and eon's turn
Their eyes cut my inner steal
Knowing the pain of my appeal
Reflected in my dull and stupid orbs
They take my life
to be absorbed
Thick black is the frame of my desires
Yet the chill makes my hope tire
A look of kindness may make one soar
But a quick change,
the contrast!
I fall to the floor
With my thumbs upturned towards my head
To push into my see,
to make my sight dead
There's a moment when the mourning stills
When thoughts and feelings are clean
The fluid whispers of sleep still flow
-- but thoughts play amidst dying dreams
All troubles are forgotten...
All pain is unknown...
Then I remember I was once sad...?
That now.
I am alone.
I pass a black girl smoking a fag
Black girl taking a drag
I don't know why this interests me
Appealing
-- but not
No other sight usually turns my eyes
From the face of a fem
so complete:
Bad breath, coughing phlegm
Blurry eyes, boring times
of hearing how they just might quit
waiting for death to make its hit
But the Nubians seemed to have avoided
The curse of the sickly stick
Other vices may statistically fall
But on this, whitey takes his licks
The young white wanna-be's
shivering in the cold
huddled close together
hurriedly becoming old
Why then the Doc booted black girl?
She has stepped from the fold
To embrace my own degenerate culture
Including the many falls
My mind answers: it's my internals
cogs and gears of mind
A subconscious cancer that always exists
towards the darker kind
I don't believe this: territ's of the mind
It's always whispering things
that are lesser than kind
But that is another poem
left for another day
And since I speak to no one
I move on my way
(Always)
Purple Madness
Silent Laughing
In the Pitt it Runs
(Friday)
A gas guzzling, cow eating, NRA mother fucker
Pounds and maces another
Teenage shits, little sadists
Harass an Irish wino
(Saturday)
Trench coat, skin and mohawk fuck
Throws the wino down
Radio breaks
Blood flows
The wino grins and rises
"Good one lad, ya got me there." Fuck!
I gave you a rose
you apologized for the mess
Not quite casual, not quite
-- something else
Crying for a past
That doubles for destiny
You said it's not you
I... It's me.
You've broken every boy
You turn away -- they cling
You can't stomach the guilt
You can't wash out the stain
You wish, just once
You could hear
fuck off
fuck off and leave
But that's your role,
not for me
and if you played it
honestly
you'd say it to me.
Oh and the line from TV?
'It's not you, it's me?"
Thank you so much
I feel better
To know I haven't a chance
I don't even matter.
So we say we'll be friends
But you just say it
to excuse your false start
Or you think its an agreement
to avoid awkwardness
-- shameful embarrassment
in the place where we first met
You are now too busy
No time to call
In your occasional email
You justify your lack of excuses
Every time you cancel
The pink razor in the shower
grew a bloom of rust
before i threw it out.
After hope was lost,
but before i whispered
-- fuck off.