POETRY & Other Thoughts

I wrote these, and I'm not even sure what a poem is. Sonnet? What is that? Haiku? God bless you. This is highly unprofessional work. sometimes i use all lower case letters because i think they're sexier than upper case ones. I don't think a poem has to be pretty or nice or yours or mine to be worth a damn. They are pennies on the sidewalk that you can either walk past or take a second to reach down and pick up. Put in a jar on your desk. Love the dirtier ones better than the rest, even if it doesn't make cents. Lose it in your laundry, find it in some old memory. Give it to a friend. Drop it back on the pavement again.

Anyways, here's to death and dogs and dearly beloveds and all the things we wish we could pick up.

If you don't know how to read poetry, try it slowly, try it out loud, try it when it's raining, try it like its bitter sips of coffee. Not rushed morning coffee though. Like evening coffee. That tiny white cup your Granny has after her ice cream, not that 24 ouncer you chug in your car on your way to work.

Coffee Rings

I pour myself a cup of coffee and the pot always drips

I pour faster, I pour lower, higher, slower, it always drips

Staining the countertop, staining my palm

And the coffee isn't even good

It's dark, and it's hot, and I get precious little out of it

But I like the mug

And it's my new favorite thing and I get one every week

and I spill coffee down the side of it and it makes rings on the table

So I clean it up with the mail because the mail is always coming

and it's always boring and it's always nothing

So I throw it away into a trash can full of coffee grounds that I don't remember buying

And I'm hungry but I'm out of eggs

So I go to a diner where they have special food at a special price for special people

And I get served by a lady who's too nice to me too close to me two eggs for me

And I give her all my money and she gives me all her coffee

And she doesn't spill a drop

Green Tomatoes

I woke up again today.

And I forgot to feel anything for 47 minutes

where I stepped outside

and the wind blew through me

until I remembered to feel cold.

I didn’t have my first thought for another 24 minutes

and it drifted away from me like the mail

because it’s always coming

and it’s always boring

and it’s always nothing.

And I don’t think I’m happy

I’m not sure if it’s something you can be

but sometimes it feels like I’m standing in it.

Feels like when we were little

and used to hold our hands up to each other’s

wanted to see how different our similarities could be.

Smells like the breeze

and green tomatoes

and then the wind goes.

Maybe over to your house

and it’s your turn to feel again.

Lives Lived Thrice

if I had three lives

i'd marry you in two

the other?

perhaps that life

over there, at a coffee shop

sitting alone, writing - a memoir

maybe a novel

or this poem.

no kids

and a small apartment with a view of the river

and books, lots of books

but with the time to read them

friends to laugh with

and someone, sometimes, for a week or two

to remember the warmth of skin

i'd be more thoughtful in that life, curious and drifting

i'd board trains alone

smile at the brunette two rows ahead looking back

i'd vacation on the Maine coast

using her old watercolors to describe each day

loving their marks more than i could ever have loved her

i'd walk the beach at sunrise

skimming stones into the gentle wash

and i'd wonder, sometimes

if i'd ever find you

George the Beetle and Other Divine Obsessions

God is a woman

And she listens to naked, chubby angel babies sing emo love songs

because she's heartbroken over the earth

She loves taxidermy, blasphemy, and the camera because it's the closest people have ever been to beating death, time, and her

Her favorite beetle is George

who was a dung beetle that lived over 400 years ago

in a desert that doesn't have a name anymore, and

i don't know, he just understood her like no one else could

She throws crumpled up bad ideas at black holes channeling Kobe

and even when she misses we still get stars

And she can't get enough of the song You're so Vain

but not the Carly Simon version

She likes it when a man named Bruce who lives in Bismarck

sings it every morning in the shower to annoy his teenage daughters

She's unapologetically had it on repeat in his head for months

and has no plans of taking it away any time soon

Olive's House

In Olive's house

she doesn't have plates or bowls

just big ole coffee mugs because they work just the same

She has a small shower that she sleeps in

a huge bed that she bathes in

and a perfectly sized kitchen where she orders take out

In Olive's house

she has a front door that never opens

a bedroom window that she never closes

and a living room wall that she has no idea what to do with

In Olive's house

she has fifty-six different items with the word home written on them

because sometimes it's nice to know where you are

Lost Pens

He forgot she was dead

and where they kept the pens

Only for a moment or two

about the her being dead part

not about the pens part

He could never remember the pens

but he could usually remember the death

But, sometimes, remembering feels like holding your breath

and he was no longer the young man he once was

He felt as though he had never been

Just born a broken old body

who could never find anything

even in his own house

And she had been alive for so long

and dead for so short

it simply slipped his mind that she had made the switch

And if only paper was bigger than people

so you didn’t have to shrink them down

when they are too big to keep

Down to sentences and scribbles

that always leave behind too much

and then read once

and only once

before they are shrunk down again

even further

Anyways, he can’t write poems

Nor can he paint pictures

or put the pretty that she was

down on paper that is too small

with pens that he can never seem to find

rain and rain and rain

That February

It rained and it rained and it rained

So he tried and he tried and he tried to keep his eyes open

And after trying for so long he was so tired that he yawned for five years

And when he opened his eyes and pulled the curtains back from his little window

in his little room

in his little home

He saw that the whole world had changed

It was sunny and bright and happy

So he turned and ran but he tripped over his shoes that he must’ve left out

And by the time he opened the front door the whole thing had changed again

And it rained and it rained and it rained

So his socks got wet and he left little puddles as he walked back to his little window

in his little room

in his little home

And he tried and he tried and he tried to stay awake

For the next time the world might change

Wasted Youth Wasted Aging

Years are weird and too long and too short and we can't wait until the net one but we don't want them to fly by faster than they already are. And everyone feels old when they get older and they wish they were younger so they could look forward to being older again. And everyone says you're a baby anyways and you cry cry cry. First at Coldplay then at credit cards now at Christmas and at not calling your mother on her birthday but she doesn't want you to. Don't remind her of her age. This year she's old and next year she's older and youth is wasted on the young and aging is wasted on people who are always saying that. And years are wasted on calendars and calendars are wasted on walls with Xs on them and countdowns and why won't this year end already. Why won't this year end already? And it goes faster than you think.

idk what to call this one

He woke up and he forgot who he was

Just for a moment or two

A little blip, a missed step in his routine

And no, maybe he didn’t forget, not really anyway

He was more lost

Didn’t know which version he was supposed to be

Because he wears a hundred different skins

And sometimes they get lost or hidden away

And sometimes he gets so very tired of it all

So he just tosses them in the corner of the room

And he lays down

And they pile up

Stacking higher and higher

Until they’re all stained and scuffed

Covered in beer stains and spilled dreams

And he doesn’t recognize any of them when he goes to get dressed

So he just throws them out on top of everyone else’s

Then at least no one can tell whose stains are whose

Because what’s the point in trying

When he can’t remember who he is

He’s just a name

And he’s already forgotten that too