January, 20, 2013
Took awhile on this poem that was actually started in 2011. Taking my time a bit more, trying to find the right poetic phrasing for a poem... I guess, you could say being more specific with my imagery, my wording. Takes awhile for a poem to gel. Have to look very close at each word, and how each word fits the next word. Anyway, here's my newest piece.
The Dirt Garden (Part I)
Hobbling
about in strange shoes tonight, angry shoes
that
argue all the while with my swelling feet.
The
parking lot too, dark and black and sweaty,
It eats away at my fragile soles…
there’s
no place for me in this world,
this
hot, dry world.
She, on
the other hand, demands very little of me
as she
bounces out of her beat-up Bronco, four bulging
plastic
bags swinging freely in her freakishly fat hands,
on
hefty legs (the width of two large babies), she propels
herself
towards the apartment two doors down from me,
I say
nothing ‘cause I know she doesn’t mean it,
She
doesn’t care, not really. And I can’t condone
the use
of plastic over paper or asking questions
that have
no answers you wish to hear.
This
evening has blessed us with a soft
breeze,
it tempers the hell our daily sun
has
butchered us with for the last week.
Rays of
UV light sliced fine pinstripes of golden
pink
along my forearms. And though I wore a hat
all
day, sometimes I forget the sun screen.
I don’t
want the cancer that gobbled up my dad.
That’s
why I’ll go out only at night, now…
only at
night.
It’s
why I’ve tried to stop smoking, why I
work so
hard to eliminate this persistent,
urgent
need… to harm someone.
Here
plopped
on a cool stone bench,
my
elbows propped on this cool stone
table
beneath the gaze of a huge elm tree
with
octopus arms twisted out, above
and
over the dirt garden and me,
here
below
its monstrous leafy tentacles misshapen
by a lone street lamp that hovers right behind
its
mossy side,
here
among
her many arms, like a mother’s
reassuring touch, a lover’s scent,
here
she
anoints me with soothing calm, grey darkness
that
mends the countless bruises, and quiets (if just
for a
single breath) the echo of those swift piggy tongues
The Dirt Garden (Part II)
Here
all
that garbage drifts away with one sturdy exhale
of cigarette
smoke that floats past my vacant eyes,
past
the dark green leaves hanging like
dead
men from the elm’s black branches,
along Interstate
41, where a constant rush of metal,
screeching
tires, screaming sirens digest an oyster
colored
sky which threatens thunderous weather…
a
promise made but never delivered,
past my
murky memory… you spread out like
a
picnic basket for my fingers and mouth to devour,
past
Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the War on Drugs,
the War
on Poverty, the War to End All Wars,
the
homeless veterans sitting
underneath
the 41, filthy and shirtless
begging
bread and butter and,
“…Just
one more dollar, my brother,
for a
warm bottle of Night Train.”
Past
the blistered gables of the apartment complex,
slipping
by the throbbing red warning beacons atop
all
that concrete and steel… 50 Penn Plaza,
then
warping ‘round the Boeing 707 that hurls eighty-six
reluctant
passengers toward the slaughterhouses
of Los
Angeles, Albuquerque, San Francisco…
all
those mumbled prayers… hope shall keep
the
plane from crashing… or maybe not.
And
beyond, far beyond the unwavering eye of
a
God who just stands there, condemns us
all
to die
a silent death in an infinite grave.
Beyond
my own desperately quiet rage:
Something’s got’ta fuckin’ change!
Right fuckin’ now!
But not
tonight. No need tonight. No worry tonight.
My
anxious shoes dig jagged trench-lines
in the
dirt garden’s soft skin,
my
wandering eye examines a tiny plop
of
rotting bird poop retired on the stone table
as an
elderly couple from apartment 207 (I think)
wobbles
down the concrete path, one holding
the
other up. The older man takes the time to raise
his
withered hand... and butterflies hello to me. She
waits patiently to resume their evening crawl,
and
suddenly… she smiles… for no particular
reason,
no reason at all.
Not
tonight. ‘Cause it’s cool tonight. It’s nice
tonight.
The dark is filled with tiny, honest smiles.
Tonight
the world is safe… from me.
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