Dear Mom,
I was so stoned the other night
that I was at awe with the world
like when I was a child
light and airy, care-free
and drug-free.
It’s just the weight of responsibility
that turns me to substance,
matter rather than mind –
a little more of the Kind
can sometimes give me back my pleasures:
the realities of the memories
I’ve dried and kept as treasures
from a time when my world was bigger.
Archive for July, 1993
0
The Decay of a Cartoon
Posted: July 28, 1993 in PoetryTags: Blood, Bluejay, Fear, Flesh, Mother, Story, Tree, World
The poet sojourns
to the real world,
concerned with education and finances,
too busy with real matters
to watch his own walk
like a bluejay on a telephone line
assuming it is his,
too bust to enjoy
the glances at his jester clashed clothing
and his odd squatting posture,
recounting endless stories
of dubious origin.
The decay of a cartoon
into another weary act of flesh and blood
is done through weight,
self-inflicted,
burdens of soggy peat responsibility
and the yokes of limiting your own strength.
I fell from 20 feet up, from a tree branch
and I landed on my head;
when I should have been dead,
(I was 10)
I walked into the house
to bandage my gashes
so that Mom wouldn’t worry about me.
I tell myself I can’t do that now
because my weight has quadrupled
from all of these woes I balance on my nose
trying to smile around them
everyday at other people,
and their circus tricks;
jugglers and mimes and tightrope walkers,
sometimes the fear of falling shows as plain as day.
It’s getting heavier and higher and
we’re all being thrown more things to juggle.
So if I fell from that tree
would I end up worrying so much on the way down
that I’d break my neck?
Or could I bounce like the balls I juggle?
Gut Feeling
Posted: July 13, 1993 in PoetryTags: Angel, Animal, Cigarette, Dream, Forest, Love, Sleep
Sometimes I can’t write poetry;
I know this so I don’t try.
so I’ll listen to you stomp around
and play your Steely Dan CD.
I’ll lay on my back, look at the ceiling,
and smoke my cigarette.
Then I’ll dream my best poems
and never write them down,
just wander through them
like a forest of different overstuffed chairs,
like a choir of angel’s hymns.
falling asleep with you mad at me
is something I’m getting used to.
I hear your stomach muttering in your sleep
and I’ll know you’re still wondering
how much I love you.
lighting another cigarette end to end,
I let you know I’m not asleep
if you’re listening.
that is if you’re listening,
behind your stuffed animals,
under the comforter.
there are rats in the walls
of every relationship.
they knock about at night
or surprise you scurrying from the trash cans.
the glint of a narrowed eye or a chiselled tooth
or the sounds of skeletons being gnawed,
teeth clicking as they polish to white
the foundations of an unsteady heart.
I give myself the leniency
to sit and smoke beneath a tree
in fifteen minutes, a little break
from the summer school I choose to take.
I smoke with friends who’re in my class
from a little whorled pipe which I pass.
with smoky lungs and contented gaze
I stone them all with sunshine rays.
Two Ten Penny Nails
Posted: July 1, 1993 in PoetryTags: Clouds, Frog, Halo, Heart, Hope, Love, Sky, Wings
I know that my heart rests while I slog
Through glaciered halls that know of no such frogs.
I tire and watch my halo and my wings;
They start to melt away like borrowed things.
The nails sunk through my heart like lovers’ frowns
Reach steely through the clouds into the ground
Below me where they drag out furrows that
Can chart my weaving course without a map.
As long as I can flutter through the days
Of filtered sunlight, jellied skies and haze,
I hope that somehow I can be rebuilt
To use these Cupid’s arrows well as stilts.
how is it that
you write and write
with so dull an instrument
as an everyday pen
and tie quick knots
in your letters
so that they stay
pinned to the page
like an insect collection?
when I steal
your butterfly net,
I am almost all thumbs;
I just get sweaty
and frustrated
watching things wriggle
their way off of my paper.
Froggacuda's Weblog 