Monday Poem: In the Belly of a Sick Fish that Can’t Afford to Flush Itself
“You’re lucky I ever even looked at you” is not what Jonah wanted to hear on his blind date, twenty-second in a series of serious disappointments, boring glass-apple stories, robbed of even a moral at the core. And this latest was off to such a promising start, from his suggestion they meet for pre-supper coffee, cherry tarts, and ice cream, to shaking hands — no hugs — pulling out her chair, and beaming mere-mortal adoration of her list of endless talents, recited at a hummingbird’s pace before the first cup was even poured. Twenty minutes in, she asked about Read more…
Monday Poem: The Wild-Child Said: Love Made Me
Nauseous; Infectious—Why were we here two nights ago, all dressed down to our skintight lunacies? True love really never dies is a sick thought that lies on a bed of gravel, under a sheet of sleet, traveled over by a sled we shared, taking turns pulling it with our clenched teeth. We’re suffering for it, that wonderful grueling nighttime adventure. Not exactly “romantic” in the sense of the adjective I’d grown up knowing and loving, but still— We were one, alone, cold, needing each other. Now we’re ill, together, in the same naughty spot making each other sicker. The Read more…
Monday Poem: Love, Uninvolved (in its own horror)
What if, when you die, you get stuck in one of your old dreams? Like the knotty one where you keep telling me, “There’s so much I’m not telling you”? I’m thinking of us at City Hall, combined, dancing— With four sinister feet . . . The best citizens lined up in a parade to gawk, and grin, and hear me serenade you. Hear me say a prayer: God, excuse their grins. Me, in black; you, in off-white. We don’t want to show off anything too bright. Anything enters Everything, spits out Nothing Read more…
Monday Poem: Going Out and In
We never do that anymore. Whenever she asks me to invite her out for an evening on the town for dinner and glancing at others similarly coupled, my excuse is that my eyes and mouth are exhausted, so tired from talking to and looking at . . . By then, she has faded wide away, entirely uninterested in what more I have to say. And now the accumulated fades have produced an inaccurate hate, (maybe) able to cure a corrupted love of the cinema, the theater, all of these and those tragic shows designed to inculcate desire, enter-staining the mind Read more…
Monday Poem: Think Blank
We are weak echoes, made flesh, from a Ghost’s last shouted wish. Sheryl clearly guessed life’s meaning as this answer to another query gassed through her on a hazy Monday morning. With intuitively-gathered and well-sharpened fun facts, she could easily puncture boyfriend Ted’s toytime theory: We’re just forgotten playthings of a Child who grew up to be a blind and senile Watchmaker which takes a feeble, febrile idea and kids it with white nights, red clouds, and pink noises—distracting effects to make it seem wonderfully original. A know-it-all who knows everything that sits on the Read more…
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