Category — Freeverse

hands clean (very very clean) and words
too (very very) he (being quite)
does not (ever) offend – i (wishing
to be more) like him (with dirty
hands & truth be told words) smile
- though (I do not) walking a woman
(old and broken) across the street
seems a bit much. he (on knees
begs) me (standing in the back
watching) – redemption like the gold(en cow)
falls (between us)

Oh, you sweet hypocrisy,
I watch you dance with those kind souls
who know best there is no good,
no god and satan is a joke. I watch
you sing, dear hypocrisy, like the morning
wren unable to fly above the bitter cold

Rectitude is the uncracked egg, my darling
hypocrite. The unclouded sky that hides
the stars and moon, the everything
else we might see.

Fear not, my beloved hypocrisy,
I will hold you close and be so blind
for you. And I will embrace each hypocrite
as if they, in their murderous self-delusions,
become my kin with every desolate breath.

Oh how I love you, hypocrisy,
the pale flesh of certainty ready for my tongue
the moaned lies of eternity, where we are
always only mortal. Yes, I love you,
and dare to make you mine.

what of small brown birds
in leafless bushes watching
the winter drift past cloudfully

they are technology, you say,
they are the connection between
and through and in the air

your’e a liar, they’re birds,
they’re brown, they’re small,
they’re watching the winter
and chirping at me

no, you say, they are
technological marvels,
natural cellphones relaying
information from the summer
to this dead dull february morning

you’re wrong, I say,
i don’t know much about
technologicality, but I know
it is not that chickadee

Once, there was a boy
in shorts running
down a hardwood floor
crashing into another
boy running in
shorts down
on the hard wood floor
the impact, hard enough
to luxate his eyeball
into his two hands
screaming in shorts
running off the hard
wood floor.

And I will be the chicken
(boneless and large breasted)
in your skillet butter-soaked
searing, envious of the carcass
I once (so very long ago) was
part of – simmering for hours
in spices and salt. (perhaps
with rice, with roots softening
and taste deepening slowly
so slowly)

I see the lines – slipped between
the verse hidden in the new space
below the picture of who we are
when we are no one else at all.

Fly my friend, fly from those fears
that hold like tendrils to our feet
like roots to the bad cold earth
where darkness becomes so very us.

See with me the lines – painted
upon these new horizons where we dawn
like a thousand haiku whispering
louder than thunder.

Fly my friend, fly with me away
to that silver oh-mouthed moon
singing out the poetry we become.

If Mark Doty ever read my poetry, I think he’d
shrug. He’s a kind man, a good man, a loving man
and a great poet. So, he’d shrug.

If Mary Oliver ever read my poetry, I think she’d
puke. She’s a kind woman, a good woman, a loving woman
and a great poet – but she’s old enough
to have a sensitive stomach.

If Charles Simic ever read my poetry, I think he’d
… never mind, he’d never read my poetry.