Mind shift

How to turn on the poetic brain
Find a new way to say the same thing about my brother
Watch closer
As the girl presses the stiff plastic dolls together
And asks most days about my wedding band.
If it means something that the pile of pine trees have been mulched away,
Or the father gives into his child
Who circles and circles the hare tree.
These cycles
This hot air against the night
Again

The Miseducation of Black Youth

a teacher fired
for getting the black kids
too riled up
about issues of race
about black boys being locked up
for being black
about black boys being blamed for crimes
they didn't commit
about years and years of racism
deteriorating too slowly
about no one caring
if they live or die

and i think
if they aren't riled up
then
isn't that the greater problem?

shouldn't we all be riled up?

Ode to Shitty poems

How refreshing to know I can write shitty poems
they have a right to exist
and I have a right
to just write
for me and not care what the result is

This is for me
an exercise of words

running across the page
my voice

thoughts
like scattered notes

i hear, fleeting thoughts
like cars whizzing by

just the evening breeze
a poem
of nothingness

NYT’s 52 Places to Go in 2016

Oh, the places I’ll go:

An empty beer bottle

ala Dumb and Dumber.

Your face and tummy

as I straddle you

in my dirty tub.

Monica’s leg after the jelly fish debacle.

Like a race-horse at the derby,

behind the bleachers

after too many mint juleps.

Along a fence,

against you and you and you

because it’s a contest

and Im in it to win it.

in her Chanel purse because she pissed me off.

on his printer because he pissed me off.

on his lap top because he still pisses me off.

in a fitting room because that dress made me look fat,

not the other way around.

in elevators with broken cameras

in your soup because you were rude to your wife

in my neighbor’s litter box because her meows kept

me up all night.

in my bed, when I’ve lost my dignity

and I need to be redeemed.

on the curb next to the goldendoodle

because he is too fricken cute.

in a hospital bathroom, only meant for patients.

in your Park Ave bathroom

after scrutinizing the contents

of your medicine cabinet

and forming judgements.

in an ocean of suffering

arousing the appetite of sharks

and the sympathy of dolphins.

in a beach restroom stall,

tiles slippery with sand

wonder why the temp of my piss

can steep ten cups of tea.

At an airport,

long lines and travel jitters.

and then on the airplane,

just before landing.

in my lover’s bathroom,

quietly in the dark,

while he sleeps near by.

in my bathroom, 

because it is home.

Thy Neighbour

Got to put in the time with non-choice always,

as it is always present and one day always wondered.

My previous out of hands are out of my hands and as they should. 

I knew them so perhaps I can still depict the ripples as they quibble;

in whose world where will the kids comfortably gather

by the garden table,

scoop scampi from the mound,

feed on that and the ducked chat of the creosote,

the faux-embarrassment of neglect that creeps out of and pulses the hedgerows.

I'm thinking reverb tails and other such claptrap,

but the cats' tails have stopped,

I've notched up the pre-delay on my fading recollections,

but who has time for this cue?

My out of hands won't find new life in them,

or anywhere else really.

I can see where the tail tapers.

I'm just wondering will I have anyone to return with

when the decking collapses,

when the New Forest turns to clay.