IncantationTake an airport parking slip,
mix with boarding pass, sprinkle with train ticket add hotel room key, stir in phone messages, simmer with postcards. Take scrap talismans and inhale deeply. Now say London. Repeat until ephemera reshapes, turns into a paper airplane big enough to lift you over the sea. Victoria Gate ☊
Atonement ☊
Render ☊
|
English Pastoral ☊Oxford summer
the cottage doors open to the garden where wood pigeons coo & distant laughter drifts over the garden wall I sit at the end of a long table paper rustling in the breeze watch a butterfly flutter in float over the forget-me-nots time stops, freeze idyllic electric blue sky tufted with motionless cotton wool the city in my head goes mute as I succumb to countryside content with birds & breeze Knoxville: Summer, 1982 ☊100 degrees at the World’s Fair
the Sunsphere shimmers a giant lollipop that loses its flavor in one lick. We sit in a cheap motel room flipping through unfamiliar TV our sweat-soaked clothes stiffening in the over-chilled air. No one speaks. Her abandoned lover 236 miles away my mother watches the phone a pot that will never boil again reaches for it, then withdraws. Back home, Bruce jerks off without me in his dark basement fantasizes about cocktease Karen decides my hand is not enough. Dad wants to see the body farm bones picked clean of worries free of cheats, brats and bills his 43rd birthday goes unmentioned. That night I dream the Sunsphere is a Magic 8 Ball in my hand I shake it hard, but the same message always floats to the surface: better not tell you now. At Lake Forest Plaza
– East New Orleans
The hotel is a skeleton, whitewashed ribs, its name a shadow etched into the wall like nuclear flash. Read Blvd. is just one ground zero, I-10 a gallery of ruin. My memory is long. I came here on the run from Chris, when he was alive and crazy, unwinding the double helix of us, embarrassed by his public madness. I wanted to sweat him out anonymously, heat cure for lingering malady. I could only afford the outskirts, but I had memorized the map so Canal, Vieux Carre, Carondelet, St. Charles, Garden District were second tongue, steeped in Tennessee, Truman, Ignatius and Julie Marsden in a red dress at the Olympus Ball. This is 1992, dumplin', 1992, not the Dark Ages. I learned to acclimate, even found charm in the Lake Forest Plaza Mall, its food court a cheap haven, when I could find pleasure in nothing. Chris and money burning holes in my pockets, finally going for broke – Maison Blanche, mon amour. On TV, helicopters hovered over the flooded mall, waist deep black water, tattered roof waving white flags and although it had been 10 years since I’d set foot there, my hand traced the places where I’d walked to shake Chris off. I should have called him then, when he was alive and not crazy. I know that now, driving past the place where the mall used to stand, swept off the earth as if some angry god’s hand descended and cleared a table. Xenomorphs
After break up and make up,
my parents took me to see Aliens. R rated treat for being a brave little soldier. No xenomorphs could match the double-jawed bite and acid tongue of my mother and father in protracted battle. I had put myself in stasis to stop my chest from bursting. As the reel unfurled Ripley’s nightmare, I shed another layer of skin, put one foot in the aisle, white-knuckled the armrests for dust off. Every man for himself. I was almost sixteen. The space between us would be vast. cleanskin
UK police term for a person who does not match expected terrorist profiles
When shoplifting is no longer a thrill, turn your attention to heaven, the promises of gold, riches and girls all waiting on the other side. Set aside chemistry, child rearing and cricket for they are false prophets, western sirens. They carry rucksacks into King’s Cross, these clean boys, these untouched boys, these led astray, almost men. Dirty yourself once and glory is forever. Your names will be on every television, put fellow passengers out of mind, their flesh the only barrier to your reward. What’s left of the corporeal will splatter on train carriage walls or fly hot-baked into the buildings around Tavistock Square. Oh, boys, the ones who sent you here will not tell you this finality, that you become residue that scatters in the wind or settles in gutters, not heavy enough to rise. |
Thank you for visiting Tweetspeak VerseWrights. © 2012-2018. VerseWrights. All rights reserved.: Acrostic Poems
Ballad Poems Catalog Poems Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems Epic Poetry Fairy Tale Poems Fishing Poems Funny Poems Ghazal Poems Haiku Poems John Keats Poems Love Poems Math, Science & Technology Poems Ode Poems Pantoum Poems Question Poems Rondeau Poems Rose Poems Sestina Poems Shakespeare Poems Ship, Sail & Boat Poems Sonnet Poems Tea Poems Villanelle Poems William Blake Poems Work Poems |
To translate this page:
|