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2008 – remembering the king

Saturday, August 29th, 2009

A double acrostic I wrote last year:

Tuesday this year brings your birthday. Each
hand claps another for the king. Adieu,
aerialist. Once the wire held your feet down;
now snapped ends lie touching air. We, awestruck,
karaoke your memory appassionato.

Your rhinestones at the last were off,
obbligato forgotten, your gyrations occluded by flab;
ubiquity buried you.

Vagabondage maybe was your curse. Your
entropic rushes between snapshots ran…
ran down. Your trips to the stage became ennui
yawning, a hunk of hunk of burnin’

mediocrity. This year your deathday will fall
unnoticed on a Saturday. Your outgo
crammed into “this day in 1977…” TV,
having electric memory, might run a tape.

Posted in Alvin, Poetry | 1 Comment »

Ashes: First Kiss

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Oh Patty. Red
hair and freckles, and that secret
smile. I remember, under the table
on the covered patio, stacks of old
linoleum turned it into a private cave.

Would a kiss be cool, like
an ice cube on the tongue? Your lips
were warm and yielding. I was falling
into butter and cream.

I thought we were forever, but
by the fifth grade we were done.
Do you remember?

Posted in Alvin, Ashes | 3 Comments »

my father’s son

Monday, August 17th, 2009

I came, a random derivative.
One sperm
threw an elbow and so, I am
my father’s son.

His hackneyed jabs
at the edges of things
always bounced awry, and so
do I.

Always with the half-formed plans
of drunken imagination, he loved
procrastination until he died.
The barman cried.

I trace his steps in cool
darkness. I stand thirsty,
my father’s son. His blood
is the sound of whiskey on ice.

Posted in Alvin, Poetry | 3 Comments »

the long bark

Monday, August 17th, 2009

There is a photograph. Two boys stand
in straw hats, their arms draped
over each other’s shoulders, freckled
faces grinning into the camera. Behind them,
I remember, is a leaning barn, and an ancient orchard
scattered through pines. I can still feel
the summer heat blowing across the creek,
picking up the fragrance of tadpoles and rattlesnakes.
The older boy is ten, and is me.
My brother John is eight. He has already lived
more years than he has left. (more…)

Posted in Alvin, Ashes, Carlie, Personal History, Poetry | 6 Comments »

Geographic Anatomy

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

A stranger to geography, I woke
to find the world in me. I do not know
how it sneaked in, but every mirror shows
I’ve been transformed. I think myself a joke
of God. My alloyed blood is Amazon
mixed up with Nile. Baobab forests squat
across my face, those eyebrows frame a knot:
the orphaned hills of southern Lebanon.
My English hand is swiping at the scruff
of Northern Ireland, blowing angry breath.
Divided heart, Jerusalem, courts death
while Sarajevo rumbles in my gut.
At first amused, I now fear I’ll succumb
as Abel falls to Cain ad nauseum.

Posted in Alvin, Poetry, Sonnets | 3 Comments »

I Don’t Feel so Good

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

My lower intestine
is locked in clandestine
disgraceful embrace
with a biotic case
of questionable
gestation.

My gallbladder belches
brown steam downstream.

My liver is a bag of dog shit
burning on Crabapple’s porch.

My catawampus tongue
spits alliterative assonance,
a philological enema
gushing soft soap.

Go away.
The room is occupied.

Posted in Alvin, Poetry | 3 Comments »

Beach Shaman

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

This poem is inspired by a man who lived near us on Sauvie Island, and who walked the beach every day with his Dog, Little Bear.

William walks the beach to look for feathers.
He holds each one against the sky, then runs
its vanes between pinched fingers
before he puts it in his pouch. Most
are from gulls, but sometimes wind
sends eagle feathers down to the sand.

Shells rattle in his pouch as well,
with clicking bits of bone and twisted
sticks of driftwood, river-washed and weirdly shaped.
William glues these things together, lashes them
with strips of leather. “Fetishes,” he says.
“I sell them on the Internet.”

Blond hair has gone to gray on sunburned skin.
“Sometimes you have to quit your job
to give your spirit room to move and tell you
God is everywhere.” He rents a tumbled trailer
down the beach, pays with prophecy
and his disability check. “It’s all in letting go
of Earth and all this shit.”

He slips a hand inside the pouch,
pulls a sandy feather out,
holds it to his ear and nods.

Posted in Alvin, Poetry, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Ashes: Sidewalk

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

Even steven

There are fourteen stairs
up to my porch. When climbing,
I put each foot down in the same
place. My feet are even.
Even Steven

When I walk I count
the times my feet come down
without landing on the cracks. Sometimes
only four or five steps go by before
a foot finds a crack. But when stride
and sidewalk synchronize, I go
more. Once I went a hundred
fourteen steps. If you subtract
ten squared, that leaves fourteen. There are
fourteen stairs up to my porch. The door
sill counts.

I don’t know how
to capitalize titles. They taught me
to use capitals on the significant words,
and lower case on the minor ones. I think
all words are significant. No words are significant.
I capitalize every other word. It’s only fair.
Even Steven

I count by sevens in my head. Evan Seven.
The second number is fourteen.

Posted in Alvin, Ashes, Poetry | 4 Comments »

Do you want them back, or should I post them one by one?

Monday, July 20th, 2009

Hey Arthur,

I found a couple of your notebooks written during your highschool days. Some pages are poems, some essays, some song lyrics. These notebooks were in the back of a cupboard at Dad’s place; I found them when I was clearing out the junk. So referencing the post title, what would you like me to do? :)

Posted in Alvin | 5 Comments »

The Corn Feast

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

This post is the result of a game played with some of my poet friends. We each found poems online in a foriegn language. We each then “translated” the found poems into English. We did this not by actual translation, but by writing English lines inspired by associations in the sounds of the original poem. (I confess, however, that my poem was Spanish, of which I know a few words, so “casa” inspired “house,” etc.) I chose the poem “VEM PARA FICAR.”

Here is the original poem: (more…)

Posted in Alvin, Poetry, Song Lyrics | 1 Comment »

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