AFTER A FIFTEEN HOUR WORKDAY
Driving home I notice
That the stars are green,
My hands are pale blue
And the streets are yellow
Like that old brick road.
The moon is really made of cheese.
I can smell it through the fog.
I get to my place, my key
Melts into the lock of
The front door like hot
Wax.
I get inside, turn on the
Shower and snakes come
Tumbling out of the
Nozzle.
My tongue is covered in sand.
My dandruff falls, the size of
Hailstones upon a floor that
Moves under me, shifting plates
In four directions.
I try to read poetry and the
Words scatter from the pages
And run down the side of the
Table legs like army ants,
All wrapped up in each other.
I stare at the empty pages.
So I go to bed
And when I do
With my aching legs and my
Hallucinations
The mattress snaps inward on me
Like a bear trap
And I float in the sleeplessness
Of the over-tired for a while,
Just a broken bit of almost nothing
But at least the aching in my legs
Has begun to subside
And, folded up in this mattress,
I can’t smell the moon anymore.
BELA LUGOSI’S DRACULA
I think of loneliness
As I sit here alone
Typing along to the music,
My fingers less than nimble
And I think of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula
Pacing his halls, ascending and descending
The staircases of his Transylvanian castle,
Reciting every utterance like poetry,
Knowing all his words, all his looks
Meant to hypnotize some delicious
Young ingénue
Into his arms,
Their necks just tantalizing inches from his fangs.
He devoured these lovelies and then
He was remorseful,
Not comforted with the fact
The spider has to be a spider
And his job is to trap
The unwary fly.
Vlad the Impaler,
He murdered many, impaling their heads
In the name of Jesus
In order to consolidate his power
But Lugosi’s Dracula
Did what he did in order to survive.
Still,
His best line was this –
“To die, to be really dead
Must be…glorious”,
Dreaming of the stake
While going for
The neck.
I think of loneliness.
I dream of the stake
As I go
For the neck.
I LIKE WHEN IT RAINS IN THE DAYTIME
I like when it rains in the daytime
And it’s dark but not so dark
As the night.
All of the drinking glasses have been shattered
So I drink with my cupped hands.
The windows all remain.
This room is sealed and climate controlled.
I’ve only heard two Miles Davis albums.
I’ve never been to Las Cruces, New Mexico.
I’ve never been wanted in equal measure to my want
But I like when it rains in the daytime
And it’s dark but not so dark
As the night
And that is happening right now
So I sit and feel the vibrations of the wind
And prepare to listen to Sketches of Spain.
If you live long enough,
You can tick off more boxes
Than you imagined.