Thursday, February 25, 2010

They wait outside like it's christmas eve and they haven't
gotten their children presents yet, or their wives.
Their usually drunk, or stoned-always smelling
of the night before, of cigarettes and sweat and the outside.
They race up the stairs to the computers,
where they sit there for hours, wasting, staring at screens,
looking up websites of naked women just to have that
feeling again, inside their bones.
They've been caught touching themselves but can
you blame them?
They can't do this on the street or in the shelter,
so they come here.
They say hello to me everyday,
even when I don't want them to,
and even if they don't want to.
We've become family, almost
 like at a bar but I without a drink in my right
and a cigarette in my left.
They talk too loud and leave their malt liquor beer cans
inbetween Nin and Rimbaud, emptied but i'm sure
they've left drops on the ground, showing
respect for the forgotten writers.
They follow the girls through the rows of knowledge-
sometimes trying to show them some off the street.
Their just lonely and desperate, I tell myself.
Their just human beings.
Ones without homes and families and food and sex
The last closing annoucement is at fifteen til
and they slowly follow each other out the door
like some funeral procession.
They tell me goodnight, they wave, they look-
I think the only hope they have in them is that
tomorrow I'll be here waiting for them, watching
in a new outfit with the same red lipstick
wondering when they'll read a book.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Let's Get Lost

The first time I heard Chet Baker
i was driving in my car on my way to meet a boy
who wasn't you,
but it was you who told me who Baker was,
and it was you I thought about as these songs
were sung,
and it was he who knew
that it wasn't him I was thinking of
as i drove around
listening to these sad songs
about the thrill being gone
and not knowing what love was
and now just yesterday i was doing the same
 minus the boy but with a man of sixty-six
on our way to the grocery store
just helping an old friend out
but thinking of a new love.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Answer If You Must

question if I might--
what all do you carry
in your backpack at night?
hopes and dreams-
hip hop and weed-
lust and a bedsheet?
I woke up and the sun was actually shining, the sun in my mind's window. The colors look bright again and the jazz plays free. Confessions.

I tell you that I've written poems about you. Poems that speak louder than my small voice. Poems that only mean things to me, I suppose. Poems. Poems. You promised me poems.

Waking up with bruises on my arms and legs and stomach. Those are always the best times, when you wake up and you have these bruises on you and they fade slowly from their blues and greens and yellows, slowly to let you hold on to those nights and you wake up and the sun is shining.

And you wake up. Smiles, miles, oceans full of blue eyes. Then those needles in your heart because you know, you just know- this isn't real and it's not nice and it's just something to do to pass the time.

And the time is moving at the speed of light. Slow it down with your thrust and slow it down with your hands inching themselves inside me. And slow it down just because you can.
Men dressed up as wolves
I, the white sheep
prancing and strutting
not ready for their pounce
not ready and not wanting.
Oh hunter, will you please bring your gun?