POEM A DAY 2019

Paint Me a Puerto Rico

never will get around to finishing this one, so.

the hampton inn on carondelet street
is where i said “i love you” last night to

Gifting

I am better
at giving gifts than I am at receiving them
I open each
taking a quick look before moving on to the next
hoping to look appreciative
with smiles and thanks you’s
but inside a little disappointed
that each gift isn’t more special
more thought out
more unique for me
I watch him open his presents
it takes longer than me
as he spends time carefully experiencing each one
living in the moment
with each gift I’ve given
I wonder how my gift receiving experience can be more like his

We finally remembered to have Book Club for the first time in a year

We Remember an Old Table

What is time? I ask Andrew. Doctors have
opened his skull to see minuscule gears,
boulders, sperm whales. The hour hand, glaciers.
The minute hand, to take out a piece of
the brain, where time is forged by measurement,
the intense craving for calibration.

Leaves do twirl
to music when
seasons change.

Andrew says if someone's slow they're just slow.
The second hand, preoccupied with the next
next, the thinnest thin, the newest new.
Earth's archaic rotation. "Our family
never called it anything." Slow means
being built out of a little more time.

CLEANING

Rough tongue on silk fur.
Private world on bed or chair...
Black fuzz left behind.

Dovecote

All these little dove holes,
in a hive,
a cote,
negative space,
tombs revealed,
where did dove
knot out the comb of ceremony.
I don't know if we ever ate dove
and I'm happy not to
autodidact, since
if you didn't know something,
you just didn't know, right, and
I know about puffins and eating them,
but doves and the weekly battle even,
the need to pass them on,
tag them with affirmations
and desire,
watch them puff out and away,
helium balloons and all.
The dovecote was my school sign,
it said more about what it is
to house,
than to actually go up there,
comb through plumage left behind,
find the furtive exchange of wrappers,
gum,
broken bottles,
gem stones that glisten once a day,
for the doves that remained.

Pop Punk Powerhouses playlist

So few joys outweigh
Thrashing around the den to
2000s pop punk

Sometimes all I want
Is to drive thru Allentown
Blasting We the Kings

It's embarrassing
I'm not going to pretend
That it's any good

Middle school was weird
Plaid skirts and sex in the pews
Remember that time

Peter Grodziak
The junior who played Jesus
In Living Stations

Said he wanted to
Fuck my brain out or something
I would have let him

I feel trapped again
And I'm angry about it
And I guess that's why

Blink 182
Has reached deep inside my soul
And found my Anthem

We felt so lonely
Those so few years we were told
To wait and wonder

Lineage