Car park in the blanket of darkness.
Highlife fights the night.
Felix checks time.
“Twenty-three girls now,” he says.
Between eighteen and twenty-five, good.
Oseh pockets phone.
“Seven more. Thirty will do.”
Die-hard girls to convince the scared.
“Well-protected on this journey,”
Felix lies, or believes.
Motel lights hide trafficking.
John’s house is one prison.
This car park is the next.
Couples retreat
Interlude Fulfill
Honeymoon feast
Love in the after
Intimates upon intimate
Caress and discover
Loving style
Through the atmosphere
Love encounter
Eyes aligned heart
Romance to the highest
Captive love shout
Love conquers all
Satisfaction to the love crave
Ultimate love
Kiss enchanted
Love theory
Being its own theory
Love’s finest moments
Love story with its own maneuvering narration.
I am in bed
in the hell hole
of North Charleston
in a motel
on Easter evening
and the rain
has come
and the tipsy time
of night
has begun.
Tomorrow,
I will drive home
and try, try again
to be the woman,
mother, teacher, wife
that I am expected
to be.
Tonight:
bring on
the popcorn,
great comedy
and small mistakes
all contained
in my room,
in a cheap motel
where nothing
illuminating
will be happening tonight.
Jesus is dead.
He resurrected.
God knows
that when I’m dead
I’m dead.
“As God is my witness,
I will never be hungry again!”
Vivian Leigh.
“”After all,
tomorrow
is another day!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
peach pit spat on cracked asphalt~
abandoned payphone hums,
one dime short of salvation.
Need a boss Need a jerk
Need something to make your ass
Get up and work
I can inspire you for sure
But I refuse to retire you
I refuse now dont ask me how
Dont ask me too many times
I dont wanna change my mind
But your so strong with my rhymes
Yust just 3 times sicker than the rest
Ill put on my best to go to town
I think I know you now
I think I know how it goes down
I think I know things you nowMaybe I do Maybe I dont
Maybe that just the way it goes
Maybe back in my Hay Day
Back at the party at the motel 6
Well leave the light on
Well keep up the lighter switch baby
Well ditch the relief and relive it in disbelief baby
Missbehaving, never live like a slave
Always swim on the reef baby
Causing were just finding reno,
I bet we find las vegas
No sense Begging us
We already give it all up for rap
We already see no fiucks
And give even less than that
Im like let me in the cage
I see the slave, but im up to bat
I got a few choice words for that
Ill see you at the Christmas shack
Ill Play santa and You play the bay thats got back
And Ill play the baby thats not afraid of that
You need a beat you better call dre
Im using my beats like all day
Time is vertical here,
it travels red-eyed in elevators,
it is an out of sequence conversation
you have with an ice bucket
it drops hair and lint into air-ducts,
then spins them into dreams.
In the morning,
perched on a sagging bed,
one sock in hand,
drinking sour wine from a plastic cup,
you close a suitcase
that bulges from two-days' worth
of motel-time.
You wonder how to leave
this wrinkled room,
with the same face you arrived with,
shrug,
move on out of one box
onto another.
in skimpy short shorts
she marches into breakfast
no eyes go up
I had forgotten
the immodesty of youth
for two seconds
it’s a public place
another wears pajamas
and bedroom slippers
motel lobby in arkansas
close to the crystal bridges
young man with tattoos walks to large creamer
he begins to pump creamer into coffee
sees me and indicates I go ahead of him.
Ii shake my head ‘no”
tell him to go ahead, he will be quicker than me
two polite strangers making conversation
in a motel lobby in arkansas
I sit down to eat my breakfast
watching people sauntering in and out
four children skip past, giggling like faeries.
they could be from new mexico or virginia
There are license plates outside from several states
I marvel that people are vacationing
in the middle of the week in arkansas
Time here is measured
by the lint-clogged resurrections
of air-conditioners.
All of us have had to learn
to shout past our souls.
Dulled minds are churned awake.
Fractured nights slumber on
beneath the rocky rumble
of nearby ice-machines.
The ‘Marigold’
is unmarried, divorced and abandoned,
but for those still not seeking lonely
there are midnight do-overs.
Behind the days horizon
a desert sky still thirsts
in the mouths of discarded shoes.
Firey sunsets melt
a stale residue of bedside booze.
The Marigold is mad, it was built that way,
its identical rows of doors
are designed to be portals
to yet more distant parking lots.
We internees prefer our rooms
to be dead to the daylight,
though every night
they will always revert
to storage units
for long imagined - much better times.
Sightseeing all day
daybreak on the go travel
just to lay my head
silver birch
.. lining road
…. ghost trees
…. snow teeth
.. mighty throat
eerie lurch
gaping mouth
.. swallow cars
… white lines
… road signs
.. battle scars
deadly route
winding neck
.. asphalt beast
… grab all
… free fall
.. metal feast
longing break
coming rain
.. motel night
… hum sound
… calm down
.. rested fright
drive again
Notes
Syllabic verse poem, three syllables to AB, 2 syllables to CC, overall pattern of ABCCBA mirror rhyme.
With plates and words in anger flying
My wife and I now deem it best
To cease all our screaming and crying
As I check into the Motel Goodrest
I arrive and plop down for a blissful night
But for two hours a car’s engine revs; varoom!
Above me screeching shouts; a lover’s fight
And the loud thumping of the bed in the next room
A frantic eeeouu; a cayote cat snack?
Now the zzz-zzz of a neon sign on the blink
If I had any brains I’d start to pack!
But I sigh aaah; into slumber I sink
Sun shines through the drapes and onto the wall
There’s splish-splashing in the motel pool
It was a calm, restful night after all
Yipee! Now everything’s cool!
I hear a loud clomp-clomp; what now?
There’s a moo so low and mournful
Through the window peers the eyes of a cow
Looking a bit weary and scornful
I pack and flee as if for my life
Passing the cow whose bell clangs and claps
I check out and meekly return to my wife
And spend the weekend taking naps
7/22/22
Written in Onomatopoeia
He built motels
across America
loving the land so much
he could sleep anywhere
on her
in her
cheaply,
predictably.
Anywhere was home to him.
Home was not special
but same.
Same bars of soap,
same color wrappers.
Same towels.
Same smells almost.
Same views.
Home across
the human spirit
of imaginary states.
Just outside streets
with tree names.
And out of this
I arrived
from love created for each single
completed
square space
spilling forward,
motel to motel,
born by American Motel Woman,
timeless builder,
faceless
with no Kodachrome
to pin down my origin
or capture his passion.
Pick-up truck front seat cradles,
beer for sedative,
K-Mart toys,
all-night pharmacies.
His gift-
I belong anywhere
nowhere,
owe nothing,
know anyone
no one,
am rooted in spackle
drywall
and cheap two-by-fours
and need only decide
which illusions
to put up
and which to take down.
The motel room
It was on fire last night
45 outside
Burning fierce within
The heat
The passion
It permeated
I thought I could contain it
But it spread to me
The aircon working overtime
But still the fire burnt ferociously
Was waiting for alarms to sound
Red trucks to show up
Knocking on the door
To say
Shut up
The motel room
It was on fire last night
Rosemary does a lady proud.
If not for the faint aroma,
as nicotine and soft music
deliver a quiet invitation.
Her heart opens with the
door and allows a feeling
to grow,
a candle to be lit.
With the draw of the night,
a closing door,
she sets fire to
her insides.
The hint of desire is washed away.
Eclectic heartbreaks, but then,
maybe just daring lust
has paved such a road.
Beneath this roof is a world,
used to recreate-
a feeling found only
in dreams before.
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