Shared atmosphere vapor trails in blank stares across a room so crowdedly desolate.
Always there, always filthy. Slideshows flicker like the magnavox eyes shuffle lid to lid, moment to moment as time fleets like dust shimmering in my heart. Always filthy.
Brought out of the infectiously swollen cardiac arrest, through the waters, so thick drowning with due care. Peeled back potential baking like hot glue amongst the weight of glory that was never there.
Love against the glass ceiling swimming above while the sharks swim below. Sinking into the black and blue that ensues carbonated lungs scream alone in the waves below a somber rock a bye into the phonetics, into the pride less afternoons wasted in silence.
Alone in the drink as all the hands let go awaiting always filthy waiting to sink out of mind and out of sight.
Daytime ghosts
Windows bring light that exhales a dead-end world
Softest intentions drown to sleep at the bottom of shallow wells
Neon memories bubble to life the static scores that bodies hide
Mouthed confessions of loveless intimacy that knows no swirls of radiance
Soft embrace of the life above from the cold souls that swim below
Hugless lovers reclining in the bleak blue edges of summer lights hung on horizons
That never knew the scores composed from names that never met
Fainted in pleasures unknown to sender as the tape decks click B-sides search for depth
Tears for two at an empty diner booth that is abandoned along travels to far off destinations
Reservations for taped confessions of vows never thought, as the food comes shared aloud
Relief by numbers in collections of good vibes, better company and lives well lived
High tides come and go as wells stagnate the fishtank below
Lover, Lover
The nighttime sings our names
Ballads of the figurative Juliet
Radios hiss hearts spilled the shadows hide naked ambition stilled
Neglected emotional hills wafts through valleys of past lives
Karmic backlogs review their closing percentages
Futures flood the floors hold the line between fate and tears
Shadow people alone in the twilight
Illuminated letters, walls woed to sleep
Dreams from the shoreline as phantom vessels waltz on the silver linings
Postures of stable footing, top of the line, kings and queens of value
Thumbs circle the knuckles, bone kisses bone, the familiar taste of home
Haunted hems lines explored in tribal pursuits
Please keep me waiting
The specter of tender frames evaporates
Morning ghosts caress the memory in travel
Neckties versus deadlines
Power brokered, breath that betrays the dream
Folded napkins
Cocktail napkin epitaphs
Check please
Yesterday, it was the tortoise and the hare.
Today, another unlikely pair -
an alley cat, a stolen car,
and a mouse on the lam who wouldn't get far -
two double crossers, one prayer, "God willing,
all I ask, 'a drive-by killing'".
Subtle tee preferred the company of those in sweet repose
His presence needless to say, an easiness would impose
We tried to engage him but this seemed to enrage him
So we settled for making him the subject of this prose.
Blazing humidity & amazing stupidity
In a lather the palaver rather pathetic
Erasing hopes fans gazing splenetic
Starc’s all round pink ball cupidity
Never clever with willow or leather
Wide wild wafts at end of our tether
Snicked off again just a little feather
Helter skeltering in sweltering weather
The Aussies strengths of line & lengths
Our bowlers retort let’s go wide & short
Flopped blame copped catches dropped
No defense or pretence was just nonsense
Not just below par couldn’t wouldn’t spar
Which is why we say ta ra and au revoir
To the Ashes at our bete noir “the Gabbatoir”
piercing gaze
inviting mouth
gestural noir scene
On misted streets of fog and pain
With lamp post lighted thoughts of rain
The city, bleak in heart’s demise
Is cold, as tears now taunt my eyes
To walk in disappointment’s dawn
The streets grow weary as I yawn
Though every life must sometimes shade
I contemplate decisions made
And though we all know things must end
And good things break and others bend
It’s hard to fathom graying skies
When promises are often lies
Yet, something always fills the crack
A light that somewhere has my back
To lift the fog of morning chill
And somehow reinstate my will
It's been a while; I took a beer from the bar
and sat in a booth
which obscured the view, the world
and myself.
I wanted to be a young man
needing a young woman, but the head of the pint
soaked my mind into a quickly foaming reality
that I had to watch go flat.
I kind of slouched in the seat,
a tired-eyed server asked me
"if I was Okay”?
I dry mouthed a thin-lipped grin,
she looked away,
maybe she was avoiding a sight
in my sore eyes.
I ordered fries, to change the subject
or distract - not sure which.
It was dark by then
my reflection in a window
was too much to comprehend.
Slowly I drained the bottom of the glass
of any further meaning.
I felt better.
The fries had not yet arrived,
maybe they never did.
I eased myself out of one empty space
to enter another.
I had to try to walk away
from an old movie in my head.
The dame's confession shook me to my core
Her life, just like a script, she did implore
With more emotion than a dame should show
She spoke of feelings that only she would know
She said her words were just a mere facade
That true emotion could not be a charade
It spoke to her in ways no one could tell
Stronger than the sound of ringing church bells
Sometimes a kitten, sometimes a beast untamed
Her emotions knew no bounds, could not be tamed
Locked up inside, a prisoner of her soul
Her emotions, like a rabid dog, took control
But in her heart, a mountain peak would rise
With feelings so pure, it lit up the skies
Most times she stayed in the middle ground
With emotions that could neither be lost nor found
So if you dare to speak, choose your words with care
For she could feel them, as if they were there
Emotions, they spoke to her more clearly than tongue
And any written word, they spoke even stronger.
:: 04.12.2023 ::
With a rose between teeth
red mouth calling me
your look reminds me of cinema noir
An affectatious arsonist announced,
“Big buildings’ burning brilliance brightens best!”
casually cites conflagration counts,
darkly deals destruction, designer-dressed.
Extinguishing each edifice enflamed,
first-rate forensic findings frequent failed.
Grievous, grim goings, ‘geniously gamed;
Hurried happenings, hastily high-tailed.
Incendiary incidents ignite
jewel-filled junkets, jazzed jalopy jaunts.
Kindling’s kittling kiss: knave’s known kryptonite,
Lapping, leaping licks, luscious, lit lavants.
Madness! Marauding mercilessly more,
Nefarious, nursing next novel noir.
—————
kittle - birth, excitement
lavant - old English, stream
The night was rainy, hot and humid. It was the kind of night that populates steamy, black and white, noir movies where someone is murdered. The stars seemed reduced to sloshing behind moldy gray clouds, as damp and listless as seaweed in the surf.
“Let’s go see a movie,” Sophy suggested, as she brought up the Fandango website on the 70” smart TV. This quickly drew a brouhaha of excited interest.
“Ooo!, Bullet Train,” Anna said. “Elvis!” Lisa gushed.
“Where the Crawdads sing!” Sunny gasped.
“Super pets!” Leong declared, pointing - producing groans all around - THAT was a no-go.
“Maverick!” I said. “I could do that,” Sunny agreed, “he’s crazy, but I’m a Cruise fan.” she added.
In the end we decided to do a movie marathon with “Maverick” that night and “Elvis”, “Bullet Train” and “Where the Crawdads sing,” on Sunday.
As we ordered our treats at the theater concession stand, a tall, skinny, spotted, teenage boy attempted to flirt with Lisa. He smiled at her as confidently as a lizard, but sagged, like a shirt whose coat hanger was removed, when she pointedly ignored him.
Cigarette smoke and cheap perfume
linger in a dance of remembrance
An unmarried aunt who clerked in a store
her rummage sale pearls yellow with age
wrapped around my memories and my fascinations
I was eleven years old when she died
and I heard my parents say: “Floss was never really happy”
But to me, she always smiled and took a
nickel from her shiny black plastic purse when it
was time for us to leave…
putting the coin in my hand and a big red lipstick
kiss on my cheek
Looking back, I think it was my parents who were
unhappy with who she was
There were whispers of past husbands and
maybe a child—but no one ever talked about it out loud
In a black and white 1950’s world Aunt Florence
was bigger than their disappointments
Living in the shadows of the post war mid-century
a ‘loser’ could slip into one and hang on
She has outlived almost everything
I was encouraged to forget
and her life has become rich in my memory
—growing richer with time
(Lansdowne Pennsylvania: 1959)
I am behind
the large white wheel of an Oldsmobile.
I am a page ripped from a Raymond Chandler novel.
Clipped words curl close to my lips as hot as ash.
Dreamy eyes are cold tonight, there will be death
at the side of a desert back-road.
Revolvers will be shaken until blood spills from a mouth.
I park carefully until the cars white-walls
appear at the four corner’s of the night.
I am on a case, another Hollywood sex scandal.
I sit there smoking until dawn mists
swim into the valley.
Speeding squad cars blast past me;
the City Dicks are tough around here
and most are on the 'take.'
I let the engine idle wondering where
this all fits into a half-written plot?
“Lets move” I drawl to my suit rumpled self,
easing the rim of my fedora over weary eyes,
heading now to where flash-bulbs expose
what we do when the stars turn blue.
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