Driftwood

Father,
with a life jacket on,
the waves ride upon us.
Mother is lost to the sea.
She sits staring out at the horizon
muttering scissors and wings
to the dolphins.
How strange to see the dead so very close.
Once we three swam in unison,
a six-legged-octopus, skimming along
the ocean floor,
breathing out and in
with the tide.
Now we are hobbled,
drowning in our own mouth,
smelling of broken kisses
and twisted coral.
A bleeding tangle,
breaking,
like driftwood gone by.

Pecan Pie and Dirty Clothes

They are in bed already.
He, asleep in his dirty clothes.
She, nodding off to some tired game show
she has watched for years.
Both in twilight.
Both fading faster than Sunday’s pecan pie.
Out of reach.
Out of reach.
How can I?
No, I can not.
I can only watch.
I have struggled for too long
trying to make it better.
Trying to make them
something
they are not,
nor ever were.
Still, I keep trying,
banging my head against the proverbial wall,
trying to wake them,
when all they want to do is sleep.
“Sleep is death,” I say.
But they can not hear me.
They are both deaf.

The New Neighbors

Two doors down they are moving in.
They showed up yesterday with their lawn mowers,
and their hedge clippers,
and their dreadlocks,
and their beat-up white Buick with the New York tags.
Today, a giant moving truck appeared on the street
full of all of their stuff.
For months the house had sat vacant.
The hedges grown up so high
you couldn’t even see the front of the house anymore.
Overgrown vines everywhere.
It had gotten so bad,
the neighbors were starting to snoop around.
So were the investors,
in their shiny cars,
hoping to grab a foreclosure.
Now, they’ll have to go elsewhere,
because this house is going to be occupied from a woman from Staten Island
and her kids.
Seems it was her granddaddy’s house and
now it’s going to be hers
and she just found out about it.
Personally,
I’m glad she’s going to get to keep it.
I only hope it stays as quiet over there as it did when it
was empty.

The Dragon Lady

There are dragons in the sky.
There
in the puffy clouds,
behind the windows of mangoes and beans.
Seeded and ready.
December dragons
flying in snow
hoisted above skyscrapers like heavy towels
rising up into the darkness of winter.
Funny dragons with tongues rich in aspirations.
Dragons of wine and loneliness.
Dragons of wool and red
stealing glasses and oxygen from
old ladies below.
If I were a dragon
I’d be yellow.
A banana of sorts,
ready to peel away
my metal sweater
and expose my pink nipples
to the world.
I would let the sun remember me.
Touch me.
Fry me,
until my skin were as tough as it had been when my scales
were intact.
I would breathe fire into the sky
and light up the night,
light up the jails,
light up the sea,
light up the poor and the forgotten
for all to remember.
Then,
I would breathe myself a sunset to lie upon
and wait for the earth to
begin
again.

The Mediocre

I am tired of incompetence.
Little nitwits who have nothing better to do than
to play games.
The biters,
the locked door inhabitants who scream foul
when they are the ones fouling others.
The crumb catchers who walk through this life
with bad hair and weak noses
ready to spoil the dreams of others.
Who do they think they are?
These reptiles wiggling with mediocrity,
carrying their pitchforks of hate,
forever tied to their nine to five jobs
like sea urchins sucking on the bottom of a ship’s hull.
What do they know about stars and worlds beyond their Buick’s and Pintos?
What beauty do they bring to this world?
They are content to shuffle through their lives with vision as narrow as a snail’s,
dragging their trail of slime behind them
everywhere they go,
so everyone can see where they’ve been.
I say,
put them in a bag,
put them all in a bag and shake them out.
No one could tell the difference between them.
They’d all be a pathetic shade of beige.
Beige.
No scent to them at all.
As indistinguishable from one another as sawdust.
Yes,
perhaps the most reprehensible in this world
are the mediocre.
I say,
no more shall I try to walk among them.
No more shall I try to fit in.
I am not one of them.
I could never be.
I know what it feels like to touch greatness,
to write
words so eloquent that I can barely breathe.
I know what it feels like
to hold something larger
in my hand
than a timesheet.

Dark Haired Rose

How long can I be the mole?
The dark-haired-drone
hiding in the rose bush
recanting my horror.
O mother,
who forsake me,
where were your arms?
Where was your touch
when I fell
and needed the earth?
Were you far away
in some concert hall
playing your violin,
and singing your tune of despair
in another’s bed?
Or were you frolicking in Paris
eating beef bourguignon
and fries?
What does it matter now?
Too many years have gone by.
The cat has caught it’s prey
and now must only wait for it to die.
As for me, I have died too many deaths already.
I must pull myself off the kitchen floor
and dance a new dance.
One of sky,
and stars,
and sun,
where the wax is fresh and the tiles are clean
and I can rock and slide all night long.

Escape From Lowry

She is convinced she is being poisoned.
“It is in the coffee and tea, “ she says.
“They give it to us to keep us sedated,” she says,
“but it won’t work on me, I’m getting out of here.”
I keep trying to convince her that she is not in jail.
She is in assisted living and she is free to come and go
as she pleases.
But she doesn’t believe me.
She is still planning her escape.
She has it all figured out.
She is going to sneak
out of her room,
walk down the hall,
take the elevator to the first floor,
walk past the front desk,
and
then go out on to the street,
where there are shops
and restaurants
and people
who can still
drive.