Verbal Straightjacket

Like all poets, I write about experiences and observations from my real life. My poems vary dramatically, from poems of pure image to ever-cliché thoughts on the meaning of life. Some of them are upbeat and funny while others are dark and serious. If I've done my job right, you'll find one that makes sense to you.

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Paradise

High above the streets
far beneath the painted clouds,
I find my paradise.

Scale the crackling shingles
to an island inside a sunset
where the steep ground turns to gold
and the shadows bathe me in cool violet.

Ravens ride the breeze and circle
the trees under my feet.
Kneel to watch new green leaves unfurl -
a deep, warm green -
green like her eyes.

Sitting together, watching the stars
shimmering like her smile in the dark.
My paradise, the two of us
hiding above the world

where the rooftops kiss heaven.

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Salsa

Latin fever burns the soles of my shoes
struggling to keep the frantic tempo.
Salsa beat drums into my bones.

Left foot forward, right foot back,
unbutton my collar to let the sweat boil away.
Salsa beat fans the flames of my soul.

Lost in the music, master the mambo,
throw in a cha-cha for flair, spin the girl.
Salsa beat starts my pulse racing.

Cuban heat crackles on the crowded dance floor,
hold her close, eyes locked, song crescendos, one last dip.
Salsa beat is the spice of life.

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Sweat in the Street
After A. Van Jordan

Sweat pours off the shoulders of the night
in greasy drops that stick to the sidewalk.
puddle around my feet,
soak my socks.

Soul-heavy air clings to my fingertips,
trailing in the gutter
with the other restless perfectionists,
missed deadlines,
abandoned desires.

Sweat pours off the shoulders of the thick, gray hour
between night and day.
The city is hot and foul in the back alleys
with the passed-out homeless and last call vagrants.
The street is a mirror where the artists drown.

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Soldier of Freedom

(Note: There are two sides to every story...)

A homemade bomb
Ticks under his dust-blue sedan
Parked on a Baghdad
Side street, where an IED
Crater smiles up at God.

His hands slip
Off the trigger
With raw human sweat,
The same as any other man's sweat,
Even the sweat of an American
Crusader.

How much more innocent life must stain
The streets diesel fire red?
When are there too many body bags
Overflowing the dumpsters?
Funeral bells toll
Two thousand
Sand-filled helmets.

He thinks of the coming nightfall,
The sky a puddle of innocent Iraqi blood
Flecked with diamond dust.
Retribution for his act of faith
Will break down dead-
Bolted doors,
Drag families into the street,
Shoot the mothers and fathers.

He thinks of his son,
Three years old.
He must do this for his baby's future.
Freedom is priceless,
His life is not.
He will make it count.
Death will bring the promise
Of life carried on the blinding wings of angles
For his people.

A Humvee encases
Four American boys.
Red, white, and blue country music
Pulses through their veins.

He grips the trigger,
Wonders whether his cause is just,
If his son will look at an old Polaroid
Of his freedom-fighting father
And understand.

He presses the button with a calloused thumb
For his son, his wife, his country.
Dust-blue shrapnel and sand-smoothed
Dog tags sprinkle the sacred steps
Of a sun dried Mosque
Like a summer storm that will never
Bear rain.
Only dust.

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Appetite Lost

He's the person you can't avoid
staring at: bulging cheeks,
greasy hands,
and a stomach like he's cleaned-out
twelve all-you-can-eat buffets
before he even got here.
Digestion is his passion.

He glares at a preschooler
in mismatched moccasins
eying his slop of heaven.
He wipes globs of ketchup marooned on his chins
onto the sleeve of his Mountain Dew-stained,
turquoise Miami Dolphins sweatshirt.
He can eat for seven minutes without breathing.

Tiny slivers of potato gleam
with liquefied lard.
He grabs them by the slick, mushy handful,
closes his eyes with each savory bite.
His mouth is so packed it is unable to close,
showcasing the wet, spongy fries
dissolving in his saliva.
You can hear his teeth grind like a garbage disposal.
He swallows them and scoops up more
starchy victims.

You wrench your horror-stricken eyes
back to your ¼ pound cheeseburger with extra mayo
and push its aroma of bubbling fat away.
You may never eat again.

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The King Has Left the Building

I'm sleeping in a railroad station
In dusty Los Angeles.
Waiting for the midnight train
To Memphis.

I'm So Lonesome, I Could Cry,
On this gum-crusted bench
Next to the all-night gas station.
Drunk drivers stop for gas and coffee,
They don't know who I am.

I'm All Shook Up, my energy drained
Into endlessly unproductive recording sessions.
But sometimes you're just too old
To come back.

I could use a shot before I shoot
Another television set.
I could use a bed at the Heartbreak Hotel
Instead of this wrought iron pillow.

Mama's long dead and buried
Down the road they want to name after me.
I left yellow roses on her grave,
Left to wither under mingled stars and city lights.

Good old blues
Burst out the back door of the nightclub
Across the frozen tar river.
Southern blues haunt me
Like the bars where I used to play
Before I ventured out of the Deep South,
Before anyone knew me by my first name,
Before 31 Hollywood flops,

Back when everyone took me seriously.

One for the money,
Two for the show...
Drizzling dawn lights
The train station windows
Like the portholes of heaven.

I plan to die young,

With a golden record
Droning its melancholy heartbeat
Beside my bed.

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The Blues

Slow drums weep with shattered souls.
Whitewashed piano keys clink like ice in the empty glass alone at the bar.
Acoustic guitar strings pluck tears from the lonely silence
that drifts over the barren wood floor like fog on dead moors.
A deep, black voice of the Deep South
confesses his sorrows to a sparse crowd.

I can almost hum along.
My heart beats the same depressing notes.
I know every word from harsh experience.
The singer ain't got nothin' to live for but the cigarette
left for dead in the ashtray on the piano.
I've got less.

We both know this song:
the coarse rhythm of rejection,
the familiar chord of "let's still be friends."
It's been sung by every poet and by every man,
but it feels like I'm the only one in the world
who could possibly feel this wretched.
It always feels like this, like an ulcer
devouring me from the inside out.

The melody drones on and the chorus runs in circles.
It's fitting for my mood.
His voice never loses its purpose and never wavers.
Neither of us can get the girl out of our heads
or out of our dreams.

I never stray from the blues.
The blues understand me.
I leave a dollar in the tip jar on the way out.

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Release

Infected
with incurable fever, I sink down into the mouth
of a red leather armchair, encircled by black sunlight
and stare blankly, with dark, disillusioned eyes
at the extinguished golden candlelight.

A storm of visions pummel
the damp, desolate moors
of my mind.
Impermanent footsteps
are erased from the mud.

Echoes of slamming doors
reverberate
in my empty coma
from which I may never
awaken.

There is nothing.
All this nothing
going on
goes on
for the infinity of a breath.

One diamond kiss
denied,
One sea-green gaze
stolen has gashed
my sunken, flat heart.

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Ace

Crack of metal arms,
Click of dusty gears.
The rattle of creation
Fills the hot, stark white room.

Pages march across its gaping
jaws. Sweat sparkles
on keys that catch the sun
at the death of the day.

The musty scent is intoxicating.
Rhythmic tapping on the ribbon
makes the words sing
their black-and-white sorrows
to the waning red light.

The black steel time capsule
groans from decades of abuse.
Inspiration hides in its greasy innards.
Typewritten words are immortal.

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Dry Shards

A bare white oak arches
over a narrow, deserted street
lined with uninsulated, wood frame houses
that lay vacant until summer. Peeling, bony branches drape
above a rain-specked sidewalk.
The last half-dozen leaves
break free of withered moorings
and flutter down to the pavement in a cascade of tarnished gold.

The leaves spiral and curve on a cushion of stagnant air.
They flip, twist, and crinkle against each other.
Icy white sunlight illuminates
their unique tints - from honey to mustard blonde
and deepens the recessed shadows of their dead brown veins.

They sigh down
past carved initials of the oak's weathered trunk,
settle next to the cinder-stained curb, and glitter
with frozen drops of dew,
only to be crushed
into crisp, dry shards
beneath the running shoes of an early-morning jogger.

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