Contentment
Only ghosts are outside for tea
this morning,
under the still-lit Christmas lights
from last night,
scratching their see-through beards
on the snow covered porches,
their hands frosting the glass-topped
tables.
Trucks pass by, sloshing the street
in front of them,
gray hairs shuffle in the snow,
smushed faces in scarves,
hands jammed in pockets,
breaths hard and visible.
The ghosts just raise their old cups
to dead lips,
watch the morning slide like hot oil
into the afternoon,
and smile at their luck.
_________________
Fell
the red park bench
pecked at my marriage
like a rooster
hungry for some cracked corn
or worms
or whatever it is
that roosters eat.
and autumn made a bed
out of the park air,
became intimate
with the yellow chill
and the yellow trees
and the thin yellow oxygen.
it was there
in a different color
where I found myself
six months away from you,
my knees muddy in the golden earth,
my hands alive in the dead grass,
trying to see
how big
the gosling had grown
since last June.
_________________
The Quiet Room
And I swear to God if I ever hooked,
ever blood-rushed the machine,
my sex would be valid,
unlike the average dirty bird-whore,
pecking, peck, pecker.
Love remains belly-hidden,
the cocked neck of nothing,
as the stomach, long, and blind, and forever,
poses as a highway for quiet thumbs,
but no thumbs have ever been willing,
and I remain untouched.
When a book goes unread it turns into a body,
a woman,
a dry poison of scattered lady parts,
a block of dead air,
an empty bladder that can not let,
flow,
nor drain any of its usual tendencies.
Oh, to be a fresh fuck!
A name, a date, an idea,
one drop of finger, toe, or chest,
one man,
a waste of time.
Rusty Truck 