riding the overpass

On the highway overpass
you can see half the city,
black boxes, shrunken fumes,
small silhouettes before the sunset.

It almost feels like something,
my insides almost flutter,
then I'm going down again,
stretching my neck to keep it.

haiku #1: oh.

I won a donut.
Sweet, there is hope for my day
to rock after all.

How old are you really?

I like your smile,
I like your hair,
I like you here.

I don’t like that joke you made
in combination with your
pretentious suit.

I didn’t know
that suit was pretentious
until you made that joke.

Well I can tell that you like
being here too,

and that you don’t like
all the rings I wear on my hands.

I wear them because
I don’t like the way my fingers look.

They wouldn’t look good
on your pretentious suit, either.

So we can continue to glare
at each other’s distracting apparel

or we can smile politely,
unfocus our eyes slightly
and part ways.

Or you can hold
my bejeweled hand
and unbejewel it,

I’ll grab your tie
and untie it,

Let’s
come of age
together,

Let’s
take the stairs instead.

a shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter (hopefully, or else I will not get an A). "A Vacant House"

The dusty floor has been unswept for years,
Ceramic tiles once pearly white now grey,
Or yellow with the small, round stains of tears;
Dried flowers, mold; the drinking cups decay.

They say she doesn’t live here anymore,
They never look this way when walking by;
Outside, the grass sways long and limp and poor;
The grass, the paint, the walls – the tears are dry.

A field nearby, below a patch of soil,
His bones, her hand, forever intertwined;
She curls her fingers; milk begins to spoil,
She stares, she holds a glass of acid wine.

At night she’ll leave her chair to close the door;
They say she doesn’t live here anymore.

What you took in the trunk of your car

I didn’t notice
how full the trunk was,
I was too busy trying to recreate
what my eyebrows do
when I’m upset,
And I was waving with Mom and Dad
to your shrinking bumper,
so every other second
all I could see was the back of my hand.

You’d packed a few things of mine,
accidentally.
Years later
when I stopped waving
at the bare horizon,
(I could’ve sworn
there was still a speck)
I really missed them.

Had I known then
that those things of mine
were rolling away from my life,
I would’ve chased your trail of smoke,
roaring,
jumped in through the passenger window,
wild,
but you’d have booted me out the door,
lest I crash us both.

You’d have zoomed on
towards the otherworldly sunrise,
you'd have left me there
on the hot charcoal asphalt,
dirty, without my things,
in hanging dust from spinning tires,
eyes watering.

But at least in that red,
bloody moment,
my eyebrows would’ve known
exactly what to do.

momentum

rusty moon tonight,
are you as tired as I am?
Does the night seem long,
does your task feel heavy?
My soles are red,
your light is dim,
and there aren't any stars to help.

Behind that thick factory smoke,
your yellow glow disappears,
and by the thrusts of this wind,
my walking pace slows.

Do you feel like shutting off?
Like flickering back into
the serenity of nowhere,
and letting the Earth illuminate itself?

But no,
you've got the momentum of millenniums
nipping at your heels and you'll shine on,
and you'll shine on me,
and I'll drag my cold feet
all the way home.

6 Trees

There was a band of brothers, six of them all living together in the big city, all suffering the harshness of its society. In the city the nights were bitter cold or feverishly hot, or sometimes both.
These brothers were flexible and quick, healthy and strong, fruitful, almost majestic. And with their fierce eyes they looked at their lives, at the nature of their days and they said, "That's enough." They would not stand for whatever undeserved stones this city would throw at them, day after day, and they were strong, and they were together, and they would stand only for something better.
So they walked away from the city one fiery morning, with no desire to look back, with relief at being out of the way of its mean winds, whipping in tangled spirals behind them.
They climbed whatever hills were on their path, suffered whatever storms they passed through, tired but grateful for the challenge. They were exhausted by the end of every traveling day until they found what they thought they were looking for.
The air was calm, there were many streets with many rows of houses, many driveways, many cars, many parks and many benches. And the air was calm. It was gentle, slow.
And so they stretched and they sighed, they looked at each other and they agreed, this is it, this is peace. Home at last. They stepped off their rocky path and onto the grass, they looked around and took it all in.
From then on their days weren't so tormented, and they lived with ease and everyone there stayed out of everyone's way, like they were all tailing along in a circle, all part of the same neverending monologue.
They grew so attached to this lifestyle, so accustomed to it that eventually, all six of them began to find it hard to move around, and this was because their feet became rooted to the ground. They could not keep walking their circular lives but they could not escape its confines. Their skin began to darken, their fingers turned to brittle, bare twigs, and then they were stretching, reaching out into emptiness, and then they were frozen solid. They were six trees.

jan 1 2011