The man from Vermont

“We all have excuses”
he says and lights my cigarette

not for me,
but one I gave to him
when favor turned for him
in this game of chess he plays with my friend

“Uh oh, they’ve dimmed the lights”
he says, and I ask,
“What does that mean?”

“It means we cant see!”
and a chuckle rounds the board

“How ya like that?”
he asks, and so I write

-----

“See that knight?
The one next to the white pawn?
Why don’t you just- take- him?”
she asks from beside her other,
who hasn’t said a thing
(the pawn takes diagonally)

They came to sit in the only seats
left in the darkened place, with us,
two women slightly drunk and edging
in past middle age. Its the time of his life
tonight, on top of his game, with an audience
against my friend who says he hadn’t played in years

“Eeeaelay!” he yells,
at the wrong point in the song,
illustrating his elevation,
and the slightly less attractive woman leans and laughs along

“How is everything going over here?”
the pretty waitress asks
“We’re in dire need of Alcohol!”
Haha
“Bring me a water!”
and the waitress walks away

Its the remake

There is a frightened calm
settled through my veins and single thinking

Stripes of red and white

And I cant think to write


Horror on the TV

When gore is something to laugh at but then it rots

You dont say

This city thing
maybe
is the subway

1) Another reason to
live just like yourself

or

2)
Just to let you get that
much more fucked up

Like where streets are full
of oppurtunistic faces,
and do they smile when vauge
fascinations float to the top
of what i think and where i thought
I might like to be one day?

In three seconds

There was a woman standing
Tall and hard for the bus

A railroad spike in sidewalk
She held her black sleeve arm limp
Left along her waste to grip her wrist

Origami craned her neck
Like a tongue could trace her folds
And lines that traced her face

Down Whitney
Long for her ride to work
She stood strong as the rising sun

Her elegance to blind

margarine's lament

living life like butter
would be so divine
to be turned and churned
over and over again
and spread on a muffin
melting making mouths water
without a care in the world

The below

The poems below were reaped from my notebook this morning. Some I like, all are still works in progress. The top two are the oldest, back a year or so, from UVM. There were more, but they were either shiyt or require more than a whims worth of work.

Apprehension

Tension grips the young men
Tight, where any noise overwhelms
The space between friends

Fooling into fighting night
Fools hating day
Bitter towards the sunrise