Gold (Draft #2 - tell me which version you like more)
My biscotti
untouched in the twirling smoke
has remnants of sour coffee
gone cold and ash
delivered from a cigarette
three men away
speckled brown and grey
echoing the skyline.
And I
small mouthed and silent
despite the fortitude and tumult
of crowning daylight
I clutch at my soiled print
proclaiming 1/2 price cabbage
1/4 price melons, and Vincent Price
died of a gunshot wound
to the heart after he put
on a protective vest
and dared a friend
to shoot him.
Police in Orofino, Idaho,
said the vest was designed
to protect against grenade fragments
not bullets,
and despite trembling fingertips
I set down the cup,
without clatter, the coffee
brimmed and intact.
A man as black as I am old
jostled my steel table
where my ponderous palms rest,
cool in autumn
and he smiled
despite my quaking Panama Hat
and I watched him turn brown
coffee in cream.
My long coat a leaf
in the mud,
I feel heavy
Touching a cigarette
to my lips,
I close my eyes against the sun
and let the crescendo and fall
of the turgid city
drift me away.
OR
My biscotti
untouched in the twirling smoke
has remnants of sour coffee
gone cold and ash
delivered from a cigarette
three men away
speckled brown and grey
echoing the skyline.
And I
small mouthed and silent
despite the fortitude and tumult
of crowning daylight
I clutch at my soiled print
proclaiming 1/2 price cabbage
1/4 price melons, and Vincent Price
collapsed on the L-train,
where no one knew him,
and despite trembling fingertips
I set down the cup,
without clatter, the coffee
brimmed and intact.
A man as black as I am old
jostled my steel table
where my ponderous palms rest,
cool in autumn
and he smiled
despite my quaking Panama Hat
and I watched him turn brown
coffee in cream.
My long coat a leaf
in the mud,
I feel heavy
Touching a cigarette
to my lips,
I close my eyes against the sun
and let the crescendo and fall
of the turgid city
drift me away.
Bellingham, 5pm (Draft #2)
There is nothing poetic about tonight,
nothing in the wind scouring the gutters
or the rain pocking and condensing on the window.
There is nothing poetic about the heavy rolls of the sea,
nothing about the frosted white floating and dissolving on turbulent crests
nothing in the sky matching the sea,
nothing in the pine lipped hills that hold and cradle the wet and dimming harbor.
There is nothing poetic about the toasted rye or the deli mustard
nothing poetic about the darjeeling tea
or the recently emptied lemons,
nothing poetic about the seagulls bickering
or the ravens gliding between spruce and pine,
and there's nothing poetic about missing you.
Winter (Draft #2)
Billowing steam falls
into the air from ramen
making me happy.
Why I can't apologize (Draft #2)
Back then, the clouds caught
on the mountains, leaving snow like ash
across the soundless peaks
and the air had no scent
except the imagined pines
and the no smell of cold.
You said you weren’t cold
and let the snow get caught
within your hair and the pines
like lace or like ash
without the scent
of burning woods out on the peaks.
I tried to feel the warmth of solitary peaks
and you still said you weren’t cold
in the pines that had no scent
and I wanted my hand caught
in your hand, looking like ash,
leftovers from last night’s pines.
You said your father still pines
for these lonely peaks
of his youth turned to ash
and I said no, he hated the cold
but you ignored me, preferring the caught
silence to any words I sent.
I looked at you then, trying to catch your scent,
white washed away with the pines.
I worked my eyes to your own, hoping to get caught
within, but as though I was on distant peaks
you looked vaguely to my parka, to the cold
leaving me waiting, covered in ash.
The snow floated like the ash
from this morning’s fire, thick with smoke’s scent
that, despite the flames, left us cold
and I tried not to say, among the ruining pines,
and you tried not to hear, staring at the peaks,
but you flinched, and I looked down, and the words caught.
I remember the way you almost caught yourself above the ash
of last night’s tented peaks, reeling toward a hard descent.
and how I didn’t reach for you among the pines, and left you cold.
The way we are now (Final Draft)
My eyes have become hard
my teeth have grown straight and thin
and no longer shy
or skid across your skin
11:48 - 11:50 (Draft #2)
Why is that girl looking at me?
Does she know that my heart broke and
watches with obscene inquiries
poking my leg with a stick
to see which quagulated leg will twitch
and what stopmotion my hand will lift
the cigarette to my cavernous mouth
thrusting her presumptious eyelashes
deep down my throat to watch
my misnomer tickless or
shudder to palpitate
immobile and oblique
ocher and violet
watching which battered elbows bend
right or obtuse and how my dogeared
feet can shamble the body
broken by the girl she was
