writing live

Spoken Words

I wanted to talk to you today,
just to say hello with earthy
and plain bits of conversation
we use to fill the silence.

Tell you about the girl at work
and the way she flirts
with the boss
and me

with her brilliant teeth
flashing, as if she can hardly
wait to take a bite.

Then there's this thing I have
with my neck, the tension
just won't leave it
until I get a chance
to talk, a minute, with you.

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the wake

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The Etiquette of Birds

They always leave the table
to wipe their beaks
and never crowd the plate.

They eat in shifts politely
making way for the next
to cluster hungrily for a feast
of suet and seeds.

Each one has his favoured food
and waits until an empty perch
appears calling loudly
"I am here. I'm eating
but one eye is on you too."


Evening is the time for readying
to face the dark huddled in cedar
or roosting, solo, still as death
in case an owl hunts near.

the new one isn't as tall as
the old one, isn't as tall as
me. she stands with
legs full of dancing muscle
and I've got this heartful
of fuckups that i keep next to
the half pack of smokes i keep
in my shirt pocket, in the halflit
cave that is my basement room
she is naked and ambient lighting
makes her skin a softer brown
how'd a scottish girl get so
goddam
tan
and when she yanks the shirt
over my head
I don't care where she gets it
because she puts it on me.

her legs don't lie, the twitchy(ing?)
long muscle on the inside of her
thigh says you don't have to
be standing up to trip the light
fantastic, waltz or shuffle off to buffalo
and she smells so clean in the
nearly dark I want to bury my face
in her still damp hair and sleep for
a jillion years, hidden in curly tangles
that are long enough to hide my troubles.

we are loud enough to make
my roommates laugh.
at four AM, it's not my problem
they should be in bed, should be
doing something else,
should turn up the music and
shut the hell up;
I'm on my way to heaven, here,
could you just leave me alone for
another twenty minutes?
No privacy with a screamer.
she laughs and says,
'free advertising' and I want
to put a ring on her finger right then
and there, in my bed with the
bedcover curled in her fingers and
yanked off the mattress to the
tune of, 'oh, holy shit!'
But I'm always too quiet,
always saying nothing instead of
what's really on my mind and
she keeps asking, 'What're you writing,
behind those eyeballs?' and
I shake my head and schizo-twitch
a smile and say 'nothing' when
it's really love poems like this
about good sex and the
way she looks in the light of
a lamp across the basement,
pointed at a white wall and
reflecting itself into a gold haze
that paints her beautiful,
or at least adds a second coat
to a canvas already worked by
a renaissance master.

it's got to be more than sex
she cleaned my kitchen while I was
passed out and stuck around
just to make me dinner and
she stuck around when I imploded
on the lawn for a girl that was taller
and had seen more water under the bridges
that lie between people
and she sticks around when I'm moody
and she sticks around when I'm distant
and she sticks around because
'I hear it, sometimes, but when you look at me
I feel beautiful.'
And that's alright with me.

Tathagata said:

God has a problem
he walks that fine line between being right
and having a superior attitude

omniscient!

oh thrills-ville

tell me what I'm thinking now
smart ass

enough with the riddles and little hide and seek games
i'm going to fornicate
and drink

i'm going to say " Christ on a tricycle"
or
" Jumping Jesus"

but you know that already, don't you?

how many fingers am I holding up?

Click to expand...

This is sharp. And really good.

Tathagata said:

LOL
you just love me sticking it to the Man


Thank you sir

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Wouldn't it be lovely as...an audio poem?

Tathagata said:

oh no
an audio poem should be....longer
wouldn't you like something...longer?



I'm working on something that will be a very nice audio poem

Click to expand...

Yes, please.

Hurryhurry.

Damn Those Crows

Their watching us everywhere,
those minute dolls eyes
hid under black silk,
waiting to catch us unguarded
waiting for us to fall, to laugh
as they conquer us with sermons
and dance
before flying like X's into the sky.

Rest Room Reading

White walls, black pen
or knife scratch
names and blame
curses and worse
fulminations
words I've never heard
uttered but here they are
scrawled on the wall
for all we women to see
an education for men
required reading for
relationships. Secret
screams for help with no prayer
silenced by experience
and whispered warnings
recipes for wreckage with no
repair or regrets that rhyme
with grace. A matter of feet
a reach of inches squint
to make out the sense of
scribbled witticisms wise
cracks and wisdom all free
for the slide of a bolt.

Tathagata said:

I spent a few
fragmented fleeting moments
in eternity this morning
right after coffee, and before
the lucky charms.

To quote the Sages:
" It was pretty fuckin' interesting"

I disappeared
and my mind chased it's tail
I watched from here
because I was here.

Then I came back to past and present
my mind relaxed
and cleaved itself in half again.

ahhh home

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hmmm. i'll ne'er see ye the same way again.

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