~*The Poems*~

***UPDATED April 19th***

Here's a couple new poems. I've started a poetry workshop this spring, so expect more on a regular basis.

(Older poems have been archived at this page)

Poetry is my passion, and this page is a showcase of my work. I was the editor of my high school's literary magazine. Please feel free to e-mail me with any comments or suggestions about my work.

All poems posted here are original and copyrighted by me.

**contents**

Jesus Wept
O Merciful
This Notebook
Untitled 1
Untitled 2
Untitled 3
Letter to the Lost Lover
Untitled 4
Untitled 5
Nothing Changes
BirthRights
Table for One at a Creole Restaurant on Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Untitled 6
No Sleep
Christina Flies To Alaska
and your special bonus prize...

Jesus Wept

Easter Sunday afternoon upstairs
At the house on Wilson street
Savannah comes home, face fallen
tears threatening to fall farther,
She says I think I ran
Over a cat; I think I killed it.

She then collapses
Into sobbing, I light a cigarette
For her. Sam and Brad go out
To the street retrieving the martyred feline;
Apologize to the owners, and rinse away the
Dark spot left on the concrete.

They are burying the remains in the backyard.
They are burning the towels and gloves,
Which are ruined now, covered with blood.
The smoke from the burn barrel smells
Of resignation; of duty, and love enough
To do what must be done.

O Merciful

O Merciful god who made me, made a world for me
and made these people my people
who gives and takes indiscriminately
why have you gone as if displeased
leaving me only these people
from which to learn your meaning to making
this, and this, and also merciful
Lord your reason for the yellow sweet
petals i peel back to discover only red inside
only the eventual decay of my blessings
my living and my dying are all dependent upon
you, merciful creator, who has kept
all of my secrets who has thought it seems
this world to be its own explanation

amen

This notebook has no importance or power
next to you.
Nothing I put in these pages can hold attention
Over the uproar of your presence in the room.
Everything drowns in your voice,
Table floating away, the coffee pot adrift
in a flood that is forty days long.
The water has stained away the ink,
such a breakable art,
this building of ships, poems in a row
like sailboats. Your icebergs have no mercy,
only that monstrous need,
rolling over and flattening the wire spiral
backbone of this notebook, poor broken
lump of wet paper, runny letter,
my heart in a heap, eaten by an act of the divine.

Still there seems no words strong enough
I try
I can't sleep off this sickness
or drink into a stupor.
Morphine or no, I could vomit at the sound of your voice

You, sinkhole, sick and paranoid
full of stories of maternal neglect
friends rejection, the failure of the world
to satisfy your conspiracy theories.
Your assumptions and your interuptions;
your drunken libido, your fake identity,
your verbosity, your boredom,
your coffee and pall malls.
I fell into the void
like Alice on mushrooms
and you were some mad hatter singing
a silly polka song.
Pierced tongue discordian value system
meaning the more chaos the better.
How easy that must be to live in a
disintregation of the classicly abnormal,
the depressed boy with disaffected repetitive
periods of breaking down
your grand plans for world domination-

You're missing some essential abiding faces of reality
I think you're ignoring the obligations of functionality
Try as well as you can but
you're still no impressionist abstraciton
no revolution, no one man band of logical insanity
Face the facts, Reverend,
the Lord is vengeful
and debtors will neither forgive or forgive
unpaid balances, so get
a fucking job, I'll be
watching from the north with a fiery sword
don't move on to the next hapless victim
your time is up for fucking your way through life
own up. pay attention.

this will be on the test.

I find I lack direction or a sense of purpose.
I find that I am not alone in this.
Things are okay.

I dream about the picture you hung on the wall,
a print of Starry Night by Van Gogh with the glass
broken out from the corner of the frame.

In my dreams I am not afraid
to say what I need to.

If you had been a figment of imagination
If you had been a delusion of mental illness
I could dismiss you this easily
I could find purpose and direction.
I wish I believed better things about myself.

Mt. Rainier on the horizon
as twilight swallows the sky
is a ghost of a mountain
if you can picture it
through the haze of another August,
dying. Always riding
in red cars, always
haunted by some foggy memory
half-forgotten and unbidden
the song you used to know,
the light you used to thrive on,
but when night falls,
I see colors emerging from behind your defenses.
Orange like the robes of Buddhist monks.
As night rolls like a speeding car,
I seek some desperate nirvana,
some numb sensory deprivation
to stave or slake this thirst
this threatening premonition
of Death, everpresent
like clouds over the mountain
repossessing souls, to atone
for the blood debt of these bodies
the wages of these sins
I wonder if salvation looks like sunrise
I wonder if that warm light
remembers my face.
What if after the last goodbye,
the last tear wiped from the last eye,
you find simply nothing waiting
at the end of the light?
No long lost love is waiting,
no Jesus, arms spread wide.
What if there's simply no one standing,
no afterlife;
but simply oblivion creeps over it all
like mildewed moss upon the tomb?

Letter to the Lost Lover

Now that we both have left the state
where all our shameful sins took place
I am no longer racked by hate
of myself and the way it all went down -
hill from the beginning night
when I reached out to touch your face
and it was delusion at first sight, you were
a sight to behold, I used to watch you sleeping
all along, it was me dreaming
we managed a fair mess of things
honey here's a toast to leaving
without saying goodbye.

It should be harder to become this cruel
cynical, cold and uncaring
in the short time I've had.
Wouldn't anyone else
have tried harder?
Kept cleaner or stayed afloat-
no way to tell.
If I had been a different person,
would I smile more
or drift through the shallows
of designer lifestyles?
If my friends didn't see the way I do,
would I waste my time
explaining this to them?
There's no answer to this rhetoric
but I would not trade cruelty
for softness
and I wouldn't give up the cold
to become complacent and idiotic
God save the freaks and long live the mean.
All of you nice people can blow me.

The least I can ask for
is easy. I keep myself
amused. I am reluctant
to even name the most I could ask for
I don't think I even know
Isn't that silly and sad
like a rabbit afraid of its own shadow
I never said I was brave.
But I hang onto my hopes
I hold to the unnamed
thinking maybe if I find it
I will recognize its face.
It's not much to ask.
But it's not much to hold.

nothing changes but the scenery so far
the days are set to a cycle
which does not seperate or stop
reading the morning paper
turning on the coffee pot.

every year there's fireworks
over the lake in my hometown
they explode in the same colors
in time to the same songs,
which bring the same applause.

Birthrights

I have to wonder how I came by certain traits.
Why I lack certain others.

I have to wonder
Why so many people keep asking
if I'm okay.

Is there something wrong with me
that I don't know about
or was it just a look on my face?

Mystery or controlled glimpses
at the heart of what's the matter
Leading the way, or slipping away
unnoticed through the back door.

I was born with certain traits,
and grew into certain secrets
Why should I tell just any stranger
if I am or not okay?

Table for One at a Creole Restaurant on Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Watching the rain dripping
From the leaves of palm trees
Under the street light
Watching the men running
Through the downpour,
Their shirts wrapped around their heads
Like turbans
I hear sirens rising over
The noise of traffic and conversation
I can hear the waves lapping the sand
This is the one way ride to paradise
The air is thicker than jelly
I'm alone at night in this city
Abandoned by mystery and romance
Passing cars blare their horns
The men across the street
Are smashing coconuts on the sidewalk
There is nothing here for me
But the desire to leave.
The wind and rain console me.
Love brought me to this place,
And love will carry me home.

i remember this time last october
when nothing was the same except
the way my hands would curl
around my coffee cup
but everything is different since
we’re not in love
i heard from an old friend
how you had moved away
i guess you couldn’t take this town
and still save your face
everybody i know
is going to leave someday
i was glad to make their acquintance
i was thinking what i’d say.
but i can still remember
how your hand felt in mine
no one can say
that i didn’t try
every year in mid october
the leaves start to change
and i hold my coffee cup
i look out to the rain
i can still remember
how your hand felt in mine
i heard that you left town
i heard you felt the same.

No Sleep

this strange way of talking
in the sunlit silence of a room alone,
while the cat sleeps on a windowsill
while miles away you're hearing
voices in your head
if i had a tank of gas and a clear
concious to drive myself on,
i'd go those miles to find
the bottom of your sheets
and bring my silence to your bed,
but i'm housebound and i'm nervous,
like water trembling in a glass
or blood pouring into sand,
i've got my fingers crossed
behind my back, on both hands.

Christina Flies to Alaska

There's a glow surrounding her face,
an aquamarine light, the closest thing to angels
I'll see in my life. She tells me
Everything will change by September
she says she just needs to leave this town
to come back a stronger person.

In the Bible, only angels have wings
and the rest of us are condemned
to crawl the dirt on our bellies. Not this time.
She's flying north to find her own salvation,
a sparrow with a swan song,
a siren growing wings.
God helps those who help themselves.

Swirldaze left town for the summer
chasing the midnight sun
bundled in a sweater, an Irish Eskimo,
a strange bird, wearing the sign of her spirit.

Water and sky, guide her.
God grant safe passage.
Go with all my love.

Extra Special Once in a Lifetime Offer~ Satisfaction Guaranteed
I can hear what you are saying. You say, wow, these are cool poems, but I would particularly enjoy an opportunity to hear you reading these aloud! Where could I find something like, oh, say, an .mp3 file of your poems? Well, at MP3.com, of course! A friend of mine has recorded five poems and made them available at his website, where you may listen or download at your leisure. This opportunity is free of charge and has shown no side effects in FDA testing to date. Get yours today!

And now you are saying, but where are all the poems that were here before? Those kicked major ass! Well, had you been paying attention, you would have seen at the top of this page that
older poems have been archived at another site.
Seek and ye shall find.

You are reader to rise to the sacraments of memory.

*~{Main}~{Pagan Pages}~{Politically Incorrect}~{The Poems}~*