Urbanality

Urbanality

I was never one to write about sunsets or birds,
to be honest that shit bores me to distraction.
I live in Manhattan so I haven’t seen a sunset
in three hundred & sixty five days, and birds here,
well they're just another pest to be controlled.
I never really liked to listen to sweet ballads
and there’s something pathetic about the blues.
I prefer the hard rocking sounds of Hindi profanity
sung by cab drivers, the tune of droning car horns
and the distant wail of another siren’s song of ending.
I never got much pleasure from hiking or picnics
and I have no real desire to get back to nature.
I’d rather choke down a cart hot dog for breakfast,
avoid piss puddles on the subway platform
and hide behind Ray-Bans and two hundred dollar ear buds.
I never understood the fascination with beauty
or people’ neurotic obsession with falling in love.
I’ve seen a lot of well groomed hair and make up jobs
and have had the shit kicked out of me more than once,
but beauty is a rocks glass, love is a generous bartender,
and the poetry is between the first sip and "hit me again".

SMG

*(Re-printed from The (&) Ampersand III)

Booze

Booze

Oh
to worship
at the altar
of drunken
abandon.

Confess
your sins,
and revel
in liquid
Absolut(ion).

There
is salvation
in intoxication,
for I am 10 feet tall
at 100 proof!

SMG

Impulse Control

Impulse Control

We met under a neon sign

at the Coyote Moon;

a rundown bar across

the street from the Ramada.

She asked me for a cigarette

and smiled as I fumbled to light it.

She carried her years well

but her eyes looked a little sad

behind the smokey blue glow.

“Are you married” she asked

and I had to think hard about

if it even mattered anymore.

“Some days more than others”

I replied. She nodded and looked away.

Our Camels burned down

and the conversation stalled,

so we moved back inside for a drink.

She drank Smirnoff straight,

and swallowed like it was pride.

I noticed the wetness on her lips

and wondered how it would mix

with my scotch as we walked out
to share my last cigarette.

“I don’t like to sleep alone”

was followed by a well-dressed

exhale of smoke. “Who does?”
I shrugged, then I kissed her

on the cheek before going back

inside to close out my tab.

SMG

Poets and Other Liars

Poets and Other Liars

She told me that she wanted love

stricken from the poetic lexicon.

It is often a lie after all

but then again poets are liars.

Dreamers that distill language

down to its purest form

in a vain effort to sip 90 proof

metaphors of truth and passion.

I used to write love notes

on the fogged mirror of her bathroom

on my way out in the morning.

She would sing full throat in the shower,

sweet songs of joy and hope

that stuck in my head

as I walked out the door.

I suppose she stopped singing

when she finally realized I was gone.

She asked if any of it was true

and I looked past her

and nodded platitudes.

One more lie couldn’t hurt.

“I’m sorry I hurt you” fell

to the floor next to her tears

as I composed a new poem in my head.

SMG

Tides

Tides

We traced the shoreline
with deliberate footsteps
in the failing light.

A pointed conversation,
each solemn word lost
in the crash of the waves;

(The ebb of love
is usually measured
and unperceived;

a gradual retreat
with no regard
for the coming moon.)

and the rhythmic water
eroded all evidence
of what was, as we passed.

SMG

Don't Tell Me Your Name

Don’t tell me your name

Don’t tell me your name;
I won’t remember it anyway
because I killed those brain cells
two or three bottles back.

Just call me Sunday morning regret
and scream whatever you want
in the darkness.

You told me that you left
your vanilla suit at the cleaners
but you won’t need it
on this bad boy escape.

All I want from you
can be had without words
and what you need
requires no long thoughtful gaze.

I want to give you stubble
burns on your thighs,
rolling back spasms
and make you question
everything your mother told you.

In return I’ll take
your nail track brands,
lipstick smudges
and your lingering guilt
home with me in the morning.

You can be a slut for a day
and I will wear my Mickey Rourke mask
until we wash off the night
and go back to our assigned seats.

Inside Joke

A phone rings in the darkness
of a Tuesday night and I
raise my glass and whisper,
“please leave a message at the tone”

I am chasing heart failure in bathtub
or aspirated vomit on a toilet seat,
but I might be a few corrosives short.

The footsteps outside my window
continue to come and go, but they
only motivate me to turn up the radio
and crack another tax stamp.

You told me once that all things
have a beginning as well as an end,
and I laughed at your pessimism.

As I sit here alone on the crest
of Wednesday morning crash
I can’t remember why
I thought that was funny.

SMG

*(excerpt from "Another Hotel Room)

At Last: Babylon

I told you I would write;
but morning after promises
rarely make it to sunset.

On a night before,
we wrestled in the sands
along the Euphrates
in an awkward exchange
of vodka nicotine kisses;
ebb and flow. You lied
and said I was your first
but Darius and Alexander
had left their marks
long before I tasted
your fetid waters.

Harlot that you were,
I loved you, even
as your gardens withered
and the sands began
to devour your beauty.
When I saw the writing
on your bedroom wall
I ran for the Tigris
afraid of the imminent
devastation of you--
of us.

I made for Lagash
without a backward glance.
With the thunder shake,
and screams in my ear,
I found my way to safety,
and the pure waters of home.

I know my missive is late
but I carried it by hand.
A promise kept,
if only to your memory
and the shifting sand.

SMG

Manahachtanienk

Manahachtanienk

Henry’s boys
on the Halve Maen
must have seen
something in 1609,
sliding up river,
mapping future
condo projects
up and down
the Hudson.
For 400 years,
disappointment
has left its mark
on this city, ground
into the pavement
by centuries
of footsteps
up and down
the avenues.
Concentration
8 hours at a time,
57th to Wall Street,
Standard &
Poor Sobibór
as trains carry
their daily load
up and down
the tracks.
The lure of Gold-
man Sachs logic,
so we keep coming,
as fortunes rise
and humans fall,
like marquee names
up and down
Broadway.

SMG

I watched the sun come up from the departures lounge at Schiphol

I watched the sun come up
from the departures lounge at Schiphol

Beer tastes different at sunrise;
maybe it's the bitterness
something like regret.

I left you crying in California
and you said you understood
as I walked through the gate.
I suppose the avalanche of clichés
finally buried your resolve.
But we both know
it wasn’t me or you; it was us.
Me in my cuckold horns
and you in your orphan rags,
both of us reading from a script
that was ill conceived and poorly written.
You held me like I was your father
the night he walked out the door
and I fucked you as if my ex
was watching from the next room.

It is 6:20 AM and I still have
some distance to travel.
I imagine you have cried yourself to sleep by now
and I am here, attempting to write a poem
about the absurdity of Humpty
trying to fix a broken tin soldier.

SMG

Roadside Assistance

You were a top down
drive up the coast
and I hugged each curve
like it was my first and last;
your luxury so foreign
to my economic hands
and domestic heart.

The time skipped past
with dotted line persistence
and dark glasses concealed
my doubts and your tears

When the road turned
inland I let go the wheel
and we began to drift
into the oncoming traffic.
I never thought about
checking the mileage
until we ran out of gas
and I left you stranded
on the side of the road.

Exponential Memories

Exponential Memories

I am 8 and my grandmother

tries to hold my hand

as we step from the curb.

Defiant, I pull my hand

away from her protective grasp

and strut across the street.

She understands and lets me go.

I am 18 and she calls to see

if I can come by and help her

retrieve some old things

from the rafters of the garage.

Irritated, I make an excuse,

lie, and tell her that I am

already late for work.

I am 28 and I find a letter

written by my grandmother

amongst the grocery coupons

and credit card bills. She wants

me to know she is proud of me

and happy that I’ve found someone

to love. I think about calling her.  

I am 38 and I knock on her door

and wonder where she could be

in the middle of the afternoon.

Incapacitated; she never answers.

betrayed by a small blood vessel

in her brain, she lies motionless

in the back bedroom unable to cry out.

I am 48 years old, sitting alone

in the dark. I long for a hand to hold

or a loving voice, on the other end

of the phone, that is just happy I called.

I think of when we listened to the Beatles

and the many times we played catch

because my father was just too busy.

SMG

Angel City

Angel City

Los Angeles is a soft-core porn cliché,

all silicon enhanced titillation and come-

fuck-me pumps with no money shot.

Glamour seems so much crueler when

it’s look but don’t touch and no amount

of sunshine can warm an empty bed.

Satisfaction it seems is only for subscribers

and most of this city is access denied.

We’re all on the outside, faces pressed

against the mirrored windows, afraid

that our fifteen have mistakenly been

lost in the mail or given to someone else.

SMG

Persi in Mare

Persi in Mare

I watched the sunrise
dance with shadow
among the spires
of midtown; a light
and dark ballet
of time's tireless march.
The possibilities of daybreak.

I set a note adrift
on the outbound current
of the east river
addressed to you
on the endless ocean,

“Good luck on your journey,
fair winds and following seas”.

I took the ferry from
the Battery Terminal
and watched the glint
of the midday sun
skip across the water
in staccato flashes.
From the port side rail
I could see the eastern horizon;
that place where the sky
pours into the sea,
and I wept in the silence.

SMG

Scars in the Afterglow

Scars in the Afterglow

Her skin still glistened, wet
with the remnants of ecstasy.
I, with the gentlest touch,
began to trace the scars
on her back with my fingers.
Slowly she drifted off
as I kissed her shoulder.
I savored the saltiness on my lips
and her scent filled my senses.
The motion of time gave way to stillness
as I continued to trace the scars.
She woke, and with a sad smile sighed,
“so that is how it’s supposed to be”.
She dressed quickly,
seductive red satin falling
delicately over the cicatrix maze
that was forever etched in my mind.

SMG

Picture Prompt Challenge (featuring Jacob Lucas)



No Curtain Call

Sometimes

when the curtain falls

it never rises again.

No phoenix up
from the ashes
of failure

or Jesus
resurrected

on the third day.

Sometimes

the lights

go out forever

and the stage

is never set again.

The final act

of you and me

was some time ago

and there is no encore

in the works.

The theater of us

has become

an abandoned stage

and the audience

has long since

left, in search
of a new tragedy.

SMG

This was written in a fog of 12 year old scotch and the loneliness of another hotel room. In  response to the One Shoot Sunday Picture Prompt Challenge



Accidental Urbanite

Accidental Urbanite

How to withdraw a gaze

from a landscape carved in neon,

where the moon shines in the gutter and love.

How to withdraw the smile of  words; that

birthplace of something buried, yet shed

but for graveyard conversation

of day breaking bread men and garbage collectors.

How to reverse any kind of sky

into light So flight might linger time

into an outpost of slow

where patience is an elegance

to those in the know.

How to, when electronic words

only tell him their surface

lean his lead into the crystal listening

of her immeasurable water and mind

to spend the week looking downward

as skin traders whisper by fingertips,

Would that she waken to a brothel of the blind,

so the biggest mistakes make of themselves

a high-rise beyond understanding.

How to Injure Friday Immeasurably…

when paranoia and inadequacy intervene.

The title clung to the lap

like a consolation prize; an oblique enumeration

of chiasmus, his disguise.

Not a poet, not an intellectual, but of tar

brick and steel, the heart really thinks its stinks

at subtlety…

An accidental urbanite of a countryside

tackled of its voice; he could not swallow

the breath of its brushed incredible beauty,

only his fear mounted  panic of the

cut-out to leave her intact.  Woken,

he could not return her to where she was before: to

rewind time for her and shore to the good

of cockiness snuffed the note pinned to

her deep and of his leaving: “I am as advertised – shattered.”

Now he could not stay in the room with her mouth

and hear in every phoneme that he wronged her so,

that he should have trusted her. How, that he waters

his never, the shade of scatter in the Sundays of her

that mattered, for if her Bouche were a zip

by the night sky’s  unraveling.

Her well being is God in the waiting.

So my hectic week continues and today my friend @m_blanc_ is guest posting. If you are unfamiliar with her or her poetry blog The Baobab Papers you should check it out soon. She also has some fabulous audio recordings here and an excellent essay here.

Fractal Memories

Fractal Memories

The Burden of Time
distorts memories;
blonde pilsner days
and coffee nights
of years gone by
foul and turn cold
when left unattended.

The shimmer and glint
of sunlight on water ripples,
dulls as it rolls away
in thoughtless waves.

The faces of loves
left and lost splinter
into slivers of regret
and flout recall; a puzzle
never again complete
for too many pieces
are now lost or broken.

SMG

Write Blocked

Write Blocked

The white screen
taunts me with
a cursor’s wink
while I drill holes
through my skull
in search of gold.

Twenty six
alpha bitches
make promises,
ask for shape
and definition;
instructions
not included.

I feel like
a middle class
needle romancer,
cruising Hunts Point,
in search of my next
opium love affair.

Thalia smiles
and assures me
that I hold the keys,
then giggles and winks
when I ask her
“to which door?”

SMG

Skiathos

Skiathos

On pure white sands
we tested our endurance;
speaking in tongues
and dead languages.
Eros, diligo, blysia, expeto;
lost words moaned
between half gasps
and screams in the dark.

We measured time
in moon shadows,
broken promises
and scars from lovers
long gone. In the glow
of muted embers
waves crashed
against the past;
a persistent hope
in the darkness.

SMG