Bulbs

Under too many lamps

my cards scattered 

• ones only ghosts could organize

• and their lines were as dead as them

and I couldn’t even find

the light switches 

shuffled

among the paper

and the artificial sun 

wasn’t enough

to wake me up

so I lived in the darkness 

behind my eyelids

until the shadows 

taught me

how.

Ouch

During the time

of translucent roses

I lived in constant fear

of a bouquet 

reminding me

that my bricks 

were hollow.

Regret

Running fingers

over coated sheets

of

locked in

moments in time

of a time

when presentiment rushed

through the rivers inside

sending flickers of

future moments in time

dismissed as froth

disguised as truth

under a thick coat

of lamination

the hesitation

of the roots of youth.

Trip

Vacationing

with the one

who already vacated. 

An empty shell

flown over the Atlantic

to remain dormant

under thicker clouds.

French doors

panes of glass

separate two

separate trips.

Pay phone

Start of daily poem thing:

Yesterday I learned through 23andme that Francesco Petrarca, inventor of the Petrarchan sonnet, is a distant relative of mine. So, I decided to write a dumb sonnet, using his template, about a child attacking a sexual predator.

Pay phone

Voice pierces through moviephone

a boy inside a man inside a boy

who can’t see human from toy

inquiring over corded curls to come all alone

for statutory eye to moan

diamond in a ship, a ruby decoy

plume to be taught to destroy

room full of beer cans surrounds his throne

I accept his offer and enter his home

and when he touches my thigh I smile

foaming at the mouth for a while

before cracking a Natty in half

Instead of man entering child, glass enters dome

a different crime, I think and laugh.