Your flat react

☞ art

I witnessed drones in east LA
A red auto speeds down this hill
Nudges my feet back to the curb

A street dog gnaws upon his bone
And the steps to your flat react
As though we’ve never met before

Six days and six bottles it took
To put to ink inchoate thoughts
And tuck inside this envelope

I read your name in my printing
And I think of your ceiling fan
I can feel the blades’ empty air

“Finding out the girl you like is
Seeing someone else” – is poetry
Though instead of rhyme there’s the chop

Of fan blades; And words; And the air

August 2015

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On the fence

Two hands grip the post
While another heaves a hammer
To its flat wooden head

The landing is silent
Except for some words
A letter

It begins “dear earth”
Dear earth emoji
If we’re being precise

Two hands grip the post
A mind in between heaves rebuttal
From their flat wooden head

“Democracy has fallen”
More words and a hashtag
To remember the dead

The stakes sink deeper
Into cold parched mud
With each flat wooden head

Two hands grip the post
While a robot twists wire
That wraps the whole world

October 2009

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The deliberate march of the ancient Chinese

The Grange does teem of elderly Chinese
Might even say “infested” should you please
But that’d be racist – so let’s say instead
Distressed I am! Behold their languished tread
One never sees them at the gym or pool
Old lives bereft of work or play or school
Can merely pad about the hallway floor
And circumscribe the condo’s corridor
And pondering my own time come to that
Pajamas, slippers, solitude, a flat
And mired in constitutionals, oppressed
Our footsteps drag death’s hand into our chests
No thanks to walks I shan’t the will to live
For that’s just holding water with a sieve

December 2008

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Clovers

A school teacher in soft grass
She’s looking for four-leaf clovers
Her red dress covered with white polka dots
My elbows grind the green park lawn

We rode our bikes to Trinity Bellwood
After first contact and coffee
And now my eyes drool with the taste of marijuana
And fingers tense from frustration

She holds up a questionable specimen
“Does this look like one?”
But I can’t tell from clovers
And I push out words when I need to breathe instead

August 2007

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Mourning Croutons

Ingredients

• 2 or three pieces of dry stale bread
• 1 dash of oregano
• 1 pinch or more of black pepper and salt
• 1 tablespoon of cold pressed extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon of garlic crushed
• 1 ounce of optimism (seemingly boundless)

Method

1. Warm oven to 137 degrees celsius
2. Trim crusts, cube bread
3. Combine all ingredients
4. Gingerly arrange the oiled and seasoned cubes of bread on flat metal
5. Slide your accomplishment into the oven
6. Flex your ribs apart with an epic self-congratulatory stretch
7. Clench your sphincter nervously from the prospect of waiting alone in your kitchen
8. Rip open a nearby bag of weed and frenetically roll a joint on your kitchen counter
9. Regard with a curious leer the can of Comet sitting by the sink.
10. Sprinkle cleaning power into your joint (to taste)
11. Spark with flame and inhale
12. Smell that garlic, man
13. Feel the snap of your knees on the hard tile floor while violent coughs escape falling body. Hear the burgundy tiles dutifully echo the barking of your abused lungs. Fold in halting footsteps and march your mind from the miasma of garlic and burgeoning toast into the dark tunnel until peaks form. Mix until the last molecule of light which let you in waves goodbye. Do not react to the chill of floor tile against your cheek. Do not protest when your extremities steal blood from your slowing heart in selfish gulps. Do not follow the whine of electrons illuminating your tired nerves. Hear the beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep of the smoke alarm.
14. Rise with useless legs and greet a ribbon of black smoke and the thick smutty aroma of failure.
15. Throw it all away.
16. Liberate the oven’s warmth into the lonely kitchen.
17. Vow never to smoke Comet nor prepare croutons in the morning.

August 2007