[Poetry] Sweet Nothings

Fuck it; Poetry

As of 05/10/13:
Applause (This Post)
Monday, After Midnight (This Post)
Florence (2)
One Day I'll Leave Kansas (3)
Precursor to a Procession (5)
Am I Not a Worldly Fellow? (6)
Drinking Age (7)
Ketchup (8)
History (9)
Ferryman (10)
Closing Time (11)
Burning the Oil (12)
Punchline (13)
The Checkered Game (15)
Blank (16)
Lapse (17)
The Saddest Thing (18)
Emigrants (19)
Last Night (20)
On a Series of Post-It Notes, Bored at Work (21)
Sweet Nothings (22)
A Love Story (23)
On a Series of Post-it Notes, Bored at Work Two (25)
Scum House (26)
In An Empty Parking Lot (27)
Title (27)
I Will Go Into that Stillness(28)
Cathedral (29)
With Transmission Slipping (30)
Seismic Activity (36)
__________________
Applause

Just taken out the trash
and I replace the bin and as
I look around the room
I wonder
why the trash
is empty.
But the thought quickly fades,
as the all-grins head
tells me a joke,
something topical,
not too incisive,
and I sink
down
into
the
chair.
__________________
Monday, After Midnight

Work!
So much work
to do, but this,
this is more
important.
This will be seen,
get me seen,
get me known,
get me famous,
get me remembered,
make me immortal!

Too busy with my own
than to read another’s.
It’s not as if
theirs will be going
anywhere.

__________________
Florence

There sat next to me
an old lady on a
bench,
knapsack in lap.
She was a wrinkly old hag
with beady
little
eyes
that had seen
our silver screen stories
first hand
and she sat straight up proper
and stared
forward,
always forward,
until the bus arrived
and she disappeared
inside it.

I kicked myself afterwards
for not asking
but vowed to do it the next time
we sat there together.
And when next I was at that bus stop,
alone,
I read the paper and
came upon her face
and I cursed loudly
for all the history that had just
been lost.

__________________
One Day I’ll Leave Kansas

There’s a tornado watch
for my county tonight.
I think I’ll heed
it.

Tonight, I’ll grab a folding chair
a couple of beers
a couple of fags (though
I’ll have trouble
lighting them in the wind)
and I’ll sit out on my front porch and
watch.
And when they sound,
I’ll raise my bottle:
A toast
to the klaxons
that always
sound off
too late.

As far as the poetry goes, you seem to roll off on a lot of free verse with some minimal consistency through out (which is to say, you don't seem to count syllables or anything). A lot of what I've read so far seems to focus on placement and spacing for effect, as the narrative runs through motions, and I'm definitely interested in that kind of thing, when done right.

Q: How long have you been writing poetry?

__________________
Precursor to a Procession

There’s frost on the edges
and it’s slowly creeping inward
inward
until the four corners meet in the middle
to form one
cold
wet
barrier.

I look out onto the street,
squint,
reach for my glasses—
the ones I am already wearing.
My cheeks are warm and red.

Behind me, she
asks a question I don’t register
and I answer
with a nod.

It’s colder in here,
I reckon,
as I grab my coat
my umbrella
my keys
my neck and rub it
not because it hurts
but it probably
does.

“Are you gonna be okay?”

I shrug it off.

Will anyone ever
be okay?
I retort
to myself,
when it’s freezing on the streets
and it’s colder in here?
She frowns and furrows her brow
and I walk out,
having won,
holding the door open for her
with a crooked broken smile.

__________________
Am I Not a Worldly Fellow?

“Am I not a worldly fellow?”
asked the man who had been to the Musée du Louvre,
who had walked the streets of London
who held a tortoise in the Galápagos
who ran with the bulls in Pamplona
who watched the cherry blossom bloom
who rode the gondolas through Venice
who stood only feet from a kangaroo
who peered down the Grand Canyon
who toured the Amazonian jungle
who saw a show at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.
“No,”
said the farmer
and returned to his crops.

__________________
Drinking Age

Past two in the
morning.
And I’m sitting outside
against the fence,
beer in hand—
My first
beer, legally at least.

I am surrounded
by blue and orange lights
that illuminate for no one
the sidewalks and misshapen streets,
holding puddles,
holding lights.

A swig, and I
lean my head back
and watch
the clouds,
auburn tinted,
low and wispy,
drift by
slowly,
like
new ghosts
who never
got to say goodbye.

The pain in my knees
return.
I shift and rub them, regretting
the football game
earlier today,
and I tell myself
I feel old.

I am old.

I am not old.
I have
twenty-one years of memories
and that is
just a quarter.

Bottle’s spent now.
I get up
—slowly—
break the bottle on
the curb
and go inside
to sleep,
though I know
I will put it off
with my ex and a kleenex—
I still miss her,
damn.

The clouds will continue drifting

and climb
lower and lower
and turn into fog

though they won’t have changed at all.

__________________
Ketchup

I had a dream the other night:
I was at a family reunion.
They’re always big;
My mother was the youngest of nine,
born catholic,
exactly a month after Kennedy rode his Continental in Dallas.
There were two of everyone
but I recognized
none of them.

So I went about
and I killed one of each.
My reasoning was sound
I’m sure if only
I could remember it.
No one knew the difference,
no one noticed,
until there were five, I found,
that hadn’t doppelgängers
and now were
missing.

The dream gets fuzzy—
next I know, I’m at my house
and I’ve just broken
my mother’s potted plant,
her favorite one.
I step inside
and my mother is there,
none the wiser,
but I cannot look at her.

Tomorrow, my parents
will come visit me
and I don’t know
what will come of it.

__________________
History

Damn it.
I’ve done it
again.

Just put us all in the ground
now,
save us the time.

__________________
Ferryman

New souls on the River Styx.
Charon must get tired
Picking up
all the
pieces.

__________________
Closing Time

Please.

Cracked sidewalk.

Please.

Irradiated well.

Please.

Peeling painted walls.

Please.

Broken player piano.

Please.

Play it,
Sam.
One last time,
and I’ll just
close my eyes
and
hum along.

__________________
Burning the Oil

I shouldn’t be here.
I should be
off
in the lands of my mind, in
whatever nightmares
it’s cooked up
for me
tonight.

But here I am.

There’s something
about
that midnight hour
that
lends me able
and willing,
wanting, god forbid,
to wax poetic
whatever thoughts I might
hold
at the moment
and put them
forth for the
world
to see.

Look! Look! I’ve nothing to say!

__________________
Punchline

I head a joke the

other day:

A blind girl

walks

into an art exhibit.

She stops in front

of a world-renowned

masterpiece

and says,

“What a piece of shit."

A man next to her

asks
about the statement.

She

replies

“What’s there to see?”

It made me chuckle, anyway.

I like how your poems tend to tell stories, they also have a certain flair that makes me giggle sometimes. Good idea of keeping a record of all your poems at the top by the way. I think my favorite so far is Burning the Oil.

__________________
The Checkered Game

I’ve tallied up
the scores.

Some of you finished
quickly,
others took
a more
roundabout way but
everyone arrived
at the same
conclusion.

No one is the victor.

Better luck
next time
my friends.

__________________
Blank

The cursor
blinks
at me,
the only
color in
a sea
off white
and it’s

waiting
      blink,
waiting
      blink.
waiting
      blink!

This is
the
most
scared
I have
ever
been.
__________________
EDIT: The line 'only color in a sea off white' is not a typo. I only point it out because I realize it could be seen as one.

__________________
Lapse

‘What do you call that?’

I didn’t know.
The hospital
floor
was too cold
to think
anyhow.

‘Oh man, there’s
a word
for that, and I
just—‘

He ruffled his
hair,
hid his
face in his
hands.

I turned towards
the doors,
waiting,
hoping,
for a doctor
to just
come
in
and
tell
me.
I didn’t
even
care anymore—
that’s not true—
but the
wait
was
just
excruciating.

‘I can’t
think of it! It’s
killing me
…’

I turned towards
him,
met his
gaze



and we laughed—
the first
genuine
laugh
we had had in
a
long
ass
time.

I laughed until
I cried
and then
I cried
and I buried
my head in my
knees—
I’d be damned
If he
saw me like
this.

‘Where do you
think
Jim’ll go
if he
goes?’

‘Somewhere
I wouldn’t
want
to
meet
him
at.’

‘He always
did like
little boys.’

We laughed
again
despite
ourselves
as the old
woman
across the way
looked on
in disgust,
missing
the context.



‘I remember it
now,’
as a
pepper-haired
doctor
walked in
and
headed towards
us.

‘What is it?’
closer now,
drawing
his breath
in,
preparing
his speech.

‘Familiar.’

And the
doctor
started
to talk
and though
I
couldn’t hear
him,
I knew
what he
was
saying.

__________________
The Saddest Thing

is to be
surrounded
by
acquaintances.

__________________
Emigrants

The worst of us
left—
too much to handle,
and instead of adapting
we took to
the north and the east and the west
and we bid the stronger ones
farewell.

And over time we
grew
and forgot
and when
we returned
we returned
as strangers
and we bid these
strangers
inferior
and took it upon
ourselves
to better them

but all we did
was destroy
and pat ourselves
on the back
for a job well done,

and I can sleep soundly at night.

__________________
Last Night

Though distorted,
through the bottom
of my fifth glass,
I saw the shape
of the devil, and
to convince myself
of my sanity
I called upon the
keep
and had myself
a sixth.

But he did not pass.

So I raised my glass to him,
for allowing me
to doubt him,
and he noticed me and raised his own glass and nodded and smiled

and I felt warm inside,
and I knew then
that God was a woman
and hell
hath
no fury.