Nine Poems

Another Other Brother

it is really quite revealing
the way you spin your guns
and open the jar of honey
like the bees are still inside
i can’t recall the first time
i awoke with you on my lawn
damp shirt and sunglasses
black as the moon


And what can I say?

And what can I say if one day
I’m opened up and falling
with rocks and stars
watching everyone watch me
smaller than my own skin
and feeling like nothing left in the sun,

but the next day it’s cool green
and silent liquid silver
and there’s Bill Evans himself
playing like a bubbling stream
and it’s all delicious,
a martini in a chilled glass?


Opinion

I’m tired of having opinions
of pinstripes and aeroplanes
and combustion engines arriving in the nick of time.

It’s the path that’s seldom taken
in the air-conditioned excuses that are trotted out
in the headlines each morning before nine.

I’m tired of making opinions fit between sheets of glass,
freshly glued to foreheads and bedposts,
scrambling down the road like a two-legged camera crew.

It’s not my hard-fought-for breath I’m wasting when
I blow out the gaskets on the kingdom of ink,
it’s the paper that soaked up each and every one of my songs.

I’m tired of having opinions
to share with my victims.



Mirror

What is a mirror
But a pair of scissors?

 
Endgame

Panicking soldiers
jostle for her attention.
More than one will
go home tonight.


Celluloid

the kids stand in line
at the birthplace of Disney
to pay their respects
to God and Lee Harvey.

 
Two Poems NOT by Yoko Ono

1.
Draw a map
Of your parents’ bedroom
Mark an ‘x’
Where you think they’re hiding.

2.
Put a rock in your pocket
Each day
Put another rock in your pocket
Keep doing this
Until you pants fall down.


Sun Heart

in the sun there is a worm
beating as its heart
it tunneled through my head
and fell upon the flames

 
Moon Heart

under a moon that’s carved in two
I hold a heart in cupped hands
my birth was a chance, a punishing peace
my tongue holds a word (and won’t let go)
but my ears are pretending they already know