The Room in the House

He asked me to write a poem with my eyes closed
No focus on function or style
Just searching for the keys with my eyes closed
Searching for some sort of salvation that will not come

There’s a room in a house
Where the light’s always on
You can see it through
The crack at the bottom of the door
And an old wind-up victrola that keeps playing
Even though there’s no one to wind it
And it plays the bossa nova
But no one’s dancing

He told me to write a story with my eyes closed
That way I’d see it all take shape in my head
How the imagination can work its way
Even under black and red

But now I’m seeing blue
And I’m wondering if you
Would care if I connected colors
To moods
Orange for glad
Pink for mad
Brown for dirty
Green for sickness
and health

Do you see the trees?
They blossom in the winter
They blossom all year long

Out there it’s beautiful
With the flowered trees
And ripe, poisonous cherries

But in the room in the house
Where the music plays
During daytime the overhead light
Beats down on me
As if it were the only thing
Living
And there’s no switch here
So I crawl
Into the room with no windows
And see the story ---
once in black and red ---
Now just black

Limerique

These things are always happening
These things never go away
They wring at your neck
When you least expect
Just to see how much you can take

There’s a monster in my closet
There’s a monster in my pants
I don’t know which one I’m more afraid of
But when fantasy recedes to reality
I know I’m barely adequate

And if they can see that
If they know the truth too
Then please go ahead and let me go
I’ve seen it all now and I can tell when I’m not wanted

These things are always happening
These things are still there now
But you just cry about this
And cry about that
Because there’s not much else you can do

The Weight of the Phrase

How ya doin'?
 How are you?
  What's happening?
                  How you doing?
  How are you doing?
 How                  you doin'?
What's up?
                Hi, how are you?
How are you today?
   Doin' good today?
How's the family?
Helloareyoufeelingalright?
          Nice weather we're 
havingHow are you?

I'm great, how are you?

Employee of the Week

Too many things to lie about
And to lie about it to the twelve dozen strangers
I’ve greeted today
Is the real tragedy

That damn clock
I can’t reach it to tape it over
I can’t reach it to knock it off
I can’t look
I can’t look away
The time doesn’t fly
When you’re stuck thinking
Every second of it

Numbers, numbers and more numbers
I never want to see a number again

Grant yelled at me
Telling me to smile
But he was nice about it
But it has to be there
It has to come naturally
I don’t have it
I don’t want to

People know a fake smile anyway
It can be more disheartening than a frown

I feel like I’ve devolved
My first job was terrible
This one’s decidedly worse
But I shouldn’t complain
Even if the truth is: I don’t
Not enough
It all goes in this book
Where no one sees it

I think the real point of complaining
Is getting someone to listen

But this is who I am
Nothing spectacular
No matter how much I want to be
I might spend the rest of my life
Putting people I don’t even care about
Before myself
Without a smile
But trying
And maybe one day
I’ll find true love if I can look her in the eye

Big Black

Comfort zone?
Never heard of it
Limits are lies
No surprise
I’m below sea level
Watching the big black fish
Eat the little black fish
Maybe I’m next

Terra’s a big black mess
And it pumps its indigestion
Like it’s second nature
Maybe it is
Not and then some

Adrift

Lost the plot
Lost the setting
All the characters
And their development

Lost the coughs
Lost the sneezes
Lost the bleeding noses
And the bloodstained lapel

Lost my heart in the gutter
Lost my mind to a conscious lover
Lost my soul to hell
And no one even so much as
Asked right out, politely

My teeth are rotting before I’m dead
My eyes are deteriorating with the TV screen
Every dot and squiggle
Embedded in second memory
My blood is pumping in the wrong direction
Turpentine sludge slowing and stopping
My eardrums bleeding and popping
With the loveless, serious tune of the band on the stereo

God please
Set me adrift
I wonder if
It matters now

Duplicitalubiquitous

When’s the news?
It’s nothing new
I follow close behind
When you’re sleeping
When you’re waking
When you’re walking
When you turn

And every song that you sing
It casts a glance
To the darker corners of the theatre
Till it all makes sense
Yet it does not flow
It does not go
In the direction
Of the bread trail left here for it

You’re so conceited
You’re so naïve
You’re so defeated
Is it because of me?
Did I hurt you?
In the act of trying my best
To never hurt you
I cannot win

Are they cutting on your heartstrings?
Are they tugging the linen sheets
Do they want you bare and naked
Vulnerable to the touch or wisp of breath

My audience will never laugh
This jaded crowd will never cry
This heartless mob will never feel
The play goes on but no one cares

Why do I talk?
Why do I sing?
Why do I write?
Why do anything?
Why do I move?
Why do I love?
Why do I breathe?
Because I can and will

Forget-me-nots
All forgotten now
Collapse the rafters
Rewind the laugh-track

Father Ayrum

“Please, father.”

A classic case of Romeo and Juliet

She was in love

And her parents did not correspond

They had even threatened to

Ex-communicate

“Child, I am sure your parents…

They can only mean the best for you---“

“Yes, I know, of course, but---“

“But your heart says otherwise.”

“Yes, yes!”

“But for a minute…

Look past the blindness of love, child.

Is this boy ideal…?

Or does he merely appear so?”

She went silent

“In all things, God chooses love.

From which party do you want, no, need love most…?

And from which party will it be returned?”

I can only hope she found her answer

Relationship advice is not my strong-suit

Especially when my other party can be so…

Distant…

At times

I know I…

Especially I…

Should not say such nonsense

But every relationship has its doubts

And the mysteries are as un-engaging at times

As they are intriguing

In example

A disturbed paedophiliac comes in

About once a month

Expelling his sins

Mournfully

Each time

I so wish I could breach that contract

Like a psychiatrist to a patient

But I am no psychiatrist

I give him the same answer every time

Only when he turns himself in

And faces his earthly punishment

Can he then absolve for his sins

I don’t know if he attends mass

He’s made a point of either concealing his voice

Or simply never speaking when near

If he does

…How can there not be doubts?

Despite the theory that most humans

Are generally good-natured at heart

Begging forgiveness,

I cannot feel sorry for a man

Who gives into temptation again and again

And makes no real attempt to change those habits

Just the other day

Some mafia thug

Came in and demanded

All held offerings

People rob banks

Not churches

This felt personal

God must have “wronged” him

But when his eyes lit up with surprise

At the few measly dollars I returned with

I knew then it was simple luck

Producing a gun he said

“Heh, where’s your god now, huh?”

To which I replied,

“This has nothing to do with God.”

Which must have frazzled him

Because he left the money and ran

With the drop of a hat

The luck had switched sides

Strange how it can sometimes

Feel far more tangible

They call me Father Ayrum

And I may well be the worst priest ever

But I didn’t exactly get into this business for…

Competitive reasons

(Not being very religious myself, I know this may seem a bit... euh... amateur I guess? But the whole idea behind confessionals has intrigued me lately, so forgive me for the blasphemy. But don't really. Because I don't actually mean it.)

Yellow

I want to surprise you again
I want to go far beyond my limits
I want to surprise me again
Make you see what I’ve been doin’ all this time

Maybe I do have too many hobbies
And nothin’ much else in between
A few friends, but they don’t matter
Just like I don’t faze them

She walks underneath
Adjoined skyscrapers
And reads all the papers
That glide slowly down
All from different dates
And different years
Stories once current
     Now gone yellow
Now discarded
Like the orphaned retarded
It’s in this one moment
I comprehend abortion

     Yeelllloooow
     Is the color of my heart
     Is the color of my teeth, and eyes
     Is the color of my piss

     Yeelllloooow
     Is the dreamers in the night
     The bird that cannot take flight
     Or fight, for what they believe
     Or simply what God gave

     Yeelllloooow
     Is the color of my mind
     Is the color of the tumor
     In my soul, and its lining

It's the color of my life
And not at all like the sun
More the sickly sweat
Stained fingers from cigarettes

     Yeelllloooow
     I'm always going to be
     Your broken history
     But never the one
     That happened

(Corn is also yellow. This doesn't flow well either. I might care more later. On an unrelated note, at least I know some useful html and can format as I please from now on. Whoop dee doo. On a slightly related note, I now have poems called Blue, Green, and Yellow. Yay, color ploms. On another slightly related note, the thought of "soul cancer" is cool. In an artistic sense of course... Of course.)

Jamie Chilton

He liked that movie, Flubber,
A lot
He liked to say the word, flubber,
A lot
I never questioned him

I remember the bent basketball hoop
Just shooting hoops
Back and forth
Back when I pretended to care about sports
But actually enjoying myself
And we didn't say a word
But ten minutes in he'd say:

"Flubber!"
"What?"
"I love that movie."

He liked that movie, Flubber,
A lot
He liked to say the word, flubber,
A lot
I never questioned him again

Listen

Everything I’ve done

I was trying to be someone else

When it finally comes back to me again

I think I wanna kill myself

I’ve got something to say

I’ve got something to say

I’ve got something to say

And that is?

I’ve got nothing to say

This is not twisted

No matter how much they claim I am

This is not pretense

I’ve no reason left to pretend

Now that I know I never did

I’ve got something to say

I’ve got something to say

I’ve got something to say

Which is…

I’ve got nothing to say

There’s this joke I tell

That you’ll never get

And that’s alright

Some people just aren’t meant

To get it

Untitled #3093

Bought a book for every issue I had

Didn’t take a look at all I already had

Thought the experts would know what the problem was

Based off of their own personal experiences

Bought a tape for all the things I couldn’t say

Put it on as I dozed off to sleep

Woke up and realized all I had were a bunch of words

So I used those words, with my own twist

Joined the geniuses and pretty people on TV

Ended up I was just like all of them

But I couldn’t seem to come to my own conclusions

I couldn’t seem to see what was there in the place

So I bought some bonds for every child I had

Sold them off and sent them off to college

While they’re in school I hope they can figure out

What it’s like to come to their own conclusions

It Died with Youth

There’s something inside me
That’s halfway done
And the longer I wait now
It gets in more ways gone
I’m just one more bloodshot American
Living the dream that the world can’t see
Clear enough

There’s a time and a place
For everything now
And that time and that place
Dictates everyone’s intentions
I’m in this time and this place
And I’m stuck and not moving
The ice is so thick
But it melts and I’m drowning

There’s a clock with no hands
And no ticking or chimes
It sleeps under Yggdrasil
And tells everything but time
And when the great tree blooms
As it does every few centuries
The clock stops and rewinds
And starts over again

There’s something inside me
That’s never done
Because if it’s done
Then see, there’s an object
It could be beautiful
It could be average

Do I really want to
take that chance?

This Whole City

This time next year I’ll be in Nebraska
Working dead end
Wages that can barely be paid
And I’ll remember everything you said about Ohio
Every little detail
Down to the bone

Where do you start
And where do I end
I can’t hear out of my third ear
I can’t listen too well anymore

Maybe I’ll take a flight up there
Sometime
Maybe I’ll stay and see all the shows
Bands I haven’t heard since teenhood
Funny, they still sound the same
They would
With too many late nights
Under incandescent lights
No drugs, no mind-fuck

This time next year I’ll be far away again
You called it true love, fate
But look what happened

Still

This time tomorrow I’ll be stuck in traffic
Still no radio, now no AC
Dreamers still dreaming dead, dead dreams
This whole city falling in around me