Couples Therapy

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Again he sits and spits the poison words
he uses to envenomate himself.
The couch and I stuffed sick with all we’ve heard
while clock is ticking time off on the shelf.
 
A rash of irritation in my chest
that’s creeping north, a silent, noxious fog
of disdain for this asshole to my left.
Will no one halt this monologuing hog?
 
It’s forty sessions in, I finally break.
Hey, where the fuck am I? Not on this couch.
Was this the plan, Doc? Forcing me to take
up space and scream I’m here, to hear me shout?
 
Well, cue the balloons
you fucking buffoons.

Missing

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I don’t know where that poem went,
it stopped by late last night.
I swore that I would write it down
then, whoops, turned off the light.
 
I searched the pack of tumbleweed
who giggled down the street,
and checked the broken traffic light,
monotonous winking beet.
 
I thought it might be napping
in my mother’s favorite chair.
Nestled soft in golden fray,
but nope, it wasn’t there.
 
I gut myself up like a fish
and dredged the gooey lot.
I don’t know where that poem is,
but I sure know where it’s not.

Remember When

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Remember wild curves lined with trees
that smelled like cum on Seaman’s Neck Road?
We sang the Girls while you cut corners
like crusts of bread. I held onto the harmony
but never grabbed the oh shit bar, not once. Laughter
opened the windows and rolled us home.
 
2,013 miles later I discovered my home
in the desert. Missing you more than the trees,
except for big oak who told scary jokes. Rustling laughter,
musing rusty bits of herself over our autumn road.
We sat on the porch smoking four-part harmony 
and checking for spider webs in the corners.
 
I noticed you don’t sing any more. Corners
of lips clamped down. A horizontal home
for humming along, robbing the harmony
of vowels, of resonance. The “eee” in trees
degraded to mingle indistinguishable with road
noise. Remember hauling ass on the turnpike? Our laughter
 
still in Jersey, when we crossed the GW. Laughter,
the secret to time travel, folding the corners
of space-time fabric together, short-sheeting the road
impossibly. Seventeen minutes and we were home.
Now I climb to the top of the trees
and towers, to get to you. Harmony
 
begs me, pluck the wires between us.  Harmony
demands the sum of us, summons a chorus of laughter,
delights in the cadence of friendship, reliable as the trees,
echoing the silent bark of long loved dogs who haunt the corners
of our hearts, warming the chambers, reminding us that home
is where we love each other. We do not need a map of the road.
 
We parade the pavement and sparkle the road
with salty dust. Suspensions in harmony
rise to resolve in the key of coming home.
I’ve overnighted you a box of our laughter.
Packed it tight with shreds of melody to fill the corners
between us. Remember your voice and teach it to the trees.
 
It will float me home and light the road,
and scent the trees and write the harmony
ornamented with laughter to softens life’s corners.

Still Life: Pineapple

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Still Life Pineapple

Solid stance, broad shoulders shrug giving rise to plumes of smirked eyebrows browning from tip to root, forecasting fanciful all the same. Curious bends of green and gray shadow flightless birds, penguins and peacocks stretching wing above fractal landscapes. Oblique orange echelons, coins of scented supple skin, blending sheathes of papery starfish recasting themselves as sparrow faces, delicate upturned beaks that hunger or gossip or titter.

How can I cut you open, clumsily tearing at your feathers and spoiling your meat?