New Poem

Below is a poem I wrote this evening. It's easy to write with the piece of mind knowing that on the NBA on TNT there is a double header of the Celtics vs. the Pistons and the Lakers vs. the Suns. I'm telling you, every night in the NBA this season there will be incredible games. No game lacks a story or a player. You want an eighties revival with tight jeans and slick tennis shoes, well get those short shorts out and slap them on Kurt Rambis. You can get them in '82 Lakers short too. Maybe you like yours in an '86 Walton style?

Enjoy.

I LIE AROUND

He breathes smoke while he walks the steps,
Names stiched on the the pocket lining
Of the coat he covers his shirts with,
Names he sees out his front window at night
Wearing scarves and moving unmarked.

Loneliness never answers by name alone
When its head turns with uneven strands
Or the curls that frame it like a little girl,
It is never the face you expect it to be,
It often looks like pork with a pepper sauce.

The metal awnings make strange bedfellows
And the plastic bags I carry in my hand are
A far cry from the way children speak and gasp.
Who knows what snow will fall past my brown drapes?
Not the girl who drew the drift out his back window.

That prince among men doesn’t wear headphones
He let the robbers rip his wires to shreds
And they ran down the street with J.S Bach
Holding hands with Mick Fleetwood in their pockets –
The strange romances we put together.

While he walks the steps the winter waters his lips,
And the wood panelled walls of his youth rise up,
The crooked tables and carpets of home
Where the gaslight shown bright in the afternoon
When potatoes roasted golden with his longing.

He tries to cook tubers now in oil pans
But in the November rain they change meanings
The longing is not gold and filled with tears
It now wears white winter hats he imagines
On the heads of the women he loves.

When love is parked and metered by time,
Can you or I gain anything from his longing?
We’d all like to listen to vinyl in wool socks
And pull the red afghan over two heads on the couch
While we wait for the secret to reveal its shape.

She calls him in his brown leather shoes
With her canvas bags fresh off of work,
And she has to see the young man tonight,
To show him the new pictures she took –
With the sunlight, stones and red jacket.

To be alone is to be with another person,
When you and I go out with the popcorn
We don’t ever need to talk to each other
We can just look at the floor and pretend,
And so can they with their glasses of beer.

He doesn’t remember it that way on the farm.
When he felt a burn in his chest it wasn’t indigestion,
It was the longing of his soul to run free
To follow the storm bulk by the grove,
To kiss the girl where the rain hit the roof.

The world won’t heal itself at 4 in the morning
With our pillow talk and duvet covers
But we can wear headlines over our groins
And laugh about them and our steak dinner,
So when we drink coffee tomorrow we can smile.

Keep your ambition for the record books
And let the passion burn through your eyes
And dredge your hungry youthful lips
Those things have nothing to do with love,
African safaris and ten volume novels
Don’t change one piece of your heart.
LLC’s and pimps grow and fall like apples
You can pick them off any orchard
But you can never pull on the burning in your chest
That strange appetite where you hunger
For a country and farm that never existed –
But you want the thunder and lightning
You want to see it over the tree tops
In the grove he imagined by the barn
And maybe then he’ll kiss you too.