. The Poet's Beat .

. The Poet's Beat .

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

The Poets Who've Gone On


Chiseled teeth survivors
hardy har har scuffle prod and push one another
to take a bite out of my knees
my calves
my tender flank ass cheeks holding their own after all
these years
but daring me
to acknowledge my age
and slow down

They ride rockets and comets and successful propellant
falls from between their legs onto my shame
onto my hair
the love/hate relationship of my existence

They dress in tailored suits and they smile
for cameras and they say
“In New York I do this”
and
“In New York I know her”
but
I’ve
fucked a New York City girl too with 14th St
yelling obscenities from the window
where the potted plants inhale taxi cab carbon dioxide
my head buried in her red hair
my face buried between her legs
the sweet gumball taste of her on top
of warm white sheets in the warm white summer city air

But she turned out to have insecurities and
fears and
a nose job and
perfect legs and
was, after all, a person just like you and me
despite the presence of that place or
her ambitions or
her friends or
the money in her purse or that toilet seat that vibrated when
the subway trains passed beneath
the building

So fuck you and your New York city ideas
sandblasting my decision
to practice my art in the thick brown obesity of
the South somehow staying
just above the waterline
spitting water lilies and leopard frogs from
my cotton candy lungs

Shotgun rock-salt Confederate cadences
calling coos into my writer’s window into
my writer’s skull past the black widow
cobwebs lodged along cypress rafters like grey-brown doves sitting
targets on telephone pole wires

She met me on the dance floor dressed in smoke and
red lights
stealing the sunglasses from my face bouncing
awfully close and leaving her breath in the pit
of my stomach crying years later in a motel  by the airport in
Knoxville
because I would not follow her to Metropolis fucking
those poets who did instead.

02.2013
  

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