Nonexistent Party

poor man’s wake
she’s forced to eat dirty crumbs off a
table where people have mourned
and she’ll suddenly remember what her first conversations with him were like,
and how he made a great impression,
showing off his words like toys,
smiles like remember-later momentos, the hidden interest like a skiddish moth
and how the progression of events was not
what she had hoped or thought.

the people have all already gone
their clothes strewn about like some strange
orgiastic afterthought;
only their memoried loss
nothing on the interior
the people are still dead to the grounds they are in only.

the house is empty
at this nonexistant party
your own kin
sings like him,
and looks a bit
like him.
it was long over
by the time
someone was dead.
it was long over when
you longed for somebody
that looked like him.

Copyright 2016 Golden Star Poetry 

Advertisement

Remain Calm

goaded to go limp
man finds woman clap trap trapped
in her room, sealed shut
found through an open door near
open books (the ones you write on).

there’s an in memoriam we always do
there’s a little song she’d whistle to
so we sang her a song a little hymn,
for a girl a woman for a whim
that, sir, was her balm, her guide.
(it’s him).

we must protect her.
(but i think she’s dead)
there are things i heard she out and said
“they’ve ruined it, they’ve thrown him out
they’ve gone behind my back, i want
the cure, i want
the heart,
i want
the pure command
‘remain all calm’
but how do i go and carry on
when i can’t feel the brush of your hands,
when you’ve gone?”

Copyright 2016 Golden Star Poetry

Behind Glass: Double Thick

you speed up time or
take a seat with it.
anyone he looks at, he likes
you can see how much it gets you turned on–

the straight edge of a ruler
you used to prop yourself against the mirror
trying to see yourself against the marks on the
hallway wall.

he’s walking in the door
i’m walking in school corridor
and the kids all seem stupid
and i’m the only one.

make a mess,
the puddles the old conversations in my
head, the fake lies, the stories i
told myself the new horizon,
butting into conversations with
cocky, uncaring jokes
“he doesn’t like you”
you say, half smiling, lazy
the coffee maker doesn’t work so now you have to
boil the water yourself waking up isn’t easy
your friends all say they’re breaking too
but you don’t know if they are listening.

you sing songs like back in the USSR
you said he’s kind of like that song
you can feel him in every baby in every lyric
that ever goes on the airwaves
and sometimes you feel like doing a full 360
cause the blindness was just like another
blind love,
you realize you blocked it out and you
still wanted every baby to be darling.

Copyright 2016 Golden Star Poetry

Last Chance

as a big sun wanders out of a sky
i wonder,
if the the people we imagine
mightn’t fly,
flit past our shoulders and say
“well, you’ve done it again, love
one more night like this and we
call it quits”
yeah, the ground is more inviting
when it echoes as it hits.

i’m not sure where it’s gone,
that touchstone i built,
(built like a fortress and i
die like a fortress)
built in the sand
my own thoughts in every gram.

(burn,
as the flames licked a
navy blue.
i was stuck with your
fingertip eyes
as we made love to 
a mind
and a deep dark hue)

all things considered,
i shouldn’t even be able to
speak a cogent sentence anymore,
only stare at the wall and
grin,
thinking
are you sure they’re on their way?
cuz mommy promised,
and daddy promised–
aw look! the man on tee vee looks just like daddy!
pray for daddy!
take away the telly,
make him happy!

the touchstones are all fuzzy now—
—dangerously close to distortion
and when they’re—touched
the hand goes straight through them
—like a knife
much for reality, i say,
old lover!
—-so much for your
razor straightened teeth and your
strange byronic nights!

Copyright 2016 Golden Star Poetry 

Gothic Midwestern Folktale

I read a scary story and now i need to get out the scary feelings so i wrote a poem and im feeling a little better now
–GSP

you’re not sure
if I’m scared
or if my hands are just shaking under the moon
are my hands shaking, under the moon?
(believe in whom,
believe in whom?)

these gazelles, for hands, will take things for you
try to run after them!
what can they consume?
do you have the room?

I am sure
that I am scared
my hands can remember shaking under the moon
are my hands shaking, under a pale blue moon?
(cry to whom,
cry to whom?)

Copyright 2015 Golden Star Poetry 

How to Take a Shove

she was sitting in an old chair, but she wasn’t in repose.
she was laughing at you.
she was looking at the way you hold her fingers like an infant,
searching for a person in a person right in front of you.
she had been stealing, but not for love.
she was stealing a book on how to take a shove
she was minding her own damn buisness.

she was in your arms.

she had her sweet, sweet song,
and liked to think she had your tongue
which dovetailed on her lost nomadic sentences
you never caught her kissing under false pretenses
and when her words started dripping out like smoke
within the wooded moss, the fog grey air like a brush stroke
you found an orange myrrh baloon in the sky and it was her
happy to become smaller and smaller
pointless as a gunpoint, barely much asunder
lightweight, featherweight, bit of string and whispering
take a shove and leave a shove, it’s cheaper by the dollar.

Copyright 2015 Golden Star Poetry

Letter to the Lost Girl

go to the cemetary
by the privacy of which
you will find a trundle of papers
by the gravestone;
each of them
was an unsent letter
addressed to you.

You may find it strange
that I had no courage
to speak to you directly
after inking into the
endless paper void,
that i was afraid
somehow,
but
(I loved you).

please don’t forget
how i
walked
endlessly
with you
through the back
house acres
like we were
schoolchildren.

please don’t remember
the silent graveyard days
when i sat impenetrable
not speaking or sleeping.

please forgive the
sporadic bursts of
anger.

and even though
i was a terrible writer
i made you a story
even though
i was a terrible speaker
i told you i was waiting for you.

so go to the cemetary
and find the trundle of papers
by your gravestone;
each of them
was an unsent letter
addressed to you.

You may find it strange
that I had no courage
to speak to you in person
after inking into the
endless paper void,
that i was afraid
somehow,
but
I loved you,

and all i can see
are your smiling eyes
by my windowsille
when i try to look outside
to the world
that seems as dull
and senseless
as the rotting earth

Copyright 2014 Golden Star Poetry

ps. sorry if this reads more like prose than poetry!

Newsreel About The Girl Next Door

I was opiated by the lolloping
way
your smile
framed
half of your face
in monsoon time
in a summer rain.
In the corner
of the day,

she doesnt know
how to respond.
(she doesnt know
how to respond)

hello, this is the reporter and we’d like to find out how you fell in love just like that?

I was young, we were always on the same page, I was bored, what would you expect? I mean people can only know so much about themselves, they need an extension of themselves to really find out who they are.

I was nauseated by the way
I stood at the door
ready to seal my fate
day after day
like a gossamer wing
stuck to the ceiling fan
etching its own name
into the crevasses
of the plastic and dust,

She doesn’t know
how to detach
(She doesn’t know
how to detach)

so, what, you had dreams about each other? As in, there was a psychic connection?

yes, we would wake up and have the same dreams almost every night. I was infatuated with the idea that we were somehow inside each other’s minds.

She doesn’t know how to detach
She doesn’t know how to respond
but none of this is new
and anyhow
she still hasn’t opened up
his letters
for at least ten years now.

Copyright 2014 Golden Star Poetry

On Getting Used to Denial

I should be living under the floors
spending my days under an array canopy of boards
and creaking bones of the house.
I can see a man on the other side of the
underbelly
of this house
and he smiles
even though there is nothing to be
happy
about,
and the days I count,
he does not count the days
I count the days
that wait until I get out.
He has tried to assure me that
the smell of must is likened to a cologne
and the putrid smell of gasoline
is merely smoke
from our breaths,
and he is trying to teach me
that the people like their lives
above ground
and I wonder,
if he’s right.

Sunlight days
I went out
I saw pastel hummingbirds
speaking in French,
and I was,
undeniably,
insane.

the clouds were now
filling up the daylight
and there was only a
Raven
to caw out into the street
when it was least convenient,
brushing his grease shining feathers against the
brackish sky
yet seeing me
smiling,
I walked,
step by step

each foot carrying it’s own message
to the childhood I was promised
to the life I promised myself
growing up
without the help of strangers
or a guiding smile,
to keep me tied down for a while.

Copyright 2014 Golden Star Poetry

The Bottom of the Stairs

supposed to be in bed
maybe, slipping from the bed
ordering my side lunch-ins and
breakfasts in bed
is how I wish to think of you
a laissez faire smile
the smell of coffee
and perhaps
redemption
from the city street noises
that keep me up at night.

I’ve lived on stone hard floors
and maple leaf cots
thrown together by girls
burnishing their side bangs
blushing,
at the looks.
oh, no, of course not
I have to live here
they might explain
humbly gesturing to the array of
blankets
at the bottom of the stairs.

it is one AM
a time reserved
only for poets.

at two AM
I was dreaming
of you.
and perhaps,
I was still naïve about
life
but how else
was it supposed
to be viewed?

Copyright 2014 Golden Star Poetry