Look-Alike

1.
he showed me his
ashtray in the sink
a prize from the last county fair
but i didn’t know why they couldn’t have
invested in something better–
a chandelier made of glass
or a cold metal flask.

he said “they know i like to smoke,”
and pointed to his throat,
“this is where my sorrow goes.”
i understood.  i took his hand and said
“this is only the first of
many lifetimes where
a person i’ve loved
was in two places
at once”. he asked me how i knew and i said
“i know a guy who looks like you”

he stood in shock for a moment,
then laughed.
of course,
he was only a boy who seemed like you,
you whose delicate eyes i’d go searching through,
waiting hours by the roadside, vain in my hopes.
i smiled and watched him smile an identical smile
to yours.

2.
he brought out several broken bottles,
shards all jagged and bent.
he said “i’m not afraid of pain”,
and cut his mouth open before he could
explain what he meant.

the blood was dripping like a broken sink,
he laughed again and said
“i know what it’s like when your heart
is in the wrong place, i think”.

when i told him the resemblance was
making things hard,
he said,
“you need to hold on to what you’ve got.”
he nodded his head to enforce the thought,
neck moving slowly like a cable car up and down;
“you’ll find someone” he said decidedly
and lit up without looking back at me.

Copyright 2016 Golden Star Poetry

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Self-Discrimination

as I poured tea the glass one drip after another

I (drip):

thinking about last night’s thoughts

and did I really want to slip out of the car

onto the street or was that just be me being irrational

drip,

wondering how I’m going to keep A façade up

wondering how long before I can get another pet

if they’ll treat me nicely as a grandma in the future

if maybe I was wrong about living on my own

drip,

I’m calling bets on who is the most

handsome person in the room and

should I keep staring

drip,

or was I still confirming or denying

my intuition, was life imitating

art or was art imitating life?

Copyright 2015 Golden Star Poetry 

Two Men of the Same Name, or: Forgotten Phrases

The First One has been

on the road of his life for only a few years

just long enough to seem wise beyond his years

His eye smiles are sludgy, mixing in with

almost every other facial expression.

I doubt that he has a real faith in anything,

(he mostly said it himself)

so I wonder if we might really be alike.

If you asked my opinion,

I’d say that on a walk in the park he’d

wonder about the way the squirrel thinks about his life,

if at all,

but in a joking sort of way,

of course;

He might think about the influence of a song to a poem

or a poem to a song or which came first,

but he doesn’t mean it usually.

Some days he isn’t actually joking-

those are the days I think I love him the most.

On the spot he will spew out the ridiculous

his teeth and eyes a fascination,

his face an endless infinity

that I might go around and around,

never getting too near,

smiling and crying for lack of response

smiling and crying.

The Second One always drifts away from a conversation;

a winter face, a thinner face,

the face of a small boy.

His lips demand to be deftly kissed,

like a victorious action

he speaks to you like a friend,

but seems to dismiss you.

Nothing in him says permanence.

He seems to deeply understand words and yet

act as though he is completely naive about them

maybe he’s a fraud, who knows.

Then in the back of my mind

I am sure and scared that he may just be a

fresh-faced, ever-youthful idiot trying to get you to

smoke in some back alleyway, but he listens, he seems patient,

he wears nice clothes, and you speak.

you speak to him but he keeps on changing the subject,

he keeps on smiling and you don’t know why it

never rubs off of his damned sweet looking face.

he might be innocent, maybe,

but it’s such a coy little smile that you have no choice but to smile back.

(when he walks into the room,

I stop everything I am saying and stare at him

and when they ask me what I was talking about I

suddenly don’t care about what I was going to say anymore).

Copyright 2015 Golden Star Poetry