January 2012
16 posts
6 tags
Headlights on Fog
I keep my high beams flicked on.
They throw their yellow onto the face
of the soggy, hanging cotton stepping in front of me
And although it’s blocking my view
at least I can see it in detail.
And after the grille parts the fog,
the V6 breaststroke rattling,
I am driving through the town we love to hate.
I’m thinking how narrow it can get, this
road of slimy mirrors, watched...
5 tags
Unisex Sweater
Weekends plus Monday nights, I soaked it in the glow of street lights
and the smoke of cigarillos, dribbled poetry down the front of it
when the humid air was too stuffy,
its arms hugged my waist like a grunge rocker.
It never let go. I was in the nineties again.
Weekdays you wore it to class,
got ink from your notes on the elbows
rolled up the sleeves with a rattle of wrist-beads.
While...
5 tags
i can't sleep so i'll tell a quick story
The other night I went to the Brewster Academy basketball game. They’re number one in the country, donchaknow. Right in my hometown! None of the players are from this state but it’s still fun to watch them dunk on other recruited postgrads who probably also have a GPA less than one.
So I’m at the game right, with several of my friends, from different friend groups. You ever have...
Anonymous asked: You are amazing.
6 tags
Alone on a Beach
The eloquent elegance of a man standing alone on a beach
tuned in to the whispers of his heart, lost in sad and lovely thought:
He steps to the edge of the unsure tide,
and sinks in the wetness as the fickle foam changes its mind once more.
It recedes, tickling his ankles as it passes,
withdrawing its reach, having satisfied its wanderlust.
But as soon as the water gets home it again aches...
5 tags
Coquette
Seeing you cross-legged on the bleachers,
thin lips smiling and
delicate fingers grasping
the new camera you got for Christmas,
snapping shots of him and his beard
as he runs up and down the court -
Is it as weird for you, as it is for me -
That we have nothing to talk about?
Words so easily plucked from the shallows
two years ago, now scatter like frightened minnows.
It’s such a...
6 tags
Untwisting
Untwisting
I imagine untwisting the spiraled ladder
of your DNA, unwinding the double helix
and ripping out the rungs, leaving two straight lines,
parallel and predictable as train track rails
So that I can decode your encryption:
strands of insistent capital letters that spell out
infinite gibberish
repeated consonants slammed together like some
Russian-German-Arabic pidgin.
...
6 tags
The Morning Before Christmas
The Morning Before Christmas
I woke in time to see the pink leave the sky,
When Nature was using the wide brushes.
The tea in my to-go cup was too hot to drink
and by the time it was cooled I had already forgotten it-
Distracted by my least-favorite Christmas song,
finally redeemed by rimshots on offbeats and
Vince Guaraldi bending unruly chords to his will.
God only knows why I offered...
December 2011
50 posts
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-12-25) →
The Cambiata (8)
Norah Jones (5)
Jaco Pastorius (4)
UB40 (1)
Elliott Smith (1)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
“Quiet nights of quiet stars
Quiet chords from my guitar
Floating on the...”
7 tags
Aurora
I fell for you under the big window,
Our two desks isolated in the floating sunlight.
You looked at me sideways, a slanted smile
And I was giddy, sneaking glances
At your handwriting.
And when we stood to leave you hurried out
I wondered what was sprouting from those
Pink earbuds.
One morning I compressed that ball of butterfly bones
In my gut, crunched them into courage
I asked you to...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-12-18) →
Death Cab for Cutie (51)
Baths (13)
Elliott Smith (13)
Miniature Tigers (11)
Late of the Pier (10)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
“That’s who you really like. The people you can think out loud in front of.”
– John Green (via elige)
youbigtourist:
i have this weird self esteem problem where i hate myself yet i still think i’m better than everyone else
tonight this girl said she could interpret handlines
and mine were way farther than everyone elses
and she said i would live really long
i don’t know how i felt about it
5 tags
Nightmares in the Afternoon
Prenatal squirming
An itch beneath your eyelids
A yearning for something you’ve
Experienced countless times but will
Never remember
An inkblot singularity
Getting smaller and smaller, until
It is infinitesimal
A decimal
Always shrinking
You can only feel inside your teeth
And the beds of your curling back fingernails
And the grasping roots of your optic nerve
A colossal whine...
6 tags
Flashing Before Your Eyes
Something that smells like copper
The taste of dirty pennies when you were a toddler
Sucking the oxides and zinc from the nineteen forties
Something fogs up the sheen
Clouding the luster that had only
Lasted the few seconds it took to
Breathe firmly in the gray December morning
On the hilltop of your twenties
The tinged bronze gulp of
Dull brown-gold
Some sort of battleground between...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-12-11) →
Death Cab for Cutie (37)
Elliott Smith (20)
Broken Social Scene (11)
::M∆DE::IN::HEIGHTS:: (6)
Toro Y Moi (6)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
7 tags
New Hampshire Pickup Trucks
The smell escaping from the exhaust
of New Hampshire pickup trucks
brought to mind somebody’s breath on some loveless night
smushing our smiles together
when the blood came back to the surface,
swimming upwards warm and full
the absence of whimpers surprised me
sitting on the lowest branch of the sycamore
my insides said nothing to me
I shifted my weight
secretly hoping the limb...
