WANT DO YOU WANT FOR QUARTERS?

All the fat girls in town
had congregated in this Laundromat
to giggle at a skinny hippie.

When they sat, mouths agape,
stomachs bulged more than their breasts.
Everywhere, there’s a pecking order.

The manager in her blue scarf and coat
fluttered in to chase neighborhood children out.
“They mess the place up. I don’t want them.”

Kids, kids, kids, she muttered
raking in quarters – all this bitterness
robed in garments of honey and bees.

As for me, another day,
another dollar, down the drain.

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Copyright 2015

ALWAYS SOMETHING

1

a decrepit mess / pit

put them away

a cat, a dog, an auto executioner
gone, finally, by dawn

desperate houses plunked down in rock face
where will everyone live?

2

Warren Farm’s disastrous pick-your-own corn experiment
DeMerritt Hill Farm now owned by New York City refugees
who need to make the mortgage

while I’ve planted

blueberries, raspberries, asparagus, pussy willow,
rosa rugosa
the laurel and rhododendron that didn’t survive
all mine, all the same, within some inexplicable current

3

gentleness versus meanness
anger (I’m angry all the time)

RITUAL
versus
SURPRISE

Wild Willy’s still closed on Sundays

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Copyright 2015

 

BUT THAT’S NOT EVERYTHING

in the median strip of Route 17 just north of Pennsylvania
Paula and I found a road map of Fayette County, Tennessee
“you wanna talk about getting lost?”

all these vehicles entering a busy traffic circle
are just a matter of shuffling cars . as the matron confided,
“Harry and I used to go down to Buffalo” to do this or do that

careening along curving roads, I saw the moon
swallowed and released over mountains . “she’s
a nice girl who does well in school, but that’s not everything”

or we could have just stopped at a
BAR DINING ROOM
flashing in orange and green neon

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Copyright 2015

 

DOWNHILL FROM THE HEART

Beethoven’s chamber pot beside the piano
revealed a man truly engrossed in his work
when there was nothing else to touch.

Not even another Zelda Fitzgerald, seeking
a Daddy-Daddy-Daddy who
never was what she’s expected
nor was I.

It was all downhill
from the heart.

She rather melted away, like the music,
at the end of the page,

while I expected another.

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Copyright 2015