Short Stories, Long Odds

Best Song Lyrics I’ve Found In A While:

So I’ll stick to my guns,
but from now on it’s war:
I’m armed with the past,
and the will, and a brick
- Frightened Rabbit, Good Arms vs. Bad Arms

Best Line from Neruda That Used To Be a Favorite Until I Forgot It (Tie):

I want to do with you / what spring does with cherry trees.

…and…

The moon lives in the lining of your skin.

Best Description of Me, Worrying About Who / How I Am, by Someone Else

If I didn’t know you, I’d say “Stop being a girl. You’re fine.” But I know you really weigh these things.

(I don’t normally write poetry that a) rhymes; and b) isn’t funny. Here is an example of a poem that breaks both rules.)

Frayed bends of pages
shuffle from between
the ends of ages:
a notebook, seen

through many years
of a young man’s life;
While you shifted gears
from girlfriend to wife

and watched me grasp
the bare, stripped ends
of a wish by the wires, clasped
and burning in my hands,

what you must know now.
After fifteen years in,
what you must know now.

(Written in 2008)

What the hands want,
the heart desires

until the sun sets
and the moon retires.

Why the fuck am I at Wal-Mart
on Easter Sunday?

Early May in New York state
my father on the edge of forgetting himself
and I, so sick I couldn’t see
did not understand where we were

A silver diner in the middle of no-where
two open-faced roast beef sandwiches
he talked about Rohack’s and his life as a child
and I, with muted ears, trying so hard to listen

more than anything
we should be square with ourselves
in the end

see this how I see it now

I.
In Grapevine at a big resort
they had Christmas lights
on public display,

and a show about Ice
you could pay
$30 to see.

We took pictures and saw
the lights and then
we drove home.

Then I stood in the kitchen
and I looked in my freezer
all for free.

(USA! USA! USA!)

with friends, telling
stories and drinking champagne
and kissing a pretty
girl at midnight,

and

watching a very popular web cartoonist
do an impersonation of
a tyrannosaur

a tyrannosaur that smokes Camels and screams,
DRAW A VAGINA

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