cheat

(#4)

Richard Blashka
Richard Brautigan
cradle to grave
Bed, Bath and Beyond

(#6)

i will sit in a chair with wheels and
you will wear roller skates and push me around
in a big room with other people and mats

The city is where ideas retreat

Like spit in a straw, sucked back

That same roller blade girl shot it,

She has no remorse

She can stalk the streets in circles,

She can always skate away.

leftovers

cleaning out my desk
long past my bedtime
i discover
fifteen city maps

marked up,
with circled addresses,
highlighted streets
and creased corners,
the impossibly named streets
dash impatiently
off the edges,
disregarding my
inability to pronounce
their strange combination
of letters and accents

mingled amongst them,
the detritus of memories:

ticket stubs,
museum admissions,
a sugar packet,
the label of a spanish painkiller
obtained through a grilled doorway
at an ungodly hour of morning,
a railpass,
a credencial:
the paper trail
of three weeks of beauty
and one foot before the other,
several photos,
a handwritten email address
who is isabel678@moroc.es?,
train times scratched onto the back
of a receipt
for two cola caos,
and lists of groceries,
sayings,
directions.

how do you dispose of
the leftovers
of adventure?
how do you throw away
a piece of paper
that holds a history
you are terrified of forgetting?

Phytotherapy + It's Going to Take a Long Time (2 poems for catching up)

Yeah, St. John's Wort
brought me back to myself,
but not the self
I'd hoped
to see. When
I was small I felt so often
so frustrated and impotent.
If What I Want
doesn't change at all
The Way Things Are,
why bother wanting?

-

All day long at the store
while I looked like a clown and fed vanity
the radio played:
well-turned love songs from the 1940s
a more innocent time
when we could deny sex
and pretend that everyone was white.

People in love aren't cute and funny.
They are the reason I can't sleep through the night.
I need help. I don't feel capable.
I wish I'd spent my time learning
things other than how to tie a bow tie.

Either Way

A quick note about boobs
Teach me how to kiss
We shared a cab, you hit me in the face.
To the slow winter drivers
for your enjoyment
Our Connection is Over


05 Dec 2009 - nyc - 1500 live ladybugs, accidentally bought while drunk, feels bad.

SIX

Double jump high kick
face block, punch
drilled into muscle
at Kim's
taekwondo studio
like bamboo piercing through
fresh earth. I escaped
torment, playground
ridicule, blocked out taunts
from memory,
constructing dreams
of kicking ass to keep
my knees from giving out
underneath my trembling torso.
Suddenly second grade,
despite glasses and bad haircut,
was lying face down
on a tire swing
and spinning it
so the chain wound up
all the way to the top
then letting go.
Dizziness, the ground
coming up to meet my face,
the flood of fists
I held in behind my tears.

Mercedes 2.0

I dreamt that you swallowed me whole,

when a thousand miles you were falling apart 

flake by flake.

Let your pieces look upon 

the next version of you

from the pipes now underneath me. 

Ham and Swift

Why did you bring a lighter to school?
Why did you bring a lighter to school?
Why did you bring a lighter to school yesterday?

Why did you light a match in my classroom?
Why did you light a match in my classroom?
Why did you light a match in my classroom yesterday?

Why did you bring a lighter to school the very next day?

sense

To lust long in curves,
In smooth, lean and arched.
To want one with words,
Still leaves my lust parched.

Or dreaming in violence,
In colours, sweat- stained and blood.
And love lorn in silence,
A heart caked, cracked in mud.

Then pulse like aggression,
Deep stroke made in flesh.
Feel close my impression
Of mouth to heat mesh.

Warm whisper is wanton,
Her sweet peaked and high.
Desire's a fountain
she twists betwixt thighs.

Kill me with raw beauty.
Your mouth ushers many.
But watch me, oh watch me
Await at the ready...
Aim...

Impatient seduction
No sleep stirs her dreams.
A body's convulsion,
unstitching of seams.

Abreast of her body,
Breech muscles for air.
Tight knots in my belly,
My hands in her hair.

Last kiss- fervent hymnal,
So say sweet goodnight.

Lest we find they've been tainted

By morn' sunbeams of light.