Poems

The Story of the West

 A free verse poem

A new square box

on the fifth floor of the former hotel,

long dull halls,

wrought iron rails with vintage lighting, ass old, slightly broken.

The yellow hue and repetition

remind me of The Shining.

Building manager and resident of nine years,

Charlie, he talks a lot,

spewing, ejaculating words, more than I possibly need.

Braggadociously showing more,

fifth apartment now, says it has the best view from the terra cotta terrace.

but rooftops and trees are all I see.

Charlie has chosen to regale me with the story of Don West,

blind local celebrity,

I don’t know him but I’m told I should,

what-the-fuck-ever.

Their local celebrity worked at the post office.

Too excited about the apt.

Wasted on the blind man, this brilliant view,

his friends come over to appreciate the best view in the building.

Dressed in their expensive best they speak through puffs of cigarette smoke

For Macon’s elite, if you want to use that term.

Charlie says,

Don greeted everyone with a Yallow!

I didn’t take that one.

My eyes could do the view, little more justice.

If I’m lucky, I suppose,

Charlie will tell the next guy the story of the albino in 5I.

It’s new, it’s mine.

This is the highest I’ve been allowed to live.

To The Dryer Repair Attendant

A sonnet

Your machine is broke and took my money.

He says no one else has had these issues.

Being nice I say it could be misuse

and he gives a short laugh, it’s not funny.

Sir, this is making my clothes smell stale.

He says that a cord may be unplugged,

my clothes sit here in a pile, water logged.

The clothes will have to be hung over rails.

I certainly don’t want to smell or stink,

but this machine likes to swallow my change.

He tells me I have to fill out a form.

One more reason to send me to the brink.

He tells me to stay calm—quit acting—strange,

but here I sit nude as when I was born.

My Family Home

A Sestina

A place I remember but have not called home

in years. It sits as a reminder of how I measure time;

years spent in that home, and those that came later. Now,

I realize that I never truly knew what I had there,

curled up on the floor with my early morning

heroes. I learned good and evil from those cartoons.

There were lessons about geography through tunes

sung by cartoons. I eagerly listened to their

messages. Some will stick with me through all time.

There has also been much pain in my home;

when Will ran away and Lynn was arrested. Even now,

like then, my mother cries loudly when she mourns.

In the past I felt nothing bad could happen on Saturday morning

though, even if I was out, at the flea market and not at home.

I’d go see cheap knives, comics, and puppies with my brother.

I don’t have time for any of these activities now,

but even at the bowling alley where we spent much time,

between my turns I could sit and watch cartoons.

When I was young I wished I was a cartoon

character. Dreams like those didn’t seem silly there

and don’t feel out of place on Saturday mornings;

content in those precious moments. Time

is the fire in which we burn. Times like now,

I remember with detail the day I moved from home.

Change begins when we move away from that home.

Work and school take over, there is no time

left to laze, play, and watch our cartoons.

Things change, and the more that I see now,

makes me worry about what is out there

not having the comfort of Saturday mornings.

It’s not the same, but I still have my Saturday mornings

that are spent at work or rushing around now,

to see what I can get done before Monday; so little time.

I miss the days of waking up early at home,

carefree, not wanting to miss the cartoons.

I can’t, but I want to go back to that, back to there,

to my home. It’s gone though, destroyed, not there

anymore. The only way to see it now is with a time

machine from one of my Saturday morning cartoons.