Poetry sucks

I guess I wanted to work again, showed up a bit late

knowing of course that my years of experience

would account for my greatness of attitude

versus the shortage of wit and rancor.

Want to be my muse Ben?  Want to try my tropes?

Or is it just the young hula hoopers and vloggers now?

We are all Instagram, we must all digress

in this disgusting language of the trying so hard to be important,

trying so hard to change what cannot be changed crew.

I guess I wanted to work again, showed up a bit late,

changed nothing, quit early and walked out of the meeting.

Nothing matters because nothing changes.

Which bed will we die in or will it be on a roadside

between a worn out tire and a biodegradable bag?

 Found in a pile...

The Bone Box

She took a token

of herself from the area

began thumbing through 

some of the pages

There is nonsense 

in the eyes of the dead

ad the beautiful problems

of the living never go away.

Phones, crickets, these

special papers and flames

eyes nose mouth teeth

ears cheeks hair

babies. Our babies

when we teach our babies

about this

in our bone box

we find flames and babies.

The names we learned

when our name was only

Adam, only Eve.

My favorite memory 

is in this bone box

with the cats and dogs

on the stairs

when I first heard

widow maker

near the hospital windows

plucking the berries

out of the pyracanthus

tree to place in a pocket

for later study

when every part 

in the assembly

pointed up or had been

counted but still,

there was no goodbye.

...no clue at all what this is about.

When you're not the hero anymore/We thought we'd be feminists for a while -It would take more than a lightning-stroke To create such a ruin. Sylvia Plath, The Colossus We all have that one shot. Without exception, we frame those wicked shop window heads and reflections and click. Most of us however, do not run out and hang ourself in a museum. Even if it is in Prague. This is not a poem, this is a fact. They blame it on one minor thing or another...a fender bender last summer, a broken tooth, nerve damage. No one says much for a very long time although they want to. No one points out the misery in the faces in the pictures. It's all set to music now. Over dressed mannequins shuffled like cards in a deck, Susie in spandex, Su Lin in red chiffon, Penelope in leopard skin replete with boa and Susie in mock drag holding a stuffed animal, Sue Lin in a red bikini, Penelope in bra and panties, some girl we can't remember in a skeleton costume, on and on like that. Picture after picture, shuffled, slide after slide and then, wicked shop window heads and reflections, shuffled with a bit more lighting, night club shots in the girls room shuffled with capitalism's witty detritus here and there and lakeside, little puddles, girls pretending not to be sex objects but pout posing all the same, standard emo pinup, no pick up lines here. Living in the shadow of her Colossus but trying to ignore it. We do not however hang ourself in a museum. We try to be a little happier because no one has had their mastectomy yet.

Ode to Upchurch Mobil Bud had all boys across from the Whitehead furniture store as Pegasus left to deliver lightning as we stopped to fuel the Impala. I didn't know then what I know now, and we trusted all those boys of his not to jerk us around. They shoulda known better. Dad signed a slip and moved on, drunk or not, you all moved on lunging left and right pulling out and pulling in to the Hitching Post next door with a real one right out front. Patio orange for the kids, blood and bar towels for the rest. All those ponies and Medusa riding shotgun, near the wheel.