Seventh Street and Elliot

Sweet Six Teen.
Five Dollar Bill.
Four way stop.
Three’s a crowd.
Two way pager.
One night stand.
Blastoff
!

I hate the Yankees" earlier version

Curses, streaks, rivalries,
running cars, Wilco and green garden hoses.
First time ever, Impossible, Miracle.
Pimperton, Susie, a life full of bills.
Alone, a woman sits hating
baseball more than ever.
"Sweet Home Alabama" never
sounded so bad.
You selfish bastard,
you ended the game we
all lost,
not the Yankees.

All Nighters

I would say at about 5:18 or so during an all nighter is right around the time when you want to kill yourself. Your neck and back are sore and you eyesight has been blurry for sometime but finally you have rub your eyes every few minutes to make sure you are not going crazy. My brain thinks that it just got a job on the graveyard shift and my body is telling me its Sunday after noon. People have told me to make a list of things I need to do the next day so my mind doesn't think about them and tries to sleep. I have tried it a couple of times but my minds just starts thinking of things that I left off--catch 22 I guess. I feel a bit like Harold Crick I guess.

Sorry no poems this week trying to polish off old ones and get ready for the GRE yeah.

Night Custodian in a Library

I see you every night;
walk by you when vacuuming,
when I dust you off,
and clean the windows.
There is one light bulb
that shines on you.
I change it often
so it won’t burn out.
I think of you when
I’m not cleaning
as you sit on the shelf—
the book no one picks up.
Coming in on my day off
I find you, check you out,
take you home,
and begin you.
Lying in my bed,
I cuddle up with you.
Try to find meaning
between the covers.
Slowly your dust jacket
falls off, and is set
next to my lamp which,
like me, is turned on.
I start feeling your
leather-bound back
and your gold leaf title
hanging from your neck.
Your pages slowly
nuzzle up to my hands.
I begin to read you
and you begin
being read.
Your words are soft
flowing together.
You speak to me
in my language.
Turning pages faster
I find more.
I hear your
pages rustle.
your words like air
fill my lungs, flow
through me.
Giving everything,
I breathe deeper,
reading faster, almost
violently turning pages
with two hand and scanning
your words for more—more letters,
symbols, dots for i’s and exclamation points!
Moving slowly in and out of your o’s and a’s
and wrap myself around
your j’s and l’s grabbing your nouns and the
adjectives that describe them.
Your prepositional phrases pull me
closer while your commas suck my ear.
Your page numbers are warm and your
chapter headings are sweaty. I get lost in
your w’s and m’s, going back and forth
between arms and legs. I slide faster
again down the pages and paragraphs. I
want to read you every day,
maybe twice a day. I won’t take you
back to the library. You are the only
book on my shelf.
I buy bookends to hold you up when
I’m not reading you. I spend all day
everyday reading you sometimes. You
love your t’s being tickled by my tongue, or
your s’s swerving around my teeth.
Sometimes, I fall asleep with you on my
chest, or lying next to me, or your pages in my
in my hands.

After the Fall

In the winter of my mind
it is still snowing. Coats cover,
and scarves wrap thoughts—the thoughts
that can't get out, the cold, frozen ones.

The Paint Job, Ten, Cookie

I think that I have finally come to the realization that my parents are almost there. By there I mean the point where they need help to do regular things. My Dad's eyes are so bad, he is legally blind, but in his stubbornness wanted to paint the his second house by himself. Knowing that he can't see to well my mom asked me to go over after he had finished and do some touch ups. My dad was there when I arrived, and he knew why I was, there but didn't bring it up.He just told me that the last bedroom needed to be finished. I proceeded to paint the entire basement again, of which I am not complaining about, but was gracious for the eyes to see it.

While painting I left my mp3 player at home and pulled out some old Cd's from our collection. Almost 16 years ago an album was realeased that changed my life. The album is obviously "Ten" by Pearl Jam. I listened to the album 4 straight times while painting and thought of "Jeremy" painting the wall of his school classroom. There is something to say about Pearl Jam being the only band left from the 3-4 year period we called grunge, but can now call really good music.

Our family dog Cookie was "put to sleep" this week, there are times when I wish I could just be "put to sleep". I am working on a poem about this but can't really put in words quite yet the feeling.