Culturally deprived

“Snow!” he shouted
tossing clouds of
thin, white sand at the beach
making snowmen
out of sand
with their heads
lying down
and their arms are wet planks
and their toes knotted kelp
and they never melt
until the sun explodes.

A hard laugh

It was a hard laugh. A cold laugh.
The kind of laugh that savages the funny. 
It pulls the funny outside.
Stuffs it into the trunk of a
'79 Chevy Impala.
Takes the funny for a ride.
It was a hard, joyless laugh.
And it kept on coming.

Different

I must be someone very different to him
than I am to me.
Maybe I'm some fast-talking jack-ass
some know-it all jerkweed
some high-maintenance poindexter.
If he saw me in a bar
he would hate me in that bar.
I hope god doesn't see me through his eyes.

Some minor regrets

I should have gone to the bathroom when I had the chance.
I should have got myself a coffee before the coffee shop closed.
I should have not said that thing that I said.
I should have just let it go.
Let it go.

Cole Porter Lives

With the biggest smile, my headed-toward-four-year-old says:
“Daddy?”
And I say “Yeah?”
And he says:
“Since it’s such a beautiful day, I love you.”
And that line, complete with matching catchy melody, has been stuck in my headbone for nearly 72 hours now.
The perfect Cole Porter lyric, showing up nearly 40 years too late, at least from Cole Porter’s perspective.
RIP Cole Porter.
Tony Randall too.

Plastic cups

You could find us
by the smell of cheap wine
in open-air plastic cups.
See, we'd walked into this sunny summer party
unguarded booze
them all in college
us two in high school.
Strolling the lawn with our big red cups
held chest-high
both hands.
We were alert and amazed.
Thick-haired and thin-faced.
Bobbing along
like tipsy rowboats.
Sipping small sips.
Invisible.
But not odorless.