Book o’ Verse

My 3-year-old and me back to back at a Route 5 pee shack and there’s this mighty roar pours out his two-foot frame. The rush of my doom. As I’m flushed out the room.

Cyril, who recently retired from service in the British government. Only fifty some-odd years old and now traveling the world in the wake of a messy divorce. And what did you learn, Cyril, in your fifty some-odd years? “It isn’t worth it.” Great. But he seemed happy enough.

Family smiles down long tables at loud restaurants there’s an extra calmness there sometimes and even family blank stares and family glares still jaws with an inch or so between them and all the muscles hanging comfortably loose.

Senator Strom Thurmond belongs to my gym. I see him there three, four times a week. On the treadmill. Sculpting his biceps. His rock hard abs. He doesn’t listen to music while he works out. He just stares straight ahead with his iron skull and his wide, bony eye sockets. I try to tell him … Read more

He tries so hard to look bright around the eyes bright Kennedy eyes kind crinkles soft wisdom star fire big pupils with flecks of genius knowing, nodding but it always comes out crazy.

Ow. Ow dammit ow. Dammit. Ow. Don’t walk and write.

That’s the goal. To open it one more crack. Bathe in the woosh. Fire it back. Not to be Superman. But to stick our heads into the place where the idea of Superman came from and then wriggle out trout in teeth.

I wear your hatred like a badge like one of those toy sheriff badges made out of spray-painted fake-metal plastic. Look at me: I’m a cowboy!

Little bird people with their hollow bones heads uplifted trying out afterhours fancy soap. Bath salts. Sugar scrubs. Sometimes it’s not all about you applying topical sweetness. Sometimes it’s all about traffic hums warm door happy birds.

His eyes stopped on her like a butterfly landing on your arm.