Book o’ Verse

…by guest poet Shonny Vortex.
In my blue house
Everyone is I, I
Talking about themselves
In my blue house
Hearts bang on your head
With drum sticks
And stars twinkle
In the daytime
And fish swim into your mouth
So you can eat them
And flowers grow out
Of your head
And people have square heads
And people love squares
And a blue moon
Floats at nighttime
and a yellow moon
Floats at daytime
With the stars
A purple oval-shaped moon
Flies at daytime and nighttime.
And there’s a butterfly-shaped moon too.
May 18, 2003

a moment to mourn.
that’s all.

And a long line of
enthusiastic
neatly dressed
retirees.

They're pressing toward the front.
And now they're strip-mining the table
saying:

   tell me
sell me

         how to stop time.

At every gas stop along the way, he pulls out trash with his wallet.
A scrunched up sheet of off-white paper
and a smaller one – a post-it.
Out, up for air and then he
bends over to close a hand on them
and pull them back up
off the shadow stained concrete where they fell.
He straightens himself out a bit.
He slaps his pants.
And then he pushes them back down.
Back down deep.
Into place.

Talking with her about her brother's death
years back now. And it's the first time we talked.
She just had a kid
first kid
last month
my son's almost four
good guy
big boy.

Their house looks the same
even the table
even the carpet
and I tell her that.
The house even smells the same.
But you can't say the house smells the same.
Or ask if the sofa's still covered in plastic.

I think of him often. I tell her that instead.
I tell her he meant a lot to me, which is true. She says thanks.
And then I use the word "maudlin." I say: "Sorry to be maudlin."
But it's the wrong word. And that's what sticks with me later.
It's not maudlin.

Her brother's dead.

Tonight in his sleep, Sam said:
“He wants a chocolate Gogurt
and to fight bad guys.”
He said it a couple of times.
Always like that — in the third-person.
And then he fell back asleep.
And I say:
Congratulations!
Enemies of evil!
Congratulations!
Gogurt people!
International chocolate conspiracy!
You own part of my child’s brain.

He wasn’t very smart,
or very rich,
or very successful.
But he was six-foot-three.
And at parties, he would
slide up silent
behind his smarter, richer,
more successful,
better-looking friends.
Head to head.
Back to back.
And hang out for a while.

He said we're longing for a simpler time
something easy
refreshing
familiar
a malt shop.

He said the polyester backlash
is still
in progress.

Last night I saw
the best argument
for 6 billion of us.

A musician so talented.

You don't get one so talented

if there are 600 of us.
Or 60 million.

You need really big numbers.

So maybe that''s why.

Or at least that's why it's OK sometimes.

For example:
Last night.

The hallways smell like paper and scissors and elmer's glue
and parents
roaming around
inspecting the tile

quietly comparing notes
amid sneaker skid
boom.

This is America.
We come here from different countries, from different cultures. 

We speak different languages.
But there are two words we all understand.

And those words are:
"multipurpose room."