Scanzello

By admin | Published: July 16, 2009

he entered with cola in hand,
through the blared Stravinski,
and said, “Good afternoon class!”
he sat on the empty desk
swaying his anxious legs
and sampled haikus on our
abrasive minds of
high g.p.a. hope.
his corn cob pipe, snuffed,
but i still whiffed the sweetness.
he fingered his goatee, brimming white,
and pressed track 2 on the CD player.
he pointed at me demanding timbre
from quick violin bows,
demanding timbre from all around.
i was already writing it down
in that notebook cloaked by socks
hidden in my bureau drawer…no more…
ready to make my mold
with the crowd’s loam cheeks,
ready to sculpt this mind.

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Good Conversation

By admin | Published: July 16, 2009

“come on over,” she said. “we’ll
talk…no one is here.”
i strolled over, opened the front door
and found someone there,
someone that i couldn’t get along with.
damn’t, maybe this someone will
leave soon, i thought.
15 minutes later, that someone was
still there, catching up on old times
that i had no part in.
they were babbling about old friends that
i didn’t know and didn’t want to know.
so, i sipped at the coffee that was
shoved in my face.
i examined my fingernails, and realized
i bit them way too much.
i studied the decorations,
which were dull.
i noticed the walls were now off-white
due to her daily smoking.
i counted the kitchen tiles: 24 of them.
i imagined myself at 24, hoping i’m
still not caddying.
i checked out the tape and CD collection.
not bad…i realized that
blues was my favorite.
then, that someone left…
but the telephone rang.
of course it was for her, and of course
she couldn’t tell that person to call back.
so, i picked up the Bible which had been
used as a spider smasher.
it was an interesting book.
i realized that i was out of touch
with the characters and was
hardly a Christian anymore.
i got bored.
i started stretching, which i rarely did.
man, it felt good.
i made a vow to start exercising.
i belched up onions that i
didn’t recall eating.
then, she hung up the phone with
exhaustion.
she laid down on the sofa,
and i bent down towards her face,
pecking her forehead goodbye,
late for Geology class.

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This Gift

By admin | Published: July 16, 2009

what i really need is
a month alone to
kill off the voices
in my head
and trap them onto paper…
but no,
i work and
love the wrong woman
and search for more
disks and codes to crack
and bike the valley greens
through the bends of a
gift that i forget is
today.

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Hard Alcohol

By admin | Published: July 16, 2009

she took me in
like hard alcohol,
savoring my optimism
and head-spin grins.
hour upon hour
she downed me
’til the buzz
passed her out.
then she awoke and her
blanch face grew nauseous
with each syllable from my mouth
until i was thrown up,
reduced to vomit down the drain,
phoning her with bad jokes,
giving her a hangover,
until later the next day
when she craved me to
unbind her stress.
i met her outside, uncorked,
and poured myself
onto her thighs.
she took me in like hard alcohol…

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Tree Of Knowledge

By admin | Published: July 16, 2009

centered in the campus
is a round fountain that
shoots water on an iron sculpture
called The Tree of Knowledge.
winter chokes the tree with snow.
spring cascades pipe water onto
its rusty branches.
students use books as pillows
and lay around the splatter
like a bathtub being filled.
at night,
drunks piss on
the tree of knowledge,
or throw litter at it,
or hawk up phlegm at it.
once, a banana was shoved up
a blow-up doll and
was placed spread eagle on
the tree of knowledge
that has no green leaves,
just flakes of
crimson iron bark that
bleed off in the moonlight,
the tree reduced to a
sad shrub of tumbleweed
about to blow away
from our minds.

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His Last Summer

By admin | Published: July 16, 2009

sitting in the shade
of his side yard,
the old man wanted to go bowling,
but his back hurt as bad as the
previous five years.
instead, he watched
the parade of cars rumble by
with their odd bass rhythms,
and squinted at the Spandex asses
of women wobbling to
lose weight on the
fitness track across the street,
and studied the sweaty man
mow his lawn,
all the while
watching the Phillies lose
on a portable black & white TV,
waiting for September when his son
would drive him
to the retirement home.

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Balls and Bull

By admin | Published: July 13, 2009

in ninth grade,
Ken and i would sit
on the filthy floor
of the hallway
damp from sweat
and spit sputtering
from braces.
we’d chat about
Altered Beast and
other video games
while the jocks sat
across from us
and talked about their
Saturday night sexual experience.
in ninth grade,
every girl liked guys that
threw some kind of ball.
Ken and i had
no balls, no women, no Saturday night.
now, in college,
from what i’ve seen,
it’s not balls
that women fall for…
it’s bull…the shiny bait and lingo…
they don’t even feel the hook
go through their skull
until it’s too late,
suckered in,
bleeding,
wondering what
hit them.

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Old Man Schultz

By admin | Published: July 13, 2009

before he handed me the cash
for mowing his lawn,
he’d babble
for a half-hour,
working his dentures
about loud trash men,
the clogged rain gutter,
foolish neighbors, and
worthless television.
grass blades clung to
my sweaty limbs
swaying in the
90 degree shade
while i pretended
to listen.
i just wanted the 20 bucks.
generations apart,
my neon wavelength
buzzed right through him.
retired Old Man Schultz
had nothing left to do
but lecture to a
scrawny future
of America.
on my last day,
he gave a silver pen,
with a built-in clock,
as a going away gift.
and the first thing
i wrote was this in a room of
tap water, semen,
sweat, and ink,
brewing into something
magical.

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Shell

By admin | Published: July 13, 2009

after my 2 and 1/2 year
relationship and
7 years of caddying, i applied
for a desk job and
then entered a Taco Bell
where i saw a
beautiful girl
reading Burroughs and
eating 3 taco supremes.
my kind of woman, i thought.
she had that rare
seashell face that you want to
pick up,
take home, and
place on your dresser.
i watched her scoop
the spicy meat
into her
thin
figure.
then she got into her car
and splashed into the
309 expressway,
mixing with the
blue and white and orange
collared fishes,
vanished
like a shell skimming the Atlantic,
never to be
seen again.

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Fanned Away

By admin | Published: July 13, 2009

difficult to sleep
with sweat beads
decorated on my face
and creases of grief
indented in my forehead.
the stiff mattress
doesn’t help either,
but the huge fan does,
blasting a funnel of
air at my swollen body
with an electric hum
that drowns the
noise of loaded drunks,
screeching tires,
engines rumbling,
house wood crackling,
and the cats
knocking down trinkets.
the ventilation
muffles the clatter and
voices in my head,
always in conversation.
fan blades like
a biplane propeller
fly me away
to a cool slumber.

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