Give Me A Call Some Time

I'll be on the phone,
and all you'll hear is
boop boop boop boop,
so you'll hang up
and hit the road.

I'll have missed you
today, but catch me
tomorrow -- we all know
where to find each other
in this good old world.

We'll be all over each other
from the wooden tables
outside Crown and Anchor
to down by the stream
in the summertime.

An Old Photo of Today

Much older than today are my friends
in a photo I took tonight, but tonight
when the hours grow long, and the music
we used to love lazes long in measure.

Older than the music are the couples
who tonight will find fine Atlantic air
meets the places where they sleep,
where the cold air meets their quiet lungs.

Tomorrow the scene will be newer,
but we'll be a few hours older than tonight.

Give Me a Call Sometime

It will be way away
in that future when
everything burns too bright:
a call to arms is still
a call; call to see
what's our next move:
make a coded call
for future action, or
cool off and call in the morning.

The Finger

Midnight: Coastal Connecticut,
and Lucas finds the finger.

The corners of the porch define
our borders;

on Monday our Holiday Road
will take us home,

but tonight the Sound is sweet.
Montauk waits quietly across the water.

Tonight's the middle of the party,
for which Lucas has found a finger.

Give Me A Call Sometime

It will be 1979, and I will be king
of all the thin brown carpet
that I can see; all three feet of me
moving top speed down the stairs
to explore the wide cosmos of the courtyard.

Call me because never again
will I be as available as I am now
to talk about imaginary magic seeds
called "sesame."

Call me and maybe we'll hit the street;
take the cat down to Winn's
for a comic book, and when we're home,
I'll tell you how to get to Houston,
Left on I-10 and go straight.

NaPoWriMo 04/30/09

HELLO DENVER

Hello Denver,
you might be glad to know
this is still your town to me
in so many ways.

Two years later,
you still find funny ways
to pop up -- in a night out,
in a back room.

I am happy to report
that two years later
a late-night robot
can make me smile.

NaPoWriMo 04/29/09

BEWARE THE FUNNY HAT

Be wary of the funny hat
late at night on the streets of Brooklyn
when any amount of attention
is unwanted: our anonymity
is our best friend tonight;
it is different from hours ago
when all eyes were on you;
you were a star.

It is right to move from constellation
to bandit and back again,
our unknownness is our time
to do the little things: to move
from one place to another,
to play a game, to eat some chips.

Tomorrow we'll feel like
we've gotten away with something
if only tonight we get away with it.

NaPoWriMo 04/28/09

THE REALITY OF OUR SISTER GRACE

Our sister Grace is not,
strictly speaking, our sister:
we found her one night
in a Corpus Christi bus station;
she was fully formed
as if hatched from an egg.

My brother Dick and I
knew we HAD to have her,
so beautiful and wild!

But if course
she wasn't our decision,
she followed us home,
she felt right beside us,
as if she'd been there
the whole time.

Our parents knew it too;
there was no "can we keep her
PLLEEEASE," it was just
"hello Grace, welcome home."

NaPoWriMo 04/27/09

SAXOPHONE SOUNDS

Hello Saturday, hear
my saxophone sounds,
our bleat-bop style is fly
on the wall of this truck,
I'll make this alley mine.

NaPoWriMo 04/26/09

PINK HEAVY

Oppressive Spring
is upon me, branches bent
with heavy pink beauty.

We are slowing down
beneath the trees,
bony December far away.

NaPoWriMo 04/25/09

sucking on a beer:
John Cotter from New England
happy Spring indeed

NaPoWriMo 04/24/09

MY NEON II

An orange-red radar beeps
in the darkness -- my night vision
blurrrs a halo onto every corner;
an insectine chirr catches my ear:
a sign pops into my sight,
and so begins my Friday night.

NaPoWriMo 04/23/09

MY NEON

Neon is not always neon;
electricity arcs to excite
other noble gases
to make light and color:
orange-red for neon,
blue for argon (with mercury)
and xenon is purple-white.

But fluorescents can be deceitful,
do not look to these signs
for noble gases; look for
"dinner," or look for "subway."