Eavesdropping on the Saint Charles Streetcar at Common

    Waiting in the cold morning after a New Year's Eve out! The pavement is moist with the evening's fodder. A brazen, foolish girl prances towards downtown barefoot as a foolish boy admonishes her. Twelve of us wait for the 4:15. Multiple taxis vrooom by. One stops. A couple gets in, frustrated with waiting. A group of handsome guys on my left banter in a language I can't detect.

Poem: Four Loves

The shrink’s nose told me to read The Four Loves

so i did

i read the whole book in two sittings,
even the bibliography,

well,
sorta −

and pondered the book’s message,
you know,

how there are four loves,
according to the greeks,

those sexy helens

and

like how i used to love diecast cars and bowling
and now i mainly instant message.

how i used to love you in some other symbol,

how i used to gaze on you and blush.

how you ran away and closed the book.

how i came to sit and read

wonderin’ where it all went,

me,

stitching together a story

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Goings-On on the Streetcar at the Riverbend in New Orleans, Louisiana

I did not have to pay a fare for the streetcar this evening; apparently, the ticket kiosk was broken. What an odd, egalitarian way to herald in the new year. The car is characteristically loud and obnoxious; slightly drunk 20 and 30 somethings.
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Poem: Another Kind Of Cave?

when it seems you have been cut out from
construction paper,
block speckled primary color green,
a carved-out human form,
when it seems as if identity has been placed on the shelving,
— fleshed-out and unread —
what, instead,
walks around in its place is the abstract me
with abstract legs and triangular feet,
a circle standing in for a noggin,
made by a bunch of kindergarten scholars,
a veritable platonic form,
that forgot about its meat on the shelf,
cautiously rotting
So I go and pick up my half-smelly carcass,
filed between a copy of
jane eyre and buddingbrooks,
and slap my self around a bit like a butcher with
a premium slice,
salve a healthy dose of vinegar to spicen up
my languishing corpuscles,
jimmy into my corpse once again as if it were a
union suit
nostalgically lined to my handsome rectangle;

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Poem: "to beget"

the world does not provoke    the world is provoked

so
    does              “the
                     world is too much with us”
mean
don’t be materialistic
            ?
or does it mean something like
                    there is nothing out there to catch the eye
because “we lay waste our powers …”
    (to say something inside is a better argument, wordsworth?)
        which is why giving up on nature walks is probably a good thing
the ants have nothing to say
    “Little we see in Nature that is ours”
                        are not perturbed    really by being stared at,
    or the moth
even the stumbled upon lizard,
    pitifully its glistening eyeball falling out of its manacled socket
is not sorry    does not get its feelings hurt if moved off the pavement
the same if accidentally stepped on
        or Wordsworth is writing about arrogance    ,    here
the panache of human beings to believe us so provocative!
    something like prometheus stealing fire; his goddamn hubris —
                        for does he really think the tritons managed
such         a         gaze        can         he be that trite?

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Poem: "When I woke up your eyes were on me"

When I woke up your eyes were on me,

like a gentle rush of waves,

as if you had been studying me this whole time,
my face an open book

(even though i was feigning sleep)

your eyes

set into the
palette of your familiar face,
your lips curved into a curious smile

and you blinked

and I yawned and complained, wishing I hadn’t  fallen asleep, but I had
done so

and 

and then without a word you closed your eyes
and went to sleep again

and I, ever the paternal wannabe,
touched your back
and prayed you would be alright

and wished you were still awake

so the story could begin where we had
left off

our eyes leveled near one another,
lolling softly another to sleep,
bedtime stories fulfilled

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