Not Writer’s Block, Just Writer’s Suck.

I am writing but I’m not feeling it.

Actually, I’m feeling it, alright. Like a chunk of bile waiting to be let out.

Breathe. Breathe.

Breathe.

Go on.

Batting Average.

I swing a bat and I
wonder, will you be back
still the weight
pulls from my toes the earth
transfers to the swing
of a bat and into the wide,
wide air
littered with freeform splotches

they say it is much easier to miss
than to hit
the missing lines a thousand
to one
yet when I consult the back of
my shoulders, the muscles taut against me
I rub and think, much, much easier
to hit

and maybe that’s what we did
the words thrown together 
spilled over white bowls
then spat out with the evening wine

you hit

I hit

we never seemed to miss
until one day I missed you
across the breakfast nook
check again the rumpled sheets
in case you are hiding between
the pillows I am hugging

but no

and I am swinging
this bat and wishing
I had missed
more than I had hit

The Nameless

Another bit of fiction to whet your appetite:

 

I walk among trees. These are not the ancient ones that weather the decades with grace and class. Nor they the bamboos of my youth, who regenerate with every new spring, their young chopped, cooked, and served with rice. They are simply the suburban ones. Though they may be a diverse lot, they are likewise the ones without names. Their fruit is useless, giving up their stored energy in spatterings of juice that paint the ground, dirty our cars, and mark the bottom of our shoes.

 

The road is narrow and the way is straight. At first I look at my sneakers. I feel they are an extension of my self, the white canvas flexes, then stretches. But my feet, how smooth and pale and uncalloused they are, unlike the feet of my ancestors, who, either through poverty or the limited technology of their times, lacked the protective shell of socks and shoes. My sneakers are disposable epidermis, periodically replaced for forty nine ninety nine. Perhaps it is not just this, but my whole life which has been insulated by some purchasable covering, my existence of more than two decades as yet completely unmarked by life itself.

 

My mother refuses to throw away my old shoes. A whole shelf the length of the garage is devoted to the shoes of my childhood. Soccer cleats and basketball shoes with pumps and kid-sized leather dress shoes and discount hybrid athletic sneakers and plain old running shoes. Each with a function, with a shelf life, some worn down to the point of toe holes, others merely tossed aside by the sheer growth of my feet. Perhaps they express more than this soft-bellied thing I call my life.

Taste of a Summer Weekday

pen cap days
the hiss of aluminum tears
against the pitch black sand
humid air under canvas skirts
palms impressed by hope
like red stitched balls
I dream of keyboards
unsmudged

above is a purplish glaze
of buildings ablaze
lightning bugs and dragon flies
cast iron memories
with a drop of egg
all yellow like
grand

I am swatting clouds
my father only a windshield wipe away
ever still the whining blips
threaten to resolve
in minor key

ice cubes in a kind of backward cytokinesis
empty printing shells
casting ominous oracles
she’s not a haughty girl per se
more a restless hand at misgenuine
compliments

just trying to trapeze me

Ape in Space.

Bake me a pie
he speaks in pixelated pitch
not waves
an old masonry face
all red, chipped

my mother bows
like three smooth stones
tossed into the moss tempered
pond
in complicit silence
I am still a child
anger a sand tickling between my fingers

my father’s mass
unequally distributed in his ass
I wished for a trebuchet life
as far removed from his
trajectory
as this sputnik diploma
allows

but am I still just aping
not yet a man?

Haiku Fortune.

Rollie pollie legs
Fortune cookie fantasies
Buy the one in red

Waiterrant.

There is a blog I have been reading/following since the beginning of 2005. The blogger is an anonymous waiter living in the East Coast who has worked as a waiter for a long time. He dropped out of the seminary when he was young (he was planning on being a priest), and now lives alone with his dog Buster.

I’m not quite sure why, but I liked his writing and the fact that he had some interesting reflections about being a waiter. Anyway, he is coming out with a book later this month, and I wanted to do my own little bit of “advertising.”

enjoy.

Pace.

I don’t got your kind of pace
the lingering kisses
elbows on window panes
how our shadows used to dance
against wavering candles
dinners that became breakfasts
that LP spinning round and round
till our worlds came standing
still

I just don’t got your kind of love
pines letting their white burdens
down and I am buried but
hands melt against my burning cheeks
your slip falls easily from your shoulder
we are dancing a quiet waltz
in three four

I don’t got your kind of hope but
todays a skipping sort of day
like soda cans stacked against the sky
rain down that ebony rain
sticky against the shirt against my chest
right up against my kokoro
we are sipping that still water tea

I’ve still got your eyes
locked in bittersweet glass
on the second shelf on my bedroom bookcase
looking out like gumdrops we were both staring
at the metal orb of the stairway
do you remember the old house?
taking photographs
like watercolor polaroids

I don’t got patience
not the silly kind of simmering pot
of brown golden chicken curry
not the crimson merlot braise
nor texas barbecue brisket
you never ever did teach me
to make your teary-eyed
soon
do
fu

Take an inner breath
a journey with me
deep
into my world
a place where nests arrive over doorways
a piece of string among a bunch of sticks
lands where girl meets boy
boy falls in love
girl falls in love
love is made
love is lost
love is found again
kept
treasured flowered married

when you are here you will breathe again
walk among untroubled waters
rest your ankles, the chilly air
jump among the lily trees
mushrooms without toxins
spiders without sting

browse the aisles of cloth covers
hard covers soft covers
untouched unbroken unspoiled
a white cover for you white pages
unwritten

unspoken words
not for better, not for worse
they are my true way
my gift to the unborn world
light beknownst beloved
believed

behold the firmament
of both heaven and earth
water and dirt
climb the skies one bitter suffering
after another
find me fluttering among the sparrows
the weakened sons

my daughter you are one in whom-
have I truly been found?
this running water
is it rain?
is it tears?
there is a crack in this basin
and the acid rises from my gut
through my soul
I hate you
mother

weakness fear pain anger confusion sorrow
I am your
every wish
your every desire
personified
sought
modified
forgotten
lichen wishes clinging to rocks of epochs
time where lemonade cost a quarter no more,
often less

stir
a soup consummated
dry bones not a sinew left
only old memories still a bitter stew
blood red
herb like thorns
melted bring me down don’t ever let me go don’t you see I’ve got to
pray

hold me high like a bayonet
a marionette
pull my strings above raise my hands bend my knees
twist my soul rend my face break my spirit
mend my love

(Un)Holy Brew.

Caffeine
liquor of the heavens
receive
the supplications of your worshippers
morning afternoon evening
the steam rises
like incense to nostrils everywhere
a sigh

swirl toil
I think of argyle socks bunched
stuffed in shoes
scuffed
a tired rub of the shoulders
a loosened tie

Tuesday evening and
I long for a Monday morning brew
a bitter drink for bitter moods

soften this night
O Jesus of Nazareth.