renga senryu, 26.01.08

barmaid laughter
long and loud
another glass

old man at the bar
drains his ha'pint
and winks

what a place
for a beat
to find herself

The Wrong Bar

I want to ink myself
a tattoo of my loneliness
stamped over my heart
I am sick of English with accents
I want a nice boy from
the city to sit across
and tell me I'm pretty
or more appropriately
"Bangin'."
Amsterdam is leaving me cold
as the old folks more in
and out of the bar
A million streetlamps
no sidewalks and so many bicycles
That Ian McKellen looking old man
is staring at my young flesh
...he looks nice.
I wonder what the price of mitigating loneliness
is in this town

The Open Door

I am still Cassady somewhere in my soul
But I'll jump into Kerouac
when I board that plane
And find my wanderer's eye
Wandering
Touching faces and pleas
of please
But refrain
because I am beat
My motto is self control
and self reliance
So I do not need your body
do not want your body because
His
is at home
Waiting for me
And I love you all for your secret charms
and quiet smiles
but he is waiting
For me.
To unlock all his secrets
peer into his heart
be a peer of his heart.
And I am waiting for him to see me
as I was
all over again

In Memoriam

Oh, I am not sure
when you became another line
a sweet harmony in the bridge of my little life
But amid sweet soft jazz
and a dimly-lit room,
I lost.

All I can see is your eyes
shyly unfamiliar across the table
kindly uncaring among my past transgressions
Oh, you will never leave me
your voice sighs
I smile knowing that you will someday
because you and I both know
that all good things must end

When I step back on that plane
My heart will break
I assure you

But the piano man is playing something oddly familiar
like I have known these chords
and they have touched me
in places no man dare go
A haunting refrain some ghost from my past
has superimposed on your face

I drift longingly away back to the good months
of Persephone's shores
You are speaking again though I all hear
is Bella gently playing
as I give up on academia

Hidden beneath a piano
or a bed
this is where I stay
in memoriam.

A Song for Koeln

Deutschland über Alles
and I am satisfied
with your cobblestone streets
Blowing kisses to your cooks
through thick panes of glass
Contented under your archways
taking sixty-second portraits
of Carnival costumed festival goers
Under rain swollen skies
a city at last that loves me
and I, too, will love you
in kind
after our German cigarettes
you will ask me to stay
and sweetly
in your eyes
I shall

Whisky Mirror

When I see my reflection
the train window
the door
I see that easy smile
those heartbetraying eyes
and I am lost

I am thinking that
perhaps
she was always there
always lurking
and she can't be killed or stolen
my Milesly Rose
its to late
and I've lost myself
to her

You Didn't Know

Did you know
that I have legs and they
are covered all in little
scars that I don't know
or care where they came from?

And my hands are
just the same I am looking
all unbroken skin so soft
so smooth but the scarring
I can see

Everyone has their favorite
stories favorite body stories
and mine I could tell you
over and over

When I cried for Pablo Neruda
and did a power slide
in a skirt a mistake because
the material didn't cover
now running down my shin three inches
of skin too dark

When I went to my eval
first eval I actually attended
and I wore my slippers slipped
on the steps my poor right hand
it looks like the bat signal
broke my favorite ring too

My favorite little thing no idea
where you popped in
just 3/8ths of an inch crossing
the first knuckle indexed my left
hand and I don't know
but I stare at you and wonder

So I think back to your body stories
and all the little things
I knew how much pepper
to put in your eggs or else you
wouldn't like them but you
never even knew how I took
my tea a mistake you
should've asked oh why darling
why is it you didn't know