Pandemic-Blues
wuhan-corona
china-covid
travel-bans
quarantines-closures
social-distance
flatten-curve
wear-masks
ventilators-pump
hospitals-capacity
economy-slows
essential-workers
people-struggle
drinking
Homework
In science class we learned
the hottest point of steam
is at the tip of the teapot spout—
where streams of swelling heat
rupture the cooler air.
After school, I do my homework
upstairs in my room.
My kid sister murmurs
somewhere,
playing family on her own.
When the clock clicks four
the stacks of the factory moan,
and the sky
gets smudged with smoke.
Being Young, 21
Being young, 21, is everything
For wisdom does not come with age
Only tired bones and fade
And maturity means accustomed to
The crumbling of a once great temple, you
Invisible now, featureless, faceless
That’s the rub of the wrinkly skinned
Who live in seaside towns, with mothballs twinned
And all this whilst the beautiful people
Run like gazelles, screw like rabbits, have such delicious fun
God, it’s just not fair, though once I was there
In the class of being young, 21
Half Capacity
lacking logic
who is essential
who isn’t
claiming following science
churches closed
strip clubs open
gyms closed
liquor stores open
corporate box stores open
mom-and-pops closed
restaurants and critical thinking
both at half capacity
A Drink to End the World
The map of the world has changed
since I photographed you;
faded in its frame,
ink lighter with the seasons.
No Siam, no Burma,
one Vietnam.
Across the room
your cheekbones are sharper,
hair shorter, bright blonde as
your lips and nails are red.
Aroma from a whiskey tumbler reveals
polite wine lost to single malt.
Surgical, your laugh slices the room,
precise as heels across an Aztec tile floor.
You step out where I stand
to smoke, to stare at the waxing moon.
Day Job
After a night of therapeutic bottle and blunt passing
He wakes on earth at 5AM
In a lumpy bed
He goes to the airport in his overalls
Brandishing a handkerchief
He scrubs the thick plastic windows
With long handles bruises
He watches the jets take off
They move hot through the endless sky
With purpose
Ocean City
Ocean City I’m on a fifth-storyhotel balconyat the crack of dawn staring past a row of rental propertiestoward vast waters beyond, as I wonderwhat ghosts lieon the hungover streets below. What sort of jukebox jiveor inebriated highdid that last breeze carry through? It’s a mid-summer den,a damn hotbed,of debauchery and sin on this morning after […]
Read more "Ocean City"After The Party
After The Party I do my rounds,collect the glasses,some emptied to the last drop,others with anything froma finger of whiskey,a solitary olive,to half a tumbler of flat beer. A couple are rimmedwith lipstickwhile others may bearthe weight of aftershaveor float a littleon a schooner of perfume. I’m no forensic scientist.I can’t identifythe individual drinkers.But I […]
Read more "After The Party"Dark Raisin
Dark Raisin The drinking glasses stay in bed Tight and dry in a shadow chest Light invades the belly-hole She’s been trying to cleanse for weeks Walls will harden under harsh neglect Violent piety will crack riverbeds Our Lady of Guadalupe lives in a candle jar Who told her a belly glow would placate her […]
Read more "Dark Raisin"An Animal or a God
An Animal or a God Paint glistens yellow in the night rain, dark Bacardi pours easy over ice. Like the ghostly colonials of Apocalypse Now— lost to France, dying in Vietnam, I’m stranded in this tiger wilderness. Half-awake, sleep leeched by dread sense, I avoid the sun, seal doors and blinds against mutations of neighbor […]
Read more "An Animal or a God"
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