Drinking Philosophical

I’m drinking beer and waxing philosophical
while I look across another empty dinner table
and stare out the window
at an empty spot in the driveway.
I’m sitting here drinking
watching MASH reruns on the TV
wondering where she went
and if she’s coming back.
The letter on the fridge bets on “No”
but the seventh beer says “Maybe”
and the ninth says “Yes”
so I keep right on drinking
all the way to “Of course.”
I fall asleep in my chair again
while the cat stares disapprovingly
from the top of the TV set
and the dog drinks beer from his water dish
and eats microwave popcorn
from a half-melted Tupperware bowl on the floor.

Tags: Poetry

Moonlight

You wrap the night around me like a blanket
and we fall in love again
while the honeysuckle blooms
explode in my nose.
The rushing water in the distance
beats out a rhythm disjointed
from your even-uneven panting.
I can hear the sweat falling from your lips
when you kiss me
your hair falling over my face like a curtain
hiding us from prying lightning-bug eyes.
The grass beneath my back smells sweet as we
crush it into verdant Rorshach patterns
while we dance conjoined under the light
of a new moon and a hundred thousand stars.

Tags: Poetry

Pecan Pie

Sitting at a bare table
In a sunny kitchen
While the weather contradicts everything.
I’m crying in my pecan pie
While I taste you in every bite
As the blue-haired women murmur appropriate nothings
In the parlor
And run their slightly disapproving white-gloved fingertips
Along the tops of the picture frames on the mantel.
All I want to do is scream
But all I do is sit there smelling your cooking
While I eat the last pie you baked for me.
I can almost hear the shuffle of your bedroom slippers
On the cracked linoleum,
Almost taste your pork chops and gravy
While I try to be nice
And not notice them
eyeballing your grandaddy’s clock on the mantel.

Tags: Poetry

Rainbow
After the lightning stopped
and the wind died down
I crawled out from under my hastily erected shelter
and picked up the pieces of my life
that your storm scattered across the world
for all my neighbors to see.
I walked around picking up broken feelings
and shattered memories,
mementoes from vacations that I thought meant something
at the time.
I took the soggy pictures of you and me with Goofy
at Disneyworld
and I put them in a box
along with the mix tape I made you for your trip
(I thought it was a little cold to give that back to me)
and the sweatshirt that was really mine
but you liked it so much I thought of it as yours
and I packed it all away in my memory
and tried to forget the storms of you,
but the rainbow wouldn’t let me.

Tags: Poetry

How did we get from
Eating Star Crunches
Naked in my bedroom
With your nipples playing peekaboo behind your curls
While I lean against the wall wondering how lucky I am
To me curled up in the fucking pantry
Listening to the beep-beep-beeeep-beeeeeep
Of the disconnect signal from your best
Fucking
Friend calling me to tell me that maybe buying that
Ring
Wouldn’t be such a good idea after all.

How did we get from me helping you change a tire after Western Civ class
In the rain
On an MG
When neither damn one of us had ever changed a tire before
To sitting up til four in the morning in the amphitheatre
Falling stupid in love
And talking about soulmates?

How did we get from that kind of tight
To this kind of broken?
How do you put something back together
If you’re not sure anymore that it was ever
Really
A thing at all?

Tags: Poetry