Pine

My butt numbs in a chair

in the sunroom behind the kitchen,
blocking the basement door.
A basket of your laundry waits downstairs.

The windows,
widows of art framed in cotton and white denim,
face east towards the pines

where slats of morning light
blunt the dusty air with bar lines
filling the room with notes of disinterest.

The last bit of bourbon in a coffee cup
still stained from your lips
lifts me up,
and moist hands
placed on the table top
strain against smooth blonde pine,
the same color as your fine blonde hair
and mustache.

The table
remains here to taunt
and perhaps remind me
how useful pine can be for a box
and how quick the world can change

in one breathless overnight sleep.

Lille's Downtown Garden View

Litter sprouts

an asphalt garden
of half wads of foil wraps and paper towels,
broken green bottle butts,
some in foul shades of brown.

Stop-N-Shop plastic bags,
matched luggage for duty-free transients,
kicked along by the waft of a breeze,
snag on yellow weeds of tarnished turf.

A shadowless rain
wrung from a shadowless day
irrigates cement and dirt.

A three-legged settee
sits in the handicap spot of the parking lot,
with dew and sun stained cushions
double-dented by lovers estranged long ago.

Next to it,
a dumpster whiffs of rat turds dropped on the lam,
and last Sunday’s comics
tossed out with brunch in a rush to church.

Its lid,
a warped flap,
sways and rocks on its hinges
as flies buzz in a frenzy of departures,
loop-the-loops and arrivals made on time.

With no security checks or customs,
their customary act of procreation
no longer bothers Lille,

who
in the center of the city in the squat of day
reads castoff postcards from street corner trash bins

waiting to share her garden view from the settee.

The Niece and Uncle Perfect

Do bring me today's paper,
I told my niece the other day.

A smile busted her freckled face
as she laid a laptop on top my lap.

You can’t wrap fish with this,
I said.

No, but you can stay on it all day
until your mother yells from the next room
to go outside and play.

My mother wouldn’t yell at me, I told her
as I looked over my glasses at the blank screen.
I’m much too perfect for that, you know.

She bent over the arm rest of the wingback
and kissed my forehead.

Okay, Uncle Perfect,
how do you turn it on?

Hush child, and fetch my slippers
and I just might empty the dishwasher for you
tonight.

Reading Biola At Ephesus

Your words drip from the page,
like pot liquor over cornbread at the end of the meal.

What a savory delight to see.

Just when we had our fill with the last period
or question mark,
and the delicious exclamation punctuates
this festival of souls on a picnic
and checks to be sure the bellies of our hearts
no longer extend from lack of substance,

we lean back
eager
to digest in sweet contentment.




For more servings, please visit: http://biola-ephesus-ephesus.blogspot.com/

In A Heart Beat

Whiffs of mist,
lured by freon cooled air,
lift from a tub

that hugs
half curled legs
and arms
with imbued embrace.

Ears,
submerged below shallow breaths
where supple ripples dimple the surface,

listen to a heart,
its beat,
its steady beat an echo
of the one you hear at night
when I sleep next to you.

Reflections In Front Of The Café Next To The Cigar Store

Weeds grow out of cracked sidewalks,
like hollow cliché rushes from soggy poetry.

Two shops stump the front corner,
a wedged toe of a high-rise
stooped against an urban sky,

where the sunlit chill
stills
the snaps of motion,
blends with the soft smell of coffee
and syrup scents of tobacco,

and dulls the bounce of city sounds,
rashes of car horns and soft hums of voices,
thousand of voices,
pitched in a stark strolling day.

Weeds, seeded in black bands of struggle,
where cracks join lines and invisible footsteps,
solemnize subtle lives
of push cart wheels, dog scoop scrapes, and clicking heels
heedless of the time of day.

Like clichés,
the sidewalk
cracks,

marred
by better younger days of rain-washed pavements
and salted snow
and pigeon’s blow
passing wind under wings,

to bare
remarkable marks,
stick figures reflecting elephants and rats,
dogs and faces,
lots of faces,
in the clouds.

Ultimate Decoy

Mrs. Hall,
balls her hands behind her back,
to steady them perhaps.

Second graders always notice that.

Her coat-hanger frame,
under a Chanel straw hat,
hangs her Wal-Mart two piece
over large bunny slippers.

Dusty eyes stare from terry cloth toes.

No one ever sees her crackerjack pumps
kept under her desk in a Reeboks shoebox,
except the day before Christmas break
when the photographer for the school newsletter,
always a young man,
comes around.

Last year they did a piece
about how
she used to drill atom bomb fears
for over forty years,
demonstrating the ultimate decoy
in a half ass protection against fallout,
the heads-down under the desk position.

It was our duty to survive, she was quoted.

They got a snapshot of her butt sticking out
above red spiked heels.

Thoughts Of Granddad

Seagulls hover

against wind swells
pushing in ahead of a cool front.

Their blunt cries
like the last of summer
slices the sea damp air.

Barefoot prints scar the packed sand,
trailing behind us
as we stand,

you in your polka dot two piece
me in my Bermudas and green tee,

watching the sea lope in
to step on our toes
with a gentle tap.

You balance,
one small foot on top the other,

a slight tug of impatience pulls
your little girl fingers
in the grip of my red-knuckled hand,

and I can’t help but wonder
when cold fronts become warm ones,
decades from now,
if you’ll remember the seagulls in their hover,
their beaks pushing down against the wind,
with me standing beside you,
wet packed hand in hand,

and you eager to move on,
to play among the shells along the strand.

Crabby Takes On The Vampires

Thank god for air conditioning in the evening.

The three digit temp outside
keeps the room stuffy beyond the yawn of freon.

Even my late Great Aunt Lille’s drapes,
the old velvet ones of dull green,
can’t escape the sharp blast of heat that beats the stale air
nose-pressed against the windows.

Tectonic shifts in skull plates
ensues tsunamis in ripples along the scalp.

They crash on the side of the face,
spilling winces at any bit of movement
of a loose tooth afloat in a clotted socket.

Like a buoy alone in the choppy waves of the bed covers,
no one hears my whine but Crabby,
my tabby,
who decides to hide behind her smoke-blue wisteria,
clumps of pastel hung from such thick old limbs
like heavy ornaments of a forgotten springtime.

Her vantage from the second floor veranda
provides her safe harbor from the neighbor’s dog,

while waiting for the backside of twilight
to bring any vampires who might pick up the scent
and decide by less intelligent design
to steer near the inlets of our lamplight shadows.

I bet they never get a bloody toothache, though.

Bug-Eyed

A cockroach spoke to me this morning
as I stumbled into my kitchen,
one eye still closed from sleep.

He rose upright on his hind legs
on my clean countertop,
next to the coffee pot
the one I use only for tea,
antennas twirling in the air
and with some authority
demanded to know what I wrote
while sitting up so late in front of my PC.

As I stood there in my Spiderman boxers
and Superman Tee,
with one cotton sock on
the other left behind in the rumple of my bed,
I bumbled and failed to respond to the question.

He swirled his antennas once more,
impatient for an answer.

Without blinking or even thinking,
I said I write poems.

With a dramatic pause,
clasping his front legs behind his back,

he said I should read more, write less.
That the paper I used at least
had a daily dose of fiber to aid in digestion.

Then he slipped under the lip of the sink,

and even as I brewed a pot of tea
and blew a whiff of steam across the mug,

I still don’t think I blinked.