Monday, July 30, 2007

Wishful August into September

Traveling from the Midwest diagonally to South America,
Chicago to Bogotá. Motor a rental across the
Andes to Quito. Wade in the Pacific,

saltwater rushing up to the thighs,
filling pockets and smiles to wash
away the years of moil.

I continuously stir like the largest ocean crashing upon
the dunes of Indiana.

Friday, July 27, 2007

Hot Air Balloon

A crashing hot air balloon descends upon an onlooking crowd.

Gary thinks to himself, I’m a money lender. A real somebody.
He watches the wreckage with pennies on his eyes.

A woman runs past him, her jacket swishing against itself.
The sound reminds Gary of a flag waving
sharp on an iron pole,

wind beating up trash bags full of
lawn clippings and weeds.

Gary’s armpits beaded sweat,
drips of dried salty water like his
own mother’s tears. The kind of tears that were
dark like the primeval forests of folklore, or
outliving your children.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

These are some new poems by Sara Kelly (no relation). I liked them so I put them up for people to check out.


NURSE FROM SOUTH BEND

Good news is on the way… But is it?

A single mother cries in a local bathroom,
Why doesn’t her boyfriend accept the new kids?
She thought she would be married before him…

Vile little nurse, bra strap showing,
Ill-fitting dress,

the inability to recognize you are hot even as
a mother(father) fucker.

How I despise you, I would tell you … but I just feel so much for you.
Disposed by all.

By the way, your clothes are always ill-fitting.
So don’t try to play anyone else…





PEOPLE WHO SHARE A PART OF MY NAME


Did you take the whole pill?, she asks
She always asks me that.
She’s protective of her pills… and her words.
These words that are important….
They are in another language

“Do you really love PHISH” says the hippie girl.
Don’t worry, she’s really a hippie.
She respects you, not to worry.
Art …. The creativity from within.
Purchase my pussy… It’s for sale.





UNTITLED


Why must you shed all over me
Tread on me
When there’s a clear sign telling you not to

There is a town
It will kill you if you don’t find a way to survive

Your friends won’t help you here
They’ll gather in a graveyard
Bones all about, but drunkenness is that for which we came.

There are pictures, there are archived breathalyzers.
They warn you…
They can be pulled out at any time.

A flagrantly drunk girl flashes a sign

”I AM SO DRUNK”

She shows it to the entire room, it’s a wonder we aren’t busted sooner.

This is the end… of the innocence (I always thought that should have a subtitle)

We are set upon “death row”.

We starve.

We eat Chap Stick.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



3 poems by Sara Kelly

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Fat Kid Lights a Smoke Bomb

1.

As another Midwestern summer falls to quiet end,
the children’s laughter quickly turns to cries of
winter’s windburn,
stockings lined with coal.

The fastballs still come,
however, they peg
the unexpected body
in the form of compacted ice and snow. Preferably,

yellow like the goofy idea to make baseballs fluorescent
yellow and orange in the 1980’s.

I remember many summers that fell in 1980-something.
Endless little league practices and games,
crushes on girls named Amy, Valerie, Kimberly, and Melanie,
Star Wars (Lucas and Reagan), G.I. Joes climbing blanket mountains in my
Bedroom, fighting with Russia on tv.

I remember my first skateboard.
Matt Hensley. H-Street.
Black grip tape, Independent trucks, Swiss bearings, Slimeball wheels.
Popular outcasts in and out of
school.

2.

When I was a kid in the 80’s, there were woods and fields to
ride bikes. Haros, Dynos, Mongooses, and Huffys
raced and jumped with their pegs,
plastic and aluminum mags,
shiny silver spokes, rotors, and,
most of the time, breakless.

We had forts where we’d smoke the butts of
our parents cigarettes
and plan some scheme that involved the
younger kids taking most of the risk.

A graveyard lined the main woods, to the south.
It’s odd to think back to when we played war while
an ex-member of the military is being put to rest,
a 21 gun salute as
the fat kid lights a smoke bomb to let his team know that
their flag is doomed.

Occasionally we’d find roaches and nudie mags in or around
our forts. In the summers underwear and other clothing would wind up
in the mulberry and raspberry bushes. Never in the grape vines.
A man named Virgil supposedly lived in a woods that was close, but
in a different neighborhood. He was said to not only molest children, but
torture as well.
I don’t know if it was him or some other old man that I saw
wondering along the bike paths,
shirtless and hungry.

3.

I was about 11 or 12 when one of the
neighbor kid’s step dad beat up a bully that was
chasing his wife’s kids and
didn’t go to jail or court.

That was in the 80’s when everything revolved around
blow, ridiculous amounts of hairspray, rock ballads, and
fluorescent colors blinding like the threat at
the end of the Cold War,

a space shuttle that never made it.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Morning after Freight

1.

Awake
from a sleep, diagonally sprawled
across a king-size bed, nightmares of
false-faced
men
crawling through shredded,
screened windows.

You hid under the coffee table,
stained dark.
I disappeared
into the fireplace adjacent from
you. I shimmied up the brick’s soot footing like

a raccoon carrying her young to safety.

The hallucinations of bat guano fuels the visions of Siamese
moonlight stuck to the back of the Baltic Sea.
They seem to be living off of one another,
fumes of smoking bananas, sleep waking for five months,
the hidden demons whispering in tongues of dead weight.


II.

I stir restless, morning growth attacks the
chin. The relentless approach of feral
fur leaches the frontal appearance.

Another display of surrealism.
An approach to unearth some fidelity.

You now slouch groggy, pulling yourself from
the tar that the sleep has laid out for you like
a blood-red carpet to hell, a

swan drowning in quicksand.

Your smile at dawn slaughters
bad moods similar to karate kicks
to the throat,
brass knuckles bursting the temple and eardrum.
Your voice makes birds jealous. They jettison
in to picture windows with unnatural avian envy.

The crows pick at their soulless carcasses

November 17th, 1980 (My First Mountain)

1.

I was just shy of three when my brother was hatched. Another born strong,
healthy. How could this be? Our parents smoked cigarettes and grass,

drank copiously, did blow, gambled at Bingo halls. Probably didn’t
eat very well either.

Brown hair roofed his miniature head like Indiana’s
spring pollen
powdering automobiles. I was still so small that I wouldn’t have to
share toys or conversations.


2.

Lots of Tupperware products, pudding and jello containers, a rectangular one for brownies rolled out of the cupboard every time I climbed the mountain that lead me to cereal, bowls, chips, and crackers.

I assembled a lift to reach the countertop’s summit. After the flag was planted,
I went for milk and a spoon.

Hey mom, we’re out of
fruit rollups and zebra cakes.

Saturday, July 07, 2007

Just Got Back

Ah, Florida, the kind of place that makes one feel at ease, but at the same time completely dirty with the filth of silicon and other new body appearances. Money tries to wipe away the build-up false anatomy and mental stability.