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Poems

Unknown Integral


Show me this street, please,

One momentary slice at a time:
The full absurdity.


Let me lend
from my own stores,

innumerable selves,

Spontaneous, 

all over the sidewalk,

like so many deli meats.

--


Today my head aches with my nose always between my eyes


And skull and I have

Precluded the street-in-itself,

Which is too sincere for my time-lapse mind.


I'm dead tired of always being in the wake of my own limit,

So I begin slinking toward my favorite delusion -

When suddenly, I am rung


By a most improbable recognition,

of always already being here.

- Center City Philadelphia

2015


Ode To Drugs or Ode To Excess

 

Coffee is so loud on the body 
Pot settles in
Liquor makes the drinker sad
The lottery is slim

Cigarettes take your breath away
Ex leaves you grim
Sleep steals away the day
Diets wear you thin

Acid flash without consent
Sunlight stains the skin
Time will leave you old and grey
The earth will fold you in.

-West Philly

2019


Homage to Dorothy Parker

Millennial Academia

 

 

And Oh, the green lawns of Manicuria, the uniform haircuts!

 

Hard-wood humid dance parties with crystal punch.

The stately mantlepieces,

And Oh, these genitals all!

Proper genitals, I'm talking, licking the corners of pink moist mouths.

 

We speak consent here, or else. 

 

We Speak the teat of suckling imperial wit, Sir.

Why, there’s room for everyone who’s known the nape of daddy’s whiskey driven tennis practice...

 

 

The Main Line, Pa

2019

3 Letters Abroad

I

I'm still here, Love,
While you're off,

Being off,

Somewhere warm.

P.S.

December is extra handsome this year with snowflakes in his hair.


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

II

I'm proud of you, but
I want
Answers!

Please tell me:


1. Is Paradise a jello mold we're both stuck into, me here

and you there? 

2. Can you remind me what you taste like?

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

III

Have you returned yet from scouring the globe for Eden? 

I hope you're home,

wherever you are.

 

P.S.

A blank return letter with

dirt and tears

will do.

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

IV

 I can wait.

 

 

- North Philadelphia

2017

UBER Driver

 

I was wondering who "Jo" was, whether
It was a boy or a girl.

I am Jo and
I am neither.

 


...

 

Well as long as you pay me, I
Don't care what you are.

 

 

   Northwest Philadelphia, 2016

 

Wrinkled, In a Busy Restaurant

 

In contrast to the lilt of your listless fingers,

 

the delicate glass
                                            fumbled   

                                                                     clumsily,
                                                                                       

Falls

as eager as ever.

- Rittenhouse

2017

Love Advice From Different Body Parts

 

 

-Listen,

              let lax the fists in your chest.

-Unbraid your belly.

-That foot ain't gonna rub its own worries out!

-Go home every time you move.

-Wish for love on every eyelash.

-Drink every soul that shines like that.

 

 

- East Passyunk

2014

 

Thanks to Poetry

the memory of my father

has begun taking inventory of

the thousand words its worth.


                        And soon,


as the image crumbles at the edges and fades,

               I can stick these words into

           the cracks

      to maintain the illusion

that some things never die.

 

 

- The Bronx

2016


 

What Did the Watch Say to the Capitalist?

  

Now is not the time to take time,

Now is the time to time time:

You can make time to take time -

But there is no time to make time to take time now.

 

 

- West Philadelphia

2014

 

I Used To Consider Bars

 

Spaces for old mustachioed men to go and get sad:

I couldn't resist the sight.

 

Now

My skin sags noticeably under my chin

And my upper lip itches of bourbon.

- Fairmount,

2014

 

On Time
 

Ah

my fellow fellow!

Something sinister awaits you under that split-flap Clock.

One

can spend a lifetime here underground.

The Clock

has started to remind me of my mother.

---

One

is discouraged from leaping in front of trains.

- University City

2013

 

Uniforms at Work

 

I rinsed an apple for a child who walked into the market, barefoot.

 

"Thank you, Ma'am."

The Apple rolled over,

revealed its face,

and winked.

 

I wondered where the child's parents had run off to, smirking.

 

'You're very welcome.'

 

The next guest,

Drenched in himself, 

Coughed, a nasty nasty cough. And 

               

the Apple hid its face in the child's hands.

- North Philadelphia

2014

 

Old-Heads

Keep ready
on your way
to listen to the universe sway,
this way
then that.

 

 

West Philadelphia, 2016

 

An Introduction To the Great Whatever

I


      I  awoke from childhood in a college dorm,

But it was just a dream I hadn't yet forgotten.

--
     Last night was tarot cards and whiskey in our summer apartment.
Luke read in his hand that a cataclysm was all but certain and
that he ought to consider sharing his feelings with

that special someone.
 

       We felt no desire to wash the dishes that were groping their soggy way out of the kitchen sink.
Fruit flies billowed out in a flittering cloud as I lurched groggily over them

to espresso myself awake.


- Drosophila Melanogaster: their species name,
was a song I sang every morning with a side of jelly toast –

I welcomed them.


I fed them the sticky residual rings of mixed drinks from every last night. Peach Schnapps.

Sudden study of Biology - the murderous subject!
Discarding tiny heap after tiny heap of drugged out drosophila into a petri-dish to meet their soapy doom -
but not before ascertaining their genetic breakdown for science: 

- Eye color: 3/4 devil red, 1/4 purgatory white –

Punnet perfection.

Come summer, I was done with death and
I made it law:


No one is to squish, swat, squash, wash away or do any violence of any kind to these benevolent guests.  - I was still swimming from the last last night.
 

There was no fruit in the apartment.



II

      The subway stung my nose of urine in puddles and someone was smoking a cigarette on the platform. It was July, and hot.

The woman sitting next to me was a waitress. She spoke suddenly into my shoulder:

You ever have these before?  
[She handed me an obscenely orange tiny plastic bottle]

No.

I'm a waitress, so I work 12-hour days & I - 
Well I don't drink the whole thing, just this much. 
[Glug.]

Right

I got on the train, and didn't see the waitress again.



III


      I swore this was my last styrofoam cup, paper sleeve and plastic top I would ever send to a landfill.

     I wasn't sure if I even enjoyed my coffee.
The man next to me drunk from a “Giant-Gulp” – the straw made a hollow squeak as he neared the bottom.

His eyes were hollow.
He suckled the last bits and dropped the cup at his feet

for someone else to find.

                                                                              
The advertisement on the subway wall ahead was for a slick plastic cell phone.

                                                                              Rectangular.



IV


The events that followed have been described as our "Neo-Sincerity-Hipster-Cliche-Post-College Adventure."

-A baby blue minivan.
-Our degrees worth little more than swank paper. 

 

We were burning - the four of us.
We were certain. 

We believed in believing in believing in.


The threat of being ordinary

prickled our skin like dried sweat.


It seemed there was nothing we couldn't shake.


Society is a myopic cyclops and we

are scurrying under its nose bleating in sheep-skins.

 

 

- Haverford College

2013


 

Readings

  • Appiary Magazine's YouthQuake @ The Monkey & The Elephant, January 2017
  • Sun Drunk: Show & Tell @ Crime and Punishment, May 2017
  • Story Slam @ Elixr Coffee, February 2019
  • Story Slam w/ IGWBT Theatre Company, February 2021
 
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