knee jerk reactions

get my broadside!!

sitting on A Small Garlic Press's page, available for download, it features poems inspired by reactions to various and assorted posts to the newsgroup rec.arts.poems; for more of the same, keep reading.


emily never reads in public

sometimes words sing silently

creep unpronounced into my head through
dark brown eyes and dance quiet
dances of joy. closemouthed poems
dressed in still white silks whisper
hushabye

even in their taciturnity take the top
clean off my head




i dream of fevers

i would pay to be fevered tonight
to writhe in sucking lurid heat to toss
and turn in flames of scalding fantasy --

to feel the soft sweet tongue of night bathe me
in stereotype: feel it wash me in red hot neon
wrap me in wallpaper escaping from walls spin me
round and around crucified on the grimy blades
of an indifferent ceiling fan

drip me through faucets a drip drop pulse at a time

and cage me in a coen brothers movie with a
cockroach cast of thousands

have you ever really lived with cockroaches --
flipped the switch in the middle of the night
and watched them scatter? they are not evil
but merely everlasting and indestructible
it is an arrogance to think they acknowledge an
individual with their nighttime rituals--
they will outlive us all

give me a fever to rein me in with fiery tendrils
(capture me)

i wake in the night and know i am dead --
laid out in the eternal casket of blackness.
it is only the 3am blackness of my bedroom
and there is no incessant ticking to tell me my life
is still being measured just the tiny red shadow
of lcd numbers that flash by oh so slow oh solo me
oh so low me a light more lurid and mocking
than any fever dream