So Much DependsThe meadows were soaked in rain.
The meadows soaked up the rain.
The soaking meadows rained,
The rain soaked the mead, oh!,
The mead owes the soaking rain,
soaking rain make me some mead!
The drive home was like
that: wiper mad rain
pelting the windshield,
the gush - way too loud
for the soft voice of Nick Drake
humming from the cd player
to calm the difference. Coy kept up
his scrabble of words, initially
inspired by misremembering
William Carlos Williams'
Red Wheel Barrow poem.
Glazed with rain, hah!
I'm amazed with rain.
Crazed with rain, .......
maize'd with rain.
Ok that's a bit corny,
he giggled
I crack myself up,
flinging his hands repetitively
on the steering wheel for effect.
He peered at the car stopped
next to his at the light. A woman
was staring at the strange man
in a brand new Lexus: balding,
pasty, suffering the aggressive
attack of middle age eyebrows.
He was having a conversation,
waiving his hands, guffawing,
working those mangy brows
for emphasis. His blue suit looked damp.
Jeez - what the fuck do you think
he's goin on about?"
She checked herself in the rearview,
twirled her brow stud, sucked
her front teeth and rolled down
her side window. She wanted
to hear his sign language,
to comprehend the visual.
Her Rage Against the Machine
blared into the space separating
the two vehicles. The traffic light
turned green. Movement -
simultaneous acknowledgement
and the all too puerile flipped
birds conjoined.
She yelled, her words pelting
the wet air, filling in the few
spaces of clarity between
his spattered windows -
she had filled the void
for herself. He had shown her how.
Poetry in Rutherford
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
7:00 PM
Featuring the
Red Wheelbarrow
Poets
&
celebrating the release of
the second edition of
The Rutherford Red
Wheelbarrow
Sleep Tight
Why blame the skin -
it does not have legs
so it cannot crawl
or slither when the midnight
hour calls the bug to slide
out of its baseboard.
Darkness is her silent
dinner bell. Each night
it beckons more uninvited
guests to dine amidst four
hundred count linen. Polishing
off in silver service, feasting
on the unsuspecting, hosting
on the host. They tuck into
our body banquet, sipping ichor,
gorging well past a gentile sufficiency.
Suck it up - we all can agree -
reduces us to a meal ticket
with welts and resulting hives:
not the sweet home
of productive bees, merely the itch
of secreted secretions traded
for a sustenance that we hope
to squash before each
beastie creeps away.
