A perfect day for Salinger

To pay respects to J.D. Salinger, one of my favorite authors and the author of my favorite book, Franny and Zooey, I am re-posting a poem I wrote after reading one of his most famous short stories.



For myself, with love and squalor

There are no silent brooks
but some trees fall unnoticed

some rocks go unturned
And the heart and mouth
do not always connect

Like cupping two palms
to draw water for drink
The heart has so much to say
it runs over the edges
So when raising it up
to quench the thirst
The mouth sadly finds
most of the substance had slipped through the cracks

So little makes it through the lips
that only a stunted version
of what was meant to be said
is ever really verbalized

So with a dehydrated mouth
and a heart about to burst
I slosh about
hoping to strike the rock
and have water spring forth
Or waiting for an angel
with a divining rod

There's an ocean of life under this course surface
and I've yet for another one to want it

And my vision is illegible and my concentration fades
two and three times for a sentence
and one or less times is my s-e-n-t-e-n-c-e

Love is...

Love is like that one movie
I've been meaning to see
and everyone tells me is really good
but I just can never get around to it

It's playing everywhere
it's in the Netflix Queue
I even saw 20 minutes of it
on TNT once

But I always miss the most important part

You've seen it
They've seen it
But I haven't

Love is Avatar in 3D

I wonder how much longer it'll be in theaters

Who can say

Clicks stop, clicks stop rubber asphalt and rubber soles
blades of grass, popping acorns and dried up leaves
angry ember, seething hate in paper packed tobacco
Orange dirty light from street lamp poles

Alcohol wipes sunburnt lips, dry cracked
licked wet
prickly stubble, cactus face, velcro snap
CHA CHA lounge delays
empty buddy list empty mind
undertones of emptiness
permeate the air like sour department store cologne
sour voices, sour responses
her voice is sweet like sour gummy worms

Smooth skin like silken sheets, dark linen
Laugh like water from minutest spring
in the suncaked dryest desert
so soft, so coveted
so soft and cold
a delicacy for starving fingertips and the heart alike

silent clicks, nearly silent, surpressed language from a board
a marriage of mind and voice
voices voices voices
voices in the darkness, pops drips bleeps
bubbled conversation

the early morning looks just like night
Who can say if she'll be there
Who can say?

Everybody's talking bout Joe Frazier

Maybe it's because you're exactly
what everyone needs
and everybody has figured it out
too

Maybe it's because you'll sit alone
pleasantly warm
like two minutes old
pancakes
and don't desire more than that

Maybe it's because the sun could rise and fall
and all the air around you jump to life
like electrons before lightning
and you would continue
unaffected

You're so
unaffected

Like the ash in an ash tray
burnt out
smoldered
heaping gray dust

Like the sound of traffic never ceasing
and birds ever optimistic
sprinklers regular

Sack up and grow a pair
you said

Harsh

I woulda kissed that girl I swear
but I had other things on my mind maybe
and my heart wasn't in that fight

You're like a boxing coach
and I'm not much of a boxer
But I'm still glad
to have you in my corner of the ring
even if sometimes
it's you
I'm trying to square off with

Steven the confident

Always out of place
Out of style
Nobody's friend
The future like fake nights
in 1960's movies
Bleak, blue,
shaded.
Filtered.
The teary itch crinkles eye lids
Not laugh lines
But stress fractures in dam walls
Of flesh
Pressed by loneliness.
Smile please, breathe please
Love please
The warm fuzzys just burn
these days
If a tear should cascade from a crack
Wipe it away
Forever.
Look at me please
See what I've hidden from the mirror
And call it good
Call it
good.

Steven the pest

Annoying little pest!
shoo!
Annoying little boy

There will be no quarter
for such badgering

The boy pleads clemency
he didn't mean it
honest

She looks on warmly
okay.

But a bother he remained
So she finally shut him out

and the little boy
with nobody to bother
sits alone on the sidewalk
wishing he'd
never done anything at all.

Better to let a feeling go
than normalcy

For obsessive games
become fodder
for embarrassment
in very short time

And make for
red faced little boys
who deserve no sympathy

and garner no award

Malls as an analogy of greater societal oppression

To all the families wasting away
in a food court
Leave, I say
Wake up and see the mall for what it is
not a destination
but an orgy
of blind expenditure
and impulsive pleasures
Parents take up your children
whisk them away
from all the gilded
brass treasures

See the outside world
See a library,
read a book
take a picture
Use your holiday to become closer to one another
and not credit card debt

Don't you see?
the mall is a lie
The mall will always let you down
because it is not a resort
but a prison

So flee the prison
before escape
is as ignored
as a PA announcement

We live in a society
where people are content to
sleep
they have no aims
they have no knowledge of fulfillment
left a lone-edness
is the most common desire

By and large we groan and roll over
and eat the slop put before us
like the swine and bovine
in the south valley
And like the valley, the stench is nauseating to
anyone passing through
but to those who live in it
of it
around it
they can't even remember what it smelled like

The mall is a trough
and entire families will feed from it
for entire days
chewing the cud
and staring blankly into blandly decorated
space

I will be waiting behind my counter regardless
wasting hours
being pressured to sell you things you will never need
and sign up for cards you will never use
the money may trickle in
at a minimum wage clip
but I swear to you
the moment the cage door is left open
my exit
will be
swift