Soul Food: Eating One's Heart Out

Let’s get one thing clear, chéri— 
Some brainless poetasters say
You should never, ever serve 
Soul in a poem as the main entrée, 
With spirit and heart 
As side orders, all taboo 
For offal-eating fools dying 
To eat their words 
And have them too, a tad bit 
Too tasteless for the likes of me 
And you?


 

True North

So easy to be led 
Astray by aimless wandering— 
All the same, no lost soul ever 
Found himself by using a compass. 

In a Mean Time

So many things weighing on our mind, 
We don’t need to count them

To know they’re there, we have to 
Forget about them and remember

How light-headed we get when we don’t care. 

This Too Shall Pass

Beautiful— 

The word becoming so worldly 
Obscene, exploited, wretched 
The many failing

To wonder why 
And to what use 
Hoping 

It will all come in good time. 

On the Road at Two-and-a-Half, or Blowing in the Wind Called Phaedra

Oh, I like this new game 
Of Papa’s—these strange little 
Light things he picked up 
To show me—he calls them 
Leaves—how they race along 
Where he placed them next 
To each other turning 
Over and over and me 
Running after them 
Like crazy I hope 
The one he said was mine wins. 

Truth's Like a Fly Swatter

Cross my heart, hope to die— 
It looks like they’re droppings

Of flies, the eschatological 
Ephemera of poets who swear

Their shit will last and not 
Stink to high heaven forever— 

Though from where I sit, 
It all smells a little too much

Like a downright rotten white lie. 

Silver Linings Playbook

when storm clouds scud 
your way, the sun does not 
up and check out— 
it stays there 

high above the weather, 
looking out the window 
of your world, saving 
for a rainy day.