Tone deaf, color blind to the hues of a man’s gestures. Bored, shy, turned on, off—who can tell? Gossip dug out of a dumpster, laid in the mid-summer grass to dry out, to cure well enough for a taste. I don’t eat meat. That’s no excuse. I’m human. I share secrets—only my own.
Archive for the ‘Morning Poems’ Category
Light in the Alley
Posted: July 26, 2010 by Arambler in Morning PoemsTags: Poetry, tone deaf, color blind, gossip, secrets
Taking Root
Posted: July 13, 2010 by Arambler in Morning PoemsTags: Poetry, desire, grit, flesh, proud, float
Just as suddenly as it resurfaces in some stirred-up grit loosened by spring, it can sink into a new dormancy nourished by her calm flesh. It can but hasn’t. Alert and proud, this desire has begun to float.
What He Said in the 11th Chorus
Posted: July 5, 2010 by Arambler in Morning PoemsTags: Poetry, Jack Kerouac, Book of Blues, 11th Chorus, Desolation Blues, muck
You swim in the biggest one of a chain of lakes. Don’t fear the consequences. There your head goes popping through the surface then bubbling back under. You were adamant—you don’t like the tone of Kerouac’s poems. So there you go through water without salt, through muck seen and unseen. I could not be so [...]
Response to the 55th Chorus
Posted: July 4, 2010 by Arambler in Civil Twilight or Dawn Poems, Morning PoemsTags: Poetry, mississippi river, Saint Louis, Hennepin Avenue Bridge, Jack Kerouac, Book of Blues, San Francisco Blues
“I also have all space And St Louis too Light follows rivers I do too Light fades, I pass.” —Jack Kerouac, from the 55th Chorus of “San Francisco Blues” (Book of Blues) If this were a poker game, I would be out by now. I would be reflecting on the morning heron [...]
In the Ars Poetica Series
Posted: May 15, 2010 by Arambler in Morning PoemsTags: beg borrow or steal, Chaucer, Plimsouls, Poetry, prayer, wetlands
To beg, borrow, or steal for this, to swing in an inked playground, to live life as a prayer opening into another garden’s bloom, to identify the shape of a tiny island now succumbed to a wetlands birthright, to be willing to start over each morning is what remains.
Cult of Benevolence
Posted: April 29, 2010 by Arambler in Morning PoemsTags: coffee jerks, espresso, mixologist, Poetry
A group chant in the back room. Espresso machines hiss in the main. The chanters clap. I may know the words but I drink the standard drip black up here with coffee jerks. I was no mixologist. Sometimes it still hurts to mingle.
Hothouse April
Posted: April 1, 2010 by Arambler in Morning PoemsTags: April, New York, Poetry, roses
I collected them from their metal button holes in a women’s bathroom stall. I tucked one behind your ear, the other behind mine. I did what I could with them: message in red, in elongated green, message in true thorn. I did what I could. Should I have taken them with me when I left [...]
Female Jonah
Posted: March 22, 2010 by Arambler in Morning PoemsTags: getaway, home, Poetry, U-Haul, yellow cab
A yellow cab double parked, medium-sized U-Haul behind it—I know these getaways too late, arrivals too early. When moving in becomes an art, it’s time to reconsider the vessel. Above or below it, I just want to crawl inside the belly of someone’s home—yours? Or, it could be mine.
Early Sunday Morning
Posted: March 21, 2010 by Arambler in Morning PoemsTags: black-and-white, fabrication, in the moment, particle, Poetry, wave length
She walks deserted streets. Not the real you, but one she’s been fabricating with rope, leftover images from an old black-and-white film. She believes in rewind, fast forward, long pauses. The sun reveals gray in all its shades—romance along a wave length, a particle spinning and at rest. She has no way of knowing where [...]
1963
Posted: March 16, 2010 by Arambler in Morning PoemsTags: AM radio, Poetry, Rockford IL, three, zero
He was minus three when those songs from heaven were playing on AM radio. I was zero. When he was zero, I was in Northern Illinois learning how to say three instead of free. I would never be so much so again. No multiples will return me to that coincidence—one he’ll never know.