You climb without hands
For hundreds of feet,
With your body strapped into
A hard plastic seat.
Then your car hits the peak
And you look down the slope,
The ground and a crowd
And the loss of all hope.
And with your heart beating
Like domestic abuse
You rush down the slope,
Through the drops and corkscrews.
Forty five seconds later
The ride is all done,
And you smile like a psycho
Wondering “Why was that fun?”
Filed under Poems
Her face was almost holy,
But in truth was kind of crass
Like a baseball in a church
Hit through a window of stained glass.
Her body was like a lion,
Kind of noble, but too hairy,
And her name was like a melody
That sounded just like “Jerry.”
And as we flirted in the bed
Of her slate grey Chevy truck
Her laugh closely resembled
A mixed chihuahua and a duck.
And I drew a terrible conclusion
As sparks flew through the truck.
Jerry wasn’t a her at all,
And I’d run out of luck.
Filed under Poems
Yellow tape around the mound
That used to be a house.
Not a creature stirs there anymore,
Not even my pet mouse.
I know it was an accident,
But it must not happen anymore.
I move to outlaw chimney climbing.
Santa will have to use the door.
I fell in love just ten hours ago
To, literally, the girl of my dreams.
We met while in prison and she kissed me so loud
That the guards thought the sound was a scream.
So they took her away and apparently killed her.
They fed her to Jabba the Hutt.
You can see why the dreamland convict I was
Felt like I’d been shanked in the gut.
And later I learned I’d inherited money
To pay off my million dollar “bounty.”
So I paid it and left, absolved for my theft
And fled to a different county.
There I met my love, alive and well
And we lived happily as we could have been.
Sometimes a poet need not be creative.
He need only remember his dreams.
Filed under Poems
Early Monday morning
And the sun has yet to rise.
My alarm clock is screaming
But I won’t open my eyes.
There are still many hours
Of sleep to be enjoyed,
So I don’t get up on Monday.
(That’s prob’ly why I’m unemployed).
Filed under Poems
It was a positive sign and a terrible truth,
A cross the week after, an x made of pink.
All her hopes and dreams were replaced by two lines.
Her destiny lay in the sink.
She didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life,
But she knew precisely what she must.
It didn’t matter that she herself was a child
Or whether or not it was just.
All that mattered to her was an image
That sang and laughed inside her soul
Of the tiny unborn child
That had come to make her whole.
Seven months and a ton of vitamins later
She’d painted the bedroom blue
And hung a tiny mobile
And purchased the baby shoes.
All the while she sang and smiled,
And now and then she wept,
Her entire life an accident
That kicked her while she slept.
Thirty days and thirty nights
And the sun rose, orange and gray.
Thirty times more came the morning sun,
Rosy pink, each happy day.
Until arose the sixtieth sun,
And the mother’s sweet sixteen,
And the golden sky brought a bolt of pain,
And the hospital bed was clean.
The doctor came, all dressed in white,
The child’s hair was red.
And the words “his name is Brian”
Were the last her mother said.
And so the girl lived in the blue room
Amidst her mother’s love.
And an angel looks on her daughter Brian
From a happy place above,
And the angel never once considered
Her life to have been a loss.
And she smiles, remembering how she was saved
By that small magenta cross.
Filed under Poems
‘Twas a fine midwinter rodeo
And we were thankful it hadn’t snowed.
We were nearly done, the steers had run,
And the bulls had all been rode.
But the final event was canceled,
And it’s a funny reason why:
Turns out that all the broncos choked,
When a blue/green bird flew by.
Filed under Poems
A friendly bit of hazing,
That’s all it really was.
No need to tell outsiders.
No need to call the fuzz.
But halfway down the mountain
I realized the hoax,
And as I died on the spiky rocks below
I swore they’d pay for their jokes.
I may not get a spot in heaven,
Might even go down below,
But revenge is a dish best served cold
And my body’s cold as snow.
I plan on haunting those nu phi guys
And filling their lives with frights,
And I’m writing all this with the hopes
That I can sell the movie rights.
Filed under Poems
“Liar, liar, pants on fire”
Was a taunt I often heard
From kids at school, and parents too
And even a parrot bird.*
So I thought I’d test the theory,
So I lied for 30 days.
Not once in that deceitful month
Did my pants catch in a blaze.
So I look now at the irony
Of a saying people try
To use to discourage dishonesty
Is, in itself, a lie.
Or maybe I’m overthinking again.
* This is a lie. I have never heard a parrot say “liar, liar, pants on fire.”
Filed under Poems
The Daily Travesty 