Scholar to Scholar

 

The mouth takes on the look of all it said

and didn’t say, the enjambed intentions

 

that never made it out the door, the ones

that did but shouldn’t lying on the floor like

 

a bed sheet without the klansman inside, a

place you can no longer hide because, after

 

all, what’s the point of remembering?  I

used to fly, you say, just like my thoughts.

 

As if you never held a moment.  Smoked it

like a fag. Stuffed it like a pipe to posture,

 

tongue without a master, let it drag for

more than needed, barely  heeded. Pursing

 

your lips and sucking in.  Now that you’re

chipped and wrinkled, don’t let regret begin.

 

At the Edge of Gentrified

One more doctor rips open the seam another first

 

stitched while she’s at the bar, making sure of something.  If you lock a toddler in a room with

 

no windows and no way to get hurt, it’s ok for a

 

few minutes.  Have you ever tried to do laundry when there are no quarters?   What about the

 

landlord?  Is he cool?  Every apartment exits

 

outside into a box of night air, the sky orange, millions of stadium lights in the distance,

 

reflecting off the haze, making the neighborhood

 

bright in that time between sun set and dark,

when everyone knows what’s coming.

  

 Forecast

 

Sailors, take warning.  The sky is red on

the horizon, illuminated by

golden clouds that will make all forget

the predicted storm hastening toward us,

distant but driving this way and dragging

water and trash through the wet air behind

it.  Batten the hatches, roll down metal

shutters, the light in the room left behind

disappearing to pin-pricks as they close.

Tie down beach chairs, fold umbrellas, ensure

pails with their little shovels, sand molds of

octopus, star, and sea horse, are stuffed in

their basket behind a latched door.  Pull the

traps from the dock, be glad you’ve no boat, pink

succumbing to ochre, cumulus yielding to bright blue

full of sun, beaches crowding with bathers

while crab deep in their holes know what’s coming.