POEM A DAY 2020

home poem

when i sit in your new house
i miss the old house
the eggshell walls
the dent where the yoyo hit when we were home alone and fighting
the pencil drawing we placed too high on the wall
an attempt to hide the evidence so obvious,
raising immediate questions
the giant fireplace where so many moments were captured together
the only separation of the living and dining rooms
the piles of mail on the kitchen counter
the breakfast nook we stopped sitting at
your new house is pure white
plain and characterless
and you're different too
constantly wiping down counters and washing dishes you didn't use
nervous questions and angry explosions
pretending to be happy
and now
i don't want to be near you or your new house

brotherhood

My brother wound up out west
Unraveling but eating good
Speaking in the third person
In elaborate terms
He’s a good man
He’s trying to be good
And it makes him paranoid
He’s calling out the
white supremacist capitalist patriarchy
Which makes some people upset
There’s so much to call out
It could wind you up
Or unravel you
It’s hard for you to be around
Which makes it hard be around you in
This white supremacist capitalist patriarchal society

Old City

You can tell the family had money
Because of the Flemish bond
You can always tell
Alternating red and black
Stretchers and risers
An entire wall like a honeycomb
Like the fields of Flanders.
American bond, British bond...
There are much less romantic.
American, especially.
Five rows of exclusive stretchers
It's all about practicality
Brick without whimsy
Brick for a wall's sake
Well, it makes it easy to pick out
Those with the means to alternate
And how you know this wall is fake
All stretchers in a row supports nothing
But bad taste
This wall would fall over if it stood alone

some people fly airplanes

there are those born into this life
and can not crack the jawbone
that snaps their body tightly
held in it's mouth
where you keep fighting
or you just learn the softest way
to give up

you may meet a child,
son of a doctor,
when you're 5 years old

you marvel
at their creature comforts
their bedroom shelf stuffed
with the dreams of 
television commercials
you never thought you'd see
on the other side of the screen

you may feel a stubborn sting
your hardly tuned in to
to recognize
your face still fresh from the awe
as you pass their gardener on  leaving

he says to you:
some men are born to sweep floors
some people fly airplanes
and you never fully know what he means
as you crack open the rusted door
of your mother's chevy nova
and you don't know what he means
until just now

whale bones, kelp ropes, 

Macau Or George Town

Saudade creepers force ruins back to the land.
Up on the second floor of grandpa's house,
where feet crack beams back to
joss stick ash piles,
where Buddha beams through
the sweet smoke
of the child eye,
this true astonishment
that this is what I'm from,
Indiana Jones leaping through,
the tracking lines of a second hand copy,
magnets, filaments of piracy,
grandpa earned his VHS through
seniority.
And before the beams broke,
where lay dad and his brother and sisters,
who flipped, turned over and gave in
to the attic sticky heat,
and listened to each others' breathing,
tracked shadows in the moonlight
and heard the street sound of the police
beating the riot outside.