Relative Poem

young faces of relatives

hang on our walls

and black iron shelves

as reminders

that if we are lucky,

or unlucky enough,

we will lose our youth

and have

the photos of our fancy to relive

the days when our organs liked each other.

all of the dashing glances,

vigorous smiles,

new hair,

non-sagging parts,

clean skin,

crisp clothes,

dapper smiles

have all given way to the future

and the

fact that our bodies

don't like

what happens

next and the past doesn't like us

in the present.

i believe

in

the might of the picture

to immortalize

us in ways that will help

our eroding brain remember

that the only thing mightier that the past,

present

or future

is the love we create

and cultvate on this

ever advancing existence

that blares forward

with all the voracity of time

as we once

used to remember.

New Joefiles 114 is Out

The new volume - curly queued daydreams - is available by clicking here - a sample poem below:

gaining gusto in aging

within
the last
several
months
i have taken
a moment extra
to look
at the obituary section
of the local paper.
maybe an old friend,
or someone i used to work
with will show up in these
back pages
and i'll have that
one moment of shock
to rescue me from
the taste of coffee
and work

and responsibility
to reflect on
what this life is all about.
the potential end
displayed in ink,
giving all us obituary
readers that
brief moment
to refocus our day on
what should
really be in focus.
and when
i close that paper flap
and know that
it was full
of loving strangers
that will no longer
co-habitate
earth with me
anymore,
i wonder
who from my past i may run into today.

Brief Poetry Food Art

Mailbox Truism

subdued war beaten

all of the faces
sauntering at the
downtown veteran's day
parade
looked weary,
beaten by the
constant lying
we have had
to endure for
way too long.

still cloaked
in small town adoration
and ready to give
us the shirts
off their backs to
support a
war without reason,
these patriots
believe
in the way of america,
but they hide
their contempt.

instead,
they bleed this
fatigue
through their
tiny waving flags,
red flowers,
and popped corn,
telling everyone
that they
don't even believe
in freedom
anymore.

instead,
they believe
in each other
and our motives
to stand in
that cold missouri
wind at ten AM
on a new, sunny morning
to tell
those that
almost died
that we are glad
they are here
in their 57 chevy's
waving at our
kids
careening
towards the
gray ground
to pick up
their bright
stack of
discharged
candy.

The 113th Volume

The newest Joefiles 113 - "a mission to understand our sky' - click here to view .. - a sample poem below:

FORGOTTEN MONDAYS
each monday
morning
i have a freshly
wrapped
summation
of our world's news
in a thin
plastic bag,
i delight in
this accidental
delivery
from a hung-over
paper delivery
dude that
forgot that
Sunday ended
and everyone
was reluctantly
going into yet
another
week that
makes us
long for one
more Sunday
night
drink.

REAL OCCUPATIONAL TALENT

i have
always
had
a talent
to get myself
either fired
or
in permanent
exile from
corporate jobs.

my best
quick jab
at getting
myself in
the shit bucket
was with
my
last job
and
a boss named ed.

he rehired me
years after
he had 'downsized'
me like a
fast food order
at a drive up stand.

it all started
with a talk
on a business trip
towards phoenix
on the tarmac
about the upcoming
presidential elections.

he asked me what
the country would
remember as george bush's
legacy if he was
to be re-elected.

my response was this,
'HE AND THE ELECTION WILL
BE REMEMBERED AS THE MOST
BRILLIANTLY DECEPTIVE
PLOY TO FOOL THE AMERICAN
PUBLIC INTO BELIEVING
ONE OF THE MOST ROTTEN
PRESIDENTS THAT UNFORTUNATELY
STOLE THE 2000 ELECTION
AND CONTINUTED HIS ROMP
TO RUIN OUR COUNTRY.'

at this,
he gave his
corporate smirk
with his splotchy full beard
and leaned back in his chair.

the transformation had
taken place
and his vapid look into
my eyes was far off
and gone.

he never talked
what political affiliation
he was,
but i knew that this
would root him out
of his hole of
corporate ambiguity
and help him make
a tough decision.

it was that day
that his pal was
verbally trashed and
he tossed me
into that bucket
as a long goner.

he proceeded to
humiliate me
over and over
again after that
trip
and it took months
for me
to put the
two and two
together.

and now that i
have counted past four
and on up towards
the thousands,
i know that
my comment in
that thick cabin air
may have been my
best business
decision
ever.

SACK OF TRAPS

when i think
i'm in the clear
and i'm just going
to dawdle through
a handful of days
without any
tragedy,
nasty self-reflections,
parenting traps
and the like,
i start seeing
the signs appearing
in my rear view mirror.

first,
there is some poor hipster
in a camry with one headlight
blaring into
my mirror.

then,
another car with one headlight
appears in the side window.

several others now
flash like
torches in my
rear view.

a big rig in comes
in the opposite lane
before me with one
Cyclops headlight.

and i get a bit
of the sweat in my pits,
blinking hard,
wiping my brow,
i look up into the mirror
for more one headlighters
and it's gone
as the rig finally swishes by.

all headlights
have turned to two
around me.

in my moment of
relief,
the phone in my pocket
begins to ring
as a shooting star
in the sky is really
a descending fire pit of
a plane tumbling towards
earth.

at this,
i jam on the
gas pedal,
hear my alarm wake me
and
rise to see what kind
of
headlights are going to
hit my
under dilated
eye balls
of morning.

Joefiles 112 Is Out ..

I have posted a new volume of poems called: 'Joefiles 112 - Brief Definitions of Moments' (click here to view) and I posted a poem from this new volume below .. cheers ..

my dad and the outer world

as much as i avoid it,
i'm turning more
and more into my
old man as i grow old.

like him,
i sincerely believe that most
people that waddle about
on this planet are truly selfish beings
that resist evolution and intelligence
for the path of easy resistance.

even friends get rooted
out for the way that they really
are and when the ugliness gets exposed,
you begin avoiding public spots
and anywhere that there may be
strangers abound.

this morning,
i had to leave a restaurant to get
some wet wipes for my son's sugar disaster
at the breakfast table
and on the way out
there was a massive man holding the door
open for a long line of people walking in and out.
as folks streamed by,
he kept saying:
'YOU'RE WELCOME,
SURE NO SWEAT,
COME AGAIN.'

all of this was in some nasty tone because
not everyone was thanking him for
his tireless effort to avoid being nice.

and as i said,
'thanks' to his vapid face,
i descended into the raining parking lot
and really wanted to turn right around and say:
'LOOK HERE BOZO THE BIG HUNGRY BOY,
TAKE YOUR UNHEALTHY, FAT HAND
OFF THAT DOOR AND WADDLE UP TO
THE PODIUM TO GET YOUR NAME ON
THE BIG LIST TO EAT A MASSIVE
BREAKFAST YOUR HEART IS GOING
TO AGAIN LOATHE YOU FOR
AND DO EVERYONE THAT HAS
UNFORTUNATELY HAD TO BE SUBJECTED
TO YOUR EXISTENCE A FAVOR
AND APOLOGE FOR MAKING
THE CHOICE TO HOLD THE DOOR FOR US
AND THEN VERBALLY PISS INTO OUR
EARS BECUASE YOU WEREN'T VALIDATE
FOR SOMETHING NONE OF US FUCKERS
ASKED YOU TO DO.'

instead,
i put my wife and son ahead of
that fleeting desire to
dip further into my father's psyche
and just get the wet naps
to wash way all the thick stickiness
that inevitably slips through
no matter how hard you try to be
clean and untainted.

Joefiles 111 Posted

A new PDF volume is ready for consumption .. it's called: Harlequin Heart Chambers In Every Thought I Eventually Forgot - click here to read - a sample below:

how many thoughts a day do you think?
seriously think about it ..
can you even begin to
put your finger on a
single number
that would narrow down
how much you really think.
the criteria is simple.
just pinpoint how many
things may have gone through
your brain.
whether you did
anything about the thought or
it was just something that
gave your synapses a reason
to flow,
let's find a number.
is it a thousand.
a million.
maybe a billion.
maybe so many that
this question
is illogical and painful.
maybe so little that you
cannot believe
you have made it this
far
through this oratory of
poetic poem rambling.
or maybe there is
no reason to count
the number of thoughts
going on because
quality is much
more key than quantity
as
i come down to this point of
telling
you
at 2:27 p.m. on this saturday
afternoon,
i am bearing down on
my 4,579th thought.

difference between men and women

i get to know my wife
in our shared relationship
the best when we
get a bit hopped up on
some drink
and start reading
the news headlines online.

last night,
i pointed at a headline that said:
'WOMEN WORRY MORE THAN MEN, STUDY SAYS'

while my wife opened a story that said:
'BRAIN EATING AMOEBA KILLS SIXTH PERSON IN A WEEK'

and it's in these small moments of life
when we choose what aspects of life
we want to explore more
that i realize why i love
her and she ultimately
loves me
in all our
worry over alien amoebas
floating about this dangerous
world of ours.

the death of radio is here

as satellites
and radio personalities
named slim fast
slobber all over
the commercial addled
airwaves that blip
over the car speakers
like coins
hitting the
bottom of a
coke machine before
making that commercial a reality.

and this dying scenario
of radio is hard to explain
to my kids because i don't
listen to radio and
the speared brittney ranking
over the proverbial airwaves
in some torrent of over produced
trash that is produced to make
you buy the compact for your wife.

it's picking the right
music for your music player
or burning the right mix
because you are running away
from the inevitable death of
something that used to actually
provide hours and hours
of needed enjoyment.

now,
it's the dormant land of
screaming voices,
audio billboards
and musicians that
cashed in their slight talent
for an overproduced cover shot
to mask that fact that
their music may actually
make rats commit suicide.

and one day i'm going
to take my kids through
some odd thrift shop that smells
real good and explain
to them what radio used to be
like when they point towards
that one display that has
an old RCA radio sitting all silent,
yet strong
like the corpse of a hero
in the casket during a wake.

Another Volume - #110

Had a nice solid weekend with the words and have another volume that is posted for your viewing pleasure .. it's Joefiles 110: Self-Proclaimed Jack of All Legs Excerpts from the ‘’One Heaven Tear on Hell’s Windshield” Anthology - a preview of this volume is below in the form of a poem ..

BURNING WORLD

many
early morning
sunrises
lately
look
as though
the morning
headlines
are dead right
as the bright
sun ball
comes peaking over
some cold clamor
of trees
to expose
the chaos
of burning
going on the
other side
of this great
big world
of ours.

DENIED = Progress!

Dear Joe Dimino
We like your poetry, but this submission misses the very special niche we try to maintain for The NVN. Should you, in future, have more timely/topical work related to the news of the day, do try us again.
Best,
James

Joefiles 109 Book is Posted

In honor of the fact that poets get paid nothing for thier craft, I bring you my newest 61 page volume of poems - the title is 'FOLLOWING THE BIG BANG THEORY ONTO THE STAGE' click here to view the PDF - or, click here to view all my poem books for free - below is a piece from this new volume .. enjoy ..

a haunted ride

on a drive through the
path less taken to southern missouri,
i saw the real settings
for every horror movie
i ever watched growing up
as a kid and even recently.

abandoned campgrounds,
boarded up motels,
rotting restaurants,
old trailers littered with
untold numbers of debris
and huge quantities of woods teaming
with wayward shadows and lost leaves.

and at the end of this drive through
lost hollywood,
i saw a big black dog

on the top of a well groomed hill
with an old gal holding him

by the leash as he was lying
a slow,
comfortable shit
on the green sod
as she looked down
with a pained,
horrified look
as though these woods may
be more than haunted.

rocker popper empty rant

used to be
that rock and rollers
would bend cultural assumptions
and fight for the common
folks that would be
their discs
or watch their shows.

they would stand up against
governments,
wars,
uselessness,
idiocy
and diseases that
rampage our planet.

en masse
these mangled brood
of musicians
would dance across
the color TV screens
with messages of hope
and willful rebellion
to get the TV dinner crowd
to think
and maybe get up
to do some of that
good old fighting.

but now,
our musicians have
decided to fight for
their own careers,
more endorsements,
spots on TV shows to
raise the stakes of their bank accounts.

most of the more famous sorts
speak like subnormals about trite
events that make up their
public life.

clueless to the cause
in the culture,
they spend their stacks of one's
without caring who
plucked it over into their
world.

not only are we subjected
to the typical american laziness
with these rocker/popper music sorts,
we are raped by their lack of
musicianship and the continuing
sinking of the proverbial music tanker.

so, turn off your radio kids
and let your imagination
float where the rockers have
retired and left for
a more
safe,
rich land of
vapidness.

the drifters

that flit about
the skits of the
suburbs
always get me
on an alert
that the
worst of the city
bums could never do.

the suburbanite
drunks dirty with
cardboard sign
or hitchhike thumb
on interstate roadway
always have that look
that they didn't quite
get all the blood out
of the carpet and there
might be some specs of red
on their shirt sleeves.

the narrowed eyes,
smiling mouths,
the stench of oppression
blinding your reproach,
and they amble as though
the gun could be exposed
at any moment as the switch blade
accidentally tumbles out of
their back pocket.

when you look back to see
if the rag tag man
fetched his knife off the
ground,
there is a massive fire
blazing where he used to stand
as the blaring sound of sirens
start instantly
and you notice
that the man begins
appearing in your rear view mirror
flipping you off with a huge
grin in his eyes
as the mysterious knife
lies in your front
seat
and you are suddenly not sure
if you should drive
any further
down the creepy road
of suburbia.

restless fonts

if i
was a
wiggly font,
i would
put on
tiny yellow
boots,
splash them with
loud colors
and jump all
over this page
you are reading
with such veracity
that you will
never believe
you read
anything as insane
as a dancing
font with
rubbers on
splashing paint everywhere.

More Ink Progress ..

Joe Dimino,
I am sorry to say I'm turning your submission down. Thank you for submitting to Fickle Muses. Good luck!

Sari Krosinsky, Editor

internal externals

i used to
stop
at night
on long,
lingering drives
and peer
deep into the silvery
flashes of light
high above on
dark poles
that winked
at me.

i used to yearn
to know
morse code
and deduce
what they were saying
to my life
as i just sat there
counting the intervals
of blinking
exultation
riding over my
eye brows,
whispering
small
forgotten
phrases over
my
unmoving
ear drums.

Poetry Progress

Dear Joe,
Thank you for your poetry submissions. However, I am sorry that I cannot publish your poems, as they are not right for the journal.

Still, I greatly appreciate your interest in The Cherry Blossom Review. Best wishes for your poetry.

Sincerely, Jennifer LeBlanc

when the weight of bills,

chores,
no time,
autism spectrums,
the expense of
everything
come colliding into
my quickly beating heart
at odd intervals
in the spaced day,
i quickly retreat
to a spot in my brain
that is hidden like
bags of gold in a forest
under a stack of sticks
to visions of my loverly wife
and i blaring down some sun ruined road
in our old age behind the
over-sized wheel of a
sussed out RV
with cigars in our mouths,
singing to yo la tengo and
wondering why the years didn't
move as fast as our
parents always
predicted.

gravity confusion

what
if
the
sky
really
was
the
ground
and
the
ground
was
the
sky
and
we
could
all
finally
come
to
the
consensus
that
we
as
a
human
race
are
really
upside
down.

A Published Poem

I would like to publish " KANSAS CITY MOBY". The fine print:

The Externalist purchases First North American Serial or Reprint Rights as well as Electronic Rights for a period of six months, after which time all rights return to you. At this time, there is no payment for publication in The Externalist; however, contributors may request a link to an upcoming or published book within one year of publication in The Externalist. That link will appear on our web site for six months.

Dreaming of Buddha

i had a dream last night
that i donated my
red, fake ivory Buddha
statue to some locale
and lost my way completely.

when i got the
statuette in a
small korean market,
they warned that i
could never bring it back for a refund.

it was bad luck
and they flashed a grave
countenance that bespoke of
fire skies and blood lakes.

so,
i tossed away the receipt and
huddled it next to my computer
monitor for all these 10 years of so
i have pounded through these years
of words trickling like a palatable
matrix i forget continually.

and it was that one small dream
with the big man statue
leaving my grasp for another location.

i don't even know where
to get it back in my dreamland
when i fall back asleep.

but the beauty of this,
is that i'm awake
and he sits to my left with his
relaxed fingers,
full grin and another dreamless day
to watch everything pass
with his closed eyes
and lightly strewn gown.

angling towards the mid-life breakdown

as we amble through our teens,
really find our genitals in our early 20's,
learn how to use our rock shoes in the mid 20's,
contemplate good thought talk during the late 20's,
figure our family life in our 30's,
and wonder what the fuck towards 40,
the reality is that we are all just
pretending to prepare
for our big, fat mid life crisis
that will have no definitive day,
but it is always spelled out in the last
drop of whiskey that
lands on your young,
pink 30 something tongue that will have
to account for all the missed words,
botched birthdays,
forgotten events and
tiny missed issues that will
barrel towards all of your bowling pins
like something so accurate,
that olnly god could concoct.

perfect human stories

if i was ever able to stumble
in the right chunks of time,
i would wander the halls
of assisted living compounds
and retirement villages to

concoct a thousand vibrant
characters under hundreds
of seasoned themes to
sell millions of books.

each of these shriveled,
aged,
pained,
pill addled bodies
have souls flourishing with the
victorious accomplishment
of cheating death for so long
and each of them have enough
adventure and intrigue
to have the best of their lives
strung together into a handful
of amazingly rich stories about human triumph.

and if i ever get the time,
i don't want you to steal
this notion of mine
or tell anyone else that is
mired in writer's block
or sell this off to oprah's underground book club
or tell me later that you are sorry
but it was such a good idea.

i simply want you to just drift
along this theoretical train ride
with your eyes slightly closed
and to conjure up the best of all of us
into one,
humanly perfect life
that would make
yours small enough
to understand
the enormity of our
human whole.

custard explosion

there used to
be an old custard shop
up the street across from
a big church.

it didn't last long.

it was always smoky and hot
inside and the cakes and cones
were rather bland.

odd for sweets because
there is few ways to
make sugar sour.

the oddest thing about
this short lived outfit
was the sign out front.

i could never figure out
exactly what it was.
it looked like a heart
exploded in the middle
of a loaf of bread or
a still picture of an
ahnnilated penis before
it's shaped into a vagina
for a happy transvestite.

some brave hero soul
took the sign down recently,
but the months and days of
peering into that creepy
sign is sitting in my brain
like a beating heart
in the chest of a newly
formed woman.

john con

saw an old con man
that i used to work with
and loosely know in my days at
the YMCA.

he stole slabs of meat ribs
from our freezer that was
to benefit kids who needed a facility
to come to.

he also stole equipment and cameras
that the kids used all the time.

and after he was exposed,
he was quickly torn out of our script.

it had been over 4 years since i saw
this 'john' dude,
if that was his name,
and he was walking up a dirty street
on the east side of town.
he looked worn,
lost,
ghost like,
broken,
falsely happy,
riddled with human debt
and oblivious to the mechanics of good living.

as i gripped the wheel a bit tighter,
i peered into my rear view mirror
to see him recede into my past
yet again
as my tiny boy
glowed like river treasure
in his seat
as my past and futures
quickly swam over that small
sliver of mirror.

REMEMBERING THE UNFORGETTABLE

each time i see that
'9-11-01 : WE WILL NEVER FORGET'
sticker streaming from the
back of broken american car
i want to follow these drivers,
get out and tell them that
i cannot forget this day
because these stickers remind
me why this country is on such
a reckless course to Armageddon,
so in reality,
i would never had to have a bumper
sticker that cost the slight fraction
of an actual bomb that is falling over
Iraq as all the dummy Americans Trollope
around reminding each other of something
that none of us will ever forget
and no bumper sticker of any cost,
size or color could be enough to
unremind or remind me of such a
day as 9/11 as the
poor old car with the pearl harbor
sticker kills its engine behind me
as a small kid walking into
the dollar general asks his dad
what kind of pearl is in the harbor
and why would we ever forget to call
911 when there is an emergency.

the priest up the street

is passed out
on wine at 4 in
the afternoon
as the rumor
of no god finally
vice gripped
his brain
along with the
putrid morning
headlines
as his eyes
begin to rise
again with the
thought of
christ sneezing
and he knows
that he can have
one more
cup of
blood red wine
if god will
only
tell him the secret
to yesterday.

exiting the cold grade school womb

the closest i ever came to the
melding of pure innocent excitement
and the moment my first blast of
light hit me as a living human out
of the womb was one
winter day in grade school.

it was one of those patent
snowy, cold days
that should have been called
by the superintendent,
but wasn't.

all us jittery kids
were merely biding our time
and dreaming of sleds or warm mugs of sugary brown.

and it was decided that us
kids could go to recess and tear
through the drifts of bright white
icing all around us in the
back of willy wonka's hidden room outside.

as we all left our home room
mummified in multiple layers of warmth,
a door down the hallway opened
and all i could see was
bright sun and the purest
white puncturing through that
tiny rectangle on the horizon.

at this,
all of us kids started running
faster and harder towards the
frozen miracle mirage before us.

as the rectangle grew into a big bright square,
then a perfect door opening,
i could feel the cold of birth
happening all over again
as i exited through that doorframe
and forgot everything
else that happened
before that very moment..

Poem is to be Published

Hello Mr. Dimino,

Thank you for your submissions. I'm going to publish "THE GATES OF LIBRARY HEAVEN" in our 2008 Winter/Spring edition, which starts in December.

Liz Fortini
Editor

http://www.languageandculture.net/

in the year 2020

my plastic coffee lid
will have finally decomposed and
become a part of our organic planet.

only a mere fourteen years
as the days ooze by like
small drops of coffee satiating
our short term memories.

i'm gonna mark 12.16.20 on the
calendar as the day
that my lid will finally
be legal organic tender on this planet.

and what a day that will be
as all the other lids wait
in line to be the
bag of coffee grounds
dumped into my
grateful plastic trash liner
this
miraculous morning
that has no biodegradable,
breakdown
shelf life.

Apple Valley Review - Rejection Letter

Thank you for your submission to the Apple Valley Review. I'm sorry to let you know that your poems--"Leaf Blowing King," "Last of 2006," "Kansas City Moby," "1st Thought," and "The Gates of Library Heaven"--were not accepted for publication. (For what it's worth, "Last of 2006" and "The Gates of Library Heaven" were my favorite pieces from this set.)

Although the poems aren't a fit here, this is a particularly subjective business, and I wish you luck in placing them elsewhere. Thanks again for thinking of us.

Best wishes, Leah

movie censors

i used to think
that custodians or
trash throwers
had the worst sort of jobs
on the planet.

that ended recently when
i watched 'pulp fiction'
on commercial cable and
was assailed with
unclever ways to mask
the original cussing
the actors so eloquently
tossed in a
cult masterpiece
it is.

it's the job of the
network censor that
takes the prize as the
worst job on the planet.

akin to the muzak corporation,
how could you take the fuck
from john travolta's mouth and
make it a 'fudge'?

what makes it right to take
the 'shit' word from eric stoltz
and make it a 'shoot'?

what evil man or woman
has done this to the voices
that ring pure profane verbosity
that is the hallmark of classic
movie language?

do they admit these acts of
hollywood treason to their friends?

do they sleep at night?

do they cuss?

what would posses a human mind
to aspire to such a shameful
adult job to cover the original
script of a hollywood film?

fuck.

shit.

damn.

and no one will cover these
words as long as i'm breathing

on this planet.

NYC DREAMERS

i believe that folks who finally
Pack up their midwestern lives
and move to new york city
have more balls than anyone i
will ever meet.

sure,
i've had friends go to
arizona,
california,
new mexico
vegas,
florida and the like,
but the heat of new york city
is enough to snuff out any dream
city across this american land plane.

there is one such loose acquaintance
that i know who recently went
up there to do some art work
and it fell through.

they have since left,
and that is just fine.

the attempt at a town like
new york is the point.
as the huddled teams of
building cram through my
wondering brain,
i imagine that i live there
for a night and sip in the morning before
i awake to another kansas city morning
with my own slivers of new york
in the paint on my typer keys,
the plaque in my boy's teeth,
and the girl smell in my wife's hair
as the dissipation of dream
becomes the emulsification
of my shoe soles sucking in another
patch of middle western ground.

buckle up for lauren

i saw
a buckle up
for lauren
bumper sticker
on the back
of an aging
jeep weeks back
and looked down
at that
tiny slit that
holds me
tidy inside
my fast cruising
vehicle
blaring to
my next destination
as visions of
who this lauren
girl really was when
an accident
took her from
future plans of
school,
family,
child birth,
homes,
vacations
and all the
decent memory
makers of earth living
gave me one more pause
to look back
at my tiny son
even more snug
in his belted seat
as the quick pace
of our moving metal
was too much for
my crammed brain
to shrug off.

Dreaming Head

i have a head
full of indispensable dreams
and that's just enough
for me on this human romp
until i try to
quantify those dreams
on some metric scale
no one knows about
and wouldn't even know how to
if there was enough
to take
my impossible task
any further than a dream
and this
slinking poem
going into
it's magical
corner right now.

convoy's of truck driving cowboy's

always pass me by
on the highway
with a tall mug of
steam swirled coffee,
an empty bottle of jack
on the passenger side floor,
the smell of pine in the air,
a girl with tussled hair
that flies up like a
pop goes the weasel game
wiping the side of her mouth
as the trucker fixes his
content gaze further on down
the road of our lives
laughing at the tiny throne
we sit on in our small
cars darting around
like substandard battery powered
bikes heading towards
our luke warm water
and simple sex lives.

Baby Breath

of all
the wondrous
movements
and instincts
of a baby,
the coolest
thing
has to be
the fact that
they
don't get
bad breath.

shielded by
the mystery of
nature and
evolution,
you can lie
next to their
face in
a pure trance
and not
smell anything
but the
scent of fresh
skin
and the
new
skeleton
of many,
many
tomorrows.

Cardboard Buffet

when someone tells me what
they are eating tastes like cardboard,
i nod and wonder.

i imagine them sitting
down to some elaborate
dinner table with
every assorted type of
cardboard awaiting their
hungry chops.

mashed cardboard,
grilled cardboard,
steamed cardboard,
roasted cardboard,
cold cardboard,
soupy cardboard.

and watch them tuck
that cloud white napkin
into the top ring of their
shirts,
then start shoving cardboard down their mouths.

as their eyes water,
they comment to their guests,
'MAN, THIS REALLY TASTES LIKE
CARDBOARD, EH?'

at this,
i can accept someone telling
me that their food tastes
like something they
have never eaten,
except in my day dreams.

night .. night.

truth behind kid sleep

the greatest thing about kids
is that they really don't sleep
at night.

they just rest their eye lids
as we adult kinds
sleep and melt down
into a dark slip of
oblivion full of failed dreams
and new tasks.

the kids continue to
rage about their landscape
with a thousand strings of
innocence flying the world's
kites and waiting for the
next ground breaking electrical
surge to meet a key as that
same rain storm soaks our
adult dreams with
worries of umbrellas and
leaking basement foundations
while the morning alarm
SCREAMS IN LOUD R.E.M.
for us to
wake our
restful
eye lids.

people are praying for the wrong things

people are praying for the wrong things
as the wheel of evangelical
abdication of war and
veiled hate flies through
the wasted newsprint wods
coming down our windy street.

folks are praying,
but do they know what they should
be asking for
as the portly face of
another preacher on a
channel in the 200's promise
viewers solace and financial freedom
if they just call one small number.

the squeezed eyes of another graying
christian preacher
blurs through the faded screen
as he holds the hand of his
terrified wife asking for
things like an end to world hunger
and the terrorists to perish.

while all i hope for is that
on one errant swipe through the
television channel guide
or side streets of america,
that the supposed christian audience
will finally ask their creator
to help them understand
love and patience as the grail of jesus
gracefully ages another day.

Welcome to the New JD Poetry Portal

welcome to the initial installment of my new poetry portal .. my plan is to at least update this blog with a new poem every couple of days and keep you abreast on all poetry developments .. this is also a resource for finding poetry volumes, spoken word, video poems, rejection letters and the triumphant acceptances .. enjoy .. and a poem is below:

NATIONAL BANKS
we always see the shiny fronts
of the first nation banks,
but what about all the second
and third national banks.

i think i would like to put my money
in institutions that have a
second, third or fourth in their names.

it's not so far in the clouds
and steeped in piles of gold i could never count.

it has that blue collar ring that makes
me feel like i'm the poor guy that i really am.

maybe i should start the third national and
give everyone a free tootsie pop

and a shot of whiskey to join.