Day 365/365

Our NYE was spent quietly with good friends. My last poem of the year was a collaborative effort among me and fellow poets Chris Ney and Bobby Cook. We wrote alternating lines leading up to midnight, and I finished it up shortly thereafter. It's a bit raw and I touched it up in a few small spots, but I couldn't have imagined a better end to a year in poetry, than writing one with Chris and Bob. Thanks, boys.


It was a blue moon on that New Year's Eve,
as blue as his lips lowered to the ice
and cold as that ice to which it did cleave.
The drop in temp'rature became his vice.
His fingers grew numb as the minutes passed.
Still, he hesitated undecided
as to whether freezing days will last,
feeling a snowflake fall upon his head...
Before him stretched a sea of endless white,
the moon reflecting azure off the snow.
He felt an icy wind and its harsh bite,
no direction marked in which he should go.
Instead of following a frozen year,
he thought of friends and family, warm and near.


That's it... for now. Thanks!


ewr

Day 364/365

one day left
there's snow in the forecast
friends on the way


ewr

Day 363/365

This poem contains the word oracle.
You should be immediately suspect.
Loaded words mean the poem won't end well.
Watch for storm surge as well.
Alliteration is grand, but references to weather
are worthy of the hairy eyeball,
especially if the poet even remotely refers to love
in phrase or theme.
Bitter is a bad choice as well.
Next there will be broken hearts
or butterflies
or both,
or a beach
because it follows storm surge so well.
A couple of references to
the ebb and flow of the tide
will leave you teetering on twisted,
shards of glass shattering in your head,
stinging your soul-filled eyes
and stoking the fires of your heart.
Fuck that,
I'd rather write about boogers, philodendron, and Minnie Pearl.


ewr

Day 362/365

Have you ever heard the sound of disappointment?
It whispers softly through a mother's voice
when she tells her son she just spent five hours in the ER
with her father and his bowel blockage
and doesn't even give him the opportunity
to come sit next to her in the waiting room
and hold her hand or tell her a bad joke about cutting the cheese
or let her read a few chapters of a Harlequin romance
without worrying about whether or not
she's going to lose another parent
starting the day after Christmas.


ewr

Day 361/365

christmas cookie
you're so sweet on my tongue
five of you is a pound


ewr

Day 360/365

Bären-Hunger


My lover was a single-cell furry,
an S&M Euglena whose flagellum
reddened my ass every night
for one sweet sweat of a summer.
His idea of bondage
was pressing me flat between glass
under the lens of a giant maché microscope
in his laboratory dungeon.
He'd sit high above me and stare down,
waiting for mutation to occur.
By September,
the entropy of all that incubation
added ten pounds to my once elastic abdomen,
and he booted me out.
A local whore took me in for the wet autumn,
and we played old wrestling games on his PlayStation,
when the Superstars' faces were painted on digitally
and the breasts of the female create-a-character
were shaped as rhombicosidodecahedron,
huge and trying desperately to be round.
I didn't turn tricks
(wrinkled necks and sagging ass cheeks
never quelled my hubris)
and he didn't mind
since it would have meant another twink ass on the street,
and he couldn't afford that.
We lived off the Mickey D's dollar menu
and his dealer's juiciest Jones.
As he shot up, I got high on Sambuca,
which he paid for
since I kept his place clean
(as clean as a fleabag can be).
One Monday morning
I returned from Wawa with breakfast sandwiches
to find him expired on the bathroom floor.
"Oh, Christian," I said aloud
and sat beside him,
stroked his straw-like hair.
It was funny...
lying like a tossed off twist tie
from a loaf of bread,
his fetal form suddenly gestated
in my brain,
and I stared at him for many long hours
that turned into days.
(I turned down the heat
to keep him cool.)
It was beyond inspiration,
beyond creation
and I found myself at the library,
researching colors and pigments,
ultramarine and vermilion,
something to get it right.
At the Michaels, I grabbed a plethora of supplies,
oils in every color they had,
canvases, brushes, knives,
more than I'd use in a year.
(Thank God for his stash of cash.)
As I worked,
the scene morphed away from an accidental death
and became a sylvan landscape,
a loon escaping from the jaws of a wolf,
eyes as black holes
like Christian's,
restless,
inescapable,
incapable of love.
Twenty of Christian's bucks left,
I walked downtown to a pizzeria called Bim's,
ordered a Coke and a slice,
and savored its yeasty goodness
before I dialed 911
from the pay phone outside,
and headed for the bus stop.
I imagined the officers at the scene,
twenty minutes or so later,
finding Christian in a state near decay,
and seeing what they assumed was his artwork
propped against the toilet next to him.
The coroner would look at it first,
see the death of it all,
before tending to Christian's body.


ewr

Day 359/365

A man can dance his fanny off
and never be content. In fact,
his ankles hurt, he's pulled his groin.
So much for calling nature's bluff.
If turning 40 makes you feel
you're old and fat, it's time to join
a gym or buy a penis car.
Perhaps foundation will conceal
the damage of the sun's impact.
We all look better from afar.


ewr

Day 358/365

Christmas Eve


She adorns a conifer
with bright red apples
hung from stems
and glistening garland of snake skin.
The top is is a pristine ribcage
(save one, broken at the bottom)
illuminated from the inside
with a single bare bulb.
Beneath,
she places a single gift for herself
and decides whether she should open it tonight
or wait until the morning.


ewr

Day 357/365

Christmas Spirits
(inspired by and words borrowed from Nick Moretti)


He unfurls the tree
and thanks Jesus for pre-lit trees
on Christmas Eve eve,
the day he found his spirit.
There's enough garland
to encircle the planet.
He chooses the green and purple this year.
The box of ornaments
is one surprise after another:
his collection of Bumbles,
a little red Macy's shopping bag full of tiny toys,
the pink elephant, in blown glass,
sipping from a mini martini glass.
Pulling aside a layer of poinsettia red tissue,
he reveals an assortment
of small stocking,
red with white trim,
each personalized with names,
cursive in gold glitter.
Marco,
who cheated on him with his best friend
and half of New York City
and blamed him for it
because he stopped going to the gym.
Willie,
who he left drunk and wallowing in piss
the morning he went to rehab.
Homer,
his dog that Willie let die
because crack was more important
than treatment.
Mom,
whose last words to him were
"You're going to die alone in the dark
with the blinds closed
and no one there for you."
Dad,
who he didn't know was his father
until ten years after the man died.
There are more.
He scoops up the lot of them
and drops them into a used garbage bag
that is catching the trash.
Beneath those stockings
is a layer of crystal snowflakes,
each in a separate cloth bag.
He removes each gingerly,
admiring the refracting light
as he hangs them one by one
until they blind him.


ewr

Day 356/365

Prompt: A disappointing Christmas present, in heroic couplets.


My parents often tried and failed to choose
their children Christmas gifts that they would use.
Example one: my brother’s TV set.
I don’t see how they ever would forget
he spent his nights and vacant days in bed
with pen in hand, or books yet to be read.
The year I got a bicycle, I cried.
I’d wanted cash for Sea Monkeys—DENIED!
The biggest booby prize of all must be
a karaoke machine just for me.
And when I scoffed, my mother said, “We thought
it’d be a lovely gift.” Yeah, thanks a lot!
I have to say, though… once, they got it right:
I played with 2-XL all Christmas night.


ewr