Minor Place

Back home after a night at the bars--another night
spent in the same places I always go in the same
minor place I've been in these last few years--I
take a beer from the fridge and sit on my stoop
watching the traffic lights on the corner blink back
and forth at one another. Red. Yellow. Red. Yellow.

I say this is a nothing place, too small for me, but it's
nights like these where I think that maybe this city is too
big. Even small cities demand aspirations and I don't
have a lot of those. I want to be able to fall asleep
every night and I want to wake up feeling OK, and only
one stop light towns accept wishes as minor as those.

On my stoop, staring up at a spider in a dingy web
tucked into the corner of the entryway, I decide that
when I move away I will go to the moon or to Montana.
I say out loud, "Mooooontana," and I know that I'm drunk
and I know that tomorrow will be another day that I won't
remember because nothing will happen.

Everyday

A meteor shower to mark the end of
another solitary summer spent wondering
what to do. What to do?

The sodium light lit roads lead me to the
beach where I hope to sit and see flashes
that will prove time is still forging on.

But the stars are gone, painted over with
soot black clouds that periodically glow
bright with lightning.

So I sit on the sand, cut my hand as I try
to open a beer, and it's too dark to see the
blood, but I can see the waves rising in white rows.

Some lights up the beach, a family with kids
carrying flashlights. They shine them at me as
they walk past, and I keep my bloody hands down.

I'd like to stand up and walk with the family,
head back to their musty, dimly lit cottage.
It'd be my vacation, and I might finally be able to sleep.

A poem

I've been trying to write some poems lately. I like that I can finish a poem fast, before I get bored--unlike with stories--and how poems force me to use my words carefully. Anyway, here's a poem I wrote. Enjoy.

You wrung me out

like some stained and threadbare
rag dropped carelessly on the
sunny ground to dry hard,
rough. To be forgotten.

Leaves collected on me and
ants pattered across my crusty
surface. Rain fell and I soaked
it up. And then I became
covered with dirt and sank down
and became the ground.