Finger Milk

The page is blank,
the damn cursor
keeps blinking “hurry up”!
Does this computer think
I pour poems in my cocoa,
and milk them
from the ends of my fingers?
Appear,
disappear,
pulse like a heart monitor
hooked up
to a comatose muse.
I guess a beat
is better than none,
beat, click...
beat, click...
click, click,
click...

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

The Poem Before This

There are poems
I write
the best key
I type
is backspace.
The poem before this
was one!

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

Best Rib Recipe

I cook up
some pretty good ribs.
Louisiana red pepper sauce,
mercifully retarded with honey,
a few splashes of orange concentrate,
generously sopped
over racks of baby backs.
Always pull the thin lining
off the back, as
this helps tenderize the meat.
Over the years I’ve sampled
many a bone savoring recipe, but
to take a rib, and
turn it into a woman,
now that really, really rocks!

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

Ashes To Dream Dust

He rat-holed dreams,
like waded dollar bills,
stuffed in
liquor-scented possibilities,
down-the-road,
one-day,
sort-of-schemes.
“Man cannot live by bread alone...”,
with emphasis on plurality.
Moths eat paper,
bread molds, and
down-the-road
was a “bed-n-breakfast” marker,
on a map he never owned.

Two Poetry Blogs

Would like to recommend two blogs for your poetry viewing pleasure:
Pris Campbell's "Songs To A Midnight Sky" her poem " 'Round The Mulberry Bush". http://poeticinspire.blogspot.com//.

The Bohemian Poet Michael Paul Ladanyi's photograph "Vine and Rattle", and poem to his wife "Bleeds Her Lover". http://thebohemianpoet.blogspot.com/.

I assure you these are worth your time and a little bit of eye-tread.

Never There

She has ice scales
shielding her heart,
over-lapped warnings,
“Fragile-Don’t Touch!”
Her heels thump
pain-pocked rhythms
on taut tile skins, and
ghost scavengers haunt
cold cubicles of hollow eyes.
Sunset whimpers
over still-shot trees,
the warmth on frozen leaves
evaporates,
as if,
never there.

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

Ditch Litter

He lies
whiskey-whipped,
passed-out free
from hygiene’s vestments.
Burger King and Coke cans
cling to his ditch frame
like litter-on-a-stick.
Ticks feast
on rot-gut bounty,
an old dog sniffs away
from worse luck than his.
Heartbeat and habit,
his worldly goods,
sleep
child of God,
sleep.

Headless Words

I watched the two of them
chit and chatter
through bites
of lean something
on whole wheat toast.
They’d shrug and giggle,
chew and blabber;
it’s amazing the words
didn’t fall mangled on the table,
flopping like headless fish
in a gunk of mayo, meat and bread.

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

In Memoriam B.P.P.

Dead Bradford Pear Petals,
like fish scales,
cover my yard.
They smell!
They smell every year
when their beauty passes to rot.
Time to fire up the lawnmower,
shred their carcasses
into fertilizer appetizers;
green Bermuda
will be mowed weekly in their honor.

Sound Intelligence

There are some people,
in this world,
that should have
their vocal chords cut.
Yes! I mean sliced in two—
preferably with a dull,
tetanus-infected saw.
When air seeps up from the bottom
of their mephitic lungs, and
words have the audacity to form,
the dangling sinews of sound
will break them into pieces
of a barely audible hiss.
At least that way,
they could maintain the illusion
of having a measurable IQ!

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

Lost for Words

My muse shows up
at the strangest times.
Last night
it was in the middle of a hot dream
shouting “get your lover-boy rump up
I’ve got something to say!”
She’s rudely interrupted
in conversations with good friends—
“excuse me I have to go drain my muse”.
Or, taps me on my shoulder
going 80 mph,
reminding me I have a bad memory, so
I’d better stop and find a pen.
But, when all is quiet,
and the interests of the day
are snuggled up tight in trash bags, or
sleeping peacefully under
a cloud of snores,
she sits with me at the keyboard,
silent,
not musing a damned word!

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

Room For One

Worry is a long term
habit of mine.
I know I don’t have
exclusivity to the pangs
clawing inside my belly,
but I have time share rights
for long-term,
appetite-stealing vacations,
to overnight, sleep-free junkets.
Don’t have to call for reservations,
they’re always on stand-by
waiting on the next thought to book a stay.

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

Wait Staff

My blog is down!
I can’t nourish my inspiration
with the proteinaceous comments
that my muse has become addicted to.
She’s starting to eat
the lining of my stomach,
threatening to take out bowel
if word offerings aren’t delivered soon.
I told her they said
it was a server problem,
she munched back, “hire a new waiter!”

(all rights resevered Pat Paulk 2006)

Happy Hour

I sat at the bar
tearing life jackets
off my pitiful thoughts, and
flooded their tenement homes
with 2 for 1 beers.
I could hear
the little boogers
gurgling and gulping,
from maniacal screams
to deep-swamp silence.
Raised my hand to the bar maid,
“pour another!”
“pour one for all the ones
you poured before!”
“pour one for everybody!”
poor me...

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

River Watch

Water gurgled
over smooth, thirsty stones, and
licked our ankles
with a cold, forking tongue.

Our hands held
in spite of slips and falls,
you kissed my cheek
when we reached flat sand.

The grass was soft
on the bank where we lay;
the sun washed bare skin,
while our clothes laid out to dry.

A hawk shrieked overhead,
you startled in my arms;
I nibbled at your ear, and
the high gliding predator moved on.

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2005)

Goodbye Rodeo

I’ve had losses before in my life.
The kind that takes your heart,
rolls it inside out,
ties it to the back of
a Jeep Wrangler, and
runs through a cactus farm
seeing how many needles it will hold.
Never thought I’d grieve
like this over a dog, though.

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

The Other "f" Word

Flummox is a word
I really like.
Seldom use it, hardly
ever hear it used.
It beats the other “f” word
we hear all the time.
I admit I throw it around
like a tongue-axe, sometimes
to split a guy’s head open, but
mostly out of bad habit.
I think I’ll start telling folks
to flummox off,
get flummoxed, or
no flummoxing way!
Watch their expression go
from gut-cutting anger
to complete perplexity,
scratching their head
as they walk away.

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)
.

Two Sides Of The Door

I opened the door
to a host of birds
singing different songs
in multiple keys.
They shook the blooms
on my Bradford Pears, like
tiny, white-gloved hands,
applauding their rendition of
“Here Comes The Sun”.
I slurped hot coffee,
listened and watched,
as each had its own agenda
from breakfast to chicks.
With the door closed
I could still see them fluttering
on feathers and worms,
but all I could hear
on my side of the glass,
was the damned telephone screaming
get back to work!

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

Window Pane Killing Fields

This pile of mail needs attention.
I’ll stab each envelope
between the flap and body, and
slice it from stamp to return address.
I wish it’d bleed on all the others—
flooding rivers of white blood
over frozen window pane eyes,
encoding terror in their genetic pulp.
Maybe, they’d find
someplace else to go and die.

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

Mirror Talk

It’s amazing what we see
when we look in the mirror.
I see a good looking
fifty (something) year old,
with a relatively svelte (beer belly) figure,
sporting a healthy (thinning) head of hair,
tinged (snowbound) with white.
I had a friend tell me
what she saw in the mirror, and
I told her it lied!

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

8 Years, 28 Days

She screeched notches
in her vocal chords, like
a gunfighter marking kills.
.44 magnum expletives
fired day in and day out,
splattered marital bliss
on pearl, white walls,
always leaving someone else
to clean up the mess.

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

Gray Fading

I feel your touch, though
your hands I’ll never see again.
I taste your lips with
our mouths decades apart.
Your words framed in Winter breath, and
love-sparked shadows on candle-lit walls,
are dreams buried in a Polaroid
gray-fading like the ghost of you.

(Published in the February Issue of Quill & Parchment)

War Games

I watched the sun
wrestle chair shadows
on the front deck of my boat.
A territorial spat of sorts.
A constant back and forth,
with each side
winning and losing,
depending on the time of day.

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

Weekend Wake

Going to a wake
for Winter this weekend.
We’ll raise bottles of beer,
shots of chilled Grey Goose,
roll dice,
deal cards,
ante and bet,
burn red meat
‘til the stars get hungry,
keeping one eye
on the Weather Channel,
making sure
the old bastard doesn’t rise.

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

Routine

I bulldozed rows
of cotton dunes,
squeezed others into
fault-line footprints.
My dreams wallowed ruts
on journeys
longitude to longitude,
and back again, and
vaporized like ghosts
every time
the dam threatened to break.
Digitized voices broke the silence.
I showered,
shaved, then
made the bed.

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

Granite Cowboys

My dreams
are granite cowboys.
They never ride horses,
lasso lovely ladies,
tip their hat
howdy do.
They don’t move,
they can’t move, but
they never get broken…

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

Word Storms

Who knows
what’s in the mind of a poet,
when they write...

Is it
agony stitched
on the inside collar
of every word?

Sadness,
clicked, like
dust-eyes fleeing,
on the last wind-train
leaving?

Joy?
There’s joy...
when the last letter
falls, like
the final drop
from a roiling storm.

(all rights reserved Pat Paulk 2006)

Ash Wednesday
party’s over—
prayer beads