Laughing Ghosts

(I thought in honor of Halloween I'd post the poem the blog is named after. I have placed a link at the bottom of me reading the poem.


Weathered-gray,
semi-petrified slats,
framed the dark holes
that once beamed
with light and life.

The porch,
shattered with broken teeth
and languid tongue,
was void of speech,
but not of sound.

Ghost’s laughter
echoed in the trees,
shading the wrinkled hat
cocked to one side,
that once sat square,
and kept the rain outside.

I clicked my heels
down the hollow of its throat,
looking for evidence
of the home it’d made.
With everything torn and scattered,
and holes set to trap,
I decided to leave, and
let the ghosts have it back.


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Early Morning Rocky Road Relief

I woke up with fear
standing beside me, insisting
I sit up for a talk—
having been kicked out of a bad dream,
I agreed we had things to discuss.

First, I thought it was rude
to wrap it’s gripping hands
around my running feet,
interfering with a panic flight
from what and to where I don’t know.

Second, my dreams are reserved
for action/adventure, XXX, fantasy,
but absolutely never horror!
I felt like I presented my case
historically accurate, and beyond dispute.

It expanded like a gas-filled balloon ready to burst,
bellowed out, “blame it on the Rocky Road”;
leaving a lingering foul stench, it left.

What We eat

She watches the glass
like I do a favorite TV show.
There’s no channels to change, but
when I feed the fish she licks her paws,
and meows with a pleading whine.
The ultimate optimist, I guess,
but, a fantasy that’ll never happen;
paradise, a quarter inch of glass away,
a formulated, nutritional diet on the floor.

Like A Buzzard Circling

Like a buzzard circling
the dying breaths of a wounded world,
Winter salivates for the coming feast.
His 9 to 5 is feeding on all things dying,
dying and rotting, painting the nostrils
of skittering masses with overcoats,
scarves, and dirty long underwear—
worn over and over, you can’t see those,
and the smell mingles with the fallen,
angels and trees, contorted in
an Armageddon pose too ghastly
to be remnants of what once was alive.

Painting Fruit

We look for meaning
in everything we read;
it has to be there,
why would it be written without?

The sadness and loneliness,
a bicycle ride,
wearing dead leaves as lingerie
are all ascribed to the writer,
why describe what’s not?

Is poetry catharsis?
Personal preening for the readers eyes?

Of course it’s not, or
at least not always,
sometimes,
it’s just a bowl of fruit,
and wax at that.

October Leaves

The wind rolls their corpses
under tires in driveways,
it’s not suicide, nor murder,
they’re already dead.

No pity for them...
what’s the point?

Broken blades,
petioles too dry to take a drink.

October’s the month for leaves,
a year ago today
you backed out of my life.

Out Of Stock

I know men and women that discard lovers
like canned peas with expiration dates,
love is just dust, tending circles on a shelf.

Of course, they’re not politically correct.
Haters of the opposite sex…
I’m not qualified to say.

Rotating inventory,
from a retail point of view,
is a good thing to do, but

running out of stock in Winter, really sucks.

Dying Words

I’ve been talking with the trees in my yard,
daily chit chat about bird things, and
rain that promises to visit, but never appears.
They remember yellow and orange stories
fragmented into distractions of time,
crisp, bitter feelings that fall to the dying.
Today they are very talkative, but
soon they will stand cold and silent.

Act II, Same Star

There’s no band
that plays at twilight
to paper dolls dressed for theater in the sky,
frozen in dreamy-eyed poses, and
still tongues murmuring things that could be said.

Angels walking on invisible stilts
roll the Sun on stage
to scissor-cut applause,
changed into a costume of moon robes,
and flashy beads of stars,

the impersonation begins...

Unquenchable

I pondered the depth
of a raindrop once, and
found the water too deep:
the lives it took,
and the ones it gave,
the fruit that slid
its memory down my chin,
the rust it painted
on old tin roofs, and
the umbrellas
bounced on
like a trampoline.
I pondered the depth
of a raindrop once, and
found a thirst it couldn’t quench.

Remodeling, But Open

Friday the 13th, late night October,
Summer checked out, and
cold poured into my pores, all of them,
goose bumps poked out, like occupied flags.

Remodeled the exterior of my body
with a sweat shirt and long pants,
cleaned up the inside with hot coffee,
and a thorough mopping of Bailey’s Irish Cream.

New season, new residents
deserve upgraded digs,
thinking about a hat for the penthouse,
the roof is getting awfully thin.

What We Are

The moon is such a fickle lover
it draws hot blood to yellow thighs,
drains us free of light-lust dreams, then
vanishes without touch, or tear.
No notes left by the coffee pot,
fragrance to linger on sheets, or thought.
Gone again, ‘til it needs our skin,
we’ll be waiting, we are what we are.

All Scratched Up

Sometimes, I’ll have a problem
lay against the back wall of my skull,
and scratch at it like a dog with fleas,

thumpthumpthump
thumpthumpthump...

most irritating to say the least, and
normally in the middle of the night.

I stroke it, massage it,
drag my nail-bitten fingers
over and over its obnoxious hide,

but it sits right where it is,
thumpthumpthump
thumpthumpthump…

The loss of sleep is inconsequential,
putting the Sun over scratched-up skin
wears like hell!

A Hoot Owl Hoots

I remember him sitting
with his head in his hand,
glued to a Formica countertop,
smoking Kool Menthols, slicing through
the blue-grey boredom to make change.
He hated that hardware store,
being a fixture in a block box;
the key turned at seven in the morning,
not again ‘til six at night.
It provided the electric fryer
with drumsticks and breasts, but
his preference was fresh caught fish.
The south Georgia swamps,
rivers, and Cypress knees
hold the memories of his steps.
A hoot owl hoots
in the silence of his sleep.

Wasting Time

The vanity glass,
that has my bathroom
tattooed on its face,
revealed a ghost haunting
the brown pigment
holding life in my eyes.
I’ve never seen this before.
It must’ve been hiding
behind the front of the deodorant can,
or slipped out from
the hanging silk plant,
that occasionally moves
without a stint of wind.
I bathed my vision
in a blur of Visine drops,
when the peeling paint
on the back wall cleared,
the only thing gone
was a waste of time.

Keeping The Beat

I read a book of poems
by a Pocket Poet.
Maybe, it was the first,
actually, I think it was.
Neither he, nor it
would fit in any I have,
they’ve all gotten smaller,
seems there’s less need
for carrying things.
The poetry flowed,
like the offspring of melting ice,
running down the hot hand
of a shadow darting under city lights,
keeping the beat,
keeping the beat...

Something From Above

I ain’t got no poem!
Checked my pockets
front and back, looked
between my toes—
won’t mention what I found;
thumbed through some pages
of a Louise Glück book,
none hiding in there.
I could take my old black hat
turn it up to the sky,
dance around the cul-de-sac
chanting, “gobbledygook, gobbledygook,
let the flood of words begin.”
Surely, a drop or two of something
would be delivered from above.

After Midnight

It was 12:30 a.m., and
I was standing on the beach
relinquishing my rights
to the next to last beer I drank.
I looked up to see a host of stars,
silently peering down,
sober, as far as I could tell.
There wasn’t much to talk about,
they knew what I was doing, and
I knew what they were up to.
I climbed in the boat,
turned the lights out, and
wondered if the flaming, little voyeurs
would still be pervertedly peeking,
when title to the last past onto the sand.