Friday, May 28, 2004

A New Jersey Trilogy

A NIGHT IN NEW JERSEY

Another train, another minute
another night with me stuck in it.
Another streetlight going on
another long time come 'fore dawn.

Seven men in seven mansions
seven crooks who climb the stantions.
Seven dogs to bark a warning
seen hours come 'fore morning.

A toilet far-off distant flushes
a young love dreams her young love crushes.
A mother yearns for husband touches
a broken spirit 'pon her crutches.

A DAY IN NEW JERSEY

I light another cigarette,
this one to savor.
I know that to an outsider
I must look a million miles away
as I search the universe,
scanning infinite space with my mind's eye
for the words, the thoughts.
The body dissolves,
the room fades,
slips I into a formless,wordless.

ANOTHER DAY IN NEW JERSEY

It becomes so hard to transcend
the drudgery
and the picayune bitchery
of life...

With the sounds of people talking,
in a room that's not my own.
The t.v. set is raging
the same soap operas of my home
(or the house my mother lives in;
it's not the same home so forgiving).
I am too old to live there
yet too young to make home elsewhere.
Like the self-full little skunk
I have been hit crossing the road.

1 comment:

  1. I remember the period of time when I wrote these poems very well. I was young, 18 or so, with my first college girlfriend Lois. It was during the summer, and I was visiting her mother and step-dad on Cape Cod, where they managed a motel. We just hung out in the manager's suite a lot. I smoked a pipe and the occassional cigarette back then. Pretty surreal, actually, bumming around in a bathrobe in the back rooms of a hotel. I think we may have even gotten a room of our own there -- I was nervous, more or less a virgin, and Lois was neither and wondering why I wasn't responding when she went down on me. Still, despite all, the poems were about me, my mind and vision, internal.

    A little sidenote: To this day, I'd rather give than receive!

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