April 17-23, 2017: Poetry from Christopher Hopkins and Jay Passer

Your thanks are welcomed every time.

I sit in their chairs like stains on the fabric,
measuring a life gone,
by counting the refresh rate on a VDU.
Monitoring the toner.
Charged with cartridge orders.
I am a King. 
Your thanks are welcomed every time. 

The staircase climb,
felt no different this morning,
though I realised those desk top lunches 
leave their trails on the seagrass.
And that’s what I took with me.

23 years.
After biting down every day,
every wish of time to go, until the
rush hour slug or holiday time hospice relief,
it’s the remains of lunchtimes,
droppings of white collars days left on the carpet tiles,
I take with me.
I died on the floor,
thinking what lunches fitted the wheeled in crumbs,
like a librarian of waste.

Fire on the corner of 13th and 3rd 

The building had gone up good.
Caught up like a timber frame.
Tangerine lashes through the window panes,
rubbing their black palms all over the brick,
and a stretch of chrome ladders batting it back.
The shouts and cracks,
and the sirens calling.
The people came,
and stood and stared.
Necks all cricked up,
and the un-winking shark’s eye, 
of a T.V. lens to the heat. 
The spectacle of it all, 
captured in its full technicolor drama.
Us counting blessings,
an after thought,
to the  crowds fuss as if watching
in the shadow of awesome, 
of some Cape Canaveral.
This upended Saturn five.
Though this crowd in their pjs 
and winter coats.
The building has the Florida heat,
the firemen in life supports,
and the astronauts wives,
waiting at home,
for their husband’s end of shift.
In the pale of morning 
smoke still billowing,
lay the skeletons of yesterday’s living,
in front of the lobby doors,
and on show through holes 
the fisted flames had torn.
Remnants of dinning rooms, 
half cooked sofas,
burned up spines of light reading on
tables of black coffee charred.
……Now just moon dust on the wind.
The crowd,
had moved on,
along with fire trucks red raving lights
that spin like crap dice.
And that black eye? 
……Still scouting for misfortune.

Entering the desert

Succulent chunks of high rise buildings and sand paper roads lead 
all the way out of town,
to where the boxes got smaller and smaller.
Like sound waves of a song 
on FM, fading out to the cemetery on the hill. 
The sun is glass above the horizon,
below the visor.
Driving straight to ball,
blind.

The lamb walks under parking signs
on the main street after dark.

She lives on an island where the asphalt meets 
the Pacific, with the mountains behind her,
and the street light switch,
hums lullabies of the night. 
Her thoughts came out of her head 
like tree roots,
when she wasn’t trying to fold them away,
and her spit tasted of the sea. 
Small hickeys of stigmata lay out the star signs,
on her arms and feet.
and the occasional thick lip goodbye.
All are forgiven.
She owned the night,
as much as the glimmer-time held her up right.
Contours of her hips like arrows to her limelight. 
She is desire. 
She is an apple, 
turning on the orchard floor.
She is and is always alone,
walking a different track, when weighed down
on back seats of chance.
Bad luck on her shoulder, whispering ok’s,
like a pimp of promise which never comes. 
The lamb walks under parking signs, 
on the main street after dark.
Sits under war paint in the bathroom light.
Loves, but doesn’t love.

Game of Drones

you get tired
and alone
and the afternoon is sometimes
so barren that
when the blue bottle fly
flits about the room
like a teething rubber band
you somehow don’t feel
so isolated

still
and somewhat halfheartedly
you roll up
the morning Examiner
and lurch about the room
always a swat behind

it’s the oldest war
reduced to the most
inconsequential participants

now you open your eyes
since fist-shaking never works
and quick! out the window goes the fly
denying you
the hunt
and the kill

that’s when you realize

you just lost your BFF

Morning all the Time

You have to stand up out of the shadows
even if it’s more comfortable
especially 
if it’s more comfortable
down there
among the roots

Even with the sun scorching
wind like whiplash
swarm of locusts

You have to stand up and take that step
even if it leads to the abyss
especially

when it leads to the abyss