you’d have to be a goddam fool to ignore the benefits of leaving town
think of the travel along the west coast from seattle vancouver bc
south to mexico city san diego los angeles san francisco
to boston new york city and back to seattle then south
to albuquerque santa fe north to minneapolis and those only the cities
towns are full of bigots and psychos of every stripe including officials
and so many homes cook what they sell and use what kills them
albeit slowly using no needles
bobby had to be on the road like kerouac without cassidy
bobby could drive but why not take busses they stopped everywhere
(7 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
angel eyes
they went to see a movie called by the song’s name
that bobby had designated paula’s
they no longer lived together, understand
they were not divorced, she confessed
he did love her and as men like him will
he wanted to be forgiven,
what is there to forgive, she asked, we can’t live together
why not, he said,
and she: we have no married life, you don’t stay home, you don’t sleep
with me
he argued, yes he did, she said sure, but you wake me to do
what lovers do but not at three o’clock in the morning,
in the beginning they would make love after lunch
I’ll stay home, he said,
it was more a plea,
she said nothing in reply
the movie starred the woman who played selena in the true
story of the young woman murdered by her secretary
once she had the gun
jennifer lopez, paula said
I only remembered jennifer, he replied
they went to bed, they slept.
he woke, he looked at her, she the most beautiful,
her eyes almonds when open, and even now, closed,
with her cheek bones he called her osage eyes
nobody courts very long,
nobody has any truck with tradition
nobody now
why can’t we go on like this, she would say,
we work together,
we can be lovers
(6 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
that bobby had designated paula’s
they no longer lived together, understand
they were not divorced, she confessed
he did love her and as men like him will
he wanted to be forgiven,
what is there to forgive, she asked, we can’t live together
why not, he said,
and she: we have no married life, you don’t stay home, you don’t sleep
with me
he argued, yes he did, she said sure, but you wake me to do
what lovers do but not at three o’clock in the morning,
in the beginning they would make love after lunch
I’ll stay home, he said,
it was more a plea,
she said nothing in reply
the movie starred the woman who played selena in the true
story of the young woman murdered by her secretary
once she had the gun
jennifer lopez, paula said
I only remembered jennifer, he replied
they went to bed, they slept.
he woke, he looked at her, she the most beautiful,
her eyes almonds when open, and even now, closed,
with her cheek bones he called her osage eyes
nobody courts very long,
nobody has any truck with tradition
nobody now
why can’t we go on like this, she would say,
we work together,
we can be lovers
(6 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
the time between
they’re off to the side, talking between sets,
when bobby goes on stage impromptu
with body and soul a cappella, the chatter
abates, you hear clark and sanchez high
from stepping out in the alley, and paula
stops and looks and keeps her eyes on him
until he ends, then strolls up and kisses him
on the lips, bobby holding her, kissing,
wanting to go, to keep on, but one set’s left,
the talk resumes, glasses clinking, laughter
(5 March 2013)
when bobby goes on stage impromptu
with body and soul a cappella, the chatter
abates, you hear clark and sanchez high
from stepping out in the alley, and paula
stops and looks and keeps her eyes on him
until he ends, then strolls up and kisses him
on the lips, bobby holding her, kissing,
wanting to go, to keep on, but one set’s left,
the talk resumes, glasses clinking, laughter
(5 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
Monday, March 4, 2013
Purge
Nothing goes. The bent rod with lightning rod electrified. Nothing arrives.
Franklin replied to the young man, saying he would do well to a take a mistress,
just make sure she’s older, not to be a mother but to teach him like Rousseau’s
Mamma how to please a woman. There is no record of the young man’s reply.
Nothing’s here. Hemingway’s old man in A Clean, Well Lighted Place stirs.
He needs to go. The management says so. It is the Lord’s Prayer with nada
as a self-actuating yet echoing noun. So that he knows the world has ended,
he wanders home and on TV is De Sica’s Umberto D., hell you may as well die.
Nothing anywhere. I make up my own story. I’m a street kid with a passion
to be myself and still be another, I want to leave, I want to bury those who made
me, I whose worth is not in the skin where I am given the right to enjoy life
but in the mind that shifts from the daily hustle to the daily purge on paper.
I will make something. I know what I am already, the lights are on, but I’m out.
Rose is singing Body and Soul, then Angel Eyes, and Dave makes like Bud Powell.
The place is packed. Someone says nothing, thinking she’s maybe Billie Holiday.
White girl with a scar, voice like a purr. The sound is Dave’s then, Un Poco Loco.
Bobby wants to go to Paris with Cathleen, he wants to free himself from Seattle.
All there is here is pain. Marge turning tricks, her Jim in Walla Walla state pen.
Or Bobby would go south and ask his mother questions so he can write a story
of her life, not the one that’s legend in this city but the way her life went down.
(4 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
Franklin replied to the young man, saying he would do well to a take a mistress,
just make sure she’s older, not to be a mother but to teach him like Rousseau’s
Mamma how to please a woman. There is no record of the young man’s reply.
Nothing’s here. Hemingway’s old man in A Clean, Well Lighted Place stirs.
He needs to go. The management says so. It is the Lord’s Prayer with nada
as a self-actuating yet echoing noun. So that he knows the world has ended,
he wanders home and on TV is De Sica’s Umberto D., hell you may as well die.
Nothing anywhere. I make up my own story. I’m a street kid with a passion
to be myself and still be another, I want to leave, I want to bury those who made
me, I whose worth is not in the skin where I am given the right to enjoy life
but in the mind that shifts from the daily hustle to the daily purge on paper.
I will make something. I know what I am already, the lights are on, but I’m out.
Rose is singing Body and Soul, then Angel Eyes, and Dave makes like Bud Powell.
The place is packed. Someone says nothing, thinking she’s maybe Billie Holiday.
White girl with a scar, voice like a purr. The sound is Dave’s then, Un Poco Loco.
Bobby wants to go to Paris with Cathleen, he wants to free himself from Seattle.
All there is here is pain. Marge turning tricks, her Jim in Walla Walla state pen.
Or Bobby would go south and ask his mother questions so he can write a story
of her life, not the one that’s legend in this city but the way her life went down.
(4 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Adolescence
A poem must not mean,
but be . . .
If you do not care what you have to say when the words run out and the body begins its dance which is banned, clothes tossed into the canyon and skin freed of the wrongheaded mores . . .
It is for the children,
don’t you know they fuck too soon and bring babies into our midst before they can pay the bill, get a job to stay off welfare, keep the American mythos of everything in its place, in its own time, they are only children after all and if they have no parental guidance, why not . . .
Is that why we have poems?
To say nothing well . . .
To stay children and once you have money put it on the market and let it thrive so you may keep everything the way it is, you are, I will be stupidly resistant to any change that’s needed?
We are not children,
not even the children
who are given the street to build their own economies, leave the rest of us alone, let the cops lock doors, bar windows as the night shift rolls up the sidewalks with the young strays inside.
(3 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
but be . . .
If you do not care what you have to say when the words run out and the body begins its dance which is banned, clothes tossed into the canyon and skin freed of the wrongheaded mores . . .
It is for the children,
don’t you know they fuck too soon and bring babies into our midst before they can pay the bill, get a job to stay off welfare, keep the American mythos of everything in its place, in its own time, they are only children after all and if they have no parental guidance, why not . . .
Is that why we have poems?
To say nothing well . . .
To stay children and once you have money put it on the market and let it thrive so you may keep everything the way it is, you are, I will be stupidly resistant to any change that’s needed?
We are not children,
not even the children
who are given the street to build their own economies, leave the rest of us alone, let the cops lock doors, bar windows as the night shift rolls up the sidewalks with the young strays inside.
(3 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
Saturday, March 2, 2013
the old wizards
the old wizards have nothing more to do but gaze into the void until the void returns for a night’s sleep, there are more simple ways to live but none as beneficial for humanity at large, many stroke their beards, a flight through the air results from such wisdom and care that the hands do not pluck white hairs from among the black, so the day is passed and night ignites, the old grow young again and their cleopatras claim them for their own as though the bright wreckage of the world were not enough for anyone to die inside, simply another reason to live
(2 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
Friday, March 1, 2013
Super 8 Movie 1969
I know we died but came back to life.
Forty years I missed her everywhere.
When I found her, she called me old love.
It was raining where she was, I never
remember myself, only the last time
she kept her clothes on we slept together.
My stay was over the day of the night
she called on the neighbor’s phone to see
if I was home. She came. I welcomed
her sailor’s walk, her beauty: almond eyes,
cheeks chiseled perfectly, how her talk
seemed to splice with a whisper words clear
as speech I could not separate from love.
I must have moved my empty hands over
her full breasts, cupping her soft buttocks
as we kissed, knowing our love would never
come again, we would have to settle now
for what the mind’s eye can remember:
running naked together through wheat fields
on film projected once but that was all.
(1 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
Forty years I missed her everywhere.
When I found her, she called me old love.
It was raining where she was, I never
remember myself, only the last time
she kept her clothes on we slept together.
My stay was over the day of the night
she called on the neighbor’s phone to see
if I was home. She came. I welcomed
her sailor’s walk, her beauty: almond eyes,
cheeks chiseled perfectly, how her talk
seemed to splice with a whisper words clear
as speech I could not separate from love.
I must have moved my empty hands over
her full breasts, cupping her soft buttocks
as we kissed, knowing our love would never
come again, we would have to settle now
for what the mind’s eye can remember:
running naked together through wheat fields
on film projected once but that was all.
(1 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
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