Category Archives: Prose Poem

2022, no scape, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, Prose Poem, river life, waterfront, work

Give us today our daily and don’t forget the napkins

This is a cold fried chicken and tart mushy apple kind of night and autumn is a leaving season.

Keeping the shop door closed keeps the cold out. The shop is a ship of curiosities, a memory palace full of one-liners. (The punch lines left with the people who told the jokes over coffee and the memory of what cigarettes taste like.)

The heater kicks on and I hear it again: that vaguely unintelligible song. The music of metal and heat and squeaky parts. The city is a battle of the bands: there is a song in the interstate overpass rattling as loaded semis storm by at 2 in the morning. Then the fupa-fupa-fup-thump of a tire going flat. The echoes of couples conversations and the lone man in a red hoodie arguing with his demons at 3 am.

We sing, one and all, unaware of the melody. It’s just some tinny tune we heard as a baby. A lullaby or a military march. The memory of a plague whose name is forgotten.

And then? Sunrise.

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2022, Autumn, Louisville Stories, Ohio River Valley Literature, Poet's Life, poetry, Prose Poem, river life, the no-scape, waterfront

from Driftwood – a piece (song of songs)

Pain. Sometimes the way in is pain.

When I was young I lived under a blessed illusion painted by my parents that pain is temporary. This too, though, is culture prop-up job. One of those old cowboy movie set props dust downs that only looks real through a tight camera angle.

Sometimes in the morning after a night on the wharf my hip sings, some harmonizing echo like last night when the cooler weather rolled in bringing tree whipping wind and whitecaps. The lines wrapped from the capstan to the timberhead are stretched like an erhu. The cold fingers in the wind play. The fleet dances on the whitecaps like middle-aged hipsters when their favorite song plays over the supermarket speaker. This song is a refrain of pain, kicked up in a current and echoing up into the city with it’s apathetic ears and high falutin’ notions of upward mobility. The song sings to the clouds, to whatever heaven waits. This pain sings forever. These bones are just one more instrument being tuned.

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2022, Driftwood, everyday words, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, Prose Poem, river life

from DRIFTWOOD: a piece (waiting)

This is not a waiting culture. From every corner, prognosticators, practioners, preachers and gurus scream against it. Waiting is the antithesis of Now. Now is what we were raised sharpening our teeth on. Now is the feast we remember from childhood. Waiting is for the weak, they say. The early bird gets the fatter worm and the runt never gets the teat.

But I have given up the early worm. Given up the feast of Now. Here in the Present Now is all about waiting.

I am learning to wait.

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