The Joneses

forty eight.

Then I was lost on land beside a different water.

Unfamiliar granite beneath my foot,

Steps echoing up and up

From one Emerald tower to the next

Until how much the same they all looked--

And I was lost.

And I thought if what I had was what I wanted.

And I thought on all the green this side of the fence

How little grass there is in the city.

In the world if I'm being honest, there's very little grass anymore

And such lovely gardens.

But the gardens are all silicone 

If I'm being honest.

And the chemicals that climb out of beakers, 

March in hoards 

Collide with the softness of our skin,

Smell our nakedness,

These are more green then the ground anymore.

If I'm being honest.

And I thought on how the sand felt rough and warm and

A tremendous adversary when I was young and I ran

From it into the sea.

The first time I came back home after being away,

How salty the air hit me

How clean.

There is a crack spreading from the top of this country to the edge

Drums shake it open

Our trembling all at once 

Shake it open.

And it circles round the outside of this country

And it weaves around the outside of these towns,

And we wedge our picket fences down the craters

And how alive the neighbors lawn looks when we're through!

Bianco

forty seven.

Blind man found me singing out of tune to the nightingales.

I remember this standing in a long white room, in
A gallery downtown.

Such a pretty face he doesn't know he's got.
Distracted me. All flourescent lit and misconstrued.
His nose is supposed to be a little further left.
His lips don't feel used.
Such a pretty face full up with breath
Smoky and leaking out his mouth
And the cheekbone edge, sharp,
Silhouetted in white and
About to disappear.

I've never seen anything so fragile
As the line of light running down that
Cheekbone edge.

Was anything so sad
As his eyes searching this abstract expressionist
Thing, out of tune?
I remember singing out of tune.

Blind man stroke my hand, he love me just the same.

He pick these jigsaw pieces up off the floor
To ask me what they mean
Ask me what the colors look like in this room,
That echoes, that breathes.
This room could be staring out the window with an absent mind.

He like the nightingales for singing
I think they sound more like cries.

Ask me what the colors in this room taste like.
Ask me what the puzzle pieces mean.
Curving round his fingers, and filling up his fingers
He feel them fit together, don't see the point.
I ask him what it looks like when he dream.

Kind man found me singing out of tune, to the nightingales
To the nightingales.
To the sirens, busses steaming up the streets
On a stoop downtown.
They should have sounded more like cries.

Dancers

forty six.


I had this dream I ran on water
The spray laced round the jutted out white
Of my ankle bones
And beneath
The thrashing of their rippled ceiling,
Scales caught, by those pinholes of light that leak always
Through our black blanket fort
And through those pinholes,
Miles of fishing line, with hooks dangling off them.

My head couldn't decide if it wanted to be bliss or fear
Or high
And my eyes just bled tears
Because the smell of rain was kind of beautiful
Coming from such fragile air

(The stars must look like dancers from inside the sea)

We fell asleep painted gold by the streetlight just outside of your window,
That flickered for a while threatening to go out.

And earlier, sitting in the open window of the bar
Because the night was warm,
I watched the muted tv for a while
Giants sliding down polished floor
And you hated basketball, but I said they looked like dancers
From outside the screen.

(We must look like a mirage from inside the sea)

Wordless

No poem today, just some of my Instagrams for you! 

Follow me at lorothery.

Fuck me right?

Forty five.

Baby what do you know anyway?

We're both of us sitting in this cherry lit room
Lost as children.

Last night you were lit up by one hundred billion suns
And I couldn't see you at all.

We're both of us parallel staring into the apricot remains
Of a fire --
What do we know.
The worlds serious enough without us in it
To grow old

And fuck me if a cherry lit room doesn't make a girl
Feel like a failure.
Or cut open. Torn apart.
Sealed shut.

You sound like a graveyard on the phone.
And fuck me if a quiet boy doesn't make a girl
See red.

On Theism

Forty four.


Johnny told me hell and high water
Johnny lassoed down the moon
Johnny lied through gold capped teeth
And stalked off tall and slim into the dark
Caught every so often in the dirty old 
Streetlight yellow brick road, chewing on a bit of straw

Left me floating, wild and raw.
 
And eyes swole up and red as a bloodhound stare
I cried quiet and long to God
Triple dog dared him to come out and play.

But the machine said God doesn't exist.
(Son of a bitch shows up everywhere)

And I heard, Daddy writ in stone he's comin home this year

He's flanked in angel snipers
Peering through green gas masks 
Over top cloud trenches in the silent blue
And Daddy - His eyes are polished black stone
The kind they use on those wooden puppet men.
(Their Australian carvers say,
The sparkling beetle eyes can make even some sprung wood
look animated, sympathetic.)

And easy soldiers, 
Golden winged air force of his royal almighty
Oh come all yee faithless to the eye of the storm
Easy does it soldiers

When you point the most elegant of slim black barrels at me
When you slide em smooth through that sheet of cotton candy
Note: my arms full up with apple green snakes
Whose legs been stole for Daddy's game
Note: I'm naked, knowledge-hungry and shameless

Cause the boss don't exist.

Still,
I dreamed I saw God once.
She stood so regal, blood in her marrow
Bone in her flesh,
And yesterday's punk beneath her fingernails
In a faded blue floral dress
Before a papered wall,
Some crooked stripes running down the length.
And she bore down this camera lense,
Gunman cocked and ready behind it.

God's halo hovered over greasy hair
And poets brain
And mamas hips
And I fell at her feet reaching
For her bleached peaches and cream feet screaming

Dear God, you don't exist.

Some time later, reclining on the fold out steps to her dingy trailer
Balancing a smoke between her fingers
God murmured her name was Marlene Dietrich but her friends just called her
Patti Smith.

Steal

forty three.


This is my intentionally low-budget feel of a movie life, get out.


This is my mumblecore moment of unrefined and poorly articulated (albeit long winded) emotional semi-clarity and you're not even listening.


My face is like,
On this massive Los Angeles falling apart Art Deco screen, and I'm blindly stealing my personality and monotonous drawl from an incongruous overkill of indie soap opera scripts, 
and my unwarranted frustration is all just so reminiscent of those decapitated charlie brown grown up drones, but hey man


you're that guy. The one in the front row that talks through the big tense shebang. 


I listened while you did the whole tell it like it is 'I'm the straight up king of the subtly ironic new world' monologue, and I mean I totally got it and it moved me and shit, but it's like you thought it was this great understated end to the scene when all things considered, 
it was just so anticlimactic. 


And now I can't even eat my 3 dollar vegan pastry-cardboard hybrid because I'm just exasperatingly underwhelmed. 
Cut.