trollcode: poems

You want to be noticed?
Walk down Braker Lane at 6pm
and see the yawning maws
in the drive-by manslaughter,
inspire the fumes of auto locomotion
curling the hairs on your arms and throat.

Even the name sounds down-and-out.
Walk the hundred degree mile,
while the seats of passing comfort
trickle change between the cushions
from drive-thru coffee spots,
lending more all the rage to the road.

You want to know why I walk,
now in my mid-thirties, down a dusty path
reserved for Austin's transients,
along sidewalks that go nowhere,
islands of development on a stint
considered a no man's land by so many.

Before I answer your nonchalant question
with left-handed verse, teetering on a rant
with gnashed teeth and ill-chosen phrases,
I'd ask each of the drivers passing by
if they'd ever stop if even for a moment
to watch a bee orbit a bluebonnet.

In those autumn evenings when the sun dripped dry
we slept in the harbor, swam in our clothes.
We picked up the drunk at the liquor store,
and from the bed of your truck, he asked us
for a ride home from AA,
and then for some beer.
We left him on the corner of Wilkens and Fulton
and he popped some pills, ducked into a stoop
and out of our lives.
We never went back.

Left on Rolling Road, we pulled into U.M.B.C.
(You Made a Bad Choice we'd joke),
threw such lofty fits in the the dorms,
pushing each other into and out of new -isms
and your finger slammed like an apple
in the basement door, its skin
dangling from the bloody core,
and we rushed you to St. Agnes in our pajamas,
sat out front with the addicts for hours
throwing bottle caps in the birdbath.
Those sirens were little lobotomies.

No wonder we were so lost then.
Past the rowhomes we ran downtown,
the city’s charms rising in Bromoseltzer hues
and were we falling to the sidewalks like beetles
drawn in by neon letters, places with names like "BAR."
Did we want to die like Poe,
right there in the gutter?
or to pass through the Blues like those other
kids bitching about their mothers?

We rode through the streets and out to the diners,
the Double TT on Rt. 40, smoked cigarettes,
drank coffee until dawn, our books left in their bags,
wrote poems one line at a time, sharing the rhyme,
the paper accordioned with doubt.
It’s odd how in these habits,
you blink and you miss it.
We paid the bill and out in the street,
the sun etched our impressions onto the bay.

In those days we looked forward to so much more,
but time has no direction or memory,
like the Chesapeake, only buoys light the way.

It was ten before we'd arrived,
But they had been on for a half an hour.
They only played another thirty minutes,
Long enough for just one beer,
Not even time to shake out the rust
To consider dancing.
Maybe it was the fifty people,
Maybe it was the smoking ban,
But we couldn’t help but wonder
How a once British supergroup
Could end their show before eleven,
Even on a school night.
Is this what happens when we comb over the spots in the past?
His long hair couldn't hide how tired he sounded.
I'm glad I gave that shit up.