-Lighter-

Everyone keeps telling me, “you could just write short poems like a haiku” But short poems take even more work than long ones. Here is a Cinquain. I spent a whole day not being able to write it. Such that I had to publish this poem back in the past a day from the future (4/16) when I finally finished it for NaPoWriMo. Granted, I also spent most of the 4/15 day stressing out about taxes. — -Lighter- A fume that flagellates out of what moments back were black paraffin and crispwick conks out. +10 Share...

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-Hunger Gaze-

I am staring at a squirrel tail that does not move. She squats on the branch five minutes looking the same uninteresting direction. Like she was trying to remember if stream beds have sheets. I think they do, but only at night when the lamps are on and you can see current smoothing out creases and groping in the dark for an afghan. Maybe squirrel is reliving that one time when Sherri was over and dropped half her bagel. Her plastic plate had divots all around the edge, but they weren’t for stopping gravity on baked goods. The squirrel jerked more then, and was crumb eager. Now squirrel is drawing an analogue with the facial muscles of Keanu Reeves. There might be two expressions but this movie only has the first one. Eventually she resumes, like a paused DVD...

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-A Love Poem-

Think about your armpits. Now stop. Why did I say that? Now there are hairy damps. Finger vices. Bristling. Like a car accident. The shatter. Squirm metal, and now we turn. Just above your elbow a cockroach. Everyone slows because viscera slices are neckworthy. We can puncture. Or fold what skin should flatten. And don’t mention toes. Now, we need to talk. It’s about you, I mean, it’s about protruding. I didn’t mean to laugh. But under the wax paper, just where your tail bone rubs; there is prowess. Someone hangs pimples in their living room just above a black leather recliner. When the sun hits it, your ankles move. 00 Be the 1st to vote.Share...

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-Coiled-

Like the field-of-vew wobble you get by rotating a coke bottle. But not blurry. Just tinted and gyrating. It is a beginning of the day smell that tugs well past 4pm. And the trees just opened a box of doughnuts. The sprinkles cross-pollinated with the frosted and jelly-filled. The lid got all mashy. Someone has powdered sugar stuck on their fingers. And there is a three year old twisting. Ready to fly as soon as enough tension builds in her mother’s arm. Maybe that’s what they mean by Spring. That uncomfortable, almost let go already. While mom is still tisking and settle down will ya? We have to cross the street. But it is the not-crossed street that is the problem. It’s before coffee, and thus too soon. At the same time, coffee already brewed, burning in the...

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-Lunches Passing in the Afternoon-

Jen paced. She had windows, and a scrunch holding her hair in appropriate tension. No she didn’t. It was that friz. And I think she was in more of a desk-to-hall yoga pose. I couldn’t decide if her pants-suit was a metaphor or if the yellow broach pinned it. Like a mustard stain I was trying to rub out of my poem. Tiny pieces of napkin rolling themselves joints by her face. What I’m trying to say, she wasn’t. And I just ate my sandwich. Egg salad, oregano, tiny olive oil. We make our order and someone wraps it in wax. Like all lunches should pupate. Their too-neon peppers drop off, metamorphose olives. And there’s Jen. Half a loaf, with Asiago cheese. She flaps. The office lights refuse to yield. Somewhere a stack of papers sloughs off; makes an unappreciated...

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-The Merry Retch-

I heard about this poetry form, the beau present, today by following NaPoWriMo and I had to try it. It is a poem where you can only use words that contain letters available in a given name. I think my mistake was using my own name (Tommy Richter). It, this is not the poem I expected to write when starting with my name as a source of derivation. Also, it sounds way too high-English for my taste. But you can only do so much for sentence structure with nine possible letters. I might have done myself a favour if I used “Thomas” instead; I missed those A’s and S’s dearly. But I couldn’t resist the Y of Tommy…and this is what I got for it: —- -The Merry Retch- To cheer my memoir I met the erotic other itch. Tho it cry mythic, I...

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