Bloom

I didn't even know
it made flowers
when first I saw
it bloom.

It was just
blind luck that
I found it,
in a pile of garbage
most people
walking straight by.

On an overcast
morning, after
walking the dogs,
and coffee
with Merry,

I stepped out
under wide-armed
Live Oaks and
into a South Austin
warm breeze,

I saw the beauty
of what it had become
and I thought,

I didn't even know
it made flowers.

On Huntington Avenue

The Gee St. Motel 

was the sort
of place that
police cruised
checking plates
when a car
had gone missing
from the nicer
part of town.

Carla was Queen
and she loved
me
but Gold Grill
Daphne
was her man.
The same one
that took
Big Fish's time
right before the
Fish died.
Daphne belly up.
But that ain't
happened then
and Carla thought
I's special
and smoked
all her dope
with me.

Sometimes I
stayed at the
Motel with her

sometimes with
Derek For Real's
baby momma
next to JoJo's trap
down the street

on Huntington Avenue.

One voice talking

A cool breezy
Saturday morning
full of canibus
and coffee,
in shamrock
printer boxers,
I sit down
 to write,
changing
the music
from Tom Waits
to something
by Bach,
featuring cellos.


I can't write to a song
with lyrics.

Pin Drop

She said,

You're an ass,
you know that?
 Look at you.
You are a
fifty year old
man that wears
skinny jeans and
three pounds of
stainless steel
jewelry. You'd
rather jerk-off
to young tatted-up
blue haired girls
that read your
poetry than fuck
and you are
living rent free
in my spare room ...

seriously ...

an ass.
You're gonna
sit there all
sad and tell me
nobody loves you? ...
that I don't love you?
An ass I tell you,
I am going to bed.

Then she
slammed the
door.

Things got
real quiet.

She knows

Once she read
to me,
like story time
only better, the
most beautiful girl
in the world.

Something sad,
and funny,
quirky but good.
She read of
raindrops bruising
flower petals.
I watched her
read, the way
her lips shaped
the words her
expression framed
each mood.

She knows
I love her.

She watches me
sometimes with
eyes more wonderful
than any seven
things ever,
present or past.
She looks at me
and her eyes that
whisper passages
in French about
love making
hold me rapt.
I do not speak
French but crave her
attentions sans pudeur

and she knows.

A pretty girl took
her away to sleep
under electric blankets
and watch movies
about other times
and loves.
Chick porn I say,
and she laughs
tells the pretty girl
that only
porn is porn
but chick flicks
are great too.
I begin writing
this poem as
they leave me.

She knows no one
will ever see it.

I share her love
with another and
ours is the one held
quiet as sin.
I love her
silent and secret.
It is enough
for me that

she knows.