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two poems
WITH
SOMEBODY WHO LOVES ME
All the orderlies have
a
Fred Flintstone five o’clock shadow,
And that’s somehow comforting
Like they knew I was raised on cartoons—
The locked doors and razor wire
Feel like home.
Wednesday is art day.
That means colored paper,
Paste and glitter and,
Best of all, plastic scissors.
They won’t cut skin
But, hey, I can dream.
I make a ship sailing
out to sea,
And the passengers are all me,
And they’re really going places—
Discovering new worlds,
Reinventing themselves,
Leaving all the shit behind.
Later on, it’s macaroni
and cheese,
Stewed prunes, and instant coffee
For the less severe cases
(Of which I am fortunately one),
Mild stimulants approved
As my episodes have waned.
An hour before lights
out
It’s either the TV room or the radio room.
I always pick radio;
The real cases pick TV.
Tonight I hear it plainly,
And I laugh because the singer’s more lost
Than I could ever be:
She wants to feel the heat with somebody,
“With somebody who loves me”.
She sings it twice each time for emphasis,
And I want to pull her aside and tell her:
“Lady, that’s how these things always start.”
THE OLD BAD
MORAL VECTOR ROUTINE
Getting crosswise with
the shylocks
Earned Nibby his dirt nap;
He’ll never lie about not needing Depends again.
Sometimes life is just time spent waiting
For a coroner’s chalk outline.
Not so much out of time
as out of road.
The asphalt, still warm under my cheek,
Offsets the smell of commuter trains.
If the path were straight
We could see where it leads.
Instead we do the
Diogenes Stomp,
And permanent high beams shine on
The last of Nibby’s Chuck Taylor footprints.
(No one ever told him only girls kick.)
Vision, peripheral:
When Mother Teresa
skitters past
I reach for the roach spray, automatic.
The nun’s gynecologist closes the book on a cold case,
But not before rigging the chart
To simulate another Immaculate Conception.
Steve Caratzas is a poet, visual artist and musician living in Brooklyn,
New York. His poetry has been published online at Unlikely Stories, Can
We Have Our Ball Back?, Surgery of Modern Warfare, and The Fifth Street
Review. He is currently completing an MFA in creative writing at the New
School. |