Pre-Dirty Plate

Dishes need the sloshing
Of soapy water washing
Away debris from rejected food bits,
Caked and baked on as it sits
Submerged and waiting
For cleanliness creating
A clean slate,
A pre-dirty plate.

Exhausted

I lay down in an uncomfortable position
Predestined for the acquisition
Of pains I should avoid
But tiredness is annoyed
At the thought of changing
My body parts in need of rearranging.

Smells like Spring.

Smells like worms,
Germs of a beguiled creature,
Now a defiled feature
Of the air inside my nose
That knows soon enough they will bring
The spring.

Early morning poetry

Sometimes I get up early,
Twirl the idea of
Falling back asleep around in my head,
But end up on the couch writing poetry instead.
Its language of love captures my fingertips.
Pressing a key that slips
Letters in lines of verse.

Often by design,
Syllabic swells align
Like roses I bought on sale,
Beautiful, but slightly more frail
Than full-price strong-stemmed roses,
Smelling great to un-snobbed noses.

I like when the library calls and tells me I’ve got a book in.

All In.

Where have all the books gone
When the ones that remain on
My shelf are not inviting,
unexciting.

So I’m bookless and waiting
for the library to call
and leave a message stating
that my books are all in

so I can stand up
as if I’m about to lose everything,
walk away from life and get lost
in the cost of overdue fines.

Me and the Birds

The house is quiet.
There’s a sleeping riot
That will erupt without warning
Later on this morning,

But for now, it’s me and the birds
That sit and write these words.
They squeak inside of their cage
And I translate on to the page.