Anthony Watkins's Blog, page 9

New Haircuts and Itchy Necks

Doggies in the window

and models dressing mannequins,

chocolate and second hand books,

black coffee cooling on the end table

 as another Sunday slips away,

leaving us all a weekend closer to death,

whether we know it or not,

Mama will be cooking chicken tonight,

my favorite with mushrooms and Madeira wine.

Life is perfect, even as we realize

it is also short. Sometimes the luxury

of doing nothing outweighs

the imperative to

“Do Something!”

The AC on, blankets over

bare legs as we sit in the quiet

near dark of our midmorning living room.

The Painting By

an Indian artist was blue

and beautiful, a hallway

leading to a court yard

full of ambience and feeling

Made me think of the first tea

an Indian friend ever made for me,

hot, with so much milk I couldn’t believe

I would taste the tea,

but a strong flavor of all the earth

of India waited in that cup,

so different than anything

English or American.

And yet, mostly I was taken

back to a hot dark hallway

closed off to the street 

by a wooden door that let in

creaks of light while a slow

ceiling fan turned and I drank

hot Cuban style coffee

served by the old Puerto Rican

grandmother of a friend’s friend,

as we traveled around

the northeastern coast of the island.

Tarot

I spend my days

Playing solitaire

With a deck of tarot cards

I make my own

Mostly kitties and puppies 

But if you ask me for a reading

Hope you don’t get

The rabid porcupine 

Wearing leather britches

And riding a Norton

Death might ride a pale horse

But the meaning changes

Every time I read it

Because we all die in the end

Two am Sidewalk

Cigarette in your hand

Brown leather belt

I wonder how far

You going in them

Matching leather shoes

The Smell of Late Afternoon Coffee

Mixed with the frying of peppers
and onions for the bratwursts
I’ll have for supper makes the lack of sleep
and hard day’s work
all fade like a torn and tattered
book of to-do lists.

Crimped and winkled they flow away
and I think about my squash growing
in the yard and how I have become
the accidental gardener
and how I have aged, not well,
but still aged into someone

I used to admire, and yet,
now I wonder if the old man
in the slightly dirty hat and long sleeve
button down shirt is anything other
than just another old man.

But the coffee tastes good
and I don’t think about
the pointlessness of life,
mine and everyone else’s.

The peppers and onions and brats
make me think of the county fairs
I have been to, with unsafe roller coasters
and sticky cotton candy fingers
and life doesn’t seem pointless after all.

Entwined

The barbarian is entwined 

with the gate 

and slouches not 

towards Jerusalem 

but his own oblivion,

Towards a desert 

full of nomads 

who forgets his one 

short season 

of self destruction 

amid millennia of sands 

and olive trees 

and watermelon. 

In Key West

They say its summer all the time

and the suns shines sticky hot

 on the uncovered streets

but the oceans, yes,

both of them blow cool

as the tourists overpay for food

and drinks at Margaritaville and Sloppy Joes,

 the famous places made so by dead guys.

The mosquitoes collect rent

in the evening at Mallory Square

But we go there anyway and worship

the dying of the sun knowing tomorrow,

even if it rains, it will still be summer

in that cool tropical way

it will never be in Cleveland or Birmingham.

Take Nothing with You

you are not prepared to leave behind,

said the man behind the glass window

I gave him my money and took my ticket,

not understanding what he meant.

Eventually, we lose it all,

every charger cable

every airport bookstore read

every water bottle and travel mug,

even laptops left in Omaha,

never to be seen again.

He gestured to the store

that specialized in lost and abandoned items,

they used to get it all

now half of everything

gets blown to smithereens.

I sat in the padded arm chair,

one of a dozen in a row,

a hundred in the space,

and one of thousands in the concourse

and wondered how much I might lose this time

and whether the plane was a 737 max

or just an airbus, number unknown.

I Wanna Half a Revolution

I want to bring out the guillotine
and behead, the prince,
and live in the palace
and drink the wine
and wears the beautiful blue coat
with a gold braids on it
and a fancy hat

but I don’t want dead children
in the street and hunger in the village,
I don’t want bullet holes
in the tenement walls.

I just want to get rid of the king
so I can be king
everything will be better
for everybody
because I’ll be a good king.

All words

Are good words 

all language is useful 

even in the hands of poets 

and fools though to tell 

the two apart sometimes takes 

more than words 

and more than a day. 

Sculpting a thought 

into the sands of a story 

where the trail leads through 

the valley of commas into the darkness 

of the nouns of an empty mind, 

where the words rush out 

like a desert thunderstorm.