Some of Rick's poems....

OK, here are a dozen or so of my poems. Most of these - though not all - were written for a college level poetry class. Here I learned that poetry is not my forte, though I like my stuff. And I get it. So tuff darts, amigos


Splitting Hairs

I’m not one to split hairs.
D’ya think?

Nor am I one to strain out
a gnat and swallow a camel.
Or am I? (At least a toe?)

And I’m certainly not one to
hold something against you.
But I could be.

“Please,” you say, with a giggle,
“Hold something against me.”


¿Estamos Listos?

It’s what she
used to always
say when we
were done
eating at a restaurant.
I could never remember
what it meant,
my Spanish limited
then to carne adovada,
and combination plate.
I always thought she’d said
“almost listless?”
and wondered if I was.

She meant
“are we ready?”
As in are
we ready to go?
As in are
we done?
As in are
we finished?
As in are
we through?
She asked me for years
until finally I got it.

But by then it was
too late. By the time I’d paid
the check, left the tip, and walked out
into the chill evening,
she was gone.

Si. Estamos listos.
“Uno mas tequila!”
Salud!

Immolation: The New Girlfriend

Memories of searing pain
and months spent in
the burn ward
stay the hand, stop me
from bending down,
striking a match,
and setting fire
to these fuel-soaked bridges
at my back.


February 6, 2007

Backing the truck out of the shade
into an early sun
flaring over the Sandias.

Breath floating around me
as I sing along with Jerry Jeff
“down the road in a cloud of smoke.”

I laugh at the comparison –
I’m driving toward a desk gig
Not running from the city.


My Life to Date

Steering wheel on this ’58
’s got about six inches of play,
so you need – as it drifts
off left or right – to spin it back.
Forget the suicide knob.
Just do your best to keep going
down the center line.


Trailer Park Dreaming

I got my electric bill today
and it doesn't bode well.
I have a little cartoon
going on in my head
of dollar signs with wings...
flying away from me...

…and...

…and I look like that little rich fat
cartoon fucker on the Monopoly game but
it’s OK cuz I'm rich and
I got all these cartoon babes
flocking around me – like Betty and Veronica – and
we've got that little silver
shoe token packed full of coke and
we're just driving around and
around in circles like
crazy fuckers in the little
silver roadster token, passing Go
with our top hats on,
collecting $200,
pickin' up friends from that crappy little
trailer park on Marvin Gardens and
driving them over to
the big red hotel on Park Place and
partyin' like we own every
goddamn property in town,
electric company and all.


The Shovel

As the words were tumbling out of my mouth,
I looked down at my foot
resting on a shovel,
about to dig a hole
from which I’d take
a long
time
digging
out.


Plowboy

They lived on a farm of sorts,
someplace in Iowa.
Her dad was an Allstate agent and
at night he’d come home from work,
take off his jacket and
drive the tractor around the field,
in his shirt and tie, dress pants and wing-tips,
like Eddie Albert on Green Acres.

She was oddly mortified
when he would drop her off at school.
Her father in his Brooks Brothers suit –
The other kids’ dads in their hayseed overalls
and feed-store gimme caps.
These men, with their Protestant work ethic
– good Baptists all –
had been at work for several hours
while her father,
the Catholic insurance agent,
was just rising.


Category 6

I guess it’s a good thing I don’t live on
the Gulf Coast or in Tornado Alley.
In my eye, storms are le petit morte;
the closest I can come
to experiencing the divine
and still retain some chance
of ditching death.

You’d see me on the evening news,
I’d be that cloud-crazed bastard
strapped to a Key West light pole
at landfall, video camera rolling;
or in a beat-up station wagon
chasing twisters
beneath a foaming green Arkansas sky;
or defiantly striding
the Corpus Christi seawall,
surfboard under arm,
as the storm roars in,
furious ru’ach driving thriving power across the beachfront,
going through cars and mobile homes
like Godzilla through Tokyo.

So I guess it’s a good thing you and I
never got together.
You, you’re such a perfect storm.


(I wrote this one an hour before my boss and I had to announce that the company was laying off half the department, every one of whom had been there longer than me.)
To Those Laid Off

It’s like an old ship rope, hot and tarry,
is being pulled through arms and legs
and bowels. Wrapping around neck,
pulling you down with the interminable
weight that comes of living a life.
And then a sickening to the stomach

unlike any you’ve known.
For me it is easier. You’d think.
I’m not the one who is going, nor
am I the one who is telling you
your job is gone. But my joints still
turn to water. I’ve been there.

I’ve watched the Death Angel
floating past cubicles with a
paper scythe. I’ve seen her
touch the shoulder and beckon.
Calling another, yet another soul
to their faithless reward.

But you’ll live. It’s like losing
a lover you wished would just leave.
The rending pain of separation
is still there, but inside you
know you’ll be happier for the loss.
It was a stupid job anyway.


Peaceniks: A Dream

We both knew him, though you
were the closer friend.
His legs, begged by Bedlam’s regime,
lie in the aftermath of abuse now,
a twisted, ineffective still-life.

We could no longer stand by and watch
as this tableau repeated itself,
though so filled with passion,
our stony eyes – as if struck
by Moses’ staff – burst forth in springs,
and voices of former mimes dissolved
in temblors of emotion.

From high roofs we shouted pleas
for an end to this war. From windows,
howling through bullhorns,
we begged peace from fellow beggars
who had none to spare.

Still, it seemed something was being done –
some cause was effected.
I awakened late, but with a sense
of purpose and accomplishment
as though any of this
had actually occurred.