Poetry Landfill

FRIEND OF A FRIEND

/in /by

The sand is naturally pixelated
Your feet, when you dig them in, are artifacts
Your face, propped up by the coast, is bright and above the shoulder
Where did you buy your sunglasses?
There is a store where you can buy sunglasses that were left on a coffee table
At your friend’s mom’s house
A true story is that I found my boots in the trash by the street

How many friends do you have whose names I don’t know?
Would they remember my name if you told them?
Or do I have to do it
Is it ok if I call them a friend of a friend?

Why is a great deal so attractive?
What makes people think they can open a store that sells just blinds and survive?
Somewhere the answer is written on a piece of paper in one of your friends’ pockets
But I don’t know them well enough to reach in and fumble around for evidence
A friend of a friend is not a pocket friend
Your towel, when hanging on your left shoulder, is analog

THE NEIGHBORHOOD

/in /by

Venture to your closest neighborhood bar outside of your neighborhood
See if you are welcome
Then take a shit in the bathroom and leave it
Walk out
Leave your beer on the bar and your tab unpaid
Believe in the kindness of the neighborhood

There were two people with the last name Williams in the neighborhood
You have no blood relation to them
But you related to them on separate occasions without even knowing their names
And you all have a dead dad in common

Something smells in the neighborhood
All of the neighbors and the other assholes that wander around blame the sanitation department
But you know the answer is much simpler than that
It’s never an organization
It’s a few thousand individuals taking a shit at once and forgetting to flush

OLD MAN WALKING

/in /by

I saw a shirtless old man taking himself for a walk at night
I’m scared that one day I’ll be shirtless
And the wind will rip through me
I’m scared that no one will be able to walk me
But myself

I’m just a lonely guy
Who stares at shirtless old men walking down hollow streets wearing determination cologne
I drive around a lot and stare at night because I’m sad
I don’t purposefully hit animals with my car

TOOTSIE POP

/in /by

A tootsie pop is a poor gift to give to your friend
It says “I care almost nothing about you”
“Also there is a distinct possibility that I found this in the back of a drawer and decided to give it to you totally disregarding its age, much like I totally disregard our friendship”

If you’re into destroying friendships a tootsie pop is a great gift to give
It says “Rather than doing nothing and just letting our friendship fade away I’ve decided to make a definitive statement. You know what this means”
It’s over

And in the end, when the day comes where we begin reevaluate our lives
we realize that the whole point of childhood is to foster an aversion to tootsie pops in order to protect us later in life against future disappointments

EXPLICITLY

/in /by

explicitly, you are not in a relationship
but also just as explicitly
you own shirtless poses that don’t belong to your body
your crowd smokes just as many cigarettes
as the star of an older film
that you weren’t in

a VHS copy of that film
rests in a drawer underneath the TV that
watched you grow up
it watched you grow into a great wanderer
until it was replaced because of the age

when complaining, it is important
to remember how the lips of the star move
they move just like yours
except that he is a failed actor
and you are young, you wander, and you are not an actor
his peak is committed to magnetic tape in a drawer indefinitely

LIKE YOU

/in /by

I don’t feel like I exist
I feel like coffee
The liquid form
Made while you rush around
And stare into the mirror
at your own invisibility

Your towels smell like college
When you should smell like an open window
Your towels smell like a confessional
When you should smell like the video you took of yourself
and all of your wrinkled posters curl a little at the corners
because college

You can touch your mirror face
but it doesn’t feel like your skin
it doesn’t smell like your towel
it is a mirror
it would feel the same
reflecting nothing at all

I reflect like you do
I use telephones to make people worried
Like you do
I sit by open windows and watch clouds form
like you do
I take shelter like you do too

BACK ALLEY ROMANCE

/in /by

On a Venice Beach somewhere
i’m tapping a cracked Vic Firth
against the faded face of a jolly giant
i readhere his paper with my spit
every few hours or so
because i need my friends
and i love my band

i complemented your style years ago
which to you are just men’s words now
sandwiched between other men’s words
which have changed as you’ve aged
but remained positive
and complementary
your kids came from something similiar
that i had nothing to do with
years ago when i grew a beard

before i formed my band
in the alley behind the soup kitchen
you refused to give me a complement
maybe you’re right
maybe your complements
could start a family
one that supports the alley arts once a month
but maybe
maybe we could work together someday
and figure out why people on the beach
give such meaningful looks to strangers

THE EMPTY SEAT

/in /by

there is no empty seat between us
this means something in a darkened theater
when there are plenty of open spaces
and famous faces clutch their tickets outside
waiting for the next show

I’m not sure
but out of the corner of my eye
I thought I saw you turn to me
but films play tricks on the mind
whether you watch them or not

on the street
where I took on a shy celebrity stride
made confident by the balmy air
and the strangeness of a new neighborhood
I recounted, to you
a moment when you had crossed a street
years ago
to greet me with a jacket on

but it was all about as real
as the pop up parking vendor
who vanished with our money
leaving us with a space
in a bank parking lot for the night

THE EDGE OF THE POOL

/in /by

I wash my filthy feet in an old bedpan
they are filthy because my backyard is unkempt
and I walk through it like I’m better than nature
I walk through it like there isn’t life under my toes
I threw my shoes in the pool
my house is rented, the pool isn’t even mine
but then again, nothing is

I try to stare out of my bedroom window
I get embarassed when my neighbors see me
because they know what I’m doing
but I’m not watching tv
or owning light blue mid-size sedans
or locking my doors to preserve my portraits
I just want to catch a glimpse of their end of day movements
without them knowing

I wander around the hot coals of my municipality before dawn
and let my toes imagine their quarry
I pretend that I know what it was like
to graduate high school in 1985
while somewhere out there my mother is thinking of me
and somewhere in my backyard
I sit on the edge of my pool making perfect ripples
trying not to let her down

MARTY

/in /by

Every movie is the same
as when I leave my house
for an adult responsibility
and I end up in a hotel room mainlining heroin
Back to the Future is especially like that

Hey let’s stop some Libyan terrorists Marty
Oh fuck he’s shooting heroin and Doc is dead
Or, Hey let’s go to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance
Oops shooting heroin in a high school bathroom and your mom is dead
Or, Hey Marty hop in the Delorean and let’s go back to the future
Oh shit you’re shooting heroin nevermind