A Poet’s Qualm

Category: Poems

  • Listening to Jazz

    Listening to jazz has to be the freest feeling in the world.It’s a playground of cautious affirmations. Where you can place yourself on top of the highest mountain.Where you can get way down and dirty into the hard truths of life,and still stand. You stand tall and proud for the part you’ve played,no matter how…

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  • River Walk

    It’s romantic, isn’t it? A walk by the river in the city as the sun sets. Maybe Paris, London, Chicago—New York, even. But it is enchanting. The bustling of shift-changers and shoppers, entertainers setting up for the evening—everyone else coming down. And all of this in a peaceful, almost rhythmic kind of way. Now that’s…

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  • Do You Love Her?

    You know, it wasn’t always this way. This place used to be ALIVE! Everyday there were important meetings, rehearsals, celebrations, god—you name it. I guess somewhere along the way things just started slowing down. And…and I mean —well shoot—it couldn’t have been that noticeable, right? I mean…I don’t know…it does seem perfectly logical to me…

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  • American Portrait, Forgotten

    Picture it. America—A portrait. Painted right down to the numbers on the old mailbox. Red brush taps over a matted, pale, blueish-white, rust its edges like the tilted hood of the broken down ford in the front yard.  A basketball goal tirelessly supervises the venous emergence of green blades and stems that gerrymander a forgotten…

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  • A Mobster’s Parlay

    There he sat, enamored with his own collection of things—a 1970s vintage car, a mansion with boundless halls and charm, records from every major and half-famous artist from all the greatest decades queued up nicely to drop onto a Thorens TD-124. But what was it all worth anyway? Indentured corruptitude as a means of shedding…

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  • Garage sale on 5th Avenue

    Garage sale on 5th Avenue. A 10-cent bar with a million dollar view. Coke is king and not just on the billboard. Yellow cabs with transportive hues transport the mundane and magnificent Birdseed crowds the showman’s dollar scuffle. And he doesn’t get rich, but he gets, and he eats. Prada shades hide shameful eyes. Distracting…

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  • Swanky

    Swanky. With all the pizzazz of a divergent pop star. The gleam of a mohair suit. A smile tossed over a shoulder beneath a cream fedora with a burgundy band. Swankmaster3000. Don’t drop the jokes. But don’t quit your day job. Get a little funky with it just because you can. Get swanky, man.

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  • One

    One step One breath One long hard night One great big fight One who’s never right One dark cold day One only way One step One day One daydream  One at a time Just, One.

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  • For Better or Worse

    This is my mission in prose. To calm all your worries and woes. Just for a little while, I’d like to beguile. Your mind. Your senses. Your heart. But first, let me start. First, give me breath. First, a place to get things off my chest. For my tongue to speak. For my body to…

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  • Vik Wood

    There it lay. Dead. Who knows for how long? Likely, it would be swept out again at the next change of tide; but perhaps, by some miracle of fate, it would remain there until the mighty Katla roared once again, and the rushing waters of Myrdalsjökull hurled it back out into the frigid waves of…

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