I had envisioned a huge truck full of Oreos and Cheez-its,
That you would have to excavate to find a question that I wrote
on fancy smelling paper I found in my mom’s underwear drawer.

But I’m on a budget and couldn’t afford the truck and the driver (DUI, you know…).
Besides I’d eaten two bags of Oreos and all of the Cheez-its before I realized
That my mother likes to keep the things in that drawer private.

So I wrote a poem. It’s romantic, it’s easy, and it doesn’t cost anything,
Oh don’t worry I’ve planned the coolest date for the day, we’re going
To go milk cows at my uncle’s farm…you’re not allergic to mice, right?

I do have to ask one favor, can you pay for pictures? My family thinks that
The camera steals your soul, something to do with Uncle Bob and Aunt Jane
Going crazy after they got their picture taken at the Here’s Ur Sign convention.

We can wear matching over-alls! Momma says that they’re “easy” clothes. Her
And dad wear them all time to bed; she keeps hers with the smelly paper and strawberry
Flavored lip gloss. I invited my cousin Jimmy to come with; he’s taking his sister Bessie!

So, You wanna come? Be ready to kick up your heels, cuz we’re going square dancing!

It’ll be a hoot!

Waiting with a five year old
in the doctors office
with the bruise hiding his face.
I wish I could cover myself.

I didnt do it...
His mother, a meth user,
hit him in the night
when he had a nightmare,
wet his bed,
called out her name...
she didnt care.

But people dont know that.
They think I'm the dad,
I'm the culprit of this crime,
That I was jealous of his black eyes,
his brown cheeks,
his spanish voice.

I wish I could mask myself as white powder,
and tape her striking her son,
but I can't,
so I sit and wish I was camouflaged.

There are no scales,
no morning breath
from left-over page
with Knight gravy.

They look like a lizard
but not a lizard.
Like a human
but not quite.
They look like a mix between
a castle moat
and Stone Henge.

They drink ice water,
with a slice of King.

They live in waterfall caves
like Frank Lloyd Wright's
Falling Water, Bear River.
Style, Class, and little elf girls
that feed them sushi wrapped in skin.

I called her today around 3:00
Said “hey baby how about hanging in the park,
Watching those crazy star-wars freaks choke each other
With their invisible hands and slash each other with plastic light sabers?”

She said, “ok.”

So I went to her house
in my white hippie van made for making love.
Singing Sweeney songs, the sweet sound of sharp
Notes filled the spine of Harold Bloom with a literary pain in the ass.

She said “hey,”

When I knocked on the door.
With my black “cool cat” beret on my head
I looked like the owner of my “books on wheels” hippie van,
As well as Mike Myers from “So I married an Axe Murderer”, only better looking.

She kissed me.

I kissed her back
and threw her in Wisp the magic van,
driving down Park Avenue like Batman chasing a lead.
Except I am a safe driver, only leaning to kiss her on the yellow lights.

She just laughed.

We got to the park
And no one was there but us, the freaks
Must have left the premises when they saw the White Streak
Of Love coming from afar; screaming out passion and fire as it squealed it's wheels.

She said, “sweet.”

Not one to mince words,
I kissed her like New Years Day after two Jacks
And a Strawberry Daiquiri with a slice of lemon and a splash
Of sex. It shuts her up for a moment; she talks enough to chew the ear off an elephant.

She said, “wow”.

The radio on the bus is blaring out
The news of a fire somewhere.
The man who sits next to me
Is wearing cattle skin and drinking
coffee from a cup marked "Caution Hot!"
I need something for the pain.

It’s a hang-over, head-smashing pain.
I got it last night at Rebecca’s party, out
near a river, where my girl, hot
With Tequila Sunrises, wished to be somewhere
Else; wished to be drinking
In public without me.

She doesn’t love me.
Adding an emotion-numbing pain
to my introvertive drinking.
only in the unassuming night I go out;
To the movies, to a bar, somewhere
Other than my dump. Anywhere hot.

The sun, that big hot
Eye with searing rays, stocks me.
Every time I kiss her somewhere
lower then her lips I feel pain.
Because I'm always out
of it; always drinking.

I find escape, relief, Home in drinking.
Those Tequila Sunrises, makes her hot
pent-up pleasure fizz out.
So its the bus for me,
Causing my red retinas pain
Because I can’t get off somewhere.

Because I can’t get off somewhere
With my girl. My drinking
leads to skin-boiling pain.
why the sun is so hot?
Is it jealous of me?
Jealous it cant black out?

I want to go somewhere parched and hot,
drinking instead her love for me;
Maybe absorbing her pain will finally dry me out.

Cut to the heart of the subject,
poetry-hater,
and tell me,
why?

Why don't you enjoy
smelling the scent
of freshly read words
in the air after reading
a poem?

What's the probelm
with the taste of letters
merging to create the
sound of life in your mouth?

Perhaps your tongue
refuses to have worthy
company join it for dinner?

Where else can you
find the soothing touch
of meter and style
on a night when the raindrops
mix, join, and combine
to form whispers of regets?

You're to busy for Poetry
you say?

Maybe Poetry's to busy
with me
to find you.

Olsen W. Potter

I get my mail at 11:15.
By 11:30 I was kicked out of the house.

It was the day after Presidents day.
I’d brought her a new select comfort mattress.

In the mail was a coupon.
“Mail in for your free bra!”

It wasn’t addressed to me,
But Gisele was on the front.

I have a weakness for hot Brazilian chicks.
So I took it inside.

My wife saw it, took it,
Ripped it up. Giselle’s face

Was torn just left of her nose,
Right down her beautiful Bra line.

She missed the coupon though,
So I mailed it in.

Figure I’ll give it to her,
With a dozen roses.

I wake-up with no one.
I feel like John Donne.

I'm pious so I raise the kid,
I won the "sober" buyout bid.

I've got PB&J and a carton of milk,
She's living it good, lying in silk.

In the drive, there's a 98 Silhouette
Cost: $15,000; I'm still in debt.

Jamie has to get to school,
I'm her pet, her dog, her mule.

I return home and write,
stuff thats nice and polite

When I really just want
to write in Hate-mail type font.

It's blades,
it's hammering,
it's a head-ache from an old testament god.

It's losing,
It's lost,
it's disarranging your mind.

It's rape,
it's drugs,
it's a shock from a deflibulator.

It's being homeless,
It's love's labor lost,
It's misplacing your heart.

It's long distance love.

Glancing at my face,
you don’t see it's a mask
to cover the pock-marks
of Schizophrenia.

The brother eyes of
Charles Manson,
my bladed eyes
are blunted by
Prozac and Lexapro.

Ah...my lips
are the lips
of a Crazy;
always smiling.
Want a taste?
I’m told my kiss
unlocks the furnace of Hell.

This sensitive mask
quickly dissolves
when studied,
receding into
a narcissistic skull
of left-over emotion.

Scott, my friend
in the white coat,
tries to discover my ailment,

But I've secreted
these gifts away,

I've buried them
into this opaque flesh.

I stood there with a crunch in my shoe,
I had been running in rainbow-half circles all day.

The workman at my house had a hammer;
quirky, he put plastic around it and kneaded my bread.

EXTRA EXTRA READ ALL ABOUT IT!
The Mcdonald barn burns in an accident with some plastic and a bread-maker.

The sterling stamping of silver nails into my counter
enflames my head more then the bread-making workman.

Olsen W. Potter

I love to be the stamp
Of a black epitaph
In black ink
On the first line of “Date Due”

I walk out with 3 or 5 or 2
And rip into them,
Breaking that virgin spine
Into beloved used.
gargling their words
to wash out
the talking-breath
of everyday conversation.

Give them to me, these icons of god’s addiction;
I want to saturate
in the serum of their forgotten fruit.

When the Portuguese found you,
A river in January,
The Samba, the Christ, Carnival
weren’t what they sought;
The wanted the gold of the land,
The slaves hidden within the natives,
The wood that has more life,
Nothing but gain.

When I found you,
A lake of passion,
The language, the food, Cariocas
Captured my soul.

I want to speak the golden language
Of the tongue,
Experience the samba of food on my tastebuds,
And let the carioca’s carnival
Releash the native in me.
I want nothing, but your passion.

May your ears screech
With the creaking of cellar doors,
While your heart echos the splintering of a shattered soul;

May your eyes melt
With tears,
as your skin
sizzles in shame;

May your spit be crossed with Arsenic,
Your tongue, a scythe
That dooms the lies you decree;

May your nose, cascading scum,
Sneeze out the lust that danced
while you fermented in your desire;

and

May your life be as
A room full of 30 empty chairs;
Love’s casket leading in their lament.

You’ve yet to speak,
Still you swirl in my thoughts
Like a hungry vulture

I want you to experience Life.

Life that, without your mother, will batter your patience
With the man who tries, to feed you infant formula and pat your back till you
burp,
But can’t fill that tenantless chair, that empty nest of stolen devotion.

Life that will burn the plastic off your lampshade,
that boy will create a crack of sorrow on your heart,
And you’ll call, needing a ride, crying, and I’ll just say that it’s ok
Because now you can understand your father.

Life that will steal you to marriage.
I will stand in line; my right hand a prisoner of war,
my left boycotting this oceanic alliance,
because I’m losing you, my writing hand, to some dude with a Corvette.

Life that will let you be a mother,
that headache from an old testament God,
letting you fill your own chair with your written laughter,

What I want for you is the knowledge that I sit today,
widower and Father,
and praise your life.

This is the assignment for my poetry class this week. We were to write a persona poem, a poem that's speaker is not the poet. I dont want to ruin the poem; so just let me what you think.

A Chip.

While I've got you here,
Mr. No caffeine for me- strictly Decaf-
(Do you think of my well being when you say that?
Maybe I need a shot or two to heat my inner self.)

We need to talk.

I can still remember warm milk by our bedside, Tolkien slept next to me, while the lamp and I
(Did you throw her out too?)
Flirted pull sting with handle.

I remember eggnog and nutmeg
the snow outside the window looked like flakes of sugar,
I always swirled a little just to see the whipped cream decorate your nose.

And remember your wedding night?
Who was the one that tipped out of the cupboard
red wine in your hand, shyness fleeing from my white stare?

Now this. A chip to disgrace my gold rim.
as if the tea ring ‘round my nethers wasn’t enough for you,
I bet you dropped me on purpose didn't you?

Don’t look at me with that rag,
you can't clean away my feelings.
You can't sip away my pain.

I use to think your eyes were like hot chocolate,
we had something special -you and I-
Now because of this chip, I get the can.

IT WAS YOUR FAULT.
I was sleeping away, dreaming of a certain mocha latte that
always animates my porcelain,

When you grabbed that new thermo-whatever
and knocked me awake with a crash,
breaking away my dignity.

We're washed-up, on ice,

Trashed.

Laying in a bare bed,
a black blanet twined around,
like ivy climbing the trellis that moonlights as a ladder
to the balcony of a lover who has been absent for too long,

thoughts come and go
fleeting feelings of friendship, love, passion

until at last, like a unwelcome invitation
to the wedding of our one true love,
sleep comes to the mind,
releasing colors before our closed eyes.

Remember? Remember
the image of a solid tree.

Loneliness comes with the mixing colors,
flowers grow, bloom, and die
all while the tree stands tall
waiting for a splash of white to erase

The colors that blind our eyes.
The blanket lets go,
As cold takes over the bare bed
betraying us to feelings of numbing desolation.

Olsen W. Potter