Rich Furman

Awakening

Awoke on the dead couch.
Spring was plastic.
The bones shivered in delight.
Under the flightpath of the screaming jets
a few days on his sofa to forget, to feel,
to flip though hip style magazines
collecting silt on the faux fifties table,
maybe write a few lines to be forgotten.
Soon, moving east.
A silver train to wisk boxes
and bags, a new life, an old women,
and the sadness of cells programmed for pain.
We knew it was doomed, but were too afraid
of dark corners, or of omelets and tea for one.
It was just poisoning, more awakenings,
more dead couches, sometimes waking up alone,
or with sorrow drowning bodies and
heal pounding sidewalks before dawn,
past the drunks and homeless and killers,
past the fat squat Italian man staking newspapers
and their message of other tragedies.
Spring had arrived again, but the cold
still a bitter pesticide fruit, too afraid not to eat.

Jazz After Masturbation

Monk pounds dissident tilted pulse
shocking into ecstatic, wide-eyed reverie.
Coltrane howls respiring lifeblood

cosmic echoes of eternity.
Powell slams mad dengue fevered revolts
backing you blindfolded paces and years.

You finish relieving yourself
wondering why you still miss her,
why this did not solve it.


Mock the Midnight Bell

Mock the midnight bell
death into your hands
like white tea steeped perfect

mock the midnight bell
the mind
a hairless dog in winter

mock the midnight bell
the rays of moonlight
between gapping teeth gums rotten

mock the midnight bell
as if blood, more durable,
than oil.


And

Do what I am doing now.
Move slowly. Small circles.
Watch the sky. The grass. Passing.
Listen. To the frantic yearning.
Sometimes fear.
You, death, encroaching like the tide.
Steady. Lovely. Relentless.
A roll of the dice. A tick unsteady.
Lie in bed and watch her face.
Play in time and.
And.
And.
A few more days. I am selfish.
I do not want it this end.

Saved

Salvation army cutie
must want
to have my soul.
I wonder about
her legs.
Perhaps they
need saving
as well.