ODE FROM A CTA GUY

The touch of your knee on the one forty six
The smell of your hair on the nine
The chicks who are riding the CTA
Are fine, fine, really fine.

You brain-heavy broads on the one seven one
You cute little nymphs on the three
I want you, I want you, come sit next to me
And see what a ride this can be.

Good ass I admire on the one twenty six
Great bobbling boobs on the four
But little old ladies that smell of their gin
The two oh six takes to their door.

The seventy two, the one hundred and three
Hither and yon they roll by
Crammed with the ladies I want to be near.
Could one of you give me the eye?

I stand at the bus stop with no place to go
I stand with my head hanging bare
The coaches go by; I continue to stand
I stand cuz I don't have the fare.

MY DOLL SUSAN

My doll Susan
Is very sweet.
Her cheeks are as rosy
As the reddest beet.
Her nose is a small one
With a turned up end.
Her skin is soft,
She can easily bend.
Her clothes are fresh,
And clean and neat.
When I take her out
She always looks sweet.
I love my dolls an awful lot
But she is "tops"
Of all I've got.
(Mary Gray - age 10)

LEAVING (a sestina)

Now at the airport I wait for the plane,
Still wanting to tell you that maybe I'll stay.
But thoughts keep returning to four lonely girls
That we left behind. And I think of the times
That we are not there as they blossom and grow
Into the women we'd hoped they'd become.

Your country seduced me; a good reason to come?
Enough reason to follow your journey by plane?
You seemed then so eager for a place we could grow
Unfettered by daughters who needed to stay.
Uncertain, I packed, then unpacked several times
But ended up leaving that quartet of girls.

But life without them? I'd see faces of girls
That turned into faces of what they'd become -
Their faces before me. How many times
Would I reach out for them? It surely was plain
I needed to be there; what reason to stay?
Love that we ran after just didn't grow.

What grew was a vacuum. I felt it grow,
Pushing me back face to face with my girls
So silent, not asking, "Please won't you stay?"
And you never spoke of them. Will time ever come
That you think of them? No, I must board that plane;
And try to return to a place, to the times

Where all of us shared in the bad and the good times
Not one of us choosing a space that would grow
To a wasteland so vast it required a plane
To bring us together: you, me and the girls.
Would that could happen, all six of us come
And rejoice in reunion, all choosing to stsy.

Yet here I stand waiting; will anything stay
My slow steady walk that will take me to times
That are coming, so lonely, already have come?
I feel them possess me, I know grief will grow
Throughout the long hours 'til I see the girls
Mature now and lovely, meeting my plane.

What does it matter if you come or I stay?
With either it's plain that happier times
Never will grow for us -- you, me and the girls.

How Far?

The extent of my love
Is the length of the sun's rays
Brightening up the buttercup
Drying up the pond
Leaving ing marshy mud crusty
Reaching into your groin
Crystallizing the juices of your hope
Coagulating the fluids that
Rush through your veins.

I laugh at your pain
Dry hacking laughter
Joyless.
The extent of my pity
Reaches
To the ends of my clenched fingers.

A GRAND CHILD IS BORN

A child -
Blood of your blood -
Can take you to the universe.

This imp
Jumps on your soul
And rides it through a lofty course.

Awake!
Time is again
Then and now interspersed.

do it yourself poetry

baron
sharon

dirt
flirt

oatmeal
surreal

cologne
unknown

scrotum
notum

civilized
anaesthetized

oboe
hobo

slug
unplug

sea
debris

proton
croton

I give you a start
you make it art.