Rote Learning

Inspiring a move to NYC, all artists moving to New York.
Or Pittsburgh. Those rivers of mud. I am tired of Catholic
schools, their French braids & air crosses. I want to get

a guitar and mime poems in high-flatulent art galleries
change my name to a single word like “Prince.” Remember
the Duomo. Those monks chanting in the hills. I painted

their river rats and yearned for Pittsburgh’s gassed waters.
How a poet gave me a ride to a NYC-like area, Shadyside
while she went to see her hot east-coast therapist. 

How I need therapy. Yet will never get it because of my
surname. Remembering Fernet in the early morning & Sam Cooke
& those clichés dive bar poetics delivered with a slur.

Inspirations of a wheel chair. There’s a point in not walking
anymore, a point in forgetting the remainder of my education.
How I paid three-hundred and fifty dollars in parking tickets

online today. I have selective memory inspirations on any or all
museums.  Remembering cliché. Cliché is like cliché. I write
bossy poems that will never get me into Brown. The imperatives

of Fer-nay-nay in the afternoon, such a delight. I like scantily
clad women in the morning with some coffee, without rouge or foundations. Perhaps, a lil’ rage…please note… parking is for pick-up

and drop off only. The publishing world is not a world for poems
but a fascist lil’ planet, whose dictator is nowhere near as suave
as Castro. Where everyone bids on NYC, on-line, under the heading

“Convolutions.” Convolution is like revolution. Scientists and Scientologists will always be more successful than I. Inspirations of triage in the evening. How insurance has avoided me like the plague.

The nose that produces blooded mucus. How it cakes around
the holes. Remembering Lynn Emanuel & Gertrude in the gothic
bell towers. The large white stain on my plus size Levis.

How dormant the phrase “oh where oh where” & has cliché recalled
the broken feet of a friend, the piggy-back ride into Urgent Care, the satin swathed “Blue Baby.” Do you remember when it changed to white?

The pallid state of normalcy again.  How normal.  The easy life
in Oakland CA & the big-time in Oakland PA. How invigorating the
side-way glance you imagine happens for the millionth time on a stool.
How I assume them because I can…  What I cannot remember.

TO TOP >