"Rosemary and I"

                               Rosemary blinked from her first story living-room window, looking out onto the neighborhood's sleeping rural sidewalk. Consequently dense in domesticated summer, residential outskirts  rest languidly upon buried-aged foundations; condensed prickling auburn foliage over jagged sedimentary stone.  Creased bushes and thunder-droughts dried and- (you can crush them between your fingertips). The early autumn seed, and cruel ripe nectar. Beaten marble rock and velour shades of evening. Night-toned moonbeams surface and eclipse above, descending downward, falling gracefully, to Ohio's vast crescent cornfields. Midwestern and seasonal: Let us pause and grimace, it is quite current that death beckons her.
                              Rosemary; isolated and strawberry blond; pensive upon a maroon-cushioned loveseat, possessing a deep longing for the afternoon city. Cryptic and elusive: daytime thoughts sweeps through her frail subconscious. The dim-lit kitchen upholstery and antique coffee table fragments. Wall-hung imitations in momentary panic. Van Gogh's' sunflowers quickening in broad retractable sun shadows, that permeate above the carpet. Wallowing in existence and mockery. The soap rack and liquid soap dispenser. Cotton linens crusted in deluded detergent, myriad gnats and swamp flies swarm along pestering lake-land perimeters, while the shallow ghost of low-class economics binds one's starry-eyed vision.
                              It is the evening of our minds that stagger out onto village walkways; while crimson dust of futile belonging grows cold and withered. Putrid along with August heat, our bones degrade, desensitize, one's memory plateaus then disintegrates. We hear the youth-like cries that surround a populated township circle, left frayed and murmuring. Agriculture's diamond baseball fields and silent side-shows. Hidden footbridges converge with unresolved creek currents. 
                              Wandering years drift in and out through my dreary perception, while distant desert morning frost awakens in stale hope of hope itself, or all that imaginary dreams have to offer. I sit and listen; waiting patiently for the pale eyes of destiny to find me, (after tracking me down for so long.) Through long-awaited passion and untempered fury. My disease grows calm with the transparent trickle, of the one fatal guaranteed cure. 

"Letter Poem To You Ange"

                                                     
             
                Dear Ange,     
                 
                        I hate that pale sadness in your eyes; as ancient ruins of time rain down upon your soiled bedhead from late afternoon's glorified heavens. There's an orange tabby alley cat that rests upon your Eastern porch amidst daytime's scattered thunderstorms Ange. Morning showers and petrified cathedral hours; stained glass bathtub curtains, Jack Daniel's marmalade baptist pilgrims stunted your growth once again Ange. I got the razor-cut blues back home on the 2nd floor of nowhere. As shaving cream sink-suds make their way from the bathroom sink to the rotted wooden-tiled floorboards below.
                       The cunning insidious dog-days of August caught me in a too familiar bind once again Ange. Kitchen cupboard upholstery anti-depressants (non-narcotic) and drowsily. Screen-window air conditioning anti freeze units Ange, Folgers instant coffee grounds, melancholy filtering concentrated Vitamin C citric acidic, Thunderbird tombstone series Ange. Pencil scribbled manuscripts stuffed into loose-leaf paper balls, forced way down deep into black backpack zipper compartments in the dull corner of a drywall non-electric facility. Past-gathered phone numbers and year old daydreams manifest nightly, interwoven in the confines of unfathomable crazy misery for me Ange.
                       Sticky sweet and sugary, freezer-burnt pop-sickle madness for me Ange, as the dark silhouetted backyard maples sleep in drought-like anticipation. Another Summer gone to waste along the borderline foothills of Arizona. You Ange, probably back home in Pittsburgh PA, with a dingy neighborhood roof over your drunken head. I'll be able to make it back home for the holidays this year Ange, if I play my cards right and don't end up back in the county. Last year at this time you lost custody of our eleven month old daughter Karina, Ange. I can't imagine the pain you feel when you mount the household stairs past our wall-hung family portrait, taken by your mother on the way back from the hospital. I know it's gotta be a lot tougher for a woman than me Ange, losing our daughter and all to the Keystone State's foster-care system.
                     I haven't been able to get a hold of your brother Tom lately Ange. He hasn't been returning any of my calls. Say a prayer for me Ange, next week at this time I'll be going in front of District Judge Carlisle. My parole officer says I got nothing to worry about, (considering the hearsay, and the 30-day rehab-bid).  As always you'll be in my prayers Ange, thank god for social security eh? I'll keep you posted on everything in these letters Ange, hopefully you won't be getting any telephone calls from me any time soon, cause you know what that will mean.        
   
                                        Sincerely your friend and lover, Stanley Boothe

"On stuffing the Queen of Diamonds"

                I returned to the Queen of Diamonds jaded parlor around half past noon; screen-window chandeliers, and ancient marble staircases; aligned sleepily through afternoon breezes and faded velvet drapery. An antique grand piano rested aside a vacant hollow fireplace, below adorned residential mantelpieces. Cushioned pew-like woodwork: I rested my ass upon it. Ashes carpeted a chiseled coffee-table; decorated surface intervals included: corner-edged condiment shakers, brass framed candelabra, a vintage Streisand record (to set the mood later-on), and a single crumpled paper-napkin. Upon unfolding the napkin, I deciphered the pencil scribbling, it read:
                              "Love is like an old beat up convertible; fire-engine red, with decade-old blood dried to the translucent windshield. Faith is similar to a dead junkyard mustang; sea foam green with pale grey interior lining.                  
                              I've held live mascara eye-lids closed within my bruised delicate fingertips; frail emotion did bleed like sap from an autumn tree in December. Oceans of water still breathe and breed throughout  moist damp Pacific greenery.
                             I've felt chamber doors slammed all in my direction, a dying thump echoed all throughout the narrow walls that construct her 3rd-story apartment building at 2 a.m.
                             I'm a man who knows what it is like to lose, for a very long time. I've lost the love I set out to gain so long ago. A circling winding journey that ends at the beginning; that begins at the thunderous climax.
                             I've thrown away myriad soul-mates; like the brief swipe of a stolen ATM card. Diseased midnight prostitutes know my pain. Their nocturnal sweat pervades amphetamine-empathy from the illustrious pours of their soiled brows. Crimson as scattered nightfall, I walk alone; these bankrupt streets. Neighborhood alley toxins are of no relief to me. My suffering is not unique; I die within mediocre graveyard boundary-lines. Cemeteries of cryptic melodic undertones, I shall pour another glass of cellar-sherry with the octogenarian undertaker (who goes by the name of Mel, a gentle soul with no immediate family)."
                         
                      Re-crumpling the paper napkin, I stood up and quickly stuffed it into the tight pocket of my pleated trousers. I stood there for a pensive moment lost in thought, then sighed grimly upon realizing: I buried the Queen of Diamonds a long time ago.