love congeals into little puddles

love congeals into little puddles
which huddle
like unforgettable reasons

between the sidewalks
of what you've
done with me

forgiveness is a sharp streetlight
upon which we cut ourselves
w/out looking both ways



flowers for goldfish

it was the night before the end of another world
and Richard Brautigan was trying to get a poker game going
but Liberace had the measles and Marlon Brando had stopped
answering his telephone and Fay Wray declined on the grounds

that she would only be in it for the money so Brautigan
gave up all thoughts of poker and decided to take a bus
down to the reservoir for a couple of hours of late moonlight
fishing the bus was crowded with people everyone grumbling

and in a hurry to get to that last place that they might ever go
Brautigan attempted to begin a quiet conversation with an attractive
Japanese woman but she was the sort who frowned upon talking

to dead writers w/ mustaches so he rode out the rest of the bus ride
in silence writing novels with his eyeballs as outside the little windows
the general population went about the remainder of things like hungry

Thanksgiving Eve shoppers tossing things-to-regret-later into brand new
shopping carts with the moon cracking in two behind their shoulders
the starry sky dissolving into a mediocre poem that ends awkwardly

like this



Rob Geisen has published two books of poetry (beautiful graveyards, paper thin-Farfalla Press), several chapbooks, and has had various writings published in magazines/newspapers (Mountain Gazette, Forever Underground, Napalm Health Spa, McSweeney's.com). His first novel will be published in 2006 in serial form by Amber Lodge Press-poems from first two books can be found on the Farfalla Press website (farfallapress.net) and Amazon.com (chose the "look inside" feature).