A to Z Challenge: A

Two poems to kick off the A to Z Challenge: First, a basic straight-forward piece.  Then an A to Z poem with more creativity, but also a lot of obscure references.

(untitled)

Autumn surrendered to winter

Draping the ground in its white flag.

A tree fell in the forest

Its sound muffled by shuttered

Windows and crackling fires.

We left the proof of our existence

Where we walked, like amateur

Criminals. Though, to be fair,

It could not be proven

If we were walking

To or from something.

We sipped coffee and played

Chess, pretending to be intellectual.

We ate comfort foods and dreamed

Of beaches while the radiator

Coughed in the corner. Then spring

Arrived, unfurling her brightly colored

Finery. What we thought we felt

For each other melted with the snow. 

Autumn Poem

Autumn is the topic of the month

But I’m sweating 90 degrees as iced

Coffee slides down my throat,

Drowns a dozen metaphors.

Every poet writes with his

Fingers crossed.  But somewhere

Ginsberg is tripping on his last line,

Howling at a harvest moon,

Injecting Bill’s

Junkie veins with stanzas of gibberish.

Killed by conformity, the Beats

Live on in paperback-addled

Minds of lesser intellects.

Neal, in Denver, published obscene

Odes between women’s thighs -

Poetry of a different kind.  I read

Quoof and was unimpressed.  (If I

Ramble it’s because I lack inspiration – no Carl

Solomon to guide my pen.)

The windows of hell look onto poems

Unfinished: a third floor room -

View of libraries wet with tears.

Writing here is like a drug -

X perhaps.  I steal words to pay for my

Yearning.  My thoughts drift to the barista’s

Zipper, tan legs slouching towards closing time.