Brian Lindsey

Poetry 
by
Brian Lindsey                                                                

Third Sunday in June

"You're an ignorant meat sack"
                        My Dad, (1941-2002)

February's sky holds me.
Boxes sealed and shipped,
Goodwill called.
Stone to be set this spring.

Takes 90 to 120 days for the dirt to firm
Gus the sextant
told me.
After I tipped him for the quick work
 
he smiles at me.
Mail forwarded,
Contract signed,
Closing complete.

Thank you cards in my briefcase to be addressed,
Burned vacation days,
I will be home in time to see the game.
Little Gem rock polisher packed in my luggage.

Bus stations scare me

The super-market is filled with sprinting single parents
Enroute to mandatory fun not thinking why
Twenty-one days is as long
as insurance carriers will commit a suicidal soul.

Wanting to find some of Williams' plain words
Spoken in a Patterson, New Jersey dialect
I go to a mall. Allen Ginsberg where are you?
Looking in the Radio Shack I don't find you.

Are you watching khaki clad sales boys at the Gap, wanting
to teach and be taught? Maybe You are asking college girls
questions about a Wonder Bra display. Ghosts of ghosts hide in solid
time as my glasses focus on the colors in the Baskin Robbins sign.

Teenage voices walk past me "I am turning into such a guy,
I told her to lick it bitch, and it was like our first date."
Light, sound and the smell of cardboard fill this hall.
There you are talking to the guy in the food court who picks up the trays.

You are explaining about what it is to be and he is telling you
about this great after-hours place. Solitary stone-faced
shoppers in the maternity store stare at us when we hug.
Laughing we talk about Madame Nyu's need for tenderness.

Alvin York is working the Chai Latte kiosk and my mother
is stocking the shelves in the music store. The friendly men
sitting outside the video arcade take a break and watch us.
The bookstore clerk waves, you pour yourself into me.

Once outside I lose you to the Salvation Army
bell ringer and the cold night air. 

The Perfect Memory of Water

 
I.

Eat in diners, live in motels and sleep in strange beds:
unwrap the soap each night before you wash your hands.

Start everyday when housekeeping knocks for the second time.
When you have more dirty laundry than clean, it is time to move.

Pay for the broken mirror at the front desk. Drive on unfamiliar
roads looking for a bottomless cup of coffee. Take the interstate

west, or was it north today? In the summer, it is south and east.
Mississippi for the tornados then Montana for the snow.


II.

Sodium-iodine lights illuminate the diesel archipelago.
Hiding from view are Lot-Lizards waiting to trade blow-jobs

for a spare tire or gallons on a company card. Essene priestesses
fill white porcelain mugs with good coffee. Bats confused by the neon

American flag beat against the plate glass window.
Tom, the mechanic, wipes down his box before leaving.

It's not a sin with a red head and they
buck like a goat. This place is full.

Newborns with meth-fevered sweat dreams
endure the powdered glass, children's saliva and ice

flowing in their veins. Embarrassed by this death,
I can only remember the time we ate

marshmallows in a Chinese restaurant.
Sunset fills this shore, Jesus Christ climbs down

from his sleeper after a quick one;
JC is dead-heading to Port of Los Angeles for a load.



III.

In our roadside park, I give a message to the frozen
creek that runs past your house. Tell him

that I brought the blanket we used last spring and I am waiting.
Tell him I see him at work and I am waiting.

Tell him I am still here,
and I am waiting.

Second creek is solid across its width;
a winter blue light of midnight waits with me.

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