All the Pretty Girls

In a mountain college town,

I, the elder, pose 

in a coffee shop,

a cliche scribbling 

notes for Mr. Poem.

B.F.M.

Betrayal

Though you say
the morning cock crowed
I was miles away.

B.F.M.

Love Poem 22,314

Mosquito bastard
loitering, piercing,
diseased, delirious.
Love.

B.F.M

Abandonment

My rime formed
in formative years
is meant to keep you at bay.

My slick craggy shores, 
lack kindling or foothold
is meant to keep me distant.

My charm: 
trapped coolness;
glassy particles;
seething–hatred–remorse;
thick tarry dark matter;
belief in a Simoom fairytale.

B.F.M.

Tipping Dominos

Losing morning after morning,

hermetically sealed inside a

windowed room 

crowded 

with ten foot wooden ladders

he rants his Poet-ness

atop a 

plastic footstool.

B.F.M.

Before

scribblings. a look in my notebook; the birthing of a poem.
B.F.M.

Click here to see after.

Trail Map Lament

I found 
an old trail map
of yours.

The one with polkadots
and trails highlighted
in bright star pink.

Yet no matter how closely
I followed it, 

it

never 
led me 
back to you.

B.F.M.

This Exact Morning Moment

I’m as kind
as a porcupine
as long as you don’t 
know
what a porcupine is 
and think
a pin cushion 
is cozy.

B.F.M.

Dust Storms

Your elders gloat like lilly pads
on a pond
under sunscreen and broad hats

thousands of miles from their 
grown children.

Then the call comes:
“your mother, she fell”;
"your father, has a spot, lump, cough.”

All this is an unexpected thunder storm 
carpeting your sun.

You don’t know it yet, but you’ve 
just been drafted into the minor leagues
playing for a team plagued by dust storms.

B.F.M.

Dolt

Sitting under 
a cottonwood 


pretending 
I’m a poet


I listen 
to echoes


plunder 
a breeze.


B.F.M.

Advertising : Poet Laureate

If I hold my spectacles
in my right hand, placing
one of its hinged arms
in the right corner of my mouth
like the posing Billy Collins
on the back flap of 
Horoscopes for the Dead
will I too once have been
the Poet Laureate?


B.F.M.