Gimme Heels

We always wore them:

Red leather pumps,

Mirrored black patents,

Snakeskin toe crushers,

Four inch,

Pink ribboned

Giggly stompers

Trudging through

Midwestern blizzards,

Skating in parking lots

To a corner gin mill

Uppers splattered

With spillage from

Quarter tappers,

Cigarette singed soles

By sot-dropped embers

On a dance floor

Tacky from Jack and Coke

Snapped heel lifts

Crossing gravel laden alleys

Cursing the walk home,

Back for more

Every weekend

Never quite

Learning the lesson

Wooden Beads

Prayers
Trickling from eyes
Down cheeks
Sunken spirit
In a knightly ritual
Stinging orbs
Saline skin
Silently begging
With redundant words
Decade after decade
Pleading for
High resolutions
To daily lows
Under a pitch shadow
Indenting
A sopping pillow
Imploring
The evaporation
Of distress
By first light
In the clarity
Of aurora

And Now, a Word From Mr.Janikowski...

amy, liquid gold

skinny-trip huffer man hacks his lung

onto the sidewalk

with a backturned, halfass basketball cap

basketball, peach basket, orange basket

basket so big like a swollen huffer-head that he holds

holds in a huffer-haze

vox clamantis, said my starchwhite friend

vox clamantis hollering

hoop-de-holler highway hollers

to the highest of heaven

(not in the desert)

while the skinny-trip huffer man

swings a deal for a tube of something good

his dirty little fingernails

like a tiny little set of sheet metal brakes

dirty line of mulch for growing potatoes

(like my brother used to say)

scratch of skin

and scratch of hair

and scratch of mucous from his nose

(some call it snot, but it's not)

even tiny little bits of dried blood clinging right in there

mingled with the feces

from the stool

from the men's room

from the grocery store

right on the bus line

but skinny-trip huffer man

holds his crotch

so the girls will look at him and know

they will know he is more

more than just a skinny-trip huffer man

with a set of sheet metal brakes at hand

and a seventeen o-clock shadow

on the skinny upper lip

that waggles just a little bit

when the old lady screams

and the old man hits

and maybe he isn't more

than a skinny-trip huffer child

in a big-boy-bounding-bold

and balding basketball cap

and his bowels came loose

all over seventh avenue

and the man with the really big eye

(just the left one)

(he injects the paint into the right one)

(it's okay, sugar-poopsie)

(it stopped hurting months ago)

the man with the really big eye

laughed away the smell

on seventh avenue

when the skinny-trip huffer man

lost his bowels

but for just a minute

so now

skinny-trip huffer man wipes his hands

onto the sidewalk

with a backturned, halfass basketball cap

basketball, peach basket, orange basket

basket so big like a swollen huffer-head that he holds

holds in a huffer-haze

and it pounds

pounds

pounds

like a swollen huffer-head

ripe with

the sweetest,

ripest,

huffest,

hottest,

hopped-up hoop-de-huffer

holy hangman

amyl nitrite

I just love you,

sugar-poopsie.

Wake up now,

okay?

Red Wolf Anthology

Over the past year, some of my poetry appearing on the lost beat has been based on prompts through We Write Poems.  The fine people at We Write Poems have published Red Wolf Anthology covering poems inspired by their prompts over the past three years.

Download a free PDF copy of the Red Wolf Anthology here, read it, share it and join in on lots of poetic fun! 

http://wewritepoems.wordpress.com/2013/12/16/red-wolf-emerges-from-the-woods/

Through this site, I have not only been able to get inspired through the prompts, but also through the really fine poets who post their poems there.

Happy reading and writing!

-Denise

"worse than it looks"

"worse than it looks"

poetry by

Tom Janikowski

Available now on Lulu

electronic format ($1.99)

dead-tree format ($8.00)

Coming To...

He slept

With uneven train tracks

In his dreams

As his elderly black angel

Sat by his feet

With her ink tipped white wings

Tucked in close

I was

Trying to get

Her attention

Without words

She ignored me

I wasn’t her ward

She laid hands upon

His tortured mind

Covering him

With feathered

Dotted i’s ,

Crossed t’s

Her stern nod

Tilted my head

To my own angels

With their blue scrubs

In super HD clarity,

Florescent halos

Calling my name,

Bringing me back,

Uncertain of the truth