15 Word Poem (Living in a Quad)

Why must they scream at this ungodly hour?
A drunkard youth disrupts my slumber now.

Philadelphia and Then Morning Classes

Here I sit, midmorning, the sunlight casting
white sails over my desert eyes by dusty windows.
My neck cracks like a Birch branch under the
weight of an overnight deep-freeze.

I still wish it happened.
I just wish it happened differently,

without this droning fatigue and a broken law or two;
I've too much to do to realize what I've done.

Just Arriving Home

I love watching you love your daughter the way that you can: explicitly.
I love watching you love your daughter the way that
_____________________________________ I would if it were alright that I loved her.
But it's not alright.
And so I'll
____watch___you love__________h_er
______________________and_______watch me love her: implicitly.

In a Mall Midmorning

I just saw an old couple waddle past. They were holding hands. Even with the arthritis, the liverspots, the hair, the hairlessness, the yellowing, the wrinkles...even with these, they're still in love. In love through it all, in spite of it all.
It made me smile to see them. Because I want that. I want a girl to ask to marry me and then I say yes and to fast-forward to this. To hold our hands in public. Waddling in sync. Waddling in love. To kiss her sagging cheek and wrap my scrawny arm around her paining back. All for the glory, the marvel, that it might bring to a kid watching us. The smile it'll bring to him.
When I hold hands, old and decrepit, with my decaying wife. Whom I love very much. Still. Still. Through it all.

Boy and Mom

an evening of stained shirts and strained voices
--waking unbearable--
your breath still makes the loudest noises.


She said "I'm in agony. Just believe and breathe."
So I inhaled and inspired.
She exhaled for me and closed her eyes to avoid seeing.