My Own Dollars Trilogy

When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk.

Chris Penn's Track Jacket

I thought about you as I was walking down the sidewalk
hours after I said goodbye to that
silver-shelled star
that carried the both of us
when there was love to be carried

Minutes after
grandmother handed me a twenty
because she needed to
give
me
"something"
Never knowing the
sandwiches
cookies
and conversations
were something enough

I hope that star is part of a constellation now
just as I hoped
the both of us
would be remembered as that entity we created
maybe painted upon silver canvases
or perhaps a crest
as you enter a city

But darling,
not in a museum.

I just don't know what they'd do to us there.

Styx and Stones

After I got my hair cut, an old man told me about an old girlfriend he had. "She had a summer home up there," he said, pointing in the vaguest of directions. Sometimes you just know what someone means, and sometimes you pretend you do because you're too busy admiring the youth in their face. And yet, at certain times, I find that I want to understand them and just can't bring myself to. I can't accept certain things, even when they flow from the same lips that whispered all those cascading nothings to me from the passenger seat of a '93 Grand Am; the ones that took so little effort but meant so much more than the ones we planned out. Yeah. I've lost enough hair already. I'll be my own boatman for now.

Guitar Case Full of Guns

Through the streets
when sand is kicked up
I always think it's you

(What we think we are)
Confident
Alive
Open

I'll feel it
feel it feel it feel it
until I look in the mirror
narrowly avoiding it this time
but when confronted
only quoting things I heard before

(What we are)
Question marks.

I would gladly jump from the rooftop
but your eyes
aren't on me
anymore.

Not sure what it was about the
angle of the sun today
but
it made me (think about) you.

Reviews

[Jacquelene Vanessa More..]

well i dont find anything wrong with piece personally. i throughly enjoyed it

[Rachelah]

Cool.
I love it when old people just start talking to you about crazy things. The guy who owns one of the places I work tells me about WWII sometimes. It's nuts. Then, I look at the picture of him and his wife in 1942 when they were married. It's unbelievable.
And then I go and talk to a little 3-year-old girl who only understands Spanish, and not very well.
It's astounding.
But anyway, I really like these. They're thought-provoking. And thinking is a good thing.
For the most part.
Just, not always.
Hehehee

[John Destalo]

This is some of my favorite work from anyone. There is so much emotion expressed in these pieces but it is subtle and understated. "Styx and Stones" is just brilliance.

And this line from the last piece,

"I would gladly jump from the rooftop
but your eyes
aren't on me
anymore."

God I wish I'd written that.

Exceptional, thanks.

[Kari [io]]

god i love the way you've begun to float out away from yourself and the parentheses . . . so awesome. well you know i love chris penn's track jacket, lol, what a title! the poem, though, breathtaking, esp. the last three lines, about the museum. sigh. perfect, absolutely perfect. the second piece, you made a lot of good points, things i could relate to, most of all, vagueness. and the last line of the last poem really was so absolutely wonderful, and it just nailed everything . . . it made me you/it made me think of you . . . such a dynamic. i needed that.

[L. L. Jacobson]

I love the vulnerability of you taking the twenty dollars to appease your grandmother and the same vulnerability, this time eerie, that society says since you're a man you cannot "feel this way" and show the Venus emotions of you that love is enough.
(nice image of Chris Penn's track jacket, by the way)

Superb writing in between the old man's storytelling and the narrator's reflection of it,
the ex post facto that is Styx and Stones.
The third poem is beautiful, just simply gorgeous; the image of the angle of the sun; I saw cast shadows, the golden setting sun color to lighten up a heart.
Richard, you are brilliant; there's nothing more to say, and that's that.