E.W. Bourne's Poetry

Flanked

2009-11-12T17:29:00.004-05:00

Flanked by two attractive blonds on the T
I focus on the Charles River,
careful not to steal glances

I grow bored of feigning disinterest,
I grow bored of playing the undersexual male.

But judging her or her as physically attractive...
that's just evil and vile (so I've learned).
It's certainly worse than pro football.

I turn to my right
and snap a mental polaroid
which I shake until I recall
the actress she reminds me of

I turn to the left
and realize she's reading
Yes Means Yes.

[June, 2009]

It Feels Like a Broken Someday

2009-08-13T13:23:00.000-04:00

Oh God that shit hurts
All the pain of being forgotten
And thrown aside
And what leaves is my smile
And my eagerness to laugh
And my everything
Leaves and I am left with

The pain of untouched skin

[2000]

Beware the Bare Midriff

2009-08-13T13:21:00.001-04:00

Beware the bare midriff.
They’re everywhere you know,
and that’s not a good thing.
Now, don’t get me wrong,
there are plenty of young women
who show off their toned little
tummies and no one is the worse
for it. But then there are the overhangs!
Oh dear God, the overhangs!
Just propped there, hiding a belt,
maybe spilling out under
a spaghetti strap top.
There should be a rule,
some sort of social understanding.

[2000]

What a Bunch of Rude Beverages

2009-08-13T13:18:00.000-04:00

What a bunch of rude beverages.
Poor old Calistoga shunned by two plastic pricks.
They’re chatting away as if he didn’t exist.
Ah,
But then there’s the orange shorty Minute Maid,
The little eavesdropper,
Listening intently to a superficial conversation
With his back turned clumsily.
We shouldn’t feel sorry for Calistoga though,
He doesn’t want to talk to the plastic pricks
Or be near that shit Minute Maid.
He is the only one with water left.

[1999]

Menu for Monday

2009-08-13T13:15:00.000-04:00

Goofy fuck, aren’t you?
Covered in some gooey nonsense,
Wobbling about,
Playing pick-up sticks with your knobby twigs.
You’re nothing more than
A strung-out scarecrow anorexic in leopard print,
A has-been runway superstar with go-go gadget limbs,
A big-hair groupie at an afterbirth afterparty.

You don’t have a chance in hell to make it ‘til Tuesday
Because a heavy around the way is licking his chops.

In the end

You’ll be nothing more than
A strung-out scarecrow anorexic in leopard print slathered by a can of red PETA paint,
A has-been runway superstar with go-go gadget limbs and a penchant for fire truck lipstick,
A big-hair groupie at an afterbirth afterparty pouring the last of the merlot on her tits.

That’s you,
So take it all in, whatever it is,
A chance in hell to make it ‘til Tuesday.

[2003]

Sonnets

2009-08-13T13:12:00.002-04:00

Reader, fuck Shakespearean sonnets.
Smut them and
Rub them against your crotch.
Sonnets have it coming;
They are so hard
To write.

[2004]

Ally’s Poem

2009-08-13T13:11:00.001-04:00

Wondering about where to find meaning
I stare at a stranger’s hollow eyes
and discover myself wondering
where to find meaning.

One of these days
I’ll lose myself to wonder
and smirk.

Euphoric, I sit (without meaning).

“But, it has to have meaning! Otherwise, what’s the point?”

[2004]

Post-Adolescent Scent

2009-08-13T13:08:00.000-04:00

The post-adolescent scent
is varied and superfluous.
What an awful word that is.

One adorable head injury
away from a lack of sex
“There is no sex in the poem.”
I wonder how their fucked-up lives
lead to this, now, here, meaningful and wondrous.

I furrow my brow hoping for righteousness
as a sputtering sense of self stumbles into a box.
A robin’s scream reminds me of my flawed mortality.
My blood is sordid and thick.

[2004]

Trips

2009-08-13T13:01:00.001-04:00

Best not to make eye contact
Under the circumstances.
Shady bastards every,
Revolting, shady rat bastards,
Inbred mulchy bastards.
Dear God, is that blood?
Every day I put up with this
Shit.

[2002]

Somewhere Along Broadway

2009-08-13T12:58:00.000-04:00

Mark Doty is trapping birds behind glass,
metaphorically speaking.

He mistakes a reflection
for his dead lover’s smile.

Watching from a bench, across
the way

you might mistake his
stare for materialistic desire.

A street
merchant’s knives

unfold and whisper about
a prone form,

an unfamiliar ratio of smoke and salt,
a new representation of longing.

[2002]

Moving to Loomis

2009-08-13T12:51:00.001-04:00

I was thrown
into a world of unkind faces.
I was not a fitting piece.
The green, mean-spirited devils
stole my smile
and stuck me with
a new, dirty sadness for a child.

[2001]

Dorm Living

2009-08-13T12:49:00.000-04:00

The quirky girl gives me a not so subtle hint,
forgotten fortune cookie bullshit
about the things we desire lacking flaws.
Curiosity kills this cat
and there we are
lying in her bed
and I discover tattoos, skirmish with pierced nipples,
kiss, lick, grind, and that's not the end.

[2000]

William Carlos Williams Could

2009-08-13T12:47:00.000-04:00

Grrr.
And that's not a sexy grrr either,
it's a GRRR grrr.
Grrr.

[2001]

The Process

2009-08-13T12:44:00.002-04:00

Sunday, heavy with God stuff,
Monday, in bed with the ticker screaming bloody murder,
Tuesday, being (bless its heart),
Wednesday, the elephant in the corner,
Thursday, leering ahead,
Friday, washing its black underwear,
Saturday, fuzzed with last night's improprieties,

and I feel bad about it all on Sunday
and I'm still obsessing on Monday, damp damn Monday,
and I find Tuesday oddly poetic,

so I stick it in a poem (Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday),

and Wednesday is about revision, but I'm lazy,
and Thursday is already Friday in my mind
and Saturday is utterly useless,

so I try to finish on
Sunday, heavy with God stuff.

[2000]

Sunset Lanes and a Small Matter of Faith

2009-08-13T12:43:00.000-04:00

Jesus went bowling,
wore sandals, and
bowled a 300,
or
Jesus went bowling,
rented shoes, and
bowled a 127.

[2003]

Papa's Day

2009-08-13T12:41:00.001-04:00

Teeth and bones
and tendons
within the skin of lonely sickness.
Unkind breaths break upon his lips,
painted with the pallor of surrender.
Here is a heavy touch
with all the memories of
such and such
on a yellowed dying day.

[2002]

I Was Promised Meaning

2009-08-13T12:40:00.001-04:00

01
Independence Day in Paris
and no one is smiling as far as I can tell.
The day tilts a bit
and we find ourselves making a round on the Seine.
Table wine for the whole bunch,
even the Aussies.
The day has fallen hard,
night has made an appearance,
and the Eiffel Tower is a cliché.
A Midwesterner remembers the date
just as we past the (not the) Statue of Liberty.
Oh say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
and none of us can sing well,
but no one seems to care,
even the Aussies join the racket,
So we crackle through the whole thing
and I miss the last few notes by a good octave,
and the night gets fuzzy.

02
Later at a Smokey Irish pub in downtown Paris,
German beer, Ohio stories,
and tomorrow I fly home to Sacramento.
Trouble.
Aussie Carrie finds her way to my lap
and my teeth find their way to her lips,
In her hotel room we wait until the others fall asleep.
Fingers undo my belt
and fingers unbutton her pants.

03
A vicious yellow rips through the curtains.
A kiss for Carrie
and I’m struggling down the stairs.
Where the fuck is the metro?
On a plane over the Atlantic I can still taste Carrie.

08
I find myself in a convertible Saab mangled by an adolescent oak.
I climb out over the trunk
and sit down on the bumper,
My ear is bleeding,
and it hurts,
and the stars couldn't care less.

[2003]

All Put Together

2009-08-13T12:39:00.001-04:00

Somewhere,
I'm all put together
and the screen door closes all the way
and even if it doesn't
it's still fine.

Somewhere,
I'm all put together,
and she swallows my torso with her legs
and the only taste in my mouth
is her pink tongue.

Somewhere,
I'm all put together,
and my name fits my personality
and my personality is
unabashedly flawed.

Somewhere,

I only drink merlot when someone else is there.

[2004]

Trashy

2009-08-13T12:37:00.001-04:00

My date to Senior Ball,
Laura Bell,
did four lines of coke off a vanity mirror.
She's great fun when she's drunk too.
She'll hit on anyone for a Vodka Tonic.
She nibbles on her index finger
and I've never seen anything more phallic.

I spent last weekend at Laura's new place
on 25th and Mission.
We went out Saturdat night and met her Cosmo gal pal
for sushi and sake and asahi at a ripe restaurant with sea green walls.
I made sure to get drunk before Laura or I lost my wallet.
At 12 or so we went to a rock show
to see her friend with the villian moustace,
but Laura slipped away as soon as we got there
and I was left to console a girl named Izzy about emerging wrinkles.
Laura popped up again at 2-ish and decided it was time to go.

We made it back to her apartment
and I fell asleep in my jeans
with Laura at my side,
just like always.

[2002]

I Develope a Chemical Imbalance

2009-08-13T12:35:00.000-04:00

I am not heard from for nine months until one day I stagger into Boyd County Hospital in Kentucky with mysterious circular scars on my neck and a missing left pinky toe. I tell all the doctors and nurses gruesome stories of back-alley beatings and inescapable k-holes even though I really don’t remember a thing. Television news crews crowd around my hospital bed as I recount how I traded my kidney to a black-market surgeon named Jeb for eight pounds of frozen ground beef and a half-empty bottle of Jagermeister. Then one night I tear off my hospital gown and run stark naked into the woods where I trip over an exposed pine root and dislocate my kneecap against a slab of granite. I scream and scream and scream, even after a young couple sinning just over the ridge uses their Nokia mobile to report a murder behind Boyd County Hospital. Eventually the cops show up and wrap me in a beige polyester blanket before shoving me in the back of a squad car. Sergeant Willis and Anderson drive me all the way to Ashland and admit me to Our Lady Bellefonte Hospital, a well-respected psychiatric facility, where I attempt to stick my tongue down the head nurse’s throat because I like the way her everlasting breasts stretch the fabric of her white cotton uniform. I stay at Our Lady Bellefonte for a good month or two while the doctors try to figure out what the fuck my problem is, but I don’t mind because I meet this girl Polly who thinks I’m Pierce Brosnan, and her and I have unprotected sex at least three times a day, and the food really isn’t that bad, and the head nurse stops wearing a bra altogether, and I make friends with the custodian, Jerry, and he sneaks me swigs from his whiskey flask.

[2003]

I Order China Quite Often

2009-08-13T12:33:00.001-04:00

So what
if I get off popping bubble wrap?
Fuck,
it's not like
I hump vending machines.
Besides,
I bet you like popping bubble wrap.
I bet
you're imagining those
supple
air
pockets
right
now,
the way the plastic
melts around
your fingertips the instant
just
before the bump

pops,
and I bet you've got
goose bumps,
petite plastic bubble wrap
goose bumps
all over your body,
and
I bet
it's driving you mad.

[2002]

The Hazards of Being a Poet

2009-06-03T21:10:00.001-04:00

I once wrote a misogynistic poem about a baby giraffe.
I haven’t been able to repeat that brilliance since.
I did write a Marxist poem about a meerkat though.

The masses shall overwhelm the few,
The lazy kings shall be dethroned!
Our claim to the Serengeti is renewed,
Unjust royal bloat forever bemoaned!

At home, leaning over the bathroom sink,
I'm sure that the gobs of toothpaste near the drain
represent a universal truth.
It’s a shame fluoride doesn’t rhyme with transcendental.

My professor is
quite adamant that Gilgamesh was homosexual,
but I’m staring at two emo kids pawing near the aisle.
I can’t decide if they’re in love
or just happy that they both have lip rings.

I’ve been single a long time,
and it’s time to start dating.
I walk into a coffee shop and smile
at the voluptuous girl with the dry wit.
"One of these days you might want to say hi to me,"
she says, her voice subtle as sex.
Does she dig me,
or just like the fact that I’m cute
and mostly harmless?

[2004]

I Ask Myself If I've Been In Love

2009-06-03T21:03:00.006-04:00

Scribbled on a small slip of paper beneath some Yeats:

"Sometimes Red Tights don’t mean
that an insatiable appetite prowls
within their occupant (although it does),
sometimes all they are is a cry for bed,
a mother, a peace.
Which, in the end,
is all we look for in each other anyway." - JLA

Reader Response:

"She might as well have been
any woman in his life,
any small promise of fragrance and wit."

Now I’m staring at this piece of paper
covered in a feminine cursive
and it sits beside a High Life on my desk.
And to the left is a half-empty glass of warm merlot
and I’m fairly happy that these inanimate players
represent well this act of my life.

I just wonder though, if I am the beer can,
or if it’s the girl.

Her Scene

2009-06-03T21:00:00.000-04:00

Frumpy and disheveled, she sits with a notebook;

Sighing at the window, she itches her puffy cheek.

She stares at the sidewalk, and,
for a moment,
is blissfully thoughtless.
She is a toggle
untouched.

Leaving specks, she peppers a page with her pen tip.
Bu-bop, BOP, bop.
Rain starts to spot the sidewalk a gritty shade of gray.

[June, 2005]

Stumble Stunts

2009-06-03T20:54:00.000-04:00

Back in Santa Cruz I stumbled around on a broken ankle
wondering if fuzzy-legged chicks ever
fell back in the closet and realized it was what they preferred.

Here in Sacramento I stumble about on a weary self-image,
wondering if self-affected hipster chicks ever
blink at a mirror, see the absurdity, and unrivet their faces.

[2006]

V.V.

2009-06-03T20:29:00.000-04:00

Tall burlesque vixen
with LED flashlight eyes
and fatalist tendencies
sat beside me at the bar.
Her later trips to the restroom
revealed obliques inked
with hollow stars, a constellation
of ill-judgment and clumsily asserted
individuality.
My later trips
revealed Mr. Adams' effect
on my balance.

I spent most of the night hoping the speck in her
teeth was pepper and not decay.

Our second meeting's highlight was the disappearance
of the speck, and the return of her
star-crossed hips.

[April, 2009]

Healthcare

2009-06-03T13:06:00.000-04:00

Make me a male nurse
so I can go to work in sneakers and
pale blue scrubs with
a tasteful V-neck,
so I can tell a woman what I do
and she'll be sure I'm sensitive to her needs,
so I don't have to tell her I'm a poet,

because that seems to say I'm sensitive to needs,
but usually my own.

[June, 2009]

Tangeled

2009-06-03T13:05:00.002-04:00

We are tangled wires behind your televion,
made independent only through concerted effort and wiggle room.
We could unplug everything and start again,
but then we might miss our favorite shows.
Or, perhaps, we are Scrabble tiles,
jostled together in a felt beg,
our lettered faces indistinguishable to blind fingers.
More probably, we are elms in a grove,
two distinct collections of limbs and leaves,
discovering our roots nearly touch beneath the soil.

[June, 2009]

North Station to Beverly Depot

2009-06-03T12:42:00.000-04:00

A blurred factoryscape passes,
complexes of pipes and squat cylinders
painted in various shades of ugly.

Automobile carcasses rotting
besides a muddy bank emitting
a pervasive sense of decay.

Cornbread-crumbled sea walls pepper
beaches with ash black stones
below steel-boned bridges burnt orange with rust.

[May, 2009]