.................................
Emory Jason Watkins
.................................

Hello the man said are you Mister Watkins? Emory said I'm Mister Watkins' brother. And the man passed on. Emory used to play ice hockey, until he was in the sixth grade. Then his hair grew long, over his eyes, and he had to reach up and brush it away. Emory fell in love once. But he kept forgetting to cut his toenails, and his toes were always bleeding. Emory thought over a beer: Random truth. Honesty. That's really the way our minds work, but most of the time we filter them for other people. Hello, the man said, are you Mister Watkins? Emory said, I'm Mister Watkins, brother. And the man passed on.

 
.................................
64 cent sonnet
.................................

Itadakimas. My life depends
on choices: Billybob's or VVaVVa --
both are on the way to where (to spend)
I'm going. Va. Red-lettered hot
signs are my signs when I choose them. This
is joy. Is cream. Is sugar. Warm caffeine,
the a-lull and smooth of half-tripping until
my cup is empty. Climbing into the scream
of daylight and its bold-faced lists.
My coffee, my car, my ritual: In here see ya's
best friend and sincerest enemy.
(Sincerity is every slipping.) Pleasure
is what it's all about what it's all
about is all about Pleasure. Fill.

 
.................................
My Body Over Three Years
.................................

That necklace I hated
when I opened the box,
a Tiffany's gift from a boy that thought
he loved me. I've never taken it off.
Belonging hangs around
my neck, but I learned to love
the attention of new acquaintances --
Is that a moon or a 'D'?
depending on the way the
charm fell on my breast.
This reach, the hope of some significance,
some non-dailiness lingering
in mutual attachment.
But hurrah, it's only Christmasness
and accumulated commentary.
Those silently common hoops through four holes
which varied their fill in years before.
Originally identical, by my own
labor, elliptically crafted
sleep and nervous habits, bent. I am lazy
to catch nothing and never change.
That ring and its turquoise stone,
the middle finger of my best hand.
A gift to myself on a birthday.
Because a mad woman in the street
stopped to tell me
the three colors of love are red, white, and turquoise.
She had her reasons, but I have none
but ten dollars I do not need and have
and I do not need as much
as I need to remember.

 
.................................
Blank Verse
.................................

When I in halogen hour place my head
upon my palm and not my pillow yet,
and think that I should turn my evening's thoughts
to lines of beauty, sexy wasted time,
still, sometimes I just fall asleep instead.

 
.................................
Day At Various Tables
.................................

Of my body,
or klinokinetically owning toward that source, or

what sees a sun's travelled atom in this will
reflects --

Red, or


this bodies becomes bodies

from which we part


to join

desire

eyes forever on -- that piece of sun
finds me again.

___________________________
January 13, 1997
37 p coffee from The Bowl
91 p lunch @ The Bowl
20 p to Trezza for a cigarette
40 p Horlick's @ All Saints Centre

 
.................................
A Sleep
.................................

we will

listen to the states we sound
but ache and stay in dream and marrow

                                        but today before your darkened eyes I lay
                                              Hello -- promise dye we will but

                                                                           wash away

___________________________
January 20, 1998
20 p coffee from the Chaplaincy
68 p soup @ Piccolo's

 
.................................
Thursday
.................................

Having arrived at a memory to upturn my memories, I am
under doing, constantly issuing the perfect imperative: Have Not.

Having attempted in Here
the marriage of one
moment's Sincerity to another --
but day this day
but day and day
makes time of Here.
Fast but love but
gone but -- Have Not
to you I say,
say again, Have Not.

___________________________
January 22, 1998
20 p fruit tea @ Friends Meeting Place
40 p fruit tea @ Mancroft Cathedral

 
.................................
To Dan
.................................

For this stamp partakes
in my history.

Myself continually remembered being
a false integrity --

(Hello)

And so I have
no account. This,

for my joy and
pain and change

(Hello)

are raw and unaccounted
for, as I

fumble for a thrust
history of now.

___________________________
December 31, 1997
43 p
Stamp to America @ New Ferry Post Office

.................................
Shawn Walker
.................................

 
Copyright © Shawn Walker
March 1989

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Copyright © 1997 A Small Garlic Press. All rights reserved.
Created 1997/6/3. Updated last on 2000/7/17.