Craig Kirchner

Full, From the Grave

by Craig Kirchner

The limo, gray leather seats, typical soft ride seemed to be driving itself. A cool, hushed feeling of finality and freedom at about 50 per, willing without manipulating, despite the new rain, the driver barely touching the wheel.

Occasionally rubbing the small container in his right pant pocket, Colton ponders Coppola’s Count crossing the ocean, with his boxes of native soil, the ship on autopilot, sailing itself to the new land, the next red light.

An Altoids tin, what’s that, three Tbsps. maybe? Alyson sitting next to Colton in her full-length Victorian and black lipstick, tells him she saw him spoon the dirt and that she collects clipped nails in a glass case. She keeps it in her room, and frequently contributes, its major characteristic of course, it is dead, cut from life.

Colton’s canister speaks in unfamiliar tones, never feels quite the same each time he touches it. Only an hour old, it has become the charm, his luck piece, the heirloom he’ll never lose, the collection he never had, the never handed-off inheritance that evolves against his leg, and subtly intimates it will eventually grow something if given a chance, perhaps help with his sleep.

not even Baudelaire

by Craig Kirchner

I’m sitting with The Flowers of Evil,

in my favorite chair, best cognac,

a small reading-lamp the only light in an

otherwise, dark room.

Early evening relaxation—

this is as good as it gets.

Back from a jog, you silently appear,

hip-cocked in the doorway,

dirty blonde shook forward,

framing Lopez lips

in an incredible ensemble

of white cotton panties and gym socks.

I tilt the shade like a spotlight,

thinking maybe a little bump & grind,

instead, you drop to your knees—

your reality more intense than

one could possibly write—

ever so lewdly crawls across the Persian rug,

gives even the goldfish gooseflesh,

and a hard-on.

No one could make you up,

not even Baudelaire.

Dream Doctor

by Craig Kirchner

Silence between the bedclothes

on a quiet afternoon,

has a rose reverence, a calming pace,

a new tranquility, defined by space.

The bed is sturdy,

four legs solid on the floor,

mega-stones set just so by Ancients,

pushed under the window with a view of the lake.

The geese like June Taylor dancers

all turn at once, choreographed in Vs,

and me pondering nefarious formations,

to a deep lazy sleep.

Grasping pointlessly at reeds and mud

as the lake drains through an hourglass funnel,

falling to dust, dirt,

and deep dimensions below the bed,

where worker ants are sticking to the plan,

stacking symmetrically, motivated

to give time space and space time

in a prime meridian castle for their Queen.

The Dream Interpreter arrives with a clipboard,

measuring latitude and longitude,

describing taste as color, intuition as liquid

and pain in geometric shapes.

REM eyes dot anew tunnels of archeology and Druids.

Geese and Jurassic antennae stay busy,

anticipating his monthly visit, through circles

of pink quilt, mounds, sneezes, and Stonehenge.

Neon poem

by Craig Kirchner

Throw away your mascara,

mousse and underwear.

Wear these lines for a week,

just one week, not a long time.

Let the words mold your face,

drape your shoulders,

your delicate breasts.

Let the lyric infuse your dreams,

scent your pillows,

press your thighs with invisible weight.

At the end of the week

if these Emperor’s clothes

are your neon poem,

call me. I’ll be here on hold,

won’t have eaten but won’t rewrite.

You are new ink that will not dry.

Evening alone

by Craig Kirchner

It was a third-floor apartment,

with patio doors off the living room

to a porch looking out onto a 4-lane,

busy with traffic, Moravia Road.

Evening’s gray was giving an edge,

to the exiting orange-glow of the day

that was leaving through those doors,

at about the same pace the Sunshine Acid

I’d put on my tongue a half hour ago,

was coming-on.

In harmony with this transition

I left the lights off, a bit anxious,

synapses popping behind wet eyes,

that when the total dark of night

controlled the room I would be

peaking in its grasp.

This tic was replaced by

a dawning sense of warm euphoria

as the room settled into a soft humid glow

and Eleanor Rigby’s scraping bows of violins

were totally liquid within me.

I was as alone with its pulsing,

as Father Mackenzie

and the other lonely people.

The darkness, now part of my psyche,

gave a nocturnal life to the walls,

blooming with energy,

textured like fog—

even the nap of my flannel pants

was quivering with a warmth,

and life of its own.

I opened the curtains,

as the beige street globes came on,

adding color and definition

to the traffic that flowed

down roads connecting

the parking lot below, to the planet,

trailers of headlights branching out

in all directions to everything.

Turning back to the sofa

I felt a squash under foot,

as the large-leafed fern

let out a howl of psychedelic mishap,

bleeding green ooze under my now heavy,

traumatized Cole Haan suedes.

Larry, Moe, and me

by Craig Kirchner

Panhandlers in Ocean City

awaiting draft physicals on Ninth Street—

never really owing what we didn’t have,

and what else is there.

Attic rooms on Third St.,

cold shower stall in the yard,

2x4’s of worn white paint and body odor.

We stole cigarettes from Ding Bell’s

and wine money from pocketbooks.

Moe surfed the big board,

never tilted pinball and cheated at cards.

Tuesdays Larry shagged the landlady.

She lived on the first floor and had a TV.

We watched Sirhan and Westmoreland

while her tits bounced.

She had a freckled throat,

and feverish flush—

her sofa smelled of coconut and cum.

Mondays and Wednesdays

I’d meet Muriel after her shift at

Phillips Crab House.

She was slightly plump,

with underaged baby fat,

peachy locomotive skin and

long straight blonde hair full of August sun.

She loved dry-humping,

and smelled like piecrust and Old Bay.

Thursdays the Steakhouse had all you could eat.

Weekends were parties in the dunes.

We were barefoot and free,

like wind-tossed kites above the beach,

indifferent, invincible

but fragile if touched,

denying such wreckage falling to the sand,

the summer was ours

and there really was nothing else.

First at Pimlico

by Craig Kirchner

She was sitting at the counter in the Diner,

black bob, I think they call it;

thin, reminded me of Popeye’s Olive Oyl.

I was sitting in front of the window,

at one of those tables wide enough for a coffee and an elbow.

We made eye contact and she smiled,

got up, walked to my table,

opened her raincoat to black lace underwear,

and thigh-high black boots.

She was built better than Olive.

“We need to get to the track.”

I paid for the coffee,

put my arm around her closing the coat,

and ushered her to the parking lot.

“We need to make the first race.”

“I’ve never gotten this response to the raincoat thing,

it’s refreshing, but I don’t drive.

Lost my license, so I sold the car.”

“Do you have a phone? Good, call a cab.

I dreamt that the winner of the first race pays $22.60.”

“Do you always take your dreams so seriously?”

“No, never actually.

But in this dream, you…. you, came up to me,

opened your raincoat to that outfit,

and told me you loved horses but didn’t drive.”

4 A.M.

by Craig Kirchner

I’m sitting alone at 4 A.M.

drinking a delicious Pinot,

and attempting, pretending, here at the desk,

to write something interesting

or perhaps entertaining.

Since nothing is coming, I suppose instead,

that I’m the most expensive

bottle of Pinot Noir, let’s say in Florida,

and I’m given the choice of whom I will be consumed by.

Add to that the lucky selectant,

doesn’t necessarily need to be

someone who can afford me,

and the musings jump to more important criteria.

It should be someone who will savor my essence,

and appreciate my intensity and vintage.

Someone whose deft handling,

and patient swirling with the tongue

will make this the experience of a lifetime.

It will need to be someone who doesn’t hate,

someone empathetic, a lover of animals and children,

all living things. Sophisticated,

enough to look good in the process,

and no anxiety. Anxiety is bad for digestion.

They should be interesting and entertaining,

They should be capable of conveying the experience to others,

the majesty of the moment,

capable of writing it down at 4 A.M.,

if that is what becomes necessary.

Leap Year

by Craig Kirchner

Time, imprisoned, like the mouse,

trying to run with the perfect rhythm to

keep up with the wheel.

No one is exactly sure when he was encaged,

locked into calendars and clocks for a

sentence of years, decades, eons.

He was free as a bird, no names,

specifications, starting points,

just wandering through the universe of existence,

and then a pause, everything changed.

he was enslaved with Februarys and Julys,

Mondays, A.M.s and P.M.s.

The remodel was supposedly to

save daylight, and the perpetual keeping up

would need be adjusted every so often,

like when you started tiring or

looked over your shoulder, leapt to

catch up, or perhaps take a bite.

Craig Kirchner is retired and thinks of poetry as hobo art. He loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen.

He has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. He houses 500 books in his office and about 400 poems in a folder on a laptop. These words tend to keep him straight.

After a writing hiatus he was recently published in Poetry Quarterly, Decadent Review, New World Writing, Neologism, The Light Ekphrastic, Unlikely Stories, Wild Violet, Last Stanza, Unbroken, W-Poesis, The Globe Review, Skinny, Your Impossible Voice, Fairfield Scribes, Spillwords, WitCraft, Bombfire, Ink in Thirds, Ginosko, Last Leaves, Literary Heist, Blotter, Quail Bell , Ariel Chart, Lit Shark, Gas, Teach-Write, and has work forthcoming in Cape, Scars, Yellow Mama, Rundelania, Flora Fiction, Young Ravens, Loud Coffee Press, Versification, Vine Leaf Press, Edge of Humanity and the Journal of Expressive Writing.

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