all you can eat buffet
half n half, whole
wheat bread whale
of a time, split
in two buttermilk
biscuits, staring
down my throat
no matter, where
I am is is am I
happy to eat, what
others leave behind
in a napkin, folded
to take home to
mother nature, famish
needing nurture because
a poor shoe, holes
is not a way to walk
around in life, children
laugh no matter what
deprived or full
------------------
Surrender to Myself
A child is at my window,
pale and frail, a mouth straight
and crossed as a pin-
with see-through eyes
he pierces at me with his past,
stitching it on into my future.
And there I see his father,
putting him down in the crib
for the night, and closing his
bedroom door then walking away,
a way he never came back and
opened the door again.
Now ill-fated it is for me
to watch this child standing
outside the fire, I want to draw
the blinds and pull down the shades
to the scales under his eyes,
and as I do, shutting out this someone
casting his gaze like black coals
glowing reddish from an after burn.
A coerce nudges at me to tell him
that I know his walk where shallow
steps fall on hard concrete, the street
I identified with long ago,
that could end if went unwary.
And our faces become transparent
in the three-dimensional window,
with the ghost of me oppositely
haunt with his image, as a seasoned
leaf cuffing against a green leaf,
I saw that child crying at night
on his pillowcase. I saw a moon
that wouldn’t let go until the break
of dawn. I wondered if when it
rained in Baltimore, it rained
in New York the same time.
I wondered if tears fell in heaven.
After I curtained the contained
face immersed in the window,
I went up the dark staircase
washed my hands and face,
and went to his bedroom, echoing
beside the unfinished B-9 model
airplane with detached wings-
where I peeked through the blinds,
to find him gone, leaving remnants
in parallel of no one on the sidewalk.
-----------------
Spoon and Fork
While yet married to a dish,
the spoon ran off with the fork
to elope into a knife
cut-throat marriage-
going feeding porkishly
at Las Vegas buffets
and drinking glass
after glass martinis and wine-
gambling the night away.
It wasn't until the cow
jumped over the plate perfect
moon, that spoon thought of his
dish back home,
probably by now dirtied
with tears and peas, as
the big dipper
above the brightly lit strip,
and small dipper below
his belt, somewhat aroused-
where the little dog laughed
to see such sport,
when the spoon and fork
slipped between the sheets
of a napkin.
--------------
A Window to See Through
A window to see through,
is as the stroke of a painting
where a river of oil runs through
pastel floras and faunas, to the
rush of a paintbrush on crevice.
A window to see through,
gives a poet the muse for words,
letters of the alphabet dangling
from the tangled branches of stars
as picking grapes off vines and
serving on the white moon plate.
How we all want many windows
when looking for a house,
a brightly lit home with sunlight
stretching from room to room
bouncing off clean, clear glass
looking into a blossomed blood
flowers bed
and blue, where seagulls fly over
the ocean and polished grass,
figure eight in-ground whirlpool
and tinfoil roofs,
this is living we say...
but what good are windows,
when the mood is lived low-
to the woman that always sits
drowned for the storm to come.
The thunder roaring in head,
and rain thrashing against
the windows of her soul-
blinds pulling out the light
and binding,
to a four walled room
sounding as a tired drum-
windowless and widowed,
with peeling and twin fruit bowl
wallpaper, a ceiling of plaster
cigarette stained smoke,
the four walls of a heart
this is first where that light
must enter, through the open
eyes of windows freshly painted
------------------
Paranoia
I have taken four sleeping pills
and two shots of Tequila and
half a bottle of white wine and
still, I could see her face-
projected on the big screen
of my mind,
lights, camera and no action-
so I quickly down two ice cold
beers and get a brain-freeze,
coming back to feeling fine;
thinking to myself even in suicide
I could mess everything up.
By this time the crickets are
a point of view out here
in my backyard,
how they line up their
chirps against the still
night,
and when I draw myself
in to them with footsteps
they shut down,
when I back away,
they go return to mingling
under their forewings,
calling me an idiot.
Anthony Liccione is from Upstate New York and has been writing poetry for over ten years. He has recently won the 2006 LizaBeth Poetry Award and Unscrambled Eggs Poetry Contest, and was nominated Best Poem of the Year 2005 (Muses Review). He recently released a chapbook Parched and Colorless with The Moon Publishing, and a full-volume book of poems Back Words and Forward (ISBN:1424113563).