The white man

Lines and ridges around his mouth like the what the
Andes mountains look like from high
Or like fucking fault lines
Sallow skin dotted with black stubbly whiskers and
The voice that classic slurry drawly twang
but softer and more thoughtful than you’d expect.
He has a trucker cap on a underneath his jeans
you can make out the skinniest legs you ever saw
with a belt tightly wound across
He smells like liquor and smokes and
has glasses with a clip on sunglasses to bifocals
He laughs and I can hear his lungs wheeze like an accordion

Frozen Yogurt

By Morty Diamond
I live in los angeles
the home of the frozen yogurt
where it all began
Like Starbucks but in the eighties
a frozen yogurt could be had anywhere
On any street corner
only a few street blocks away from the next
Low fat, creamy, fat free, vanilla choco swirl
frozen yogurt a passing fad
Today a sixteen year old girl
in a mini skirt and small white tank top
is asking me
If I have ever been to a self-serve frozen yogurt store before?
No. I have not
Well its by the pound
any flavor and any topping. Ok? Here’s a cup.
I stand at the wall of frozen yogurt machines
peanut butter, chocolate, vanilla, strawberry,
All the same as before –
except now I have to make it myself.
That’ll be 2.78 sir. She says
Its noon - my lunch break.
Two cops come in and survey the flavors.
I’m eating frozen yogurt
while standing at an intersection.
I am walking towards another intersection.
A mini-mall,another one and another one
make three and a gas station rounds it all out
ten more minutes
ten more minutes till I gotta go back.

Laces by Morty Diamond

They took my shoelaces first
Thinking I could do myself harm
Then they took my clothes
And told me I could have my hoodie
But they would have to take the drawstring out

Claire sits by herself and blows ink she has dropped
On a bright white sheet of paper
The ink goes haywire and splashes the paper to its edge
“I’m making a card, for my nephew.” She says
Her eyes blink furiously and her nose twitches
I know, because she told me, she is in here
For severe depression.
“I have a cat.” She told me. “He keeps me company.”
I nod to her yes
“The neighbors have him now.”
I nod yes

They did not give me more than a sheet and a mattress cover
“This is just in case you wet on the bed.”
But I don’t! I just want a blanket!
“I can give you two mattress covers then”

I see Mr. Hernandez – he is walking the corridor again
He does everyday, as much as they let him
Until they scream “Mr. Hernandez! Will you please stop
walking now and go to sleep!”
He does not talk, he is drooling on his slippers.

They told me I would be leaving in one or two more days.
I can have my old life back if I want it. And it’s a good thing
my father has flown from Los Angeles to see me. This makes the chances
of leaving that much better. I sit in my room, cold, quiet
waiting for the medicine to take hold.

Forgetting

It is perhaps true
That the one thing I miss most
Is forgetting
What is to be forgotten
Once, not too long ago,
I sat on the J train patiently as
The begging man I come to know
As Bruce comes closer once still
And yet I recall Bruce less and less
He is not vivid anymore
Nor is the scene out the window of said J train
From Manhattan to Brooklyn
I forget which side the sun lights up first as we venture eastward to my
Home
coming out of the dark still tunnel at
Essex/Delancey
I forget the smell of you taking me home
And I forget the kiss we had as the train hit the stop closest to your
House,
we both knew it wasn’t that close but the J train was mine
And the L yours.
I am hungry not for old love or old smells
Just of forgetting – I miss this only
I will be on the 101 freeway ever losing site of
What I ever wanted to forget

My Plath

M. Diamond

Young lady
I carried you
folded the delicate aroma of you
made nervous my soul in search of you
and now you are here
In you her spirit slumbers
Touched by the same misery
And still like the lotus
Being planted amidst the fiercest flames
You carry that blood drop by drop, still

My Plath
There is no need to replay how fraught life can be
I hope you see the we
You, Her and Me
She is You
But I am not he
On the heels of love and ever shallow sympathy
Won’t make you push through brambles and poisonous leaves
You will be sung overtures
will swing mightily from
tall Oak trees
Robed in silk, your bosom ripening

My Plath My Plath
You -The exemplary woman
Nestled deep in my history

The Opal

By Morty Diamond

I think of the men, the horsemen
Their leather boots casting shadows on a stallion’s bloated belly
Pursed lips under powdered faces
The horsemen searching for the tallest spire with the opal eye sitting atop
shimmering and
haloed with stardust
that beacon of truth and redemption
dropping to his knees and leaving his body for isolate rapture
to find his own prophecy
in the tendrils only the opal may lay down for him

I think of a place
Where men, whose religion it is to feel eternally damned
Gather the air around them and bellow, and
wail for the finality of their unknown destination
marking time with the stamping of feet
the opal sitting atop the tallest spire has made him a marionette
for he cannot eat or drink without looking up at her to grant such a serenity


Those men whose eyes are buried in the folds of their forefathers
Searching for light as they journey
Over zealous, empty handed
Resolute in the face of injury or death
They do not know the end, cannot know the end
They feel blood in their ears
As the angels meander in their lace and curlers
waiting for these mortals to build stained glass beauty parlors


I am consumed by it myself
I am not far behind, my own wheels clacking on the cobblestones
Possessing me as it would thousands of years ago
A worshiper whose worship has left him wanton
I stroke back my hair in anticipation
Of my first look at the opal that has been guiding me for weeks
To her own eyes, and our own rapture

Florida: Part One

By Morty Diamond

They desire of you
All the two of you
Your love, a docile or languid one
Your soul a captive
A centaur with clipped wings
The flying creature you used to be
Around a year ago
There is a black trench coat
There is a smell of pine needles
I’m waking up in a car on the freeway smelling
What’s been covering my eyes
A bottle of drops to ease and heal
And another bottle to keep my skin purple
There is a metronome in my pot belly
There is a peppermint candy melting on my tongue
There are one or two residual pills so caustic they re-soak my spongy tissues
My right eye shorts out
I’ve never been good at standing stalk still
So in third person I went with her
Knowing I would take my leather jacket
And never see any of it again
Dozens of townships
Two bouts of diarrhea
Six mars bars
I began to see
What she had been looking at
A guy like me
With jet fuel for a heart
I was an easy passenger
Drunk on my own pain
Not so hunter/hunted as much as giver/giving
Yours becomes mine and mine became yours
Liquid, smoke, rummaging, entertaining
Two pleasures refilling in tandem
As large as grain silos
Two smears, red lips, blind passages run into each other
I was cut right down the middle
Slipped a pane of glass between the two halves
So she could see, at every step of the way
Where I was getting wet, hurt, pumping, shriveling
But then there was Florida
Florida made all the difference
Florida was the daylight
They always want your mouth in a smirk
A plain t shirt, a clean shaven face
They wailed to me ‘It’s here!’
But omnipresent danger was all I felt was ‘HERE’
Photosynthesizing
The sun yarrow colored and hazy
Blended red and blue milk shakes
I was two weeks sick
She begged me to stay on
But when I cried “I’m casting shadows!”
She waved goodbye to me
Solid and carefree
Like driving a new car off the lot