Newton’s Dilemma

She flies into bed with me
and says, “Sorry, I must kill you tonight
but your dying will be like flying.”
She takes out a comb, “it’s okay,” I say,
“I part it on the left.” Tears run seams
in her face. “No,” she insists,
“feathers part in the middle.”
“Try to think like a butterfly,
symmetrically. After, I will
slip you in the thickest book,
flatten your dark edges.”
She switches open my razor,
singing the aria I wrote on birds,
and starts removing me hair by hair.
I forget the song of yellow
warblers, redstarts, only the black
grackles caw; the aria crescendos.
By dawn, she’s taken a lot out of me
but stops at my chest. “This is so hard,”
she cries, pecking at my heart.
“It weighs so much.” The aria
has only one sharp note; like
the awkward way magpies walk.
“I’m too tired,” she says, “I would stay
at this, but your fingers are so cold
and my stomach just growled.”
“It’s okay,” I say, “you’ve done so much,
I couldn’t ask more of you.”
She nods, wipes her eyes.
The aria’s left unfinished.
A murder of crows waits out of reach.
She leaves me the razor,
an apple on the pillow,
her light apology for leaving me
in the middle of such weight.
I don’t blame her for flying off,
after all, if I can make love
weigh so much, imagine
what I do to birds.

- m.r. kidd

Gravity - Rickie Lee Jones
Gravity - John Mayer
Gravity Rides Everything - Modest Mouse

Calliope

She hits me
in the face
with a dictionary,
a thick one,
the kind that sit
on bookshelves.
Before I can recover
she asks what I did
with the vowels.

I say I don’t know.
She hits me again,
but harder.
The spine snaps.
Ink runs from my eyes.
Please, the words, I beg,
they’re between
the covers.

I try to write down
what I don’t know for her.
She rams the edge
of the dictionary against the bridge
of my nose and asks again
Alright…I cry
the vowels are in the closet

next to the patent leather boots.
She uses the dictionary
to make a stool
and ties me to it.
She puts the boots on
and leaves
with the vowels.

- m.r. kidd

Freckle on Lisa

So little in life
claims perfection;
flaws demand detection.
Yet seamless work
artists apply
to deny a crooked nose.
But, bantam and lone,
like a dimple in stone,
yours is no mole or imperfection.
In more than dreams
I dream to kiss
the freckle in your complexion.

- m.r. kidd

Freckle Song (mp3) - Chuck Prophet

'(Till) I Kissed You (mp3) - The Everly Brothers

The Pathetically Honest Romance Novel

It’s the same ol’ song and dance;
there’s always a girl with a heart
like an oven, a designer peasant skirt
and a history of just so much hurt not to be
pathetic. The boy is thick
with repetitious morals
but has a fantastic house
and there’s always an English country-

side where he ponders sermons
to give his victims, to make hurts
hurt more, tongue his war wound, his leaving
woman, over whose body his salt swarms.
A thing most strange and uncanny

as pink paper-maché over the breasts
and sawed-off arms on the sewing mannequin.
In the attic the girl must sleep in when not
cleaning she reads the signs that the story
was forged from another language,
the setting changed, the dates updated,
and only he’s there to say he’d never lie

to the fiery wrenched-up girl
on whom the story cannot center
because she’s playing in the parlor
a bourée, a dance that does not exist
in English. She sees past him in the pink
paper filled with Spanish or French or some
other words that are not real and says, God
this story really sucks, and starts
ripping out the pages, the pages before
which the real pathetic
heart is breaking.

- m.r. kidd

Love Junkyard (mp3) - Rickie Lee Jones


The Last Time I Saw Richard (mp3) - Joni Mitchell

What the Cats Aren’t Saying

Of all the ones we bind and morph
they are the ones who mind
us having speech the most. Listen how,
when they stare you down, they scrape
off insults with their tongues.
How they choreograph their every stride
to say they know when and how we’ll die,
saving breath for that triumphant cry.

What conniving prima donnas; hairdos
perfect, licked down in mom-spit, rubbing
body smells on our black pants and spewing
fanatic propaganda. Grace they’d trade in half a sec
for a leather jacket and a nickel plated
Colt held in your face. But here in my office
their fury is patted down and hinted at
only when they shudder back

disgusted at fate’s tone of voice,
despite the scads of cat-prayers ever spoken,
because religions like us to see our souls as cats,
leaping from high to higher wire performed
with pluck and in power of the dark.
Imagine how they must feel:
cock-blocked, cheated, mocked by god.
What they’d like to do is cuss up a storm
but they’re held to tact and dangerous body language.

- m.r. kidd

Stray Cat Strut (mp3) Stray Cats

Speak To Me (mp3P Rocco Deluca & The Burden

Numb Hand

It still pinches, points and picks,
but it won’t play what I love.
How I used to baby it, clean it,
marvel at its tricks. Now it’s just
where part of me ends.

I’m going
to slice it off and wrap it
in birthday paper; it’s a pretty gift.
I hope you can use it for something,
a paperweight, indicate directions,
pin it on your blouse,
“I’m With Stupid.”

It can’t feel
what it’s done to me. Dumb lump
didn’t drop a tear as I handed away
all my veined guitars.

In the bathroom
while I cried I thought it hardly
worth my ass as I snotted out
a laugh. I can’t trust a thing like that.

Be careful around it, it is deadly.
Look how it scratched out my heart.
I would give you both
but I still need my other hand
to cover up that hole.

m.r. kidd

Amputee (mp3) Scott Matthew


The Hand That Held Me Down (mp3) Two Gallants (black sessions)

Hand Made In Spain

Her body is smooth as bone
and smells alive, old, strong
rosewood, cedar, ebony and pearl.
Her butt and bout cut, bound
and twisted, beat back
against my three points of touch;
sternum, thighs, both in and out.
Left fingers, one, two, three,
then four, grip her flat black neck
wider than all electrics. My stronger hand
hovers just above her hole.
Index, middle, ring, and thumb
exchange just so much pressure
and release each other to rest
before the next execution.

But sitting with beauty is never easy;
a maze between wanting and hearing
skin rip, sweat run, the muscle twitch.
Though my freakish posture veils
any real violent motion; the hammer
on must be like breathing.
Exercise secures the pattern.
Sharpened tools and sacrifice
to neatness over speed
have made my awkward habits
come alive until I die.

In space kept humid
I tilt, stroke, flail and pluck
a mass of sound from her.
Such work is worth some blood
and little care for more.
For more time, for tone,
I sit alone behind her body
to which my hands are nailed.

- m.r.kidd


Las Abejas mp3 Augustin Barrios


Dark Eyes mp3 Alexander Gluklikh

How To Drink Single Malt Scotch

Dear Cable Company,
I was cracking a 12 year old
double wood Balvenie when the news arrived,
it’s digital tidings sheer and edgy as slit skin,
blasting twenty plus and still counting bodies into my family
room. Some were disgusted by the smoky appearance
and the peaty smell. Others babbled about
retirement planning and hair loss.
I told them to keep out
of my scotch, that I prefer to breath
it in from a tulip glass because it splashes the spirit
onto the tongue. Riedel and Glencairn make quality variations.
I said I didn’t need them,
to consolidate my credit card debt. But they stuck, staunchly
bleeding trails down my glass, some streamed out louder,
especially during station breaks, so I threw water
at them but they wouldn’t come out of the carpet
which made the dog bark a bunch and the neighbor yelled
to turn it fucking down. Yes, you should stick in your nose
and gently agitate the glass but
single malt drinking is more rewarding when free
of distractions. That it numbs the brain is a documented
desire but it’s smoother without little murders
floating in it. And suicide bombers, demanding religions,
teenage sex with guns, primaries on different dates, and all that
money? Granted, I like to pair up with a plump
cigar but these awful things might be better kept silent.
The evening news should not need washing down and those three kids
that were drowned and their mother are messing up my hot tub.
You must understand this isn’t what I ordered. I wanted Disney and MTV.
And someone else’s child is still missing. And I know it’s a lie
about not eating the sushi, oysters and dark chocolate I wanted
with my whiskey which is now oddly empty. Please
cancel my subscription. In the box you’ll find the body
pieces that remain, some toys made in China, a glass of rain
from the sunny weekend you promised, one emptied bottle of scotch
and those little dead bastards who claim they didn’t do it.
Please remit $70 for the scotch. I get giddy just thinking what my loss
in business will do to your day.
It almost makes one murder worth another.

m.r. kidd

Whiskey, Whiskey - Tim Hardin (mp3)


Whiskey Straight - Rocky Votolato (mp3)


All text, prose, poetry and written material are the legal copyright of "Michael R. Kidd" - © "Michael R. Kidd, ADG, LLC" 2007. All rights reserved. The poems posted here are copyrighted and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Too Unemployed to Buy Your Love This Year

Dressed in new shoes I stride
through the mall. Pants and coats
turn away from my ass looking to
time me out for the work I walked away from.

Perhaps I should have bought that better
suit in the shop by your office,
the one spun by immigrant hands and laid away
on funds I owe in windfalls.

Just ahead of me more holidays parade.
Down this long hall of same ol' shit,
I notice a gathering of viciously inane
bargains I'll have to pass
getting to the end of this long spree
with no transaction between us. Good,
because I look so rich in these shoes.

m.r. kidd

Gift Rocco Deluca & The Burden (mp3)