Author: Andrew Thomas

you have to decide on a career. you have to decide on friends. you have to decide on drinking. you have to decide on spending. you have to decide on drugs. you have to decide on opinions. you have to decide on teachers. you have to decide on principals and beliefs. you have to decide…

Becomes a Cartwheel. An article becomes abbreviated. A word becomes a whisper before it is stopped. A sentence becomes a look. I have seen you here before, haven’t I? Before what I wondered as I exited. A circle becomes a circle. A square is a circle. Or a triangle? I once met a man when…

A tip of the hat. A mark of the dime. A vagrant with a cat. A Mercedes on fire down the street. Or do the words fall inherent of their meanings? Or are their meanings shards of glass and as they fall formless, do they disappear? Only to cut into the mind and how deeply…

Over here beyond the Teflon Presidency, behind the Toys R Us Palace where Self-Determinization is preempted by birth. Beyond the camera’s faceless. Here I came to find Cosby’s Sweaters. Iacocca’s Chrysler Lebarons. The Catalog Showroom. The City Chase. I realized today I’m not depressed. I don’t suffer from Depression. A little bit. What’s really going…

I heard the Beatles for the first time. It was in Tucson at the home of one of my father’s Lab Managers. Bob’s son in Tuscon who was my age played a Beatles’ 45 for me and played drums to it.

Gus Grissom was found in the capsule in Apollo One when they entered, against the cockpit door trying to get it to release. The oxygen had burnt in the fire and suctioned the door in. My father never told anyone in our new city about his earlier company, nor did he ever tell anything about…

Again, lately I am doing dialogue relying on my skills in the background as I recall, with some help, about Jay. Memories came back when I used Jay’s real name and I realized one of those real memories, as I struggle for memories from my PTSD. But Jay was saying goodbye when he gave me…

I changed the title of my last poem. I lost too many friends. I don’t mean to be a priss. And no they aren’t gone. I stopped drinking forty years ago (I actually never drank, perhaps I was just tired) after a party at a hotel when we were all clearing out and a friend…

I had a friend in sixth grade named Jay who bought me a birthday present. I had never gotten a present for my birthday from a school friend. My father had lost his company on Apollo One. And no one in our new neighborhood knew. And Jay had gotten a rocket for me propelled by…

As a child I saw tomorrow in my eyes and that made everything OK. At a Christmas party one of the execs came up to me with his clean white cotton handkerchief and said that I had a buger on my nose and before I could say anything he pulled the wart off my nose…

A red Canary sits perched on the side of a gray tree. It is winter. Am I mistaken or does the hand turn slowly as it lowers to the side. I have seen you in my thoughts. I have whispered you in my prayers. I have left you and come back to you. And today…

There are three elements present at Arlington for John, Bobby, and Teddy. One is Fire, one is Bobby’s voice over John’s shoulder, Rain, and the other is Ted the Earth. The Fourth is the elder brother Joeseph Kennedy and he is the Wind. Perfection being the human Soul is the fifth element when you are…

My brother had a paper mâché’ puppet. The kind of puppet with strings. Have you heard kids joke about… you’re adopted. Or…you were kidnaped. I went one further. The paper mâché’ was a joke, an attempt to hide the evidence of the extortion note.

I had a golden Stingray with a Banana Seat. I had a cowboy hat and a holster and a cap gun. I had a diamond in my eye. I walked the words back until the distortion from the music reached up from the ground. Do you remember me? As a child I was turned around…

I came in. The air was bristle and fine. I came into this world. The camera’s faceless. I forgo a family and friends. What was important is you.

September in the evening with the lawn mowers. El Dorado, Arkansas. September 1971 by the pool. In the eyes of an old man, are the eyes of a child, worn down to his soul. In the hands of an old man is air in the turquoise bruises of time. Medalions of workhorse days. I have…