Diary Fiction, Haiku & Two Poems by Wayne F. Burke

 

Dear Diary 

"poorly written fictional diary entries"--review of my poetry by professor, writing at amazon.com.

Snow falls without a sound and covers cars, roads, and houses. Flakes the size of leaves, napkins, pancakes...Draped like white overcoats on the hedge--encrusted on telephone lines drooping from the weight. Three prongs of the tall bush outside my window have bent like old people with scoliosis. Looking like probing wormy creatures out of a Lovecraft story...Two prongs still standing wear snow-caps of Klu Klux Klan hoods. One of the hoods has eye holes. The sky looks like the underside of an aluminum frying pan.

Blew $120 buying scratch-off lottery tickets--after I'd won $150. A kind of madness seized me as I went store to store buying tickets...I feel chastised by my "foolishness." Hope I have hit some kind of gambling bottom. Gambling, for me, is like taking a drink of alcohol: immediately, I need another, another, anudder...Try and get that win again--feel the thrill of a big win (or small one)--chase that thrill--stuff the bills won into my wallet and walk lopsidedly for half a day or so before breaking into the bank, and looking for the thrill, again.

Whenever writing a short story you must become a God. The story you create is the world--your world. Your baby. Him, her, er, fashioned as you will. As you would. And without explanations of any kind. A God need not explane, explain, anything.

The tree outside my window has the Blight--every leaf is spotted--call it Old Blighty, like England, which once ruled the waves, and now rules nothing.

The day has sprung as if from the garden the birds are dive-bombing; the sky gray, as usual around here, but a glimmer of hope on the horizon--white fringe of the albatross rising--slight brightening in the east too, but, in the west, a beastly Himalayan cloud moving in like a manatee in stagnant water.

The clerk at Price Chopper Market tells me she is from Pakistan. Also tells me she speaks Urdu, which, she says, is the same as Hindi. She tells me how to greet someone in Hindi but it is too much of a mouthful for me to repeat, or remember.

Same movie out my window this morning--never changes much. A foot of snow on the roof of the porch below. Big tee-pee-shaped bush next door thinning out: I am worried about that bush: could be the big-C. I dunno. Too thin, wizened; can see right through it. Big Hercules tree of brawny arms in the distance--3 houses away. One day I asked a guy raking around the tree how old the thing was. He stared, owl-eyed; finally said "I don't know," and went back into narcolepsy as I moved on to less interesting subjects,like a mailbox, a catch basin, a hunk of quartz crystal rock on a lawn, and, half a mile distant, a girl's ass (I used my telescopic vision to scope-out).

Big balloon of a Super-Moon shining through my window like nobody's business: that huge bulbous fraud is owning the sky tonight, and me.

 

Art Groupie

 

I am standing at the window of a restaurant across the street from a white church on a lawn of neon-green grass. I used to live in this village. A first floor efficiency, mattress on the floor, a 12-inch black & white television--that I watched the NBA playoffs on (Baltimore Bullets vs: ?). My name then was No One. The girl whose house the art group I belonged to met at called me "Duane" (not "Wayne"). Her boyfriend made drip paintings, drop by drop, from off the top of a bunk bed, canvas on the floor. I was more alone then, at age twenty-one, than ever, and could not stand my own company for long...I called my grandmother long distance just to hear a familiar voice. A heavyset girl in the group invited me to her apartment to look at her drawings of flying penises; I wondered afterward if it was a come-on--maybe I would have responded if she were thirty pounds lighter...Maybe not. Arthur was the star of the group: a small guy, glasses, and always with a tuft of hair under his nose, where he'd failed to shave. He had published a book--a car manual, but--still, none of the rest of us had published anything. I lived in that room all summer; until I became a student again, and lived in a dormitory room.

 

 

from Haiku-You!

 

my repetitive obsessional dreams

make me wonder if

I am human or machine

 

walk past the pizza parlour

just for the

smell of it

 

hot sun

(sing) fi-nal-ly it's happening

Indian Summer

 

sun rose yellow

pose-y in the

sky

 

new summer play: The Ice Machine Runneth

 

Note

 

The sun breaks through

chunks of obsidian

in a stormy vaporous

burst

immaculate exception

of some dreaming

otherness

that speaks in

stupendous

ennobled

images--

Olympian vistas

to house the

gods.

 

 

Poem

 

Diagnosed with terminal

uniqueness, outlook bleak,

character weak (ened); my

book rejected by Moron Publishing

Inc.--they're dinks. Who

wants to go back to the

drawing board? Not I, said

the spider to the fly--besides, I am

sticking to this flypaper like glue, oh

my, the spider broke loose and

valk valk, valked on vy i i...Wearing

eight new shoes.

Wayne F. Burke's poetry has been widely published in print and online (including in LOTHLORIEN Poetry Journal). He is author of eight published full-length poetry collections, one short story collection, and 4 works of nonfiction--including HENRY MILLER, Spirit & Flesh, and BUKOWSKI the Ubermensch, Cyberwit.net., publisher. He lives in Vermont (USA).