3AM – Poems and Stories From the Other Mind
by
Charles Harvey
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Wes Writers and Publishers on Smashwords
3AM – Poems and Stories From the Other Mind
Copyright © 2017 by Charles Harvey
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, organizations, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A poem comes innocently into the world.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Went Crazy
Living Through Your Hair
I CAN’T LIVE WITH OR WITHOUT YOU
The Beast He doesn’t Tell his Friends About
Farting at Funerals and In The Museum of Lies
How To Tell Who the Old Men Are
Sister Brown Had the Last Word
How did it get so late so soon?
Dr. Seuss
Walking through the house naked at 3 a.m.
The air is your garment
Used Trojans cushion your feet.
You hear your roommate making love
With the one, you called Dr. Spock ears.
Your breath and dick brush the door
As you stand at the threshold and wonder,
If you should knock and ask to borrow
A cup of raw sugar? You don’t need much,
Just a cup to dip your fingers in sweet stickiness,
Just enough to still your parched trembling lips.
Who's
up at 2 am?
The midnight oil has long burned out.
Sleep and sex
roll restless
On worn mattresses.
Dreams escape open
eyes
Shadows rattle the door
Three o'clock is the witching
hour
Red ashes float from patios
Eyes across the courtyard
catch you breathing.
You look away only to look again.
You know
your lonely mattress would enjoy the company
And your
lilac-scented air could use some funk.
But the night won't last a
lifetime, so
You slip back into your room and wonder,
What if
there is a man in the moon?
Through the open window, the Crown Plaza beckons
In red neon stars just beyond rooftops and
Night colored trees.
My room is dark, but my window yawns
Letting in silver moonlight.
Masculine voices rise from the balcony below.
The conversation is peppered with
Black bitches and white “hoes.”
Smoke drifts in through the open window.
I have been hypnotized all night
By visions of prancing horses.
My only relief is self-sacrifice.
I drop my pants and aim at the man in the moon.
Those horses rear up on hind legs,
Their tails swat lilies and flies
Their cocks drown the grass.
In a moment, I call his name--
The one in the moon,
Smiles and swallows every drop.
The best time to be naked is 3:00 am
Black velvet skin is the proper attire
As you stand on your balcony
Stroking the night
A little drink, a little smoke, a little lonely.
There ought to be other men
Standing on their porches too
Aiming the red tips of their cigarettes
At you.
A
Good Dog
The
neighbor beats his dog at 3AM
and
he don't stop
I hear her
tail beating the wall
and
he don't stop
She gnaws
on his bone
and he don't stop
All night long she whines
and
he don't stop
Her collar and chain drags the floor
and he don't
stop
She begs at the table
and he don't stop
She rolls over
and plays dead
and he don't stop
She fetches his slippers
and
he don't stop
She trees his birds
and he don't stop
She has
his puppies
and he don't stop
All I hear in the wee hours
is
Bitch, bitch, bitch!
And he don't stop.
At 3 AM I wrote a poem on a horse.
He told me to.
He said, I want my ass to be artfully used.
What they write on tombstones is bullshit
But what you write on the left flank
I’ll let Jesus read.
So I wrote:
Brown hills grow berries ripening
In summer sun. The sweet juice runs down my chin
Turns to wine, sweeter than anything
That started with water.
“The Lord will be offended,”
The horse neighed.
“Who said he would read this poem?”
I asked.
Eating....
corn
on the cob at 3 AM
that
witching bitching hour
when
everything conceived is immaculate
until
the shit hits the fan
nine
months later.
"Oh no baby you can't go back.
I've let you
live
My coat hanger, unbent,
is wrapped in fox
in the
closet."
So here you are five decades later
teeth
gnawing on a corn on the cob
You'd rather it had been
that tall
thing whose hips wrote poems.
But hey these days eating is about
surviving
loving ain't about Jack'd
Oh no not that
I mean
loving ain't ... isn't ... is
slipping between your fingers.
And
now you're finished with the corn
but the cob ... is it a
possibility?
Club
Boyland
So
much lonesomeness after the club
Shuts
off the jazzing lights--
makes
one wonder if there was a point to all
the
flash and glitter and the new shoes
giving
your feet the blues.
After
the hug dap hug dap hug dap
And the bourbon has diluted the
blood,
Three AM is the lonely hour
except for crickets and the
cars
whizzing down the freeway
and your heart beating solo
under the sheets.
You tell your hand to be still,
the night's
seen enough futility
Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps tomorrow.
It’s 3 AM
For
those who can't make it
From the bar
To the car,
There's
love to be made
Under the lamplight
Under the
moon’s sight.
Stars witness, and twinkle
Their blue
bright approval.
Don't worry about the stop sign.
Red is
the color of love
As you get down on this bed
Of satin and rusty springs.
At
3 AM I hide poems under the mattress from him--
The
monster who shakes my shoulders and
Fucks
me in the ass.
“3am is a bad hour for love,” I say.
The
monster doesn't agree.
The
door clicks. “Show me a poem,” he says.
“The lord is my shepherd,
I
shall not want,” I chant
He
backs off.
“Tomorrow is another night,” he says
Before the door rattles in his wind.
Did he say take three pills or thirty?
“There's
a lifetime of difference,” a voice says.
“Doctors
don't know everything,”
I say back.
Who is this that comes in the dark,
Who presses against the small of my back,
And shoulders? I want to kiss him,
But instead I curse and shout the twenty-third psalm,
“The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want!”
Sometimes he leaves right away
And sometimes he lingers longer
Turned on by my struggle.
He digs his fingers into my ass.
I look forward to his coming
Not the Lord’s but this thing
I look forward to him mashing me into the mattress.
When he’s had enough,
I hear bedroom door go thump
And my ass twitches a little.
“A man is a dog and a nightmare,” my mother said once.
I agree, “a dog and a nightmare.”
And I’m lying awake thinking about the duckbill platypus
Is it a duck or beaver? Is it a quack?
Does he love his parents June Cleaver and Donald Duck?
You know she thought about scrambling his ass in a teaspoon
Of hot sauce to hide her infidelity. But the Duck said let it be let it be
How does he eat? Who does he eat?
What’s his politics? Does he talk out of both sides of his mouth?
If it were a man what sport would he play?
I see a career in swimming or Frisbee. What’s his kink in bed?
Hmmm with a mouth like that I bet he’s into spanking.
It’s 3 AM. Why is my dick all up in the duckbill platypus’ head instead of yours?
Why baby? Why?
I drive around at night,
Pick up lonely women,
Take them home, and
Watch them open their doors.
I stand at their windows,
As they throw bras and panties
At my black moon face.
Some tuck in and cuddle bears
Others leap into the quilts and weep.
One does herself better than a man
Could ever do
With no regrets and morning breath residue.
These are the women I drive all night long.
I wonder where I am?
It's
way past 3 AM
and
I would not should not could not
do
what I ought not. So I did not
Then,
I thought, do it anyway.
So
I can, shall, and will
walk unlike an Egyptian
and get my lazy
hee haw
a glass of water.
(note to self: Stop writing)
That Doctor ain’t got no license
He practice love on the bootleg side
Aint got no license
Steals hearts just to get to the ass
When he done got through
You say, Lord my name Skinny Roo
Love you so hard you change your name
You can’t sit down for days
You dance all around the moon
Singing Al Green tunes
Love and happiness
Three days later you touch your cold phone
Look up in the mirror and your heart be gone
You call them digits that doctor wrote down
Ain’t no such number in town.
That doctor aint got no license
Lord that doctor aint got license
There you go trippin out to the graveyard
Looking for some kind of heart to fill up
The hole in your breast
Lord, Lord. That doctor aint had no license at all
You got your 45 just in case
You run into that no license son of a bitch
Love and happiness make you do wrong
All night long.
I Know Why The Caged Bird Went Crazy
The thing you love is a prison,
Hands hold you like iron bars.
You bathe under watchful pastel blue eyes
But hate those eyes and
Want freedom over yonder.
You love to love, because
You fear freedom.
You hate the freedom you love,
Because you know
Wings can fail under the sun’s gaze.
We want to be in one another’s dungeons
Yet are grateful when we’re not.
We curse the night and shadows
Dancing outside our open windows
As we lockdown our hearts.
Living Through Your Hair
I want to live vicariously
Through your locs
Want to feel, see, touch, smell, and taste
All that you do in bed, on a beach,
in the alley, in dark anonymous rooms.
I will be there when your eyes first meet his
When he’s late for that first date
And your flowers go flaccid in the vase.
I will run through your rooms
When he chases you naked.
I will watch him cook your breakfast
Wearing nothing but an apron.
I will scream when he grabs a fist full of me
As he plunges deep inside you.
I’ll sneak out on the balcony with you
To smoke and fuck at 3 a.m.
I’ll let him comfort you when life