Maceo Nightingale ~ Three Poems

FORGOTTEN WHEELS

Abandoned shop­ping carts
roll like patients in a hospital.
Wheels frozen, spin­ning in puddles,
car­ry­ing the bags of
mid­night customers,
gro­ceries for families
liv­ing in burn­ing buildings.

Footsteps echo in the
park­ing lot,
walk­ing down the street,
step­ping over loose receipts.

Inside, a shopper
com­plains about eat­ing fruit,
arms flail­ing like a cir­cus seal.

I have nev­er met you
but the uni­verse has
put you in my thoughts
late at night
and when I go to sleep,
I stare at the ceiling
won­der­ing how i’m
going to pay off my
phone bill from writing
poet­ry and if true love
will find me this year.

Electronic pigeons
flew from the roof
and broke down in the rain.
I bent my back
and slipped a wing
into my coat pocket.

~

AQUATIC NIGHT

The lob­ster men dragged their suits,
whis­tled at pass­ing cars,
spent two hun­dred dollars
on a bag of salty French fries.

Insanity meets the real­i­ty of aging.
Staying up till three in the morning,
watch­ing French sailor movies.
In the garage, feet kicked
up on the table,
eat­ing a bag
of warm peanuts.

You close your eyes to youth
and open them in a retire­ment home.
Nurses push­ing wheelchairs,
doc­tors inject­ing pur­ple needles
into the thin arms
of frail skin.

Night fog swal­lowed innocence,
spat into a bot­tle of sleep­ing pills.
Leather brief­cas­es tucked under beds,
sweaty armpits curled on floor ten.
There is no immortality
in the West.

Born into the world,
appre­ci­at­ed more in the end.
A tooth pulled from a mouth,
hid­den in the basement,
pre­served by dentists
study­ing simplicity.

~

THOSE PURPLE DAYS

A green bus stood on the cor­ner of the street
preg­nant women walked through the open doors
pat­ted stom­achs, engine roared for gasoline.

Rarely leave the house of wet orange walls
sleep till mid­night when spoon fed babies crawl
poked nose in places where it shouldn’t sniff.

Took a whiff of bird feath­ers dipped in gasoline
pigeons flew through a fire
and melt­ed on the cement sidewalks.

Grandma hides her mon­ey in shoeboxes
hun­dred dol­lar bills stuffed with fam­i­ly photos
reached for the cher­ry shampoo
washed hair in the shower.

Black bal­loon stood stuck in a tree
rab­bits hopped under the wheels of trucks
who­ev­er is on my side spots qualities
in me that I will nev­er be able to see.

~

Maceo Nightingale is a writer whose work has appeared in Ghost City Review, The Gorko Gazette, Thirteen Myna Birds, and his debut chap­book, Blood Before Midnight, was pub­lished by Bottlecap Press.