Crooked path
by Dave Aichele


Tell the blue world my white lies.
If it happens, it happens. If not, what then?
I’ve made up my own alphabet, so I could counteract the nonsense I
hear from the language you and I share.
I’m wrapped in what-if questions. So wrapped in them that the
opportunity passes and I find myself walking into a swarm of what-now
questions.
The easiest way to my heart is with coffee and amaretto.
For what it’s worth, the world can eat me.
Keep your global tragedies and major ethical crises off Joe Six-Pack’s
TV. That way he can stop complaining to me about it.
Math is the universal language, but think of how many people don’t
understand it.
Celebrate with Jesus, the joys of aluminum botany and white beards
that give rashes to fat guys like me.
And now, to recite the Gospel according to Charles Bukowski.
By asking me not to judge you, you take from me a basic survival
instinct. It’s in my biology to figure out what you’re all about.
Nobody’s hometown is beautiful.
I’d love to writer her a letter telling her how I feel. But I know the
words will denigrate and turn into a tirade about how badly I want to
nail her.
Stop indulging in these shallow histrionics. Nobody cares.
I want to write an audiobook, but only if Patrick Stewart is available
to narrate it.
You went to the store for milk eggs bread but got Pepsi butter candy instead.
The anonymity of this city is the byproduct of our collective
existential crisis. Millions of people trying to forge their
identities on the same iron—making a lot of noise and yielding such
shoddy results.
The world is not against you. It’s as indifferent to you as it is to
me, my mother, Pauly Shore and the prime minister of Namibia.
So soon after I swooned for you, I ran away to lick the wounds I got
from falling.
Science fair for clowns.
I wanna go back to my personal Eden behind the hornets’ buzz of the
motors, the glass and concrete, and that weird smell that permeates
the downtown.
How do you ruin the fantasy for someone with a medical fetish?
Threaten to sue them for malpractice.
If I keep it under my hat, it’s gonna mess up my hair.
The orioles are dancing around, beneath that sprawling sycamore just
aside from Kelly Drive. Good for them.
She’s a beautiful person, whom not even the sharpest pens of fiction
could engineer. She wears a smile that could embarrass the Dawn.
The skyline always looks better when I sketch it in blue ink.
There is a crooked path between my mind, the pen, and my poetry book.
Each time I navigate it, I come out with scraped elbows and a
bewildered grin.


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Born in South Philadelphia, Dave Aichele is a poet of the inner city, a muse of the streets, a student of psychology and a modern existentialist. He is currently working on a compilation of poems centered around city life and its challenges.