Leo hosted Mad Dog Midnight Open Mic, an impromptu BYOB poetry night at the now defunct Changing Spaces Art Gallery in downtown Albany, and has been featured at several readings in the surrounding area. His self-publishing efforts have yielded three chapbooks and three “mini-chaps” and, most recently, production and composition credits for the Albany Poets CD “Didn’t I Hear You Read?”
POEMS
DEAR
forgotten altogether the
expanses of your feathers activate
themselves like wings to
think you flew in secret to
regions of superior natures
she flew to hell yesterday it
made me a believer that not
all skypigs are thrown
weeklong whispers of sedation fooled
us into false states of security we
thought we were boatmen carting the
dead for cents a day styx and all
that yes we were really twisted out
of focus again the sidewalk was
the styx the banners of imperceptive
sky were dark ceilings rumbling with
imminent passengers we were timeless and
skeletal until it
wore off
we were paired when we ran out of pennies and
needed a new gig and panhandlers were
hiring and we had that kind of experience empty
pockets and all that yes we needed to go home on
our hands and knees to parent animals who
would mainline us with guilt till our eyes
swelled the rooms frosted with familiar carpets the fingerprints still on the frames the bedrooms torn to pieces with all drawers and secrets exposed on the floor like delicate gears of some pocketwatch of personal history
because sometimes crawling
helps me get a better look
at the sequined crotches of
strangers lost in books they’re made
to read supposedly college helps
the strangled poet breath
self-
esteem and all that yes i know the sire
gave me his trademark eyes and
hair but i’m a different
animal scared by different
animals wagging my english language
tail like there’s no ass to
sniff there and
if
this writing exposes and encloses then
bury me with phrases
save your roses for the pedigree
BLUE EYE BLUE EYE
are the roses on sale today is
the guilt
i’d presented my lover with a
single sunflower in penance
when we fucked that night
i couldn’t help staring at it lean
in its coffeemug vase
thinking it jealous
my burnt yellow cyrano
she liked the excuses for flowers
the fights and the silences
the slender vibrations of
duplicate mornings the
dishonest sentences the absence of
proper warning
were we the children we seemed
opportunistic shadows failing at
the chance
to love and be uncomfortable simul
taneously
in winter we fumbled embraces in
efforts to be cold
in summer and spring we chased
freedoms and abandoned
kindness
our tongues grew burrs
our kisses bled
made us dizzy and spiteful
in fall we fell in some aspect of
love and in fall
we smashed that aspect
i don’t remember birthday gifts but
there must have been some
sometimes in a rare nightmare we
thrash like newlyweds surrounded by vouyeur
bouquets and
cannot reach pitiful climax
i grasp her breast in a dead blue
hand and
tell her i want her to cum
simple enough but it actually used
to work
