The following poems are contained in Tom's latest hardback poetry collection
WAITING MY TURN TO GO UNDER THE KNIFE.
Click on the book jacket for ordering information.


My Friend Ernie, Trying to Light a Match
by Tom Piccirilli

I got there and Ernie was trying to light a match with the house
full of gas. He'd had two beers and a couple of shots of Tequila
but his nerves were gone and it had been enough
to topple him over the rim.

I was going to do it, he said. But I can't get my fingers
to work anymore. My coordination is off.

Dude, I said,
you invite me over for a beer and you're gonna blow up
the house? Have I
offended you that bad?

No, he said, I just forgot you were coming over.

You called me ten minutes ago. It's the kind of thing you ought
to remember.

Sorry, but I haven't been thinking clearly lately.

But he had, I saw, been pretty sharp about that. If you're going to go
out in a furnace of blue flame,
taking with you all that you've got,
the unsold manuscripts and the wasted paintings,
the photos and the dying plants, the busted
toilet tank, the debts and the diarrhea,
the wrinkled spank mags you've had since you were fourteen,
the dirty windows and the bed
your ex- never made,
you'd want to go out with a friend.
For love or for mercy,
for repressed jealousy or old times, for the women
once shared and those who weren't,
for the stray dogs fed,
the brotherhood of shared pain,
the anguish of alliance,
our family of lost priests who can speak the word
of the Lord
no more.

I took away his matches and turned off the gas,
laid one into his gut until he was coughing blood,
grabbed the Tequila,
went home and called a girl from high school
I hadn't talked to in ten years. She was just sitting there
with nothing to do.

Big G & Little J
by Tom Piccirilli

Her writer's group meets in my living room again, 1 pretty boy
know-it-all living on his mother's wages, 2 ex-beauties gone to fat
who only get out of the house by leaving
their oldest kids in charge. 1 teenage stripper who has found
the answer to life in Grisham and King, 2 who come by only
for the wine and cheese and to steal my DVDs.

Today, the letter opener opened 3 overdue bill notices,
a royalty check for $12.47, a fan letter from a professor
hoping I'll stop by his class,
and 2 pieces of hate mail saying
heaven is going to put out my eyes soon,
Big G & Little J are gonna take me to the mattresses.

Between chapters I turn an ear to listen–
they're slagging on Joyce and Jackson,
ripping up Ellison and Pynchon,
discussing how DUNE was a brick of ash, how
Poe never learned to put it down unfettered.

The letter opener is all point without weight.

Today, the phone brought 1 bill collector to my ear, 1 guy asking
if he could send me my books to sign and return
if he paid postage (I will),
15 calls for the kids, and 1 woman
who wants to sell me a prayer rug
that Big G & Little J personally blessed in the back of her church.

Between chapters I turn an ear to listen–
somebody spilled wine on the carpet and
it won't come out, somebody farted and
made the rest of them giggle, somebody
wants the teen stripper to let it all loose.

The phone is all weight without any substance, the battery
is running low.

Today, the front door was filled with the solid presence of
1 amiable old lady serving papers, 1 salesman who wants me
to go digital, 1guy who wants me to help put his son
through college by buying cookies, 2 nine-year-old girls
who want me to help put them through college by buying cookies,
1 guy who only glares at me, silently,
while I glower
back, silently.

Between chapters I turn my ear to listen–
they can't figure out how to get my surround sound
system to work, how dirty and disgusting old man Buk was,
how thin I used to be in the photos on the mantel, how
the teen should get implants if she wants the real cash.

The door hangs on hinges of whispers,
the knob can't keep anyone
out, but it serves to lock me in. The guy who glares is still standing
in the yard,
looking up at my window
and I'm looking down. We're gonna be at this
for a while longer.

My Grandfather's Fear Cut Loose Through the Decades
to Perch at the Foot of My Disheveled Bed
by Tom Piccirilli

We must take into account
that which drove the old man mad,
what it was that clipped Nunzio's wings
and sent him spinning down through the black branches
into the white room of decimation. I have only one photo
of him, standing dapper in his suit,
hair slicked, shoulders rigid like he was daring me,
all these years later, to pass judgment. To look at him
and say, There,
there's the first broken link in my chain,
Old Boy Nunzie, he's the first one of us
who went completely insane, the fire in his eyes
isn't glory, boys,
it's not stars,
he doesn't see his wife beside him
or his children, my mother and her sister, 5-6 years old,
waiting for Papa to return,
still waiting for their
clack puppets and Christmas toys.
No,
he's watching a rat
that roams around his sick room,
circling his bed all night, each eternal hour
leading into another week, another month, an endless year
until at the dawning of a new world war, with his lungs
full of pneumonia,
the rat of final repentance, bathed in rapture's light,
took its ensuing pity.
Finished him off,
and began its long restless wait
for my birth.

ALL POETRY COPYRIGHT TOM PICCIRILLI 2004

TOM PICCIRILLI'S ATTORNEY, PICTURED HERE,
WILL NOT TOLERATE COPYRIGHT INFRINGMENT