Adam Stone
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Adam Stone is Cape Cod's Spoken Word Poet Laureate. A veteran of seven national slam teams, he toured the country with Morris Stegosaurus in 2003 on the Poetry is Gay Tour, and was a member of the 2000 SlamAmerica Tour sponsored by Grand Marnier. Having served his time as bartender, waiter, retail slave, liquor store manager, jester suited fudge maker at a renaissance faire, odd jobber, and paperboy, he's currently trying to make his living as a writer. After several chapbooks, he releases his first professional looking collection of poetry, "Target Practice" on SonofWordsPress in the fall of 2005. His
first prose collection, "Puppy Victims of Pet Store Fires" is due out in 2006.
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"Fireflies Dissolving"
My mother said my brain was like a tooth in a bottle of Coke
That my father wouldn't stop shaking
There are fireflies in the Mason Jar
But no one poked airholes
The light is going out
It's 3AM
I am standing outside Jeffrey's window
Watching fireflies burn gasoline multiplication tables across his forehead
I almost believe I can protect him
But the sirens are blowing in my ear
It itches
But my hands are snakes
I've got mice thoughts
Sometimes
The streetlights hit me at just the right angle
The cabs slow down to hail me
I can almost believe I'm ok
That the bricks aren't slightly out of alignment
That the park benches aren't covered in barbed wire
There are no more brick fisted frat boys
No more mace breathing pigs
No more white vans with my father's overhand glare
Daddy please don't make me kiss that man
I'm a good boy
I only pink when you tell me
Don't blur my sleeping children
Daddy I'm a better man than you
A better father
Even though I run from daylight and my son
Jeffrey I'm sorry I can't be a throw overhand father
Sorry I run from multiplication tables and you
I still remember folded towels made beds spotless kitchen
I never stopped reflowering your mother with my eyes
And you my child are night time
When lucidity and I come together
My brain is not a tooth
It's the Coke dissolving the world around me
Even with airholes fireflies can't live in a jar for long
Jeffrey I'm sorry I throw snakes
You're a lucid boy
I'm a siren
My father is the brick fists and multiplication tables I run from
Night time is the comforting kiss of fear
These are my nighttime gasoline streets
But this is not my daylight city
People can seem me in daylight
I can't see the van's overhand glare but I know it's there
Daylight is too lucid
Daydreams are escaping cubicle work early
Making the baseball mundane superhero catch
Reflowering the girl with boredom
Night dreams are fireflies devouring this glass jar city
The headlights punching air holes in the city streets
Jeffrey I love you always
I'm sorry I can't watch you throw overhand pick you up at school
But at night
I stand beneath your window and watch your dreams
I almost believe I can protect you from them
Jeffrey I must leave you soon
It's 4:30 AM and the sky is filled with gasoline
Here comes the sun
"Chasing Cliches"
Every morning, I wake up to the sound of a bird
slamming into my bedroom window. Some days
it's hard to go outside because my doorstep is waist deep in bird corpses.
My mother walks into sliding glass doors.
It's never serious enough for admittance to the hospital,
so my father and I never felt bad about laughing at her.
She broke her ankle,
chasing down a volley I shouldn't have hit
to her. Laughter wasn't medicine enough
to alleviate the guilt. I feel sometimes.
But today
I crossed my fingers too tight,
and now they're asleep.
Fists numb from punching drunk brick walls. If they even exist,
souls don't have windows. Birds don't fly
into bricks.
"Deconstructing Freedom"
My grandmother had wings before they were fashionable Before goth
girls sprouted them from shoulders during adolescence Before the sky
was streaked silver with 747s my grandmother had wings
Late night sessions over sighet transylvania kept the reich in the
dark as to whether my grandmother was jewess or vampire bat Her first
long distance flight landed her in normandy france where an aunt and
an uncle clipped her wings Rewarded her with tale bread for parroting
back unfamiliar words
Words became her prison Warned of the high price of speaking her
native tongue she studied english and french Grew up to find her voice
in verse Compounding sentences with elie wiesel Directing clauses with
steven spielberg Drawing conclusions with art spiegelman
But my grandmother is quick to correct poets who misalign flight with
freedom Flight is late night cold crossing through unfamiliar
landscapes Flight is the deafening pulse of silent fear Flight is
waking up remembering seven sibling ascending over auschwitz
backflipping over birkenau Words that still catch in the throat of my
trilingual grandmother
When maya angelou asked her why the caged bird sings my grandmother
just laughed Any bird with a beak and a little ingenuity has the key
out of their cage
Words fly dazzlingly Though they are never free
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