Thoughts in a Laundromat
Travis Blair

It's ten o'clock
at the laundromat, the one
with the upside down sign.
Only an hour left
before I run out of time
before tonight's entertainment ends.

I play the laundry slot machine
put in a dollar and ching ching
out come quarters.
I never lose but I never gain
which is better than
the Las Vegas games.

I read ten pages
in a Hemingway book
white elephants over in Spain
then switch to a chair
where I can sit and stare
at drier TV, the thick round
screen on a channel tossing
cheerleaders into the air.
A juggler drops them
into a vat of brightly mixed
wash and wear paints.

I make two new friends
a plump brown-eyed boy disguised
as a choo-choo train
on a track that circles
the machines, and a young
woman in a see-thru top
poured into the tightest jeans
I've seen since the last
Mavericks game.

I go outside and smoke
two cigarettes chased with a Coke
and watch the cars
on Camp Wisdom Road
driving through the Burger
King line before the late
night locals go
home to eat alone.

As I go back inside.
I hope I get up the nerve
to ask the blue jeans queen
for her number
before she folds and leaves.
Those are the sexiest
front-load bras
I think I've ever seen.

I wonder why the laudromat
closes at eleven
and sends us into the night?
I guess seven dollars
is a fair price to pay for clean
clothes stacked in a basket
of warm folded dreams.
Goodnight, blue jeans queen.

A Leaping Lament
Travis Blair

Fat Cats live nine lives
And Buddha lives in Cambodia
The River of Living Water
Runs not through rustic woodlands
Singing a Mother Nature song

I never had three wives
I was never one of the Wise Men
But once I looked like Jesus
The Old Rugged Cross in my car
Until Chicken Little's sky fell down

This town is armed with knives
The street gangs are invincible
My friend the Muslim's daughter 
Smokes roaches in her waterbed 
Yet I shall fear no city evil 
For there's a lizard in my head 

Bring me tens and fives 
The twenties are all counterfeit 
The milkman comes a calling 
And all my dreams have fled 
Somewhere south of Nine 

Buzzards build their hives 
While the honeybees are praying 
The acid rain is falling 
On the Home of the Brave 
The young men are all dying 

And I've run out of rhymes 
I cannot pay my bills 
My girlfriend is a lesbian 
The Publicans storm the Hill 
And I am not a Fat Cat 
And Buddha up and died

Pretensions
Travis Blair

She cut herself
and called me on the phone
her sad red blood dripped slowly
from the receiver onto my wrist
flowed like spilt strawberry juice
and pooled in a sticky mess
under my elbow onto the desk
and I silently wept, trying to keep
my pain for her a secret
but she knew, and she wept too
silently, just like me
we both pretended not to know