Poetry Window Poem of the Week

Introduction to our poetry window, featuring for the next year the selected poems of Johnny H., an East Village poet currently waiting for a publisher. We like his work and are sure that many of you will as well. The poetry window is a real window, at the front of our store. The poems are in a well lighted place and can be read at any time. Not a bad destination if you can’t sleep at night. You can send comments to poetjohnnyh@yahoo.com   Poem of the week (this week there are two):   

       Patriarchy

What is that we heard
Tapping with the pileated
Taking girls from school
To teach them lace
On quinceanera

          Pure Joy

Nothing pleases me more
Than to see him
Wearing the shirt that I got him
With the heart on the sleeve
Tucked in with our secrets
Walking alone on the street
Under a light smoking a cigarette
On the way to my house
Not seeing me drive by
Eating my toast

The following poems are Poems of the Week from our archives of Johnny H poems: 

                Gringo Trail Mix

It’s not like you had no introduction at all
Your laundry, their laundry on plastic ropes outside
Rooms with a single fan no plug, a lamp
The undergarments those the kind they wear
Over where did they say it was–Iceland, that’s right,
Where Odin and Thor arrive on puffs
Confounding language no way
To even begin picking out words
For lust, let alone love or hot
Unlike where you come from
The three walking hand in hand
Along streets paved with nuance and idiom
Tripping you up on the way to the beach

So you pass by them at the Tierra Mia porch cafe
With your loose ends from the night of
Green margarita words at the standing bar
A side eye then would have been a latent
Victim to magical realistic entire white skies
Orion on the edge of the bed salting limes
What now remains of tiempo del fuego
Is supplanted by a Mayan woman, serpent tray,
Serving black beans and eggs inside tortilla rolls
You shouldering by next to the semi-crazed Dutch
Magician you met on the hunt for Mezcal worms

 

                   Proofs

Out here on the sequined bay
He does not wish to think of loneliness
So he thinks of nothing in the dark
Except how swells lapping the breakers
Are both systolic and diastolic
That the cove like the heart
Ventures into mathematic quests
Women from his past who no longer reminisce
Who have decidedly left so many years before
Are over there in the studied black
Calling to each not by name, but instead,
With given sines cosines and tangents

What has been laid to rest inside
A sort of Schrodinger box is the moon.
However, Jupiter is steady on its course
So his walk of black roses is thereby lighted
He carries his shoes over mollusk shells
Through the brine mashes of spicules
Toward the day and the new star and cove
Where breakfast waits at a round table
Overlooking a green sea of perturbation
Hopefully, like his wish of the past fortnight,
A fresh encounter is seated near.
Even so, as it is over many yesterdays,
As it must be with buttered scones
Here there are also tables for interlopers,
Round as well, sixteen into four groups,
Arranged according to packing theory

 

             The Mouse and Gauguin

The mouse lost outside my window is hard to watch
Jittering and gamboling along the ledge
Stopping sniffing solace from icy blue air
Which in a different circumstance
He could actually enjoy or so it seems
Given the parameter of glinting whiskers
Back and forth up and down in the early sun
Pausing once to pat the aluminum frame
One four toe little foot
Touch back no touch backs
Flitting otherwise, nose tacking steady
As if he has one over on Icarus–the ledge
Oh the faithful fateful shelf how did it get there
Patched with slippery tar
Fifteen stories above the street
How does one get anywhere he seems to say
How are you there in your bomber underwear
Why this Dante, why are you not reading
Hydrology in the Roman Empire
The Reuse of Human Remains as Compost
How Wall Street Collapsed
Came Back Collapsed Again
Why did you not stay in the part of your life
When she walked faithfully along
All you had to do to deserve her
Was to keep the house tidy
While saying the important words
The kind which drags their true meanings
Along behind, say, over the persian rug
Which she so prized
You went and done it, damn it
Damn it still the question begs
Where did we come from
Where are we
Where are we going

 

     American Politics

They rouse the common man
Ask how the fickle weather is
And how would you like it to be
They promise elevators to galaxies
Banquet offerings every day
Funnel clouds rhapsodizing
Architectural prowess of the birds
For better or worse

Elder women tire of endless dreams
Years of sharing births and deaths
They speak of lighting fires
In the midst of nighttime rage
Cheering on the stuporous masses
Such banter the badgers warn us is meant
For those in lands of busy souks
Or on frothing islands of paradise past
Men to men speak symbols of intent
In quiet nights on motor buses
The virgin hanging off the mirror

 

         Quiet Valley

We are vain to insist our thinking
Processes in parallel with the complexity
Of t-cells and the bread we have made
That our key to the stars is on the ring
With the garage door button
We forget the first man was a silent one
Pursued by a dog with no name
Who came down from hills
Bearing smooth stones
Wrapped in putrid skins
Venturing out onto
A heat wavering valley also unnamed
Yet he was waiting for the name which
The farmer would one day notate
To the miller for his cart of grain
The men who would follow, into space
Thus looking out onto the valley
From that lofty epitome pointing
Explaining the name as a natural one
Earned by fate and death of men,
Heroes processing the earth and sky
Legend on a map a metaphor applied
To all the good deeds yet to be done

 

                             Parity

Lamp poles are the watchful fern stems
Over the forest floor of the city
Backpacks walk around routine messes
Canker mud cakes bruises and boils
(Not so much ecological destruction
Than unwillingness to tender a ledger)
There is much forgiveness
In a prickly land where the other nature
Surrenders to the now little things in life
Like entire pigeon flocks attacking
Two paper plates of rice set near to curb
Picture ready picture perfect lungeful
dogs
A mix of beating wings the single bark
Not unlike a golden eagle cautious eye
Nested above the city of the river

 

   One Day They Will Run Out of Clay

Well, you can’t feel Proust (neither can I)
So many good things you do just right
Getting the sunshine to make the beds
Sitting all day painting kites on the ledge
No fever or chills over unpaid sin
Are they allowed to hold it against you
Because in the development
Of your creative urges
A bolt was left inside

There is a certain motivation
You say you must have
Only once ever did you push someone
Down from a tree to watch them land
On solid ground so you told the law
You were checking the time
You love all the animals
Especially the cows

 

  The Muse Has Walked Off the Boat to Address Us

She still walks in beauty
Even though Robert Burns died
All those years ago
The contents of her bag have mostly changed
Save for the comb to render her hair
Out of Medusa’s state, mostly,
To its reassuring fairness, warmly
Lasting not forever, but until
The sun in its inevitable wanderings
Passes into shade
At such point the confident song
Of her voice startles
The usually complacent air
She parting the way
For new poets to write

 

       Development of the Posterior

Your mental starts out
Like everyone else
Kicking and cycling
Waiting for milk
One string of red beads
Comforts your eyes
More you want
Please sir may I have
Another like the one before
Maybe this time
Add a little mustard

 

      Conspiracy Theories

You are full of beliefs
As am I
Yes there could be saucers in space
Who am I to say not
How can anyone really know
How can anyone really know anything
Except what they hear
Walking through the pines
I will tell you it is the wind
Waving the trees,
Sparrow sayings in their little riffs
Sparrows replying we know
They do not waste words
You can tell me what you want
On and on till the sky falls

 

                    Optimism

You recognize it following the happy person
But not always; sometimes it approaches from the front
Meeting all kinds on the street on the way to the bank
Or wedding hall or with purple crayons for the sky
It always carries a half-full thermos
A place for the wretched to hang their hats
Hall keys for saints to gather souls
Directions to the mall for buying clothes
A book of plaints for making a case
A pile driver for stumbling blocks
A wrapped mystery gift just for you

 

“Nature abhors bare soil”—Gabe Brown, farmer, hero to many

   Ode To the Winter Grass

Somewhere in your DNA
Are memory twists of twelve hour sun
Somewhere in your very presence
Are lessons
Written in song to the rest of us
We who choose our friends
From those standing far away
Our cats from serendipitous encounters
Our wives from dangerous ledges
Though we may live in wide warm
places
All is under burdened roofs
Who are we to inform you
In your jail packed XX to a cell where
A left foot and knee are fine company
A symphony rising at every turn

 

               The Other Side

The grass could actually be greener
You would have reason to find the gate
Set up business at their roadside stand
Sell potting soil as part of the scene
Light fireworks to consummate your getaway
From learned lessons now turned to dust
The old pale now tinged with rust
Serendipity turned to stone like the biblical
Walking down the road looking back at smoke
Feet tripping over feet in the proverbial human
Race toward winter and mildewed thoughts
You made me think about it I suppose they’re right
What good are new shoes that don’t even fit

 

        Stage Four

All it takes is a nibbler
Searching for warmth
To topple the blocks
Your years have built
Taking others by hand
To work things out
The dog’s leash
The cat’s desire to eat
How far you have come
From seeds of suggestion
The gravel the paste the paint
The pain has found happiness
In a glue trap
Inside your omentum

 

          Teenagers

With a good telescope
On a moonless night
With the best of insight
A warm oven
A loaf of bread
You can entice young stars
With your spiral arms
Maybe not to wash dishes
But to invite you
To the farthest reaches
Carry you along
As an exoplanet
Their gravity waves
Keeping you young

 

         Occupation

You came through at night
My intent was to sleep
It was insane but your zipper
Made the sound like oasis
Crazy onomatopoeia
You whispered in my ear
Promises of greatness
I tried tuning
To where I belonged
But you said you had oranges
We would share
I lay back watching you
Decimate my village
Burn the crops

    

        Casino Mouse

If I could use my comb
On your blood-matted hair I would
If I had been there to say the Words
Before you managed to limbo
Into the non-humane trap
Being defenseless and without sin
Why, I would have done everything
Even opened my jar of luck
And rubbed some on you
However
I have already spent my excess capital
Playing blackjack through the night
Running probabilities to the very end
Have thus concluded that all of us
Are either coming or going
Yet
Despite such knowledge of the flesh
I still bet even money on your dreams
Of slithering out from under roulette
Finding the way home to your children

 

     Mangroves

I with our one paddle
Alter our drift
Complying with local law
Leave places undisturbed
For the pelicans to dive
The spoonbill to wade
The swamp owl to wait for night

It is we who have brought
Our loneliness to this place
Not the other way around,
That these figments
Dipping their claws
Welcome our interpretive gaze
Our puny categorizations.
Our only business out here
Is beneath the checkered flag
Moving us along

 

     Having Come From Far Away

A scant throw from the path
Through the old stand pine trees
A meteorite steams
Shiny hexagon parts
Iron burnt rust
New car smell
The unfairness of a sand landing when
There is a universe bubbling
With so many possible elements
In a heroic plunge across time
Deviation to this injurious moment
Now to be taken off in a lunch box

 

         Endless Beauty

I have been picking the world apart
Trying to find even one thing
That fails to amaze me
To see if I can find a special case
Where I do not marvel at its place
Let’s jump right to car crash
For heaven’s sake
The one that came from nowhere
A singular person–could be anyone–
Thinking nice thoughts
Behind a leather wheel
On her way home from the job
One of six nights a week
For seven years count them
One two three and so on;

The shadow in the morning dim
Everyone’s beast to blame
The warning crow
That flew across her path
Pictured here dipping low

Who knows what nature meant
The pond over the earth
Stagnant green for months a year
Algae blooms are bad to some
Bad for the fish
Good to cyanobacter
Slaking its hunger
500 dissertation pages;

I could go on and on with awe
Sometimes, though, I personally
Feel the pressing need
To be slammed and splintered
For example, your vague apology
Old words, different context
Testing the limits
Of the human ability
To both grant and deceive,
The nuance settling at the fore;

 

      Closet Full of Clothes

They walk around with dignity
Summer khaki winter jeans
Shouting out alpha logos
Cool reds or practical greens
Wagging tails on the street
Lonely though and sorrowful
Tribal nature never goes
How is it their model
Will be chosen from among
All the other fabricants
Before short life order
Passes over a final border
Leaving wonder in its place
If you must, then ask
Is it such a gift to match a hat
To be the “this” he likes on me

 

                         Tools

The annual summer bricklayer picnic
Grew larger over time, peaked,
Until the sand began to weather
The caterers had once sent seven trucks
Children with glittering branded bottle openers
Prowled next to stacks of red and green,
Soda pop potions in rattling wooden crates
The husband-wives tossed eggs
With requisite hints of spitefulness

This year the crows moved in
They had their fun center stage
Using magic forest symbols
To create their own reciprocities
Could not shake, however,
Why the gleam had gone away
Wondering if it were some sort
Of disruptive contrivance
Unintended fallout of their own making

 

          My Problems

Sometimes it becomes a bit much
To hear another one’s grievances out
Into the room spilled onto the floor
Splayed like a kitten chasing a tail
That never ends happy
Nor satisfactory, just waiting
For the next opportunity
Food, rest, flicker

 

  Not a Single Letter z Has Been Harmed

Prudence out in regular clothes
Non-eventful normal day
Sock holes mended no untoward agenda
Requisite apologies already said
48 payments overspread
Clean slate dirty street Main and Maple
Rain clouds onto treetop wind comes in
Stocking cap the sidewalk ends
Prudence onto overpass wends
There was that time when she was ten
Swiped a twist-o-flex on behest of friend
Honking cars diamond brooches
Surgery scar that never blends

 

          Life and Fertility

I watch you standing there reading
The poem on the wall
More, I watch the man beside you,
Waiting though not impatient,
In a way also reading,
Though not words any more
Than the metaphors
Running through you are words

He is studying you,
In your yellow sun suit, adjusting
First the hair off your face,
Then the snorkel mask, he hears
The strap snapping in place.

You slide into the water
Bite down on the mouth piece
He watches the end of the tube
Glide across the wake

Though that too fades
As the dolphins come to greet.

 

                 Girlfriend at First Base

I am the one in your life who you can flip through
So slow because you do not have to imagine
Back against the wall last out game number seven
My name is not glory but regular Ethel
Cheering you on those nights when no one will take you
Your hand on the ball you know how I mean
Curling the pages shifting your eyes
The great ones they echo into the years
Stretching bloopers onto grass why is it
They charge so much for Honus Wagner

 

The Second of Two Poems About
Random Children
(The “Why Is It” Poem)

Her children create poetry
How is it she’s so blessed
They hang off monkey bars
Kick shoes into abyss
She knits, the pursuit of math, beyond
So that they may contemplate
Their deaths one day, maybe
Why the vole squints
When the sun comes on

At the edge, whatever it is,
There is hope, anyway,
That these children
Will find the words
Why is it always the edges
To where we go impoverished
Abandoning our youth
Why do we search
For that only one
To bring along
When there is no way
To tell her what it means

Why is it we ever reach
When we know which rules
We have been set against
Wake up, love, go to sleep
Is there kindness
To explain it all
Maybe waiting beyond the edge
In one basket (eternal happiness alert)
We will find a paradise
Where all the knitting goes

 

     Magnetic Navigation

You too can flick your head
Just like a bird
A lowly sparrow let us say
Scouting here pecking there
Warding off a pestilence
Have you ever been
To an evergreen fair
How did you judge the tarts
On which rides did you go
Did you set your wayfinder
To zero o’clock
Due west of Lent
Was it a pleasant day
Did you listen for
The sounding waves
Three o’clock, to the right
Twelve above the shelf
Did you hear six below
Did you watch the trucks unload

 

 

       Serendipity

I am fortunate to have lived
In the days that you lived
Had I arrived at a mismatched time
I would have otherwise been cast
Into a sea of characters
Sketches, each having one bit of you
Someone with a warm hand
I could take for direction
Another with a forehead so smooth
In dark on the edge of the bed
There would have had to be one
Who cooked so well
That a little would rub off
Where I could create great feasts
I walk out with you along the beach
Thrilled at how the stars cluster so
Confidently night after night

 

     American Crowbar

Phineas Gage the rabbit
They always pull from the hat
On the brain test
A multiple choice answer
To spike in the head
The very next question
About mindfulness therapists
Climbing inside you to change
Your lightbulb from 60 to 40
You should see somebody
Something wrong here
This is not right
You hear
Dragging your blanket
Through puddles of mud
Along your well-worn path
This is me
You say
Breathing subtle
Developing affection
For cold shanks of metal

 

                 Hiving Day

It was marked on a calendar of sorts
The moon the night before into itself
The queen awoke to fan her workers
Trains passed by on a single track
There was wonder of where I would be right now
If at that moment I had chosen to excuse myself
From his embrace
Would my children be aligned like this
Lifting the comb, scraping, or
Might there only be one, is that possible
Can you gather honey without a smoker?

 

    Not Another Handsome Face

God’s gifts are strange,
But apparently my brain
Has hips smart women like
How the hemispheres twist
When I walk through
Arabian Nights or Days
Of my misbegotten youth
Pretty and dinner they make for me
I read them baritone recipes
I tell them this is serious
Heathcliff raging
We must wait for him to calm
As the wild moors thirst for her
That’s it, only a plot I tell them
It is this house filled with cinnamon
I don’t understand
Why you would draw lots
To see who paints me first

 

On Running Through a Red Light In Aspen Colorado

Since it is too late for rescue
It is that moment to kiss
And head to disparate shelves
Let me first grab a cotton shirt
And you a bit of the cake
I told you about so sweet

Of the song overhead
Please inform why
The always present
Infinite space
Between the chords
Waits till now to settle

My adieu you cannot take with you
Nor yours I with me
On this platonic journey
We carry only our sewing
The baskets with our names
Hereafter I speak of Dante,
You of Elizabeth Bishop

 

       First of Two Poems For Random
       Children:
      (The Sometimes Poem)

Sometimes even the soft wind will kick
The other kid gets the lollipop, the friend
You wake in the morning
Put right shoe on left
There will be unfairness all around,
The vessel grey uncertainty
You may find it easier
To just watch the movie
Walking down the street
Sometimes
You ask the moon why am I here
Instead of a different person
Let it be known of the moon
It always gives the same reply

 

       Impetuous

By my hand a spider
Nearly met his fate
We had dawdled all morning
At the shore of the woods
This our last day of redemption
Before the money thing
The seaweed and breakers
Reflecting the pines
As goes salt and turpentine
Okay she said it is time
To go in there
We need brown cones
To build our collage.

So then it is obvious
One cannot contend
We ran a race, instead
The woods took us in
By compact mind you
At a pace reserved
For those in Gujarat
Who sweep the path
It was not only kind words
But under perfect sun
Perhaps the last one
Till the clouds come in
With the money thing
That I stumbled
Into the powdered net
Of crispy wings
My boy saved dangling
By the emergency cord.

 

           Warm Reception

To sit with the peonies
One must walk a very long path
Through the garden
Past the roses,
Beneath the tracks
Which is why I queried Elizabeth so
With her walking stick, even though
It was the stout one for good days,
The occasional intermissions
In her nerve and muscle show

Roses are for sitting, Elizabeth said,
Don’t get me wrong
It was a struggle
To pass by such temptation
Excess beauty to be shed
Aphrodite sparrow
Goddess in the air

It is the peonies, though,
That forever inform my spirit.
However delicate are the blooms
Their towers are patient
Among the moss and ferns

Of the roses you should also know
It is warnings from themselves
That turn their petals white to red
Today this first of summer
I could do without that
The peonies proudly waved
So I went forth to celebrate
By invite of a friend

 

     The Days Below

14th Street has long receded
As the place to go
For pipes and bargains
Ice cream and snow fruit
Casual run-ins with
The far out you know
From the other streets
Down in the village
Collage in the trash
Soaps in the stores
You could gather all day
Till the landlord calls
Bring in the broom
Visions of onyx
My friend those were the days
That have receded
Into my room on a cliff
From which I look out, onto
An avenue with no number
Far off people walking along

 

              Emigration

The water runs off the Lower East Side
Changing color over the age
The elm gave up contributing
How many years has that been
How many years ago
Was the blood of my birth
The wrens when did they fly away
At the price of a song

The city breathes dispensation
Into the fruit of the land
Have you flown there yet
Did your wanting change
Did you see the subway train
From a seat in the tree
You may not know
You will not be ready for it
A most inappropriate time
You will alter
The tint of the sea

 

                 Memorial Park

There is a far corner of the impound lot
Where tow drops the crashed cars,
Where unbroken cats hang out.
Most of the time it’s fairly quiet
In winter the metal and glass plays
To the slanted sun
A good place for birds.

Then there are the marked days,
Always after lunch
When the cats rise on pointed toes
To greet the next of kin
Gathered for the final moments
The sounds of brakes
The fragmented sentence
That single time years ago
When he struck out in anger
Sometimes it is the silent silence,
Asleep at the wheel,
Bringing in the breeze

 

     A Chance Encounter After a Number of Years

He:
It was the blue place
In the pine forest
Of the public garden
Narrowing to a grassy strip, where
Having been so long on separate paths
We met again.
You were following the white circles in
I was watching for amber out
Though on that particular day
By chance and good fortune
I was not in a hurry to leave.
I remembered your name, though
Few details of our previous circumstance
Just that we had ended on a pleasant note.

She:
I was thinking lucky just to hear
A woodpecker tatting on a tree
Or surely a pine warbler
Would call out for my pleasure
It is the time of the spring
When smart birds forage
For discards of winter
Building a nest at the end of a branch
I was looking for tops of yellow heads
Which is why I seemed distracted
When you called my name,
Which was itself curious to hear
Considering I do not know a soul near.
If when I looked at you I seemed puzzled
I truly was because I too was trying to recall
To say the least it has been years, though
I remembered something easy with you
The kind of thing that never changes
Once you began to talk there was no mistake
We were in the right place
This narrow lawn called the meadows.

 

          Propriety

The newspaper said
Mother wore a red hat,
Definitely not a story about our mother
Certainly not the livid one
Who may have slipped in
To her own funeral of brothers
Calling each other
On the phone
Looking for the cheapest not for profit
Cremation service that also picked up,
Was not one of those paid-for obits
Though reappeared three days later
In the corrections stating
It was no hat at all that she wore.

 

   Near the Woods at the End of the Street

You have been deemed a crank
Chasing off the neighbor kids
From your lawn natural by nature
Yet your body has to be fed
So you find fruit brown on the ends
Week old bread in the rack at the store
Fire up oil despite a bad flue
Sit on the floor because the chairs are full
Shake your head at the state of things
Your cat comes over and rubs your leg
She is the solitary sort
You are not
Neither was your father before you
Nor the one before that
Tomorrow you will go back out

 

  Do You Know Where Your Lover Is

My missive sits on your bed
Did you see it before you left
The presentation there lies
With every detail spent

Have you thrown the floral
Before our chance to wed
Are you out above it all
Maybe looking down at me
Perhaps it is me atop
You are from below
I do not know how that goes

Or say for all intents
You took the time
To read my heart
Before you shut the door
In which case
God bless the two of us
You may have only gone to shop

 

       Love In the Time of Revolution

These streets may be troubled
But streets have always been so
Paved with prosperity
To say the least, religiously
Long ago the moon had lost
The way to self-repair
Still repair it does, helped away
By clouds and rain

This is not to say I do not
Feel your presence around me.
Though a side attendance it may be
I know that you love me
Your love following me
The way the moon repairs,
Following the sun
Into the night
And always will.

These streets are sodden
With blood that does not wash
These streets are left witness
To the gods of war descending
From the one true god,
As they say; As they say
How is one to know
How is one to know it is not true
One handed the machine gun
Two rode it from above.

I have tried to land your gaze
You have shied away from my
Inveterate longing for normalcy,
Turning about on a fleeting wish, as if
There could be or ever had been
A vantage point one could find
Beneath this moon constantly changing
In the fickle glistening
Of these blacktopped streets.

 

               Arrival

We have carried this picture in our visits
Knowing one day we might find the place
A random street with a panaderia
A crown sign a fish cart at the curb
Though here there is no fish cart
Why don’t you walk to the end and back
To see what feeling might be had
It could be these cobblestones, you know,
Even though this is daytime that was eve
Also this air is clear and safe
Not like the mystery of the photograph

That a cable car brought us here
Was no mere chance
Nor that the cabin rotated on the route
Note the way the picture is set
Not only are mountains on the edge
Of both this and that
But the horizons also seem to end
Mark this, those two walking past
Into and out of the panaderia
Wear the same colors as these two
Even though the picture is winter
Here the birds are leaving the nest

Suppose we have found the place
Just suppose we wait till night
For the picture to come to life
What will be left for us to see
Will the wind pass our ear
Those two of the panaderia
Will they bid us hello or walk on by
The disquiet of the photograph,
Will it find us or could it be that
All along such feeling was dust
Meant for somewhere else

Or are both “this then” and “this now”
But an ice covered mountain
The crevasse waiting for us
I notice the birds flying straight ahead,
Determined not to be caught
By an artist brush
The dogs too are staying in
The street, though, is coming to life
Passing by us not as dream
But more in rotoscopic scenes
Welcoming our intrusion
We are falling happily

     

        Parthenogenesis

He is a little bit tired, I know
But yes he will wash your hair
He would not pass up the chance
To encounter hunger on your back
The quid pro quo
A lone flower in a narrow vase
You bruising your knee
Against the sink
Is met with welcome reminisce
He asks if you would like
To ride the bike
You on the seat, he pedaling
Till you reach the creek
Where the mosses
For a short time this spring
Wave spores atop their stalks.

 

        Elder Care

Our dad when he was dying
Wanted one of us to scratch his back
He could not say so because he was dying
But he always used to say it was his favorite thing
Not in the whole world, because he did not talk like that
But it was the thing he liked most of all nonetheless
Neither of us were there when he was dying
Because his heart attack took place
On the kitchen floor over at assisted living
The clinic notes said writhing supine
I wasn’t supposed to see that, but I had to know

 

      Mid-Century Travels

The brims of those hats
Place the ladies in a distant past
Where then did the columns go
The avenue lit not by gas
But with vanilla praise
Trapping both the sun and shade

I have come on visit
To this busy land
Having heard of dances
In the street
Why is it always so
That the busy land
Is verily languid and slows
When night is fresh,
The signaling bats
Gathering heat within their wrap
We sit on ledges watching
The hats and their toppings

You need not listen close to hear
Narrow torsos flush with phlegm
How are there no feral cats
Did the borders of the countries go
Has the game of thieves
Made a comeback in the street?
Sing accolades of thirst if you must
I have found deprivation lacking
Best tie your fate to a wooden door
Kick it like a spotted cur

You may wish to take my hand
I’ve detected a seismic shift
In the name of Cain.
We should leave by harbor
To a holy land
Blessed with acid springs,
I hear by night a busy state
A place of shrouds
Where all is free, yet
Entombed by day
Certainly not a place to acclimate
Though we should go there
Nonetheless

 

      Joy As We Bathed With Her

Why on Earth did you die
As the Sun came up
You left the Squabs undone
The Strutters to an early day
The Turtle skimming across the wake
Did you not feel welcomed by the Night

Under which Moon was your birth
What Dentata parted way
Did the Pangolins drop and roll
What Owl called out
To let Me know
To begin the Years
To ready my Ground
Who held You?
What Songster composed the feast

 

    On Leaving Baltimore

The streets called
Are you sure
Are you sure you are ready
Is this a thing you can take
What about your fair lady
Her long legs and high cheeks
The soft shell crabs
You will be starting a place
Where mustard smiles
A foreign face

What about the sacramentals
Dispensations from neighborhoods
Forsaking all of that
How will you find your way
On roads named for
The Valiant North
Cities ringing
Not with hymns
But with blandness
Called the modern way

You will let your big hair down
I know. They will not let it go.
Think of all the places you have been
Some sad
A mother fallen from the map
Some glorious
The parties within you all,
Spilled unto us, the southern streets,
Blessings of the brine and fish

This land of loam asks but one thing
For you to not forget what drew you out
Remember the light that awaited you
Beyond the womb and the way
The colors separated into
Golden hues marking time on the wall
The first gift to you was a book
Where you could gather
All bits of recipe
Your pledge was of allegiance
To kings and queens

 

           Nativism

That’s the crazy part about this
I never once gave a thought
To feeling accountable
To the cardboard cut-out
Come to life as the one
Threatening my nation
With steamed buns in his lunch box
Not even a real lunch box
But dim sum holder
To make him stronger
Than my irrelevancy

 

     We Shall Not Walk Along the Beach

Rumor has it
The trillium are coming in red this year
Lilting up the splintered poles
Letter boxes on oiled roads
Wheels of the rumor trucks
Spitting out the dusty rocks
Word comes in through tainted air
Far-off conceits of lightning streaks
Hairless nestlings dropping
Not at will but well timed leaps
Plaguelike under hillside oaks

In the city it is said
Of the new breads
Of old doughs
Bringing new woes
Of soured yeast
Having fallen behind the modern age
All is not equal on the ledge
Well-cultured women wearing caps
Of cooking shows
Talking of pineapple jello
As it sets and as it goes

As rumors will be
Here. Take this down.
The great battle
Has at last been lost
Elephants return without mahout
Crows fly circles without a mate
There is black on the mountain top
Clouds have tried but cannot heal
Paracelsus has left the street
The score is tied at the bottom of eight
Nine and ten and on and on
The trilliums wait
Let us go then, you and I.

 

   On the Winding Path

My god what despair
Such lover must have felt
Gift of flowers strewn about
This way out of paradise
Not the gate in, where lovers pose
But here in the roundabout, shaken
Geometric stems of dyed carnations
Tickle a leaf at play in captive clutch

Could the flowers themselves have been the basis
Or was it the way he had bestowed
Perhaps with imperatives she could not meet
Might it have been last night’s moon?

Yellow butterflies pull back in thought
Not lighting on the baby’s breath
Saving flight for ripened fruit
The sun chasing off the clouds
Had Aphrodite’s rage turned the peonies red
Was it the days forth she could not take?

 

               The Bonsai

This is all very complicated, though
Please remember it is not necessary
To comply with a norm
Better to start with a vision
To create something
From that which does not exist
Bring such into the world
With beauty your motive
Plan to one day let it go
Though beware
Of being sidetracked
By faces in the cloud
Wishing to care for you
Watch your feet

 

             Flowering

They came to you in the night
Surrounded your table
Lecturing one by one,
Together exhorting
This is what you should do
What you really want
Learn to set goals
Know your true needs
These are all the stupid things
You should not have done
Really, start walking the line

The next night you were ready
With questions of your own
Why are you yellow
You green
That hat
I would never wear that hat
But you should
One of them would say
We need to find her a hat
Just like this one
By the way
Yellow becomes you
As does green.

The next night you waited
Nothing entered except
White light broken
By the trees
It was comforting.
When sound found a way
It was steady,
Like a forest of frogs,
Until it was not
Which was also fine.

 

                  XY

I am glad I was made a boy
Never taught to beat the dough
Buttered sides of a bowl
Wetting the powder into rolls
Left instead to walk the streets
To learn the cars and hobo ways
A rain does not send me home
Nor am I frightened by the thunder
Though it calls my name in acronym

Any given day I will follow
Toussaint Louverture into the country
Ride Napoleon’s horse the next
I gather all sorts of spinous orbs
Fill my pockets with ancient coins
Wear my shoes to a rubber plume
I learn of evil men in search of prey

Mother let us carry our dinner
Onto the verandah,
Which using our private
Public housing vernacular
We named that narrow little strip
Below the window box
Where we would look out
Upon a city washed half-clean,
From the deserted height silently
Sharing our separate
Views of how the future
Had changed that day

 

                  Nodding

There are critters awake while they sleep
Dolphins, manatees, parrots and kittens
However, others sleep when awake
Brains transacting in a pleasure dome
With ears that do not hear
These bright-mind wondrous creatures
Artfully avoid the crashing seas
Run along the endless walls
Look for thrones on which to sit
Gather baubles of ambiguity
Sometimes you just want to shake them

 

              In Consideration

I did not happen on this gift by chance
But when a fortnight ago you returned
I saw that luxury had worn away
Down to a pragmatic soul
That not quite dispirited glow
Where one’s socks line up in rows
I thought you might wish
To pleasure yourself
This privacy screen shows
In turquoise blue and green

 

     Veg-O-Matic

I am not white inside
But glistening shinola grey
Two-beet red
Pancreatic orange
Shimmering omentum
Snappy castile peppermint
Microscopically I look
Like shag carpet

The white capsule
You were asking about
Holds it all together
I will one day toss that scrap aside
Enter platinum rehab gates
The fool I played so long
Will shed as well
Leaving me as I started
A naive little seed
Which by the way
Is for the common good
Because they make yogurt
Out of your different flavors
Vanilla bean is on the list.

 

   The Wind Is Gentle

Her attempt to stop him
Often women cannot
Grasp the full essence
Plagued as they are by subtlety
Asking him why do you not wait
I will call right now
I do not want you out
In this snow
The very hour
You are usually in bed
Come take my hand

This time
Grounds elusive
At least to him
She was right
One of those things
Not subject to analysis
Rehanging the key
The hand not realizing
Where the command originated
Or who it was making it
The female voice having long faded
The male attempt at understanding
What was ghost written
Not to be defied
Nor even questioned
The only answer the keys
The quiet noise of the hook

 

                    Frog

How does one live with a cold heart
Well, simply leap from rock to rock
Let the water gurgle on your back
Mate with other good luck charms
Keep an eye, which you can’t
Looking over a shoulder, which you
don’t have
Duck the shadow of the broom
Sweeping down the clouds

What difference does it make, anyway
If you carry a suitcase or become one
Life is a fluke, I’ll have you know
Motivation skill and luck
Ribbons of humility
Blessings of simplicity
We are water first, water last
Free will a happy plus, though
Only the very special among us
Can preach to the choir, leap,
Lecture the moon
With a blustering din

 

     How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

The latest mumbo-jumbo came my way
I had to have it I read it in the news
It kept me up at night
I feared missing the anxiety
It was causing in all who knew
It was only in a few colors, yet
There was so much room to grow
Had to have it if for no reason
Than to keep it, put it away
Take it out to show on anniversary day
There were only a few colors
But I had to have it anyway.

 

   The Science of Melancholy

Pushing out of ground in mid-spring
The puzzling shadows now exposed
The chloroplasts at last knowing
What has kept the mitochondria warm
Organelles contemplating as organelles do
This has not been so bad so far
The weight that we have borne.

There are children, also
Nurtured by rain,
Then baffled by sun
Fortunate to encounter one
Who teaches the tree cycle, or
Brilliant as they are,
Learn for themselves
That H20 and packets of light
Play in wondrous ways.

           

              The Girl Next Door

I was content as I was
Riding my loud tricycle
Over the yard
Around and around and around
Till autumn dropped
Hellfire owned the sky
The stinging bugs
Locked themselves away

Onward I motored about,
Cutting over frosted mud
I really didn’t know, but
If I had thought about it
At all, at the time
I would have said to you
A backyard away
Something like
That’s a cool flashlight
You have hanging there
Above the plastic fuchsias
At the doorway of your house

Because at that time
I did not realize
How girls connived
Over something as simple
As sputters and roars
Coming from next door
I had no clue
You were preparing a place for me
Between two dolls at your table
Lucy and Frank
That I would one day wish
I had appreciated the wasps
Just a little bit more.

 

                 Change of Life

This had never happened before
You and I were in bed with morning on the wall
When I felt someone scribbling on me, really
With some sort of implement, someone
Had arrived at some kind of frustration, perhaps
Had up until that moment felt at least some modicum,
Steady-state satisfaction with their creation, me
It could have been something I did
Or simply, something had come over
Whoever was doing the creating
I asked you, “Did you feel that?
Do you have any opinion of this?”
You replied that you too had felt something
But it wasn’t scribbling, you said
It was more a sudden urge to shop.

 

      Foreordained

So this is what it feels like
To be a quiet old woman
Mounted between lives
One hand on the rail
The other on a past glorious
With patter play
Unseemly words
Once cracking open
Like a hard shell crab
A mirror of furrows
The teaching voice
The inside voice
A silent voice inching in
Over years of disregard.

 

            A Day In the Car

The joking stopped at the tragic scene
Began again at the chocolate ice cream
Billboard of a two for one just
Buy the cones on your next trip in
Paused at the radio news
Of yet another breach in the bank
Failure of armor to hold
Then Louie told one
Everybody had already heard
Though in a different voice
That started the laughing going again.

Tragic scene number two held us up
Three crows flew down from two ways
Swarmed the windshield
Converged and flew out again
Lunch was another myth left in the
Happy Trail Truck Stop handicap space
The sun finished crossing the roof, then
Climbed into the passenger side
A tale told often, though never enough
Late is late, but good thing
Funerals always start without you
anyway.

 

   The Soil Has Always Been There

What has been said
About the seed
You planted in the earth
Nothing has been said of that seed
Nor about your waiting.

We will say about the rain, how
A drop crawls across the earth
Attending to your seed,
Falling short,
How it waits for other jewels
To strike the black,
About which not enough
Has been spoken
Least not how such dirt guides
The communion of all the drops
Then filters the contrivance down
(What has been said about gravity?)
To your waiting seed.

 

       The Envious Moon

Those who call love a gift
From stars rising
Over bedside table
During the long night peering
Through diamond shaped
By the leading edges
Of the drapery lace
Light both hot and tamed
That couple has not
Yet risen into the morning
Amongst Polaris’ stuff
To gather the detritus, not yet
Sorted out yours from mine
Walked out the door
With that new found love
Parted their ways
Into the realm
Of the brightest star
Felt their feet quicken.

 

              Childhood

They motor around on those toys
Legs arched over truck seats
Pushing off with their feet
Onto silica roadbeds up to
The property line marked
By the hum and rattle
Of the diaphragms
Of animal youth, then
Nowhere on this earth
Left to trounce
To the top they climb.

The other side of the hill
Is one of strife and bickering
Tugging their own children
Along the grocery store
Cold aisle, the laundry
Not helping mommy fold
But now giving orders,
Fixing creaky doors,
Rage over debt
Then, down the hill
Are the nursing homes
This time not the aunts
But sisters and spouse.

Dirt clogs the steel axles
Youth invert the trucks
Grind the wheels to mash the dust
The spin is troubled now,
Having caught a new tic, yet
Though pavement is within reach
Youth returns to the dirt
Implores self to mastery.

 

    In the Scheme of Things

What is a cocklebur waiting
For a bear that never comes
What does it do the day
But wave in the wind
At the end of a stem
What nature is this
To have gifted a purpose
Crafted a means
Assigned proper tasks
To chloroplasts and sun
Was it better that one day I,
Yes a mammal with no hair
To speak of
But new jeans and argyle
On a clumsy path
Through loblolly pines
Become a raison d’etre

 

     Getting Bored With Yourself

The earth is running out of presents
That can’t be true
Just one more
Surely vast seas
Can grant
Just one more
Supersize
Maybe just one more
Little airplane
Taking me to a last bird
Just one more
Sighting is all I ask
They are so colorful
A dash of red on the wing
Stop the grumbling
That’s all I ask
It’s annoying
Just one more present
I will be on my happy way

 

        Frailty

Woman I feel your eyes upon me
Waiting
Not necessarily for me to stray
But for a stray word
Betraying a longing
For that which I cannot share.

 

          House of Mistakes

At the museum of ceramics on the riverfront
The door is always weighted with a lock
In the yard is an unreaching grey flecked waiting pool
A mirrorless swirl of thumb prints
Aged mildew clay hovering at the edge

This place is not forgotten, not the least bit
The uninvited climb over a porch chain, awkwardly,
Too fastidious to crawl across brown paint dusted slats,
Though eager to act as witness
Stand on powder kiln glaze buckets, also faded grey,
Peer through cupped hands, wonder at the nothingness of
Grey motes choking on improperly thrown sun

If one is so astute a window observer
Perhaps arrived here from concern about the craft
One may notice black pits in the blue shelved bowls
Never to be unshelved in a kitchen of mead and honey,
Green jars matched with poorly casted unfitting turquoise
lids, the lots
Eternally staged with gatherings of spoon rests, butter
dishes,
Corpuscular gifts tut-tutted out of the kiln

Then there are the vases.
Some were predestined to never gather mantel dust,
Many with improper openings,
Perhaps even appropriately so,
As with the case of unrequited lover bouquets,
Openings at first too small for expectations
Then too large for the wavering stem of rose
Alone and homed to finality,
At rest above the coals where the photo sat.

Old story of fragile star stuff
The passing of time
Scattering with the dust
Could there be process
Within the process
Are there are places
We should never go
Old questions

The durability of the clay jar
As with the bowstring north and south
Is intimately bound to fragility of heart, sometimes
Wondrous and sound, though too often
Baked into the process is a mistake of
Improper wedging, or proper wedging
Of the wrong clay, too wet, too dry
Or the right clay on the wrong eve;
Or all can be to height of craft
Which by human happenstance
Is inviolable until it falls.

 

 Commencement

When ripening peaks
At harvest time
You are expected to turn
Your hips to the scythe
The remains of balmy childhood
Have slipped away
Anyway into colloquy
The first wisps of cold
Are already in the air

Move on, first born.
After baking the bread
You will be expected to fold
Your new clothes.
Upon putting up the yams
You will be shown a way.
You will exchange
The lotus in you
For mincemeat and presents.

 

      Foreordained

So this is what it feels like
To be a quiet old woman
Mounted between lives
One hand on the rail
The other on a past glorious
With patter play
Unseemly words
Once cracking open
Like a hard shell crab
A mirror of furrows
The teaching voice
The inside voice
A silent voice inching in
Over years of disregard.

 

                  City Father

As children you look to the father for
direction
Follow him onto the street of invention
First by wheel then like ducks
With loving eyes of singular focus

On the paths along the way, you
Gather his words and paste them in a
ledger
For example, when buying from the
newsstand
One is to say thank you,
Whatever might be going on today

Those who you know who you meet
about
You ask if those they love are well
enough
To walk in sunshine and breathe in
redolent air
Or if what they have has returned to
stay

The Arab at the fruit stand is to be
Greeted with a clasping of hands,
Complimented for his shallots, then
Queried about his nation’s ongoing strife

At the library you ask what do you have
That has been written of those who are
right,
Of that which is new in science or farce,
know
It is okay to ask for tragedy, to learn
from that

Your father does not need remind you,
Though occasionally does, referring to
A higher source, not in a heaven
But around you, yes certainly, and
To know those callings you listen for
Are sounds not meant for you
You learn to walk among trees,
To let the pigeons be, that
Words breathed in nature’s midst
Are often gratuitous

 

         The Tour Guide

When I led my last group through, years ago
The jacaranda were in their purple bloom
An orchestra was set up right over there, where
Fetid water circles that wrung-out house.

You should have seen it back then,
Sunday best on Friday, children sharing,
Pickerel hopping onto the grill
If families bickered it was with trust
None of this pushing shoving
You have going on everywhere.

That cove, the broken stage at shore,
Used to be the place where
Friends would come to tea,
Friends of friends,
Strangers from the street
Telling stories holding court
With sun and stars alike
Clouds like this always went away.

Those leftover trees
Named for their fruit
The sweet chestnut
That earthy treat
Giving this place its name
A proustian grove
Now fending for itself.

Follow where my finger points,
Beginning at your closest hill
The huge gap you see
That’s where the mining was
Before the money cashed out
Leaving the wounded earth
Open for all to mourn
Which became known as the time
When the youth moved on.

Nowadays to find brightness here,
Anywhere, anymore, really
You have to lower your hopes
Beneath the ground
To the level of the germ,
To the roots that remain
If you could prod away the soil
You would see true happiness,
The creeping mycorrhizal,
The bacteria at play.

I assure you when the final person,
The last woman or man, walks away
It will be mercifully leaving these weeds
With a future where
They owe us nothing
Their scars will be but
The remains of a bad dream
The jacaranda
If they were meant to be
Will return and the birds will nest
Maybe over there
In that still proud tree.

 

                 Old Time Religion (Western Version)

Holy Spirit
Not so terrible for a non-believer
To invite into his heart
If only to show around
Holy Spirit has never made war
By itself or with itself
Nor have angels good or bad
Taken a hand where it was not written
Flown up or down
Where it was not imagined
If you have to choose a train
To chug along a rambling line
It might as well be one
Where you can get off
Whenever you want
Choose your own story
Choose your own end.

 

      There Are a Million Stories

The endings are not all happy
Like the transactional one
Where the robin pulls the worm
Converts it to zest
Flaps off into the warm
Brooding breeding
Then, when the wash is over
The bird, the worm,
All that gave of themselves
Make amends.
No, not all are like that.

There are cases like Sally Straw
Who married into money
Beget three without thought
Of what an amend might be
For what or to whom
I paid for my Gucci bag she said
And so should you
Then died without ceremony

 

             Certain Farmers

Where have such men gone
Who trailed their oxen with a stick
Who woke candle alone
For all of how many years
Begetting no one,
Only the thought not the act
Of procreation,
In the market stalls
Looking askance, away
From fine linen dresses
Lest the golden legs are bare–
Their own, of bristled hair
And dark ploughing maps,
Masked by burlap trousers
Sewn together from pieces
With tremulous fingers
Over fading nighttime embers.

They give no errant thought to the land
That is not already the whole of
their conception
They have lived not a life
But that which is a disassociated guise
Yet there is a life
The brain still demands;
All thought chafes under carpet
Of undirected rage
Of disappeared longing
Of silent words.
Once, old years ago, they fed the world.

 

         My Beauty Fair

You see in a mirror what I see.
I see no flaws
Except in the way
You scrutinize
Which like makeup
Obscures my humble view.

 

      Brownie Instamatic

At the stern
The side of the frame
Picked up the oar drip and wake
Not the frog on a lily pad
She’d wanted me to conjure
So we switched
I was happy looking at her back
Feeling the pull away of the
Stream below the surface
I became occupied with
The hum of skimmer wings,
Pond circles from distant incursions
The inflight mating dance of the darners
Switch again, she said, I got it.

 

   Living With the Spectrum

I did not like you very much
In the way I like other people
But I would reach for you
The way I would them
As close as you would have,
With love, for
Whoever could say if
You were the same in and out
Or that you would be like this
All your coming years
Or that you were not already
Inside somewhere
Screaming please have me
This is me.

However we have sailed together,
I do not know you
As I know the errant tides.
Though I can watch you
Like the rising moon, if
Said orb were to reject
Its reflective glow
Consign us to Neptune’s dark
You could hold your truths away
Run your circles
Around my reaching hand
I would still hear you
In eternal revolt
Looking back at me.

 

  There Are Those Who Do Not Stay

Some move quickly through life
Sowing as they go
Planting expectations beneath our feet
They share our sunshine
Break bread at our table
Say 1000 words for us to hold
They give us the pictures we find
In unexpected places
When we reach out
They move on

           

                   The Translator

She has to pick apart what Elena really means
Probe the vicissitudes of Dante’s depths
Draw serendipitous renderings of meat–
Which to season, which to braise
Name the pink from where the juices flow.

She draws no conclusions of her own
That are not otherwise extrapolations
She cannot look heavenward
To find her inspiration
That path is always worn.

Unless the words arrive on waves
When the surf is standing up
Her never indulgent insights
Metamorph bit by bit
Like Virgil’s
Or wake in the morning
Just like Gregor
Walking along the ledge.

 

 

 The Traffic Circle With a Happy Ending

It was a lone pigeon
Started out that morning
Trying to cross the rotary
Looking the one way
The only way
Its neck with a crick
Could look, unfortunately,
Not the way the traffic flowed.

God has taught it to dance
For a reason and has built
A curb on which to practice
Still, 9 AM rolls around
God’s messenger weary,
All hope worn.

Except there’s a car
Norwegian metal,
Devil paint primer
Gorilla glue welds
Driven by a sorceress
21 extended years old
Late for work
At the mortuary
Now in orbit around the rotary
Catching the bird’s eye
The one closest to the road.

Short story from purgatory
Bird hops in
All forces enjoin
Circe circles
The traffic circle
Bird hops out gleefully
Onto a moment of grace
Exactly 9:15
As the crow flies over.

 

               Postcard

80 years ago someone I don’t know very well
Except that she licked a green stamp
Was in Essaouira writing to someone named Hen
Who I do know was back in Chicago teaching
The final days of classes
After which she too would spring
Whatever that meant back then.

I have been to Essaouira
I have seen green stamps and olives
It was maybe 40 years ago
And now my son is there
These kids do not send postcards
For all I know he is surfing the beach and sand.

In the Medina in Essaouira is an outdoor cafe
They do not hassle you in the souks
An arab told my friend and I
You do not point your shoe while sitting
Dogs are dirty, flies not so much
Flies on the olives
80 years ago and 40 and today
There are still things to write.

 

        Fledgling

The some day has come
When the one day I said
I would then find the way
To do what I should.

I am glad you are with me
The way that I wished
That one single day
For this singular one.

Free will is so great
It makes me at ease
To know I can have
My wits here about
When I make this one
Great leap up, out,
Away from our tree.

 

                      I Was

Who will walk where I have walked
Who will contemplate that tree
Will I have worn this path just right
That they will wonder
Just who this would have been
To have marked the clay
In such a way
To invite them on their stroll.

Speaking of that tree
Will a blackbird borrow the nest
Then pass it to its kin
Will thunder come
And winter snow
After I am gone
Will the news look
Favorably upon these hills
Will my children want for me?

 

          The Weight of the Commons

The bluebirds that did not
Migrate for the winter
Stacked in a pile
Of relative warmth
Do not when stomachs rumble
Take a vote to see
Whose turn it is to buy
And whose to fly,
Nor were they part
Of the industrial revolution,
Mining fossil fuel
Not an option
To ward off the night,
Just the feathered underside
Of the one above
And the slow heaving
Ever weighty carapaces
Of surrounding equality.

     

 

          Bed and Breakfast

They told me the first rose of Sharon
Was set to open outside my window
During the fortnight of my stay
Your visitor they called it
The good kind
Because Sharon are variegated,
Beautiful
Enter beneath the moon
Stay but for a day
And on the next
Another will take its place
Like freshly cooked breakfast
At the jalousie glass
The dirty dishes swept away.

 

Sorry I Tripped On My Way Down
From Olympus

With the boy it’s as if he never
Learned to make oatmeal
When I know he can and has
Here he’s not even late
For the bus leaving town
I am not only stirring the oats
For Odysseus trip
But asking if he wants
Apples and brown sugar
And do you need a water bottle
I have a silver one here
I happen to not need
Even though I leave tomorrow
For the desert and shrub.

Sure, he says, in the beauteous
manner
The Greeks take their myths
By the way do you have another
Of those ziplocs
I tell him
I got this covered
(The way he says it)
And you might need
Nuts and crackers
For the stop in Calypso.

I am thinking even grown kids
Have special genes from the gods
To get their parents to ladle
And parents have genes too
Switched on when removing
The training wheels
Off golden bikes, now
Imagining horrendous events
That happen on buses,
Like starvation and quakes.

Why am I making your food
I am old and you are young
It should be the other way around;
Though if I were headed for Troy
You would not think
Of a shiny water bottle,
But let me suffer glory.
How does this work
Do I wait till the nursing home
And for me to ask
Did you remember
To bring me my teeth
And for you to tell them
He wants oatmeal for lunch.

 

                Wonders

Why is it when my daughter was born
When she first came out along the rail
The only song I could think to sing
To her in my arms
Was the ABC song crazy
Because Broca* was dark
If I had known then what I know now
Of the fire that grows from embers,
Of the loosening of the tongue,
Of my dusted space now granted
In her neatly ordered place
I would have hummed to the violins.

*area of the brain that deals with language production and comprehension

 

      I Suppose You Think You Are Special, Lady Jane

My father with his egg nest hair
Would turn hungry
Middle way through night shift.
My mother would wrap a sandwich
Like my brothers on the floor
In brown sleeping bags
A cookie, an apple and pear
Wake me the infinite daughter
Tell me to heat water on the wood stove
Tell me to stop watching it sputter
Hopping on the sides of the pan
Tell me over and over take it off the flame
Like I was some parrot learning words.

The blue night was making its rounds
The ice nymphs had come and stayed.
My job was to dash angry water
On my mother’s car lock, then mine
She would shout watch the paint
Hurry up get in before it freezes.

She would look at me, not her driving,
The tires thumping along the road,
Why do you think your father calls you birdy
Why are you wearing your spring coat
You wonder why you’re shaking
Not the heater vent
Leave that alone.

She would not see the deer in the yards
At least one deer in every yard
Sometimes whole patches of deer
In a country of yards
Antlers nosing at the fairy bushes
Coaxing into snow play
The pixies and the pucks.
She would tell me stop my warbling
And my drumming
On my father’s black tin lunch box
With blue thermos inside rounded top
Wipe your window she would say
You are making nose marks
The sun will come up in blotches.

I could see into other cars, not she,
Kidnapped children with open mouths
Screaming words, not breaths
Beating their fists on the glass
Trapped in boiling vats
In red-tinged cartoons
I would flap hope
Put your arms down
She would say
What are you doing
You’re going to rattle your brain.

I am to this day
A nightingale
My perch is song packed
My claws play open my red thermos
Morning steams into the office
I sense envy around me
I was stolen, I tell them
As a matter of hubris and berries,
It’s a good thing I was.

 

              1564-1616

What are you thinking about
When you read
The year he was born
“To” the year he died
I know the first thing
I (am) self-centered think
Is at least I am alive
Not like him
Even though I am not
Famous enough to
Have someone reading
Those years and the dash
At least I am alive.
Sorry. Now I feel ashamed.

Then I remember it is something
He would have said
That happens to everyone
(Though not everyone yet).
So far in my life
Having reached the dash
With not even a story
In the book
Let alone a special moon
That did not fall on a
First night
When I was not there
The typesetter did not bow
His head in respect
When he did not
Read my name
Which he would not
Have remembered
Anyway.

 

    Why I Walk Through

The sun engraves
A hot obtuse angle
Circumventing curved walkways
Sneaking in
Lighting bachelor button
Bobbing heads
Stringy stems
Scattered leaves
Peeking out the pedestal cracks
Of the temperance statue
In Tompkins Square Park.
Pigeons eye
Crows slink
Empty spirits rise
Over carrion, over dust
The ragged caps of faded pastel
Wave you to
The next station
Accompanying musicians
Of a cross gender singer
Nodding in time to their words.

 

      The Hazards of Being

      Beneath the Flight Path

They extend those long legs
Push off into flight
Good for them, though
We are forever marked
With loneliness.

The wind calls out
The currents arrive.
They relax
Those straw limbs
Into the lice
The ground
Is laced with dander.

The beat of wings
Is felt in China
The weather changes.
Everywhere.

 

Winding Through the Renaissance

It was so simple then
One day at a time
No two point painting halls,
Naked sculpture or windexed glass
No labels to read
Just real pastel people,
Pale complexions of true love,
Walking on cobbles outside
An actual Globe Theater,
Hounds of the spartan kind
Wending amongst odors and trash.

At night, over Toledo
The hills brown and green
No need to question
The artist intent
His view and the brush strokes
Or memorize the year
As the year was the year
That everyone knew
Over the city of Toledo
At night
Back then.

Artemisia Gentileschi
Painting Judith
And her maidservant
Going for the throat
Did not know if or however
500 years later
You would stop and stare
Or run from the blood
She may have thought of you
She might have cared.

Leonardo, neither, did not pause
To rest his feet
Get a bite to eat
And check his phone
Painted guelder rose,
Drew Vitruvian man
Kept devising till he made
The most visited woman on earth.
Now so might you
Move on give other people
Their turn at the smile.

The Renaissance was not
Such a big deal
To the people back then,
More like each day
A breath mint
Medieval old pyres
Burning down
They would shrug and say
This is just the beginning
Of the modern world
Why are you whispering so
They would ask us today.

 

           Storm

Outside the window frame
Is black as the stove
For minutes at a time
Then the flashing disruptive
Lightning and St. Elmo
Crackles bluing confidence
Skirting a lonely gap
Here our burgundy chimney, there
The neighbor’s silver antenna, then
The laundry poles
Suck spark into the ground
Natural phenomena
Father points out
At the moment the cow’s eyes
Flash green and green again
Permanently, indelibly
Onto our devil-washed walls;
The red eyes of rats, though,
Skirt sideways
Exit the frame with a flicker.

   

         My Beauty Fair

You see in a mirror what I see.
I see no flaws
Except in the way
You scrutinize
Which like makeup
Obscures my humble view.

 

        We Bring Gifts

How was it the early explorers
To this current land were so brave
As to trowl among mermaids
And walk dark forests
Run by dragons and melon heads
Peacefulness was strange
Armor plated vests were permeable,
Given slings and arrows of uncertainty
The present men had written no maps
Of past infractions or atonements
Our brave anglos faced the strangeness
Of cities whose names
Lacked civilized alphabets.
Boreas and Zephyrus blew,
In from the north and west,
Conjuring monstrous forces
To defend the gold
Move on said these new men
Let us show bravery to the savage realm.

 

       No Rebels Allowed

A poodle strained at leash
In search of her, she
Who the runway
Had abandoned
Left at the roadside
In a black Miyakian gown
Waiting for a primered BMW
To autobrake and glide
Onto white pebbles.
Known for haunting looks
Over her shoulder
And the stories of her
As a child playing with dust,
As an adolescent
Rescuing pink lobsters
From steel pots,
Melly, aka Christina K,
Was last witnessed
In a thrift store purchasing
A knurled empty bottle
Chanel Number 5.

       

         Quantum at a Distance

They made a one decimal point error
In the theory of relativity
They just figured it out
My cyclotron bicycle
Slammed me against the wall
Not even immediately
But yesterday.
The drapery hardware
Rattled the curtains.
I picked up the phone
To tell you we just cannot
Keep seeing each other.

 

         I Will Have Been There

Maybe we will sit around one day
Laugh about broken poems
What is it called
You know the word
When you long not for the past
But for the future
Not daydreaming.

Maybe this is all there is
One undeveloped thought
Reminding you of another,
The subliminal part of living.

 

                   Birding

The convenient thing about a bird
Is they will never correct the record
For example if you report
Bird number 534 is off his food
Due to a missing mate
He is more likely
Rather than divulge
Your lack of insight
To sweep the walk
Then turn himself to song.

 

     A Proper Education

I learned to walk they tell me
Watching the snorkel birds
Slice beneath the wake.
I said my first conjunct words
With a musical laugh
Chasing a burrowing vole.
I developed second sight
Next to Saturn and Jupiter
Aligned with the waning moon.
With one grand bow
Love came to me
Splashing in the bath.
If I call to suddenly change our plans
Please accept I have passed a tree
Whose feet have been so bound
That I had to turn around
Sit with it
Listen to its leaves.

 

  Enter Through the Gift Shop

She lived in a museum.
Her house was a museum they said,
Ochre coated door knob
Opened the hall of the sun.
The diorama in shadows,
The one moment
The singular event of her coming of age,
The day of the night
When childhood disappeared,
She sitting before a platter of eggs
With him
In the rear of the diorama
Lit by a single candle.
Rest to know
The eggs were curated, shellacked.

 

                Mimesis

Six men converged from all directions
According to the news
To lift a Honda CRX
From the limpness of a boy
Or so they said at first
Finding not a boy
But a crow whose limb was broken
Who had learned from watching news
Just what to say and how
Jack in the trunk
Jack in the trunk

   

          Workers of the World

Classless society
Bird rule
Corvid committees
Grain sorters
Equal amounts
Even dispersal
Ledger marks
Lids snugged
Tiny clips.

Before time
Visionaries visited
Staked out
Nameless kingdoms
No borders
Measured wind
Rose water
Soil of rose
Birds today
Communist yellow
Communist red
No fealty
To opiate gods.

Shreds of nest
According to need
Eggs the joy of the masses
No questions
No one to ask
All gather all build
Festival of harvest
Not one day one day
But eternity
Under corvid guidance
Syndicalism celebrated
Not practiced.

 

      A Mere Being

It is your eyes opening
To watch the clock
Your arm probes
The empty bed
Your memory
Of she who was there
You who are searching
For the sheet,
For your dreams
Casting all away
With sleight of hand.

The dog licking your face is also you
As are your commands
For which he waits
And the bowl you will fill at seven
That he will empty by seven-o-five
You are your old sock with the tennis ball
Your alarm clock that did not go off.

Who are you if not she
You left so many years ago
Who is awake time zones away
With your picture
Creating lesson plans
For her class
With chance lines
That came from an afternoon with you
Could this too be your dream
She is living with familiarity
That she does not otherwise recognize?

Who are you if not your children
Also stirring in their sleep
Warm because
They work hard
Your direction their fortune
You in who they are
We will not mention
As it has no need for mention
The connection between
Nurturer and child
Is an oft unspoken one.

You are your neighbor
Who gave a wave
Yesterday and with whom
You stopped to talk
And ask after her hospital
How the treatment has gone
Who you did not see
Glance over her shoulder
As you were walking away
To your own house.

You were for one moment
The other day
The kind person who veered
Off the sidewalk into the street
So as not to disturb the starlings
Tearing at the scented bread.
Though you were only photons
In a side eye
Instantly forgotten
You were goodness of their world.

You are the friend you will be making today
The new person at work who comes to you
You were the nth-billion person
To be born ever
As you will be the nth to leave
The earth will be you.

 

       Other World

They discovered a body beyond Pluto
This is true I read it in the news
It has been out there all this time
Will they bring it back
What should we expect
The body will not be like ours
It has not seen this wicked war
Temperatures have changed
Man is less caring of man
Women of simple treasure
Will they bring it back
To this era of baubles
Rinse it clean of purity
Prop it against our sullen walls

 

 

   The Metaverse

A home for old people
Who at last unshackled
Free to roam
And prevaricate
Chose to gather at the fish tank
On the lower floor.

Simon is a betta fish
With a chill persona
The guppy twins
Are a perfect community species
The neon tetra
Spent her life in schools
The suckermouth catfish
Lost her teeth
Wrapped in a sheet
On laundry day.

 

     Friday At the Moon

Dancing girls come dance
Dancing girls come dance
Friday at the moon
Night of night
Of all the nights
Leave the heels at home
Roll ‘em down roll ‘em down
Show your pretty knees.

The war is over
The war is over
Men are coming back
Forget the news
It isn’t true
Friday at the moon.

Paint your lips
Dot your eyes
Bring along a friend
Let one bus pass
The next one goes
They marked it with a sign
A dancing girl
With rouge-ed cheeks
You know it’s just for you.

All are welcome
All are welcome
The end.

 

           Starling

I bet you’re hungry right now
Thinking of double clutch fries
Strawberries with cream
In fact I see hunger
In your double black eyes
Two feet clutching
The high tension line
Mmmm this is so so good
But Silly Fellow,
It’s flambe
Nothing you would want
Since your surrender,
Your return to primitive
Paleolithic
No salt at all costs
Vegan Gluten free bird diet.
The crust is fabulous, darling,
You just don’t know!

 

     Creation of the Commons After the War

I am permitted entrance but once a year
On which day I am politely greeted
I have learned the path through the part
The grass opens for me though sparingly
I know the trees I must not brush
Over which creeks I must step
And the brooks through which I may wade
My trousers are in a tall cuff
My arms are at my side.

My penance is a brown suede satchel
A year of hope and prayer
Drawn, though I am no artist,
According to dictate
I have been asked to bring
Depictions of children at play
Extrapolations of innocence
The details of games
Further thoughts on reconciliation.

The woods have been washed of color
For I am not a reporter
Nor a witness
This subliminal ground views the other
Of course with greatest suspicion
But also with pragmatism
Not of priest and sinner
But of folly’s creation.

I make my way through high thorns
Respectfully recusing my pain
I become unsure of time’s pass
As the sun is washed as well
I find the stump with scar-red top
Where I have sat year on year
One time sick, the others not
The tree remains in grief
With which I will stay the night
Returning just before the new sun
Brightens this.

   

     Walk With Him

Eternity is made
From words at bay
The hymn that carried
My father to his rest
I did not catch the name
I have only what
The graveyard cat
That caught the mice
Was called
Alyosha
Who my father
Walked with
Through the gates
While the embodiment
Rubbed against my leg.

 

      Crow About

Rogue crow
Palled up
To see
What made me
Made me tic
Made me exclaim
Made me kick cans
I said,
I should teach you a thing or two.
However smart you are
You know not what you miss
The way you are
You will never enter
The gates of heaven
Tough to fix, as
You have no hand to take
So we will have to arrange
Things differently
Just for you.
Before prying out termites
Say three hail mary’s
One nevermore
Take this mickey finn
An hour before bedtime
Learn to dream in color
Reduce the minutes wasted
Flying from point A to B
With a more direct route
And most of all
Stop staring.

    

         At the Vanity

The flickering light
Calls out
I had promised days ago
To put a new one in
Thank you for mercifully
Granting a pass
Though probably far from your thoughts
Pencilling your eyebrows
With the new color you showed me
The same one Janice uses
I still do not know the answer
Does it make you look younger
Nor do I know how it could
Or how I would tell.

I am in your mirror.
I do not wonder who you see,
I know.
Not the one
Who bids you confidence.
You are watching yourself,
In others’ eyes
Those judgmental unforgiving
More often nameless than not
More often women than not
Competitors for plump
Lips and chins
Blushed lupus cheeks
Smooth needled foreheads
You know all the supercili,
Yet you join the fray.

It does no good
For me to praise
You hardly listen
Do not hear
Or if you happen to hear
The words are on
The next train out
A new one sidles to the curb
I could spend a day of days
It would matter none.
Today at the hardware store
I will pick up
One pack of 60 watts,
One of flower seeds.

 

     Love Between the Leaves

The book, from 1825,
The title not important,
A missive of heart
Laid into page 220/221
Sat on a library shelf
In settled New England
In the state of impartiality
Never checked out
Never read
Never rebound
No book reports
Decades of hinterland strife
Babies and old people
Everywhere
Cycling through
Posthumousness and prenatality
Never giving a thought
To the book, to the library
To the middle of nowhere.
New writers overwrote
What was witnessed within
Casting said titleless work
Into inquietude.

The letter, however, ripened.
Nehemiah and Mercy
Begat Eleanor and Oliver.
Eleanor and Homer
Begat Emma and Joseph
And three others
That died at various intervals
After childbirth.
Emma married
Into genetic non-diversity.
The Brother’s War
Claimed most of what
Remained
Of twice-over miscegenation.

All is not to say
The love in the letter
Was not real.
Because the love did carry on.
Just outside the writing window
A tree grew,
In the hollow of which
A pair of flickers nested.
On the morning
Of wagoning the estate
To the newly christened library
Fog that had settled
Over the path
Shifted up the mountain
Drafted evenly
Through the forested cover
Dissipating at last
In whirling wisps
Into a large field of peat,
Harvested years later
When the land was settled,
Repurposed for balneotherapy
And growing blueberries.

 

          Bath Time

Now that hell froze over
Your mother will come looking for you
Tell her you are waiting
For the stars to fall
When the stars do fall
Tell her you are in the middle
Of your favorite cartoon
That under no circumstance
Will you leave the room
As long as road-runner lives.

Flash-forward sixty years, boy
Tell the IRS you thought they knew
That everyone everywhere waits for you
Tell them checks bounce
You can write another
Not to worry
Hold your horses
Just thirty days more
Give a guy a break
You know that I
Would do
The same for you.

 

       Predisposed to Spells

I do not know much about spells
Except the one inside every sparrow
Gripping a branch beneath
With loaded springy feet,
When though an minute alight
Through eyes and ears(!)
Intuits my slowing approach
Tincture white and tincture black
Magic makes its flight.

Let us try an experiment then
Today I shall intrude
From another way
Following the creek, say
Not the sidewalk,
With you at my side, say
Nearing the lilac hedges
Growing low and sparse,
Sparrow should intuit
From hearing the talk of lovers
(Words not of sighting birds)
That a spell is here and now
Already in the works
And think not to fly away.

Love can be
Contrary to belief
Meat and drink
Potion and plum
Lover can be gone
The body here
Or
Love can not be
Meat and drink
(Nor potion nor plum)
Lover can be here
Though body gone.
Then again
Either can be true.
This I know because
For fifty-nine seconds
This morning
I thought
Only of me,
With that sparrow,
In flight.

 

     You Have Come Around

Back when my father was a god
I came to him
With a jagged thorn.
He slid me down
The plaster wall
And with heavy palm
Subdued my anxious hand.
“For the next one minute,”
My father said,
“I am not your father”
But your doctor
You with your finger lame
Look out the window
Not at me
Think of blackbirds
Flying away.

Sulfur smell of a farmer match
The devil my father did softly say
Waving the needle
Through nether flame.
Yes I looked
How could you not
Gaze at the thorn’s retreat from hell
Wonder at the wisp of blood
That followed it out.

That was then and this is now
You seek me here my son,
Grandson of my father
Your bloodied arm aloft,
Running the same blood
As mine was then,
And his, his,
Though
This not the gift of a barberry bush,
Though
One for which your father
Will set your chair against the wall
Say to you to watch,
For blackbirds,
And soldier past the styptic sting.

Life moving along as it does
My son,
Wearing its stops and starts
For this eternity now
Let us both sit still,
Me with my scars
Yours to come.
Happily I watch you safe at home
Resting with your lesson learned,
Listening to the blackbirds
Calling your blessings
As we watch the sun go out.
The warmth you feel,
The wrap’s embrace,
Hold all close across your chest,
Like once I swaddled you.

       

          You Are Blessed

If you are wanting for birds
First find the birds inside you
Remove them one by one
Name them for their colors,
Their bird sounds.
A passerine may look at you askance
Where did you come from
Where did you winter?
Not to worry this
You, like the birds,
Have always had your song
You are of earthen colors
Your change
Is the continual movement
Of the planet’s crust
You are from
Where they are from.

 

        I Put That Stove There

I plopped that plastic children stove
On a bare spot in the woods
To wait and see
If a hidden creature
Would make some use.
I did not expect a casserole
Nor a cup of tea
Just that some furry one
Might curl up for warmth
Behind the drop-down oven door.
I did not plan for the branch to fall
Or snow to fade the paint,
Mushrooms to nudge the feet,
The green to climb,
The wind to pontificate.
I only aimed to reciprocate
For the useful bare spot
On my children’s toy room floor.

 

      Where There’s Life

When at first the mouse grew cancerous
The pups would come around sniffing.
The tumor began curiously as a depression,
The hardened surface without hair,
Doing little, though, to deter the fellow
From foraging speckled kitchen counters,
Albeit discomfited.

Through many sundowns
It was business as usual
Though occasionally the wrong step
Brought a shooting pain.
The adults would angle away
Especially as the tumor grew,
A wobbling side-saddle knot.

One night the defect brought on
The greatest distress
Becoming jammed
Under the refrigerator
In the motor casing.
The mouse knew by instinct
The downside of vocalizing,
Also that morning was near,
When the children head out,
Seeding the floor beneath the table
With Life cereal,
And the irony of it all.

 

        Yogurt

Go forth
Yog-hourt
Mighty one.
Suleiman the Magnificent
Dispatched you
To save the bowels of the King
Go forth into the night
Your maker’s bengal fire eye
Watches over my dark kitchen.
     

          Mascara

The best thing about
The flat seeds wafting
In August
In waves
From the tree
To the ground
Is the birds think
You threw them there.
You get credit
And they like you.

The alternative,
An east wind day
Spreading the seeds
Far and wide
Someone else
Gets the credit
You have to start
All over again
With just your good looks.
              

         Not For Us

Before you send me emojis
Please consider
My thoughts of you are infinite,
My love happy and sad
All sorts of happiness
And more kinds of sadness
Filigreed in between.
When we part
I live and die,
Smiley face and scream.

 

        Picking

In the picking meadow
I listen to my math daughter
Point out apples
To her engineer boyfriend
The red/green are snappy
The totally green ones sour
Need more brown sugar
The small apples prep-time
With a standard cost equation
Are more than made up for
By three dimensional sphere packing
(Into the picking meadow twenty dollar
All you can pick picking sack).
The slightly bruised ones are ready
The flavor is right there
Get some.

I watch the two move on to the Autumn Crisps
Unnoticing of the hovering, collecting, gathering
Warning yellow-jacketed wasps,
In my ignored observation
The team name and mascot
Of the boyfriend’s institute of learning.

The sack as everyone knows
Must be filled to a rounded top–
For this meniscus they choose Jonathans
I learn about the perimeter,
About medium-size guard apples
Not limiting the height of crown,
Nor restricting three dimensional space.

At the end,
On the way to the car,
My daughter hugs the bounty to her chest,
Upbraiding me for knowingly plottingly
Wearing the same red flannel shirt as she.
     

           Go Back to Nature

The brown puffed tardigrade
Living within the tangled feet
Of the green-needle bonsai
Along the silver shore of mirror lake
At the jutting-in point
Of finger creek
Looks at wandering you
Over her impervious shoulder
Or at least discerns through it
Your annoying umbrage
Interrupting the previously steady
Jewel waves of sun.
     

     The Fading of the Elm
     In Tompkins Square Park
I remember a time of the elms
Variegated quilting overhead
Silvered stitched and golden green,
Also reflections of blue homes
Whispers of Revolutionary Catalonia
Song of wind through leaves
Echoes of American punks
Also woodland rhapsodies
Hum of the mujeres libres.

There had to have been children
Dancing with bottles
Because I remember the hydrants,
Spraying windmills
I do not remember children, though.
None younger than Vickie and I.

Tonight, in the dark,
There will be children
Scootering the walkways.
You will be able to hear,
Listen closely,
Tents flapping,
Daughters of syndicalists,
Bowls passing over tables.

There will be quiet, too.
Vickie died at 52
Breast Cancer.
Blue is the color of the elm
Glucose, Oxygen, ATP.

       

         Urtica

I touched a stinging nettle
Just the other day
Trying to make a cup of tea
Don’t worry it went away.
Reminded me of better times
When I crashed my red car
Into the public Sherman tank
In the town square
Surrounded by the law
That at least
Was an itch to scratch.      
   

         Walking Stick

The story of that stick
Lying in the dirt
It was a branch
Praying shade leaves
Over Saint Francis school yard
Raucous recess,
Meditations of the King.
Powerhouse leaves
Blessed by the church
Need turning about
How else to find the sun
For growth and fruit
Pollen and bees.
Dutiful branch
Breeze catching
Gracefully aging
Ten years, thirty
Moving on through
The patient cycle
Faithful branch
To faithful stick.
Pick it up.
Walk tall.
     

            The Internet

Why do you think we look bored?
This display boat is boring.
Where are the cobwebs,
The broken bloody nets?
Even the fish smell is piped in
Fried tenders
Trawling and docking music
We do not need the explainer
Feeding us numbers
That the real, smelly, boat
Clocked between overhauls
To erase the oily barnacles.
Come alive, man,
Introduce us to your grubby mates.
     

        On Other People’s Dyings

I had a sudden urge
To look up
My prose writing
Workshop teacher
E. L. Doctorow.
I wanted him to see
I’m writing poetry now,
To hear him calmly say
Writers are witnesses
But the catch is
Mr. Doctorow died a few years ago.

The way such an urge presents
And the way it leaves…
I mean people die in all lives
Some so close and loved
That presenting and leaving
Is an unyielding wave
God bless you…
This was not that.
It was only a strange feeling.
I planned to tell Mr. Doctorow
About my search for metaphor.
Yet I was greeted by a dancing girl.

I would have shown him
Not told
Using this,
What you,
The witness’s witness,
Are reading,
Barely a poem,
Though one nonetheless,
With line breaks
A little rhythm
Plump metaphors.

Maybe the whole uncanny thing
About people dying,
Not being there anymore,
Scotch and soda aside,
Was some evolutionary process
Where we just move on,
By Design,
Our axons straight,
Our dendrites unruffled,
Run a comb through our hair
Be on our way.

The poet asks,
With little flair,
Leaning forth his cane,
I must implore
How do we keep our hands
Out of the boiling pot
Of supernatural soup
Should we just stand there
Aside, watching,
Witness for the state?
 
   

          Selection Pressure

It was at the botanical garden
Under a rock
Where we discovered
The secret of love.
Love is not a dream
But a beetle
The carapace of which
Bears a hologram
Resembling
Distinctly
A wedding ring
Not unlike the emperor crabs
Tossed back in the water
By Carl Sagan;
Here the female of our species
Not permitting the male
To crush anything that glimmers
And the male so loving her
As to subdue his inclinations
To mess with the gods.
     

      Under Heaven a Time to Clean

Nowadays a broom comes in handy
So much to sweep
All the land is covered dirty
Hard to tell if streets are left
Or roads to anywhere.
Once upon a time there was empire
That built the streets
And roads to Babel,
Free speak of empire.
Brooms, though, piled up from disuse.
There was you
There was me
We were king and queen.
Voices of the mayor
From street sweepers came
To get your car
Out of the way.
The gas has left the ground,
Moved to the air.
On foot we run through streets
Sweeping a path in front
Like the Jains
We ask forgiveness.

     Henry the Stammerer and the Rise of Capital

The good thief manages
To wrest himself from the cross
Beneath the side eye of the king
Henry the Stammerer running
Through debris
Fortuitous
The afterlife a loaf of bread
Tucked under his arm
One heel the devil
Gabriel the other
The centurion slicing
Going first for the smile
Then the bloodholes
The Stammerer mocking
Drawing from his good life as a cur.
Henry sets a pace
Of two thousand years
His flock of strays
Lapping and tail biting.

 

    Children of the Dusk

This is for the child
Who in the middle of night
Wakes up
Thinking about the belt.

But also for the green child
And her red dream intruder
Who the other day
Green teased about
Fat clothes
And watched red’s face
Pale like lost moons.

For the princess who sleeps
One eye on the clock
Wishing the numbers to fade,
Let them keep the school
For themselves.

She was never understood
Nor will ever be,
Having found her place
In the first story book
The teacher ever read.

For the child of things
Weights and measures,
Not people,
The names of others
Being words
And the others numbers
There is a special green bus
To drive you away.

As for the child
Who sleeps the night through
Ladies and Gentleman
I dedicate my next song.

 

On Reading Absalom Absalom

Choose you soldier ghost
Pick one
Miscegenation
Incest
Scratch it on your stone
Bury the slab to the hilt
But just the hilt
There is a germ so loves the dirt
Another so loves the rain.
The South will venture by
You should dress your burden
Satinette and piping
The South will come to you,
Crippled and stout
Wanting to know
Wishing to hear from nature
The intractable end.

     

          Junkyard Dog

You could see the rib skin dog
Was having a rough time about it
Drinking from the flathead six puddle
Through a rainbow film of flickering oil.
I called him over
Wiped a star from his beard
Poured my New York City tap
Into a headlamp shell
Proceeded to yarn him
About my life too as a junkyard dog
At least in your telling
About tail chasing
And not coming to terms with myself
Let alone you.
Dog circled, stretched out,
Plopped his diaphanous skin down
Next to my seat
Beaten burgundy leather
4 on the floor
Flapped his ears flat to let me frizzle.
They were soft.

 

Girl Interviews

Human race
You are here
On little account
Of Alexander Great
The balance of life
Is no different
From the balance of all things
The tiger in man
Is the tigress
Holding to account.
Humanity begins
With the interview.
Boy, you won’t hear it
You won’t see it
If you know what hit you
It is you who will be proud
Proud you should be
For having been chosen
From among the lunkheads
For a crack at your DNA.

 

      Steward

It is not necessary
Usually
To invite nature into your house.
But if nature should
Happen to venture
Into your kitchen, say,
You should either set a place
Or coax such little thing
Into a demitasse
And send it on its way.

 

What You Are Missing

Are night birds not enchanted
Sighting Arcturus
Or do they but fix
For only a wink?
How could they not
Engage with their eyes
When their spinners lock on?
You would think,
For Arcturus,
Bird eyes
Would flicker
Arcturus light
All night across the sky
If for no other reason
Than we would
With our mouths open.

 

     Flow (The Bighead Carp)

Bighead carp knows not the name
Does not think he invades
Does not feel unclean
Plies along dirty river water
Keeping it as clean as he.
The lip hook came
He knows not from where
Or that it is made of metal
Only that it is there
When he tries to eat.
The river current is his friend,
Flipping the shank of the hook
From time to time
Off the floor of his mouth
Into the water
So to speak
He knows not from where it came
Or whether the pikaia
With its primitive notochord
Also had a barb in its lip.

          

The Stories of Our Lives
(For Future Generations)

Often, with little warning
Time ends
With nothing written down.
That is one thing.
We may live a long life,
Too long
To write it all.
That is another.

A drawer of art supplies
Unopened, dried
White canvases
Propped against the walls
Brush swirls
Of the old masters
Ideas of the sublime.

Unfinished poems.

I with children
Have not sufficiently
Told such children
How much I love them
And have always loved them.
They do not know the stories of my life.
I who have tendered reparations to the
world
By raising such children to be world
citizens
Might best gather I and they,
Improving and improved,
Next to a pond
Wait for the fish to jump
The pond circles to reach us.

 

       When You Were Sleeping

You were beside me warm
I needed warm
You were quiet
I needed reassurance
That would not require
My imagination to dissect
So I said your name
It was my name you said back to me
But in one syllable.
I knew I was being unfair
Nonetheless I pressed on
With the happy memory
Of sitting now
Side by side
The dawn of May 25
Years ago
One beach towel
Across the two of us
With the sun on our legs
Rising to our laps
Chosen because I knew
You could not have sun in your dreams
Not really.

 

              Worries

It seems they are always searching
Looking for the right size opening
To push their way through.
Search as they may
Even sighting relief
In the canopy above
What looked like blue sky
Was only a plug.
They move on
Peer talking, nail tapping
It keeps them lubricated
Waiting for the opportunity.

 

       The Game of Living

If we could take a lesson
From inventors of games
It would be for everyone
To start from zero.
None of this The red bird
Better than the pigeon
Or humans slicing earthworms
Halving and quartering
Just to see.
A roll of the dice
Would start us off
Probabilities kick in
Some eggs would hatch
Others not
That would be fair,
Written instructions
For all to see.
How to handle bullies
In a world like this
Send them back to Go.
Pollute the earth–
Not on any of the cards.
What color are you
Your choice
Crayons of every shade.
Boy or girl
Drone or queen
Goes by the DNA.
So who invented this game
You may ask
Ask you certainly may
After that we leave our notes
We all begin to play.

 

        Recycle

One day will see
Children at play
Come across in my trash
This very fan
That fades the dew
From my brow
As I sweat through this book
About the hazards of eternity.

There will be the day, too
When the children of those children
Come upon the fragments of my bones,
My teeth,
Left outside the crematorium
To wash along the street
Because my spouse did not want them
In her living room
For people to question
Her choice of color and weight
Of ceramic vessel.

One would hope that the children
Take the fan somewhere
And plug it in
The way that children at play
Often do, just to see.

 

         In a Heartbeat

When I last saw a naked girl
She was wearing a holter monitor
I asked her what it was for
She said for her EKG
So what am I supposed to do?
Nothing, it’s automatic.
I told her eyes that I was not.
It’s for my fibrillation, she replied,
Would you like to feel? 
   

        Shelves

In our lives
We pass by
Giving little thought
Simple grey photo of Uncle Ed
Aunt Camilla
Standing there together
Dust on dust
Could it be we move through
Just watching the motes?

A visitor will ask
Who is that and what is that
Anachronistic novelty
On the shelf below
A crest of gold
A family shield
I ask them back
Anachronistic
Time which brought this here
Will pass along with it.
One day the final mote
Of our family name
And yours too
Will waft away.

Long ago
Swimming up from dark to light
We told ourselves
You must leave this house
Discover who you are
Seems longer ago,
Perhaps the irony of it,
Coming back late at night
Not bothering to turn on a light
Walking past.
   

           Creep

I have a flash-bulb memory
Of the creep at the side-show
Inside the dunking booth
Rolling down off his perch
And ripping apart the chain link
The water spilling forth
The water itself reaching the crowd
Well before the creep
The crowd scattering
With creep smiles
Still wearing on otherwise perfect faces
Me grabbing up my terrified kids
Booking it toward the subway home
Feeling the hot creep breath
Up and down my back
I did not say anything to you
I yelled to the air in front of me
I was in sympathy
For you and your predicament
Your life-long struggle with inner sloth
Your undiagnosed spectrum syndrome
The ones who said the words
Are the ones you should be chasing.

 

     Adolescence

Mark the calendar
Count down the days
Till the tree reaches your window
For your escape.
In the meantime
Bake bread
Bake extra for the world
For the world will judge you
Believe me when I tell you
No one can resist
Shrouds of rye
Taking over the street
They will be waiting to see
Just who that may be
Working the controls.

 

             Alone Nest

Loneliness is not an island
Nor is it a book.
It is not something that sneaks up,
Descends on you overnight,
Follows you home from a party.
It is not the absence of people.
Even when your dog dies, that is something else.
Loneliness did not start at age ten
Or when you left for college.
If you want to know loneliness,
One day, wearing a headlamp,
Track down a bat
Sleeping on the ceiling of a cave.
He is hanging there in the dark
Next to others hanging there.
This was predetermined.
They were born to hang.
If you feel lonely
Confront it
Welcome it home,
Party or no.

 

      Lemon Tree

Where did you come from
Lemonade stand?
Who are your children?
What a fabulous idea
Two stools and a board
A flowered cloth
Flowered lemonade.
This is the future, they say
And you are already there.
Five cents, I certainly shall
Freckled cookies
Still warm, you say.
I will take two
Yes, a napkin please.
How did you choose this tree
Of all the trees everywhere?
You say it chose you
I believe this true.
What tree would not want
The future beneath its leaves?

 

       Searching the Dust

I wish I could say
You will make it to adulthood
You and you and you
I wish I was better
At knowing.
Unfortunately
I can only issue prescriptions
Fair to tell you
That do unto others
Is weak to say the least.
I am more likely to tell you
Do not become addicted
Keep your eyes open
And your ears hearing
Gather others with you
Create
Do not be afraid
To see and hear the truth
The answers are not in there
They are out there.
Though the problem of man
May not have a solution
Realistically
It will never be solved
Within yourself
Within there is no without
Without is from where you came.

 

                        Just Another Story