The PoetGuru Podcast

January 1, 2012

2012-01-01T12:48:00.001-05:00

The garden, with its plush leaves, locked. Only tree
tops peak over. With wry grin we rush to chop
down sticks. Pray if you wish. Brush your forehead to ground

begging forgiveness. Or gush and sing
our story. Thump some twig to hush far
off sighs of parent or thrush. But scoff
not at paintings, lush thoughts, plots.

What to do with a bruise

2010-07-10T09:20:00.000-04:00

Let it sink
in
to your skin.

Go slowly purple
out the back end
and deep.

Then begin
to knit skin over
skin, and heal.

Leave a scar
far below
the surface.

Where no one sees
kept where you beat
where you breathe.

Where its mere presence
prevents you from ever
being new again.

Being innocent
and honest
and free.

In Exchange For Having

2010-05-02T21:25:00.002-04:00

You cross paths with a man in a woods on a search that he claims is for lost gold.
He's been told you can match this map to a point where a sycamore bends, then turn left beneath an old grey stone.
You see the tree, and the man; course, disheveled, a mess. He turns from left, goes on right and starts to scavenge.

In younger days I would help him, tell him right, or maybe dig, and upon success, take my leave.
I would walk the long path prided in knowing that my jaunt made someone richer for knowing.
But to be true I must tell you something deep would resent the dumb man, and my giving and knowing.

Today, I might well wait, see what happens, not to misdirect, but to meander on a chance for comfort (happiness).
No more that kid pleased by the memory of an old man who knows nothing of right or left, but sleeps well tonight.
But what voice tomorrow might I regret in passing? What’s left speaking which I tamp down in exchange for having?

Kiss Me...

2010-04-07T06:28:00.002-04:00

Kiss me. On the lips. With the shore of your pursed
mouth. What more could I ask than to be left out
from the cage of my fears, the store of my wants? Home,

in concept, is a door closing. When
you are closed, nothing more escapes. Who
stops to find my body, tore to drops
of flesh, sees your lips hover.

You Said Say

2010-04-06T22:51:00.000-04:00

God. I lay prone in my bed to pray. It’s odd,
but you answer in my head with quips that
would sound biting from a kin. Instead, we share good

bellyfull laughs. You tell me my will
keeps the tension that weds us and leaps
of faith are fay. “Don’t dread the fall, love,
or rising.” You said. “Leap more.”

Veteran

2010-04-05T07:01:00.000-04:00

A man walks in, obviously a veteran,
to the shop I work in. Obvious if you
notice the nub and skin on his left hand. Some hiss

from a bullet in a chamber, some
shrapnel spinning. We are the lost selves
of our cells, of our quests to win. Love
and flesh living in our hands.

Ends

2010-04-03T21:47:00.003-04:00

What will you do when the world's not spinning, stuck
awkwardly on it's axis, when all objects
stop shimmering and the light around them flip-flops

no more, when you see the walls plateau,
each a land of objects within reach
resting peacefully in 3d? Best
if you then kick a fresh riff.

For Marley

2010-04-02T07:44:00.000-04:00

“Get up.” said the Rasta. Said the faith healer. “Git.”
said the rube on the porch to the mutt he met
sleeping. Don’t be led to your resting in a heap

of blankets. Forget who you laid, loved,
lost, who you freed or fed, at what cost.
Life is best lived feet below head. Strife
and sloth are useful dead. “Stand.”

In That Key

2010-04-01T06:51:00.002-04:00

Someone improvs a few notes, and what’s been done
cannot by undone. Emotion taps a hand
as an ear, that just wrote the riff in neurons, has

an epiphany. It totes the band --
bass, snare, keys, the lead’s coat -- in a case
smaller than a pick. It can quote all
the changes by rote. Two. Three.

Towards Stillness

2010-03-26T08:26:00.001-04:00

Asleep on your pillow, noses close. I keep
my breathing slow. Move not a muscle lest I
break the spell that holds. All night, the effort I make

tends towards stillness, calms the folds and bent
muscle-blankets, elbow uncrinkled
only if I know this: You, holy
gift, won’t go, won’t leave, won’t shift.

To Ankles

2010-03-26T08:20:00.000-04:00

Fear faced at the mouth of a river, the sheer
weight of rain and melt, thick waves native to great
cold-snaps, laid by an off-kilter sun; olive, old

as untold sin, as death, as the hiss
of wind whispering to our motives,
soaring round in an octave cursed (or
blessed) to outlive forgiveness.

Thirty Seven Thank Yous

2009-10-30T11:06:00.000-04:00

Thank you for this body that is still working.
This body is thanking you for still working.
That is a thank you for this still working body.
That thank you is still working, for this body.
For still this body that is working. Thank you.
Thank you for working this body, still.
Thank you for this body. That, is still working.
Working is this body, for thanking you, still.
This still body is working. Thank you for that.
Thank you for this working body, that is still.
Still, that body is working for this; thanking you.
For this still working body that thanks you.
Thanks. For this body is you, that still working.
For these workings, this body still thanks you.
Thank you for this, a body that is still working.
Thank you is working for this, that still body.
This body is still working for that thank you.
Is that body still for thanking you? This it is.
Thanks; for you, still body, that is working this.
Thank you, for this body is still working it.
Thank you body, for this is still working that.
Is that thank you still working for this body?
Thank you for this body that is still (working).
This still working. That body. Is for thank-yous.
For-still this working body that is thanking you.
For you this body is still working. Thank you.
This, for-still working body, is thanking you.
Thanks for working this, You that is still body.
Thank you; for this body is still working.
This is a still working body. For thank yous.
Thank you working body. For this is still that.
Still body, thank you, for that is this, working.
Thank you for workin’ this still body.
Thank you body, for still working, that is.
Still for this body. Thank you for this that is.
Thank you four. This body is still working.
For You: this body; still, working-- thankful.

Three

2009-10-04T23:04:00.001-04:00

Three does not divide equally
but when the obsessed is faced
with the last tic-tacs
that must be eaten in pairs
and gets stuck with three
she does not take two
and hand one to me
but bites down hard
and passes me her half.

One and a half is not even
and so when the obsessed
makes sure that between
the pair of us the tic-tacs
are split equally her lips
are my lips and we
are more than two people
separate. We are done
searching for the one.

After the work

2009-09-24T03:39:00.003-04:00

After the work, in all its usefullness and emptymaking
I could argue with no/ones in traffic, tossing cursewords
only to arrive home horse and exhausted and laydown
for something like a nap, approximating giveinsurrender

I could, but when I get there, arrive dead in that statehood
you smile and dig my back muscles with themlovenails
and I sense your want/to dripping into me, as in an IV
and whatever anger I held for them no/ones goesout

You smile, and lead me from that frontporchangry in
to where hands/squeezed and backpetting catlegs
absentminded thigh kneading, our limbs like saying love
and crawl onto me curling up and asking for comfort

To where we tie up in that thickhug at our neckmeets
where nolight flickers and we see smell lumps of candle
batting off our eyeshine, which can't spot eyes, but
your head buried in my neck teeth dug of moon and stars

Where nolight is wrapped inside but each other's heart
that beats away whatever stupid/dumb nothing done
coworker customer again today. Who cares here?
where we pounds of flesh, we godinlaws try to get back

That beats away like wings thee thick gravity and lifts
our love bodies into something approximating heaven.
After the work, desire for giveinsurrender, your silt grin
settles in, awakes me for goodwork to begin, and for better.

Tripping Fields

2009-09-17T15:58:00.000-04:00

What we thought of as our rooms,
laid out in rows, our beds,
our mattresses, our feet
sticking off the edge was none of it.

The halls could best be described
as belonging to those who cut
a yellow ribbon or first
tye-died clothes in our sink

or belonging to the first to groan
on our mattress, spill love
when they were new, belonging
to the state. We, as Rockefeller's

children, who belonged
to whichever farmer sold the land
or to the natives or the earthworms
or simply to the earth.

We called it ours. Grew tan
by the gunk, thin in the limbs
of a dead tree, ran like bats
along a starless evening.

They paved the tripping fields.
Made soft the slope that felled us
and hung lights so the incline
would never, again, come as a surprise.

Tore up the tree and its roots.
All that's left is a patch,
or a pennant, or a hoodie,
some embellished aberration

walking back to us down a hallway.
Ah-Ann, who may have been
that lovely, worthy of our lustful
admiration and our youth.

Womb and Surrender

2009-09-15T19:57:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I view sleep;
that covenant between the body and sheet,
between a mind that requires rest,
to cool down, come down
off the mountain into a darkness
with one light small enough
to bay the fears of childhood
but not too bright to penetrate eyelids
or keep away those sweet sweet fantasies
of flying in peanut butter castles
or endless shadows chasing.

Sometimes I view sleep
as giving in to the worst of lazy
habits and sometimes, like a shaman,
as knowing when to pray
and when to rest and when
to breathe. Sometimes
as womb and surrender,
that dark heartbeat of sleep.

So you've come home...

2009-09-12T00:14:00.000-04:00

So you've come home
having spent a lifetime alone
on a raft at sea
or on a park bench, or at war
or simply walking a mile (or more)
in someone else's too tight shoes.

Now what do you do?
Set up a desk by the window?
Paint the walls pink?
Sit like a mountain and think (on the floor)
of all the silly things you can hang
and grow and coddle and adore?

You lay down your weapons
and strip to the bone,
decide what sound a good life moans,
what echos bounce off the walls,
that this is all you need to be done:
a drum, a hollow space, taut skin you fit in.

Straight and Narrow

2009-09-07T23:23:00.003-04:00

Face the day lean
stretched out
long in the heart and arms
let the day spill over you like a spout
get out ahead of the curled and the slow
know the Way is straight and narrow
keep below the false drama and sad songs
be lean and long (what some call mean)
for stealing all the lights
and all the beams
all the heat and all the dreams
of the sun
that great warm embrace
across the sky
behind clouds or in front
of the race we run
coming home to our lover
our family and the One

All The Good Sun

2009-09-07T23:22:00.003-04:00

The rain stopped, so I dragged to the porch
the chair we plopped down in when spring was popping

curled my legs up to listen to the resilient bugs
ones left now that all the good sun has south run

to you in your bikini and me with my tanned feet
to you by the river and me in your swimming

to you with the top down and me naked running
to you in the tall grass and me in the weeds.

Now, onto this harvest, this bounty, spirits and feast,
thanking you for summer with winter impeding.

On This Straight Earth

2009-09-06T12:54:00.001-04:00

I can’t see the ice-caps melting, have no love
for concrete. I’ve felt the heat every summer
and my skin browning. I’ve heard the yelping chorus

of crickets belting out melodies
from trees, helping themselves to a hum,
sought myself outside myself, stayed straight
on this straight earth by tilting.

The Cicadas

2009-09-01T14:30:00.002-04:00

Off the beginning of summer cicadas would come
and eat the leaves that spent a spring budding.
There would be articles on the news about how horrible
the infestation, that left our trees bald as politicians.

I couldn't join the consternation. We had no plans
to use leaves for food, nor fuel. Simply our aesthetic.
The buzzing sounded like noise, a song we hummed,
one we sung about God given rights to our life

our country, our homeland, to beauty.

But no one wondered why the cicadas come,
hungry and singing, horny and ornery
why they lie dead on our sidewalks,
serve themselves up for oak or poplar,

what love drives them most to death,
what breadth they passed, what distance
and why the chorus sounded like laughing,
what they knew of happiness.

Summer

2009-08-31T11:43:00.000-04:00

Graze in the field and I'll shield
my eyes from your eyes, from how
they drowned out other light,
how even in sunlight,
bright bright light,
I have to squint at you.

You ask how someone loves so easy.
To be baked by you, tanned
in your presence, retina panned
at the sight. It's right. The tune
played in my head since I knelt
by the bed and prayed as a child,
a small child, a small and pious child.

It is not easy to love you. But to not to,
to let go and watch you float away
as any warm summer day
must end, would be the end.
With my last breath
I would rumble towards the horizons
at top speed, up the mountains

to chase you at fifteen degrees
across the land, to the oceans,
exhausted, but never able
to calm the wanting,
unwilling to be without you
for a moment, to never
stop moving or leave.

Of A Life Like This

2009-08-30T09:57:00.002-04:00

It's all script, the rend and rip of person
from person, lyric from rhythm, notes
from their home on the page. We're separate.
If I can accept this, then the longing
is simple, chronic, expected.

It was only when I imagined myself of you,
that loving you was coming back
to taste my own flesh. If I could settle for less,
nap and get fat, be content arguing,
investing, hoping in earnest.

All day I could fend off demons,
pretend you're listen behind the windowpane,
that as I wait you wake with eyes open,
lips parted, that I'm not the only one
up early and alone.

If I could bend my will to a paperclip
and forget, hold on to none of it,
then I would not need you,
would not miss you,
would be a fine citizen of a life like this.

Death Is My Pose

2009-08-29T11:48:00.003-04:00

Death is my pose, where I run,
where you can't follow,
that shallow river
in which you dip your toes
and realize, (no, where you really know)
you can't cross, can't catch me
where I am washed
clean and pose
on the other shore,
smirk on my face permanent,
wiping old blood from my nose.

You thought you could keep me,
or that I was gone.
The shock on your face
at my existence shows.

Try, stick in a foot or a toe.
It looks shallow. Like you could cross
to reach me. But by that time I'd be gone,
on a new shore where the wind blows,
where we live separated by a creek,
by an ocean, by the rills
that wind between
our deepest connections.
Until you die with me,
cast off this pretense and these clothes.
Who knows? Death I suppose.

Curtain

2009-08-28T12:56:00.001-04:00

Cross the grate,
that gate of iron-moss,
links that won’t stop flame
but make a falling log
or flailing corner
come up short of escape.

I hold your heat
and stare into your deeper bed
and deep, let letters I long to write,
rhymes and reams
meant to singe
your eardrums come.

I bask in your petals,
yellow and orange
swishing out to taste me,
to leave a mark on each spot
you touch, blister
promising to never heal.

Meet me at the edge
at the curtain's kiss
shish your scar of a story
whispered in the dark
wish it were lit brighter
by heavy breathing.

The Work

2009-08-28T02:53:00.001-04:00

I complain about the sun, shirt off in a run, the heat
the flab flapping over the clap of feet against concrete.

Stop in a moment of weakness, to catch a breath,
hands on knees and see what appears to be

a pine-cone but thinner, in the shade of a tree,
hovering just above the grass, just off the concrete

spinning on some thread too thin to hold it. How long
has it been here? How old? No way to know.

I straighten and run another lap, complain in my head
about how hard, how unfair, with what I have been burdened.

When I return to the spot, I catch it again, but even
with my eyelids; chrysalis, dinner, some insect catacombed

in a woody sarcophagus. Only then do I stop and watch
the inch by inch of something lifting it, listen hard to catch

the groaning, assume some spider, some insect,
some alien of scale must be straining to lift it.

By my next pass the work is finished. And who knows
what enjoyment's been won, whether the bug

did it for her nest, her stomach or her children,
whether there was any consciousness. All we know

is what we have left when the sweat and twitching muscles
give in to it is the work, and the rest, and the results of it.

Official Sounding Press Release

2007-08-19T06:11:00.001-04:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT:
thom ingram
PoetGuru.com
206-350-5436
poetguru@mac.com

PoetGuru.com Launches

Columbia, Maryland, August 19, 2007 - Today thom ingram announced the launch of the permanent home of the PoetGuru Podcast and his other poetry and training related pursuits, PoetGuru.com.

Over the last three years the podcast has moved around, being hosted on free sites such as Blogger and Wordpress. The new site will host the podcast, information for the annual writer’s conference Convergence, information for thom’s free training sessions and more.

“I have been waiting nearly ten years to host this site, ever since I signed up for my first free poetguru email address. Sites like Livejournal and Blogger are awesome for people to get out there on the internet, but there is something very special about having your own space. Hopefully, I can do the best work of my life now, having a permanent online home.”

Archives of the previous sites will remain up and are a great resource for over 600 poems written by thom and his poetic friends.

For additional information contact thom or visit www.poetguru.com.

ABOUT THE POETGURU PODCAST: thom ingram is a poet, podcaster and trainer living in Columbia, Maryland. His poetry has appeared on his own sites, The Cloudy Day Art Podcast, The Everyday Muse, Indiefeed Performance Poetry and has been published in local and national journals including Elysian Fields Quarterly and upcoming in 29, The Magazine. The PoetGuru Podcast has existed since August of 2004 in many incarnations and is a member of the Association of Poetry Podcasting at PoetryPodcasting.org

- END -

Shoving Consciousness Through the Side Window of a Lexus

2007-08-18T08:54:00.001-04:00

A better man would drive on, offer no proof,
realize it’s no use ruffling your own nest
trying to better a goof who made it this far

in grey silk suits. Mr. Trendsetter’s
got a nil chance of hearing proof, less
than he’s got reading prayers scrawled on trash.
Here’s a fool, best left aloof.

Seven tables

2007-08-14T09:04:00.000-04:00

On one we flip colors, cheer faces, boo numbers.
Two hosts a hot meal, but just once a month.
Three wobbles when leaned on, a page folded under its leg.
On four rests a discussion from college, hung on a wall, left unfinished.
On five I’ve marked out the beauty of my friends using equations and colors.
Six sits in the desert of my imagination, a towering mesa.
On seven we make arrangements, set a vase and a picture, place flowers.

In Poplar Glen

2007-08-10T08:15:00.000-04:00

Some guess they hear singing. In my younger days
it sounded like an argument, like Congress
or dinner, or free press. I wondered what passes

for news in the forest. But today
I hear recess: robins on swings, crows
erasing lessons from blackboards, dorks
stuck on pavement playing chess.

This muggy summer

2007-08-09T09:04:00.000-04:00

The air, thick like eighties hair held up and poofed
with Aquanet, keeps us hid inside, subdued
with freon and well conditioned. A crew cut day

may come soon, but first we’ll need thunder
storms, wind, shampoo we must massage deep
into our scalp to renew our split
ends, this gooey sky turned blue.

The Champ and Buster *

2007-08-07T07:26:00.001-04:00

The champ, undefeated, undisputed, yet,
something in his visage suggests the ride’s clicked
to its apex, feet planted on the mat while Buster

dances and bobs, raring and weaves.

By the third round the fight’s over, by the eighth
our eyes are swelled shut, a last ditch effort
to slide a bullet proof vest into history.

Space shuttles at landing (and take off).

Here lies facts we dare not admit; brothers,
Presidents, heroes and foils gunned down,
leaders succeeded by mediocre men.

We all miss Cus.

From our torn chairs, our stained carpets, from walls punched
that we’ll never repatch, we pay our debts and cast
votes holding our nose, knowing the awful choice

leads to less tears (and less death).

--

*also an assignment, from yet another friend.

Gray, slow, and gravity *

2007-08-06T08:51:00.000-04:00

If first life were easy,
if for a buck or ten,
one could be tall and thin,

man or woman, with a click
find the perfect dress,
if conversations

were free and flawless.

But change is often gray,
slow, and gravity flows
in the wrong direction,

so for an hour or day
I will forget the first
and take the second.

--

*an assignment given to me, proving again that you can "order a poem like you order a taco"

Paradox in memory

2007-08-05T07:37:00.000-04:00

If I push the muscles of my cheeks skyward,
furrow my brow, blur the edges, try stretching
the cornea of my inner eye, if I deny

that others live, then that shy kid hung
like a stoplight, high on your every
twitch, aligns in memory and myth,
till both lie and truth exist.

To the Edge of Woods

2007-08-04T07:46:00.000-04:00

Welcome, welcome. Why’ve you taken this long
what seems like eons to stroll out along the edge
of the forest? Stroll out with your overloaded back
packed like a camel, packed for the long haul,
when we all know, it’s not like that at all.

You have no more to carry than a flea.
But the words I begged, when I’d pleaded
for you to show your kind and simple face,
to place your sweet paws down below your chin
and begin to welcome me home, welcome me back in.

It’s been cold on this ledge, in the wind, in the mist
of the appearance I’ve been living in. You must
have heard, have caught a breeze of me, shouting,
bellowing for you to come out and catch me,
teetering, sure I would continue failing,

and fall

eventually into the abyss, into nothingness,
into whatever rests in the pit of this long thin
precipice. I know my scars, how their jagged edges
must make me ugly, I know, to you, I must seem
hideous. And though, though I have nothing

yet to offer, no kind words, not a nip of solace,
I promise, promise you, whatever I have, I will give.
Tonight, it is tuna by the can, my hand rubbing itself
along the thin spine of your back, brushing back
the hair you’ve quietly quaffed for your visit,

and tomorrow, whatever gold, whatever riches,
whatever old thoughts laid before me,will be passed
out to loved ones and to strangers as blessings,
for your kiss, for my language, for this visit.
I’ll walk to the edge of woods, to sit and listen.

Lion

2007-08-01T10:51:00.000-04:00

I’ll waste days in your presence,
bring breakfast, hear your whining,
feel the love you offer
as headbutts to my kidneys.

I’ll watch you wheel and scratch
on the back porch, nudge your paws
against the screen dividing us,
sense you, wrestling beneath me.

You come round the forests’s edge
as from a haze, and I’m sure
there is no home on this earth

where your head lays. Sentinel,
each time I twitch you see it

as a sign, that maybe I’ll
come back, let you in again
to rest, weary, beside me.

There will remain this curtain
between us, birds and squirrels
hooting, rooting. But the choice
made can never be unmade.

You may love infinitely,
perfectly, poking your head

round the edge of my failings,
my obsessions, may want me
to return to simple peace.

I won’t get back up. Fallen,
the snap of bones must remain
unhealed, unset, altered

this way.

The Answerer

2007-07-31T08:29:00.000-04:00

You call out, in your weakened voice, call my name,
as if you’re a child, some meek invalid
spirit, lost strong ethic, bleak, devoid of output.

So I speak, woofing at your back door
and once you house me, sleek as a cat
and once you feed me. I sneak before
you. Too weak, you ignore me.

Solved

2007-07-30T08:35:00.000-04:00

“What it does is push the boundary and give a vivid demonstration of what computing technologies can do.” - Jonathan Schaeffer, Head of the Chinook program to solve checkers

Red versus black

Each piece equal in limitations
and skill, a utopian battle
solved by the machines
therefore making
the real possibility
of real war
nearly palatable.
What dangers we welcome as we
forget
the lessons
taught to us
by Matthew Broderick, setting
the computer against
itself and letting it run,
bloodless
fingers on keys, wiped clean
of errors
in thought, and in decision making.

Early

2007-07-27T06:28:00.001-04:00

Awake early, not to get a jump on things
that need doing, nor to see the sun rising.
The worm gotten will never be my dawn trophy.

The bladder woke me, tangled blankets,
deafening, mundane thoughts of daily
problem-solving. Devices woke me.
In the pitch, their lights gleaming.

The Work of Sin

2007-07-27T06:27:00.000-04:00

The road carved before and behind, lie equal
in measure, until one day the signs suggest
you have dawdled enough, fine work needs to be done.

You must dine without hunger, compose
without pining, stoke the cooled embers
for fuel. A boy, some twine, a stick.
Forage and fiddle to shine.

A Groom’s Maid

2007-07-19T07:34:00.000-04:00

My first romance, all three weeks of it, ended
with a phone call, with mutual agreement.
Her next high school sweetie offered her his name.

And so with each of my college loves,
each post-grad, even the fleeting trysts
I keep alive in my married mind.
Look. Behind me. Mr. Right.

Of Solitude

2007-07-18T00:58:00.001-04:00

In the alley, I duck amongst the boxes,
hide like the shy child I once was, discard
newly purchased toys to hunt through wrapping paper

for a cape, for a fortress, a front
to shelter the voices behind, dunce
cap, aloof, grunting anger, silly,
charming stunted baby boy.

What am I doing here?

2007-07-16T07:54:00.000-04:00

"What are you going to do, when you no longer burn?" - Molly Peacock quoting a teacher or hers.

http://www.mollypeacock.org/

Curves

2007-07-16T07:35:00.001-04:00

The sweep of the earth, we once wrongly called flat,
oblong of the sweet ovum, edge of a breast,
the ball, the bow, river feigned by cheating machines.

And I, peak at thaw, beat of a drum,
tree limb rooted deep, close-up edges
of sharp reefs, all those things invented
by man, of fear and concrete.

Thrust

2007-07-15T21:10:00.001-04:00

What waste could we muster, what rocket begun
with the ton of tidbits strewn about our house,
cables, tubes, shunned offers in unread magazines

for the husk? What fuel must gun us
off the landing pad of our cushions.
our fun electronic diversions
that dowse out the rumbling.

Patron

2007-07-14T11:47:00.000-04:00

With nary a muscle, no synapse, no will
to speak of, the tree has no trade but to let
all manner of bug and beast mow around on it,

bow its palms against faint passing light,
grow green and blossom, forfeit its fruit
showing no sign of struggle, allow
its ends to blow in the breeze.

What’s left of religion

2007-07-12T17:26:00.001-04:00

J. claimed we should call it the First Church of Soul,
and to obtain enlightenment take daily
one Snapple, one hour of Jazz, homemade pastry.

I lie on my back, strain to listen.
It’s all rubber bands and panes of glass,
campaigns to win votes, know odds, get chips.
Coltrane’s still chill in the fridge.

A Poem From the Porch

2007-07-12T17:16:00.000-04:00

One could lament a string of bad luck, losing
at cards, the passing scratch of cemented thoughts
hovering over old lovers, nigh distant friends.

But Fortune’s intent can not be grilled;
bent, feet to the sky, in a hammock,
in the rended shade of July’s sun,
wind in the freckled forest.

Why the PoetGuru Podcast Is Back

2007-07-12T16:06:00.000-04:00

"While I was gone, I did my best to fail at many things." - thom

This Podcast Has Moved

2006-10-11T11:46:00.000-04:00

come visit the new site:

http://poetguru.wordpress.com

(or click the title of this post)

The Light at First

2006-10-11T01:01:00.000-04:00

The light, at first,
is not brilliance
nor even light,
but lessening
of the darkness

and maybe this
was God, before
opening day,
my hazy face
awoke from sleep,

the dilated
eye of the womb.

And maybe this
was the first steps

of my someday
soon to be wife
round the marble
wall of a cold
and crowded room,

a lessening
of the darkness,
at first a blush
and cause the curve
of atmosphere,

a purple-blue.

Atone

2006-10-09T07:21:00.000-04:00

Maybe, my friend, my sadness,
my inverse lover, there is
no action to be taken,
no action short of dying,

that could polish off the sin,
grow back the original
and unblemished skin stretching
like a lone widow's artwork,

like a long expanse across
the canyon spread between us,
across that which divvies up
our self, alone from our self,

all we can do is grow up
cities and bridges, piles
of lumber, stacks of dailies,
generations of research

and harness the deft power
of our children and their skill
and their potential to grow
new cell lines from nothingness.

We are trapped here, in these cells,
perhaps to make our mistakes,
our dumb moves, and keep digging
ourselves deep into this pit.

To my soon to be ex

2006-10-06T08:59:00.000-04:00

The gaze, your eyes
searching my eyes,
for too long now.

Last month, last week,
that which you sought,
at the surface,

a scent or hint
was the first thing
you could retrieve.

It has sunk now
below the skin,
so long you look

each day, never
asking what drowns,
nor pulls it down

until one day
that tin anchor
on love condemns

it to the silt.
--
* four syllable lines, three line stanzas, written with verbs and nouns and as little scaffolding as possible.

Of Sins for Saintness

2006-10-06T08:57:00.000-04:00

Our good choices, those ceaseless flops and meals,
lazy peace, lying on the couch ignoring
loved ones while wafer-thin images story-weave.

We should be running, each giving blood,
working to tweak out our masterpiece,
but reach for a promise instead, blessed
upon the live and breathing.
--
*tricuahilo

Seeds With Scalpels

2006-09-22T10:01:00.000-04:00

They crawl over each other
like ants
or soldiers
taking a beach
relentlessly.

We've witnessed this day,
the gray sunrise,
dead and injured,
the widows
and the hollow children.

They reach a noble goal
no doubt,
but are sewing
their seeds and sutures
with a scalpel.

We swaddle the body
in a flag,
in a pine box,
and refuse to dishonor
the memory.
--
*five line stanzas, varying, almost alternating line length, end stopped stanza. Movement, movement, movement, but always to the same end.

The Gone Woman

2006-09-21T11:36:00.000-04:00

The narrative of living
spun here, coddled and threadbare,
nurtures a repetition,
and thanks the nurturing soul
of one with no right idea
what impression the naked
hiding of her hair behind

her ear left. The necklace
hid in her locker, the bear
as a noble gift, the nile
which carves Africa and leaves
in its place a noxious fume,
resources of nuclear
reactors, that null space I

could never fill. I rifle
through old pictures, a nifty
collection of vacation
photos, us in Fiji, us
and our first kiss, us lifting
ourselves to a nirvana
nere imagined, all of it

imagined. Nothing you say
now, serious, sarcastic
or snarky, could mitigate
the risks I'm still want to take,
should you show up at my door,
notes in hand, a symphony
writ to fill this awkward space.
---
*seven line stanzas, one leads into the next, project taken from the pallidrome post at http://carolpeters.blogspot.com
each stanza is worked from the name of a once and always loved one

Of Diligence and Decay

2006-09-19T06:21:00.000-04:00

The scabs of former leaves,
former skins of the trees
that eighth grade biology
tells us are the ways

the plant breaths,
lies on the ground now
decomposing,
becoming short and old
on the damp earth,
parchment etched with shrunk cells
that used to work.

The squirrels flip the lost scrolls
over in their paws
looking for fallen acorns, nuts
to carry them through winter.

Only the most diligent
will horde enough
to make it through,
to see the new buds
and the new fruits
that with the coming spring
will come unsprung.
---
*A quatrain and a seven line stanza, interesting and driven by content (aka, not intentional). The main focus was where the good end words were, based either on rhyme, slant rhyme or simple tastiness, (aka, the break between line four and five to breathe).

Off-R

2006-09-18T01:46:00.000-04:00

Miss R asks
if you r single,
if you r married,
if you r planning
on having children

Miss R offers
her advice, if
you r interested,
her understanding,
a beer at the bar.

Miss R
with her laugh
and her arbitrary hair,
her cat rimmed glasses
and her long arms

Miss R who loves
the things you love,
who lives a life
you r able to see
yourself,

had it not been
for the rut
you r stuck in,
living. Miss R,
still waiting at the bar.
--
*five line stanzas and a weird use of the letter R. not genius, but workmanlike

In The Window Too Late in Autumn

2006-09-16T01:11:00.000-04:00

Like Tink, whom I'm sure
flew in my window
on cool fall evenings
to inquire if

in my traveling
I had seen Peter's
shadow, as it had
gone missing again.

She always loved him
more than me, even
in times when Peter
was cruel and too mean.

Tink is the reason
I can sense those nights
coming back to me,
my breath in the air.

It's almost too cruel
to see her, her hands
small and too silent,
banging on the pane.
---
* five syllable lines, because something is wrong here, and wrong things seem to fit on fives for me. quatrains (four line stanzas) because something is right here and right things feel right that way for me. End stopped stanzas, but for the first, because the conversation starts well, but life. tends. to. intrude.

Coming Home

2006-09-14T05:45:00.000-04:00

The rain, a wet
I duck down,
bow down
under

in hopes that I
could stay dry,
if just,
somehow

I could find. What?
A tree, leaf,
my keys?
Inside

I will crack free
the glass door
and hear,
listen

To rain drops strung
like the chord
that falls
sweetly

In the dark night.
I should sleep,
should quit
writing,

but see me here
wet and cold,
thick eyes
alive.
--
*quatrains with a syllable count of 4, 3, 2, one word. All one syllable words until the two syllable finale of the stanza. It should sound like rain when read.

Twin Reflection

2006-09-11T07:48:00.000-04:00

On a clearer morning, one could crane across
the torn fabric of spacetime, and with their hands,
unfold the worn, nearly see through thread, of choices.

Here, I see how your firstborn daughter
could have been mine, how the angry scorn,
words sworn from our lips, made that twinkle
wither, a thorn in our eyes.
--
Tricauhilo: A poem with two 34 syllable stanzas. The tercet is 11, 11, 12. The quatrain is 9, 9, 9, 7. There is a thread rhyme that runs throughout each line of the poem. In this one: morning, torn, worn, born, scorn, sworn, thorn.

His Lost Voice, #236

2006-09-01T00:37:00.000-04:00

One can lose it
somewhere like a sock,
leave it behind in the wash,
in the pocket
of a old pair of pants
that sits at the bottom
of a basket
of laundry for too many days
until when it comes back
it is almost too stinky to keep.

One can keep it in the corner
of the room
you work in everyday,
a trophy like a mask
or old chair that you love
and remember
wearing to a party
a few years back
that created such
great memories
that out of the corner
of your eye
you wish to constantly
be reminded,
in the vaguest sense,
of the drunk beauty
of that night.

One can certainly
hand it over
to a new lover, a trinket
to keep them linked
together, even when apart,
a necklace or bouquet
of roses to remind
the insecure
of what meaning
love can have, and that they
who now have my voice
have value. "Keep it"
will be the last words
spoken, "Keep it
so that you know I love you."

One could send the voice
away to college,
to school back east
to round out its knowledge
and grow up a bit,
to gain qualification
and prerequisites
to come home
a better person,
ready to run a company
or local school,
to be a great leader.
For those years you'd be
quite quiet,
and even later never sound
quite like yourself,
an off note in the accent.

One could accidently
say something terrible
in a rage or moment
of thoughtlessness
that could be taken
as insult,
the voice huffing off
into another room,
sitting in the corner
with the door locked
or pacing the floor,
brow furrowed
and muttering
underneath its breath,
only returning after being
coaxed out
by endless empty promises.

The two of you could
simply grow apart,
so slowly
even the spiders
making art
out of the unused corners
of your apartment
didn't see it coming.
The two of you just
don't talk anymore,
and when you do,
not with the depth
and intensity,
the sincerity for so long
you had mastered.

The voice has grown up
now and moved on.
It has a family of its own
and spends days quietly
humming on the back porch
or marching around
the house
picking up things to fold
and wash and throw
in the hamper.
It rarely thinks of you
and never speaks,
not out of some malice
or anger,
simply out of the fact
that the voice
without you
is not the same
as the voice with you,
the two of you
were for so long
inseparable, your love
a conquering force
to overcome
whatever petty
nervousness the day
had laid at your feet
and now, when the day
wins on a daily basis,
no reason exists
for the two of you to talk.
And so you will go through
your life a timid animal,
always stuttering
and looking
for the right thing
to say, for
the good word
or the right nuance,
always coming up short.
Everything you ask for
will not be what you get,
not due to some
angry God
or trickster devil, but
your own inability
to ask properly
for what you properly want.

One can be lost on the shoals
of many islands, on the shores
of an always rolling
and innocent looking sea,
and perhaps it is not
the voice that is lost.
No,the voice could be
at home, making
the commute
to work and back,
paying the bills
and spending the time
in between
in an easy chair
lip reading.

The body, the spirit,
perhaps that is what is lost.
But the tyrannical brain
who can not accept a notion
that it itself could be removed
from the body,
that it itself could be the source
of the issue, that it could be
the one who needs
to get out of the way, that brain
has thought such
dangerous notions,
such evil things
that one must have
always expected the voice
would leave, it was only
a matter of time really.

I can not live forever
in this house father,
can not go one begging
and demanding you
take me seriously
if you are then
going to be the only one
doing the talking,
berating me
for all my shortcomings,
which are not
my shortcomings
but yours,
which are not my angers
and demons,
but yours. It was you
who spent every moment
of every day imagining
another time and place,
another life and another love.
She didn't leave
because of her own
idiosyncrasies, but because
of something you said,
or something
you should have said.
We didn't grow to resent you
for working too much,
although that is what we said.
No, we grew to resent
that the only words
coming out of your mouth
were spoken
out of anger or frustration,
that you had no voice
but this voice,
that you said to us nothing
but all the anger you had built up.
Where did you voice go?
Where did you lose it?

A voice can be gunned down
in the heat of war and so
could be on the shores of Tripoli,
or left back home and so
could be on the tarred over
grass of Ebbet's Field.
A voice can be locked
in the marriage it first
spoke alliance to,
and if so,
is lost forever to me,
child of something much later.
Or perhaps you simply
misplaced it,
as somedays I do my keys,
and so you are hoping
that someone will find it,
recognize some distinguishing
characteristic and return
it back to you.
Then, and perhaps only then,
when you and I both
have our voices
firmly back in our hands,
maybe then we can finally speak.

Anatomy of a Date, #235

2006-08-30T03:01:00.000-04:00

First, I will fumble
with the right words
and fret over the movie
and the restaurant
and whether flowers
at first is sweet
or pushing it.

Pass the cilantro
and the rice
the ketchup
to put on my fries

let the avocado
sit uneaten
on the edge
of my plate

while I watch
you order
the pad thai,
lips like thick noodles

I would have preferred
a nice basil sauce
or a light cream
on the side

Any kind of pasta,
however, will do,
be it Italian
or asian

But the baguettes
will never
be eaten
from my plate

Nor the brie
as it passes by
leaving behind
a rare scent

The fresh corn
will turn on a spit
while butter melts
below it

Ripe tomatoes
burbling in a pot
hoping soon
to be eaten

The olive oil
coating the pan
like a light
sun screen

The char mark
across the beef
remind me
of my mom's flank steak

How she cut
the Schwartz's
smoked meat sandwich's
in my lunch

The fresh shucked mussels
tugged from the bay
at their ripe prime
and flash boiled

Wild rice
serving as a bed
for any to sleep in,
whorish side dish

A lime squozen
over the lip
of the fluting glass
up and outward

Thick flour tortillas
patted between
my hands
and sniffed

The manchego
cut into thin strands
and splashed over
the top

Shavings of carrots
mixed with pineapple
and left overnight
to marinate

French toast
served in the morning
wet with buttter
but not too eggy

Artichokes, served
fresh and tender.
Getting down
to the heart of it.

Red licorice
meant to bring back
the fun of youth
and the sillyness

Blueberry-apple crisp
to prove
what a great
homemaker one makes

Peach pie
as in competition
of who can make
the crust flaky

Dutch apple pie
hot like a great hug
and filled with
fresh fruit

Wild berry yogurt
sitting untouched
in the fridge
for being healthy

Hot & sour soup
spooned up
by moving the trowel
away from the body

Granola kept
in a plastic bag
and brought along
as an emergency

Olives with acid tongues
meant to keep the pizza
from getting too sassy
too quickly

Cornichons split
down the middle
and left uneaten
off the side

Bruschetta
quickly eaten
before the appetizer
fills you up

Zucchini
in a light sauce
but overcooked
and none too fresh

Scallops perhaps
a day beyond
their best
possible date

The risotto
was taken
from the stove
too soon

One shouldn't buy
sushi from anyone
but the best
Japanese chef

Edamame
flavored over
until the taste
is all gone

Naan flat
like the land
we grew up
farming on

Yellow curry
instead of cilantro
means the rice
will be dirty

Papadum
to hold this
all together,
fall apart

Cheesecake
like a promise
we made
but cannot keep

Starbucks's maple-
walnut scones
which Englishmen
snarl at

Garlic to keep
the vampires
and everyone
else away

Mixed greens
served as a meal
instead of
the side dish

Almonds that
will always make me
think of the eyes
of the one I love

Blackberry jam
in clear glass jars
kept in the basement
all winter

Marmalade
half eaten
in the fridge door
for years

Rice milk
to quench
a thirst
I do not have

Omelettes
meant as love
every Sunday
at sunrise

Grilled salmon
to show off
how much
one person can love

Spinach stuck
like a curse
in between
your teeth

Tandoori chicken
sprouting with
all the possibilities
of joy

Green beans
snapped in half
and dropping
in a pan

Tender broccoli
cooked just right
to snap back
against gums

Rumaki remains
all I can offer
you tonight,
from this place

Veggie burritos
to entice
the hippy
in all of us

Fish tacos
like two pair
who work oddly
well together

Let's not even get
started talking about
the good-bye
at the end of the night,
whether you liked me
and I you, and how
to end, handshake,
hug, kiss, run.

Once the day, #234

2006-08-30T02:58:00.000-04:00

Once the day gets started late
there is no catching up,
no making up
for the productive
early morning hours
when the sun
is out for its run
and making its way
up the long hills of the course,
over the dale and the dew
on the ground, spurred on by
the early morning sounds
of busy squirrels and baby robins
starving from a long night
of dreaming.
You are still dreaming.
You have not found
the wherewithal
to kick off the cotton fibers
that keep you pinned down.

Once the day has begun
and the long pendulum
its swinging, you must
simply try to work your way
against the worst,
fat, bitter feelings
of having wasted
something precious
that can never be retrieved.
Try to fill the moments
with a dedication
that can not be
questioned. The work
is all you have,
the furrowed brow
of the moment
that proves
you were pushing,
that you were willing,
able and ready
to leave something behind
at the end of the day.
Tell a story,
no matter how insignificant
and what gibberish,
that shows
you are not simply
a newborn,
fresh out of the egg,
with your beak up in the air
and your larynx blaring.

Once the day gets started,
once the sticky afternoon
has come, the grass
brown and burnt,
the dandelions
bending westward,
there are no easy runs,
no easy lines, no
easy tables or classes
or closing hours at work.
All the levity
is in the morning,
like the best dreams,
the ones where
you find yourself flying
over a field of heather,
the tops of the brushes
just nipping
the underside of your belly.
One never dreams
they are flying
in the afternoon,
when the dumb geese
are below you,
squawking about
on the golf course
about a bad lie
or the divots
or the ball marks
on the greens,
pooping around the pond
and sliding in their own grease.
Never, not once
has a man dreamed
of flying low to the ground
on one of those
high humidity days,
days where the asphalt
below is melted like clocks,
days wheres the air
breathes like tissue paper
and the mere thought
of moving your body
calls to mind that horror
of having to wade your way
through a dark room of cobwebs
created by the phantom beast
who no longer appears
to roam these dank
hallways, but who
could be lurking
around the corner,
and so each movement,
may well strum
the string that will summon
the demon out for lunch.
With each breath in this air
you are being spun.
If you have had that dream,
please, don't tell me.
Don't tell anyone.
Don't ruin the slanted image
I have of the morning,
the mystique of a sun rising.

Once the day gets started,
in your cocoon of blankets,
with those first few
winks of decisions,
you are done.
The day has come and gone
before you even mustered
the strength to wipe the sweat
from your overheating forehead,
to reach over
and kiss your loved one,
to slap back the buzzing
of the digital clock.
A bowl of cereal waited,
drowning in milk
grown stale on the counter.
While you were dreaming
your mom dropped by
and made
you a sandwich,
placed it in a plastic bag
in a paper bag
and left it on the counter.
It will be gone
by the time you reach for it.
By the time
you are truly awake.
It is halfway gone already,
the day eaten.
The arm of the round one
on the wall reached
its apex, its erection,
and you are still
a ton of rigor mortis
dead in the bed, just now
beginning to rise.

Once the day is done,
once the sun has surrendered
its lust to the moon
and stars, once it has
painted, in its last throes
the great masterpiece
it set out to paint,
at that point,
you may just as well
go to sleep.
Sure, some artists will sing
that the nighttime
is the right time.
Some will say
they have spent
many a good night
up with friends,
Jose Cuervo, Jack Daniels
and their compatriot
Captain Morgan.
But the words are slurred,
as is the paint they used,
and the clay.
There's is a word
that has rejected
the crisp and the fresh,
the clean
for the abstract.
All that black.
The unending night
trying to be cool.
But the aerosols
we've let loose
have ruined our chances
of cooling off
and now we must
live with these long
humid summer days.
The old south has risen
again, up the gulf stream
and into the mid-atlantic
and slowly up
into the northeast.
We can debate
the causes
and the reasons,
industrial revolution
or natural forces.
Either way, we have begun
to burn the bodies
that lied dying
in the ground,
a disease of the brain,
like mad cow.

Once the days gets started,
if it gets started without you
as a part of it,
there is no turning back,
no rolling over, no invention
that will come of it.
Remember Ben Franklin,
history's great early riser,
perhaps, an insomniac.
I wouldn't put it past him
nor any figure of history
to be that deceptive,
to tell the world he woke early,
when really, he never slept.
Once Ben Franklin dies,
we as a nation
have nothing left.
No motivations, no heroism.
Once Hemmingway left
and Clemens jumped ship,
once Keroac dowsed himself
in kerosene and lit the match,
once Walt Whitman
closed the book and Warhol
passed his fifteen minutes
it was noon. The day
was on the downswing
by the moment each of us
woke up to meet it.

Off in the distance, #233

2006-08-29T09:18:00.000-04:00

I watched
what appeared
to be
a deer,
prancing around
the field,
too far
out of
the woods
and with
not enough
fear for
a deer,
skittish creatures
that they
can be.
I tried
to make
out the
makeup of
the head
and the
tail when
the deer
split, I
realized it
was not
one body,
but two
teenagers from
the neighboring
apartments who'd
come together
to escape
parents, the
watchful eyes
of society
who says
they are
not yet
mature enough
to know
the difference
between lust
and love.
At first,
I assumed
the taller
one was
the boy,
the smaller
the girl,
he hunched
over her,
her bending
to his will.
At first
I thought
the girl
was the
one with
the longer
brunette hair
the boy
the one
with the
mullet, what
had been
the mane
on the
back end
of the
deer they
together created.
They then
rotated, in
whatever odd
dance they
were manufacturing,
up one
side of
the hill,
back down,
one chasing
the other,
one landing
on the
other. In
that orbit,
that rotation
I came
to see
that the
boy was
the girl,
or the
girl was
the boy.
They could
have both
been girls,
but with
the chins
of boys,
the hard
outline in
the face
and hips,
in their
arms twisting.
They became
one body,
this time
a goose
flapping
its wings,
wallowing about
in an
open field,
destined
by design
to rise
up, fly
only briefly
and then
to fall
back down
on its
webbed feet.
The feat
of these
two teens,
or might
they have
been middle
aged, or
even better,
a grandma
and grandpa?
No, this
is for
sure, their
lithe bodies
and dark
shaded mane
made them
definitely young,
teens defiant
of parents
wishes, ignorant
of the
cost one
pays for
the time
one spends
thinking about
the few
lost moments
like this
after they
are gone,
ignorant to
the price
of a kiss.
Off in
the distance,
off in
the sky
behind them,
a cloud
was dancing
with the wind,
a shape
being made
and unmade,
and in
their stomachs,
the turns
and flips
the butterflies
that were
not butterflies
but the
churning
of hormones
dumped into
the bloodstream
and receptors
flooded and
levees overrun.
I watched
them tumble.
I watched
them fall
back down
the hill
on top
of each
other and
give in
to gravity.
Again,
they were
one body,
a worm
or agile
monkey. Then
again, separate,
always separate,
while they
spend their
lives savoring
this moment,
keeping it
as a
trinket in
a box
on the
night-stand,
keeping themselves
separate from
the one
they spend
their life
with. In
that moment
falling into
one ocean,
into the
cold waters
of memory
that keeps
them dropping.

What Weighs, #232

2006-08-25T01:40:00.000-04:00

The tire of flab
I am strapped with
round my belly,
which is nothing more
or less than
all the nights out
at restaurants who
take pride in portions
for each person
big enough for a family,
the lunches grabbed
because they were hot
and fast and filling,
cheap at the food court,
the days I slept late
rather than waking
for a brisk morning run
or sat like a lump
in front of the TV
or computer screen
while the sun did laps
around the earth
and the moon
did laps around
the earth, and the world
moved on around me,
every trip to the fridge
just to peek, that ended
with a cheese sandwich.

The air in my lungs,
though not much,
still weighs a ton
and takes the effort
of a lion both
to push it out
and suck it back in,
as if I were running
a black hole that ran
both ways. All the matter
of the universe
spit out far enough
that it needed
to be replenished,
and as soon as experience
made it tasty enough
that it became nutrient,
then the universe
breathing it back inside it.
The air in my lungs,
though not much,
weighs like the hand
of God reaching down
into creation and saying,
"Go, love the world I have
created, then come back
and tell this blind one
what of this living
you have seen."

We are weighed down
by our morality,
built not on principles
of what works,
of what God allows
to work, as is all
the physics and science
of the universe, but
based instead on what
our limited hearts
and minds and intellect
can imagine a good
and great God would
take as good and great,
as if not only did one create
a universe of plentiful
beauty and imagination
but also a mine field
or maze to be run through.
So we can build mine fields,
and we can kill those
who would kill, and we can
chastise the ones who
see only God's many fruits
and none of them forbidden,
who believe the laws
laid out and hidden
in the objects and methods
rather than on pages in books.

We are weighed down
by our choices,
by their future implications
and the echoes of past
anguish they harken back to,
the hits and misses, bad beats
of cards played
and good cards left
sitting on the table
face down. Everyone
tells you the ones that win
in the long run are the ones
who "dance like no one
is watching and love
like you've never
been hurt." Easy to say,
but the weight that weighs
heavy, that rolls your shoulders
over until you are hunch
backed. The osteoporosis
of our anger we've hoed
and buried, means
the only crops we believe
we can raise would be
stunted and mutant
and unworthy of the time
it would take to shuck them
and draw out enough fruit
to make a meal.

The boxes we ship
our technology in, work
lost to get a grapefruit
from the trees in the tropics
to a shelf in upstate New York
and still be fresh.
It would make more sense
for cold northerners
to just eat plums
and apples and leave
the tangy juices of Dole
on the shores of Puerto Rico.
But we don't. We send
the scientists, who could
be working to cure disease,
to come up with ways
to keep refrigerated
the fruits of labor,
freeze dried dates
and cured meats,
wasting petrol
to bring particular labels
to areas already overstocked
with trees and livestock
that too will be shipped out.
What work we could save
if we could eat what was given
rather than what fine foreign
cuisine our taste-buds crave.

The luggage we carry
on trips to foreign lands
weighs down the trip
and the plane, the things
of travel, accouterments
and toiletries, the peanuts
to keep us distracted
in flight, and the attendants,
trained to take care
of our hysterics and our cravings,
to take down terrorists
or anyone who dares
to disturb the quietness
in which we all sit
knowing we are doing a thing
wholly unnatural, kept up
by the weight of our
ingenuity and understanding
of the laws and counter-laws
that govern the universe.
If you can take your coat,
made of fine leather
calf back, and place it
over your head, tightly
enough wrapped, you won't
have to see or think about
anything until you end up
woken up and landing
in a foreign land.

The fuel on the plane,
which is nothing more than
the carcasses of races
of creatures, nothing more
than the leather calf back
coat you have strapped
over your head, weighs
down the plane. So, while
you are wrapped up in
your own world, taking time
to forget where you are
at the moment
you can wonder
where you are going
and why this trip
seems so important,
why you packed no luggage,
bought a one way ticket,
sold all your belongings,
emptied out your fridge,
why you sold the house
and the car and gave
all the money away.
How much weight
you've lost. How long
you have waited to make
this flight and that call.
The response that came back
and weighed heavy.

I left a kiss for you
on the porch steps,
where I stepped away
and into another life.
I left a kiss behind
in the mail box
with a stamp
and an address on it.
I left a kiss for you
on my lips, a kiss
I swore under my breath
I would give to no one
but you, a kiss
meaning more than
my breath or time
or the wastefulness
of all our wasteful
spending. A kiss meant
to fulfill your wildest
wishes, a hope,
that for once my kiss
would mean something,
that it would earn me
a shot at being the man
your imagination dreamed,
that we both hoped
I could be. I left a kiss
for you I am now returning.
It weighs nothing.

Pleasing the Prom Queen, #231

2006-08-25T01:39:00.000-04:00

I can see myself,
wandering
down the hall,
four people behind
the gaggle of girls
giggling
at whatever event
was unfolding
at lockers left,
right,
and in front of them,
the music of geese
or a broadway chorus
following behind them.
The hallway
like a highway
and the commute
from class
to class led
by the Beemers,
Rolls Royces
and outfits like metal rims
leather seats
like broomsticks
of witches
who looked down
their long crooked noses
at those of us
who didn't fit,
who wouldn't subscribe
to the tenants
of the religion
that was built up
around worship
of their expensive outfits,
their breasts,
their makeup
and their highnesses.

I can see myself,
willing minstrel
to that court,
jester
whose only purpose
was to trip
and fall in love
at the feet
of the wonders
and the mystics,
those chosen by God
to step down among us
and commit
heinous atrocities
against the better nature
of those
of us
who could not walk
on water, who were merely
the salt of the earth.

I can see myself
in the mirror
of that role now,
committing my life
to the service of others,
for the duty of women,
at the pleasure
of presidents
and heads of state. I,
who should have been
a soldier in the army,
with my willingness
to follow. I,
who should have been
in the navy
with my willingness
to go to sea,
paddle the longboats
so long as
I believe
the leader above me,
the coxswain in the bow
is an enlightened spirit. I,
who should have been
a Buddhist,
a monk,
or a Catholic,
kneeled
at the feet
of temples built
thousands of years ago
carving out
small figures
from soap
and pig fat
and mounds of clay. I,
who instead woke up
in a small, nowhere town
and mistook
adulation and full lips
for a divine presence,
who would follow
a pair of well toned legs
to the ends of the earth.

I can see myself
parched in the desert,
catching mirages
of moments
when the girl I longed for
looks down at my tatters
and found inside
a prince
or at least
a pauper
she could live with.
In the mornings
I would feed her
breakfast in bed,
and in the evenings
a rub down.
But, those shortcomings,
with me, she would never
have the riches,
nor the abs to climb
of one of the jocks
who went on to college
to party,
come home on weekends
and lie to her
about the girls
she knows he slept with.
And here,
in my adulthood, I,
who again have to
please the prom queen,
finding my way
to the front of the throngs
of people cowering
at her feet
and begging
for her mercy,
for the crumbs
of bread and sweat
falling off her back. I,
who have read
and learned
and know that, if I
were her best friend,
and she could hear it,
would do best
to tell her the things
said behind her back.
But, instead, I,
who must learn
to play a game
I've never been good at.
Like, for sure. Really.
Oh my god, Becky,
look at her butt.

I can see myself,
sandwiched between
the life I want
and what I must do
to get it, the lamentations
of a reluctant hero
holding poor cards
at a rich table. I,
who fold up the table
and carry it away.

I can see myself
looking back on myself,
anointed with the title
I swore I longed for
and all the rights
that come with it,
sick at myself
in the mirror for what
I did to get it.
Sad truth, subtle truth,
that we are still stuck
in tenth grade
and the prom queen
still commands
the respect or fear
of those who care
about looks first,
and greatness only
by association, those
who voted twice
for the frat boy
in the white house
and his frat boy friends.

I can see myself
against myself,
trying to hold on to
what should not have to be
sacrificed to rise up.
What I fear must be given up.
We sat once,
in study hall, me
reading over her notes
and offering a suggestion
or two
on verbiage,
on word choice
and sentence length,
on what big words
one should use
to best impress
which teacher,
gawking at her breasts.
For a moment she saw
my potential, my glory,
thanked me,
kissed me
on the cheek.
But, that love,
as all her love,
was pitiful
and short lived,
soon forgotten.

I can see myself,
wandering down the hall
four people behind
the gaggle of girls
giggling at whatever
event was unfolding
at lockers
left, right
and in front of them.
I can see myself
hating myself
for hating them.

Einstein lamented, #230

2006-08-21T23:49:00.000-04:00

From the outset the challenge
was to raise the consciousness
and race up off the tarmac
of our thinking, even before
tarmacs or tar existed,
countless contraptions
of men strapped in obviously
ill designed machines.
But before we could worry
about carpet bombing cities,
much work still needed
to be accomplished,
rain forests to be forested
and light, unfathomably
light wings hooked onto
gargantuan engines
that needed first to lift
themselves and their fuel
before their payload could be
jettisoned over the still
to be built modern cities.
The prop propeller that lifted
two farmers off the launch pad.

Societies like airplanes
and caskets draped with flags,
enjoy coffins shipped back
from what will be
the great wars of this
or any century. So much
that we must be on the march
of technology. And if our airpower
is not enough, or the enemy
invents a gas to throw
at our coming hordes
then we will filter it through
our great and sieved
minds to come up
with some cover that lets in
the oxygen but not
the new ideas of the enemy,
a mask called nostalgia
for a time and place
when we couldn't see
and didn't have to live with
all the crazies and fanatics
who've grown to hate me.

Though the ups and down
of life could get you down,
with all the wars and foreigners
coming across the border,
with life on a string
one can't help to carry on
bringing the yo-yo along,
hand carved wood
on two spindles and a string,
countless hours when you
should be rocking the baby
to sleep or walking the dog.
As the stock markets
rise with the promise
your parents made
to leave the old times
in the old country
and you look forward
to a new day,
on might say the wonder
of entertainment is enough
to keep you occupied
for the better part
of this lavish life.

When you leave, close the door
please, turn off all the lights
and leave quietly.
We will be keeping
the shiny new ballpoint pen
we gave you as a tool
to do the job we no longer
need you to do. Please ask
no questions about food
or profit or how great fortunes
of wealth can simply
disappear. Please
do not allow petty
differences with your spouse
to cause you to lose
that too. Take it in stride.
We'll be back one day,
hire you back at one tenth
the salary and one tenth
the size, automate
the majority of processes
that took a mind, so you can
punch holes in walls and cards.

Work too late, sleep too late,
don't get up in time to eat
anything that would help build
a lick of useful muscle,
and so, the microwave oven
comes along to let you
spend less time in the kitchen
and more on the couch
getting slow and lazy,
slave to the TV that blares
in front of you, irradiates
all your senses and leaves you
a bubbling mess. The medal
you tried to hold onto sparks
and causes anguish
and dies a slow death.
Same technology they used
to make the bombs,
cure disease, what melted
chocolate and the brain stem
of a scientist passing by it.
Einstein lamented his role
in it from the beginning.

Now that physical activity
if unnecessary and all the good
jobs require a thoughtful brain
and a weak back, you can sit
back in the front seat of your
muscle car and let radial tires
roll beneath you, roll you
out of the restaurants
and down blue highways
passed attractions the promise
the worlds biggest, fattest,
slowest whatever. Look here,
in this giant tin can puffing smoke,
a man who believes that work
will win out and that the powerful
will someday come to realize
how valuable a good man
with a strong work ethic
can be to a company's long term
plan. Roll on down that path
and see what riches it brings,
what empty diamond minds
and dusty lunged coal factories.

In the heat of autumn's hot
races, they found a way
to tarnish even the purest
of old time American sports
while trying to build a home
for whiny players who can't
stand the heat, business men
whose polyester would stretch
and stink in the Texas heat.
For a generation, astroturf
stretched from sea to shining
sea, anywhere one didn't feel
like paying for grounds crew
or weeds, great chunks of carpet
pulled up over the concrete
to soften last centuries inventions.
Not until the last days of autumn,
when they are playing games
on the finely mowed grasses
of the Bronx and Fenway
does it cool down enough
to let plastic feel at all
like the dank mud drenched earth.

It's all one
and zero, this universe
akin to nothing but its creator
and its current benevolent rulers,
the twin suns of necessity
and lazy, ingenuity
and imagination. Nothing
that can be created
can not be created
and so pay
whatever price
is suggested and never
argue about the goal. But
the ones and zeros
that zip across the screen,
that allow the people
to reach out and approximate
what it felt like so long ago
to be linked like fingers
on a hand and hands
on a body, like long
slow hands on a clock
ticking on, and ticking.

It was not enough
that we needed to get bigger
if we were to live longer,
using the redwoods
as suggestions for how
your height could lead
to a long and fruitful life.
But instead, we sent
our scientists to concoct
an elixir of life,
a human growth hormone
to keep at bay
the slow fattening
and dying, the all too short
end of an all too short life.
In the anger of the moment
at the limits of pharmaceuticals
we could hear the records
all being broken, and still
could not bring ourselves
to give kudos to the chemists
and the trainers who made
these muscle bound freaks.

Keep it up. Keep building
on the last great invention,
the last great empire,
the great lost erection
of building a place
in place of altars
where our ancestors
would slaughter virgins
and the unfaithful. Not us,
we would never settle
on such limits as this.
We will invent. For us,
viagra, that ultimate trial
and tribulation, an outdated
impotent man who despite
being taken off the roster
and put out to pasture
can still, with the help
of his wits, pretend to be
something he is not,
young and virile
and potent. Good
to the last drop.

Collections of Breakables, #229

2006-08-20T03:07:00.000-04:00

The teeth of the comb
are planted down and out
like fangs on nails,
sharpened to perfection
and waiting to wind
its way through the hair
of your daily living
to untie all the knots
you have here created
with your head twirling.

I found one overripe tomato
locked away in the drawer
in the back of the fridge,
left there who knows
how many months ago
or for what purpose
we brought it home
from the store, salad
or a handmade sauce,
and the mold growing.

In the dish strainer, a set
of wineglasses left over
from the last time
we played host
to the neighbors,
a reminder of how little
we like those clothes
and cleaning, or anything
that requires the hands
to be dried and shaking.

Coffee, brewed fresh
in the morning by our
plastic butler, the blurry
eyes of my mother
leaning over to smell
the steam and the beans
supposedly hand picked
by men in the mountains,
hand picked like her scars
and her tears, dripping.

Useful device, a pillow
to rest your weary head
and cradle the muscles
of the back, goose feathers
or new plastics wrapped
in a cotton sheet,
used to keep me calm,
or a least to muffle sounds
rising up out of my mouth,
the geese gifts smothering.

Mom would yell for us
to make the table, as if
out of cardboard and sofas
flipped over we could reuse
our fort, invite in the adults
who had lost their own keys
to their own kingdoms
and wanted to borrow ours,
but chores were the call,
forks, plates, children setting.

The lamp over the lazy boy
was left over from the early 70s
when gauche was hip
and, oh my gosh, how long
did we plan to continue
flipping that switch on
and off, never once talking
about what came in
and went out of style,
all the patterns fraying.

Flowers, stems of love that wilted
as the hours passed by,
as the years go by
in step and silence,
planned out for you to reach
a time when you can leave
and go to school,
or get out and married
or buried and in the ground
with new stems sprouting.

The cloths flop through the washer
like children in bathtubs
except for their lack of struggle,
the bubbles rolling up over
the edges and onto the floor,
leaving a thin sheen destined
to upend some poor sole
passing on the way to the john,
the sound of detergent and cursing
and infinitesimal bubbles popping.

What my mother would keep
in the kitchen, spider plants hung
from the curtain rods, hung off
at an odd angles, but reaching
downward to the ground,
sprouting factors of offspring
she would clip and repot,
making it more of a nursery
for the spiders than for any of us,
the scissors always snipping.

Some story claimed the poltergeist
of old man Bohnsack still lived
beneath the house, beneath
the addition he made to the kitchen,
but when we crawled under there,
grown up and unafraid, we found
nothing but faded scraps
of newspaper, an old deflated
ball and much dust,
even that, no more rising.

Come fall, mom would buy
new pants for all of us,
like clockwork and like an arrow
we would make our way back
to the back aisles, passed
the school signs to the clearance
and leaf through to find
a pair the fit on our bodies
and, if lucky, our liking,
either way sucking and zipping.

Round the house we would run
cords and wires, bare and taped
together to deliver whatever power
we thought was needed to make
all the toys and engines go,
our small fingers and toes
trained to step over
what might spark
and hurt us, ducking
from the words of our father.

Knick-knacks on shelves
piled and dusty and left
out in the open, collections
of breakables that prevented
us from being able to play
catch in the house, Mom,
going through them
to sell the house, keeping
nearly nothing of what
we made with our fingers.

The candle, like any fire
will burn if you put your fingers
too close to the tip, but move
through the bottom of it,
near the wick you can sit
here for ages, looking up
into the teardrop of the flame
whipping around with the wind
until a stiff breeze snuffs out
whatever it was consuming.

The pictures on the wall,
hung up and ignored, acting
more like a buffer or a bar
that showed the progression
of five in a family, down
to four and then just us three,
after dad died and one sister
decided she no longer
wanted to be party
to a family so blinding.

The watch my father
never gave me,
precision time piece
I would like to keep
as a symbol of all things
I was deprived of, all
things I wish to blame
on my grandfathers
melted down in the hands,
and gears ticking.

Made in shop class, the bowl
was never meant to hold
anything more than candies
or screws, one side dipped
in glue and covered in felt,
the other stained a deep brown,
kept in a cabinet and then moved
with mom after the house,
fixture in each apartment,
still always unfilling.

I will curse these glasses,
from the day they were placed
on my face in Kindergarden
until my last day, a mark
of defect and shame, kit
that suggests I was never
good enough to look
at this life unfettered, naked
in this all seeing world,
to me, too often blurring.

Rock me with headphones on
or out in the open, since
my first move a stereo
of some brand name or ilk
has always been the first
unpacked or the last
put into the box to leave,
the steady bass of my life
and the noxious treble
kills the silence, booming.

The closet, where all the games
are hidden, where we keep
the trinkets of our past times
living, our distractions ready
to go at a moment's notice,
to roll the dice or deal
the cards and leave ourselves
an afternoon that will amount
to nothing but play money
and time wasting.

From this living room, I
can still hear you, dreaming
what I know will be bad dreams
through the whole evening,
some fear you can not shake
or sense that something
is being hidden. It's all here,
in these walls, in this wallet,
in the things not being spoken.

Bright Yellow Down, #228

2006-08-19T18:45:00.000-04:00

I can feel it
slipping away,
my grip on this project
and this world,
the words
and the works
that have spewed
from my fingertips
and my lips,
the stolen moments
when I can
sneak up
on the computer
and not be bothered
by either the wife
or the sleepies
or by the customers
who need me,
when I would most
like to be sitting
by the river,
the long slow river
constantly slipping away
and behind it,
the river
constantly coming,
time and age,
the hair hung
off my body
and the flesh
which grows
imperceptibly lower
each day, imperceptibly
fatter until one day
I think my body
will be nothing more
than an overripe grape
leaving stains
on the floor.
I can feel it
slipping away,
the long slow slide
of my IQ
down the pipe
and the drain
into the sewers,
down to a point
where I won't realize
the agony of the locale
in which I reside,
some old folks home
left here by my kids,
left here to die.
Even though I don't
yet have kids,
haven't yet fathered
a brooding infant
or brood of infantile
imbeciles
who would continue
whatever family defect
has made me
like this,
the wooden spoons
and grease saved
in a can
on the stove,
to be carried out
to a barrel
in the back yard.
How those long years
of vomiting over
the used up waste
of life would effect me.
I can feel them
slipping away,
those long old years
and the memories
that started
as beams above me
in the living room,
beams hewn
from the largest trees
the Catskill mountains,
in a thousand years,
could sprout upward.
As I sprouted,
those mysterious, cliched
small town ideals
became a foundation
below my bare feet,
a basis of gravel
with a line,
bright yellow, down
the middle, white
lines on each side
and then nothing
but shoulder and dirt.
My shoulders, dirty
from playing
out in the woods
all weekend
and taking no time
to use the soap
my mother packed
in a plastic bag
and shoved
in the pack
next to a pair
of clean underwear,
which of course,
I would be forced to move
around and ignore
for the whole weekend,
wanting to feel
some modicum,
some hint of the "authentic"
outdoor experience
that something in me
was sure it had missed
by choosing to incarnate
into this particular time
and place and body.
I could feel it,
even then,
slipping away.
And yet, rather than
playing to catch up,
rather than grasp
onto the recessed
handles of my madness,
turn the accelerator
and head off,
snowmobile of anger
beneath me, bopping
over the mounds
and the precipices
of my shortcomings
and white snow
painted over earth.
Rather than taking
an active time
to actively seek out
the answer, to climb
up the steep cliffs
of the slow
rolling Catskills
to the feet
of Rip Van Winkle
or whatever knight
has taken over
his long lost post
since his slumber
must has fallen under
the weight of
an endless history,
even the sleeping body
must die. My father
in his mutated wisdom
would swear
that on the day I
was born, one could feel
a change in the wind,
a turn in the road,
bend in the long
river like ripples.
I can feel it
slipping away,
my own heartbeat,
my own desire
to continue
on with this life,
my own platelets
and capillaries
threatening to fall
right out of me,
seep out from
under the toenails
and the cusps
on the prints
of my fingers.
What good
does it do anyway
to keep on
with this charade,
to catch up with this
dying project,
to go to work
and go on today
with this plain living?
The monster in the mirror,
face that faces me
each morning
and curses
the very sight
of me, the one
growing older
and fatter
and less living
by the moment,
suggests that
the only value is
to better feed the worms
at some point
in the decaying future.
I can feel it
slipping away
and through me,
the long slow
slimy bodies consuming
my flaking off flash,
right down to the heart
of me. Until nothing
is left, not
even of the creepy
crawler's feces.
The earth
that is the earth
is falling away
from itself, falling
back into itself.
Merely dirt to dirt
and nothing deep,
nothing dug
up. I should quit
this living forever.
Fold nothing
into nothing.

The sadness carried, #227

2006-08-18T12:46:00.000-04:00

The sadness I carry
in a dark place
in my heart is
my heart. The sadness
that left an imprint
like a dying muscle
one can feel all
the way down their
dying arm and out
into their tingly fingers
is nothing more than
her long absent fingers.
Remember, in the past
days when the days
would pass by slowly
and without a thought
would lead you back
to the lost thoughts
of her. The sadness
anyone carries is not
for the few moments
when we were less
than the super hero
we would like to
be in those moments,
the sadness is for
the moments we were
all we could be
and it was still
not enough. The sadness
I carry is thick
like the river silt
or the air on
the worst summer days.

The sadness I carry
is an old technology,
outdated and with no
known players still left
in existence. I know
if I wake up
one day and forget
to press play it
will begin to degrade,
start to fade out
like the old tapes
I've packed in boxes
right now being eaten
by time. How much
I would miss seeing
your face, even though
you have long ago
left me for some
other life, have grown
and changed and now
look almost nothing like
the one I loved
and who I keep
an old photograph of
tucked just behind my
eyes. Do you hear
me in the morning
wake and stretch out
memories to keep them
limber, keep them fresh,
to keep you warm
in my dying mind?

In a dark place
I've told no one
about, shown to none
of my friend, not
to my lover, apartment
where I bent down
to sit just beneath
your feet and massage
a moment to my
advantage, in this place
I left my keys
or maybe my wallet,
my light summer jacket
just under the sofa
so I would have
to return there someday.
You are not there
anymore. The sign outside
says condemned or sold
or please do not
return here. Under new
management. But my wallet
that held my emotional
center, the little card
that allowed me tears
at discount prices, rage
from the bargain basement,
laughter on clearance sale,
that card is gone
now, left beneath something
that no longer exists.
Here, I feel nothing.

In my heart is
what's left, the muscle
and blood my ancestors
handed down to me,
the deep red anguish
of old lost friends
and of dead parents,
a buildup of plague
left behind by all
the bad-for-you
cuisine and awful books
I have read, digested,
used to build up
this body of knowledge
of cheap new age
spirituality, of pop psychology,
of quick fixes for
life's long unending challenges.
I could have built
this heart up on
fresh fruits, pears, apples,
they were all around
growing up. I could
have built it up
on beef and fish.
We lived near there.
But the convenient store
was closer and cheaper
and took less effort.
I built this body
and my cheap love
on cheap fast treats.

My heart. The sadness
I carry for too
many women, for too
often loving the ones
who would not, who
could not love me
due to their own
hang ups, their own
cheap convenience and family
upbringing, the bad timing
that seems to follow
me. Here's my heart
laid out for service,
to sit at feet
and open its ventricles
to let in blood
and oxygen, to carry
off waste and anger.
Here's my heart like
a soldier holding his
own hand on top
of the wound, trying
to keep his guts
in. But they seep
out onto the ground,
or in my case
onto this cold page.
I carry you with
me like laugh lines
on my face, scowl
on my brow, that
line that betrays me.

That left an imprint,
that one last night
when at two a.m.
I thought maybe my
skills as an orator
or as a masseuse,
as a modern day
Dante might be able
to convince your heart
to finally listen up
and to agree, we
were meant to be,
in some universe, on
some planet, by design
or by accident, meant
to be these lovers.
Yet, after that night
nothing else grew up.
The heart that beats
in my chest, that
beats constant and hollow
just to hold you,
or to speak more
correctly, to still hold
an image of you,
my lone left image
of you, that heart
is a tired muscle
hoping for an attack
that will leave some
or most of it dead,
to then forget you.

Like a dying muscle
that has no hope
of being raised up
in seance, all that
one can feel all
the anger we muster
and the sadness, all
the way down our
dying arms and out
into our tingly fingers
is nothing more than
those long absent fingers.
Remember, in the past
days when the days
would pass by slowly
and without a thought
would lead us back
to those lost thoughts,
our mind's stark remembrance
of her. The sadness
anyone carries is not
for the few moments
when we were less
than the super hero
we would all like
in those few moments,
the sadness is for
the moments we were
all we could be
and it was still
not enough. The sadness
I carry is thick
like the river silt.

For Pride or Glory, #226

2006-08-17T09:30:00.000-04:00

Not once in the long history
of our great country, this false
country, this lie of a land
we've come to imagine
has something to do with
a gift of God, with the hand
that reached down and split
the great barrier of ocean
and cleaved the great lip
of the land and left it
uninhabited by man
and abundant with foliage
and animals, filled
with wild creatures to please
each of the us. Not once
in the long history
of our great country, has
the lot of us gone hungry,
and how, one should ask,
did we repay this great
and benevolent God,
who takes our side in all
conflicts, who loves us
despite our infectious
roads and cities,
who forgives despite
the rape of these gifts.
Not once, have we given
to this creator the tithing
we so openly promised,
welcomed into our arms
the bounty and the natives.

Not once in this stagnant year
have we opened ourselves
up to criticism and allowed
those around ourselves
to define ourselves,
invited in the cynic,
with the muse, to come
and present lectures
at the university
of the mind we have
erected within ourselves.
The classes are not full.
Not close. Where once
the questions of who
and what we are filled
a lecture hall, enrollment
has dropped and so
they have moved you
to smaller and smaller digs
and made it a seminar,
an independent study.
Still, no one shows.
The matriculation rate
is near zero and scholarships
for those who like to write,
play poker, waste time
on video games has made
the level of discussion
roll ashore into the shoals
and get stuck
on the simplest things.
The class clown stinks.

Not once this month
have you sat down
and dedicated yourself
to the long form workbook
of workout and music,
the CDs and cassettes
that have fallen by
the wayside, replaced
with 1s and 0s locked
on harddrives. When
I was alive the sweetest
art one could make
for the one you loved
was a mix tape, hours long,
take all afternoon
or an entire Saturday
to lay out the tracks,
set them up, get the mood
and the right order,
start out as strangers
and by the end, end
on our song, power ballad,
the metal of a guitar
toned down to express
the silent agony
of a heart that could not
express itself for itself.
We've lost that art
like frescos in Rome,
except no PhD student
is going to revive us
one day from decay.

Not one time in this week,
this long week that drags
on and on, the drug induced
stupor of a Monday morning
stretching all the way down
into Tuesday evening, the
loping roll of a hump-day
long enough that one feels
there were two of them
in there, one right after
the other. Not one time
in this lengthening week
did we spend a moment
simply breathing, opening
our lungs to the many gifts
of molecules mixed up
and locked together
to smell a certain way,
perfurme in a certain way,
the wetness, or what we
have labeled the wetness
and the coldness of a dew
on the morning lawn, hot,
freshly brewed coffee,
powdered sugar on a donut.
Not once did we stop to thank
the flora and fauna that went
into making the muscle
of this day, the people
who carted the resources
off, who baked and boxed
so that we may, today, eat.

Not one time today
did you take the time
to look outside, past
the mirror of glass
that separates you from
countless singing insects,
the crickets and chipmunks
who inhabit the forest,
the long stagnant trees
waiting for the wind to blow,
the green shaded palette
stolen from you by the firm
and unbending anger of a God
who has yet to offer
of an explanation or apology,
or even an invitation
for you to apologize.
Must we continue like this,
at odds with one another,
like a son and a father
who haven't talked
for decades or years
because of some silly comment,
some dumb mistake both
would rather take back?
Must we be men who
in their blatant avarice
will cut out their own hearts
to please some grand
design, fulfill some role
in which we've envisioned
our long slow living.

Not once this brief hour
have we committed ourselves
back to the ideals
we walked across a stage
with in our pockets,
we walked into a college
with in our mindset,
we spent countless nights
molding and shaping to fit
whatever wonderful living
we had imagined. Not once,
not one time have we
reached out to the friends
we left there, that we loved
there, to ask them what happened
to those dumb children
for whom sex was the biggest
deal and protecting one's purity
the greatest defense. What
did we gain, by not wasting
our time in each other's arms,
being in each other's embrace,
by saving ourselves for ourselves,
who would love us forever
only to hate us weeks later?
I think about you often.
But my loves for you are dark
circles underneath my eyes,
and left there for a time
when I can finally sleep
for weeks, and set straight
the cancer of my mind.

Not once this minute,
while typing out a rhythm,
creating songs and conscience,
while opening up my ears
and my heart to the great
big world these walls
keep me from. I haven't
entered into any agreement
amongst the voices,
the myriad imprints
of instinct and evolution,
of book and theory,
of old friends and new
who, in their best iterations
would not allow one to sit
and be calm in this calm world,
who would ask you to swirl
about a wind that could bring
about change and transgression,
that could whip up a level
of discontent and break
what is not yet broken
for the betterment of us all.
Not once this minute
have I thought of these people
who are now old, fat and tired,
wrinkly and settled like
old trees, who reflect
the old tree in me. Simply,
I have spent this time sucking
up the water from the dirt
and keeping it within me.

Not once in this long history,
nor once this precious second.

Mob mentality of the modern age, #225

2006-08-15T11:31:00.000-04:00

Like the lights in the kitchen,
the florescence
that quivers
above me while
I am making
a meal, putting together
the same tired ingredients
and imagining what could
become of the same things
mixed a bit different,
what could
be done to keep
the spice in this marriage,
or worse, what could
be done with a hot new
body. I kneed the dough
and fold the moment
over itself into itself.
As if someone else would
offer up the chance to
me, to come close by and
attempt to recreate not one
of the tricks one
learns setting
the same table night after

Long night for years,
the placement of fork
and knife, of napkin,
the fine plates with
a fancy pattern. But,
seeing that hottie
has always been
on vacation and is now
not around the corner
and has little chance
of walking through
that door anytime
soon, little chance
to open up
and ask me to spend
a sweltering August night
in her arms, the likelihood
of a friend of a friend
or a fan looking at me
with anything like desire
is as slim as the mannequins
passed each day in the
window at the mall.
With as much chance
as one of them calling

To say how interested
they are in taking me out
for a bite of lucite,
a nibble of plastic,
eating with the non-
anatomically correct.
Instead I will prepare
this dinner and try
to make tonight,
the same meal
with the same love
served on plates
we received for wedding,
the same suburb
and same China
of each night,
I will try to make it
something special.
The unique ones
at work are the ones
who come in all
cute and preening,
white cotton shirt
in a long slope
between the front

Of the breasts, leaving
a deepening chasm
of imagination
to be filled with
whatever wicked thoughts
lurk inside me.
And what's worse,
instead of carrying a purse,
she totes a bag from
Victoria's Secret.
One can be
sure it is a gift
for a friend
or love one, one
can be sure it is a pair
of plain white panties,
a long camisole,
or the most
comfortable bra,
but that's not what they
advertise in the window,
and so, even though
the woman here
is not as long legged
as the mannequin,

Not as pouty lipped
nor as top heavy.
I will imagine
that whatever
tiny thing fits
in that tiny bag
is barely enough
to cover the most
likely scenarios.
So, while I should think
about going home,
about finding
new ways to dote
on my bride, instead,
inside, I am locked
in the gaze of this
stranger, in a fantasy
of some boudoir,
that I might have
the right thing to say
to unlock a desire in her,
peaked by her time
in Vicki's, opened up to
the possibility that her
boyfriend, fiance, husband,

May not be enough
for her, and somehow
she has a gap
in her life
I could fill.
Lights in the kitchen,
the whirr of the fridge,
the whines of technology
and hums of mediocrity,
the turning soap opera
of the dishwasher,
detergent and clorox,
aroma of shampoo
and soap. I can smell it
from here, and now
must face the competing aims
of something exciting,
new, never before seen
and something safe
and trustworthy.
Don't confuse the
cacophony in my head
with the deep, abiding love
I share with the one
who is always there

At night, who is happy
making me happy,
who lies down
next to me
and asks
for nothing
but for a kiss,
a kiss goodnight
on the cheek.
This rock
is the rock on which
we can jump
from platform to platform,
up to management
and through the storefront.
But still, she is here
in front of me,
the long cleaved woman
with the bag of secrets.
At times, I think the thoughts
of every boy become
the thoughts of every boy,
old, outdated telepathy left
over from the cave ages,
and in this case,

Left over like an old
disease that infiltrates
the mind without a name,
without a label or remedy
offered up on TV.
Maybe this is all of us,
and so, the more the world
procreates the more voices,
thus the manicness of the
moment, the mob mentality
of the modern age.
You send one
of ours to the hospital,
we send two of yours
to the morgue.
And so, as Cancun,
that vacation you
think you would
like to take, but
never live there, leaves
the store, the committee
meeting in my head
becomes awash with images,
alive with the crackling PA
of all the people

She passes on the way out.
And, somewhere
down there
I am sure there
is her voice as well,
asking if the boys
see her, wondering
if the boys
want her,
hoping the boys
would stop ogling her,
and continue to ogle her.
At the door
she turns each way
to find her way, and looks
back at me for just a moment.
The grin tells me
she knows I know
she knows, and that we
are both okay with the game
and the space and the
counter between us.
Between us, the paints,
and the palette,
and the warm wet clay.

To Be Not Me, #224

2006-08-15T01:51:00.000-04:00

It's up. And what's up
is the price of the time
I can spend with you,
its not as easy as simply
asking me to come hang
out and hoping that I will
have no plans and
whatever plans I have
could be bent and turned
a bit to include you.

You seem to believe
that the chance
to see you tooling
about town in my
car, with my face
on your face comes
at no price or at the price
of simply a smile or kiss
on the cheek.
It's not that easy
to look cool or to get
the rub you hope for.
What I need from you is a
firm commitment in the
form of jewelry, a counter
offer from the counter at
Macy's, some sign that
your love comes with
accessories and does not
include simply some
Shakespearian promise
of kindness and a love
everlasting.

With all due respect
to the words you
are speaking, their
weight is not the gold I
am seeking.
See, in the short run
I need to know
on Friday I will be riding
out to the party in style, in
fine garb and with a hot
one at my side,
something inside gets a
rise from everyone's
oohing at me,
everyone ahhing.

In the long run I
must know my offspring
will never want for
nothing, and so I will set
myself up with someone
who takes care of
themselves to take care
of them young'uns.
Comprehend?

I will take my chips south
of the border and leave
them there, get drunk in
an idiot's basement and
pretend that whatever
happens has nothing to
do with me.
I will just as
likely spend this
weekend blind stinking
drunk and losing my
mind, all day Sunday
trying to will the
molecules of my body
together, as I will
working on
the report on which
you offered to help me.

So nice one, though
you indeed may be,
please don't take it
personally when
I pass you on the
stairs in the hallway
at the school, on the
playground and look
away, nose in the air,
books at the chest,
high heels clicking
quickly down
the steps.

It's really
nothing you did,
or could have done.

It's something
in the water and the
upbringing, something in
the toys I've spent my
young life going without
and hope to never
miss out on again.
I simply can't
see myself
hanging with you,
spending time
getting to know you,
you becoming familiar
with me, you being the
shoulder I lean on when
my grandmom passes,
my children having
your ears.

What I am trying to
say, I know you can't,
won't and don't want to
hear, but listen.

You are a
nice one, too nice
for a vindictive one
like me, and unlike me,
certainly the right one
for someone very lucky.

I don't mean
this in the petty way
all the others
push you away.

I mean it sincerely.
If I were most at ease
with myself and my own
shortcomings I would be
okay with letting
myself go.
But, being the
basketcase I know
myself to be
I can't be
questioning both of us
in this relationship, this
would be relationship,
this never will be.

So please, I beg,
forgive and
forget me.
You don't need
to tell me I am more
of a person,
good, kind, smart
and pretty,
than what I see.
You'll never see me
nude in front of a mirror
crying, laughing at my
form and the games
I play to hide my form,
to be not me.

Please don't
remember, and spend
your life pining for the
half of me I brought to
school with my lunch,
packed in my bag, the
part of me that fit in a
makeup kit.

I will tell you
this, young, dumb
and stupid, in my many
years living in lavish
houses and hiding
out in backyards
next to pools,
slipping off
to the gym,
off to the surgeon
I will never forget you,
never forgive myself
for not being the person
I could have been,
the one that would
have had the
courage of my
convictions to date
someone for the jib
of their jaw instead
of the filth of their
parents.

But again, my
shortcomings become
the worst of me, and I
am left with next
to nothing,
a husband with
a hairpiece, children with
chips on their shoulders
put there by the kids at
private school who come
from old money.

Somewhere I wonder
if you are wondering
about me, if you ask
yourself where I am
and if I am ever thinking.
All I do is thinking,
while doing laps
and running, while
keeping myself fit for my
husband and family,
while watching the help
help in the garden.
I have everything
my ugly heart could desire
and not one bit of what
my lonely heart needs.

If you get a
chance, write me.
Spend a moment
in deep reflection
to relive the time when
we both could have
chosen differently.

It's not that there
was anything
wrong with you.
Contrare.

The fault is all mine, so I
must live with the great
and many consequences
of my terrible living.

Armies, #223

2006-08-14T20:40:00.000-04:00

Long in the arms
of the day, long
in the long rays of sun
that reach down from
the dankness
of space and bounce
of magnetic poles,
allowing through
only the briefest hint
of heat that could
come through and
cook us. For that
reason and that
reason alone the
temperature today is
in that thin range that
leads to us getting a
tan and feeling only
a slight nudge
uncomfortable, and
yet, now overdone
either in our
breathing or our
burn. Long we have
thought and some of
us prayed to this god
and this ball, this
yellow messiah who
without fail comes up
over the horizon to
offer us the light to
carry out our work
today, our toil in the
gates outside the
garden. One can
imagine that back
inside the garden
there is a spot, still
and unmoving where
we could wake and
sit by a creek,
naming, renaming
animals as they
pass by, the sun
neither going cold or
burning, even more
exact and skilled than,
the mechanical
substitution for God
we have come to
adore. Long in the
arms of the long day,
the arc of the story
and the covenant,
the twist and turn of
the straight and
equally loving rays.

The rain falls on all
our house, as does
the good fortune of
the sun. In their
wisdom, our fathers
have come to know
the name of things,
to give a name to
things and to label
our mother's hands,
the warm hands that
held us, us and our
fathers, that stroked
our hair and left in us
a warm sense of
sadness, the old
fingers our
grandmothers
attempted to unfurl
on our backs when
we fell on the
sidewalk outside
their houses on
vacation, falling into
the stream of light
that snaked its way
down the long
uneven path of the
sidewalk my mother
and her mother
walked over to get to
school. Not once in
the history of this
curve, in the long
slow growing of this
geographic, social
and political
neighborhood has
one other than my
family lived here, all
the way back to
woods and tee-pees.

And so, the blood
that flows from my
skinned knees is the
same blood that has
fallen on this earth
for countless
centuries. I don't
remember. But the
gap in the sidewalk
that slides through my
platelets and the dirt
below lets out an
echo that calls back
to all the good and
wonderful things of
this world. My
grandmother's hand
lifts me off the
ground and leaves
me ill at ease.

Armed with all the
knowledge in the
world, all the silly
words and phrases
one can teach, the
cliches of a
thousand years,
which in the hands
of a master could be
turned to open the
hidden doors of love
and admiration,
which in the hands
of a student could
lead us down the
circle of knowledge,
to help explain the
many fears and silly
needs we have
come to take for
granted.

Returning years later,
too tall for the
unclimbable steps
that lead from the
walk, too talk to
make it through the
screen door that
slams behind me,
but without nearly
the weight or
meaning it did when
we were kids, in my
longing and my
uncanny ability to
surrender to the
nostalgia of
yesterday, I was
mistaken enough to
believe nothing
would change. The
beam of sun is still
reaches down the
hill of the street, from
somewhere in town,
down the street to
the inlet of the
ocean. I will never
be able to let go of
this place, though
the grandmother is
gone, the mother is
gone, all the family
has left this place
and generations
have been lost.

I'm sure the ground
knows that blood
from the skater
punks is a foreign
body in this soil, an
invader and evolution,
long in the arms
of the army,
of the battles we are
destined to spend
our days struggling
against, the conflict
that roots its way
down through the
generations, through
the ground beneath
us, and from its dark
depths lifts up a
corner of the
foundation of this
home, of this living
sidewalk. It was only
a seed then, only an
off comment or
stupid sick joke, but
now, the ground is
not level, and years
of sun and watering
have left us with a
rotten, off kilter house
that swaggers to the
left, where we can
see the eyes of our
grandmother and the
fear of our children.

The world we are
handing them is best
handled by carving
up the earth with a
bulldozer, with a
pesticide to our
history and the
street, remove all
remnants of this hate
and these roots and
lay down a new,
even, bland, care-free
asphalt smoothed street.

Jack and Jill, 222

2006-08-14T02:01:00.000-04:00

The train that winds
through our fine little
town has nothing more
to give us but its smoke.

It took out of here a
couple we had named
king and queen of the
prom, and who, as a
town we had planned to
have crowned mayor
and first lady someday.

Since first grade we all
knew, as most in a
small town do, who had
a future in power and
who, like the rest of us,
would work in the mill
and the factory, who
would run the local
market and who could
be seen wandering
down main street in a
drunk stupor shouting
the name of someone
who left our school in
the first grade.

Somehow I think the
salary paid to the
guidance counselor,
who tried with each of
us to find a career that
suited our skills and our
level of aptitude on
certain state wide exams,
who supposedly earned
his chips by properly
placing the smart and
muscular in the correct
classes to fulfill some
destiny. We could have
save the school lots of
money with a simple
survey that stated us
each pick a career for
ourselves and our
classmate. We know
each other best and
have each other
pegged, and none of us
showed any interest in
bucking the system of
perks and generations
that permeated the
fabric of life in our town.

So that's why it came
as such a surprise to
see the train pulling out
of town with our future,
our supposed
permanant family
structure rolling down
with it. We could wish
that what happened had
to do with some silly
crime or a stupid
embarrassment that
would get any one
removed from a town
such as ours, we would
love it if the high and
mighty had to leave due
to an intrepid
encounter we could not
talk about, that would
live in the whispers on
infamy for a lifetime,
and yet, it was none of
this. We would love it to
be a brief stop, four
years in college or the
army for our former
hometown heros to
return, better for a taste
of the great big world
and ready to settle back
down in the bosom of
our small burb, to bring
a whiff of worldliness
and a desire to never
leave. Unfortunately,
that is not what has
come to be. The train
today pulls out of town
with two people of
complete free will
leaving for the city, just
after their in town
ceremony, a
honeymoon on some
island far away and
then a life of prosperity
and amnesia. Later,
in interviews they will
simply state they are
from the rural part of the
state, never speak the
name of our town or
mention the people who
made them. What's left
of our town can not be
understated. Sure, the
river still runs along the
main road in and out of
town and we still get up
every morning like a
family of ants to dig
tunnels out to the
picnics of our life. No one
says anything about the
two leaving. We just go
on this way, working
and at lunch eating.

The current mayor gets
in a small scuffle with
his wife that plays a little
too loud to be ignored,
and no one really talks
about the next few
elections. They go off
without a hitch. But,
what's left is a slowly
aging culture. The other
children, whom we
know would have never
wanted to leave town
suddenly see that the
old are not growing old
at the same rate of
those who used to,
and they non-aging
corpses take up too much
space on the town rolls,
voting registration, list of
taxpayers, list of
currently employed
veterans. Suddenly, a
good paying job is out
of the question and the
holler, which had seen
its share of bad times
has a real dilemma.

How to honor the living
and honor those who
wished to move up into
their positions. The
children moved out in
droves. Some to the
city, some just down the
road. What is left
behind are the edges
with no center. A strong
social structure just
waiting to flounder and
fall to pieces. Waiting
for the stubborn to die.

The train is a rusted out
shell that hasn't moved
in years, it adheres to
the old tenants and
offers the tenants of this
town a false image of a
way out. This town is
going no where but into
the ground, slowly now.

But twenty years from
now, when
anthropologists and
government surveyors
cross the hilltop to look
down into this valley,
they will find a series of
graveyards and
abandoned dying
properties, houses
falling to pieces. In their
quick desire for a quick
buck they will not
investigate if this is
indeed the land of their
ancestors, but will see
only a chance to build a
six flags or golf
complex, a retreat for
businesses to use,
vacation escape for out
of towners. We will be
kicked down like the ant
hill and by this time
tomorrow barely, if at
all, recognizable.

The couple, our king and
queen who left could be
labeled visionaries,
instead, I would call
them kings to the cause
and allow them to admit
one free to the ride on
which I am not working,
one free night in the
lodge, one free ride
down the water flume
created on the side of
the hill. But they would
not walk back up the
hill. Jack and Jill.

No, they are gone
for good, for their
own good and not
returning for us,
to save the place
that gave them life,
not ever returning.

Starting Hands, #221

2006-08-13T06:49:00.000-04:00

Like a couple you looked at me,
we pair of twos who loved like
no one has ever loved,
who took these two eyes,
these two ears, and opened
them to the world, to the sounds
of crickets eating the night.
Like a crooked swan
you looked at me and begged
me to add up, spent your days
trying to determine if I were
prime rib or real estate,
though you never touched me.
Like a lying twin, an evil
doppelgänger, the projection
of both sides of myself,
with myself, everywhere.

In whatever suit you put me
I am nothing more than
a standup butt, half
on, infinity and ready
to be forbidden. When two
get bored they will invite
me and ask if I could,
if I would add some spice.
But I do not add spice
as well as complication.
While two are equal
on top and bottom,
with three there is one
left out, or one favored
or one who feels things
were better with only two.

Paired or off. We are off
to vacation, we two couples
who are hoping that stealing
some time together will
bring us closer, will not
lead to an awkward trading
of names and faces, will not
bring about a change in mood
or a loss of connection. It's
the over pair we fear
and so we go on pushing
pots, making small talk
and dinner, sitting out
by the pool and the pines,
lazing around a nude beach
with no cards left to play.

What awkward betrayals,
what odd shapes, a fat man
in a top hat, an unfair fight,
sure bastion for alliance
and betrayal, my nuclear
family ready to explode.
The witches who meet
to discuss the unclipping
of the wings of evil
from the body side of death
and the devil, know on some
very basic level that the end
will be felt, not in triple sixes
but in the firm grasp
of hands of fingers, sprouting
like an evolution.

What dogs can sic,
which dogs leave, their
tales left behind with much
still to be asked. The sick
one in the waiting room
coughing like a sax
player with contaminated
reeds, like sex with
a popular and touched
too often, all sinister
she-demon, stocked
by the stacks
in the library across
from the river Stix.
It's sick really, to still
need sex to relax.

Off the edge of the cliff
they have walked out upon,
the Acapulco divers
look over and must press
on, with a trust in the cycles
of gravity and gravitas
buried in their heads,
as they head downward
into the sharp rocks
of an empty chasm,
into the blood gushing
cuts of dangerous stone,
and know that the air
below will be filled
with a water, now
nothing but invisible.

One hates to admit it,
but what is great about
knowing that forever
is forever is the knowledge
that whatever one does
to tweak the mix, poke
the pot is nothing
more than trading seeds
with those who built
the farm. Comfort found
in our own inept bungling,
our silly flapping wings,
seeds that clink in dirt
falling to the ground
like old dandelions
and razor blades.

A fish hook to the eye
can blind the sharpest
of sharks and leave him
with nothing much left
but the chum hung
from his bottom lip. Two,
and one could be lead
to believe a nearly
unstoppable armor
surrounds the body
like plates of steel,
only to discover later
that the plates were
nothing more than a ruse
of flesh, penetrated
easily and easily left.

The roll of the drums
and tap of the thumbs,
the beat that makes feet
lift up and land back down,
the thunder of wonder
when seeing the meaning
of great unstoppable pairs,
a bat and a ball, Laurel
and Hardy, opera glasses,
the sexual innuendo
of an all too celibate
couple. Time will tell,
but concept one is that
the relationship is over
as soon as the sex stops,
as soon as we sleep alone.

Someone in the last row
has to be the class clown,
someone must take the cap
and gown off the mantel of
the coat rack, take it down,
place it on their chrome dome,
fill the open seat and make
the other children shoot milk
out their nose. No one knows
why this must be... why a class
without a clown with no class
doesn't work, whether it has
to do with ancient archetypes
or how the brain processes
information. We only know
what must be done to learn.

Ladies, refined and rounded
off in all the right places, deft
in their abilities to make smoke
from a cigarette taste as sweet
as the nectar flowing from pores
at their feet, the perfect sense
of following them into oblivion
and never coming out alive
on the other side. What harm
comes in believing in a woman
who has never hurt anyone,
would never hurt anyone?
What foolish notions waft
around our heads, infiltrate
our reasoned thinking, leave
us with nothing in the end.

My friends, my father, the men
in my life who have carried
me here to face the face
in the mirror. Big strong brawny
men with their sleeves rolled
and the arc of a muscle
pushing against the fabric.
Our belief in the male ethic
is enough to force our hand
into international politics
of the kind that leaves people
angry and beaten, held down
and without a clear out.
Weakness is letting others
decide your fate or theirs.
Strength breeds contempt.

My God. My God. What a fool
I have been to ride along with
those who would have me
believe anything, be it men
or women, sport or profit,
the beauty of laughter comes
even close, the unbridled bliss
one can feel in the arms
of a God. What terrorism
has been brought on me
that I would give myself
over to the forces around me
who claim to know something
of hope or anger. The fury
and release I feel is enough
to leave me, even dead, in peace.

Ten Bad Beats With Unpaired Faces, #220

2006-08-10T23:56:00.000-04:00

A boy sits in the pew
flanked on all sides
by an invisible God,
and by the trinkets
of that invisible God
who promises to hold up
against the coming storm,
to stay strong against
the turns in the river,
against any of the flops
this life can deal. A boy
commits all his being
to this God, to a faith
in the awesome power
that could only be
eclipsed by the love
one has, one God has
for a mother or father.
In the end, the boy
is disappointed, left
empty and depleted,
burned down to the felt.

The father and the maker
are eating dinner, dining
at each other's table,
sitting together talking
shop, divvying up
the spoils of their winnings
once they take the land,
the clubs and the hearts
of the people they rule.
But, the father and the God
have made a terrible mistake,
forgotten the power
of like minded individuals,
men in the same suits
who sit close enough
to bust up a father and a God.
Were one to see the straits
ahead, perhaps so many
would not have to die.
But, convinced of their own
righteousness, the God
and father, press into oblivion.

We can all agree
society sees women
and men as different, as
unique in their own rights
for better or worse. But
would a God, who loves
all of creation equal place
the man above the women,
treat him as the high card
when she obviously has
much to offer? How hard
would one push if left
in a room with their wife
and their favorite deity?
Is it not the best move
to let the ones
you pray to mate,
and make which
golden babies
they can make?
We will take our winnings
and cash out with that.

Fathers and sons,
sons and fathers,
generations upon
the generations, years
and eons and tons
of artwork, mountains
of research and therapy
to find out why the boy
will always be a failure
to the father, and
the father, always
a disappointment
to the boy. We're sorry
father that we never held up
against whatever enemies
or foes you placed us against.
We know you were only
trying to do good, to make
us strong where we weak. We
felt overshadowed, and hope
someday to disappoint
someone just like you.

They are not twins, not
born together, but still, after
spending so much time as one
you would think that would be
enough, they would be enough
for each other, that no matter
what came loping down
the road, the two of them
would be able to handle it.
And yet, such junk, a pile
of rags lying in the street,
an old matching wardrobe
is enough to divide them,
divide and conquer. One
must wonder if something
so innocent and sinister
can defang what should be
a monster couple, did
they ever love each
other to start, or was this
an arranged marriage
based on money and hope?

Mother and son, after
the divorce, after the scandal
and the tabloid articles,
after all the hoopla about
who cheated on whom
and who was to blame,
the long drawn out custody
battles, these two were
left to their devices. As
the boy grew, they grew
closer, her, the woman
who would never leave
and he, the man that never
betrayed. And yet, when
the moment of truth came,
they were not the uncrackable,
unstoppable hand-in-hand
couple. He would have
to leave for college and she,
as an unmatched woman,
had needs. Each would betray
the others for a time being.

What to call the unroyals,
the ones we have left, the best,
the top. On a scale of one
to ten, amongst the commoners
easily an eleven, and paired
with a God of the people,
a force nearly of royalty.
But even nearly royalty
is not royalty, and the king,
for all his ineptitude
still sits higher on the throne.
The queen and her sisters,
even the princes. But,
what takes him down
is none of these. Conjoined
twins on the outskirts
of town, whom he didn't
know were any relation.
The news story could be
enough, and though he may
wish for a good outcome,
we all know what's coming.

In the rags of clothes
given to him by a servant
and hid from his wife
and family, the king leaves
the castle to find men
of honor, and comes across
the mayor, learns of his
benevolent and great rule
and humbles himself to sit
and break bread with this
man of the people. He finds
the two make a great match
and could be good friends
were it not for their
unchanging stations in life.
Though they may hang
for a moment, tempted to hoist
a beer and celebrate, they
are too far apart in their kindness
and intellect, in honor
and birth, in the outcomes
that come between them.

It was not just slumming
for the Queen when she spent
a night asleep in the mayor's
arms, that same mayor
the king shared a handshake
with. She shared more than
a handshake. It was not
slumming because the two
were old friends from school,
had known each other most
of their life. And though
their love is forbidden, both
believe that the couple would
have been better off had
the other chosen to risk,
life, limb, birth, vote
and found for one another.
He could have been king,
she could have been happy.
Instead they have this, a liaison
forbidden and too easily
made public, torn asunder.

My brother, my father's son,
my infamous, dangerous
near twin. The ways I reach
for you and hope you reach
back for me is akin to the love
one shows an enemy, someone
more than a brother, one
you loathe to the very core
and could not live at all
without. Will you come with me?
Of course not. What should
I expect, that we two
could bridge the gap,
between the royalty
and the masses, the gulf
between sanity and lunacy,
the river between this world
and the world that inevitably
is to come? Brother, our love,
though genuine, will leave us
both unpaired, and both
worthless, and both dumb.

In this dream I had, #219

2006-08-09T13:24:00.000-04:00

Dear boo, I cheated
twice on you, in
this dream I had,
once in the last
month, and once
in the last week,
once with my boss,
that cute little athlete,
once with two women,
strangers I'll never meet.

The first one was
at work, while in
this dream I had,
we were working late
and used the tables
and fixtures as support
for our two bodies.

And it was good.

You told me once
there was no point
in having bad sex
in a dream. Why
would I waste dreaming
on that? Although, it
wasn't great. Apparently,
even in my dreams
I think I'm inadequate.

Dear boo, I cheated
twice on you, in
this dream I had,
once in the last
month, then once
in the last week.

The second was not
at the mall, but
in a random bedroom,
there were two women,
one blond, one brunette.
Both were a bit on
the chunky side,
on the bitchy side,
a bit on the side of
experimental and desperate.

Somehow I thought
it would be just
for a moment, that
neither would ever
care to come back
or to follow up.

But, the next day,
walking cross a field,
walking to the mall,
while walking downhill,
the side of a hill
with friends I saw
one of them, the blond,
coming. So I did
what anyone would do,
in this dream I had,
I jumped as high
as I could and flew,
turned a dive
into a frog splash
and landed myself
in the upper branches
of a tall tree,
they didn't see me
coming. They had seen
me coming. The issue
was me coming. But
it was avoided
on the side of that hill.

Later though, back
at work, while trying
to conceal from
our arriving coworkers,
the spot where we,
me and my boss,
made whoopee, trying
to erect a pile
of boxes to hide
the blankets, you,
dear boo, stopped by
for some lunch conversation.

Dear boo, I cheated
twice on you, in
this dream I had,
once in the last month,
once in the last week.

And, for some reason
you needed to leave,
take care of something
outside the mall, and
as you walked back in,
the blond, the one
of the two I thought
to never see again,
approached and started
to openly berate me,
started to ask me
about commitment
and responsibility
and what is needed
to be trusted and
how she trusted me.

And you watched
and waited patiently
and thought I was
talking to a customer,
someone who might need
some of my assistance.

But, it was not her
RAM that needed reseating
nor anything exchanged.

I looked for trees,
I looked for an exit,
I looked for a way
out and hoped
for a minute
that my boss,
the one that I
had just slept with
would come out
and need me,
need my presence back
in the store.

Surely I have
too many women floating
around inside this brain
of mine, too many
legs and too many
breasts, too many subtle
perfumes and body aromas,
too much lipstick
and makeup, too many
dramas about who loves
who and why and how
the words spoke behind
one's back are worse
than the one spoke
to their face and that
the real tragedy
is not what was said,
but the way in which
it was said, the look
on her face
and the sneer
which she uses
to say that she
is better than me.

What I love
about the dream,
about a fantasy woman,
is the idea that I
could in anyway
entice more than one
woman, you, Boo, into
wanting to spend
a night with me,
what I love is
the roundness, the softness,
the wetness and the curves.

What I love is
the squirminess of legs,
hands massaging a scalp
and the smell.

What I love is how
easy it is to make
another person feel
this good. For a moment,
in my blank brain,
even in a dream,
in this dream I had,
cheating on you,
once in the last month,
once in the last week,
what I love is
the look in the eyes
of a woman or two
women, of you
and these many women,
a fire and flutter
that wraps a warm
cocoon of itself around
me. That look is the fire
that will end me,
the ice that will end me,
the look that one day
may be the death of me.

Boo, my dear boo,
I cheated on you,
thrice on you,
in this dream I had,
once in the last month,
once in the last week,
once with my boss,
that cute little athlete,
once with two women,
strangers I'll never meet.

But, I suppose
that is no worse
than the women
I see everyday,
that the painter
in my brain, poet,
the mathematician
and the slave, all
of them scramble
to make up a life
with this stranger,
with this lover, with
this friend. They're writing
stories, constantly cheating.
If it's nothing more,
it makes it no worse
if I do it
on a daily basis
or just at night,
in this dream I had.

Young Elias, #218

2006-08-08T13:03:00.000-04:00

When he was young,
a youthful man,
young Elias

man of the hour,
would sit his younger,
flirting to all men,
sister in his lap. Elias

into his manly ears,
she would whisper, young,
younger than you man,
though I might be, Elias

even you are a man to me,
unknowing and young,
to a man,
I know you Elias

first man in my life,
and know, as your younger,
not a man,
sister that you, Elias

man-child,
were once young
and unmanly like me,
and you Elias

man you are becoming,
will never be young
and unmanly
again. Elias

man of the house,
are you a jealous one, young
man who wants to be a boy,
and longing, Elias

like a dying man
to hold on, young,
yet a man,
and unwilling Elias

like any man
to die young,
like any man,
hoping too Elias

to be a better man,
that the young
manless, baldness
will wear off? Elias

young man to me,
when you were young
and not a man,
did you, Elias

a man in your head,
shun being young,
and not a man,
run Elias

towards your manhood,
down hills of young
well manicured
grass and roll, Elias

with your manicured hands,
into the young
frigid mandible
of the creek. Elias

man of the house,
to be your younger
and less manly
sibling means Elias

when you are a man,
I will always be young
and unmanly
to our parents. Elias

father's best man,
I will always be the young
and unmanly
baby. Elias

was the first,
the man to carry the name,
blessed young
man of the future.
First walked, Elias

baby and a man,
first talked. Young
like a man
and beautiful, Elias

not a man
first young
and soon to be a man,
offspring to sing, Elias.

Listen, man,
being your younger
and unmanly
sister, Elias

man of the moment,
means being young,
less than a man
and stupid. Elias

your manliness
means me being young
and unmanly
and worthless. But, Elias

man of my living,
I love being your younger
and unmanly
sister. Big Brother Elias

man in my eyes,
though still young,
still not a man,
my brother Elias

first man in my life,
you are a great brother. Younger,
manly or unmanly
siblings would be lucky, Elias

to have such a man,
to be younger
and unmanly
siblings to, Elias.

When you are a man,
when I grow old and young,
not yet manly
grandkids named Elias

the men at least,
sit in my lap. When young
and unmanly
chidlren ask why Elias

such an odd name for a man,
is their name. I'll tell them, young
and unmanly,
children, my brother, Elias

who was a great man,
whom I loved when I was young,
when he was not yet a man,
their great Uncle Elias

man in my living,
when we two were young,
and I was unmanly,
me and Elias

woman and man,
spent our young,
manly summer
days, me looking up to Elias

as a man,
as younger sibling,
as not yet a woman,
and Elias

man of the house,
looking out for me as younger
and unmanly
sister. Elias

little man,
my young
and soon-to-be man,
your name, Elias

man of the moment,
comes from young,
younger, manly
and happy days. Elias

man in my eyes,
my grandson, young
man, wonderful,
beautiful Elias

you are already a man,
lovely and young,
yet, of course, manly
and full of faith. Elias

my good man,
pass down your young
and manly
name. Tell them, Elias

when you are a man
what good young,
not yet manly
folk can do. Elias

man of my life,
in my youth,
my unmanly youth
I met a boy. Elias

this man,
he was beautiful, young
and manly
and suave. Not named Elias

not that man,
but young
and manly
and suave. Let me tell you Elias

about that man,
that young
and beautiful man
who grew, Elias

into a great man,
from a boy, who was young
before he was a man or
was your grandad. And Elias

if you see a shot of the man,
you in your young
and not yet manly
face, Elias

your dark eyes and manly chin,
look just like your young,
not-yet manly,
grandad. Elias

that man,
one day when you are not young,
those men,
like your great Uncle Elias

and the man of your grandad,
who was no longer young,
you, man,
like your grandad, Elias

will be a man,
no longer young,
but a man,
one day Elias

some not yet manly
child, some young
wanting to be a man one,
will sit on your lap, and Elias

that body, that boy,
that soon to be man,
when that young child,
looks up to you, as a man

You will know love, Elias
and as a man
you will again be young.

Logistics of fishing, #217

2006-08-07T06:02:00.000-04:00

The pond across the street,
postcard and perfect
fishin' hole for nostalgia.
From it's murky top
where peepers peeped
their summer song
on scummy algae,
where we would skip
rocks across
a mythic echo, an echo
rose as we grew,
the old tale
of the country boy,
whistling as he walks,
straw in his jaw,
jeans cut, sitting
on the shore fishing
for a gullible fin,
his feet splashing
the stagnant water
that smelled more
and more like feet,
atop the stories
and old tales,
wading like lilies
and watching the rings
of effect roll on
over the carp, rock bass,
the great imagined
whiskered catfish, hope
for sunnies to bite
out of temptation
or desperation,
in earnest for the worms
he strung through
with sharp hooks after
digging them up earlier.

His feet still dirty
after leaving home
this morning. If you
have the patience
to sense the wind,
listen. You can hear
a rumbling sound,
a muttering child,
Tom Sawyer's lament
in false pride
and narration
for having to paint,
or what passes
for painting
the white picket fence,
in his training
for politics
trying to rope
anyone he can find,
friend or foe,
into doing it
for him so he
may escape,
so he may fish too.

In our town, our
neck of the woods
that's not how it was.

For us to tackle
the pond, we'd meet
for weeks setting
the hooks, set
a foot on the long
sloping grass, a neighbor
whom we never saw's
yard that made the shore.

As if planning
for an invasion,
we stopped at K-Mart
after peering through
the Kabela's catalog,
and begged our mothers
to provide the needed
accouterments, to pay
for a new reel,
Shimano or Daiwa,
nothing store branded,
for a thousand yards
of eighty pound test line
built for Walleye,
for a pole to go with
the reel, sold separate,
and shiny new hooks,
kind sold in threes
and built for pulling Shad
out of the Hudson
and award winning bass
from the Great Lakes.

Once we had the gear,
camo pants and all,
bandanas and face paint,
then the bait. And we,
in our attempts
to look cool and proud
would not settle for
what we could find
in front of us,
the slimy old worms,
thin like grandfathers
in nursing homes
we could uncover
for cheap, for
free from
any old pile
or anthill after
a rainstorm, any mound
of dirt in our yard.

Call us selfish
or spoiled babies,
blame it on cable,
progress or good
addictive advertising,
Bassmasters Classics,
rows and rows of stuff
at Jamesway,
Lake Okeechobee,
Evinrude motors,
Rick Clunn, even
blame the fish. We needed
to own and collect
like artifacts
the biggest tackle,
most complete set
of hues and shades,
shapes and colors
a double fold out
box and a complete
set of poppers, jiggs
for all manner of fish,
all depths of water,
for all temperatures,
regions, humidity,
for every specie
and situation.

We stopped on the way
home to purchase
night crawlers grown fat
on a special blend
of fertilizer and dirt,
mated for this task.
Monday through Friday
we would buy,
so on Saturdays
at the crack of dawn
and armed to the teeth
with our parents cash
traded in for trinkets,
the pitiful results
in hand, we would march
like commandoes
or special forces
cross the street to find
a good spot, a great
wind, and discover
our poles were able
to cast a lure
the whole way
cross the width
of the pond, landing
on the opposite shore
of the pond, the hooks
we purchased
for ocean goers
too big for the fish
found here, the tiny
tiny mouthed fish
to bite, the line, thick
and unbreakable
like chain, pulling
up the flailing
fish tugging against
the few sunnies
with mouth enough to bite
was no challenge. We
would wait for hours
for such a fish,
would laugh and walk
instead down the hill
to the river to fish
for shad and their roe.

But not for me,
so on a sick day
faked, hid and refreshed
with a plan, home
from school, while all
the others were students,
minions of progress,
the other children
taking an every Wednesday
spelling test, locked
in the classrooms
of their future wealth
and ignorance,
I reached up, broke
off a branch
to lean backwards
from one of the trees
tore off its leaves,
ran a bit of line
around the end, tied
on a baby hook
and a sickly worm
and sat with the line
between my feet, stuck
into the water's
edge for a nibble.

Little did I know
I had no hope left
of catching a thing from
that dead pond, the water
our neglect was killing.

Around the Clock, #216

2006-08-06T09:33:00.000-04:00

A feat, each time we can last
past the topmost strike, awake
into the next day before
this day has then surrendered
to the crushing history
of mothers putting us down
in our cribs, turning off lights
and telling us to sleep, sleep,
the crushing weight of eyelids.

If we are still awake here,
there must be a good reason,
something that needs to be read
or written before morning,
some pain in our side, longing,
a dream we are afraid of.
I almost cry at the mass
of squinting eyelids and twitch
of muscles that beg for sleep.

Surrender. There's no reason
to be awake here. Lay down
your head and dream. On this night
the tale is of a horse
who rides down the tongue like slide
of a waterfall, over
the edge and into a lake
of corn rows below, landing
on his feet and then eating.

Deep in rem sleep, images
that have abandoned fiction
in honor of post modern
ideals. A car shimmies
along a string of noodles
and runs out of gas, only
to find itself on the tracks,
but floating inside, cat fish
who tell the driver to swim.

The eyes are a snakes cold slits
and the muscles of the neck
are angry old men who creak
when they move. The old geezer
lifts himself up to figure
how long he has left to sleep,
to calculate and to pray
and wish he had willpower
enough to wake and create.

The strategy does not work.
No collection of reverence
and blankets can keep at bay
the voices and to-do lists,
sun sneaking through the shutters
and the sneaking suspicion
that he would be better off
getting up and running. Now,
he will just lie here. Awake.

Whatever strategy rose
up from the ashes finally
worked, though I have forgotten
why, how or when. I'm sleeping,
though not one with my dreaming.
It's a frigid second nap
below the level of thought
and creation, one I know
will prove a bitch to wake from.

I should be up. I should be
up. I should be up. I want
to sleep. I want to sleep. I
want to sleep. What time do I
absolutely need to wake
to get up to not be late.
too late for the job. Shower,
find some clean clothes, and a tie.
Remember, do I need gas?

Holy holy. I'm so late.
I had to extract myself
from this muscle bending dream
that rose up from the half-death
to tug me back down. Shower.
No, food. No just get clothes on.
Shoot. I do need gas. Cell phone.
Call to make excuses. Why
I am, again, a bit late.

The customers are here now,
and watching and listening.
But I am not yet caught up
with the missteps of the day.
What can I say? Get a can
of soda, cup of coffee,
Red Bull and some dark chocolate.
But get here, and now. Allow
the day to wash over you.

Like a flash bulb that burns out
the first time we point and shoot,
push the button, the curtains
you'd bury your head under
that could catch fire. It's ten,
and the next thing you can tell
it's eleven. The hour
doesn't exist on radar
and can't be found by Mapquest.

Time like a rocket launching
any minute, on the clock
waiting for the final go.
Count down the minutes, seconds
until lunch is upon us
and we can break for the day.
What a life, fight for hours
to steal a few moments,
marriage to steal a kiss.

Awful pizza, two slices,
too expensive, but quick, hot
and without a thought, consumed
quickly to leave time for work
more pleasing, satisfying,
a chance to write a poem
or tweak the pot, check mail.
All too quick the clock turns
past the half-hour and down.

Back to the grind, to the down
swing of the day, the workday
and the endless measuring
of Sumerian watches.
What goes down comes back around,
turns itself on its axis
and once an hour resets
itself. The hands are flesh made
and therefore inaccurate.

A whole hour, whole hour
to answer a question, solve
a problem that was not a
problem, to put back in place
the structure and measurements
that a lack of wisdom kicked
off into the corner. Try
against hope to get someone
to take measure of their life.

The day can wander on, long,
slow, susceptible to fits
of melancholy. I'm stuck
now under the light buzzing
above me of the office.
Outside the sun is blazing
and making shadows linger
behind the people who leave,
whom I want to chase after.

Time to tie up those loose ends
before the clock allows me
to bugger off at my pace
from this work-a-day. Even
though there is much more to live
I know what I will do when
I get home. First sit, then talk
about the day, process it
with honey, then take a nap.

Out to the car and unlock
the gas and the tunes. Turn up
the AC and the Springsteen
to rock out at all the lights
out of town, curse and argue
with my fellow drivers cause
I can, cause I am no more
concerned for your conundrums
and shortcomings. I can curse.

Dinner, flip on the TV,
check mail and email,
junkjunkjunkandfromsister.
I know I should be doing
a line or a recording,
but I don't have energy.
I know I should be going
for a run, raising the heart
rate, but I have no gumption.

Watch the trees turn from light green
to a forest green to tips
of yellow and then to black.
The glass between you and there,
the world outside becoming
a mirror, which you sit here
watching, waiting for your love,
your reason for coming home
to come home, to complete you.

If you can find the latest
viral video or fun
thing this guy at work found for you,
you can share it with your spouse
and pretend you spent the day
together at the cost of
spending the night together,
put yourself down on the couch,
bury your head in your hands.

You know your day, and her day,
and the days of all the folks
you both work with, the trials
and tribulations the job,
any job puts on people.
Hopefully yours has meaning.
There is still work to be done,
so we sit, then we forget
that each other does exist.

You should be sleeping. You know
you have to get up early
tomorrow if you have hope
of getting to work on time.
Why are you watching this show
you know you don't like? Turn it
off, flip the switch, don't sit there
mindless and stupid. The bed
and the blankets are calling.

Prop yourself on your elbow,
on a pillow, grab a book
and attempt to read. By now,
your eyelids are heavy, you
are getting sleepy. Let go
of thoughts and reasons. Let go
of the trials of the day.
Listen to your lover say
words that end the day. Kiss me.

Our Dance, #215

2006-08-05T09:33:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure who started
our silly little shuffle,
the dancing, the sweet
and tender lighting
of the ballroom we've been
twirling each other
around in. Was it my fault
that I spun you, my fault
for flirting, trying to make
something live, make
you laugh at least once
in a long day, once
an hour, to titter
and flitter about,
chortle at some
insignificant and inane
story or antic better
played out on film, better
left in a hollywood comedy?

It wasn't a waltz
we were dancing
mambo, rumba, samba,
nothing taught by parents.
More like a two step,
a high school friday,
stiff and with less hips.

In all my meaningless sketches
I've never been one to dance,
to turn my body into
a tool of rhythm, though
you don't believe it,
swear on your mother's
grave you have seen me
in my weak moments
twisting in the wind.
But around you
can I be blamed for two
timing the music, for two
stepping around the issue,
the idea of you, dipping
across the wide open
room, around the circle
to land square on the square
in the center of the floor
in front of you.
When you weren't looking
you didn't see
all the sidestepping,
the tap dancing
and pirouettes
I ended up turning
and tapping
behind your back,
and in my weak moments
the ways I stare
blankly for half a second
at the tan of your neck
and the left turn
just below the wisps
and feather
of your hair, how
that curve bends and
calls to something deep
yet unnamed, something
pitiful in me.
I tell you now

It wasn't a waltz
or a tango,
mambo, rumba, samba.
Something a bit more subdued,
more like a two step
with my two left feet,
stiff and with less hips.

In my own mind
I'm not sure what moves
to the left and right, what moves
we have left, what dance floor
or squared circle
we could inhabit, seeing
that due to construction
the space has been closed
off, condemned, abandoned
for years, the walls
and the moldings
stripped down and bare
the wires ripped out
and the electricity,
in grave danger,
arching from each outlet
out my two eyelids
into the empty night,
out onto the sidewalk
and onto the cold brick.
Our little bingo hall
has no past,
no lick of history,
it has not a future,
with not grow up
and so we can not,
in good conscience
meet here.
Did I leave too early,
demolish whatever
chance or odd hope
we may have had
of moving forward
in finding a place,
some empty and quaint barn,
an old skating rink,
any floor
on which to play our music?
In my best moments
could I? Should I,
even in bad conscience,
tear down the condos
and strip malls
of a life I've built up
on top of and in place
of that grand
and much celebrated
old palace? Would we,
in a moment of weakness
ever want to go back?
You know too,

it wasn't a waltz,
or the Hully Gully,
mambo, rumba, samba.
No, we side stepped it,
more of a two step,
one and two and three,
stiff and with less hips.

Because I know you
I will see you
like a portrait
everyday in front of me
and in your absences
in my mind's eye,
that perfect first date
held in a place where
there are no ties,
where I hope
and fantasize, and hope
somehow I could tell you
a hint of imagery
something of my feelings
the wet paint of my canvas
and not risk your scorn,
or worse
your candor. My hands
feel feeble around you,
not the great force
of literature
and nature, they roll
over and play dead,
roll over every inch
of your aura
of your body,
akin to your body,
slaves to nature
and their own instinct,
fall over every
waterfall of creation,
every inch of your body.
Tell me in a code,
would it be right
though I know the ending
to continue to dance
around this bingo hall
with half of you,
less than that,
with the idea of you?
Do I violate some pact?
Is it of any use,
worthy, poetic or psychotic
to focus so much
of my being
on the nape of your neck,
the curve of your spine
and what images,
what wonderful images
I paint there?
Honestly,
to what end
do you do this dancing?

It wasn't a waltz
when I turned you
mambo, rumba, samba.
An awkward gait,
more of a two step
into the crazy,
stiff and with less hips.

I know how the dance ends,
I will settle, as I,
in my self-defeating way
have always settled
for the reproduction,
the inaccurate
and incomplete
portrait of you,
the Wal-Mart knock-off,
the cheap imitation,
bargain basement single
covered by a local band,
midi file,
elevator musak
lip synced to
synth version of my angst,
my adoration
and my dedication.
In truth
what more can one
expect and be expected
to live with, if
we are to continue, neither
standing still nor moving?

The Water Cycle, #214

2006-08-04T02:18:00.000-04:00

Who knows which
came first, whether
I fell out
of you or
you crawled from
me. All that
we can be
sure of is
that since that
first strange kiss
we have been
twisting and turning,
lifting each other
up and falling
from each other
from the most
private of parts.

I have seen
aspects of you,
organs and capillaries
that you will
never see, that
even your mother,
who held you
while I danced
down the thin
strand of skin,
the umbilical cord
and carried messages
from her to you,
she was singing,
singing but could
not see. I
know what cancer
grows in you
and you have
changed my color,
my consistency, allowed
me to mix
with the various
faithful and sinful
meals you have
consumed. That day
at the lake,
the one that
hangs in the museum
of your memory
like an anchor,
like a cross,
you there, hanging
like a cross
at the weight
of the lake.

The day before,
I was in
Kentucky, the Great
Salt Lake,
The River Thames
and heard the winds
coming up from
the Gulf, I
heard you coming
and so made
my way to
the lake. I've
been looking for
you, missed you.

You, who have spent
too much time
inside lately, for
whom I've been
unable to find
an avenue or path
into your bloodstream,
soda, coffee or just
a sip of tap
water. All you drink
nowadays are those
sports drinks, those
bottled entities, water
taken from tanks
in far off
foreign countries. I'm
in the clouds
today, hung in
the thick humidity
of hundred degree
heat. Come outside
and see me,
breathe me into
your body, so
I may feel
the comfort and
bask in the
rich fluidity. I
believe it is
almost that hot
inside, that air
trapped in your
lungs and blood
in the dark
and porous veins
is that thick.

In my heart
is where I
tend to dissipate.

If you do not
wish to walk
through the hanging
mist of me,
then stop. Rest
by the municipal
pool or local
fountain, somewhere
in the park.

I will follow
you out on
the walk there,
gatorade in hand,
wiping sweat from
your brow. How
I long to
be that sweat,
to join again,
spend some time
in the corpuscles
of one so creative
and prolific. This
time, however, I
will get into
the mucus of
your lungs, so
that I may
stay buried in
you, an irritant
in my loving.

The water cycle,
a continuous circulation
within the Earth's
hydrosphere, the mind's
tug and definition
of gravity and candor
of the sun,
my fall from
grace and the
asteroid that brought
me to you.

I was waiting
for you, driven
by solar radiation
and a need
to belong, to
reach back to
the days when
you swam in
me, when I
was your mother
before your mother.
My longing includes
the atmosphere, land,
surface water, the
groundwater, the sweet
nectar of body.

As fingers moves,
as love moves,
it changes state
between liquid, solid,
gas, from compartment
to compartment, vessel
to vessel, such
as from river
to ocean, by
the physical processes
of evaporation, precipitation,
infiltration, runoff,
subsurface flow. What
is rolling beneath
me? Will I
trip myself to
the ground. Precipitation
is the falling
in any form
to earth, infiltration
is the process
of being absorbed
into the soil,
evaporation or transpiration
is either when
water is heated
and turns into
a vapor or
when plants use
the water and
give it off
as water vapor,
condensation, which is
when the water
vapor cools to
form clouds. I
could leave you.

I could come
back never. I'd
always be missing.

I could love
you. Who knows
which came first,
whether I gave
you life or
you handed me
a purpose. I
know only how
dry I feel
when you are
there, hiding inside.

213 Days of the Penitent

2006-08-03T07:16:00.000-04:00

I, who come to this castle
born
into the king's right hand
caught
nesting in the amber
of his great palm,
I,
who trace the lifeline
of the thick meat
just
above the wrist,
along
the mountain ridge,
then down
into the valley where
bone
and tendon form a cradle.
I,
who bore, in that honor,
a civilization
made by hands,
torn
from the fire and shadow
of the forest,
I,
who let go of tree branches,
whose wood
splintered and hardened,
scarred
and calloused these hands,
upon whom we have
tacked up
all the good people.
I,
who keep in the foremost
of thought
and my mind, the ominous
and great figure,
God
whose love I barely deserve
and to whom
I am
a poor excuse for a son.
For when my God
says
to go collect coins
or wood for the fire
I,
come home
empty
handed because
along the journey something
tickled my fancy
and answered in me
a need
I
was not able to live
needing.
If I were a son
of any value, worth my
weight
in gold or creation
I
would live this life
broken,
in tears,
and down on my knees.
Mystic father,
who would suggest
that one
who toils endlessly
in obscurity
offers
up some plate
more worthy of eating
than those
caught
thundering ahead
at the dimless
speed
of curiosity, science,
the quest
to understand how
one
could design such a universe,
and more
to the point, how to
harness
the boundless energy
arising
from that design for our
perverse
projects, the arks and the chapels
that are bounded landscapes
on which
to imbue a reflection
of our heartbeat
and our talent.
What I can recall of that time
includes
a tangles of signals
and aroma,
arms and legs
dipped in each other,
seeking out
another patch of skin to kiss,
plain
of unfarmed land to mow down
turn into
a rowed and lined field
whose employment
includes nothing more
or less than stuffing
the face of man.
She thought herself
fat
and me a might bit goofy.
But still,
in that moment
nothing mattered
but pleasing the other,
tempting
the other flesh.
For us,
we were really just
holding
onto the reigns,
the grains
that rise up
from planting and hoping
what we were doing
in no great way
violates
the peace of the other
or worse
the nature of what need be done.
What I can recall
is two kids
lost
in the moment
and losing
their words and their plan.
Mothers
never told either of us
how this one
was supposed to go,
so,
let's blame them for the hoed field
that reaps a bit,
but well below
its potential yield.
The rows
are not and never will be
straight.
The sling
that hangs from my hip
was never used
to slaughter a giant
or giant mess
placed in front of me
by Gods
more obstinate than parents,
who demand
the completion of all work,
showing all work,
no matter the quality of one's health
or the focus
one brings,
all the baggage
claimed at the counter,
ticket punched and seat
for the journey,
all personal items stored
beneath the seat.
Arrow
that sits in the quiver
is nothing
compared to the prey
I
must face.
I am nothing.
Prostrate at the feet
of such mythic and real Gods,
at the base of Olympus
or the gates of heaven.
Peter is just
to laugh at me
and seal
the entrance. If
I
were half the father
as the Father
I
would be able to stand.
As it stands now
no living
or dead creature
would challenge
my right to living,
but none
would follow
were I to leave.
Dad,
I come to you free
of nothing,
taking nothing,
asking only to be
welcomed back.
I
would suggest
you turn me away,
into the cold,
so that I may learn.

Ghosts in the Trees, #212

2006-08-02T08:39:00.000-04:00

Find one woman
and place her hands
within your hands
to kiss always

Find one woman
and place her hands
within your hands
and lift her

Find one woman
and place her hands
over your heart
share the rhythm

Find one woman
and promise her
to never stray
and cross your heart

Find one woman
and promise her
within your hands
to share rhythm

Take this poor man
to kiss always
over your heart
and never stray

Take this poor man
to kiss always
over your heart
and embrace him

Take this poor man
to kiss always
as if no time
passes you by

Take this poor man
and rescue him
from his own mind
before he strays

Take this poor man
and rescue him
as if no time
can embrace him

This tender thunder
between a couple
what starts as hatred
and ends as hatred

This tender thunder
has a warm middle
center of tension
that rises like bread

This tender thunder
produces a reign
as great as monarchs
can hope to maintain

This tender thunder
vibrates to the edge
rattling the house
and down to the toes

This tender thunder
and vibrant lightning
roll across a life
leaving trees behind

The roots we unearth
go deeper than thought
running underneath
the haunted forest

The roots we unearth
carry the markings
of our ancestors
long dead in the ground

The roots we unearth
suggest a longing
of two lost lovers
who reach tree to tree

The roots we unearth
show signs of fatigue
like they've been walked on
time and time again

The roots we unearth
to whisper stories
we should either know
or simply let die

In another lifetime
we could have been allies,
together we nearly
had guts to dominate

In another lifetime
we really might have tried
to make something happen
in the mix-up of us

In another lifetime
the wonder and thunder
of our love might have breathed
a sigh of contentment

In another lifetime
fear I experience
when thinking of calling
dissipates into mist

In another lifetime
the babies who suckle
from your bosoms would have
shared a body with me

Coming over the hill
I see the invasion
my own body falling
to the warrior's sword

Coming over the hill
a vixen's high heels
at the base of long legs
on the way to the store

Coming over the hill
cracking like an egg shell
the yoke of the morning
whites of the humid air

Coming over the hill
with a cake and candles
greeting me like a kin
grey hair and father time

Coming over the hill
the rumbling masses
hoping for a serving
of the rich man's meal

If you can find a rhythm
in the pattern of dreaming
dwell for a moment in sleep
let the visions wash over

If you can find a rhythm
early on in the morning
and ride it through the evening
off into the setting sun

If you can find a rhythm
in the absence of a kiss
and the many devices
we spend our hard earned cash on

If you can find a rhythm
in the music you bathe in
and in rocking back-and-forth
at the battle of the bands

If you can find a rhythm
then jump up on the wave son
and let the other follow
or tumble by the wayside

Her body like a temple
altar to the goddesses
I kneel before to pray
bury my face and tongue in

Her body like a temple
built first by the townspeople
who settled here in my heart
and then built malls and houses

Her body like a temple
core of civilization
constructed on the remains
of many long lost cultures

Her body like a temple
whose doors are always open
in whose pews we're worshiping
where sinners come to be saved

Her body like a temple
of bread and holy water
wine and sacrament body
and blood of the Son of God

Prone at the sole of the master
subservient to the doctrine
we keep as the basis for breath
the prostration we do each day

Prone at the sole of the master
my soul sharpened to a mirror
in hopes of summoning the sun
to come and reflect off of it

Prone at the sole of the master
missing the home I abandoned
the automobiles and bills
and all the meaningless banter

Prone at the sole of the master
my head bowed in embarrassment
at the agony I have caused
and the people disappointed

Prone at the sole of the master
prone to make mistakes of students
to move too fast down easy paths
and miss the wisdom of breathing

I wake before you this morning
and marvel at your chest rising
the fiddle of arms and blankets
and back muscles against mattress

I wake before you this morning
and hear that you are still dreaming
having another not good night
an argument under your breath

I wake before you this morning
to smell the trash and the forest
hoping to throw out the garbage
and bury the ghosts of the trees

I wake before you this morning
to the taste of the stale air
we choose to sustain ourselves on
the thick tongue that requires drink

I wake before you this morning
to the feather touch of blankets
but not the supple graze of skin
because in dreams we are separate

For whatever quest you choose to take
I can only suggest you carry
a blanket a pen and shoelace
so you can keep warm in the cool night

For whatever quest you choose to take
whether it be of the body or mind
carry along side all your stories
jot down the ideas that pass you by

For whatever quest you choose to take
let the anger subside and love
rise like the face of a fine woman
in the morning like the rising sun

Beasts of Upbringing, #211

2006-07-31T12:49:00.000-04:00

An eel is a slippery dowel
moving through water
like butter, except
on the end of a line,
hooked through the lip
liked the common catfish,
at which point, he turns
his hind half like a rudder
becoming almost impossible
to push through the water
with your Shimano reel
and fifteen test line.
He proves even uglier
and harder to unhook
absented from the water.

The catfish we spoke
before of, the one
pulled from the river
is one grotesque creature,
all grumpy face and strings
of whiskers, a grandparent
who made it through war
and still believes in rationing,
even the light of day.
I saw my grandfather
on life support, sucking
oxygen through a straw.
That catfish I was so proud
I caught, I brought home
and watched die on the porch.

On the mile walk to school,
one passed a horse farm,
a trailer, a long ominous drive
back to an invisible house.
But the small huts, the ones
behind fences and crumbling
were the most interesting. Back
of one lives a bark. No,
not a dog, because no one
ever saw a dog. A disembodied
bark that yapped on endlessly,
day and night, night and day.
When you passed, you jumped.
And not once did the owner
move or wake or calm the beast.

There was a swooshing tail
in the barn I mentioned.
Walking home from school
you wouldn't know, being
on the other side of the street,
facing the wrong direction.
But going, in the morning light,
you could watch the tail
for almost a mile growing
sharper and more detailed
in the rising light, gaining color.
But no matter how close
one got, no sound rose
from the barn and no horse
ever showed its long thin face.

Down at the Anchorage
we would stare into the shallow
water and watch the sunnies
swim in circles, their fins
nearly breaking the water.
All the silly musings
about perfect summer days
are carried in this image.
Just as quick, they'd scurry
when something dark
and deep moved below them.
It had not a fin nor face,
never rose out of the icy
water, would take no worm
and no hook, did not exist.

To try and entice the beast
we used worms
dug fresh from the earth.
We'd steal a shovel
from the shed and push
as far down into the grass
as we could, and turn,
without tearing, a triangle
of dirt. In this mound,
all manner of animal
crawled and scampered.
Not so much a beast to me,
as I would steal the worms
and put back the rest, but best
for scaring the life from sisters.

By the time we began
not looking like each other,
when some got taller
while the others got fatter,
when girls grew their hair long
and their bodies began to curve
we all became the enemy.
Some by the swing of their fists
and others by sheer titter,
laughter in a corner
when they could be talking
about anything, but you were sure
they were talking about you.
By the looks of it, we morphed
into our own worst enemies.

In our younger days
we saw the 'rents as pillars
of both our own homes
and society. Some have never
got past this mythology.
Because by aging, we
were no longer the students
and them the masters.
We surpassed them
in both education and wisdom
and could see, in glaring
color their shortcomings
and idiosyncrasies. In short
we, to each other, children
and parents were enemies.

By nine, it was clear
the real adversary didn't live
in our hometown, let alone
our house. As soon as we
could understand Meet the Press
or Face the Nation, we knew
the threat was foreign,
spoke with a thick American
accent and wanted to kill us.
We called him communist
or Castro. What was best
was to be the bully
rather than be bullied.
Might made right in that war.
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

At the ripe old age of sixteen,
again the demon was women,
the girls we had been friends with,
who sat and listened in study hall
to your newest rambling
and when you were in love
with her friend, whom she knew
liked someone else, she encouraged
you to hold off on the telling
because she already knew
the answer. But now, the question
was how to tell this confidante,
who you knew was in love
with someone else. The crux
was our own foolish wanting.

In college they taught us
what a buddhist would say
if we asked. First, of course,
we would have to get past
the thick accent and the low,
quiet voice, so the first hurdle
was our own prejudice,
our own upbringing.
But then, the buddhist
would agree and say the worst
enemy was our physical body,
that which is always in need,
always wanting. As soon
as we give up the need
to live and exist. Ecstasy.

In my twenties I came to see
the hours I had wasted
growing up, sitting watching
other people on TV
tell their stories. That
was my shortcoming. But, never
being able to get that back
decided not to dwell,
like the buddhists taught me
and start to scribble for myself,
not wanting to let anyone
else's opinion become
my own undoing. Words
like dogs hidden back
off the street allude me.

The body is falling apart.
Days I wonder if there exists
any upgrade path, any way
to trade this one in
for a new body. The buddhists
tell me this one is an illusion
anyway, but that the path
is a bit painful and requires
starting over. It all seems
too messy. I could try
the manual add-ons
that are all the rage,
but to what end? Left
with lips too big and a blank
forehead. Vanity is the enemy.

The breath that infiltrates
my lungs, my lungs that wish
nothing but to stop breathing,
to beat my stubborn heart
to the punch, one keeping
the other alive and each
trying to die. I wish to slide
through the coming door
like an eel in flight along
the deep channel of the river,
ignoring anything that might
distract me from my journey.
But something in my history,
in my longing causes me
to curl the back end of my body
and hold on to this living.

Beasts From Dreams, #210

2006-07-31T12:12:00.000-04:00

Picture an insect, not ants
and not bees, not anything
where there are many suitors
and only one queen, but one
where almost all are women
who at some point in their life
find one of the useful men
and get themselves fertilized.
Upon the activation
of the many endorphins
and hormones that will now play,
they get a sense to move home
to a nest they don't recall
leaving. They start the journey.

By arrival at the lair,
the place of her birth, spotted
by scent and intuition,
the insect is exhausted,
fat with eggs and too ready
to burst and die. Landing first
at the entrance and crawling
under a crack in the door,
the insect sees first piles
upon piles of hollowed
out dead carcasses. She tries
to crawl under them for warmth
but is far too large, tired
and bloated with her offspring.

She mounts the stack, rises up
to the top of the pile
and moves toward the back-most wall.
Beneath her, well down below,
she spots movement, tiny legs
scurrying in the other
direction, legs with no form,
no bodies to peak back up.
Over and over the graves
she goes, knowing by instinct
which plates to step on, and which
give no support, and might crush
the underlings. At the wall
she rests, her legs collapsing.

If one could listen closely
enough, scurry near enough
to settle just beside her,
they would have heard the snapping
of eight legs. Here is her grave.
Over the next couple days
her body grows gaunt and thin.
When she sees other mothers
coming, climbing the pile
she tries to warn them. Go back.
No good comes of this temple.
But her voice is like parchment,
flaking off, as are the plates
that no more carry her weight.

By the fifth day, near nothing
remains but a sack bursting
with these squabbling siblings.
At some point during sunrise
the remaining skin becomes
so thin the oldest brother
takes it as a sign and moves
toward the light. At the membrane
that separates him from God
he reaches out with tiny
pincers and snips the body.
Mother makes a final cry
as her flesh is torn and out
escapes hundreds of babies.

The children walk in one line
as if headed off to school,
but their size will not allow
them to navigate the plates
or the spaces between them,
so the children shimmy down
into the stacks or corpses.
When exhausted they simply
stop and drink the juice dripping
from somewhere above, healthy
as mother's milk, and indeed,
the squozen remains of moms
upon moms, giving their last
to raise their helpless offspring.

At last they reach the bottom,
well-fed, to find a river
of other children flowing
in a single direction.
The light is up, but the flow
stays on the floor. The smart ones
go with it, the flow that is,
while the others try to climb
against the traffic, against
the falling milk like showers,
up the slippery cliffsides
only to tumble back down
onto their backs, carried down
beneath a thousand small feet.

Now the light is to the front,
calling them under the crack
at the foot of the baseboard.
Seeing this, there's a stampede
that breaks for it, pushing down
the slower of the family.
At the wall, rows of insects
squeeze outside and run for it
cross the long naked expanse
of the empty room. But some,
wiser than that stick beside
the wall and commute along
the long route. Better for them,
as the others get the boot.

Off to the space underneath
the kitchen door, unknowing,
but somehow still retracing
the steps generations long
have traversed into the yard.
From there, food lies underneath
every fallen branch, every
decaying tree, under rocks
and beside the stone walkways.
The ones who made it outside
are drying, getting fatter
and growing out wings. The sun,
the light they were seeking out
calls again. The best ones fly.

In their coming of age, high
above the ground and feeding
off the trees, they come to see
the light as the source of life,
unattainable, too bright,
and learn to enjoy the shade
of a good tree, the cool ground
on occasion, a respite
and nice place to relax in.
The smart ones, learn to entice
their mates to these dark places
where they can be licentious
and indiscriminate, not
worry for being eaten.

Picture an insect, not ants
and not bees, not anything
where there are many suitors
and only one queen, but one
where almost all are women
who at some point in their life
find one of the useful men
and get themselves fertilized.
Upon the activation
of the many endorphins
and hormones that will now play,
they get a sense to move home
to a nest they don't recall
leaving. They start the journey.

By arrival at the lair,
the place of her birth, spotted
by scent and intuition,
the insect is exhausted,
fat with eggs and too ready
to burst and die. Landing first
at the entrance and crawling
under a crack in the door,
the insect sees first piles
upon piles of hollowed
out dead carcasses. She tries
to crawl under them for warmth
but is far too large, tired
and bloated with her offspring.

She mounts the stack, rises up
to the top of the pile
and moves toward the back-most wall.
Beneath her, well down below,
she spots movement, tiny legs
scurrying in the other
direction, legs with no form,
no bodies to peak back up.
Over and over the graves
she goes, knowing by instinct
which plates to step on, and which
give no support, and might crush
the underlings. At the wall
she rests, her legs collapsing.

If one could listen closely
enough, scurry near enough
to settle just beside her,
they would have heard the snapping
of eight legs. Here is her grave.
Over the next couple days
her body grows gaunt and thin.
When she sees other mothers
coming, climbing the pile
she tries to warn them. Go back.
No good comes of this temple.
But her voice is like parchment,
flaking off, as are the plates
that no more carry her weight.

By the fifth day, near nothing
remains but a sack bursting
with these squabbling siblings.
At some point during sunrise
the remaining skin becomes
so thin the oldest brother
takes it as a sign and moves
toward the light. At the membrane
that separates him from God
he reaches out with tiny
pincers and snips the body.
Mother makes a final cry
as her flesh is torn and out
escapes hundreds of babies.

Play Ball, #209

2006-07-30T17:25:00.000-04:00

Konerko:
What whiff you must let
go by, while the pitcher
busies himself with
the business of keeping
the runner on first
occupied. What balls
did you bring to the plate
that will let you swing
through the air to connect
on a weak looper
over behind first base.
Walk back to the dugout.

Dye:
What an eye you
turn away from me,
that makes you move
with the crack of the bat,
what arms and what neck
that react with the least
concern for brain, least
need for impulse or neuron,
what lungs you must have
to stroke and breathe,
to perk up on edge
and the balls of your feet.

Markakis:
What possesses you to choose
21 for the back of your jersey?
That best of blackjack,
age of ascension
miracle of God's
first three weeks. But
you forgot the days
he rested, the times
he sat lazily
at the ballpark,
ordered a beer
and watched the game.

Patterson:
Floyd, like the boxer
or a call-back to the General
who carried us through
the second world war. But,
also to a Corey
and so, a hint of a star
from the early 80s.
Maybe not so much a star
as simply an actor.
If he played you in a movie,
surely, you'd go 0 for 3.

Uribe:
Unraveler of stitches.
Usurper of the mindset
of the pitcher.
Undercover agent.
Unknown quantity
placing your substantial
finger on the scale
of the boxes. Ultimate
decision maker,
dictator of the outcome
of the scoreboard and game.

Roberts:
Full count. You've run
the pitcher this far,
fouled off a couple balls,
fought back from the edge
of oblivion to get
one last chance at glory.
Fouled off another. Poked
the ball down the baseline
and into the stands, before
you park 102 stitches
over the center field fence.

Crede:
What jokes have been made
about your name, about
the mispronounced nearness
to a statement of honor,
what rock band we lamented
ever listening to
in the late 90s. How
many people made those jokes
in high school, the force
with which you had to
beat them or run away. How
those morons got you to the bigs.

Millar:
On a green pasture
in the great woods of Germany,
those woods that spawned
the tales of Robin Hood
and Camelot. By the turn
of a brook feeding into
a great river, a man decides
to break grain. We spell it
many ways and have lost
the long white line
back to the silt of
the Rhone and the Rhine.

Iguchi:
You came here, being an all-star
in your own right, hero
to your friends, came down
to our minor majors,
starting over, staring lineup,
starting out this season,
as every season
0 for 0, hoping
for a good pitch
and a good eye
that will carry you
long into the cooling fall.

Mora:
How much you bring
to the team, el Patrón,
Capitán to the cause,
carrier of the curse
Cal left behind when
he drew a packed crowd
to the stadium
to honor a man for
going to work. A stadium
full of men who wish
for a day off, to go
and honor those who toil.

Garcia:
Curl your fingers round
the round seams of the ball
that seems to cause the wind
around the ball to drop
the bottom out of the earth
and create a singularity
that tugs at the very core
of the cold earth
below the stadium
into the frozen ground.

Bedard:
Rear back on your hind leg.
Place all your weight
in the furthest back
position. Wait. Wait.
Rock forward with enough
pace to cause the left arm
to wince just a bit
and by the time
they recover, the ball
to be fiercely planted
in a deep leather mitt.

Tejada:
Like a hook that lifts
us out of our seats,
the long fly ball
that teases the fence
and tempts the front row
to reach out
and taunt the right
fielder. Outstretched
hands on the run,
hands left disappointed
hanging empty
in the summer air.

Cott:
Cold, all night
in the humid air
waiting, spitting
peanut shells
and sunflower seeds.
The call, from an old
girlfriend who loved you
dearly and ditched you
due to your love of baseball.
The man she loved
turned out to have no arm
and now you make the save.

Pierzynski:
In a city steeped
in great Polish traditions,
stewed in old names
that ring like the spice
of a sausage, the casing
and grease of the El
blown past Halsted Street,
turning the track
and grinding against
the rail. The head
of the bat scratching
the edge of the ball.

Conine:
Drafted just as the world
plucked me up from the nest
I sat in, in high school,
the end of the bench
I warmed, drafted to start
a franchise and me
a degree that has come
and gone, leaving behind
no trace of useful credit.
But still you reach
for the low, outside
curveball in the dirt.

Ray:
Of light, of heat
a man with one job,
end the opposition,
shut the door, close
it out, chuck-a-pill,
keep the ball low
hard and inside.
The big man
is coming forth
in the line-up
with a cannon
and a deadly eye.

Jenks:
Short, fat
to the point,
like the name.
Mow down the weeds
of the middle line-up
who pepper the grass
with their wild attempts
to return the ghosts,
raise the stakes
and pound them
back into the ground.

Each for a Week, #208

2006-07-30T11:32:00.000-04:00

My days at school are loaded
with fine women. And by this
I don’t simply mean beauty
and youth and body shapeness.
Girls my age who left behind
the small minded prom outlook
of who would be the richest
date one could land, ignoring
the fact that said jock leveled
some innocent bystander
in the cafeteria
at lunch today. That diva
is back home now, wondering
what to do now that her man
has left for the Marine Corp,
to fall ball in the D.R.
or to Chapel Hill to make
the freshman bitch squad. What’s left
are the cool chicks who mired
in the cowl of those witches.
To me their beauty relies
not on Loreal, Clairol
or Marie Clare, she relies
on the laughter and the mouth
God gave her, a mind tightened
by the gymnastics AP
classes put her through, English,
Trig, World History, Physics.
Her beauty shines through the most
on Sunday mornings wearing
her hair up and her PJ
bottoms, an old concert shirt
from a show we two witnessed
last month in New York City.
Her true wonder is only
spotted in the dining hall
when we sit cross the table
from each other chucking looks
and peas, laughing out soda
from our noses, and that night,
when we all meet to suffer
some terrible cinema
my roommate swore we needed
to see, the whole lot of us.
She sits just in front of me
and giggles while I whisper
picky, bitter, judgmental
quips about how bad the script,
the direction, the acting.
Asking why someone from Old
England would wear Adidas.
I take this to mean she loves me.

We had a fight this morning
over the amount of time
we spend together, over
the amount of time we spend
apart, over how much time
it takes to write a paper
and how important getting
ready for an exam is
compared to flying a kite.
We had a fight this morning
about flying kites. Never
in my wildest dreams, never
did I imagine these days
would turn like this, like bad milk,
stink rotten enough to wilt
the leaves of our love. I thought,
in the month or so we’ve known
each other, that we had made
a stone structure of our love,
that ours was a pyramid,
built to last eternally
and shift only to better
capture the glimmer of a star
that aims its passing beam through
the center of it. Never
did I imagine that all four
sundays we spent walking round
the Gunk to find the perfect
spot to lay down and do work
while rubbing the back and butt
of each other, while basking
in the glow of the sunshine,
the afterglow of our love
making. Never did I dream
those days would set like the sun
over Mohonk Mountain House.
What’s a boy to do, but spend
the day in his room crying
dry tears and cursing the whole
damn thing. Not even Game Boy,
in all its glory could calm
the anger, the confusion
and bewilderment that comes
from this. Only the most coarse
curse words will do. I’ll never
suffer a love-pain, like this,
again. Her eyes a steel
blue that opened to welcome
the warm breeze of my body
like a mountain lake, just thawed
and willing to cool the most
volcanic aspects of me.

The third act, scenes of drama
where the hero violates
all the honor and the pacts
built up and does something so
reprehensible that your sympathy
is almost drained completely
and you feel almost no
remorse. Witness him lying
in bed next to a woman
he doesn’t love, he admits
being with her completely
for the shape of her being,
for her willingness to let
their bodies mingle nearly
whenever asks for it,
merely to seek out pleasure.
But, let it never be said
he held any of this in,
kept it a secret, misled
anyone. Straight up. The boy
inside who used to come out
and tell the girl what reason
he had for longing for her
is not in this equation.
The words he used to whisper
to the poet, that he asked
to be turned upon the lathe
of verse have fallen silent.
Doozer, bulldozer, the man
who is bored, who is looking
to be entertained and cares
not one little bit for how
or why or what characters
get hurt in the aftermath.
Was it the color of hair
or eyes, or the curve of hips
into her tightening stomach,
what hid and rested below
the far too out of aspect
and ratio breasts, body
she had been hiding for years,
since the boys in seventh grade
made some snide remark about
what they thought they would enjoy
doing with her after school?
Her hands reach into my hands
and curl their fingers deeper
and with such a longing force.
Inside a brief agony
at the games I am playing,
that I know I am playing.
How soon will this be over?

Each for a week, I look back
to the poorly innocent,
the boy I have abandoned,
at the havoc I have reeked
and the damaged caused, and hope
that both the woman I loved
and the women that arrived
too late for me to adore
in any aspect other
than in comparison, than
in the moment, have mastered
something of this life, have found
a place and a happiness
and that perhaps, in the mind’s
eye they are able to peer
back into the emptiness
and spot a fun moment, laugh
or date that fulfilled something
of an ideal that may
have left a good aftertaste
of our historic moments
together. I never need
wonder that about a boy,
if he found peace, happiness.
He’s left back there, in a room,
crying and batting his head
against the wall, wondering
what he did wrong, what false step
he took, how his ideals
could have betrayed him. At night
the flowers he knew to buy
wilt and are thrown in the trash,
the note he knew to compose
as a sign that he was not
just any guy and that she
was not just any woman
he was using for his own
enjoyment. That note, folded
and unfolded countless times
has been worn through, rewritten
in a thousand kind missives
as mantra, apology,
declaration of self-worth
and self denial, of times
he could have been a good man.
My life has been overwhelmed
with the most gorgeous
women in shape and make-up,
in heart and in intellect.
I only wish, in my dreams
I could have played better. I
could have been a better man.

Womb, #207

2006-07-27T22:17:00.000-04:00

Those first days, silent
and anonymous,
able to effect
only negative
side effects
an occasional
burp, upset stomach.
Spend those days doing
mathematics, practice
fractals, algebra,
solve for quadratic
equations. Imbibe
all the food given,
even the cheesesteak
gets down here liquid.
Try to remember
something forgotten
about origins
and evolution,
about genetics
what the Gods create
and the family tree,
bases of being.

You have an idea
that something might be
different. No,
not the flu, not food
you ate for dinner,
the backlash of some
ancient Japanese
recipe, pint size
leftovers ready
for you to take home
in a doggy bag.
Your best friends notice,
ask you about it.
Your friend doesn't come
to visit. And now,
after all this time
you decide to test
your theories. A trip
to the grocery.
Looking for a plus
or pink or two lines,
the basic art of
hormone therapy.

The world shapes itself
into a spinning globe,
flat on the bottom
and top from the speed
at which it revolves.
Bodies mold to make
room for the outcomes
that may be upon
them, the cold weather
and tropical storms
forming in the Gulf,
near ready to come
ashore, to touch land
and devastate who
might still be living
behind these levees.
The decorations
in homes have started
going up, houses
shifted to make room
for the arrival.
Chickens are running
round without their heads.

We're not awake yet,
please stop that moving.
Not that food again,
don't we ever eat
anything different.
Off to the bathroom,
we've got to go now.
The room temperature
is too cold, turn up
the thermostat, don't
listen to the dork
beside us who keeps
shouting, vibrating
our little kingdom,
has he no manners.
What kind of a clod
plays that wrecked guitar
and warbles off-key
into a belly.
Ok, time to sleep.
No, we do not need
to get up again.
Come back down here please.

When we bend, we crunch
up, end up doubled
over, hands to toes.
When we stretch, the length
of us is a long
vowel sound, a groan,
an exclamation
missing its point. Know
that we are both long
and short, what vision
you can imagine
and the shortcomings
of our whole species.
In our history
we are still promise,
all the outcoming
of virtue and sin,
yin and yang twisting
itself into itself.
We're always tired
and in need of sleep,
in need of contact
afraid of shadows.

The world shapes itself
like a belly. Long
slow forming curves round
off whatever sharp
angles thought themselves
capable, able
to reach with these hands
and push the corners.
The globe turns itself
like a heaven. Long
sloped hilly ranges
peak wherever keen
angels think themselves
capable, able
to reach without hands
and move the mountains.
It's time for dinner,
none of that yogurt
this time, none of that
protein that assists
a forming body.
Bring out the cheesesteak
and the hot hot sauce.

It's getting hot here,
would you take off that
parka, that sweater
you think diminishes
the imprint of me.
There's no point trying
anymore to hide
me. Next, I come for
the button on your
belly. An inny
to an outie. Next
I come for kidneys,
for the hot flashes
and your wild dreams.
Tonight, our movie
is brought to you by
local Mexican
eateries. What you
wouldn't give for a
tequila. But I
am young and tender,
so easily swayed.
None for you today.

How's the back lady?
How's the swollen feet
and the tired neck
and the hemorrhoids?
Remember back when
you were just happy
to be pregnant. When
you imagined tiny
shoes and tiny clothes
and how I would look
up to you, and you
would look at me, with
such endearing love
and affection. Son
or daughter that you
always dreamed of. Mom
you wished you could be.
How's the painful night
asleep on your back
when you wish you could
still roll on your side.
How's the mood swings, brain
that makes sense no more?

It's warm and cozy.
I want to get out.
Forever hold me.
I want to get out.
Why are these muscles
contracting around
me? I never did
nothing to bother
no body. Mommy
should I trust the voice
telling you to push?
It cold and lonely.
I want to get out.
Somebody hold me.
I want to get out.
It's air I'm breathing.
No, its your body.
It's air I'm breathing.
No more your body.
The doc just hit me.
Someone just cut me.
It's warm and cozy
lying here Mommy.

Evening News, #206

2006-07-26T12:32:00.000-04:00

If the woman
weren't asleep, hadn't
quit it already,
if work had not
beat her down, stole
her creativity
today and now, while
the night, that should be
time together is still early,
if she weren't dragging
her ass through the door,
too tired to hold
her head on her shoulders,
keep her gaze
up, to hold open
her eyes, we might have
some alone time.

If the woman
hadn't worked, left
at eight, back at seven,
more hours today
than work, any humane
company, should allow,
if the managers, those
in the charge of employees
of the shop were on top
of timecards, quality of life,
their job, they would
have spotted the blinking
red neon sign, lack of a lunch,
hours doing repetitive tasks,
overworked and thought
OSHA, occupational safety
or better, her well being
and sent her home punctually.

If all the deliveries,
the dudes in trucks
who bring stuff, came
on time and her helper,
saint and friend though he
may be didn't need
a week's off rest, time
to spend with his parents,
or someone had been
assigned, any of the many
staff, to assist in his
absence (how many
to change a bulb), then
my wife would be awake
at this still early hour
and smiling, bubbly
bouncing up and down
the living room,
gladly telling me about
how helpful everyone is,
what a well worked day
she had at such a great
company and how she
was glad it was her
chosen profession,
though now over.

To show her love
for me, not the company,
her hands would reach
out for me. In the brief
minutes awake, and when
they did, in my dulled
wisdom I would try
to banter and tease,
hold back her hands,
continue my online
fantasies, sloth
watching TV or playing
at some meaningless
card table, whatever
video game, foreign
or domestic highjacked
my attention. This
after my whole day
off. All day, sitting
and waiting while dramas
rolled on by, for my love
to arrive home, my one
true compatriot, lament
her inattendance at my
brief vacation day
and curse the millions
of reasons, all of them
right and worthy,
why she must stay away
bills, meaning, self-fulfillment.

Yet, when the moment arrives,
her car in the parking lot
and she walks through
the doorway, all
my lamentations null,
suddenly the policy,
devised mainly in theory
shifts to me, missing
my free-time, alone
with my thoughts. In
some odd twist of fate,
I recall the long
and wasted sunlight
and suddenly have
projects to complete.
In my drunk madness,
crying the whole time
from the inside, voices
of my younger,
dumber selves screaming
at the top of their lungs,
unbelieving anyone
from their future mindset
would pull back from
her forwardness.

Why, one might ask,
might a man, or he
who claims to be such,
and a romantic, writer,
poet, virile young lover,
or he who claims
to be such would
simply put his head
down and focus
on the minute
pursuit lurking before
him, the sitcom
in front of him?
No good reasoning
exists and so,
no explanation
will make sense.
Somewhere inside
himself he wants
to commit this night
to just hanging out,
to kicking it
with his friends,
old school. And the wife,
lover, woman he
married, married
in part, because
she is one of those
old friends too, perhaps
he thought, perhaps
they could just be friends
tonight, and then
tomorrow go back
to being lovers.

Why else would he
decide to turn tail
and hide, why else
would such a boy,
this dumb boy turn
away such a woman?
If not the sex
he was chasing then
the servitude. Do me
attitude that
demands more
that it inspires,
orders more than
it asks. He grasps at
the energy floating
by, the strange
collection of spores
that infect the mouth
and nose like allergies,
sneezing him
while a summer day
rolls by. What love,
what peace. The winter
season never brings
happy, calm thoughts.

But, in its defense,
it never begins
the bombing. In
the Middle East
bombers, those devout
enough to give
their life for acrimony
have an agenda.
Take life. Perhaps
the goal is not death
but water, and therefore,
it's the desert to blame,
the sand and the mirage
of peace, the lies
of marriage, of deep
deep oceans, fresh
and clean, always
the right temperature.
Perhaps, if in her
seduction, she would
turn off the TV, fix
me a whiskey, get
me drunk, give me
something to drink,
perhaps then we
could have sex,
and without guilt
or sadness we could
both enjoy our brief
stolen time together,
and she could sleep.

Our Father, #205

2006-07-25T11:16:00.000-04:00

Our father would
hang up the phone,
click down meanly
the receiver
and start yelling
at whoever
was nearest by
about something
unrelated
to whatever
had upset him
in his last call.
He would never
hit us. It just
wasn't in his
nature. But steam
and hoot, holler
as if he could
erupt any
minute like Mount
Vesuvius.
We townsfolk thought
we might be trapped
beneath rubble
and a pile
of molten rock
and hot lava.
So we steered clear.
Soon as his voice
began to rise
you saw children
busy themselves
behind closed doors,
in other rooms
or off to play
outside, some game
that required
hiding. Later,
when the smoke cleared,
kids would appear
like villagers.

Our father would
get an idea
to make something
out of the scraps
around us, piece
together wood
and nails, screw
this into that
to make a box
house, rustle up
a new meal
from odd ideas
or draw on walls
with a strange ink,
we'd all jumped in.
For a moment
we were cavemen
discovering
fire or flint
or the wheel.
Mom would tell us
dad used to be
an artist, writer
of some rather
fine verse, and now
he did these things
to make up for
not writing. How
could we believe
her. Our father,
a poet. Not
once did he lift
a book or jot
down an idea.
He just shifted
from super cool
tinkerer to
explosions of
sound and fury.
How could this man
be an artist?

When father would
be home alone,
we could come back
to find the rooms
spotless. An odd
change from the filth
he mired in
when we were there.
He would never
lift a finger
to clean a dish
or wash his clothes.
So what duende
came to visit
while we were out
is a riddle.
Once in a blue
moon, we would show
early and catch
him moving at
light speed, a blur
who could not say
a word until
the dishwasher
was running, clothes
were spinning in
both the washer
and the dryer,
and each toilet
had been scrubbed down.
Only then did
he even see
us. He would say
"hi" as if we
had just walked in.
No mention of
the half hour
stage performance
we just witnessed.
Simply a kiss
on our foreheads.

Our father would
sleep, take a nap
in the middle
of the day, he
would wake and lie
silent. Hours
just looking up
at the ceiling,
his eyes frozen
into nothing.
We would walk by
talking, ask him
questions, try to
snap him away
from his coma.
He would whisper
in a tenor
we never heard
outside this strange
situation.
There were moments,
many of them,
when our father
was a normal
dad. He'd tell us
to take out trash
and stop fighting
and help your mom
with the groceries.
But too many
anomalies
existed not
to mention them.
Father would sit
on the back porch
and stare into
the forest, wait
as if the woods
were going to
talk back, as if
the birds knew him.

When father would
pack the car up
for the weekend
and take us down
to the water,
he seemed at peace.
In the ocean
with his body
floating, rolling
in the waves, tide
washing over.
All remained still
in his life when
he came ashore.
A cool calmness
washed over him,
a smile donned
his boyish face.
It's the same face
we looked into
today at his
wake. We walked by
in a long line
to pay respects
to a man who
loved us dearly.
People showed up
we never met
and confirmed what
our mom had said.
Our dad, crazy
wacky father
of ours, used to
be somewhat known
for his goofy
grin, his dancing
around, writing,
always writing,
and his temper.
Our father, who's
art in heaven.

Days in July, #204

2006-07-25T00:31:00.000-04:00

The partridges have been clipped,
slipped from their cages with sweat
rolling down their healing backs,
while they themselves hang singing
in the unladen pear tree,
stood amongst its brethren
out in the budding orchard,
which was all blossoms until
just recently. Even Pa,
who has seen countless winters
and too many hot summers
says he's never seen the trees
this lonely, and partridges
sing so loudly, fluidly,
a melody bearing fruit
as if the birds knows something's
coming but are not telling.

Over the barn door, mother
has posted two turtle doves
cast in iron and painted
so that their dark midnight eyes
look up to heaven, never
down to the ground. She hung them
up with three nails each. One
through each wing-tip and one more
for the beak. My grandmother
would tell us stories about
how her husband built that barn
just after he returned from
the second world war. How he
would wake up early each morn
in a cold sweat and head out
to pound lumber. How he'd say,
"A man ain't nothing afraid."

Inside the barn in a cage
my brother and sister keep
three french hens, who each morning
they kneel in front of, lift
up to see if overnight
any eggs were laid. Not once
has either come running back
into the house to announce
that one of the hens has clucked
out an egg. But each morning
without fail, the children
run like wild turkey's cross
the grass to see if Santa
left them presents underneath
their own particular tree.
It's faith like this that brings me
to write beside the pear-tree.

The calling birds are calling
above me, one from the four
corners of each of the four
distant seas. I try to mime
the words and the melody,
play call and response along
with the various species.
I wonder what they're thinking
when they hear my voice cooing,
a stranger, an immigrant,
an undoubtedly foreign
off-key warble of something
below them, evil, unseen.
But they continue to sing
along as if I am mute
or perfect or otherwise
fit. I think they adore me.

My family, five of us
all curled around a table
at dinner telling stories
of the day, of what repairs
we made on what small corner
of the farm, what upkeeping,
what milking, what harvesting
we helped along. And when Pa
came to me to ask about
my day I bragged mightily
about the birds and their song,
how they let me sing along.
At that Pa got a queer look
on his face, curl on his lip
as he laid beside his plate
his fork and knife. He asked me
what I spent the day doing.

What happened next is a blur,
my father talking about
all the days that everyone
has to work, and that even
God himself only took one
day off for each six he worked.
Father said that the lazy,
pooping-in-the-field geese
were harder working than me.
He forbid me to break bread
at his table until I
did an honest day of work.
And so I was sent to sit
in the living room and wait
until the fat, full family
rose up from the dinner feast.
I was to clean all the plates.

The following dawn father
sent me out to get water
from the pond to fill the well
to use to water the plants
in the garden my mother
was gardening. "Be back by
breakfast." He said. So I left
in the darkness with pail
in hand. Came to the water's
edge, face to face with seven
swans swimming in the pale
darkness. They at first ignored
me and then squawked me off from
their private meeting. Three times
I tried to get the water.
Three times they fought me. I think
Pa was sent here as a kid.

I missed the breakfast, of course,
and with my stomach rumbling
I was told to go outside
and locate the maids milking
the moo cows. I was told not
to dilly-dally around,
but to get there, and toot-sweet.
Tell them to put me to work,
to teach me something useful
rather than this queer fancy
I'd developed for singing
with the birds and with writing.
My mother would label me
the prodigal son, assure
me father would come around
but that for now I needed
to show him some hard effort.

On my way to find the maids,
to do my days earned labor
I ran to the pond, and saw
nine ladies dancing, perhaps
friends of my mother, perhaps
of my Pa. In either case
I was sure I was to have
nothing to do with women
such as this. And yet, intrigued
as I was, I had to stop.
They seemed to be fluttering
along the skin of the lake,
dancing in like with the waves.
I approached and they giggled.
Asked me if I was with those
who were coming to figure
out how the dance. I fibbed it.

When the lords arrived to learn
the dance, I was revealed
for the charlatan, the dumb
boy that I was. But ladies
forgave me. I might've stayed
had it not been that there were
already too many men
for the number of women.
And still I needed to find
the cow and the maids. Father
would not be happy until
I came home with red raw hands
and tired muscles, dripping
with the remnants of fresh milk.
I found the maids by hearing
the sounds of the cow, booing
their painful lot in this life.

My triumphant return home
could not have been more welcome
if my father had hired
eleven pipers to play
my way up the walk, into
the dining room for dinner.
I told my family the story
of the day, how many jugs
of milk I pulled, and how cows
don't like it when you don't know
what you are doing. Lastly
I told Pa of the ladies
dancing and how they showed me
a few things. My calm father,
my serene father, the stern
wordless man I had lived with
all my life snapped to a rage.

How dare I, at my young age
presume to dance with ladies
I know not of, who teach things
well beyond my years. His face
growing redder and redder.
As he moved toward me, the face
of my mom and scattering
siblings all faded. I found
myself running through the door
to the living room, across
the den and up the staircase.
At the top, my Pa caught me.
His fists like drummers drumming
upside my body, inside
my head. How could you? How could
you? From outside the window,
I heard the partridge cooing.

Course Catalog, #203

2006-07-24T11:27:00.000-04:00

-with a nod to "8 Easy Steps" by Alanis Morissette

Welcome to the study
of one's lifelong pursuits
and congratulations
on your acceptance
to your institution.
Below you'll discover
our Course Catalog
which includes all classes
to be offered over
the next seventy-five
or so years. Included
are a brief synopses
of the underlying
impetus of the course,
a discussion about
the pedagogy used
and the grading structure.
Choose wisely, for as soon
as you are registered
for a course, all your fees
are non-refundable
and canceling a course
is not an option. Here
there is no unlearning.
Again, welcome to school
and congratulations.
With heartfelt eagerness
we look forward to all
the great things you will do.

101 Distraction by Goofy:
This introductory
course explores the methods
and reasons to portray
a care-free, never down
attitude to the world,
no matter how your day
is progressing or what
verses inner demons
are singing. Emphasis
will be placed on quick-wit
and sarcasm as crutch
and tool with which to hit
any true emotion
back down that rears its head.
Students are expected
to bring to the lectures
levels of dysfunction
commensurate with their
station in a high school
social strata. Outcasts
and prom queens are welcome
so long as their placement
has left emotional
scars and is not still used
as a point of prideful
indulgence. Students should
come with props, sarcasm
and other basic skills.

201 Leverage Psycho-Babble:
A course whose sophomoric
bent is meant to assist
college educated
stuck-ups to look better
than townie counterparts
who were too terrified
to leave mom and daddy
and go into the world.
This course will not give you
the tools to understand
the world surrounding you
beyond elemental
explanations of things,
beyond the most simple,
trite, overused cliches
of argument. Basic
Psych 101 would give
you more understanding
of history, theory
and method. This course will,
however make you sound
smart at parties, with friends
and with other pseudo-
intellectuals. Bring
with you to class a free
and open mind, the need
to sound important. Course
not designed for majors.

301 Half-Seen Pop-Stuff and You:
Ever want to converse
about a well known show
or movie you've never
actually seen, a film
or stage show talked about
so often at parties
you could almost simply
spit back the pabulum heard
over and over and
sound almost an expert?
Well, no need to appear
an outcast when this course
can polish your BS
skills to a fine razor
like edge. In this classroom
we will not be watching
any of the great films
or TV shows, reading
none of the fine novels
of this or any time.
We will be studying
conversation and news
clippings written about
each of these. Emphasis
will also be placed on
how to obtain snippets
of information left
lying about the room.

401 Hiding Deformity:
This advanced level course
involves concealing,
on the outside, those parts
of yourself you dislike
as much as the aspects
of yourself you disdain
on the inside. Again,
trolls and prom queens may both
apply. Whether it be
a mole or a belly,
some obvious blemish
or hid deformity,
the shape of your elbow
or a scar on the back
of your left knee, this class
will instruct you how to
de-emphasize, highlight
other aspects, how to
lean and sit and shuffle
to conceal. What's not
covered is fashion tips
or make-up. The techniques
discussed is in wearing
what you want and moving
the eye to some other
corner. Also covered
are more ways to obsess
in the mirror later.

501 Leading by Hook and Crook:
How easy some people
find it to lead others,
to motivate others
and to obtain from them
their best effort on all
occasions. This lecture
class is not for those folks.
This graduate level
seminar is shortcut
and pith to get people
to perform to levels
acceptable in your
organization. How
to manage those smarter
than you to do a job
you not only never
could do, but understand
not one smidgeon of how
it is done. Here's how
to do the job better
than you yourself ever
could hope to do. Students,
check your ego and bags
and don't come expecting
leadership and training
theories of the day. Here
we're going to explore
getting by to get by.

601 Meaningless Life Projects:
Post graduate courses
self-created and meant
to keep busy voices
that may saunter into
a lazy and empty
post graduate living.
These projects can fight back
any sense of boredom
and stagnation, even
if they amount to zilch
in the long-run. Students
should come with some ideas
already in their hands,
the more useless, crazy
and unnecessary
the better. One on one
instruction will be on
honing and shaping work
brought to the instructor
by the student. Recall
that all teachers of this
seminar completed
all previous coursework
and may use the techniques
garnered from the above
classes to only half
help you and half cover
their own silly asses.

After hearing one too many complaints about the shortcomings of this or that new technology. #202

2006-07-23T00:57:00.000-04:00

        Follow bread
crumbs down
        the path,
around the
        trunk of
the tree
        and into
the underbrush,
        the lush
garden path
        is just
up ahead,
        that clearing.
Allow yourself
        to be
yourself, breathe.
        Get out
of the
        dark forest.
No. Just
        go. We
never needed
        you here.
Go build
        a kibbutz,
a nation.
        Build an
economy based
        on who
toils most,
        works hardest,
studies hardest.
        Don't even
try to
        remember me.
This morning,
        while quelling
a jonesing
        for coffee
I stood
        across from
a Barista
        who could
have told
        this whole
story with
        the flick
of her
        wrist. It's
that infectious.
        The whine
and moan
        of her
foam language.
        The groan
of machines
        we've created.
The long
        O's and U's
and too
        many S's.
A bit
        of shite
must fall
        into life,
and so
        why choose
to lament
        its existence,
to worry
        and complain
about all
        the long
days, those
        endless hours.
If you
        don't like
it go
        back to
the forest.
        Go back
and let
        your beard
grow long,
        let your
fingernails grow
        into sharp
points, let
        the moon
that comes
        out once
a month
        turn you
into some
        freak of
old movies.
        If you
don't like
        it, head
down to
        the beach
and strip-off
        what's left
of your
        clothing, smock
they make
        you wear
at work,
        the button
down shirt
        underneath. Strip
them down
        to your
nothing skin
        and step
into high
        rolling tide,
lay down,
        roll around,
feel what
        water turns,
see if
        the gills
you once
        had grow
back, if
        you can
breathe beneath
        the water,
if Ocean,
        from which
your grandfather's
        grandfather crawled
out of
        remembers you
by DNA
        or simply
by family
        resemblance. If
you don't
        like it,
tell cells
        to quit
dividing, stop
        multiplying. Tell
them to
        fuse back,
together, two
        into one,
until there's
        nothing left
of you
        but one
packed amoeba,
        and when
that's what's
        left, strangle
your own
        self with
the part
        of you
that used
        to be
the fingers.
        I will
tell you
        this, for
all those
        long stories
we tell
        each other,
the fairy
        tales and
hard science,
        nothing comes
close to
        this reality,
which is
        far less
dynamic and
        more boring
than one
        can imagine.
The good
        book didn't
get it.
        Follow along
the path
        that leads
from point
        A to
point B.
        It's a
one way
        street, cul-de-sac
that shows
        no outlet,
no Starbucks,
        no forest,
no ocean.
        Sit down
here. See.

Hero, #201

2006-07-22T00:26:00.000-04:00

While you were wailing
in your newborn crib
I was tuned into
the Mets and Red Sox,
tied into the set
for twenty-nine outs
that did not come,
seven games after
seventeen innings,
wretched heartbeats struck
countless times. Watching
with my mother, born
of Boston, dying
and being slaughtered
with every moment,
between both of us
we wolfed down the hits
and errors, the saves,
the homeruns, Rocket's
right arm and Daryl's
long loping amble.
We argued each night
and rubbed our noses
into the defeats.
We thought the dribble
moving through Buckner's
legs was the greatest
and worst thing that could
happen between us,
that a sport that could
split a mom and son
must have no value
or mean everything.

When you were seven
I left for college,
packed up my suitcase
and my teddy bear,
crying in my bag.
At the state college
my mother and I,
like frozen statues
hovering over
the grounds,
memorials cast
on the stone sidewalk
that turned underneath
the tunnel and down
around a corner.
Her quivering lip,
my sister honking
the horn. In what world
should a parent be
separated from
their child by such
distance? Not like this.
Not for the reasons
we're sired to give
our allegiance to,
to pledge our endless
blood for. We have spent
not nearly enough
days in unison,
standing on sidewalks
whispering good-bye.
We cried for how long
we would have to drive
to see each other.

In this incursion
I want to debate
policy, theory,
the potential use
of military
force as a method
for encouraging
the spread of freely
renewable, built
on the absolute
ideal of votes
equalling right, made
by the people for
the people and of
the people regimes,
a debate about
what authority
our democracy,
land of the free and
the home of the brave
has determining
the path and free will
of the citizens
in the world,
a debate about
the sword and the word,
with which we project
our best foot and our
first allegiance, to
whom to we commend
the body, spirit,
our mental prowess
and with what we lead.

Unfortunately,
people are dying
on both tragic coasts,
in the arms of moms,
Shia, Sunni, Kurd,
Americans trapped
beneath the rubble
of the Twin Towers,
the need to lash out
against someone,
to bring to a trial
the lip of a gun
or a beheading
anyone who might
have been inwardly
involved in any
of this. Our soldiers
being redeployed
time and again,
being sent back in
and being slaughtered,
and placed in harms way,
and more turned into
killers who suffer
a bit each moment
they are under siege,
away from their homes
and kept from mothers
who love them, fathers
who wish their children
could be farmers, work
in a factory
or a skyscraper.

I load up my car,
all my belongings,
snacks for the journey
a full tank of gas
and head out to work.
On the highway there
I forget to call
home, tell my mother,
that woman who sat
next to me in her
own cold agony,
suffered my taunting,
who I know worries,
but I have not told
how much I miss her,
miss the bantering
back and forth, and most
miss all the ballgames
we used to sit down
together to watch.
The raspy TV
whose signal goes in
and out, pre-cable,
the taste of dinner
served in the living room
so we would not miss
the first few innings,
the smell of popcorn
with salt and butter,
cry of umpires,
the dirt and the grass,
the crack of the bat
and thump of a ball
felled into a mitt.

So, as much as talk
intrigues me, as much
as I would enjoy
a good argument
about the finer
points of policy,
international
and domestic, as
much as I feel
I have to offer,
it's not up to me
nor is it done for
my own enjoyment
or mental challenge
I here seek. Instead
I will surrender
to the forces who
would use you for gain,
political and
historic. I will
call you hero, and Mom,
call her a goddess,
who gave birth and raised
everyone of us
such sweet children
who would dedicate
their fate to winning
a fair victory
against an unfair
enemy. Hero,
that word, relevant
in tone and focus,
in shape and contrast
to foreign soil.

"Ten" Metaphors

2006-07-20T12:56:00.000-04:00

w/Pearl Jam

The echo is radar
I sent out this morning
to call back a pinging
from a solid object
that once upon a time
was our friendship, our love,
but which over the last
few years, the passing years
has maintained no body,
held no real meaning,
but a random message
of static emails
that could best be described
as stock, glancing footage,
anomaly of broke
poorly calibrated
equipment, an old glitch
that does not heal no
matter how many times
I kick or punch the set.

The pillow is not a breast
where I lay me down to sleep
but, in its welcoming give,
is cozy, wrapped around
for my enormous headache
the fluffiest substitute,
a valid facsimile
the true culprit behind all
the breast envy we've buried
our unseeing faces in.
All night I muddle and fuss
to find the right curve of skin,
the shape and gentle contour
that will jog my memory,
calm me, that will shuttle me
back to those first mornings
in this world, when my wailing
was enough to rouse the ones
around me to respond in
kind, to lift and comfort me.

The ground beneath our feet
does not support us. It bends
in ways we refuse to see.
Ask the ants and beetles
what earthquakes come through here
when our big feet bury
themselves into the sponge
of the planet, the porch
on homes of each of these
infinitesimal beings
who spent all day building.
We only see footprints
when the earth is sopping
or when we have been tossed off
to the ground at some pace,
and then we imagine
by tomorrow the crews
will come through and wipe clean
the imprint, leaving behind
no trace of our shadow.

Sheets, amniotic, the skin
of our mother's womb covers
us while we sleep, while our soul
roams around imagined
fields and planes, places
where our greatest wish or fears
can blossom with small thoughts,
a loss of self-control,
the sick fixation of minds
who wonder what could exist
if only we harbored
no concern for our being,
our own well-being, the sane
stares of those around us,
who love us, who commit us
and keep us grounded. As if
each night, below these sheets,
we die, and therefore find
ourselves single and unfixed
to any singular star.

The sun coming up over
the mountains, falling behind
them to signal night's begun
rising. What I know when, first,
I know nothing and again
when I am old and sure
to forget. The burn of things
between their safe comforting
gaze, the conforming fingers
of the mountain. When I climbed
them in later life, to bring
back a pebble of something
known and unknown, the mystique
disappeared. Even the sharp
angled sides gentled themselves
and lay flat. Not once did earth
pull me back, like Jack and Jill
or like our classmate Chris K.
who got too close to the edge
and fell from a waterfall.

Currents in water, my love
for you, always moving,
shifting in their meaning
and rounding off the stone
underneath. But at once,
not moving at all. A photo
from years ago will show
the same image as one
taken this morning. Each night
I empty into the bay
of you, into the body
that waits for my falling.
All life comes from these waters,
from the cold frozen mountains
down through the falls and pools
rounding the corners and rounding
off the corners, this way
since the last ice age, until
the next frozen winter
which is always threatening

On what used to be a machine
and is now only a space
online where we leave notes
to each other, carrying
no intonation, no hint
of how I meant to say
what I meant to say.
On what use to be letters
and is now only bits
of ones and zeros that can't
even suggest to what n'th
or what degree I miss you.
These words are just utterance
and suggestion, the failed
and continually failed
attempt of language to bridge
the divide that happened
long ago, rift that sent me off
in one direction, cave man,
and you to live in the zoo.

My hands covered in a dirt
that can not wash off, pierced
by the gaze of your sleeping
eyes, the stare of your dead
and stagnant look from behind
the gauze curtain of lace
they wrapped around your eyes
to keep you from seeing me,
for me. Your hands, what's left
of our ability to talk,
a mouth that can not be closed,
speaking tales that will not be
silenced. I have no lids
on my ears and therefore
must be able to listen
to your endless cries,
your constant mumbled moaning
of discomfort, of pleasant
and peaceful living, the cage
you choose to decorate.

A heartbeat that's exploding
out of my chest, the thunder
of a tight tube that connects
my gaping mouth, open wide,
and the lungs, the wide
open lungs, is a thin straw,
a twirly comical prop
that could be used by clowns
and soda jerkers to stir
the laughter and the drinks
of any lucky teenage
couple who happen to sit
in the booth in their section.
No matter how much I run
I can't seem to pry open
the path of oxygen
getting into my body,
to spread its living seed
to each cell in my belly,
my legs, my feet, pumping.

My cell is my cell, habits
I keep my fear going on,
snacks with little nutrients
and less flavor, but which
over time I have come to love
in ways that I cannot
justify with logical
explanation. How mom
used to cut crusts off bread
or chocolate given as reward.
No amount of science
can suggest to someone
so enamored any good
reason to quit. Until wells
run dry and our lips are cracked,
unable to be shut,
until no fantasy
survives on which to feed
I will always come back
to the ethos of you.

L, #199

2006-07-19T19:24:00.000-04:00

From across the lifeless room
I spot you, am drawn to you,
not in a sexual way,
the imaginative way
I am drawn to everyone.
I am not ensnared by the
almost imperceptible
sway of your body from left
to right, leaned as you peruse
the objects in the aisles,
the way your hips shift when you
walk or the long curving path
of your back, imagining
hands moving up and down it.
No, that's not it. This is more
of a hometown connection,
one where I am drawn to ask
your name, drawn to uncover
some piece of information
I can latch onto and use
to shimmy into your life,
into your circle of friends.
My first instinct says to go
with sports, or maybe music,

To find something visceral
we all love and we can all
relate to. I want to hang
with you on a Friday night
playing poker and basking
in the warm auburn aura
of you. Perhaps it's merely
the attraction to all those
other women, the thunder
of their hair that topples me,
leaves me walking home sideways
and the contrast, the deep roots
that stake me to the soil
and pitch me down like a tent
that draws me to you. Oh, yes,
I want to bed you, but not
from the same ugly corner
of my brain. It's an odd thing,
much deeper and more calming,
like the bass of the lowest
guitar string. This attracts me
to all my lesbian friends.

Could one of you please tell me
what the obsession is. No,
not your attraction to your
brooding girlfriend. That I get.
What's left is for me to sit
at the table, watch the world
spinning around me, the world
spinning inside me, churning
an amalgam of features
I'd rather not think about,
my lack of guts for going
outside and seeing what's left,
the ugly collection of
chemicals and interstates
we've laid down, what my mother
and father laid down, what face
the first of my female friends
to come out, or not come out
but be too cool to just be
another of the prissy
girls at school laid down. I spend
so much time in the forest
of my mind, swung from trees,
tripping over the dead roots
and branches, rolled in the mud
of my discontent. How nice

To find a well-paved highway,
without the need for downward
staring navigation. I
saw you walking on the road
and stopped to offer a ride,
a place to stay, food to eat,
a life to live and a home.
We never need sex or fights
over who sleeps on what side
of the bed, or who steals
blankets. I will lay the seeds
of our love like a garden
in the backyard, keep the weeds
from growing up and toil,
repairing the infinite
doodads life's rending apart.
My admiration is just
a condition of the contract.
Let's agree that a kiss, when
planted in the hand, buried,
lies dormant, but one planted
on the lips, breathed into, lives.

What's left for me but to sit in
this frigid jail cell,
to live out a life sentence
handed down by a family
of people far more potent,
more powerful and more cruel
than I could once hope to be.
There is no wish of parole
from this prison, from behind
this self-imposed confinement
in a small room meant to keep
the wild ideas away
from the maps of the agents
who search for things to believe,
to vilify, to enter
into and to pilfer out
the nugget of loveliness
at the center of all this.
I'm clinking my steel cup
on the steel bars, begging
for a scrap of forgiveness.
Instead, the profiting of
my success is used to build
more prisons and to hold
more brethren, all because
of my inability

To keep quiet, to keep voices
from playing drums in my head
or the filter running next
to the pool of my verses.
We can sit here and ramble
on all day about what kind
of a kind, cruel world this is,
how it's been thrust upon us
and only our friends, only
our allies are at all worth
trusting. But, you there, sitting
in the car next to me, you
looking down and stern into
your steering wheel. You could
murder me with the turning
of a wheel, at the drop
of a hat decide to end
my life. So I hurry up
the peddle and the wheels,
hurry up my escaping
the constant and ongoing
negotiations, ad nauseam.

No, your Honor, I wasn't
the person going over
the speed limit. That person
has been hidden and slaughtered.
From across the lifeless room
I reach out with my seeing,
try to convince you, connect
to you with my mind, explain
what a cool, interesting
challenge I might be, what gold
and silver coins, what rewards
are hidden at the foothold
of this tree. Walk five paces
until we cross, till you come
to the X of our brief lives.
Dig there. Hurry a moment
to delve through the underbrush,
the moss and the fallen leaves,
all the foot deep minutia
we only barely witness.
Dig there into the lukewarm
topsoil, the rich, loamy
history that follows me.
Beneath that is the hard earth,
the stone and gravel, the hard
unforgivable red clay
of the mistakes I have made.
Stop. Don't dig further unless
you wish to build a homestead,
to lay down a foundation.

The concrete cannot be poured
until the hole has been dug
out, hollowed out, until struts
have been posted to hold back
the crumbling bit of life.
No. Don't dig there. You are not
ready for the work that needs
to be done just to ready
the place, make it livable.
But yes, there are those rewards,
their upside to this longing.
The treasure chest, the old crate
you've mapped out across the floor,
that you take that stepping
hoping against hope exists,
indeed exists. It is stuck,
is embedded just below
the surface, just below my
fears and irrational cuts,
the lines on my arms and legs,
healed over, hollowed out
markings, remnants of my
unpatchable scar tissue.
What split when I was a kid
which can't be healed by time
or by the stitching over
by cells and vitamin E.

Fibonacci, #198

2006-07-18T00:10:00.000-04:00

Like music
which calms dissonance
twisting
a harmony
which calms dissonance
making the morning blossom
ants and all the other insects
twisting
sounds,
which calm dissonance
which calm dissonance
ants and all the other insects
singing in a glorified chorus
like music
making the morning blossom
making the morning blossom
sounds,
which calm dissonance
singing in a glorified chorus
making the morning blossom
sounds,.

Singing in a glorified chorus
a harmony
which quells the savage beast
making the morning blossom
which calms dissonance.

Twisting
which calms dissonance
which calms dissonance
sounds,
a harmony
twisting
twisting
singing in a glorified chorus
singing in a glorified chorus
twisting
twisting
making the morning blossom
a harmony
which quells the savage beast
which calms dissonance
twisting
which quells the savage beast
making the morning blossom
singing in a glorified chorus
sounds,
a harmony
twisting
singing in a glorified chorus
which quells the savage beast
twisting.

Like music
which quells the savage beast
which calms dissonance.

Sounds,
sounds.

Making the morning blossom
a harmony
singing in a glorified chorus
which calms dissonance
which quells the savage beast
making the morning blossom
twisting
twisting

Twisting
which quells the savage beast,
a harmony.
Sounds,
sounds,
sounds,
making the morning blossom
which quells the savage beast
which quells the savage beast
singing in a glorified chorus.

Like music.

A harmony
which quells the savage beast.

Singing in a glorified chorus,
singing in a glorified chorus
a harmony
like music
making the morning blossom
ants and all the other insects
ants and all the other insects
singing in a glorified chorus.

Which quells the savage beast
twisting
like music
making the morning blossom
like music
sounds,
a harmony
like music
singing in a glorified chorus.

Which quells the savage beast
which calms dissonance
sounds,
which quells the savage beast
ants and all the other insects.

Making the morning blossom.

Ants and all the other insects,
ants and all the other insects
which calm dissonance
a harmony
ants and all the other insects
which calm dissonance
ants and all the other insects
like music
twisting
like music.

Making the morning blossom
twisting
sounds,
ants and all the other insects
a harmony
which calms dissonance,
which calms dissonance
sounds,
ants and all the other insects
twisting
which calms dissonance
making the morning blossom
singing in a glorified chorus
like music.

Like music
like music.

Singing in a glorified chorus
which quells the savage beast
like music,
which quells the savage beast,
which quells the savage beast,
like music
like music
like music
making the morning blossom
like music.

Ants and all the other insects,
ants and all the other insects.

Which calm dissonance
singing in a glorified chorus
which calms dissonance
twisting
twisting
twisting
sounds,
a harmony
a harmony
like music
sounds.

Which calms dissonance.

Twisting.

Like music
which calms dissonance,
which calms dissonance,
a harmony
singing in a glorified chorus.

Twisting
ants and all the other insects
singing in a glorified chorus
a harmony
which calms dissonance.

Which quells the savage beast
a harmony,
sounds,
singing in a glorified chorus
a harmony
sounds,
twisting
making the morning blossom
like music
singing in a glorified chorus
ants and all the other insects
which calms dissonance
a harmony
singing in a glorified chorus
which calms dissonance.

Ants and all the other insects,
ants and all the other insects
a harmony
twisting
sounds.

A harmony
sounds
like music
making the morning blossom
sounds,
a harmony
a harmony
like music
a harmony
sounds
like music
ants and all the other insects
which calms dissonance
like music
sounds.
Sounds.
Sounds.