Poem #37
When I try to write a poem
It’s my way of telling
The world I love it here
And I don't want to leave,
Not just yet.
It’s an apology of sorts
A confession to a faceless voice
Behind a red drape.
I know I’ve gone astray.
I never should have smashed
That monogrammed wine glass
Or ignored so many half moons
Or cursed my life.
But the truth is
I really don't want to go.
I want to stay right here
With everyone I love
And all the things I pretend to know.
Op Note XV
Before starting we reviewed the risks. She had many questions. What about this. What about that. We had discussed all this before. That there could be bleeding that couldn’t be stopped. That the wounds could get infected. That she would have wounds. That there would be marks on her flesh that you could never wash off. That there could be pain. The kind that lasted long enough to make you miss it when it finally went away. None of that bothered her. She asked about feeling better. But just better, not fully restored. She didn't want to go back to the beginning. She took pride in the things that were calloused and semi-broken. She didn’t want a perfect stride. She had earned her aches and imperfections. She didn’t want a fresh start. To begin again. It was all too much pressure. I couldn’t promise her that. Once fixed, it’s easy to forget what was even damaged. It’s a form of self erasure. In the end we canceled the case. We didn’t do anything at all. There was too much risk.
1/24/22
Jewels
Most of us are lucky to find
something precious. Everyone is
always searching even if they
don't admit it. Everyone wants this.
That’s how love is.
Some glow red and some come
hidden in the core
of the darkest heart.
Some we thread with
chains and wear around
our necks. Protective talismans.
Givers of powers unbeknownst.
Some we only take out
when we’re sad, when we can't
exactly remember, or are afraid to forget.
Some we celebrate, some we pray
to. Some are kissed. Some caressed.
Some are perfect. Some seem far from here.
And some are home.
All we know is we cannot live
without them. Mine— how it shined!—
I held within my hand
for a brief time
and then I gave it back.
Isn’t that what love is?
Gray Dawn
The hour before dawn
Endures as the hour most
Dour for thoughts of self harm:
The wind weaving through leafless trees
The hollow roar of distant traffic.
Everything is spectral, shadowed
The dog a faint ghost
Raising a leg against a tree
At the edge of the frozen yard.
All is best seen indirectly,
Sideways from the corner of your eye,
The ancient vision of the periphery.
A false hope remains that once
The trigger is pulled
Or the pills are swallowed
Or the cords of a rope are cinched
This blurry edged world
Will remain as it is; unlined, indistinct,
Known only by flashes of action
And you will be the sole witness
Of all that dares to move.
In this place there is none of the clarity
Revealed by light of day
Nor the absolute faith
Demanded of pitch darkness.
Just this desolate quiet disarming gray,
A thin tattered shawl
You wrap around your shoulders
In the cold misty fog of morning.
It isn’t nearly warm enough
But it’s better than nothing
Neither dark nor light
No sun nor moon
Nothing to be asserted
Nothing denied.
No forever, no soon
No sounds, no silences
A world that is both half true
And a series of justifiable lies
The wind picks up again,
Trees tapping bony fingers
Against black glass
In distracted impatience.
The sky is bruised an ecchymotic blue,
Injury welling to just below the surface
But no further.
The skin remains unbroken,
A thwarted bleeding that smears
Like a form trapped beneath the ice.
Distantly, the horizon begins to define
Itself as a faint yellowing rind.
Such is the way the world heals,
Always from the edges
In slow sighing deliberations.
Day comes.
Shadows retreat back into bodies.
Colors burst forth from the hollows.
Day comes as dawn:
The first song of the woodpeckers
High up in dead trees.
The dog is licking at my fingers.
A motion is my own hand
Scratching at his scruff.
I’ve damaged the frosted grass
In a trail of pressed craters,
Glazed blades straining to rise again.
Time is passing again,
Permitting sorrow to stretch
Itself into a thrumming joy
Before snapping right back again
And the world is a space again
For the moon and the grass and the sun.
And work remains to be done
And so much work remains to be done
Poem #36
In the end, the poems were all bad
And the rain was no ablution
Even the holy waters were dirty.
Ultimately, thunder no longer frightened
And the lightning failed to awe
For I had lost everything I had.
I had lost everything I thought
I had and what was left were
Just the poems that were all bad.
You try writing a good one, down
To your last few adjectives and nouns
Clonking around in a bag of bones
Without the fear of thunder
Modern Economy
People have figured out you
Can just take things
And no one will stop you
So they seize the spoils
With savage guile,
Work the angles,
Leverage inside knowledge
For hostile takeovers.
Add a dollop of venture capital
And pounce on a ground floor IPO.
Flip a distressed property
For a handsome profit,
For ever larger slices of pie
And then the whole pie, unsliced,
Leaving for the rest of us
Crusts fallen half eaten to the floor.
No one goes to jail
Only winners left standing
I miss a world where people
Left their doors unlocked at night
Hoping someone would
Sneak in and steal their heart.
They’d surrender it willingly
And when it was gone
Mourn they couldn't give more.
1/17/22
Asphalt
Here they come again, dump trucks
Full of steaming hot asphalt
Trundling around corners to patch
All the fatigue cracks stellating
Across the thawing ash-gray roads
Of my half moon Midwestern town.
I hate the need to pave over such minor faults
It’s still safe. Drivable. Un-potholed.
I like it shattered, patterned like crocodile
Skins or the baked dry bed of the Nile.
Or a floor map of an undiscovered country
Deep in the heart of a dark continent
Parceled by reasonable men into
Provinces, parishes, arrondissements.
I could spend hours gazing at maps
Marveling at how well it all fits
Each shape specifically named, every
Odd polygon its own unique place
I wanted to explore. But there they go,
Dumping piles of bitumen, rough men
Standing by with shovels, ready to spread,
Rollers lugubriously smoothing it all into
A black flatness like the corners of space
Devoid of stars or constellations.
No one can know where they are anymore.
Not that it matters, just gliding along
Mile after mile of gothic black
Ribbon, unspooling in funereal monotony.
But no one else seems to notice this
Deadening uniformity, cars rolling by as before
On roads now astonishingly flat
Like oceans viewed from the soar
Of an arctic tern untroubled
By the absence of landmarks
It knows exactly where to go and why.
And everyone else proceeds as before,
And everyone else proceeds as before
Except for me, tethered
Once again to the side of the berm
Failing to take a single step forward,
Stuck staring at black voids, waiting
For shooting stars, comet tails,
Anything to suggest a connective
Seam weaving it all together
Poem #35
It’s ok to write a poem
That no one reads
That seems half finished
That doesn’t rhyme
Or seem to go anywhere
Or reference anything sublime
It’s ok to crumple up the paper
And fish it out two days later
When you run out of fresh ideas
It’s ok to feel like you’re stuck
And put all your faith
In late night full moon luck
It’s forgivable to starve
After spending your last dime
On a leather bound notebook
It’s ok to write a poem
When you’re all out of words
And are forced to use “sparrow”
When you mean “love”
And “trial size dove bar”
When you mean “infinite sorrow”
It’s ok to throw it all away
And hope you’ll find
At least half again someday
It’s just words after all
It’s just your life
And when it ends
You’ll simply accept
Its finished incompleteness
And press send
Poem #34
This is the poem of my life
In it everything will be perfect
Nothing will flow
Not a word will rhyme
It will lack articulable meaning
People will be so angry
Such words were inscribed
Others will laugh
What the hell, they’ll ask
This sheet of white
Used to be so clean,
Who’s smudged it all up?
Shake their heads and walk away
For them, it’s a strange language
Or just a lousy translation
It’s not my fault though
They don't really see it
Not the way I do
I find it beautiful
My first goal
My truest laugh
My favorite song
It’s not my fault at all
I didn’t even write it
It was just the words
That were here all along
Distance
Romance works at a distance
Opens a vortex with little resistance
The closer you get the more it thins
And narrows to a point like icicles
Straining to be launched,
Sharp enough to pierce a heart
But sensitive to the glare of the sun.
We see it dripping, dripping
And worry the tip will dull
Or worse, this frozen passion will melt.
Careless people reach for it here
And snap it off
But so cold and slippery
So easily dropped
A shattering of crystalline fragility.
I can be patient
For the sun works in mysteries.
I’ve chosen to stand beneath your eave
Eyes closed, mouth open, and waiting.
Such distance is dangerous,
Knowing any second you could
Release your grip and
End it for the both of us.
But love is to trust the discerning sun
And the slow drip down to my tongue.
Love is to trust I won’t ever leave
No matter how long it takes
To catch your delicious fall,
Drop after drop after drop.
1/4/22
Broken
I am not amused
There’s nothing you can do
To damage me anymore
I can’t be re-broken
My bones have all been shattered,
Plated and fused. It’s too late.
Even my flesh has been thoroughly
Threshed, beaten and bruised.
There’s nothing you can do
That I haven’t already had done.
I’m scarred so thick
Everything you strike is numb.
More hide than skin
And don’t you dare try to be soft
Either, after all this time,
With your soothing words of flattery
Your small hands’ caress.
It’s too late for all that, and cruel
To attack with loving tenderness now.
I can’t feel even if it could get in.
Latchkey
I was a latchkey kid.
I was self reliant.
I wasn’t afraid of the emptiness of home.
We’d barge through the foyer shouting, bickering,
Flip on the TV, fill the clock ticking silence with sound.
Noise as a way of forgetting you're alone.
I could do what I wanted
I liked being alone
I could run and shout,
Boss my little sisters
Pound the basketball against the cement,
Chuck a tennis ball against a cinder block wall
That had a strike zone chalked in the middle,
At least until mom got home
And had to take her nap.
I preferred being alone.
I didn’t wear the key around my neck
Dangling from a red yarn necklace
Like some scarlet letter of abandonment.
I stuck it bare under the front porch mat.
We were poor and unaccomplished and white.
Mom did her best.
She worked and went to school
And on Sundays made giant platters
Of food meant to last all week.
Ragu spaghetti, pots of powder mix chili, tuna casseroles
Tin bowls of raspberry jello, halibut stenciled with soft white bones
Frozen peas, tater tots, chalky lima beans.
A Lutheran pastor brought groceries once a month,
The one chance we had to eat the good stuff
Like Pringles and Cheetos,
Like Frosted Flakes and Count Chocula
Instead of the usual off-brand Cheerios
You had to scoop from a plastic bag.
I had a special token for school lunches
All through middle school.
Green for reduced, red for free.
I kept mine in my pocket until the last minute
So no one would see.
But the lunch lady always made me show
When it was my turn to pay.
Later on, I packed my own lunch.
Ate salami with cheese
Enfolded in a slice of wheat.
A browning banana, a baggie of mini pretzels,
An oatmeal cream pie smashed flat.
Counselors called me out of class
To discuss my adjustments
To living in a “broken home”.
But it wasn’t broken, I told them.
The walls were solid,
Our roof never leaked.
Winter air may have gusted through our windows
But none of them were cracked.
Maybe they saw the fissures in me.
We went to JC Penny in downtown Massillon every fall
For wool sweaters and corduroy pants.
My winter coat was a second hand Oakland Raiders job
That didn’t quite fit and smelled
Like I’d been zipped inside an old church closet.
Sometimes we got hand me down
Toys from the Burgess boys
(Friends of my moms before the divorce)
Who played hockey and baseball
And had a pool in their backyard
And all the things I ever wanted,
Like a cool mom who laughed a lot and swore
And had snacks on plates waiting after school.
One Christmas I got Scott's
Old talking robot
That I used to covet.
But I found I liked it better
When it wasn't my own.
Other kids I knew had Intellivision or Atari,
Foosball, bumper pool,
Ping pong tables in the garage,
Weight sets in the basement,
Bedrooms walls laced with baseball pennants
Signed posters of Mike Eruzione
Model airplanes and action figures on shelves.
And cable TV with millions of channels.
I never had anyone over.
I didn’t want anyone to see my own bare walls
The paucity of toys and gadgets
Or the TV set with the rabbit ears and broken dials,
The way I had to use pliers to change the channels.
When a pack of neighborhood boys rode by on bikes
I ran inside in case they thought of stopping
And interrupting my secret solo games.
I hid and peered from behind the curtains
Until they turned the corner and were gone.
I was responsible.
I was in charge.
I yelled at my sisters
To finish their chores.
When darkness fell
I turned the porch lights on
And locked all the doors.
I was the latchkey kid
Who grew up to be a latchkey man
Carrying around a ring of keys
That unlocked all the doors
To lonesome secret places
Sheltering all I came to love.
