poem

 Somebody Dies

When you love somebody

Somebody dies
You are that somebody.

You are now dead

You become the person

Somebody else has fallen in love with 

That’s who you are now 

An object of love

It's a tragedy

All those years of hard work and grit

Carving out a sense of self

From a slab of heavy stone 

Now a statue in the rain

An empty cathedral on Sunday night 

Not the tree anymore

Just a warm nest

Waiting for your morning song

Not an ocean

But this little boat buffeted

By the swells of a black sea

Nobody drowns

Nor is there thought

Of retreating into safe harbors

Of former selves

In the morning we wash up

On the shore of an undiscovered island

First thing we hear is the cannibals

Beating their drums 

But I’m the one who is loved!

We both shout at the same time 

Over the churlish din of waves crashing 

Then we begin to fight

Fists and scratching

Rocks and gouging 

Vengeance for the dead

We mourn

4/24/23

poem

 Nuts

I bring you a bowl of nuts

I come back later and eat

The ones you’ve dropped

In the transfer from hand to mouth

I devour everything you thought

You once wanted. It tastes fine

Just as the others

Probably did for you.

Peanuts and almonds

Salted cashews

All scattered and nervous

Under the eave of the bowl.

People who worry about me

Say you do it on purpose—

Some weird, fucked up way

Of sharing 

7/18/23

poem

 Surgeons

There are two kinds of surgeons

Those who say “cut to cure”

And the ones who prefer “heal with cold steel”

The difference between them is dispositional

One brings the cheese to the cracker

And the other the cracker to the cheese

One cuts the Swiss so thin 

You could use it as a shroud

The other shreds a hunk of mozzarella

Like a woodsman whittling at a walking stick 

One says who cut the cheese?

When he smells flatus 

To make his kids laugh

The other one rolls his eyes

While spreading Camembert 

Across a toasted bone.

They are also very much alike

Both will end up divorced 17 times

And all alone

Both have a soft spot

For self estrangement

Both “forget” to lock the front door

Out of respect for the karmic

Spirit of surgical misadventures,

In case she decides one night

To visit him while he sleeps

And cut his throat.

There is a third kind of surgeon

The one who says 

“Never let the skin stand

Between you and the diagnosis”

This one is a real bastard

He drives a Bentley

And stiffs the caddy at the club.

Your job is to choose the surgeon 

Who stands alone in the twilight

Surrounded by weeds and trees

Pinching a scuffed white moon

Between his finger and thumb

He never says a word at all

7/1/23

poem

 Date Night

You make reservations 

And I’ll bring the night

Wear that black dress

With the matching heels 

And I’ll arrange the stars

We’ll show up late

Forget to eat

Dance on the arc 

Of the moon

Like northern lights 

To the funk swing

Of galaxies spinning

We’ll pay the bill in fireflies

And then serenade the kitchen

On our way down the black hole

To an infinite density

Where all love that matters

Is reduced to a singularity

Beyond time or extension

In the morning 

You can make the coffee

And I’ll bring the sun 

7/1/23

poem

 Lady Macbeth

Just the day before 

He thanked me for saving 

His life

But that was before

He began to bleed again

And the finely crafted repairs

Began to leak again

And before I could begin

To try again

I thought to myself

    he spoke too soon

Afterwards, you take

Your sadness and regret

And you sit with it

As long as it takes 

And you’ll know enough 

Time has passed 

When you've cycled

Through the roles

Of judge, jury and executioner

Of the part of you

That has to die

So the rest can live.

This is when you must

Grab a shovel

And try to bury it,

All by yourself,

Under the yellow moon.

When it’s done

You have to stand

There and wait for the sun 

All that remains is an

Aching back and your 

Dirty blistered hands

6/27/23

poem

 Birds of Twilight

Evening birds convene in old trees, plotting crimes.

In the twilight I can never actually see them,

Squawking ominously behind bruised leaves,

Only their coming and going.

All we ever know are voices and tones

Mom and dad fighting late at night 

I never understood a word

Language beyond my grasp

Huddled on the last step of the staircase

Listening, beyond the clutch of their living room light 

The scariest time is just after dusk

When the birds go silent.

You can’t tell what they’re up to

If they’re even still there. 

Torn between an urge to keep quiet

So as not to disturb this tentative peace 

And a gnawing longing

To scream: please come back

The morning remains a source of great relief

To this day I wake daily at dawn.

Just to hear the trees singing

6/22/23

poem

 Satellite Radio

I listen to the satellite radio in the car

Can’t stand commercials 

The only problem is that the signal sometimes

just goes out. Those binary bits of songs riding along on quantum waves 

apparently need, at all times, a clean and unobstructed path

Occasionally it happens driving through a tunnel

or waiting to pay to exit a parking garage.

The station flatlines and everything goes silent

It always comes back but still…

I never get back the best parts

of the song I’ve missed 

Which hardly seems fair, given the costs.

Sometimes the signal goes out

several minutes after I’ve unroofed myself,

some sort of time delay built into the system

But it’s weird nonetheless

sitting in a parking lot wondering 

why the world has gone silent

Tinkering with knobs, then, oh yeah

the drive-thru when I was picking up lunch

the I-270 overpass a couple miles back

Usually it happens at the most inopportune time
Crescendoing into some rousing coda

like right when the Boss is about to yowl on

about the poets who've stopped writing

and are just standing back and letting it all be

or New Order misted by addled memory

going on about your blue eyes

your green eyes, your gray eyes

which, if you miss that, ruins the whole song,

as far as I’m concerned.

I feel the same way about my own

finicky signal beaming down

from a distant galaxy far far away where everything makes sense

and gravity is the wrong term for what actually keeps us grounded.

I’ll find myself standing in line at a gas station

wearing a sauce blotched t-shirt and designer jorts 

bearing a bag of pizza flavored Combos

and suddenly I just lose it

What am I holding?

Why am I here?

For whom am I waiting?

I don't know where I am on the spectrum

somewhere slower than infrared

but a twitch beyond the ultraviolet.

All I know is it doesn't take much to block it—

all those diaphanous marquees and canvas canopies 

I’ve walked beneath over the years 

Sometimes it’s an immediate shut-down

People walking with me when this happens

think, what happened to his music?

And there’s nothing I can say

but stand there in the silence 

waiting for them to catch the first 

riffs of another song somewhere down the lane.

But it often manifests itself years after

I’ve wandered under some looming blockade

Just today I was scratching my head

trying to recall whose wings

I once huddled under

that sad and rainy day long ago

when the tune cut out 

You wouldn’t know it even

if you thought you knew me but 

I’ve always been a closeted optimist

doggedly clinging to the hope

that all the songs I’ve ever loved

will someday come back

6/18/23

poem

 The Secret

The secret to a good life is very difficult 

To convey in a conventional manner

One way of practicing

Is to try to learn to recognize

That you are in a dream

Without waking up 

To be able to say: This is a dream

While remaining steadfastly engaged

As a participant in this

Projection of your own mind

Thus, in some ways you are sleeping

Quite soundly while in others

You are fully engrossed and alive

If you can master this very difficult

And esoteric skill, many things

Will start to fall into place

You will begin to understand that

Someone is always sleeping and 

Someone is always awake

Every dream remembered becomes

A chapter in the story of a life. 

Every dream forgotten

Returns to the void

And waits 

In this way we are both the dreamer

And the dreamed.  

Neither of which is absolutely real

In the conventional sense 

And the secret is the thing that everyone already knows  

6/18/23

poem

 Taylor Swift

At the Taylor Swift show in Pittsburgh

Most of the restrooms were reserved female

When I finally found a men’s room

It was near empty and very clean

As I pissed a pleasant tropical fragrance 

Wafted around me in heady swirls.

It struck me the pains we take to mitigate

The foul, the ugly, the reeking, the distasteful

My own piss, via complex chemical reactions

With the lime green slab at the base

Was creating a Costa Rican fauna

Of sweet citrusy florality 

It’s just piss, I thought

It’s just me and my own piss

I didn’t need this 

Funeral home perfumes, deodorants and antiperspirants

The way we dab our upper lips with tincture of benzoin

In the OR for cases of Fournier’s gangrene. 

Always sanitizing, erasing the olfactory evidences

Of waste and decay

Out of respect for the demands 

Of civilizational decor.

Just before we got into town

We stopped at a run down gas station

With piss spattered metal seats

And the agitating churn of my stream

Stirred up an ammoniac stench 

That watered my eyes.

A keen physician can sometimes 

Make a snap diagnosis bedside

Based solely on the smell of a patient’s urine.

Odors are difficult to catalog

The words only have meaning

After the experience, like love.

Juniper. Jasmine. Lavender.

Petrichor. The smell of raucous sex.

Such overlap with taste.

Put your nose in places it doesn’t belong

Now your tongue.

Next thing you know you’re a dad

Your kids are getting too old

Your daughter’s scent begins to hint at unfamiliar flowers

But you’ll get used to it.

Add it to the catalog

Call it: Blossoms of Pittsburgh

Once, I got written up by a nurse

Who saw me sniffing the effluent

In a patient’s drain bulb

She said it seemed “weird and pervy”

But she was young and hadn’t yet learned

The difference between sour and bitter

To my great relief

The fluid smelled like stone.  

6/18/23

poem

 Father's Day

Looking through old pictures of my son

He looks sullen and snide, lip curled,

Eyes squinted like he’s aiming a dart

At everyone’s invisible bullseye

Look at that little asshole

People would say

Someone needs to wipe 

That smirk off his face

But I know the truth:

His little world riven in half,

Mom and dad nightly fighting

Always at one another’s throats

So we had to get our shit together,

Mom and dad, even the boy himself.

Now when he cracks a smile 

In pictures he means it

And so the cycle goes on

Boys grow into men

Sons become dads making

And breaking such fragile delicacies

Along the way.

Each little family doing their best

To expunge the anger and sorrow

They’ve inadvertently brought into the world 

6/18/23