poem

 Haystacks

Some mornings the sky is an impressionist painting steeped in violaceous streaks of anxious soft light. I pull over to the shoulder to snap a picture with my phone but the result never quite captures. By the time I get to work the colors have dissolved in the warm yellow orange glow. The sun continues to rise. The day arrives. A painting is an artifact of loss. Museums compendiums of once flickering flames. We swim through the wisps of spiraling smoke. In the darkness we reach for the wicks that are still warm. From memory the artists move their brushes across the canvas. Even the haystacks are dreams. Every painting is a picture of something now gone. Imagination becomes the only thing that feels real. To paint is to remember something that once was. To love is to love someone who’s always leaving. In the fading evening light Monet was just painting (haystacks). Before the dawn burns away its purple sashes I was just loving (you). 

4/9/23

easter poem

 Op Note XXXVIII

Just once I’d like to open up an abdomen and find something unexpected. Utterly unique and unprecedented.. Instead of a liver, a codfish. Instead of a spleen, an antique clock. A giant pair of scissors. A barrette this girl from middle school used to wear in her hair. I’d write a paper about it. Get it accepted by peer reviewed journals. Present my findings to the International Society of Distinguished Anatomists. Make my bones as an academician. Give talks to passionate coteries of pond side geese. In textbooks it would become known as the Parks Variation of organ system configuration. Every few years I’d have to pull something new out, to maintain demand for my exorbitant speaking fees. This year I pulled a rabbit from the chest. Happy Easter, I said. Theologians applauded. Neo-marxists averted their eyes. The doctors in attendance tried to start CPR. But old Jesus had already signed his DNR papers. Everything was otherwise empty. How this person continued to live remained a mystery.  

4/9/23

poem

 The Boss

I was eleven listening to Born in the USA

Blasting from cheap boom box speakers 

Sprawled out on the skin thin carpet

Of my tiny bedroom in Massillon.

Even then I knew it wasn’t an anthem.

I’d read the lyrics, all the songs,

Printed on the fold out

Cassette cover like it was scripture

I was born to run I had a hungry heart

I was going to get out of that two-bit

Dead man’s town and go racing in the streets

Far away from this hand me down precarity

That tempts most into a docile mediocrity

And find a reason to believe.

Driven by nothing but a desperate hope

And an inchoate rage manifesting as tenacity 

All I had to do was not give up, not stop

No matter how much disappointment

Dripped down from the dark clouds

Of a two faced modern American life 

This was the music that told the truth

About the quiet middle aged acceptance

Of finding yourself alone in the space

Somewhere between everything you 

Ever wanted and all you have lost

Or left behind 

It’s the price you gotta pay

It's the faces looking through you

It’s the ghosts in the eyes

Haunting my son someday when

Everyone he loves is sent away.

Eleven himself now, he sprawls

Across a much softer carpet

In a much bigger home

Occupying himself unthinkingly

With all the things I erringly thought

Made the least bit of difference.

Soon enough it will be up to him

To stop waiting for that moment

That won't ever come until

He finds his own way to live

With the self-same sadness

And reckon with the rollicking madness

That I’ve loved him into living

4/5/23

poem

 Tone

Pick that up you don’t have to say it like that you don’t have to say what’s the matter like that you don’t have to sit on the beach in a chair when the waves roll in like the hands of a clock without any numbers. Just throw yourself on the sand with the rest of the detritus washed up on shore abandoned really if you want to be honest some of it still useful well more interesting than useful like this broken shard of limestone shell pebbled with little bumps radiating out from the focal point probably in some sort of Golden Ratio configuration nature is always finding itself in and you don't have to say it like that watch your tone please it’s so nice when it’s just your skin against the rough sand and the water washing over you in in such predictable cadence it starts to feel like silence.

3/25/23

poem

 Triage 

This one has already died

This one won’t survive the night

This one needs a blanket

This one is just sad

This one is fine

This one will live

This one looks ok

But is torn to shreds inside

This one could use a breath mint

A change of clothes 

This one needs a long hot shower

Someone to bring him an extra pillow 

This one it’s probably too late

This one lost me when I tried to look into her eyes 

This one tries to drown you in her eyes 

This one needs an IV

This one just needs held

This one could use a calculus refresher

This one just needs the right book at the right time 

This one needs a mirror

That one is the reflection

Get this one to the OR

That one to a nunnery

This one to the dispensary

That one to the train station

One way tickets to the other

Side of the world 

This one was supposed to be me 

This one is actually me 

As for the rest 

I just don’t know

Let someone else decide

3/22/23

poem

 The 12th Draft

You know what? I can’t go through with it. I take it all back. I retract the apologies spewed in all the other drafts. None of you are absolved. You’re all to blame. It’s all your fault I came this close. I don’t regret the temporary sense of loss I may have inflicted. I’m still here, grinding my teeth, nursing hard earned grudges. Do not go on with your lives. Do not remarry. Cancel the meeting with the estate attorney. Stop trying to be strong in the face of untimely tragedy. Do not leave my room untouched. Stop curating your memories. Un-cancel your holiday plans. I’ve spared you the hassle of fighting with airlines to get your money back. Maybe next time you’ll get trip insurance. You’re stuck with me. I shall spoil your lives for a bit longer. For those who have already forgotten me…. Surprise!  I’m back!  I know now my pain isn’t unique. See? Even my suffering is derivative and unoriginal. I’ll continue to not miss seeing any of you. I’ll embrace my isolation for now on. I don’t need a coffin and a tombstone to feel alone. That’s the way it is. I’d probably screw it up anyway. Wrong dose, poor aim, catch something on the way down to break my fall. End up only half dead, a vegetable that gets fed and watered q shift at a sorry place called Somnolent Oaks or something. Truth is I'm a coward. Weak enough to loathe myself, while lacking the tragic nobility of rock bottom despair. Still, after all these years, with the delusions of grandeur. Besides, the dog kept banging through the bedroom door. You can’t do a damn thing in front of a dog. Whether I do anything or not do anything, whether I live a “long and fruitful life” or careen headfirst into a wet ditch, you will all someday, no matter what, disappear from this warped point of view. That’s what happens. It’s neither fair nor unfair. When it’s over it’s over. I’m only still here because I love you.

3/22/23

poem

 Lifelong Friend

We spend the bulk of our lives

Alone with the person

No one else really knows

The one who sits with you

As the March snow falls in feathery ash

On the other side of smudged bedroom windows

Over time the distinction between 

Yourself and this person blurs into one 

But it's only an act of self preservation

To ease the pain of always

Having to say goodbye 

To your oldest, truest friend 

Every moment is a secret little death

But he always comes back to life

Before there’s any time for lamentation

Such private farewells are best deferred

Until the final days when it’s obvious

We've both come to the very end 

And even then it’s easy to run out of time

Bidding adieu to the glowing embers of a world 

We both have loved 

What does one say then?

Who breaks the silence?

Who gets hugged?

3/19/23

poem

 From Darkness

A photon experiences no time

Trillions of years traveling

The vastness of the universe

But instantaneous. 

Light of my life

Tiny eternal flame 

Time belongs to darkness 

Surreptitious moon like a shy boy

Watching you shine from the other room 

Timeless radiance 

3/12/23

poem

 The Funeral Disruptor

The funeral disruptor was at it again. Driving his car through the All Saints Cemetery Saturday morning with the windows down, blasting Gangster’s Paradise. The small groups of people in black gathered around rectangular holes were collectively aghast. He stopped his car at the biggest gathering. He put his sunglasses on and leapt into the grave. Laertes come hither! he shouts, brandishing a broken off broomstick. No one finds it amusing. Hearse rhymes with curse, he shouts. He zig zags evasive maneuvers around a couple of beefy pall bearers and makes his way to his bass thumping car. He does this every weekend. He claps his hands, he speaks out of turn. He slams the heavy old doors of cathedrals. Why do you do this, an exhausted priest once asked. The funeral disruptor just smiles. He leans in and whispers something in the priest’s ear. The priest’s face lights up in sudden recognition. From then on they become partners. They go in halfsies on a souped up hearse with tinted windows and high end stereo woofers. Half the time it’s Gangster’s Paradise blasting from the speakers, the other half Mozart’s Requiem. Sometimes the priest is Hamlet, sometimes Laertes. They take turns. 

3/12/23

poem

 Scene III

The man is working on an abstract poem. He isn’t sure what it means yet. He’s stuck. The woman is reading a recipe she found online for chicken cacciatore. She realizes she is missing one of the ingredients. But she can’t figure out which one. It will take a process of elimination, trialing the various combinations. Before starting this arduous gauntlet of tasting, she decides to finish a puzzle she had started in the morning. None of the pieces fit. Nevertheless these are the pieces that were in the box. There are no others. She makes surprisingly efficient progress. A picture emerges from the edges that lightly touch. You have to see through the emptiness and imagine the rest. The man dips a spoon into the broth and scrunches his nose. He adds some salt. And a spice he has trouble pronouncing. Stop that, she says, mind your own. But she’s too late. He’s already plunged a flute of cinnamon into the boiling stew. As it softens an idea dissolves in his head. If he releases it now, the meal will be ruined. But the poem, the poem can still be saved.

3/5/23