The best thing about me is that I'm mute
I can say whatever I like and no one seems to hear me
I like being mute
I don't feel the guilt of my words
Because they go unnoticed

The best thing about being mute
Is that I can throw my voice around
And I can scream my words of pain eloquently crafted into the night
And I'm not deemed, "drama queen of the year,"

The best thing about being mute
Is that I can I sing "Hurt" at Joan Sutherland volume
And the only thing suspected
Is that I'm widening my range
Becoming well-rounded in my repertoire

The best thing about being mute
Is that when I'm approached by my comrade
Four years my junior
And am scolded for not taking care of what I was "supposed to"
And now HE must bear the burden of my carelessness and selfish tendencies
I can drop my vacuum and set down my washing
Beseech him to not use those words against me again
And am later chastised for usurping my lieutenant's role
Out of personal, hormonal hurt
No-one suspects
The fact that I am scolded in this way
Means that they don't hear

And that's when I start to wonder
When my throat is sore and my lungs ache
If I'm not really mute at all
And if they're just deaf

The best thing about being mute
Is that no one hears me at all
No fingers of shame and eyes of admonishment are cast

The best thing about being mute
Is that I can look in the mirror and tell myself,
"I'm strong"
"I'm smart"
"I'm generous"
"I can do it"
But the words mean nothing
If there is no fog of breath
Ghosted against the glass

quiet minds lightly preoccupied
unspoken words that don’t need to be said
a white house in a white room
where all the light is green
pushed through an old bottle
just the three of us, like it used to be
    -minus one
naivety lost
it’s shadow still hangs in the dustiest corners of the room
i leap through velvet mountains
and dive through smokey books
no sounds can penetrate the walls of our silence
i can see the smile in your eyes
twisting your face for the first time in forever
giggles and remnants of the past
as we delve into years past
of white afternoons

I sit in the sun room, I am shaded for the sun
is only newly risen, low slung, just above the horizon,
behind me, over my shoulder, early morn warm

Slivers of sun rays yellow highlight the wild green lawn,
freshly nourished by torrential rains of the prior eve

The wind gusts are residuals, memoirs of the hurricane
that came for a peripheral visit, your unwanted cousin Earl,
in town for the day, too bad your schedule
is fully booked, but he keeps raining on you,
staying on the phone for so long, that the goodbye,
go away, hang up relief is palpable

The oak trees are top heavy with leaves frothy like a new cappuccino,
the leaves resist the sun slivers, guarding the grass
from browning out, by knocking the rookie rays to and fro,
just for now, just for a few minutes more,
it is advantage trees, for they stand taller in the sky
than the youthful teenage yellow ball

I sit in the sun room buffered from nature's battles external,
by white lace curtains which are the hallmark
of all that is fine in Western Civilization,

and my thoughts drift to suicide.

I have sat in the sun room of my mind, unprotected.
with front row seats, first hand witness to a battle unceasing

Such that my investigations, my travails along the boundary line
between internal madness and infernal relief from mental pain
so crippling, is such that you recall begging for cancer or Aids

Such that my investigations, my travails along the sanity boundary
are substantive, modestly put, not inconsiderable

Point your finger at me, demanding like every
needy neurotic moderne, reassurance total,
proof negative in this instance, of relevant expertise!

Tell us you bona fides, what is your knowing in these matters?

Show us the wrist scars, evidential,
prove to us your "hands on" experiential!

True, true, I am without demonstrable proofs
of the first hand, my resume is absent of
razors and pills, poisons and daredevil spills,
guns, knives, utensils purposed for taking lives

Here are my truths, here are my sums

If the numerator is the minutes spent resisting the promised relief
of the East River currents from the crushing loneliness that
consumed my every waking second of every night of my years of despair
                           divided by
a denominator that is my unitary, solitary name,
then my fraction, my remainder, is greater than one,
the one step away from supposed salvation...

Yet, here I am sitting in the sun room buffered from
nature's battles by white lace curtains which are the hallmark
of all that is fine in Western Civilization

I am a survivor of mine own World War III,
carnaged battlefields, where white lace curtains,
were not buffers but dividers tween mis en scenes,
variegated veins of colored nightmares, reenactments of
death heroics worthy of Shakespeare

Did I lack for courage?
Was my fear/despair ratio insufficient?

These are questions for which the answers matter only to me,
tho the questions are fair ones, my unsolicited voyeur,
they are not the ones for which I herein write,
for they no longer have relevance, meaning or validity,
for yours truly

I write poetry by command, by request, good or bad,
this one is a bequest to myself, and also a sidecar for an old friend,
who asked in passing to write what I know of suicide,
unaware that the damage of hurricanes is not always
visible to the naked heart

These hands, that type these words are the resume of a life
resumed,
life line remains scarred, but after an inter-mission, after an inter-diction, an inter-re-invention
in a play where I was an actor who could not speak
but knew every line, I am now the approving audience too...

But I speak now and I say this:
There are natural toxins in us all,
if you wish to understand the whys, the reasons,
of the nearness of taking/giving away what belongs to you,
do your own sums, admit your own truths
query not the lives of others, approach the mirror...

If you want to understand suicide,
no need to phone a friend, ask the expert,
ask yourself, parse the curtains of the
sun room and admit, that you do understand,
that you once swung one leg over the roof,
gauged the currents speed and direction,
went deep sea fishing without rod or reel
and you recall it all too well, for you did the math
and here I am, tho the tug ne'er fully disappears,
here I am, here I am writing to you,
as I sit in the sun room.

Memorial Day, 2011

The thought of becoming stardust
when you die
is a reassuring one.
Being strewn across millions of
light years seems exciting.
Witnessing stars being born,
planets forming life,
stars collapsing in on themselves
and becoming black holes.
It's appealing compared to
going to a gloomy underworld,
or worrying about a punishing hell,
who deserves to burn and who will become angels.
It wouldn't matter,
you'd be apart of the growing universe.

Holy Crap,
They Sold My Name!

No big deal, your name, your email, bought n' sold daily,
Like a baseball card, your picture and vital stats are on the internet,
Your credit card in the fine print tells you they love you much,
But the data they collect, might get credited to such and such.

You're fair game if your sign up for anything.

Now I know I am getting on in years,
Tho spry rhymes with die, I flatly deny
Any notion that
My great beyond is just around the corner!

But Holy Crap,
They Sold My Name!

Got a color brochure
Suggesting that when my travels are over,
A nice place to rest my head might be
St. Michael's Cemetery.

St. Michael's Cemetery
7202 Astoria Blvd, East Elmhurst
(718) 278-3240
Friday hours 7:00 am–5:00 pm

In case you want to check it out too...

Tho I live not in the Borough of Queens County,
My zip code but a hop, skip and jump away,
The cemetery adjacent to the Grand Central Parkway
Which is actually quite thoughtful of
The mass marketer who dreamed up this scheme
(And got paid a plentiful amount of bounty).
My kids could wave as they drive by,
On the way to LaGuardia or JFK, (airports)
And say, guilt free, they visit me regularly!

Sadly, their plot foiled,
I will be buried in
New Jersey soil,
Near to my pop, who liked the
Wide open spaces of suburbia
And shopping on Route 4,
Where the selection is great
And there is no sales tax.

But Holy Crap,
They Sold My Name,
And I am now target marketed,
Niched, pretty soon the boys from AARP
Will come calling, reminding me of the gap
Tween Medicare and the poor house!

Ok ok,  grow up you say, tho your hair is full,
And not even a hint of baldness shines forth,
Nonetheless, its color is zebra striped gray,
And when someone says they got my back,
I think, please, please take it and keep it....

Oh yeah,
Dear St. Mikes
You might ask for some of your money back,
Cause this sily scribe is a member of the tribe,
Some call "those dirty (hint: it rhymes with Mikes),"
It starts with K and ends in yikes!

But thanks for thinking of me anyway.

My mom only three
Not a single memory
Of that big tall soldier
Used to bounce her on his knee

The Irish man gone,
Grace raised her little girls.
She pierced their ears and
she brushed their curls

And every month she bought two bonds.
Told them stories so they could go beyond
the iron in the ground, the lumber on the hill.
That small town two girls watched out the window sill

Between the man’s death and hers
Grace lived 50 years
But still she loved him
And the daughters they held dear

Words are letters only,
The sounds they disappear
It’s the sadness in our hearts
That will keep our grandma near