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196 · May 6
URSULA AT 10
Ursula crafted a boat today
made of styrofoam,
white as sea foam.

Ursula sailed her craft today,
over the bay and
into my eyes.

Shaped like her - with waved bow.
Long and smooth like a
handmade arrow.

Bon voyage!
You are off!
God bless your journey.
141 · Apr 30
MARCH BRAINSTORM
Let it blow!
Blow through,
rip, tear and take
back to Kansas
the decaying clutter of
last year’s living.

This mind left a mess here.
It held onto, no, dogmatized
the rites of living.
Now I live in Boo Radley’s basement,
with fetid furnishings, stale air, and
clocks all stopped at 1:11.

[The curse of imagination is to see what you ask for.]

The spider-webbed fruit of my forced labors –
an etheric fabric of false beliefs –
covers everything,
denying all
access to light.
Dead…nothing but dead stuff.

Blow wind, blow it all away!
Make sweet storm wreckage of my mind.
I give you permission
to leave me bare.
It’s easier to risk rebirth
than pretend living.
Dear readers, I'm not satisfied with the current title. If you have any suggestions, please send them my way. I'll read every one!
57 · May 7
CAN YOU LIMBO?
Tinkerbell and Tijuana, the mistresses of lost hope,
mill around these high-tech molecules
called Future, waiting
for the lights to go back on.

By train, my brain sees a tunnel ahead.
By foot, shadows dance upon my back.
In the stillness of a page of news,
I wait for my muse.
52 · May 2
MOTHER'S IRON
It’s shaped like other irons, but                                                                                                                                         there all comparisons end.                                                                                                                                              Heavy steel, encased in chrome,                                                                                                                                                                                like a ’53 Buick or our navy-blue Caddy                                                                                                                             with the white leather seats.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               It’s authoritative – requires                                                                                                                                                        a sure hand and perfect attention.
No pushing, pulling, or sudden jerks.                                                                                                                                  You must drive Mother’s iron as if                                                                                                                                    your life depended on it.

If you practiced (a 1000 Saturday mornings)                                                                                                                   and learned the rhythm of touch,                                                                                                                                   and speed, and turning,                                                                                                                                                    your precision would be rewarded with                                                                                                                          the crispest linens, smoothest satins,                                                                                                                                and creases that could slice bread.                                                                                                                                    
I was only 10 when it all began –                                                                                                                                  when I knew my work had to be perfect.

I managed Mother’s expectations as best I could, but                                                                                                            slowly our town, our world, began to change.                                                                                                                       Sharp pleats gave way to polyester, and
the clean hay smell of linen succumbed to                                                                                                                  linoleum-scented Wash and Wear.                                                                                                                                
It was about that time that Mum painted over                                                                                                                the knotty pine walls Dad had planed by hand,                                                                                                         encasing us all in Cool Aquamarine latex.

Before long, it seemed that everything was synthetic  
and Mother’s iron became harder to handle.                                                                                                                            If you weren’t careful, or rushed to make your ride to                                                                                                                          a one o’clock movie or a football game,                                                                                                                           the power, intensity, and weight of the burning steel                                                                                               would melt silk blouses into gluey clumps,                                                                                                                   and turn summer dresses into parchment paper,                                                                                                  leaving crazy brown sunflowers where daisies used to be.                                                                                                  

But the iron wasn’t traded in or tossed away –  
it wasn’t part of the Great Planned Obsolescence.                                                                                                          Of course by then I didn’t care about any of it.                                                                                                                                                I was a teenager,
overwhelmed with self loathing                                                                                                           and a dull ache you could call lust.  

While the days wore on like a sentence to me,                                                                                                                           there were milestones, markers, on our journey                                                                                                           to this upwardly mobile American Middle Class.                                                                                                                                                Friends and relatives stopped coming,  
and Mums’s fancy aprons were the next to go.                                                                                                             Back then, she had dozens of them –                                                                                                                           one for every holiday or function.
But gin and jealousy ruined most of our parties,
and Mother’s iron became dangerous,                                                                                                                                      as Time and Memory seemed to flatten out                                                                                                                       and accelerate without us.

Our Cool Aquamarine home gradually went dark,                                                                                                           and we observed the new automation as if at a picture show.                                                                                        But the motion was all herky-jerky,                                                                                                                                      and our brains began to stick, and                                                                                                                                      our bodies began to burn,                                                                                                                                                         as we fell shrink-wrapped onto the neon-lit stage,                                                                                                                        half human, half machine, still smelling
of Mother’s household helpers.
I'm trying out varying lengths for each section. Does it interfere with your reading and absortion of the poem? Or did it seem natural? Let me know!
50 · May 7
MISSING ME
My incidental life
is a weight I cannot lift.
Of my own creation,
it's an indicaton
of the rift between
who I am
and the shadow
I've become.
47 · May 7
DRY TEARS
A November gale is blowing
through the sun-smashed trees,
shaking my sight to
the roots of perception.
The wind-essence pushes
memory slides past my eyes -
eyes that looked out at the world
and learned the habit of
crying without tears.
44 · Apr 25
WINTER THAW
The sun rolls over flattened fields,
hay and mud like matted fur
on a yellow lab’s back.

It touches the blind cold earth,
releasing heat and parables
begun in early spring

The earth rises to its feet and,
shaking off winter’s icy glove, seeks
language and the old paths.

I turn to meet a new story,
greeting the tender boughs and
white rivers with cautious love.
A slilent hym to the beauty of the farm lands of Ipwich MA, which has preserved its precious heritage with help from the wonderful humans and gracious ghosts that abide there.
43 · May 7
Graffiti
There's graffiti on my flowered walls.
I scratched it there
with a pin,
when I was very young.
The view
from my bed
was much better then.
42 · Apr 25
THE BLIND PHOTOGRAPHER
Two cars, two strangers,
Side by side, by the side
of a country road.
Human fenceposts,
fixed, yet watchful.
Odd, perhaps
they’re with their dogs?

A quick glance in the
tear-view mirror and I see!
Sky-big fire ribbons streak across
the coal-black timbers edging the field.
In the center,
the giant sun ball
falls slowly to earth.

I reach for my camera,
flip the snap the toss the case
in one quick move,
only to see
Jack 0’ lantern trees
backlit in sky embers.
I missed it (another small regret).

Then, turning the corner onto Argilla,
a form takes shape in the amber light.
A golden-haired boy,
12, maybe 13,
crouching,
eyes fire-bright,
suspended in pure radiance
Argilla is a street I passe on the way to Crane's Beach in Ipswich. It borders rolling fields of horses, cows, and a wolf reserve.
37 · May 6
FACES
Some men look like abandoned mines,
tunnelled through
every working day.
Some women look like
storefront mannequins,
adornment with a price tag.

Others live in Nature.
Their eyes mirror the sky.
They breathe the seasons,
in and out, and they know
it is possible to change one's life
in the blink of an eye.
35 · May 7
LOST FRIENDS
Poking around in these ashes
reminds me of a traffic jam of
friends I once had,
way back when you could
understand confusion
with the best of them.

We moved, bumper to bumper,
in and out of chaos, cold cities and
warm lands called hands.
It was a mess, I guess.
But I was our mess.
33 · May 7
I AM GAIA
Rose juices rush
through mountain streams,
down his sides thick
with thirsty pines.
Coming to rest
in my shining cave,
until the waters rise again.
30 · May 7
DEPRESSION
Cry me by the bedside,
by the edge-side
I've been before.
Who saw me walking lonely
through all those shades
drawn round my door?
0 · 17h
BAD ZEN
Loosed strands of wanting, willing,
tossed by thought-winds,
day and night.
Heart's hope gathers
in the morning light,
to stumble and fall
when the darkness comes.

— The End —