My dad
a tired old guy
drinking **** warm beer
one can after another
in a basement refuge
he called The Shop

He was kind
but very quiet
His silence
a gift of the War
and its visible
atrocities

He didn't spend much time
upstairs
with the rest of us
but we could always
enter his domain
of cigarette smoke
and beery mist
to panhandle some change
or just sit with him
in the half darkness
listening to baseball
on the radio

Until the day
his liver
generated
another
final
plan

Let's
skippydance
into the
grumbling
daybreak

I'll be pleased
when your
name
is a cargo
my memory
no longer
hauls

I want
to stop
writing
these things

But then
another one
shows up

Begging for
garments

Presenting
something
well crafted

With a
blind swing
of an axe

o raspberry
donut
please
accept the swing
of this hammer
and its
readjustment
of your
seeping
convictions

Welcome
Initiate
to the
Big Room
of the Summit
County Jail.
Specialists
will handle
the theft
of your blanket
while you're
watching TV
The game of Hearts
shall be played
each morning
after the pancake
with cold coffee
and the
entertainment
features your
inaugural public
performance
on the alfresco
commode

My best friend Steve
had a rat named Beulah
and although she wore the white pelt
and pert whiskers of a domestic pet
she never generated the heroics
of Disney’s menagerie;
rather, she’d
unwind her days doing a scurrying
hunch'n'hop
around the perimeter of the living room.

As a native Pittsburgh rat
Beulah escaped the bizarre fate
of her Baltimore cousins
who resided in neighborhoods
where the residents fished for rodents
using Kmart rods and big steel hooks
baited with cheese and rancid bacon.

Instead, she died rather mundanely
like many rats
at the end of her life's only adventure
fleeing the tame existence
of the living room
for the fresh air of the driveway
where the rear wheels
of Steve's dad's pickup truck
flattened and whirled
poor Beulah
in a counterclockwise
spinfest
of radial belted
frenzy

Courtesy of the 
efforts 
of the brain’s
nightmare
software
I’m extruded
onto the path
leading to
Mister Coffee
via the bathroom
hoping that
the quality of the
aborning day
matches that of
the imminent
cinnamon
oatmeal

Before our Moon
dips below
the romantic
horizon
I'll swing you
around
with such
affectionate
torque
that
paramedics
will need
the Jaws of Life
to extricate us
one
from
the other.

I dreamt
of becoming
an oarsman
on the
rowing team
fervently
pumping my
arms to
the cadence call
as the craft
chased the
twilight
moon
under sequential
bridges
but woke up
remembering
my buoyancy
is like unto
a large
rock

When I was
eight years old
reality
was the stupid
grey
oversized
handmedown
jacket
my mom
made me wear
for the
sneering
entertainment
of my peers
and the future
contained
nothing
better
that
I could even
imagine

Writing poems
in my head
while cooking
macaroni
produces
bloodied
syntax and
blistered
fingers

Certain
concoctions
of words
are like
bubblegum
providing exercise for
the mind’s
chewing apparatus
and if you’re lucky
they
explode
in
your
face

Having never
mastered the
rotational demands
of dancing
I stand alone
in this
forsaken corner,
my toes
corkscrewed
discreetly
into the
carpet

What I
remember
most
were the
sweet dimples
in the soft flesh
of your elbows
as you passed by

Although
they appear
on many
another’s arm,
only yours
upend
the unsettled
chasteness
of my dreams

Accursed is
the 1:45
outbound express
long distinguished
for its
contentious couples
vomiting babies
drunks marinating
in *****
and miraculous
near misses with
cars careening
around curves in the
no passing lane

Monday Morning
chugs out of the
Harbor of Weekdays
like a leaking
garbage barge
sailing into
ominous seas,
bound for that
remote
but redeeming
rendezvous
with  a beaming
Friday

For viewers,
I’m adjusting
my face
and while
foraging though
the trunk
full of masks
and manufactured
convictions,
a sack of
amusing diversions
spills into view,
all of it lacking
convincing connection
or anchor…

I’m the
Houdini
of human communion
vanished again
into smoke,
a phantom floating
in air
left behind
for your
entertainment.

Today is
Trash  Collection Day
on my avenue
and the raccoons
and  feral cats
and  unleashed dogs
and diverse rodents
are rejoicing.
It’s a jamboree
of indiscriminate
gluttony and
the lip smacking
stickiness
of furry jowls

It should be
illegal
because
I don’t
look good
in shorts --
white spindly
legs
like those on
an emu
and big
fat feet
slapping the
suffering
pavement.

Soul of my brother
Cast into river of ghosts
I’ll too swim that stream

A cabin den
paneled in knotty pine
slick with thick varnish
jellied in mid-ooze
& running down the grooves.
A festive group gathers
around an electric fireplace
talking up old work stories
in mid-December.
My dad sits dead center
for the camera
wearing the face he wore
when in the company of adults
his long sleeves rumpled
and his collar askew
one arm straight up,
a bottle of Blatz in hand
commending
the buzz.

A dreadful
shadow
moves across the
wallpaper
its twitching
spectral
legs and wings
accenting the
delicate florals

spray it fast
with the can of
Insect Annihilant
or just
smack the ******
with a broom

I'm about to slip
quietly into sleep
when the cat,
her food bowl bare
and the drink dried up
like Mojave,
hops on my back
and feigns affection
her sharp claws
stabbing here & there
in a soft attack
as she carves out
a cozy perch
in my flesh.
I lurch up
grunting and fumbling
pull the short chain
on the night table lamp
and in the pale green glow
pad off into the kitchen
scouting for Cat Chow
and a measure
of peace

The big secret
to producing
perfect eggs
is to let them hatch
into wee chickies,
christen them Buddy
and Isabella
and
love them
for the rest
of their lives

His advance
toward death
was as certain
as sunset
but with
a prelude
that became
a dire
double fortnight
without
so much as
a moon

In a
desolate dream
an old friend
dances
alone
on the trail
i blazed
in an effort
to forget him

Packed into
holiday traffic
on Christmas Eve,
I recall a story
told by my mother
of a snow blown pass
in the Rockies
near Estes Park
and the searing glow
of cougar eyes
just beyond
the high beams

her rear wheels whined
the engine sputtered
and the snow
kept falling