A swift and certain line -
moment and movement.
A glimpse of life
unburdened by the weight
of physical form.

RIP: The greatest show on earth

The announcement came:
This was the last year for the circus–
The working man's circus,
The last ******* child of Ringling Brothers
And P.T. Barnum

Good, my wife said
Think about the animals.
I nod in absent agreement -

But I am at Coney Island as it might have been, once.
And watching amusement parks in Celeron, Bay Ridge, the Palisades and a hundred others places vanish -
One by one like altar candles extinguished before the recessional.

I am a young boy staying up late tearing through Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked this Way Comes"
while everyone else in the house is sleeping.

I am at a City Lights book store in San Francisco
Where Lawrence Ferlinghetti is sharing his cotton candy with Diane Arbus and Allen Ginsburg

I am listening to "Take Five" in stereophonic sound.

I am behind the Big-Top
with Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens
trying to catch a glimpse of the show through the shadows -
Then being told to get away by a large sweaty man who doesn't smile.

I am eating peanuts salted in the shell.

I am holding my daughters tiny hand
while my son hides behind me–
a clown is walking by.

Whatever you do,
Don't feed the poet.
You don't even have to pay attention to their
rambling diatribes and self important pronouncements.
All you need to do is look up from your phone
Every now and then and furrow your brow.
Really. That’s pretty much it.
(A furrowed brow is actually quite a fashion statement-
Unless you are a highly paid supermodel for whom such expressions run the risk of marring a gloriously smooth and exquisitely pampered forehead. But come on now. Chances of that are negligible. Right?)
  
A furrowed brow gives the illusion
That you care about the effort that has been made.
That you have parsed the poet’s carefully curated collection of words and discovered a small kernel of truth,
Or the translucent shadow of a new idea.
Or a fresh perspective on an old idea.
Or perhaps an amusing juxtaposition of phrases and sentence fragments.
Trust me, it’s better than food to a poet.
It’s what they live for.
Just furrow your brow.
Then maybe they’ll shut up for a while.

Joe Thompson 2022

We are universes unborn-
you and I -
dimensions yet to be formed -
hidden here in plain sight.
Time and Space have no more consequence
Than the opinions of those
who believe they set the boundaries,
and make the rules.
If you listen
you can almost hear angels laughing.

goodnight

We exist
As a reflection of the creative force
That drives the universe.
It imbues our cells,
Our molecules,
Our spirits.

As children, we did not hesitate
To pretend,
To imagine,
To make up songs and stories,
To paint and draw,
To dance and sing -

Another joyful voice in the choir of the universe.

So tell me why
Do you hesitate now?
Why do you hide behind self made limitations and fears -
Excuses that become the walls of your cage,
Your prison cell -
Your tomb.

Why do you say
that you are not one of THEM -
The gifted, the talented, the artistic -
(As if we were not all made from the same stardust)
Repeating it over and over like a mantra-
that could absolve you of your responsibilities,
Your role,
Your unique harmony in the song of creation.
Oh, what arrogance!
What hubris!

Buoyant, Oblivious
Drunk on manufactured insouciance -
How did we did not notice life’s quickening -
As we were caught by the pertinacious story-currents
Of our lives.
The torrent
Of consequences delayed
Long disconnected from their antecedents;
Of our personal mythologies -
Lies, truth and misremberances
Churned together into an exploding froth:
The anxious anticipation
Of our ineluctable destruction
At the base of the falls
Where the water, like a perpetual gospel choir
Shouts and sings in joyous celebration at being made whole.

So we hold on tight.
To whatever we can.
To today.
To each other.

When the facts are fake news
and fake news are facts -
Examine the nation's
foundations for cracks.

And when great barrier walls
all around us have risen –
How long 'till we notice
that we've built our own prison?

Donnie, Donnie with his broom like hair,
Tells everybody "Well I don't care -
If the seas all rise and the air grows hot,
I have an air conditioned yacht."

Would you love me
If I weren’t smart?
Of course I would dear,
With all of my heart.

Would you love me
If I had three eyes?
Of course I would dear
No matter their size.

Would you love me
If I were bigger or taller?
Or rounder, lopsided
Or a thousand times smaller?
Would you love me
If I were transgender or gay?

Child, I will always love you –
That is all I can say.


“Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds”
W. Shakespeare

When I am asked “What’s on your mind?”
It’s sad to say but I usually find,
That, dig as deeply as I dare,
There just ain’t much there.

Some folks are clever and witty,
While some are disarmingly pretty.
But to truly be elegant,
One must also be eloquent,
For if you are not, mores the pity.

Joe Thompson 2022

The elephant in the room
Is tired of being a metaphor.
He is tired of standing in for unpleasant, awkward things.
He is tired of being ignored -
Of being invisible.
He wants to do the same things
All elephants like to do
Like painting his toenails red;
Hiding in apple trees;
Jumping on ants.
If he could, he would pack his trunk
And cram himself into the backseat of a Volkswagen beetle
With a couple of his friends.
Maybe head down the ocean
For a weekend.
But he knows he can't.
Because however he got into our room
The door isn't big enough
For him to get out.
He could just smash through
But that would be pretty awkward and uncomfortable for everyone.
He hates being awkward.

Joe Thompson 2019

Some people say
that our destruction is waiting
in the dark matter of our lives–
the crap upon which we bestow the gift
of invisibility;
the crap we pretend doesn’t exist-
that we ignore until we can't.
But I don’t really see it.

This is a tree
In the backyard of an apartment
In Jamestown, New York
In which an eleven year old boy sits
Silently considering
The sounds of the cars driving past
A man yelling for his dog
The ommm of a distant lawnmower
The smell and smooth feeling of damp tree bark
How his thoughts and feelings
have become unspoken sentences
How the images of the past have lost detail
How his anger tightens the skin of his face
How the blood hums in his ears
How his toes push against the end of his tennis shoes
How it might feel to fall face first from the tree
Or fly away over the house
And the people hidden inside
Higher and higher
Until everything had grown small with distance
And so much quieter
Until even the words in his head would be silent
Then he would let go
Then he would fall

A man sitting on the beach
thought he was making the whole thing up:
the water, the moon,
all the people he had ever known
the earth, time, himself
but he was wrong.
It was me.
I made him up.

When all the people
I am, or have been
Finally meet up with the people
I ought to have been,
I hope there are are no angry words
Or bitter accusations
Of betrayal or cowardice -
No self righteous pronouncements,
or objects sent careening across the room
to smash into a thousand shards against the wall.

No, I hope we celebrate
the infinite variety of our imperfect selves
Each of us formed out of circumstance and necessity, fear, dreams, love and chance
Though not necessarily in that order



Joe Thompson 2022

But you're dead, I said. 
From which angle, he asked. 
No, I reiterated, I mean that you are literally physically dead. 
He laughed.
Oh that, he said. It's just a phase I'm going through. 
Dead is dead, I argued. 
And art is art, he answered, and went back to his work.

I have stumble danced across the threshold of memory
Into the museum of personal mythology,
Where the actual has been replaced by representation.
Images of images -
Ossified narrative abstracted and streamlined
through repetition
With each regeneration introducing new elements
And loosing old
As they evolve
Into a synthesis of truth and lies and misrememberences -
amalgamations, the component elements of which
Are fused at the molecular level.

I have heard that the originals still exist
Locked away and archived in the unlit basement of my mind.
But I am comfortable with these
And doubt I would recognize those.

There once was a girl named Clarissa May Drake,
Who was very afraid to make a mistake.
So she only did things she knew how to do,
And she never tried anything wonderfully new.
Then when she grew old Clarissa May Drake
Said what do you know?
I made  a mistake.

Joe Thompson 2021

Age
Confounds me.
Yesterdays mixed randomly with tomorrows;
Pain interjected into simple daily movements;
Memories that slip and slide from my grasp like a wet bar of soap.
Yet somehow
I am supposed to smile through it and say "better than the alternative"
(Which I suppose it is
Because I fear leaving those I love, the way I was left when I was little)
So I will watch my cholesterol, my blood sugars, my blood pressure and I will try to  exercise more
I will atone for my sins
By getting older and older
You're all welcome.
And perhaps after all, it does beat the alternative

You know I remember when there was a field here. Or did I already say that?

Joe Thompson 2022

When all the people
I am or have been
Finally meet up with the people
I ought to have been
I hope there are are no angry words
Or bitter accusations
Of betrayal or cowardice.
No Self Rightous pronouncements
or objects sent sailing across the room to smash into a thousand shards against the wall.

No, I hope we celebrate
The infinite variety of our imperfect selves
Each of us formed out of circumstance and necessity, fear, dreams, love and chance -
Though not necessarily in that order.

Joe Thompson 2022

Someone left a barrel of laughs
At my front door.
I was suspicious, of course,
Not knowing who sent them
Or where they were from.
So instead of opening it
I crouched down and put my ear next to it,
Listening - to guage what sort of hilarity might be contained within.
Guffaws might indicate cruelty.
A self satisfied chuckle might be ironic.
A mwah haha would surely indicate - well, I think that's pretty obvious.
Were they the laughs of a person
With nothing left to loose?
Or the laughs of a person
Who knows knows he can only win?
Were they the happy byproduct of joyous celebration?
Or the giggles of a child who feels anxious and embarrassed?
A few of each, perhaps,
All jumbled up together.

I looked up to see my neighbor
Standing next to me.
Seems It had been delivered to the wrong address.
He rolled the barrel over to his house where his family didn't waste a second before letting them all out.
It was total laugh-fest over there.

****, I could have used a good laugh.

I am streaming some old Jazz (Mingus, Duke Ellington, The Modem Jazz Quartet) 
From my phone via bluetooth
As I drive
To the store
When my brother Dave's ghost
chimes in:
It would sound better coming from a long play stereophonic record, he says. 

No doubt, I tell him
Surprised that I am not surprised
That he is in the car with me. 

We call it vinyl now, I tell him
I think he nods
Though I can't really see him. 

You know, he says, it is all about the intervals and the timing.
We listen for a while, then he says :
Something nobody really understood about me 
Is that I was a jazz improvisation
While I was alive.

I think, this makes no rational sense at all. 
Though I don't say it outloud, my brother responds:
No, it isn't about being rational
It's about the intervals and timing. 

And suddenly I understand him in a way I didn't when he was alive. 
I love you, I say
But he's gone
Jumped to an unexpected note.

Unexpected 
But perfect.

4/17/2020
Inside and out

My oldest brother,
After a lifetime of smoking,
Found himself tethered to an oxygen tank
Which, exacerbated by the steps up to the street,
made his trips out of the house
More and more Infrequent
Until they stopped.
My mother
Spent the last twenty years of her life
Ensconced in a small dark apartment
rarely leaving her own mind.
My other brother stayed with her
Making occasional trips to the store
For food, cigarettes and beer.

I think about them today
As I shelter in place
Hiding from the pandemic
Practicing the banjo
Watching old movies
And wrestling with anxiety.
Outside the window
A brazenly red cardinal
Stops by for just a moment
Before heading off
to another engagement

Ode to the Serif

There are those I have heard that just couldn't care if
There were no letters left that featured a serif -
Old fashioned and useless and a bit of a joke
Those last little marks at the end of a stroke.
This is the age of Sans serifs designers may shout
(Sans being a French word that just means without,
which is odd in a way cause the word serif is dutch
and the Romans invented them - mixed up very much?)

Serifs are busy, Sans serifs are leaner
Sans serifs, they say have a more hip demeanor.
But I beg to differ. (you suspected I would)
I think that serifs are perfectly good.
They have class and panache and a long history
while Sans serif letters lack all mystery.
Imagine a monument - maybe marble or bronze
with the name of the hero set in bold comic sans.
So be like the Romans, who in sunshine or drizzle
just finished each letter with a smack on the chisel.

4/8 /2020

Today
Most Americans stayed indoors
With their hand sanitizer and bleach
While The Supreme Court
Made voting a game of Russian roulette
Today
John Prine
Joined Hank and Woody
In the Tower of Song
Today
Another 1,800 people died
While the president worried about his reelection
Today
a lot of brave people put their lives on the line to help the sick and dying
Tonight
I just want to Scream

Long forgotten in poems and prose
Are the tribulations of a person’s toes.
Perhaps the likes of the great Ulysses
Are all afraid that they will sound like sissies -
If, in a battle full of strife and woe
They should take a moment to say “ouch, my toe!”
(though no one thought twice to hear Achilles squeal,
"I can’t go on - I broke a heel")
So go on and whine if you stub your toe -
be like: “this little piggie went to battle - Yo!”

- joe thompson

When Fangirl and her husband opened their comic store downtown
she had already been diagnosed with cancer.
But we didn’t know
She was all smiles and excitement -
her secret identity.
It all seemed so colorful and you didn’t notice the halftone dots
unless you looked closely.
When she died
all those colorful dots
seemed to melt or wash away.
Her husband kept the store running  
as long as he could
but the shop - the comics
the toys, the displays
were her
and not her
and finally he had to let it go
because in real life, things end
and don’t come back.

When I think back on my mother
My heart begins to churn
With a complex and volatile mixture
Of memories and emotions.
Maybe because she was a complex and flawed human being.
Or because I am.
I yearn for a child's simple
Hand drawn joy -
Appreciation without judgement.

I remember that feeling
Or more precisely
I remember remembering it.
It is always set in the spring,
The sun is shining and the tree outside my window
Is becoming greener by the day.
I run down the hallway
Excited to feel her embrace.
Excited to look into her eyes.
Excited to be loved.

On this day set aside to celebrate
Our mothers
I try to hold on to that feeling for as long as I can -
Like a child holding his breath under the water in the bath,
Counting the seconds
Unaware of everything else in the world.

The banjo is an instrument
for expressing joy and pain
Perhaps designed by Beelzebub
To drive one’s family insane

And that could be the truth of it
I find it hard to tell
Until the day I join the band
That practices in hell.

Though I suppose there is a chance
I end up in the other place,
And St Peter says “The banjo’s fine.
It’s not as if you played the bass.”

I am stealing these few moments
When the lights are out
And my family is asleep
Not because I have anything of importance to do with the time
But just because I want it.
I want to own it.
To add it to my Collection
Along with the books that crowd my bookshelves
Which wait in vain to be taken down and read -
The LPs
That rarely get their turn
on the turntable
To release the music hidden inside their shallow black grooves;
The plans I made when I was younger
That were going to make me famous.
Or rich.
Or both.

Only now do I realize that I have violated
The cardinal rule of all serious collectors and hoarders-
I allowed myself to use the time
To write this poem.

And now it is gone.

The sand and driftwood on our little beach
Is rearranged regularly
By the tide and wind and waves
While the large stones that abut the sea wall (river wall?)
Seem to hold their ground stoicly.
In time they will shift as well.
A trio of young boys ride their bicycles past us
Casually ignoring the young girl tagging along behind them.
On the news
Stories of people protesting the stay at home orders

Oblivious to the risks they take home to their families.
The streets of major cities become war zones
When activists are joined by rioters and bigots with guns
A new president is elected.
The old one tweets and sues and continues his angry lies
But it's all for show.

I turn off the television.
Aware that behind the black screen the outside world continues to unravel.

3/29/2020
Hope

Once, as a child
I sat alone in a tree for most of the day
Listening and watching
Trying to understand the invisible threads
That tie us all together
My mother in the house
My brother in another city
The neighbor mowing his lawn
The woman singing to her child

Later in life I learned that on a quantum level
Particles can be entangled
And continue to influence each other
When they are moved apart

More than a century before
Whitman said this:
Every atom belonging to me
As good belongs to you

This is the genesis of all hope
In these strange times -
This knowledge that even separated
By distance and walls
Politics and religion
Lies and truth
Continents and oceans

We are still connected
All of us
Together

I could do magic as a child
Real magic
Not tricks.
Once I made it snow
By destroying a dragon
cleverly disguised as a bush
Hiding in my backyard.

And once I flew like Peter Pan
For an instant
Before gravity intervened
Pulling me to the ground
Where my wrist was sliced open
And blood gushed forth
(Which upset my guardians
Who were no doubt worried
That with a little more practice
I might have flown even longer and gotten farther away from their expensive unhappy house.)

I still do magic
sometimes
Small magic
Woven into designs and words, colors and sounds.
By itself it can't heal the sick
depose tyrants
Or even make it snow.
But together with thousands of other magicians
Maybe we could weave a web of hope
To catch a few falling souls
And teach them to fly free.

So many possibilities
Endless paths
Endless choices
And yet fear keeps me moving
In the same direction today
As yesterday,
Making a mockery of free will.

I cry out to the wind
******* away from my plotted course
Challenge me to find new worlds
Hidden in the mundane details of my surroundings
Let me walk slowly down the streets I always pass by
Converse with friends who have remained strangers to me,
Listen to someone else's favorite music.
Let unfamiliar fragrances tickle my nose
And whet my appetite for new foods
I want to run my hands along the trunk of a gnarled tree that I've seen a hundred times
Or feel the warm pulse of life through a newborn's soft skin.
Then I'll learn a few dance steps
And embarrass myself in front of strangers
Maybe there's someone who could use comforting in these stressful times

Or I could just binge watch some mindless sitcom

So many possibilities