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.

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

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.

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

With every breath
Every touch
Every thoughtfeelingdream
Joysorrow pain and healing
The map of our soul multiplies -
An infinite fractal reflection
Of the universal design

And we move further away
From simple answers

To the brave non conforming curl of hair on that woman’s cheek
To the grace of that man’s rhythmic movement as he hurries down the street
To the pure glorious delight with which that girl greets her friend
To the faraway gaze of that child’s eyes
To the faces that girl makes when she thinks her mother can’t see
To the lip being bitten
To the swirl of the skirt
To the way that girl holds her baby sister
To the way those boys jump to touch the branch above them
To the slow careful steps the old man takes
To the disapproving shake of the old woman’s head
To the  toddler jumping across every other tile

Thank you

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

Look,
Just pick a path, will ya?
Flip a coin if you have to
But move along -
Other people are waiting.

You ate them?
You ate the ******* plums
that were in the fridge?
God, you're a selfish *******.

The walls of my sleep have been deteriorating,
crumbling

So full of holes,
that my dreams have escaped their dark cages
to prowl the world in the greenblue day.

Outside my windshield
Morpheus transforms the landscape -

sculpting traffic, trees and sky
Into mythic tableaus
of seductive beauty - hypnotic grace.

and then I am also transformed -

Into a bullet

For an eternal moment
I become a speeding messenger of death,

until the alarm of the traffic
breaks the spell
and the dreams scurry away,

to hide once more
from the waking world

and wait.

A child’s mind and spirit need a chance
To confront the boredom of unstructured time -
To build, explore, to write, pretend or dance;
To dream and plan for futures more sublime.

But we, with anxious guardian concern
So fearful that our wards might come to pain,
Replace their fires with ones that do not burn
Colored lights that anesthetize the brain.

Our children grow and sadly we bemoan
How ill prepared they are to lead us on.
(You harvest wheat if wheat is what was sown
The chance to harvest other crops is gone.)

So let the entertainment sit ignored,
And see what comes of children being bored.

So peaceful and calm
before the lights are turned on
then students arrive.

Class is almost done
student raises hand and yells
"What are we doing?"

Students focused, calm
intent on learning, thinking
someone else's class

Bell rings, students leave
room in disarray - teacher
exhausted, drained

correcting, grading
while family watches movie
while eating, sleeping

October days are thin, you said,
like a shirt worn through at the elbow
so that your skin shows.

Then you smiled, and your stomach so full and swollen moved beneath your sweater.
We can’t move out of the city before the twins are born. I know that,
So I spend a weekend peeling wallpaper off the walls
of the back room.

It is slow work most of the time, though occasionally
a large section rips off quickly, revealing the bare white
wall underneath. I run my hands over the newly revealed surface

looking for bits of paper that I might have missed;
small bits, almost invisible.
In a few weeks it will be Halloween and children I do not know

will crowd around my door in cheap costumes
and cheaper masks - many will have none at all-
Naked faces emerging from the shadows.

Bit by bit, your past
will try to distract you from the present,
so it can steal your future.

This is how we become ghosts
in our own lives.

This morning one of my ninth grade students
Is showing off her sonogram
With the same excitement and enthusiasm
I used to see in my daughter when she was showing off a new Barbie doll
With it’s glittering gown and open toed plastic heels.

I tilt the image this way and that -
Hypnotized by the light
That dances on and off of the black glossy surface
Just the way it did when I was a kid
Shaking the magic eight ball
Waiting for a glimpse of the answers
That I knew were going to emerge from the shadows.

I know that I look different,
But here’s the paradox you see-
Maybe I don’t seem like me to you,
But I seem more like me to me.

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

Now that you have accepted the seeds
Of my work
(My sentences, words, marks or noises)
Into the womb of your soul
My (our) artwork can be born

I will not be present for the birth
Nor will I ever truly know
What we have brought into the world
what it means to you
But I hope you will love
And nurture it
And that it nurtures you in return

Today I eschew all matters political
and examine a subject I consider quite critical.
The greatest invention in man’s history
is, IMHO, the apostrophe.
You must admit it’s quite impressive
even if sometimes it’s a tad possessive.
Suppose, if you will, you need to drop one small letter
(because somehow shorter is always better)
’tis the thing that shows any gal or feller
That you’re not just a miserable, terrible speller.
So go on, drop your letters with wild abandon
and know the apostrophe will be there to stand in.

Just one other thing before I call it quits–
concerning the fuss about its and it’s.
It’s an issue for some that is really quite raw
Because they think that possession’s nine tenths of the law.
But I tell you now without any deceptions
In life there will always be some small exceptions.
“It” owns an apostrophe, I hear some of you cry,
But its apostrophe’s useless unless it loses an I.

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.

Many a human being is smitten
When they come face to face with small furry kitten.
And theys hardly need much -
Just some cat food and such.
Oh yes, don't forget a small box they can **** in.

Dinner with even the gnicest gnomes
Can be excruciating -
Their table manners are less than genteel -
In fact they’re gnauseating.

There is a thing that I have to do,
that I really, really don't want to.
So I sit and think of reasons why
it can't be done; I shouldn't try.
So I don't– but then I think of how
If only I'd done it, then right here and right now,
the thing that I don't want to do would be done
and my list of to–dos would be shorter by one.
But I didn't, so it's still a thing I have to do,
that I really really don't want to.

(I was wondering: does this ever happen to you?)

Do not write about love.
Do not bleed words all over the page.
Do not tell the world how in-love / heart-broken you are.
Or sing your lovers virtues.
Or spew hateful bile at those who have bruised your heart.
Don’t do it.
Just don’t.
Not right now.
Later, perhaps.
Much,
much
later.

My mother dearly wanted  
to be Dorothy Parker.
She yearned for a taste of the power that comes
from a truly witty response.

She craved to deliver
A statement so powerful
and sardonic that it would terminate
all argument or discussion.

My proximity made me an easy target to practice on
as each of our arguments ended with a bon mot
delivered with the all the acerbic flourish of Bette Davis.

As I listened to her footsteps receding down the hallway
I had only to take one more breath
before the footsteps reversed direction
and - standing at the doorway to my room -
She would deliver another culminating witticism
turn, leave and repeat.

In the fifties and sixties an intelligent woman –
a single mother of three
with no high school diploma,
but a surfeit of imagination –
Savoured what little power she could find
even if it was a fiction, a delusion
or just a punchline sharp enough to draw blood.

A toddler with a stick
poking holes in wet sand;
Making short lines and squiggles
which waves wipe quickly away.  
When his toes have been tickled
and sand rises up around his tiny feet,
the boy falls
backwards onto his bottom.
There! Did you feel it? The universe stops–

Then begins again -
with delighted squeals burbling forth
as the water moves around him
licking his skin –
and a thousand small kittens
tumble away.

Split the words open.
Cut them in pieces.
Let the guts spill
and the blood spurt out.
Get it on your hands
And face;
Get that wild glint in your eyes –
The one that makes people nervous;
Bellow to the heavens as you stitch old ideas back together,
Laughing hysterically
“It’s alive!”

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.

He had a voice like death on a ******.
We listened,
Our vision growing unexpectedly blurred
As he scribbled landscapes
On the window, and sang poetry he created by
Twisting  prayer around blasphemy
Around lust around yearning
With  notes whose colors  bled
One into the other
Into the other -

Beseeching, begging, demanding
The scars of our doubts
The armor of our pain.
And when, one day, he shattered the sun
Raining shards of gold flames like shrapnel
Down on the innocent and guilty alike,
We sat in our shiny new darkness
Singing hallelujah, hallelujah
Over and over again
Rocking back and forth
Clutching an old album cover
Like it was the relic of a saint.

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

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

Are they good people?
Friendly folk?
Good neighbors perhaps,
Willing to lend a helping hand-
Loving family members?

When they are not preaching hatred, I mean,
Waving symbols of terror and oppression;
Scapegoating people who fled oppression
Torture, death or economic hardships
Such as we have never endured..
Or denying the rights of fellow citizens
(who's ancestors were stolen, enslaved, tortured, terrorized and
Stripped of as much dignity and humanity as was possible even years after the promises of freedom and equality.)

And when the parades and riots are over,
Are they good people, nice folk, once more?

Numerous were the people that did turn away from the Truth
and worshipped Ignorance
Saying “Oh, lead us in the ways of true Ignorance,
for the truth we love not.”

Then they were sent forth to find the truth
and destroy it.
And their God did say unto them:
Where truth grows in abundance –
plant lies, so that there is confusion.

Where truth stands as a monument,
chip it away.
Where truth sounds forth like music,
Blare your falsehoods louder.

Where the truth shines brightly
obscure it with shadows.

Deny the obvious.
Eschew all reason, logic and evidence
that does not please you.
Above all else repeat the lies
and repeat the lies
and repeat the lies
and repeat the lies
ad infinitum
These are the ways of true Ignorance.

Thoughts, ideas and words
Have always been corporeal objects in my life -
Things, with weight and volume.
If you could see them, stacked precariously one atop another
Pile after pile and stack after stack,
threatening to bury me alive, when the balance is destroyed someday
when I try to remove the wrong item at the wrong time -
Well, If you saw them like that -
The way I see them –
You would, no doubt call me a hoarder,
A hoarder of ideas, thoughts and words,
Living safely in my own little world  
Surrounded by the waste products
Of an over active mind,
Unwilling to part with even the most useless thought -
Secure that someday they will all fit together into in a grand poem
That will free me at last.

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

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.

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

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?

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

If you should come upon a painting by Mark Rothko in a museum -
I'll assume you are not one of those billionaires who has one hanging on the dining room wall, or hidden away in a secret room behind the bookcase -
but either way, do not just look at the painting or you will see nothing.
Well, except color. You will see color. Rothko loved color.

But wait a while and you will begin to hear it whisper its secrets:
How lives are layered upon lives;
how painful sacrifices
get buried beneath petty ambitions and lies
and joys and succes as well-
oh, and perhaps another layer or two of color.

Each generation scrapes the parchment clean
and blithely scribes new marks on its surface -
confident that they will not forget the lessons
that seem so absurdly obvious.

Empires disappear beneath overgrown vines
and dieties who, drunk on the blood of virgins
would feast on the hearts of conquered warrors
but now shuffle past each other
with oblivious nods, grousing about the food,
wait for the day someone remembers their names.

Listen and perhaps you will learn
how every layer of life is a forgotten secret
discernable only by its subtle influence
on the layers that are built up above it.

If not. There is always the color. Rothko loved color.

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.

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

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."

Inside the house,
my cat is a cat
napping and lounging all day;
but outside the house
she’s a wild jungle beast
silently stalking her prey.

Inside the house
she’s all cuddles and purr
and a nudge so loving and mild;
outside the house–
crouched and ready to pounce–
she’s a lioness fearless and wild.

I wonder does she know
that they live with us -
all my other selves -
over on the stairway is the me that went totally insane
five years ago during the great stress
while I had to keep it together for my family.
He is looking quite relaxed today.
On the sofa is the me that quit his job
to write poetry and become involved in the theater.
( I am surprised he is here - he should be in New York)
Over there is the me that told everyone to *******
and leave me alone.
On the second floor, looking out the bedroom window,
is the me that actually went to find
my birth father and tell him he was a **** for leaving my mother and me.
He is chatting with the me that sent his manuscript out to more than three agents before giving up.
The me that has worked out diligently for the last 30 years, playing football and basketball and soccer is over - no I’m making him up. He doesn’t exist.
They crowd every inch of every room
and more than a few hang from the ceiling
and now all her other selves are moving in as well.

I suppose that’s married life for you.

My summer -
The one I knew so well as a child–
Was a universe of green, blue and white
Meant to be explored and explored and explored again–
While the cool breath of angels
kept the sweat from my brow
And worries from my mind.

Languid and sweet
It was my sanctuary, my world.
Time would stretch or contract as I chose.
The silver clear water of my creek or stream
Slipped and slid over my bare feet–
Like kittens or puppies
Carelessly tumbling over each other.
In the distance
Other children laughed and screamed happily together.
Sometimes I would sit back to listen–
Imagining myself as one of them.
.
On the other side of their beautiful cacophony,
nicotine stained walls were waiting
The walls of my mother’s latest apartment;
Where the light was thin
And shadows
Wrapped around quietly anxious secrets -
Then a breeze would touch my cheek -
To remind me where I was and where I was not,
The sky would grow purple and stars
Would begin revealing themselves.
My stars, in my sky, in my summer.

Being disorganized and somewhat distracted
I seem to have misplaced the map that the universe provided at my birth.
You know the one:
it shows your perfect path through this lifetime-
so you can be at exactly the right place at exactly the right time
and use the talents and intelligences that the universe let you borrow
to achieve great and wonderful things.

It would be so nice to know that I was on the right path,
instead of guessing and hoping and straining to hear the angels
that I imagine are hoarse and frustrated from screaming:
Not that way!! The other way!!
or
Where the hell are you going?