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.

I realize at last
That I can not be God.
I feel the pain of others too deeply,
Which would inevitably lead me
To end pain and suffering -
Probably even discomfort.
I would, no doubt, answer the prayers
Of people in need and trouble.
I would try to make life fair.

I have come to the painful realization
That such actions would in turn
Blunt the tools we use to sculpt our souls
Into strong, beautiful and unique pieces of a universe
I can not begin to comprehend.

Therefore, in light of this weakness,
I must respectfully withdraw
My application for the position .
I will seek a different position elsewhere,
For which I am better suited -
A friend, perhaps, a parent or teacher

Someone who cares a lot,
But controls very little.

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.

When it happens, it happens quickly -
a small crack will appear
and the ossified personification
of one of your most revered gods will crumble.

And that is when the true magic will begin.
When you realize that what spills forth
is not all miracles,
beauty and wisdom -
Much of it is ugly, disappointing, even petty -

and all too human.

Not all questions have answers I must suppose.
And some of the most important are those.
Or perhaps they have answers we don’t dare contemplate.
So we smile and ignore them until it’s too late.
But that’s the dilemma of this little verse:
Will there be any answers in the back of the Hearse.

New gods are rising
Up from the mud
At the place where streams of blood
Fed by the violence of ignorance and greed
Flow together at last
Into the great river

New gods are rising
Beautiful and strong
From the sacrifices of the oppressed
The marginalized, ignored, the mocked and reviled
New faces, new races
The mud of the river

New gods are rising
Free of the chains
And fetters of antique gender expectations
Not willing to be defined or bound by anatomy
Only spirit and dreams
Down by the river

Old white gods in dotage
Behind their great walls
Are blinded by their own reflections
In the highly polished arrogance of power and wealth
Unaware of the river
And the mud and the blood

And the battle ahead

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.

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.

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.

To teach is a thing you can't do alone -
No matter how deeply the fire may burn.
The desire and effort to teach must be matched,
by another’s desire and effort to learn.

Tell me how you are feeling,
Or tell me to go.
Say its none of my business
Or I don’t need to know.

Tell me what’s going on,
Or tell me **** out.
Say it or text it.
Whisper or shout

But silence is hurtful -
Though it may seem absurd -
Every unwritten sentence
And each unspoken word.

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.”

The boy, age seven
Stayed behind the others -
Remained outside in waist deep snow
While his newly assigned family
plodded and stomped onto the back porch of the great house,
shaking snow and cracked ice from their matted sweaters,
Shedding their scarves, wet gloves and socks .  
Loud excited voices growing muffled and faint
until they disappeared completely into the warmth and comfort of interior rooms.

It was the boy's first winter in western New York
and he had never known such monumental silence
or seen the world disappear so completely
in snowstorm and dusk.
His cheeks burned red;
His toes and fingers grew fat and numb –
How long would it take, he wondered, for fresh snow and wind
to obliterate his footsteps completely,
leaving no evidence of the path
that had brought him there;
Until it looked as if he had just been dropped into someone's yard;
as if he had just appeared from nowhere.

Before he began to move again –
before he headed inside with the others
he smiled.
In the space between his thoughts
there was a moment of silence deeper than anything he had ever felt before.

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

The moon floats nonchalantly outside my window as if we had never met -
As if we were strangers.
I like to think she is a bit melancholy -
Hanging around in hopes of catching a glimpse of me,
To see how much I've changed,
Hoping perhaps, that we might swim again through the inky black night
As we did so often when I was young.
But I was only one among
Millions of suitors and would-be Lotharios
Enamored by her silvery beauty.
It is absurd to think she would remember me.
But I like to imagine that she still can hear the melody
Of the song I wrote to her, one night on the beach
As we walked together exploring bits and pieces
Of our other lives
And other times -
Each of us a little intoxicated by the moment.
Vowing we would never forget.

A muse is not a fairy godmother
Or a genie in a lamp
A muse is a disagreeable *****
Who shows up whenever she pleases
And offers mostly excuses
For ideas left undeveloped.
Sometimes she offers up nothing but recycled cliches
freshly polished and smelling of chocolate chip cookies.

Don’t come around when the muse and I are wrestling –
It is definitely not a pretty sight.
But when we’re done -
Both of us lying exhausted on the floor -
That’s when she’ll say something really meaningful-
Or at least it always seems meaningful
At the time.

A line in the sand -
a border -
a fence -
my 40th birthday;
my 50th birthday;
my 60th birthday -
the ball drops at midnight!
A new year -
blow horns, beat drums,
kiss somebody, make resolutions.

but everything on that side
looks exactly
like everything on this side.

and somewhere
rivers are carving canyons
and small plants
are shattering boulders

Jack they say, one autumn day did fool the devil well;
And then and there, did make him swear, to keep him out of hell.
But when he died, he was denied his entrance into glory;
And so he roams our streets at night and therein lies the story.
To see at night, he has a light that comes from hells own flame-
Which burns so well in a pumpkin shell and jack-o-lantern is its name.

Step one: I write something down.
Step two: I erase it.
Step three: I start over again.
Step four: I misplace it.
Step five: I search and I search.
Step six: I give up and play.
Lists are so good at using up time,
in an orderly organized way.

“Artists create art”, ah, yes they do.
But art creates artists is equally true-
And many a man from his comfort is torn
The moment an artwork decides to be born.

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.

Jack, they say, one autumn day did fool the devil well;
And then and there, did make him swear, to keep Jack out of hell.
But when he died, he was denied his entrance into glory;
And so he roams our streets at night and therein lies the story.
To see at night, he has a light that comes from hells own flame-
Which burns so well in a turnip shell –and jack-o-lantern is its name.

The task was quite simple - speak into the mic,
Or post it to Twitter if that's what you like,
But pause for a moment your intense game of Yahtzee
And tell the whole nation that no sick neo-****,
White supremacists, kkker or alt-right fanatic –
(With or without robes that they found in the attic)
Is allowed to spread terror or drive cars through a crowd.
Vile speech, vile actions just won't be allowed.
As people sat waiting throughout our great nation-
Instead of a strong and robust condemnation
There came but a tweet both insipid and sad
Implying that both sides were equally bad,
And when no one came forth to defend his position
Not Repubs or Dems, hardly one politician
Trump finally said okay what I meant
Was white supremacists are evil one hundred percent.
But the bigots were grinning as Trump's sound bite got tossed -
Cause he had made it quite clear that his fingers were crossed.

Tomorrow should be getting closer.
But is it? I must answer no, sir.
Whatever speed we walk or run
We’re no closer than when we’d first begun.
Like the carrot dangled in front of the ***
(I apologize if this sounds crass -
I refer to the animal here of course
A second cousin to the horse)
We chase the carrot till our days are through,
And then we die. I am afraid it’s true -
Without getting the carrot, ain’t that a *****?
We might die poor or we might die rich,
But our tomorrow’s the same no matter what we do,
So I offer up this thought to you–
Let’s stop and share glass of Claret
And let other ***** chase the carrot.

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

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

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!”

I watch men I do not know.
How they smile,
twitch,
scratch-
how the ***** steel bristles
cut through their cheeks and chins;
their tatoos
dull blue and grey
on sweat washed arms.
How they rub their hands,
push back their hair,
adjust their collars,
breath,
laugh,
belch.
I am looking for someone
I never knew.
I am looking for my father.
If he were near, I could not
let him pass by unseen, unfelt.

Meeting him,
I do not know what I would say.
hello
or
do you know me?
Maybe I would say nothing.
Maybe I would just sit and stare,
like a soldier,
seeing his own arm
****** and torn in the road,
wondering why the fingers don't move
when he tries to make a fist.

Tonight the moon,
Voluptuously full and swollen
Moved close to me
And whispered -
(The way new lovers often do in the early hours
When they are sure the other is still sleeping,
Or too groggy to understand )

And truly I did not understand -
But I smiled and nodded
And continued our walk.

Now as I try to reconstruct the moment
I can’t help thinking
That beneath the sweet, gentle lightness
of the night breeze
There were overtones of something much darker.
Shadows mixed with dreams
Mixed with dreams
Mixed with moonbeams.

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!

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!

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

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.

Words are fun to play about with -
to rhyme sometimes, or simply shout with.
Textured words with rich deep color
that vivify those words much duller;
phrases culled from a private stash
to give your expletives panache.
Cause shock and awe - gain admiration,
with erudite vituperation!
So let your language soar unfettered
away from tired words four lettered.

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