Somewhere between the dream of what it could be
and what it wanted to be, this poem hightailed it
out of town. Down the road it went, careening into
hedgerows, jostling small birds from their resting
time. Running for all it's worth, out to the sea cliffs
then arrested, stock still, before all that immensity.
Chagrined by such a rash attempt at escape, even
blushing a bit, it wondered about strange things:
What would it be like to be a badger? To always be
dressed in all those lovely stripes? To never have bad
wardrobe days?  Or what about an otter, with such
strong muscles, and an utter delight for swimming?
To never really feel the cold? These are the things a
poem can wonder about, when it isn't quite sure, just
right then, in the present moment, how to be a poem.

The Straw Furniture (Summertime and the Living is Easy)

The ancient straw furniture, yellow-white, cracked,
My boon companions from the Sun Room where I write,
Give me a welcome back embrace and purposely snag my sweater,
Crackling a laugh and tween boisterous gasps, all wish me a hearty
Welcome back ancient mariner, to your cottage
On the bluff overlooking Peconic Bay.

The deck furniture exhumed from the garage,
Accompanied by a parade, nay a slew,
Of spiders and insects waving Adieu to their winter palace
Climb aboard to get a better view of their new deck digs,
And of me, the anti-hero of their grandparent's tales.

I go down to the basement.
Chagrined,
I come back up the twisty stairs
which designed, aimed to maim,
vowing never to return.

The refrigerator says do you like modern art?
Mold of multifarious colors, heavenly hues worthy of the
Museum of Modern Art,
I bequeath to you freely, no charge!

The clean laundry left out from last summer,
Looks so forlorn, asks politely,
Make me gone, wash away the winter's dusty grime,
Besides, traces of aged balsamic suntan lotion, still inhabit.

The golf clubs say nice meeting you,
Tho we think we met you once before,
Five or eight years or even never-years ago, was it not?

My obedient servants?
No, my friends, my helpers, my guides,
For in their sheltering embrace, in this holy place,
Inspiration floods, overcomes me and I am compelled alive,
Poet renewed, ****** why am I crying...


May 26th
10:15 AM
Shelter Island
In the Sun Room, weeping.

this flourishing silence feels more of
a trite hack-job than it is a writing stint.
     my fingers (frenzied, brazen) continue to tap
and my mind starts to spill like a spigot
   left open. I have taken to smoking and laughing
away

       in an obscured day for myself in the parking lot
and sometimes I can do without company; only the snarl
of the well-oiled tractor in front of me.

    the days are full of yellow and the Sun is a dog
on a leash. the roses smell of brine and their slender
stems bones of the young.

    I can see cheeks flushed with red and skirts
neatly trimmed just above knobby knees
   and I know somewhere in that tender flesh,
a man sifts without knowing what it feels to eat
    bone before flesh, flesh after bone. my silently augured
procurement of today’s induced comatose is but
    a Freudian slip – the world with its burly physique
is a chauvinistic man
           drinking whisky in the red light district of hazy Makati.

                 each slapdash word in penitent reprisal
is the moment’s clearest reprieve. I am glad that this room
is darker than the eyes of the love I have lost
     staring back with a mound of the abysmal or the yearnings
      of a chagrined mother startled back to her home;
  it must be dreamy, the dogs outside pant in heat
        and the obnoxious *** of vehicles outside bears the cadence
  of two people   starting to fall in love:  all chaotic and unmoving,
             fastened to the Earth, aware of the passing minutes,
                                         wishing to be somewhere else but there.

I want to be fluid, I want to be smooth
With the ability to soothe
Be like the waters
With seashell daughters
Of streams and brooks and rain
Always tender, always humble, never vain
Yet still ruling with sovereign reign
Nothing should ever be able to stop me
Nothing can stop the ocean or the sea
Not even time
I want to be huge, I want to be sublime
Never hurt, never chagrined
I want to have no fear of the wind
And even less of the heat or the cold
I want to shimmer with gold
When the sun sets
Away from mortal things like hate or regrets
I want to learn to sing like water
Without ever wearying, tiring,
Wheezing or expiring
I want to be the water
When it hums to the night
Chants to the stars bright
Stroking the sand
I want to be water never bland
I want to be the water that glorifies
Which runs, which plays, purifies
Which is sweet and pure, untainted, unattainable
I want to be the water mysterious and unexplainable
I want to be the water when it unfolds
When it holds
The seaweed with maiden hands
I want to be the water when it expands
Dances, sways, flows,
Diverted from the abyss

Such a tedious thing,
I sense our existence appears.
For my chest to breech to the sky,
A tightened blossom of whipping purity.
Then to sink towards such a vicarious engulfment of hell.

With each palpitating symposium,
My lungs waver.
To crust over,
and bless the,
upon gilded guffaws.
Perturbed of my ascension.

Or shall they sink,
Sallow under chagrined blasphemy,
My horridness inked upon
parchment seasoned skin.  

Not but,
a child of bitter consideration.
I shall butter myself in ashes,
just to perceive myself a shadow.
For at dusk's beckon,
perturbed; to kiss the constellations.

Blemishes I conjured,
beneath a quavering lip,
a gentle crease of my nose.
I silence their whimpering of wrongdoings,
which I have failed to rupture.

To exhale,
in such a bubbling manner.
It gurgles at my lips.
Dribbles before me,
Whilst the sun blinks back a yawn.
Yet, upon a lunar serenade,
the talons which protrude from my veins,
writhes gruesome.  

To my supposed
talents,
I see no anchor.
From them, to what lay before me.
To where I shall drift.

And good sir,
label my simplistic existence,
if you must.
Yet I shall soon die,
and so, you will too.
And by that flicker of seconds,
we should matter no more.

She has a girlfriend.
Deep red hair and soft fingertips and a magnetic gaze like being pierced by a ray of sunlight
And a girlfriend.
Freckles sprinkled like cinnamon over pale cheeks,
Eyelashes that cast soft shadows
Around chocolate eyes
As she looks down in confusion
That I would gaze into them
Like I gaze into a night sky full of diamond constellations.

And. A girlfriend.
Permission aside, and brevity,
The fact remained, and...

God help me, but I never minded.
We were partners, and we danced all night,
Not with steps but with subtle touches and near collisions.
And I tried, I really did,
To bow out.
But sweeping close and stealing away,
Somewhere within the infinite moments when we were a breath apart
I lost my grip on restraint
And tumbled into her thrall.

I don’t understand how someone could want a man.
Men have no power, no magnetism like that.
No force that draws you in like a moth to a flame.
No captivating pull that drags you into their arms.
When I've kissed a man, I've been led.
Hell, when I've kissed most people, I've been led.
But every once in a great while,
I meet a girl and I am drawn,
Enticed, seduced.
And oh,
Does that demolish my self control.

The dizziness of being touched
My skin humming like guitar strings
Strummed
By her casual hands
The little tendrils of her hair that waved in the breeze and twined in my fingers...
I showed her tenderness that I don’t show people
Because I knew she wouldn't see it if I did.

When I hitched my fingers beneath her chin,
I thought of the marble sculptures in the soaring halls of a museum-
Perfect and smooth- that cool, soft texture that begs caresses.
Even as a child,
I always wanted to run my fingertips across their cheeks,
Feel the curve of their lips,
See if soft and unyielding could exist together like kin.

Last night, my restraint frayed like a rope
Sawed down by the blade of her subtle symmetry.

I never had much anyway
And what I had never meant much to me.

We shared a breath a thousand times before we shared a kiss
And it was like dying to be so close every single time.
That was the best part- the sweet, slow torture of being close-
I didn't think I’d feel that way again
After the last time.

Maybe that was why I couldn't stop,
Wouldn't try,
When her hands would flutter around my waist
And land like butterflies on my hips.
I’m not sure it was me,
Leaning in, tugging on the thread of decency I didn't have.

I fell. And I was happy about it.
From grace and from goodness.
All my life I've made my choices to save everyone else
And last night I made my choice to stop for a night
And save myself.
It was the sweetest chance I ever took,
And I don’t know what it means or what it makes me.
Not sure what I've lost,
And if I care to look towards missing it.

I know it was too short a time when I was near her.
I wouldn't call myself caught,
But captivated.
It was like being drugged.
Her hands wove a spell into my skin,
Pressed a longing into my chest
That I haven’t truly felt in too long to remember.

Stupid me, I loved her scars,
Tattooed on her arms like snowflakes that hit her skin
And stuck, lacy, to it.
I tried so hard not to break her vow,
Sat with her and asked her who she was.
I think she thought it was an act
But she doesn't know that that was what I meant by kissing her-
I wanted her soul to come out and play,
And lay lithe in the light of the almost-up sun
So that I could see it and let it transform me.

Can you feel a woman’s soul in her lips?
Only if you look. Only if you beg for it to touch yours.
I did,
Unapologetic,
Full of shudders like a struck chord.

But hours before, I lay beside her as she struggled in her conscience
And told her I didn't mind.
What a story behind those eyes,
And chagrined to tell it, she glanced away.
Her fingers twined with mine and it was my struggle then:
To keep it simple.

But.
See.

The quirks of her lips when she’s tired,
The way she squints her eyes when she realizes she’s done it again
Like you've set the sun on her and not warned her first,
Her steadfast denial when the words of awe would slip from my lips
Showing her the side of me that can write a poem about such a beautiful girl,
They tugged at my heart and I bade it sit quiet.
But it ignored me like it usually does
And seeped tenderness into my veins like wine.

She has a little bit of me, I think.
God help me, I really know how to get myself into these messes.
But she does, she’s got the part of me that hoped
Someone like her would prove me wrong that I’d never feel again
Beyond the confines of my control.
She stole it with her soft lips
Pulled my resistance from me and turned it willing.
And today I woke up
Happy to have lost it.

The flames of the furnace (well-travelled by wind
slowly glazing the rags of gray women chagrined
at the sight of a hair fleeing tresses now thinned)
sometimes billow like waves flooding naves through the night,
when the lightning peeks in where the tension hangs tight
while the lanterns, alarmed, appear fulgent with fright.

Having lost both his hands, and now dancing for dimes,
Captain Hook haunts the alleyway's rivers of rhymes,
sometimes singing or prancing to mimic the mimes
with white faces contorted to pillars of pain,
as the ringmaster murmurs “we're all the insane”
and the inmates dunk donuts in droplets of rain.

With their hammers in hand, in their plum pinafores,
Satan's soldiers of fortune wield powers of Thor's
leaving blood on bent bodies, the tombstones of wars
lining highways and byways  with manna and gold
for the mastermind movers, survivors consoled
with some pie in Valhalla (or so they've been told).

Above boulevards, battered with batches of bricks,
flys the Duchess of Dawdle on waxed candlesticks;
while she watches, debauches, her ****** tricks
as he talks (on their walks in the summer-day parks
where a parrot kneels praying, a parakeet barks)
’bout the buffed brazen beaks of the latter-day larks.

Hoary goblins glow gruesome, they leap from the loft
to the hard-hearted rues, shedding tears that they've quaffed
through the night of the dead as the clarinets coughed
and the keepers kept watch so that no one escaped
dingy dungeons where priests and their puppets hide caped
behind walls lined with tulips and justice hung draped.

In the Garden of Eaten, where apples once grew,
lie the bones, somewhat blanched, from the last barbecue
and the snakes strut like storks down a lost avenue
along tracks  like the cracks on the mask of the moon
all alight with the shadows that seep down a dune
as the firefly crawls from a crimson cocoon.

Phantom trains travel tunnels (dispatched in all haste),
voiding tickets to nowhere, it seems such a waste
to see roadblocks with red lights at dead ends misplaced
at the base of the bowels of the bottomless pit
where reflections of life seem so ****** counterfeit
from the back of the eyes of the blind hypocrite.

Lady cockroaches, camped in the Countesses' beds,
are commanding crusaders to fit arrowheads
to the ends of burnt bridges suspended by threads
from frayed thongs of diminutive bald balladeers
taunting Cerby, the three-headed dog, serving beers
to the pagan disciples of bold puppeteers.

The oceans lay barren, the garbage dumps filling
with fracking and cracking and lead water spilling,
for milling and drilling are thrilling but killing
the birds and the beasts and the tea leaves, soon falling,
yet gurus roast chestnuts but can't heed their calling
while mauling and crawling on knees while they're brawling.

Unshorn sheep in the meadow are led to the bay
to be brainwashed and fleeced, trusting donkeys that bray
of the virtues of demons that haunt yesterday,
while the vultures deflower the turtle dove lanes
where the blood trickles up and the cruel crimson stains
Easter eggshells and feathers – that’s all that remains.

One eyed bees pilot lines through electrical storms
and blind hornets hum hymns when they're swirling in swarms
while the rest are repressed as the blue marble warms
(regent Queens losing sight that the end has begun)
and for eyes of the ewes, veils of wool have been spun  
and the wasps fly their flags from the **** of a gun.

Seven trumpets (attempting to echo the horns
of the Siamese goats and the three Unicorns
giving birth to the mirth in the temple of thorns)
sound the bugles of sorrow inside of the sea
of crazed lies of the wormwood afloat like a pea
in a pod of dark dolphins that can't disagree.

Often bellowed by barkers, to crowds with no faces,
are words (in their aftermath, leaving no traces)
of picnics and parties in limbo-like places
on paths to perdition where pundits are preaching
and sirens belch bullets while pirates prowl, breaching
the shadow's barbed branches, with whistles blown, screeching.

They're dissecting dissenters that dare to annoy
and then trample with jackboots sent in to destroy,
until taming the toes of the last Gypsy boy
who gets caught in the craw of their cold catacomb
with no rescue by running nor staying at home,
and no freedom to breathe, only rough roads to roam.

Those majestic immovable mountains
As mesmerizing as the prettiest fountains.
No. More so, I know so
Standing here on the highest plateau.
The sky depicts a deep dark hue of blue,
A hue that can make all stress subdue’d.
The air somehow heavier, harder to breathe,
As if God Himself forced my lungs to seethe.
The higher I climbed, the more it burned,
Til the top I reached, and rested, well-earned.
How blue the sky is! I would say,
No wonder they come here to sit and pray.
So close to Heaven, I wonder in awe
If They can see my each and every flaw.
Like a speck on a microscope slide,
I felt Eyes moving with my every stride.
I laughed; what else could I do?
Facing those mountains, refusing to move,
Making their stand, their point to prove.
Stretching far beyond my scope of sight,
These fearless peaks displayed their might.
It was me versus God, no one else there.
I was all alone in the cold thin air.
Now is the time to ask, I thought,
Of all the questions and answers I sought.
I glared at the heavens and began to vent
On why things happened, and what they meant.
And on the mysteries of life, time, and space
Why some people are good, while others disgrace.
Can there be no right in a wrong-filled world,
Where hope is dying, withered, and curled?

O why must Your will be done?
When I have fallen,
  Is that when You’ve won?
Why do You listen, and help me not?
Do You watch me in silence,
  Or have You just forgot?

Nothing.

I waited for something, an answer, a sign,
Something amazing, something divine.
My yells were turned into echoing spears
Of anger, frustration, and fading tears.
So this is my answer, I mused, understanding.
My life unto you I will be handing.
For I am to walk this earth alone
Soul ever pining for one like my own.
My greatest desire caught in the wind
Carrying my hopes, now chagrined.
But here the mountains will not tire,
They will forever rise higher and higher.
Making their point, remaining unshaken
Here their honor will not be taken.
At last, I shuffled down the gentle *****
Clinging to one last, final, hope.

A gentle breeze brushed against my cheek,
Could something this subtle be what I seek?
I thought of my family and friends who care,
The ones who have stories and memories to share:
Speeding on the highway with the windows down
Yelling with the radio from town to town.
Dancing ‘round cones on a dark-lit stage,
And making money at minimum wage.
Of awkward hawks and dynasties,
And engines failing overseas.
Discussing life, women, and the mind,
And how one so insightful can be so blind.

An epiphany occurred right then and there,
That I wasn’t alone; I shouldn’t despair.
And that ever-gentle breeze picked up once again
Aiding my trek down the gentle terrain.
The mountains continue their looming presence
But for now they don’t seem as intense.
As I set foot onto solid, flat ground
I realized I was lost, and now I’ve been found.

Upon entering the orchestra pit to take my
chair, I noticed someone else was sitting there.
My ressentiment was without notes;
therefore, I was unable to emote.
With my head hanging down,
I felt chagrined because no one
would allow me in.

Up the dark streets I began to walk,
pondering my dreary thoughts.
What had happened to cause this rift?
Perhaps I never possessed a gift.
The playing of the music was sublime
but maybe it was just imagined
in my mind.

It's very quiet and lonely on ths block
except for the ticking of a clock.
The time has come for me to step outside
the fray and determine if there is value
in what I have to say.

Bill loaded the truck with hard red winter wheat
One night so as to beat the scales at morning light.

Before sun up, he kissed Margie on the cheek
And roared out of the yard,
Overload springs sagging,
Engine fierce, but groaning,
Toward the town.

Two miles out,
The scale light said "Open,"
Giving Bill a momentary chill.

Shifting down, he exited
Before arriving Scale Hill.
A gravel detour waited
To take him on the long way 'round
And bring him back the other side of town.

Most situations similar
Go from bad to worse.
The truck eased down into a swale.

Beneath the surface gravel,
A bed of soggy clay
****** down the wheels
And stopped the farmer's way.

The creaking truck began to settle,
Testing Bill and
Leaving him chagrined
As the Transportation Deputy
Drove up to see the mess.

"Looks like you need a pull!"

What could Bill say?

And so he took the offer,
Then followed flashing lights
Back to the scale, and paid
A hefty fee to compensate
For being cheap too early
And learning much too late.