the third day of spring, pear blossoms fall like snowflakes
then disappear in the new grass

this blanket coming green after a russet winter
during which the old man took shovel to earth
to bury her last Retriever

the runt of the litter, yet it grew strong
and outlived her by only a fortnight, after sniffing her dormant beds, lying at the foot of her lawn chair

as if the canine divined where he last saw her:

lounging in the yard, reading Dickinson under early March light,
sipping a mint tea, scratching the pet's ears;

she passed there, under the same trees, winter's survivors
not yet in bloom

though full of budding promise, unrealized, unseen, but there even as they lay her in the ground

kayaking, on the same lake
since college, two score before
by the tiny bay ice fishermen swore
was haunted--having lost one
of their own, only last winter

if the dead man's spirit lingered
he hadn't heard or seen it, and the bay,
though small, was deep, calm

he rowed daily to this big cove
a treasure trove of quiet and color
without a house or pier in sight

as the sun was sinking
into the lake one August eve
he heard a hissing from the thick
stands of pine

webbed feet, he did not imagine
could be as treacherous as talons
but the were, and the knobby beak
of this mad mute swan felt like pliers
when it yanked on his ear, ripping
nearly half of it off

it took but one sharp blow
from his oar to thwart the attack
and the giant bird disappeared
into the dusk

in its wake a pool of blood
and pain he had not felt since hot shrapnel
pierced his young shoulder
in that crazy Asian war

the battle lasted
but a few manic moments
as is the case with most wars of the flesh
though long enough to end his silent sojourns
on this still blue glass, now shattered
by flapping limbs of man and beast

fine Furhman's Funeral Home
used the best alchemy money could
buy, to keep her flesh fresh

and a master seamstress
sewed her wicked wounds so not
a single soul could see

she was stabbed forty times
from her rubicund cheeks to her
pedicured toes

Furhman's was the best, above
the mediocre rest, in gifting mourners
with a pleasant view

when I got their bill in the mail
it had an itemized list, which included
a charge I had to contest

not because of penury or pettiness
for I am a wealthy weeping father, but
I couldn't see spending a red dime

for crimson polish they painted
on dead toes, slid in slick hose, and
hid in patent leather shoes

my wife said write a check for the
full amount, crying this was not about
what we the living could yet see

Baton Rouge, April, 1989

For some reason,
I walk softly on this ground
Expecting perhaps to be chided
if I make an unwelcome sound

Among stone sentinels in scattered rows
beside a clear stream that perpetually flows
are markers with names both common and bold
for mourners and the curious all to behold

Some come to release dammed up tears
others to tease their deepest fears
Some like I tread so lightly they leave no tracks
but others come bearing burdens like heavy sacks

I read the dates and do the simple math
and create my own tales of each soul’s path
Some lived eighty, some lived less
and others carved numbers seemed to confess
that the trail they walked was likely brief
and with each breath they exhaled cold hard grief

But my stories are surely not real
and my reveries can hardly conceal
what I conjure up among these standing stones
and the crumbling and hidden sacred bones
are tales that mask the shivering thought
that soon I will rest in a similar plot

For some reason,
I walk softy on this holy soil
and in some coming season
I will finish my toil
And lie near this same clear stream
and begin my own blank eternal dream

when the shining glass looks back at us
like a stalled rerun of our personal opera of soap
and the technicolor turns to charcoal gray
we know we are coming to the end of our day

and we look to smaller spaces,
those “windows to the soul”,
for a reflection of who we are,
or were
they cast an obligatory glance
or do an avoidance dance
when we give an imploring stare
to see if they know, we are still there

each day fewer shine bright or glitter with glee
and we wonder what happened to me
the me they saw and sought after
in the colored world of before

others disappear into their own dark night
long having endured the inevitable plight
of the cold mirror’s still, shattering view
and disappearing eyes of all but a few
who see us faintly
in the light that remains

the clanking
of the radiator
the only sound

except her breaths
which she counts, as if
she knows the finite number
until her last

her coffee cold;
in it she sees the night
from which she came:
the blind, deaf walkers,
the fuming taxis she left
in the square streets

her eyes well
with the last drops
of the last light
of the last star
in her galaxy
of loss

only one tear falls
into her cradled cup
where it vanishes into
the indifferent sea

she sups it slowly
back inside, where night belongs
but never stays

I am the age at which you died
no comely pictures immortalize me,
though I am not washed white with time
like you

a lone silver streak stripes my chin

many would say
you were too sensitive for this world
thus rushing your years
and guiding the barrel to your mouth

I would pit my pain
against your Nobel torments any day
if such things be a contest,
what is not, though
a rabid race to the grave?

but who would really win?
for your mother’s madness did not leave you
skittering around like a cat on a hot tin roof
and your father’s anvil hands
did not leave scarlet letters
on your skinny legs

excuse me then, if I don’t
grant you a capital letter in your name
excuse me if I don’t applaud your time in the ring
or say bravo to the iconoclast
for your sparse use of words
(though, “for sale, baby shoes, never worn” was…perfect)
excuse me if I don’t think your readable feasts
should be on everyman’s menu

you were but a man
who drank and ate and fought and ******
until you could no more and decided there was nothing left
I respect your triggered choice and do not call it craven
but janitors aren’t made legends
they just clean your brains
from the floor

I need to write a letter, in curling cursive blue,
and mail it to me, it doesn't matter what the words say
I just want to see them scrawled on the page, to remind me
I am seventy minus eight, and my symmetry in script
is increasingly askew

I know this
when I press ******* the pen,
when I fold the paper, lick the envelope,
and drop it in the blue metal world where its flat life
commingles with strangers until it comes back to my red and white box,
into my black and white life, where the average of the two is gray,
the growing, groping color of my beard,
and the hair on my heaving chest.

I need not even open it to know I have forgotten
what secrets I writ...the name and address suffice,
showing me not who I be or where I be, but how slanted and sloping
my world has become, no matter how vainly I endeavor to keep things straight,
of late, and more tomorrow, my dysgraphic lines
tell the truer tale, in the simple scribbled letter
I wrote to me

Life

a
death
sentence
commuted
briefly
while
I
dream
I’m
awake

93 million miles Ra’s rays travel
and light your cratered face

as you rise between monoliths
where janitors man buffers

and ambitious white collars sit by crumpled fast food wrappers
devouring data, dreaming of their own ascension

while you climb ten floors a minute

tomorrow, our wide world will shave a corner from you
in a fortnight, you will be a white whisper

though surely as our stone spins, you will again
become gibbous--then regally full

inside the scrapers, the buffers yet buzz,
the aspiring giants yet yearn for more

while you remain, silent light in the night,
unperturbed by their folly

George told me,
"ain't how long you live,
but how you live that counts"
strange he had clung to this
rock for double eights

and that he swore he'd jump
from a plane when he hit ninety, without
a parachute if he chose

those long linoleum journeys
when I wheeled him from his room to the dining hall
were the best part of my day

a minimum wage slave,
ending my graveyard shift
watching one after another leave
a thousand different ways

he called me "brown sugar"
I took no offense, for colored girls get deaf to such
jabs before we get bras

I knew, from him,
it was a term of endearment
since his red blood had earned
him ****** names like "Charlie Chief"
and "Drunk ***** Joe"
long ago

he told me grabbing melons
along the Pecos beat cotton picking
on the prison farm, and I never asked
how he came to know either

he said his squaw
was dead some forty years
his own trail of tears since
would never dry

no children had lived
to become great warriors
or proud princesses, though
he never said why

when I would leave George
at his table, the end of our daily stroll
he would bless his eggs with words
I didn't know

those who shared the table
sat mute and chewed their cud
as I walked away, I would never fail
to wonder, if I could find
a plane and pilot

he moves the pace of the river,
his home a houseboat

he eschews dry land, for that is where
they are all buried:

a wife, his only son, the anonymous victims
of his rifle's rabid rattle

whatever ghostly litany lives in the lapping of waves
against his hull remains mystery to him

on the water he'll stay, drifting downstream
until he reaches the sea

where he hopes he'll have no memory
of hard earth and tormenting souls

the carpet was her friend  
its woven pile stitched by a Java descendent
just for this sparkling occasion, or a thousand others  
when she slithered across it  
to find the crystal goblet,
or porcelain bowl      

the night began with promise
a phone call from him, or the other him
saying he would be there after dinner
when it was night enough to enter
under cover of darkness  

last time he had entered on the sofa,
though she didn’t remember anything
but rolling onto the floor, and waking the next morn
rug burns on her back, dry tracks of him on her thighs  
and the carpet to the door    

she had asked for more,
more of him, more of the wine, more of the night
that came and went like he, without so much
as a by your leave  

doubtless there would be
other nights, when they would turn off the lights
and sink as one, in a silken simmering sea
together to find treasures
on the ancient floor…  

more likely,
in her world of more,
he would walk away again  
her left draped in sweat,
and the familiar scent  
of disappointment

In the long lingering shadows of last light
the trees do not complain or put up a fight
to keep their dark companions at bay
or cling clumsily to the waning day
the grass will neither wither nor whine
nor ask the hidden orb to continue to shine
but for creatures who wander through incandescent haze
and speak boldly of the passage of days
the long shadows are measured with fear
for a certain number of them make a “year”
and unlike the eternal sea from whence we came
or grass and myriad other things we could name
we hide among shadows when they grow
and beg their source to once again glow

he chose to return home  
to the familiar sights, sounds, smells  
to leave the silent antiseptic Medicare paid
vacation suite behind, for some other sinking soul  

he chose to deny the “in home palliative care”  
for he said it would be like a door to door peddler
you allowed in , one who would never leave
hocking her wares as if he got to keep them  
when she would give the same calming commodities  
to a stranger, the very day he was gone  

they all said, he would be in pitiful pain,
peeling his skin off pain without the magic potions
of modernity, the ones that brought on Morpheus' sleep,
and lapped up miles he had left

he knew though,  he had no miles left  
only a few steps, to the bathroom, perhaps,
if his old soldier’s legs held out, perhaps
he could make it to the yard again one time,
to see the ivy he planted in lesser numbered years,
the cool soft vines he watered and ignored,
until the sun turned them a yawning yellow,
then a brusque brown, perchance he could make it
to their home one more time, before the last speck of green
vanished in the dying light

I didn't choose to be son of a scared Jew
and angry Irishman

who never laid a hand on her, even when
she turned the butcher knife on him

when he tried to stop her from slashing
her red wrung wrists

this spectacle in plain view of 5 children for whom "woe is the world" was daily refrain

I recall Father's blood trail on the concrete between our house and the neighbor's, a surgeon not expecting a bleeding Sunday guest,

but my mother's madness didn't rest on the Christian Sabbath, nor on her own

after that, the shrinks did their magic: Mom did the Mellaril march, the Haldol hop, the Stellazine stomp, and the less alliterative Thorazine shuffle

none of those chemically induced dances did a thing to increase the chances for my mother's salvation

soon she was behind the locked doors of "Ward 30," where I visited and Mom told me she had found Jesus

a befuddled revelation since I didn't know she was looking for him--her kin had hung him from a cross and taken the heat ever since

the doctors released her to the street, where she made misty retreat to the hills of Saint Francisco's bay

though she found faint solace in Pacific waters, she would never again see her sons or daughters

half a lifetime later, I found a long lost cousin my mother agreed to see, though not with me, for I was too much a reminder of scars which never heal

she sat with Mother near the end of days, sharing silence, the scent of Salisbury steak, and a view of the distant shore

as my patient cousin rose to leave, my mother finally spoke of a sea she watched turn from cerulean to indigo dusk

childhood beaches my mother did recall: the castles she did craft, the crawling ***** she did follow, the sun bathed sand where she made her bed

far from the one where she now lay, the one in which she would go smoothly into the night, perchance returning to blue waters, where hot blood trails cannot follow

999
were cyber plumed
I,
exhumed
from
exile,
pecked
1000

what did he miss most?
the whip of wind on his face
the unbridled buck of life between his legs
the scent of the saddle
the lathered beast?

the fast pass of the satchel
to the next eager rider, the covenant
he carried in the saddle bags; the one he made
with the Almighty to keep him safe
from the red devils?  

a new century dawned, two score
years since the hot rides were quick
made obsolete by the iron horse, the poles
and lines that brought Morse's magic,
ticking time electric

what did he miss most?
perhaps the deep, unperturbed sleep
after the ride--slumber filled with liquid dreams,  
gifts bestowed by a condign contentment
from his brutish labor

she wrote an entire novel
about a man who cut his hand
on a can of sardines

he found in a silent cupboard
of a prairie house abandoned since
the dust bowl, or perhaps since
the eighth day of creation

the can he opened with a rusty blade
he found in yet another home of ghosts
on a treeless lane in Topeka

where he spent
four naked nights
hiding from the cruelest January,
his memories, and the devil

who his mama said eschewed the cold
and he believed her, but built a fire all the same
until a fat ****** sheriff came
and sent him into the night

where a wailing wind waited
and blew him south through the dark
like just another tumbleweed

when he finally
landed, dry and thrashed
in his new sagging palace
the snows had melted,
the winds calmed

there he found fine fodder
in a tin with sailor standing proud
a feast of fish at his feet

was a shame to behead
the mariner with such a dull tool
only to find mush and ancient fetor
anointed by three drops of his red blood
the can demanded in exchange
for its long dead bounty

I asked him
                    the old one
how to  t-r-a-c-k and trap
find
      fine  
             l    i    n    e    s
                                      in fresh dirt
                                                          s ­  i   f   t    through the carrion
                                                         ­ they did not devour
                                                          ­                                  s   m   e   l   l    the droppings
                                                                ­                            to know even more
                                                            ­                                of their sacred work

even with his eyes closed
                                          he knew
                                                         but did not say
                                                         that I am among
                                                         the lazy learned
                                                         ­ who did not see
                                                                ­                    the p-r-i-n-t-s
                                                                ­                    I leave,
                                                                ­                    and the ones I read
                                                            ­                        are also
                                                                ­                    t-r-a-c-k-s
                                 ­                                                              that may lead
                                                                ­                                               to traps

hey!
you lookin’ at me?
like you would if I wasn’t here
is it my stewed stench you fear?
you lookin’ at me?
you wonder at all where I been?
or if I committed the original sin?
you lookin at me?
like I’m some bug you gotta crush
or some load you forgot to flush?
you lookin at me?
how ‘bout I sit beside you in your holy hall?
would you then know you too could fall?
you lookin’ at me?
**** no
I ain’t even here

in black sky above us, the shreiks
of the shells cut the air, sharp, until
the dreaded booms which tell us
how close

how close the rounds landed
to our trench, where we hunker, drenched
in dreck, mud and blood, an unwilling
audience to this martial symphony

screams stream skyward
and comingle with the next volley,
a cacophonous courtship of vibrations,
invisible, but we know it's there

a miserable marriage of metal
and flesh--monkeys made into men
who ****** their own; who are determined
to sing these sour songs

when the lobbies stop, the only sounds
are the winds, the ones which will gently carry
the sounds of men moaning, crying,
praying for silence

gold, round
it has felt a thousand hands
in sixty years

tomorrow it will be
replaced, the dead door
along with it

the old brass globe
knows nothing of gentrification;
its desecration of memory:

the carpenter who bore its hole
the first child to turn the **** to play;
the last man to yank it in anger

when he felt the bowels of defeat,
the bane of bankruptcy--the effluent epiphany
of eviction

how many tales began with
the spinning of the circle, the opening
of the door, letting in the light

tomorrow, and tomorrow, the door,
the handle, will rest in the landfill, the
graveyard of myriad doorknobs

all with their own stories of auspicious
beginnings, mysterious twists and turns--
plots thickened by the hands of time

you found me
in a second hand store
on Lincoln Avenue

you bought me
for nine dollars and tax because
you thought I was a mandolin

you told Tryone, the clerk
who would sell me into slavery, your
wife always wanted one

you took me home to your
twelfth story apartment; I discovered
your wife was gone many years

but her photo on the living
room wall got to see me, and hear
your lament:

you wished you would have
found me seasons sooner--but my
strings were rusted even then

my last song played at a bar mitzvah
before your hair turned white, before
your wife's many colored regrets

you played me but once and didn't
like what I had to say--you tossed me
from your balcony to the street

I made the same flight your wife did,
landed in the same spot; yes, I suspect she was  
more a disappointed music lover than you

what grand abstraction
lies behind your words,
word weaver extraordinaire?
I see only a concrete grid,
a stenciled number, and glass bulb tears
some evidence of your years--tire tread trails, a pothole here and there
a worn fence to keep intruders at bay
but no cars resting
is that why you weep?
does being alone
with your number take its toll?
if I stroll your pages,
will the answer be revealed?
or will I yet be wandering
on an empty asphalt plain
trying vainly to gain, access
to some invisible door?
could you not have named your tale
with more banal words?
could the hero not have been
a John Doe sweeping the weeping lot
or a Mary Doe painting a happy ending?
was not to be,
I see, for
when I begin to absorb the light
of your pages,
I forget the tome’s beguiling name
and what the crying lot once had to say

every night, the klaxon
wailed, like a hound lost in the fog

Mum and I would be sitting down
to dinner when the beast began bellowing

she would quip, them Gerrys want me
on thin rations, and to the cellar we scuttled

Mum would bring a votive candle, a pale of water;
I would grab Tag, our shivering terrier

in our tiny circle of timid light, we would wait and wonder,
how far were they? what would the next sun reveal?

on All Saints Eve, the house shuddered; the dust
from its two centuries drifted down on us like fine rain

then all was still, until we fell asleep--maybe she was
dreaming of Father, and what field now held him

I was not--sleep had taken me but a moment before
our tired beams moaned and gave way

Tag was then barking through his tremors, and she lay
still in the rubble, her eyes slit open

though only enough to see I was there to bury
her, in green pasture

far from this gloom, her quivering pet  
and orphaned manchild

my old street,  
a perfect bicycle drag strip,
needed no gutters--all rains drained
into the bay  

but today,
the lane where
I learned to drive, is a place gulls dance
and killdeer prance

this river
is a dozen inches deep
at street’s end, but a yard and growing at the bay
where the hot dog stand once steamed  

the melting monsters
were a million miles from us, you know;
a threat to a Titanic, though  surely inconsequential
to the Atlantic, or so it seemed

all the hype about heat, carbon emissions,
ozone’s demise, and other gassy notions, we thought
belonged in tomorrow’s world of worry  

but tomorrow became today,
and now it’s commonplace to say,
"the shoreline receded--that neighborhood’s gone."    

a continent constricted,
a lowly inch a year, by greed or divine design?
retribution from an earth that never forgets?
or a fickle force we cannot fathom?  

I am ancient now, though I recall those admonitions,
ambiguities that fueled futile debate, until it was too late
and here I be, watching waters at low tide, lapping
against my feet on a once dry and driven street

in the green searing sea of afternoon
my gaze fixed on his black pajama clad frame
the croaking canopy of jungle shading his tanned face
( I never knew why they were called a yellow race)
my hands had followed some voiceless lethal command before
but only in faceless night
that could not only conceal my fright
but also keep me from seeing more than shifting shapes
that one could have convinced me were eyeless, thin apes
flipping the switch and popping the rounds had been no easy task
but darkness had always been a convenient mask
did he see my eyes digesting the scene if front of me?
this little man called my enemy, AKA VC or Victor Charlie?
did he have time to think of my malicious intent?
(that I would only after the fact invent)
or were his last visions not of my pimple pocked face
but of richer times in some faraway place
where he planted and played and heard simple songs
and couldn’t imagine the treacherous throngs
who would come to “save” his jungled land
but could never fully understand
why we couldn’t just leave them alone
I can’t say what his final racing thoughts could have been
but I do know that mine were deafened by the din
of my rapid rifle fire that caused his demise
and I only remember I could see his eyes

dear diary
when I write in you
in cursing cursive, indelible blue
I don't expect you keep my secrets
one day, strangers who professed to love me
will open your paisley cover

you will surprise
those interlopers, won't you,
with fierce fires, thick thunderbolts drawn
by a demented hand, in a razor red
never never land    

my confessions
will jump from the page,
eager creatures, long locked
in your pale parchment, their patience
forever tested, ready to tell
terrible tales

dear diary,
where were the benevolent schemes
and childlike dreams you expected?
in others deluded epistles to themselves,
necessary fiction, for it is much more important
to fool oneself than the indifferent world

my daughter bought me one
of those extensions for my cellphone--to take selfies
so I wouldn't forget who I was--as if looking at a "me"
in the face of my phone would remind me
I am John Smith, I am 73

and I had been an engineer
at a missile range for a 45 years and two months
that I had lost a finger in Vietnam and my wife
died in a automobile accident three years ago
and her name was Emma

but my daughter says I never,
not once called her mother anything
but "M" and now, whenever I read,
hear, say or write the letter M
I get a lump in my throat

my daughter has notes taped
on every surface of my house, reminding
me to eat, and take my meds--she placed
a big one on the door: DON'T GO OUTSIDE
but I wouldn't anyway

I like it here, where I think
I have been a long time, and it is filled
with things my daughter calls memories
and photos of a lady I don't recognize
with a sticky note on each one

the notes are all yellow and have
an "M" on them; I get that lump in my throat
when I see them, and sometimes water comes
from my eyes, though I don't know why
because Emma didn't look like that

their walls pale peach, eggshell
tiny flowered paper in the dining room
wood panels in the den

but then, when the boy's voice changed
and hair began to stubble his face, he painted
his own space

eleven by a dozen feet,
all scarlet as Camara rose  
though the can said,
“Passion Red”  

when daylight shined
on these crimson plains, his mother swore
she saw flickering flames  

the boy told her there was no fire
but to extinguish her ire, he painted again,
a stark white, but in just the right light
she still saw a simpering glow    

off to college he went, a full day
she spent, pressing the roller firm against his walls,
extracting every red drop that remained, until
again in perfect light, she was certain  
she saw imps and fallen angels  
dancing in delight

when I returned, things had changed  
while the wild white dogs still gnawed
at their prostrate prey, by the tracks we all cross,
they were larger, and raised their mongrel heads
only at the scent of me  
for I now could walk so I would not be seen  
or heard by their blue black tongues  
my children’s children were not there    
perhaps wandering in another's field
of dreams, with another’s eyes,
perchance another’s thumping heart  
all the homes were old, and smelled of the past, yet
the young ones inside were who I hoped they would be  
filled with the bright eyed promise of tomorrow  
though I tried to know them, they only smiled,  
spoke a language I could not understand,  
and left each morn without me, wandering
with the beggars and beasts, on trails I could not see  
the sun shone through every door  
sending shafts of light at my invisible feet  
without warming them or giving them
safe passage among the same old dogs
I longed to know, but who never saw me
again

I am there
but time is standing still
though the river rushes past
to remind me of the grave grip of gravity,
the rolling of this tiny rock
and the necessary fiction of minutes

no wound clock woes me
no hunger torments me
no trail awaits my feet

I am there
with my line to the depths I know hold treasures
blocked from my deluded eyes
by reflections of blue-gray skies

a simple tug on my wrist
pulls me farther from the burdened banks
to which I must ultimately return
but not for an eternal while
while my line is taut
and the curse of time is not
menacingly marching
in this dreamy flow

every night, before bed,
a simple ritual: he walks to the foyer
and drags the deacon's bench to the door
to keep intruders at bay

has been this way, since
the day he read "In Cold Blood"
and realized what uninvited guests
can do under a god's watchful eye

the belly of the bench holds every bible  
he has ever owned in his four score years
save the one by his bedside, where it sits as sentinel
against other imagined foes and woes  

though he is long deaf, those
who would defile him can yet hear, and
the righteous moan of the bench on the hardwood
would give them pause

or so the old man believes;
as if a simple sound could be so profound
to tip cosmic scales in his favor, save him
from the tyranny of evil men

this very night, before bed
he takes the same walk, shoves the same  
weighted wood against a locked door,
a simple ritual

the Siene does not run red
Eiffel still stands, though both
a million miles farther from our hotel
than they were at our last meal

had we not had a cancelled cruise
we would be listening to blue waves'
soft song in Nice

not now, instead
we hear the sirens' cacophony
premature dirges for the dead
wails of the maimed, yet
unnamed

tomorrow, their biographies will be
in print, their families numb in disbelief
longing for belief

and wishing numbers could be
reversed: 11-13-15, 9-11-01, 12-07-41
or perhaps AD plus one

when will this end, and
how much farther from Eve's
curious breach can we fall

the headline, Avian flu,  
was the first bird that arrived
to mark our beginning  

I was in O'Hare,  
on my first cell, when she agreed
to have dinner

but stuck in JFK, four cells later,
when she asked me to get my things
from her loft

CNN was on the flat screen
the new plague on instant replay,
becoming a stale tale de jour

wings of silver birds
were slicing the night sky
my ticket to ride one
on the bar

I hoped
I wouldn't catch the newest bug
while still in the air