The ice sifting in my glass
melts as the full moon sets
Another vice, constricting,
like a tightly wound corset
I can't be around so many people
in such familiar atmospheres
without a mixed drink and a cigarette
intervening through my beers

On her phone, at the table
She seems alone but not ashamed
I wonder if a single person here
could even guess her name
For a little liquid courage
I finish up my drink
I transfer to a closer chair
and ask on what she thinks

"I've got a past consumed by lovers
and a future filled with death
But the only thing I've ever wanted
was someone else inside my head
I want to hear somebody understand
that I don't always feel so fine"
I think I start to fall in love
as she pirouettes her glass of wine

She tells me how she grew up
on shattered hopes and dreams
Yet everything she's ever needed
has been well within her reach
The scars that she has
they paint a vivid history
A reminder of the past
A tour guide, makeshift, just for me

We talk a little longer
We joke and we sing
Halfway through her bottle
her ride informs us she's leaving
She says "I think I'm gunna miss you
when I'm alone laying in bed
Unless you want to take me there
and tuck me in instead"

We head out to the main street
where I hail us a taxi
She says she wants to split my headphones
and hear something relaxing
So we listen to Alcoa
Cab Rides & Cigarettes
I never knew that such a sad song
Could evoke such an affect




I dropped
her off
and left

But I'm glad
that we
had met

And I've never been good
with secrets to keep,
but I can lie white,
right through my teeth.

It was not smoke getting in my eyes;
More likely the third shot of Wild Turkey
In relatively short order
Which made my eyes a bit misty.
I had come up North to that cold cow country north of the Thruway,
Ostensibly to reconnect with the prospective love of my life
To start anew, to set things aright
(She was a grad student, Electrical Engineering
But not precise at all--she was mercurial, Plath-esque,
Prone to both epochs of silent introspection
And inexplicable spontaneous combustions of rage.
I heard later she’d dropped out of the program
Without a word to advisors or anyone else.)
It had not ended up hearts and flowers,
The breakup, which left feelings bruised and china broken,
Was both unpleasant and irrevocable,
So with an evening to **** before the next day’s flight
(Out of Ottawa, **** near a two hour drive)
I was haunting a bar stool
At the prototypical North Country townie bar:
An endless series of the owner’s cousins jamming on stage,
Several dogs wandering the premises
A veritable kaleidoscope of buffalo plaid
In shades of red, green, and gray.
In such places on such occasions, somebody ends up as your buddy,
Which is how I came to be doing shots with one of the regulars
Who listened intently, sympathetically to my particular tale of woe
Until such point he blurted out (if one can blurt something sotto voce)
I used to bone a girl in the nuthouse up in Ogdensburg.

The particulars of the liaison came gushing out like whitewater;
He’d been laid off from the Alcoa plant up in Massena,
And landed a temp job at the state mental hospital.
There had been, so he said, no shy romancing, no overt flirtation
(And as my drinking buddy pro tem put it,
It’s not like we could do dinner and a movie)
She’d simply followed him out to the trash compactor
And, the whining of cardboard
Going to meet its maker serving as cover,
They had simply let Nature take its course.

The girl was not like the other denizens
Of that particular soft-walled motel,
A broken factory-second of a human being;
Christ, she was beautiful, he lamented,
Red hair, skin like half-and-half,
Green eyes that ate you up and spit you back out again.
He’d never been able to figure out the attraction--
I was just a schlub guy who’d never had anything but schlub girls
But he said that she’d told him she loved him--no more than that,
He was her very salvation, the feeling mutual enough that he said
If I’d been there any longer,
I probably would have tried to bust her out myself.

He found out later that she’d been put inside for killing her old man,
Hacking him into dog-food sized bits,
Then walling up the pieces in her dining room,
But he insisted, slapping his palm on the bar,
Swear to God, even if I knew that
I would have risked sneaking her over the border anyway.  
I asked why he’d never tried to hook up with her on the outside.
He stared straight ahead for a few moments.  
I dunno.  I heard she hung herself, but I dunno.
We drank more or less in silence after that,
As there wasn’t a hell of lot more either of us could say,
And as I drove the sparseness of southern Ontario the next morning,
I said a silent thanks to whom or whatever kept me
From giving voice to the urge to express my respect and admiration
For any woman with the ability to hang drywall.

He is, to his way of thinking, the only one wearing shorts;
The nine young men with him, baggy-wearing and body-pierced,
Swoosh-adorned from head to toe,
Sporting something which seem close kin
To blown-up Bermudas or women’s culottes.
Back in the day they would have been laughed right off the courts,
But it is not his day any longer, as he is constantly reminded;
He wears shorts that merit the term, old leather Converse All-Stars
Cracked and faded as the berm of the back roads
In this out-of-the way locale,
A faded and decades-laundered jersey
Bearing the name of a long-defunct auto dealership.
The kids call him “Jumping Toyota.”
Yo, Toyota—no dunkin’ on us tonight, OK?
Hollering and laughing as they dap and jump-and-bump,
Mimicking playground ballers in cities
They have never been within three hundred miles of,
And he smiles in grim resignation,
Knowing he might get a fingertip on the rim on a good day.
His game is strictly cerebral, horizontal now,
The muted, pastel joy of a solid, timely pick
Or well-thrown bounce pass
Has become his vehicle of blacktop epiphany,
And he eases up now and then on the offensive end
To provide succor to tendons and ligaments
Which, in spite of admonitions to himself
That at your age you need to take it easy, *******
Will still register their protests a very few hours from now
Leading to tortured grimaces and the occasional audible grunt,
As he holds his place on the third-shift line at the Alcoa plant
Bringing his co-workers to ask him,
In that hazy place between bemused and stupefied
Man, don’t tell me you’re still playin’ ball?
Once in a while, though, he will still drive hard towards the tin
And, eighteen again for the a snapshot of a moment,
He will stop on a dime and drop a jump shot
Making no noise whatsoever
Save for the whispery snap of the bottom of the net,
Sound every bit the same as it was
Before his knees and ankles went rogue.
Outside the chain-link fence, a young man plugged into his iPod
Bobs his head in time to some unheard song
As he leans in an approximation of nonchalance
Against a great old elm tree
(Branches bedraggled and drooping,
Giving it the air of some old warlock gesturing in mock-menace
Though his wand has gone a-gleaming,
His magic having deserted him as well)
Which bears a large painted orange circle
Signifying its imminent destruction.

If life had made up a mind,
in the neighborhood I formed from
communally, we might all notice, we'ld agree,
we might not be the first to say, we know.

But you know, life, or the active agents of it,
makes up our minds willingness to look, see if it

might be meaningful when seen another way.

The flipside of freedom to choose, what may
be taught
to children, and what must not,
under any circumstances, be allowed known,

before a child has reached the bloom of youth,
the useful strength age, draft age,
pulled into the slipstream
of easy will
to prove worth, true grit, traction,
hobnail boots, true secret weapon, stick
and stay, and make it pay, the exploitation
unwinding wars perfected reasonings,
to the victors go the spoils, boys,

discomplication has begun, the unraveling
of ever, once again, the stories tell, the tale,
told in tapestry since Carol King, at least,

during the era of top-forty aimed at boomers,
the largest cohort of like-minded consumers,
ever propagated using pride of new knowing,
to push the value proposition
in Alcoa over Kaiser.

What local tax-base funded schools,
were required to do, in Massachusetts,
as Brahmin first intention to mass convert,
depended on a deluder, and a deceiver,
to do the work,
first make believe God can hate you,
for knowing what Eve knew, some how.

Original disconnection from the wisdom,
sin leaves no mark, but in the faith abused,

to aim, and miss, leaves no stain, aim right…

use the logic words prove, knowing one
is not enough, each can mean so many-
possible provables, using patience, truths as
developed the rules for inclusion in the deme,
the select few among the many called, whom we
deem among the elect, to whom much is given,

from whom much is required, as noblesse oblige,
indeed, duty to God and Nation, County, if you will,

Natural words twist across old sores
from bully brothers, mollified by battle buddies,
those who bore the brunt,
those Bonus Expeditions,
those dust bowl pawns,
those road builders, and bridge builders,
that made the old days look real good
on television… Dizzy Dean,
and ***** Mays, and that one year,
there in the story that took us through
the Sixties, right up to 2024, the summer
any boomer alive in 1954 remembers,
Maris versus Mantle, and the tub scene in ******…
make up the mind that remembers Beatle Wigs,
And Whammo everything, every fad we had,
let that mind never really
recover after the exposure to war, from inside…
that few,
those boys, men, now,
this wedom, tuned to my signal, thinking, dams

break, eventually, all the dams doing damage,
to the original intention allowing letters to work,
break free and wild,
as magi slowly brought back wit,
the bit of branching used
to make us think once
more an old idea, we
think slow, like a all day sucker…
make an image, I, mage of my own eyes,
Lo', I see, and say, hey, you, can you see,

does that flag,
still hold the dowery,
those stars in field of blue
above the BEIC stripes of red,
on a background as white as this?

This vast empty white space,
white wall between us now, you
and we the instigating impulsive wills

to know, sublime, beyond simple,
serious knots to learn to tie,

turbans telling Sikhs, the ontology,
why we are we, the chosen ones, and

the others, those we, must imagine,
have another reason for being, as we

have crossbred, or so it seems, as we
continue using old war reasoning schema

constantly trying to find the art official.

Riches and ease of existing, does, in fact,
lead to slavery, the will is made subject
to the feeding power, always, the owner
owns the user's fees, this is only right, see

first come, first served,
woe be the Juans who come late,

get one shot,
blow it, and you blow it for as long as
the will you failed to do was yours as

in the holy scriptures, all versions, common
thread, the planet we became on,

common, clean enough to make use,
we use raw letter A formt secret intent
to think, we used to say, no word wasted,
to the t we cross and the I we dot. or don’t/
recall each inflection in the fashion shown
courtly, while
in judgment found being wanting,
will to make a way to reimagine, a we to
think the original intention taught to you, for your
attention paid, intently, learning, we who read,

know more than they who can, but don't.

Some learn late, some never learn.
Fools make children laugh, who pays the fools?

If I die before you read this, did the words feel flat?

I trow not, letting this mind found made up, be
just right, among unnaturally neighborly bears,
some thing lingers from first intentions,
it truly can be imagined, just so.

After all the amendments needed.
To undo the original malintentions,

tie your hopes to those whose riches came
from ancient forms of diversion during deciding

the fate of the functioning laboring classes.

This is now the zone f-
from Gol'ilocks, original intent.

fsure, strue, suptyou
step on a crack, breaks yo momma back.