a desire to know
every muscle
governing the movements
in your face
that bring smile
from lapsed synapse
explodes from my meridians
with your name
on the lips of every
captain to my ships
in hopes that my tired thoughts
could find a home
in a harbor not far from your heart

I don't know how to write happy poems
because I don't really believe in them.
I thought angst would die with adolescence,
but alas I can still feel its cold dint.

Perhaps like virginity this goes too;
no longer a creep standing idly by.
Plastic smiles taped to our cardboard faces
and yours alone I felt the need to prise.

That's okay, because the teenaged rosebud
that we claim to be so very unique
is beginning to wither, can't you see?
And now it's the thorns society seeks.

So look out over yonder cityscape.
Your mask shall be shed only by the moon.
Until then, a cartographer of love;
yours that is, we'll still pathetically swoon.

Give me another
Minute alone with you
Give me another
Kiss on the lips
I want to feel that
Future/present
Collision feeling
I want to feel like
I have plans again

when i was 6
i learned to float on my back
eyes closed against the sun
and i zoned out floating
made it all the way to the middle
of carlisle lake
where i woke up
but couldn't swim yet
so i treaded water and
floated away
eyes closed under the sun again

Give me another
Dinner in a tiny college kitchen
Give me another
Twin-bed-sleepless night
I want to feel that
Flying bullet/speeding train/sound barrier
Breaking feeling
I want to feel like
I don't have to make plans
I want to feel like
All roads lead in the same directon
Like I don't need directions
Like you're my direction

I feel like a cartographer
Lost in space
floating
In no discernable direction

I marveled at                            every sunspot,
every freckle on            your naked body.
With my fingers,
I traced them
as though I
were plotting a map,
and I had               set a course
which led to                      your perfection.

i have painted universes on the
backs of paper cranes again and
again,
but i am still too scared to
explore them.

Azure mixed with red
Wine stains ripple the oceans -
Black pen shining through

Some of my
earliest
memories
are of you.

I can hear
your soft
Irish lilt
humming
into my
drowsy ear,
waking me
to a morning
filled with
sunshine.

Half a
century later
I still see us
sitting at your
kitchen table,
I’m a six year old,
spooning warm
tea, dribbling
a soft boiled
egg onto a
piece of
buttered toast.

I remember
smiling at
the laughter
you and grandpa
enjoyed at my
proclamation
that I ate
three breakfasts
every morning.

You were my
connection
to the wisdom
and ways
of the old world;
extolling the luck
of the shamrock,
the lore of
the shillelagh,
recounting
the haunting
mysteries of
the banshees,
the mischief
of leprechauns
and the magic
of nymphs.

You were my
passport  to
a gathering
of the proud
O'Brien and
Cook clans.

You opened
my ears
to the thrill
of distant
Philadelphia
cousins
crooning
folk tunes to
happy bagpipes
while my
widening eyes
watched young
Colleen's
ecstatically jig
the night away
in full regalia
with stiff armed
step dances.

You are
my maternal
cartographer,
your DNA
etched the
map of
Dublin onto
my face.

You are the
wellspring
of the Liffe
that courses
through my
veins.

You were the
cook who
conjured the
nourishing
aromas of
a Sunday’s
sustenance
from a boiling
***; simmering
ham, cabbage
and potato to
succulent
perfection.

It is a
meal
that still
sustains
me.

The warmth
of your apartment,
the dainty doilies
and light filled
lace curtains, the
spoken hopes for a
sweepstakes ticket
and the hushed
murmurs of deep
sadness the
devastating toll
alcoholism
extracts from
a troubled family
steeps deeply
within me.

I see you
kneeling in
prayer;
the muse
of your brogue
whispers endless
strings of Rosary
incantations.

Angelic fingers
anoint each
blessed
alabaster bead
with the piety
of an honest
soul.

You
endlessly
cycled
through
the family’s
litany of
sorrow and
hope.

With a
matrons
fortitude and
an inner strength
women possess
to bear the
weightiest of
burdens; you
sought the
resolution
of release
from the
crush
of worry
and woe,
by diligently
lifting these
delicate
hosannas
to the
Mother
of Sorrows
compassionate ear.

Your petitions to
the Blessed ******
as intercessor,
allays all fears that
your light prayers
will not be lost in
the incomprehensible
clatter resounding
amongst the
heavenly spheres.

You knew
The Mother of
Perpetual Help
understands
and will
ask her
Son
to whisk all
burdens away
with the flick
of his feather
of absolution.

When your
daughter
became
ill you came
to mother us.

You fed us
Thanksgiving
Soup for breakfast,
lunch and dinner
till the last drop
of gratitude was
consumed.

You made sure
homework
assignments
were completed.

You drilled me
with spelling quizzes
made difficult by
my inability
to decipher the letter
H through your Gaelic
Haayche.  

Your exclamations
to “Jesus, Mary and
Joseph” was fair warning
to give Grandma Tippy
extra sway.

You were fond of
cats and took pity
on our mangy
Tom sympathetically
imploring us to
“look at the face of it”
before laying down
another fresh
saucer of milk.

It took me
years to understand
why you would
commence to
polish my
mothers tarnished
silver plated tea service
as the first thing you would
undertake upon
entering the house.

As a house keeper
for the wealthy,
the sparkle
of your daughters
silver plated tea service
was confirmation
that class mobility
and your enduring belief
in America’s economic
democracy was real.

Your daughters tea service
was just as worthy and
on equal footing with
any tea service adorning
Englewood’s finest homes.

At bedtime your
silhouette would
would fill the
doorway of
my bedroom.

The lullaby of
your blessings
filled the room.

From that
safe distance
you would
dip a brush
into a jar
and sprinkle
holy water
onto your
grandchildren.

When you passed
away I beheld
your magnificent
presence in a
state of eternal
repose.  You wore
a blue flowered dress.  
Your clasped hands
held a Rosary.  

I surmised
your closed eyes
were filled with
the visions
of rest and the
soft light of a
glowing glory.

Your lips gently
smiled.  I knew
you were in the
tender arms
of your loving Lord.

The Blessed Mother
now tended you,
coddling a newly
arrived saint
in the loving embrace
of a mother’s
unconditional love.

I thank you and
bless you my beloved
Grandma Tippy.  I am
caring for your
Rosary Beads.
I consider them
a precious gift
and most
valued treasure.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day
Margaret "Grandma Tippy" Minehan
Love Jimmy

Music Selection:
Bill Evans, Danny Boy

Oakland
3/17/12
jbm

I never regret
Asking you
What you're thinking about
Because your mind
Is a maze
And slowly
I am drawing
A map

for Stacy B.,
who is both, of course*



a third floor
walk-up,
to wake
us up,
really up,
perhaps obtain
a provision
to a question,
someone knew
needed answering,
needed us,
also,
to witness and testify

is the dancer,
a diplomat,
or is the diplomat,
a dancing naïf?

hard by the East River,
in a building unheated,
the Brooklyn Hipsters
patrol the streets,
drinking hard,
their homegrown lager,
against the
December winter chill,
all wearing their
very long or very short
hair heads,
in unisex
watch caps

so too,
we have come to watch,
but we are,
uncapped,
open minded,
needy to get it straight,
once and for all

we crossed an
olde Dutch bridge,
having come,
to a land almost overseas,
traveling recklessly,
without our Manhattan
diplomatic immunity pouch

looking for answers for
questions long lingering
in a tall women's New Orleans soul

no biggie -
be both
says the rational fool

irrationally
failing to understand
the logic that
dancing
is more than
just a
single daily, caloric rich,
ration,
but a
blood type,
that doctors
don't easy recognize,
needy for
constant spice transfusions,
perpetual transformation

is this your answer then?

the diplomat departs soon
first, and not before,
having danced in a black hole,
where all is annexed, animated,
but also, annihilated

a dancing metaphor message,
reflective perfect,
of a too oft,
cruel world,
to our official
US of A messenger
of, by and for,
we, the people
of our mutual states,
her audience and employer,
nota bene:

Morocco and Tunisia
beckon you,
lands where dancing is
not a shouk spice for sale,
but we,
our country,
needs someone who can
nonetheless fluently teach and speak,
dance interpretively,
a précis of
how to dance to
reveal our best,
American song

so I have my answer,
and perhaps,
she does too

a dancer first,
a dancer always,
in a national troupe
that I am a member of,
even though I can't dance a lick,
and my Arabic is but
a few healthy and choice curses,
a linguistic skill of mine,
from traveling in many unfamiliar climes,
always, a handy tool

proof positive,
we need specialists,
who can cross boundaries,
real, or cartographer-drawn,
artifice dividers that demand
diplomatic dancer skills in overcoming
a resistant world to
American ideals

so we train our dancers
to be diplomats,
our diplomats
to be dancers,
flexible, but all possessing
that mark of a ramrod carriage,
the upright walk that
is the passport of joy,
of those who dance
for all the world,
an answer so good,
it simply makes
good

NATO confiscated my calculator as a weapon of math destruction

Or

Matches to a pyrotechnic cartographer are weapons of map destruction

Or

Moth eggs in the wardrobe are weapons of mac destruction

Or

Nuclear bombs used in warfare are weapons of mans destruction