Night noises rather know
How to snap
fingers
for heat
While wind
hears puddles shudder
Bashes chimes
all to hell
Rocks the house with no one
in it
Rain pits a heart
Against ungodly hour

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Swainsons_Thrush/

“...But didn't your mother die too?
Back before we came?”
Some thoughts, Dad?
That day for you?
How was it?

Tell me how you woke in gray –  
dressed so uniformly in it
Tell me how you turned away
from all those helpless flowers on the ground
Came back empty to her kitchen
Still filled with the smells of her

Let me see her!  Hear her!
Once!
With any words –

besides the ones about the meat juice on her dress
The roast flung back
to splatter rage
upon the gentle curse
I see reflect
in my own image
across the table from him...

I want to know about the picture on your bureau
Do silent eyes still tuck you in?
She has a kind face that seems unending
I understand why things have gone unsaid

Do you know?
I have been wondering
Sneaking in your room
to pull her down from heaven?
To melt the years
of frosted glass between us?
to touch her face?
To look into her grayish eyes
pretending for a moment – she can really see me
To lay my head against her calico embrace?

Celina Arnell Rodier, 1872 – 1941  (Dad's Mom)

Took this down, but I'm putting it back up after reading a letter by another teacher, deeply questioning his own courage and what has gone wrong In America.
___

Anger, sorrow....
They sometimes converge
in children
The wind explodes them in our hands
and
I hate the world that kills 17 kids
with American Senseless  

Peace--
Impossible possession
The angle of declination
Breath of a moment
  
A violet thread pulled from the hem of day.

I lay on the ground below
the curved hips of the hills at sunset
The aperture of my eyes, my ***, my eyes
and the narrow escape
of mind from body

I am ten again
and they’re calling me falsey
“*******, No bra!”
Shoving them into the lockers
of Holy Name’s pool
My eyes? Brown. My hair? Brown
My body? Invisible, lean and “Leave me alone!
or I’ll punch your lights out!”

Meanwhile, Mom is mortified
but not cause I’m banned from the stupid pool

All I want— is to run bare to the waist
Ride my bike, maniacal  
Be a bird
Swipe ice from the milk truck
Marvel over maggots in garbage
Catch toads, caterpillars, pollywogs in jars

Later, sell lemonade— get rich!
…and pretend…pretend…
till the litany of our names, hollered from the porch
till the street lights come on….



“This is for something you haven’t got yet”
says the matron of the fitting room
Bones in a bathing suit?
What I haven’t got?
or they haven’t got?
will never get—
in their worlds of curtained cubicles
Cause of death:
Strangulation by measuring tape!



In my plaid two-piece
sunburned shoulders, wind-wild hair
By sweat and the afternoon’s imaginings
I built a fortress of sand and stones
to endure forever….

But she— shook the blanket
at the tide’s full reach
Peppered the air with an epoch
Clouds darkening
the wind-torqued sea

Finding my flip-flops, we—
    trudged off…
    into the changing… changing

A beer can, phone book, a grapefruit
and an Advent wreath
with four candles
in its nest of greens
Two weeks
Two lit
Third one's the Pink
a life three quarters spent?

Next weekend
Saturday-- The Sabbath
falls in Hanukkah

“Blessed art thou, Lord our God
King of the universe
who dost create lights of fire...”

I'll light that third-- the pink one
like a barbarian wise woman
who traveled too far along life's way
to find a Jewish baby, wrapped in rags

...or, was it the old guy that night
lying in the street
outside a New England bar

“Oh Christ! Ya gotta be kidding me!”

Nope, He was there alright

Wallowing in the freezing slush
amid his helpless drunken cries
No cell phones then
Scrapped my pizza plans

On foot alone
waving in frustration  
in the passing headlights
a turquoise, wind-crazed scarecrow
_

“Someone's gotta stop?
Someone has to help us, don't they?”
_

Now there are two beer cans
a grapefruit, and a phone book
beside the advent wreath

Third candle lit and leaning out
for hope along the way

On rising heat, killdeer flush
to decoy enemy--
threat to its young that roams too close
They rush to skim on hayish blur
wailing over wildflowers drying

Fretful twitter in perpetual flight
swifts-- twirl and hurl their bits of bodies--
debris
from a cumulonimbus of a late-day sky
toward a ridge of stag horn sumac
presuming horizon primordial
behind which time and city-- drift and wobble
on rising heat-- after rush hour

Rising Heat
Rising--
to meet my mind
on its way down
from my post behind
the laundromat
where I view it all--
rising--
where I usually go in search of quiet
to almost hear the ocean
     two hundred miles away
to strain words from wind
     in careless conversation
to wonder over
     missed whispers....

But not today
In rising heat, I went down
in search of something better--
     your eyes again
     solvent for my presence of mind
     dissolvers of hours and the order of things
But I need an excuse!
     To turn, to trespass, to disturb the peace!
     For your eyes again!
And still I need more-- being feverish, weak
Or?
Or... should I take the cure?
     To deny ...To deny

To deny what?
Overtones from a sea of years?
I don't know!  Whatever it was!
Nothing explain it...

I melt... I'm gone....

On rising heat, killdeer flush
to decoy the enemy--
threat to its young that roams too close
They rush to skim on hayish blur
wailing over wildflowers drying

Fretful twitter in perpetual flight
swifts-- twirl and hurl their bits of bodies--
debris
from a cumulonimbus of a late-day sky
toward a ridge of stag horn sumac
presuming horizon primordial
behind which time and city-- drift and wobble
on rising heat-- after rush hour

*Rising Heat
Rising--
to meet my mind
on its way down
from my post behind
the laundromat
where I view it all--
rising--
where I usually go in search of quiet
to almost hear the ocean
     two hundred miles away
to strain words from wind
     in careless conversation
to wonder over
     missed whispers....

But not today
In rising heat, I went down
in search of something better--
     your eyes again
     solvent for my presence of mind
     dissolvers of hours and the order of things
But I need an excuse!
     To turn, to trespass, to disturb the peace!
     For your eyes again!
And still I need more-- being feverish, weak
Or?
Or... should I take the cure?
     To deny ...To deny

To deny what?
Overtones from a sea of years?
I don't know!  Whatever it was!
Nothing explain it...

I melt... I'm gone....

Was I ten?
I think?
Was it December?
that I became distracted
by the snow's
falling
silence?

The ******'s hills lure me
off
the curving path
toward home--
I surely know
my way--
though
path invisible
snow beyond my knees

Now
but for the patterns of the trees
that etch the skyline
I would be lost...
My love....
...were it not for those
I would be lost

My feet lift depths
Impassible
The snow
impossible--
could it be this deep?
could take this much?
should trudge so far?
beyond
my depth
my breath
a fog-- of
all
I own?

I am wading in the white
down-warmth
Sweat
in spite--
of freezing
of parental threat...
Wind brings tears
to reddened cheeks
Toes, long since numb
...and I am late-- as always

Wipe my nose on sleeve
Pull mittens with my teeth
fumbling
tissues damp in pocket deep

I have gone so far
too far
into the ******'s windings
with my mind

and night is falling
Night is watching
from the hemlocks
now behind
my purpose--
only
in
the gray of sky
the ghostly silence
of the moon rise

I don't know where night came from
How it got here
why I came
only that I want to linger--
longer
than that twinge of fear

Listen...to
soft tick
of snow
against itself

Wind in white pines
saddest of living things
begs a loan of winter winds

The kind of neighborhood
where you can hear someone  
crack a beer
across the street
Behind, in wide open yards
fireworks and laughter light the sky
fireflies take to the under-story
Meanwhile allergy eyes
have turned the stars
to flying saucers

Crickets celebrate
getting lucky
and I am jealous as hell
At 95 degrees
the air is thick
with mosquitos, those little devils
Have found an ear
for their only-known musical composition

“Aggravation in Monotone”

I continued the gentle climb
passed building, birdbath, “bathtub Mary”
and was stopped by the sound--
Endless mission of the river
as she made her way over the rocks of early summer.
I knew I'd found our home
At the top of the stairs
a wooden deck off second floor
Up the fourteen stairs to our new door

I could see her now fully
gleaming
beyond the red oaks and wild cherry
framed unspeakable
by greens
and fragrance of the multiflora rose
just coming into bloom
I could go on-- but there are so few words that fit
the sound of a river so content

She whispered to me between her gurgling song
“Hush....”

My father used to sing this ditty for us:

"Columbus sailed the ocean blue
in 14 hundred 92
He sailed as far as Chicopee Falls
...and there he left his overalls"

When my teacher asked where Columbus landed,
I knew exactly where! Out of my seat, hand waving in the air... "Oooo ooo me! I know!"

"Yes, Liz..."

"Chicopee Falls!!" ...and I argued the accuracy, VEHEMENTLY.

At least Chicopee was a genuine Native Algonquin word, meaning violent waters.

Thanks Dad!

“…Take your place on the Great Mandala as it moves through your brief moment of time…
Win or lose now
You must choose now
and if you lose, you’re only losing your life…”  Peter, Paul, and Mary
___________

Stitching the hem of a prom dress to the
Chicago Convention on TV
Pink brocade, white gloves to the elbow

Night sticks snap skulls

“...and a time on a 27 will always shine a light”

Seven Day War
but neither of us dance

Whispered under weeping willows
“What will become of us?”

“The New Left” scrawled in my yearbook
under Danny’s name
I stared at him puzzled, half-attracted

The New Left came
from Harvard, Radcliffe, Mars?
to the grimy streets of Lowell
to teach us “worker kids”
‘bout our sorry selves

Aloof
from our bad teeth, unplanned pregnancies
stuccoed bungalows
chrome kitchen sets circa ’53
So far beyond

Alienated
by our worn out dens
with proud TV’s
the evening’s beer proclivity

They, weren’t “Right on!”
with the smell of furniture polish and
lifetimes of motor oil on overalls

We were okay to be organized though
before they left—

Because they knew what mattered!
…and “How could WE  know so little!
‘bout Lenin, Marx?
the exploits of profit and endless war?"

How could THEY know so little—
  
about the death down the street
‘bout the conflict caused by *in-house “Pigs”

Husbands in Canada
Brothers in Nam

Dying small-town, piece-work kids
Labor's legacy
Lost bourgeois

Freezing on street corners
Telephone’s tapped
Handing out leaflets

to talk of guns...

“Our people blew up the Bank of America!
You know”

To talk of guns…

While Black Panthers were dying
No ******' around

Hell’s Angels—  graphite ghosts
hover in ****** shadows of shared back yard
Revolutionary panic as
mafia muscle makes an appearance
comes-on to me
sped-up and pulls a pistol!…
_____

Guts ran out the holes in my head

Lonely now
…and not so… ready?

Someone suggested “experience”
to explain for certain
the face on the clock
the of wince of Time
and all the reasons there were to die

Should ‘ave asked why— they called it “acid”

Connecting the dots of despair
I saw it all— for the first time

and lost— everything

Route 84 would not lend me
the light of a star last night
Radio blazing at 75 mph
nonsense noise to chew gum by
Crackling political commentary
Static of distance and thick clouds
Invisible mountains blocking
Memories seeping through the cracks
coating the music in a film
I rub my eyes
watch myself punch alert buttons
But it’s the angels’ jukebox tonight

Roll down the window
Watch the heat escape

Summer again

I am building a castle of ancient stones
pulverized by relentless tides
Dragged across maps by mastodons
and mammoth glaciers
The scouring hiss
the ocean sighs
Time has lulled these smoothly
rolling them in the softest hands of sand
and gels of life’s comings and goings
tenderly tumbling
in the millionth moonrise—
Time deposits them here
wet and glistening

For the girl with the plaid two-piece to gather
Shoulders sun-burnt barely say
one week only,
one week of the fifty two
“It’s the time of the season…”
and daddies on the beach are watching….

She has chosen yet another stone
And the castle continues—
in oblivion to all but her legend…

     The queen will be safe here
     from the rabble
     The disgraced Tristan will surely seek her
     Among these lofty cliffs
     Between the raging circuit of the tide
     Here winds forbid the vengeful mob
     Here lovers learn
     the debt of love’s bad timing
     “Drink ye all of it!”
     --the potion that assigns our sorrow….
     She will not sleep—
     while I chew this gum--  GUM?

Roll down the window!

Angels escape with the heat
Waking me with the brush of their wings

As that eighteen-wheeler hugs my flank
And leans on the horn
Lights flashing
Rude rumbling under right tires
Tantrum of snow
In the draft of mass and velocity

…and the angels?
They’ve chosen another good one!
They must’ve liked the 80’s
Their wings slapping the windshield madly  
Their hands steady the wheel

Another Nor'easter
dims the sky
while it makes its plans
to howl all night
getting rough with spring
under white drifting blankets
crushing her crocuses
benching her robins
yet again

An ant crawling on the edge of my hankerchief.
Testing the summer air with hopeful antennas
I let her stay

I offer you an apple
and you're lost

The wind is up and roaring mad
Birds and insects fly between its gusts
There is no other way
to get around
They can hear it coming
Between the crying aching limbs
and begging chimes
The wind is having at it
tossing trash cans down the street
Robbins grounded to the lawns
The wind will have its say
or pitch them against the buildings
like a threat

About 3:00 AM, 

I wrote to someone here
on waking
from a dream
of waking-- into a death
of darkness and dread
A nuclear winter's night
without the hope
of light or heat again
We fumbled to be in each other's arms
beneath the quilt and blanket
to weave our warmth
for this last time
trying to comfort
Waiting for that moment
of knowing by the silence...
of the other’s breath
who would  truly be

alone
and the last….
_

In the dream, something had gone terribly wrong worldwide, with origins of the problem out-of-sight on the moon?  Dreams do not make the best of sense, but I’ve had variations of this one multiple times.  

Nuclear winter is the hypothesis that suggests the sun could be totally obscured for years by the ash of global nuclear war or debris from a massive volcanic eruption.  It could also be caused by an asteroid striking the earth. 
Those on the coast would be wiped out first.  Those inland would experience the poem above.



Consciousness of being utterly alone is the most horrifying state my soul can conjure, and I believe we were not meant to ever be that way.  We will always seek the other— the one whose image we bare.

“For now we see in a glass darkly-- but then face to face…I will know even as I am known.” —James

On waking, shaken, I reached for my phone, knowing someone, somewhere is always awake here on HP.  To the person who answered, thank you— though I know you did not really understand.  Your living presence was a comfort. I stayed awake till the sky turned first-light gray.

They die  
I leave a ruined edge
They leave with someone else
Tectonic plates mismatched
grate life on time's most vicious rasp
Some people never find their mates
left anonymous to pages
The empty internet
all their beauty fed to air

watching others celebrate
their joys their moments

I struggle on
Alone

The world is flat
That's what they told me

...and I always take people at their word
Nice people like at The Acme Company
always believing what they say

I am a gullible fool
to trust, to love, to hope
to get ground down that way

I cower
I yelp when kicked

Running, madly
scramble over edge of ice
(New concept of Antarctica)
Missed the sign
for The Acme Map Company
and that dead end
Loaded down with Acme Explosives

Cartoon coyote
Always sees “that painted tunnel”
as possible place to hide
Inexplicably
shows up again--
just a little fried
smoke rising from my scalp
small white flag in hand
says, “HELP”

Scramble over that ledge of melting ice
and crumbling shame
Clinging by my fingertips

You'd think something would finally do me in

Me and "Wile E. Coyote--  Genius"
__

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8eP0ntOJ1U

Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner are classic cartoon characters that date back to 1949.  They've been popular ever since.  I think the sound effects, music, and the timing of the animators are elements that make them so good.  Their expressions just **** me.

No more red balloons let go
Strangles wildlife of sea and land
Thought you should know

Oh, for the innocent days of balloons
birthdays, parades, life's bright cartoon

Back before we knew
Even our joys end the world

Why do we go back to our saddest moments
when we need comfort
Maybe to bathe in tears...
a baptism
of rage
to blow the sides out of sorrow
to come to terms
with helplessness?

To get someone
to hear
maybe to listen
to loss?

Dull skies have finally broken
Humidity lifts
and there is air under there--
The last of day
the barest blues
the singe of pink
held up by lumps of charcoal cloud
drifting in scent of backyard fires
The moon curses from its crook of smile

Then hides again
behind the city rooftops and blackened trees
among the aerial cheers of a football game

two miles away

Before he returned from the fields
she must get there!
Harnessed Ole' Jerry to the buckboard
by herself
flung wildflowers mixed with iris, roses
tied with string
up on the rough-hewn seat

She was sweating, ill
and pregnant yet again
But some things always mattered more
than dinner at his hour, on the table
Sometimes in her frantic mind
she found the strength to curse him

Wiped her brow with sleeve
No bother for a hat
No time to tuck the loose hair to her bun

Hiked her skirt and hoisted sorrow
beside the wilted posies
Grabbing reins and slapping
Jerry's quarters with them soundly
she rumbled madly
out and up the hill

toward the cemetery
once a week
Her promises--
of always –  in his fear
she kept

My apologies to the individual(s) I rather fell for.  I'm sure he thought he was getting somewhere.  I kept trying to dismiss it as nothing, hoping maybe we could find a way., but something was wrong, and I was wrong to even entertain "love in the background."  
I have probably misled.  I was wrong and I'm sorry.  I can leave you only with The Lamb, slain before the foundation of the world and His blood for you to bathe, left below the Mercy Seat in Heaven.  His resurrection was entirely physical and mine will be the same.

John:  20 and 21
Luke: 24

Walking by that isle
hope it will not reach its memories
to me
with all that red and pink and bows
festooned with ribbons, Doilies, flapping doves
Cartoon kisses
candy heart...ache
Doubt all the chocolates of

the lovesick world
could fit in those heart-shaped boxes
Crying out for dollars, Perfume, diamond rings
Isle end-caps filled with promises  
carnations, roses
Gaudy sugar pleas –
Be mine!
Be My Valentine!

All the tiny candy hearts in the world
all 8 billion
strung end on end  
could not –

Love U
Hug Me
Be Mine
You Fine
Hey Babe
Lets Rock
Luv Ya
Play Time
Adore
You Rock
Text Me
Hot Boy
Say Yes
Sweet One

The only hope of February – these

Meanwhile
Cupid –drunk, passed out
behind some barren trees

Betty Coutu drives a mean Rambler
takes us public school, heathens
to catechism on Saturday morn
Smokes a cigarette like a prima-ballerina
Shifts three on the wheel
drives that clutch to the floor
with her thick leg
Makes the engine roar
a little
“to warm it up”

Turns with the grace of swan
Pavlova or belladonna
Something of beauty
just to watch her
three-finger the wheel through a turn around
all while taking a drag
exhales to ceiling
to music on the radio
Elvis? Roy O, Patsy Cline
circa 1959
Betty's hair is short, uncombed
but she's not without lipstick
lights her smoke with amazing matchbook skills
Calm
like a woman who does it often
takes on wear
with I'm in love, and I don't give a care
She shifts and turns
cigarette balanced like gossip on lips
or between
those first two fingertips
Smoke swirling
amid kids squabbling and whining
in the back seat
No belts back then
till Dad got home
to keep them in line
But, I bet on Betty every time
to get us there
I want to drive like her, so badly!
I sit beside her-- ossified
watching
her smoke and handle
like a total expert
I am distracted
and will surely fumble
my catechism answers
for the nuns
cataclysmically

She drops us off by an icy foot slide
I swear to God to stop back later when we're done
...with prayer and penance  
recitation... and resolvings
to sin no more
Once we're out the door--

back to that forbidden foot-slide

Always had a plan for fun
So did Betty's son
the hemophiliac
Bless myself like an Olympian
and pray for Johnny
before he joins me for a run


hemophilia:
a medical condition in which the ability of the blood to clot is severely reduced, causing the sufferer to bleed severely from even a slight injury. The condition is typically caused by a hereditary lack of a coagulation factor, most often factor VIII.

To love
you must find
where light convenes at daybreak
brooding

You must search
beyond impending greenery
assertive lace and pirate flower

Below the clouds of spring
that can’t—
be seriously taken

Behind time’s betrayal
where vined lattice
cages fragments of a smile

Why sophisticate such sense?

Far more to the extent
of will and heart extended
taste is answered
unaware
of when the sweet was gone

For presence is!
when savored sources—linger
...in their endings
known—and not resigned

Melted...quiescent...priestly moment

It’s not Zenith!
but Twilight

who drops her eyes!

To love
you must—
must love

beyond...below...behind

I do not understand transitioning
to what?
to hormones?
to surgeries?
to maiming?
mutilation?

If trans is not new
what did
other times and people do?

Perhaps they accepted themselves
no matter how born or grown
Adorned the way they wanted
created by the beauty of the day
among the company they kept

Maybe they danced in the  continuum
of their music and sexuality
somewhere between the male and female
There lies the mystery

Somewhere between a bicycle
and a seat at a daydream...

I had to make money
so I mortgaged
my woods, my sea, my music
Words--
left
Regaled only with rust
my 1938 Columbia
bike
(sold for a crib)
to an antique dealer

Fat-tires, red-faded fenders
Baskets saddled on wheel
for towel and lunch
Key chain dangling
jingling against jar
of cool ginger ale

Look back at the baskets-filled
afternoons at the park
I was a poet
The road
laid itself bare
For my bike
and I
scrolling through leaves
like words that fell
like hair across shoulders
that I sang to no one

the audience--  
air
I know that now
I was not really…
nor ready

I once was a poet
_

This poem was based on a black and white photo of Harry Bertschmann as a young artist,
posed proudly by his magnificent work.  First two lines of my poem were my immediate reaction to his painting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/05/nyregion/the-struggling-artist-at-86.html

Small pond under the tree
dark, deep
filled with rainwater
and relief

One frog
only one
has made it home
Resting in the soupy duck ****
by a fallen branch
in muck of rotting leaves

Floating

Isolated

in quiet of the green

A queen

Does not call for mate
as if she knows
they are not listening

Having found the ones they need
...and so she
being so different
in her view
of on/off fireflies
by night
off
on
always
in their searching of July

Like days
...of goldfinches
with cursive flight
that sweep the day in loopy strokes
that mirror close their seeking song

Frog has found
...Peace
can be so precious

Some days are gone before they leave...
that taste in my mouth
Why do I care?
What is this air?
going in by itself?

I should drink coffee black
take chocolate bitter
My wine turned to vinegar
Acerbic
so next to
spit-
out
the ferments of rage

There are words
there is nothing
there are words
there is nothing
there are words
there is nothing
as abandoned

as a vacant page

Images tattooed in two dimensions:
Oswald's gutted fatal gape
Ruby's black hat (as seen from behind)
Black horror
in the sheriff's eyes.

The night is ink
It moves around me
with it's broken heart

Bound to Downward
___
Trickle--
bound to downward
  faceted presence of light
   weedling its yielded way
    to a lower level
     Smoothly pouring payment
      to tributary
Now creek is bludgeoned
by sudden stones
Stone remains....
Water is stunned plunder
     carried off
      toward hammering bastions

Brake-clutch-shift
Glance at the clock
It must be about... half-past-an *******
as I sit in traffic, idling, wondering

Glance at the clock
Could this be hell?
98 degrees, sure humid enough
and will this guy ever signal a turn
or find the gas pedal?!
No, of course not
His job in damnation is to torture
the sucker stuck behind--

--his cardiac appointment
his destiny at the grocery store
Half hour early
just to wait in line
to pick up prescriptions
to punch the clock at The Pearly Gates

He's out and about in his Ford Taurus
ridin' the brakes
touring the streets in sunglasses with blinders

“No Effn' blinker, Pops!?”

Twenty miles per hour
just inside the lines of

Turning me into the animal I am
in the depths

They would have given a lot
those paste-skinned kids
with straw for hair
and knobby knees
Not that frail— it seems

Beneath grayish strings
through black rims
one cracked lens screams—
Gets nothing!
Changes nothing!
Ritual words fall—
a rusted refrigerator
shoved over a railing from the second floor

Barking dogs tied to the radiator of misery
fed on rough-house excuses for kindness

Why do people keep children?

Larger than average eyes
huge foreheads of genetic wrong
******* childhood downstairs
while mother is sleeping
I can get used to the smell of cats
Human ***** is not so—
different?
and if I didn’t change my clothes for a week

What do children know?

Jenny cuddles a starving kitten
then releases it to where
they disappear...
one generation after another
Famished eyes
devour anything offered
words...food...***...God

Screams from the mats of string and gray
Scald the frantic instant badly
I watch her bolt beyond explanation
Night gives no reason to let her live....

My faith went the way the kittens go
Hope and a small girl
blend beyond blackness

My bright and shiny little girl
with dark smiling eyes and yellow curls
who learned to talk before she walked
Who lifts sorrow
like an offering to joy
who waits
and gives and gives-- and gives again
to everyone whose path she's crossed

It didn't matter
Yes, it did...
Those bride's maid dresses
never fit
Made for tiny friends and frames of dreams
a day to hang a life on...
For others always
She made their days
She spent herself
Not telling tears
of sausage dress
she could never wear
"What were they thinking?"
"Maid of honor" she became
--in name only
She stands aside of honor by design

Awaiting honor to grace her
in its own time

Burgundy, the color of a dress I’ve never worn
to an occasion that never occurred

Velvet lined
coffin
Where lies the violin
There lies its song

The heart of fiddle strings
that bare of arms
That heart that sings, speaks, no, yells
to the hands that can’t respond!
to a mind that can’t remember
I was drowning in some future
not a violinist’s

“Alive with Pleasure”
read the billboard slogan for cigarettes
behind the happy couple
running out into their future

Forcing the hand of marriage
Waving goodbye to my life
from a rooftop in Scranton
as the wind hauled my laundry three city blocks
dumping my unders on Saint Luke’s sills
sailing my sheets up Wyoming Avenue

I lay on the tar and pebble roof
watching pigeons swirl
listening to traffic pass on the street below
The moment you know you’ve made the mistake
you can’t return from....

Wherever my towels have blown?
I wish them well....

Behind the barn in late afternoon
Uncle Ray lifts my brother
to the seat of a harrower
abandoned now
and rusted to this field of family
tilted and monumental
plunging its tines into memory
of broken earth
behind this life of the workhorses they were
My father and my Uncle Ray—talking
Scattered conversation
in hushed tones

...as skyscraping thunderheads
slashed through their heights
by arrows of fire
light the pumpkins
between hay bundles
of time golden

Behind the barn in late afternoon
Uncle Ray lifts my brother
to the seat of a harrower
abandoned now
and rusted to this field of family
tilted and monumental
plunging its tines into memory
of broken earth
behind this life of the workhorses they were
My father and my Uncle Ray—talking
Scattered conversation
in hushed tones

...as skyscraping thunderheads
slashed through their heights
by arrows of fire
light the pumpkins
between hay bundles
of time golden

...to choose Him, or at least, include Him
as our weird and lonely friend--
to yell at, to misunderstand, to complain to--
or maybe--
just to sit with, for a silent while--
while we figure it out

The quiet company
where we sit with our friend in misery.
Maybe share a beer, a smoke, admit we can't forget--
...the knowing companion that we talk to

He so gets it--
about the girl or guys we love, and why...
And he tells us, "Yeah
He feels that way too"

The grief of having lost us to another...

That whole free will thing--
that lets us choose Him
to be with us in our lonely failing--

It was everything.

I forgot that we share nothing
but the sky at night
O wait-- not even that
The clouds are here
but not with you-- so
sometimes?

We have nothing
not even blues
or clouds
to hang on to
...or songs of love
No

Leonard's song, “Suzanne”
was always his
for me
I wonder if he ever knew
How much...
when I didn't even know?

He named His daughter after me
where he left his memory

My heart told me he was gone
to graver places

As I wrote
of love
in decades hence
I would mourn
brief moments by the sea
Go on! Go on!
Your life awaits!

while distance does its thing
along with time and rhyme
and white noise and music when I'm drinking
by myself

and
for a moment
you--
are here

I know the truth

...my wonderings
what you look like
doesn't mean a thing
your covid smile behind a mask
you take the only pictures
every trace
of puppy
strange proclivity
my darling curiosity
of art and thought
You take....

I wonder
what your breath would feel like
on my neck
should we share a moment close enough?
to know your scent?
and how in God's name
would I
love you?
Not a clue
what it's like to know your eyes?
were they for me?
some guy?
some girl?
And all the questions of--

Another memory
for time to rub away

But I forgot
that we share nothing
Not time of day, nor sky
a simple glance
nor graceful dance
What is this room that we are in?
And does it matter?
Anyway
If you are here
But no, you're not

but I forgot

Odd color
of trifling light
Flitting petal
blue-purple-gray
emerged from asphalt's
heated slumber
to lead some airy way--

The road forgot

I don't understand
so much
but the grief-- that's real  
Unexpected
Grief often comes that way

I lost the you I knew

Misunderstood-- the ways of you
Uncontrollable-- the heart of me

What do I do?
With all the love?
Leftover?

The wine, the fire
before me
in the still
night

...in me
behind me
through me
I sit here
running....
in my head
my heart

I will escape
it
to the truth
that some of us will make it

after the fire

Drinking before noon--
not my habit
In the quiet of my favorite room
of softest brown and purple ciphering gray
One wall off-white reflecting light
or a good mood
or something--
I once needed
from my soul's depth--
Trying to forget

Startled by a train's screech and howling wail--
its bell about an intersection
“Look the hell out, why don't ya!!”
--get outta your own...
my own way
and let the failures just stream by

Days--
There's this calendar by some bankers called:
UNIVEST
adorns the wall
between my daughter's sketches
that I seldom see
on well-worn afternoons
among accustomed things

Yes-- "One here!"
to un-invest
in this day
I have no interest
in sunlight or the ceaseless
songs of birds
I forgot to turn  the pages on the months
Forever sunk in April
having given up on June
with its birthdays of the dead
missed events, appointments, bills come-due

Just a picture there-- the bottom of a tulip
stung in warmest pink
within the sepal hand of green
that holds it steady-- ******
A year-- dangling from a nail

if that's allowed
--my ***** mind, I mean

Black, Swiss cheese hulk on horizon
The James Longstreet
immobile old freighter of the bay

Towed to the ignominy
of its last commission
in the curled arm of The Cape
Tides flex their muscles against it
But The Longstreet is steadfast
in its dark purpose

Standing target for practice

A sortie if planes home in on its bulk
Honing their skills
on this  “fish-in-a-barrel”
Thunderhead-etched pyrotechnics
Booming follows the miles over water

Against The Longstreet’s silhouette enduring
even God fixes sights
firing bolts across its bow
taking aim at our futures

Standing targets for practice

Vietnam? Cape Cod?
No difference to teens
before life’s ocean of conscription

Sand is cold beneath dunes
Beach grass rustles
to the pulsing surf
to the wind’s whispers
just below hearing
as if there’s a secret
that must be kept

We are targets for practice
We are meaningless din

Pulling our sweatshirts and blanket closer
The Supremes sing thinly
from transistor
“Stopped for a moment in the name of love—

Thinking it over”

Cardinal Attack

Beating heart!
outside my body?
In the bushes outside!

God!

Clutch my chest!
and look again...
Yup!
It’s out there alright—
eating seeds no less!
and flicking its blood-red aorta!



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