Dead Time

Gangs

roam
ransacked streets

soldiers squat
around the governor’s
mansion

churches filled
praying

protected

skies streaked
mini drones
peek

some of us
ready
ripe
stockpiled supplies

armed
ourselves
hidden
defenses

we’ll fight
survive
new beginnings

a blood drenched parcel, acre, country, earth.

Dream?

My direction seems set
unchangeable

hypnotizing
numb

yet exciting
like watching a movie

I’m in
my mind

all the world scene
everyone

my brother and sister
dream

should we scream
awaken

realize
someone is pulling the strings?

Those at the Top

They
can only look
down
from
their fortress
towers
and up
from
their periscopes
from hell.

They’ve been
too long
removed
from the daily
truth of living
and struggling
in a world
they control
at long range.

But they’re getting
the message,
we’re breaking
their code.
Soon coming
after them
with butcher knives
and bare hands.

Run,
you little weasels,
run!

The Poet’s Carnage

At the typewriter
in a white cotton undershirt
and torn boxers

the struggle to create
like a fist fight
between milquetoast poseurs
stuttering curses
on a broken hayride

sometimes Bach on the radio
water glass half empty of bourbon
ashtray overflowing with butts
blood smeared postcards
bearing cryptic messages
mailed from a dozen
small Midwestern towns
each one tacked
to a map of the US

an old Bowie knife
and visions of starving Jesus

somewhere a dog barks
somewhere out there
is the one
attempting contact

somewhere in a corn field most likely
somewhere under a harvest moon

Life and Death are Everywhere

Gin drunk boy
stumbles along
the winter sidewalk
counting angels
in his head
sometimes
forced to rely
on fingers and toes
because angels
multiply fast
die faster
and are often
too tricky
for anybody’s
good.

The old lady
riding the number 9 bus
removes a
halo from her purse
and tosses it
out the window
as the bus passes by
striking the gin drunk boy
on the head
to the delight
of her fellow
passengers

while she smiles
and moves closer
to her funeral
only a week away.

She does not care
that in the whole world
there is no one
who will remember
any of this
longer than
the life
of a mayfly.

The angels
remain far away
and unaware
of the old lady
the boy
or the bus

and go about
their killing
of innocent dreams
as though nothing
in heaven or earth
could ever matter.

The old lady
exits the bus
at her regular stop
takes three flights of stairs
to her small apartment
where the memory
of an old cat
claws her heart

and dreams
of all the sins and comfort
to be found
in a hot and loving
cup of tea.

The Devil’s in the Details

I sleep well alone.
Your ghost is just a texture on the walls now – a shadow,
the slow drip from a leaky faucet,
the loud – creek – when I try to tiptoe in the middle of the night.
My face is a Cubist painting.
It is what’s left when you examine every perspective but your own.
Is there a definitive before and
after?
How did you become this way ?
The grief rearranges your features until they are unrecognizable.
I’m scared you’ll never figure out how to put them back,
I’m scared it’ll be like assembling a puzzle with pieces from different puzzles.
I come home to yelling / or a fist / most night.
I want to live in the heart of that summer
the egg yolk in the sky / the whistling wind / whispering through the open windows / the cicada stilled nights / doused in whiskey.
The smell of smoke took three days to wash out,
I slept for eighteen hours,
You are still gone,
I am still here
and yet,
do my hands belong to me?

meditations on the first of another month in the same continuum

All my months are bullet / train to the end of / the year / and no one is waiting there for me / but myself / and I still don’t know how to be alright with that / all my laughs come out sounding choked / and strangled / like they don’t mean it / even if they think they do / and what’s the use again / when everything feels like a lesson in impermanence / the truth is / I would have sat outside with you all night / for every night of that summer / and every summer after that / if it meant we got to see another shooting star / together / if it meant we would be sealed in a pocket of fleeting burnout / and break apart in some other atmosphere.
I almost wish / I never hugged that first cigarette to my lips / the entire room smelled like / my mother / used to / and now I am a portrait reimagined.
I wonder if the moon will always hang so heavy / no matter what phase it’s in / and what window you’re watching it out of / and the girl / with the pearl earring / was looking at something over your shoulder / never right at you / only through / and somehow you knew this / too.
You knew everything / so you didn’t have to wait around to find it out from me.

Blissful Nightmares

You are putting me back together again like gluing a vase you broke at your mother’s house,
like fixing the hole in the drywall
You are moving like molasses,
like everything is a slow motion timestill,
and I break knives trying to cut through the tension
You know I care too much,
I still need you when I say I don’t, but I like to entertain what it would be if I didn’t
How easy it would be to walk out of your car
and not look back
How simple it would be to unlove you, if I were anyone other than myself.
But you know these are the worst of the nightmares.
I averted my sight from the moon last night
That kind of dripping darkness remains invisible even when you open your eyes
and keep looking
And then I became a dead thing,
And the wind was a home, like my breathe, both settlers of the land,
And I did not let the stray dog lick my scraped knees, but instead caged myself in alone
The trees are all immovable weight, quintessentially rooted in place
We have nothing in common,
You are a break in the sound barrier,
and I only want silence.

Inside the Boarding Home

My father won’t tell me
what happened in Vietnam,
he just asks me to roll him
another joint,

and likes to talk about
the Beach Boys
and other music that mattered
in the time of exploding
shells, and dirt flying

At the Veteran’s hospital,
my father gets therapy
and all the medications
he needs to survive another day
in his boarding home,

where he cooks breakfast
on an old iron skillet,
balanced on a hotplate
I taste his scrambled eggs
and two strips of bacon
and thank him for his service.

Wheeling in a Supermarket

Rolling steady
Do it over a curb or uphill
I find it easier to wheel backward
in Ralph’s parking lot

Just hope someone sees my flag
and my Vietnam veteran cap,
so one of those 16-cylinder Maserati’s
don’t accidentally leave me for roadkill

Once inside of Ralph’s,
I wheel around the fruits and vegetables,
get wedged between the soups and pasta,
and grab a sample of nachos and avocados

Sweat pouring down my brow,
can’t carry these groceries on my lap
I have to tie it to the back of my chair—
weighing me down

I keep rolling past the check-out counter,
saying hello to the boy who collects carts,
and saluting the security guard
who keeps order in the parking lot

As I make it over a steep hump,
I keep my wheels steady
I’ve flipped over more than once,
but always manage to get back up.

19 vintage autumn leaves

57 figure eights..calloused
twigs intertwined..18 wings
that bring the greens..the
grass, the seeds, along with
19 vintage autumn leaves

along the railroad’s park and
ride..treetop tall..the flying
artists’ sky design for the
winter weary window eyed

they’re making a nest for the whole world to see

Death in the Living Room December 25

suicide is always questionable
unmentionable
like his angelic face as he lay there relieved
of all his duties.
relaxed finally…
black liquid wings feathering through the wound,
flightless arms flung out
uncrossed.

His eyes suck me in and hold my vision
like finished art,
a watercolor painted
with blood.

---

Jan 22 2016

you gain a name when you are saved
like the cow that ran for freedom in Queens New York
on January 22,2016
fleeing the slaughter house with nowhere to go…
still. it
took hoof and blindly ran the streets.

I was devastated she was caught and brought back to death…

Then, my daughter called…the bells tolled but
not for Freddie….he was saved by hands who could and did
reach out and touch that beast with kindness
oh that God would do same for me.

Pond

On my way to the clinic
sunlight kills me softly
like the popular song,
its tongue warm to my skin,

No one is more out of touch
than the sanctioned shaman
with the stethoscope.
Touch isn’t his aim.
My presence reflects
his prescription pad’s
white space

*

Bloodwork like water
reflects, my lies to myself
taking health for granted
for decades. Flow through
my ribcage finds my eyes.
I remember the garden, circle
of concrete that holds decades-old
water. I hear the rain, frogs.
Staring at lab results
I pry the scab in my toe.
It blooms a red lotus.
The tear lengthens.
I used to pull my foot up,
meet it halfway to smell
the wound’s caramel
but my spine now says no.
The mirror and me
we reflect like kidneys

The Calamity of Lament

Light blue flowers are scattered
along the base of the hill.
I can’t name them but I know I have seen them before.
The ridge above me is lined with maples
and the sunlight bends through their leaves,
casting the day’s last light on the grass below.
I close my eyes
and see the death of my father
through the fog of a future wish.
Raccoons feed on his body
near the banks of a lake that was once three rivers.
It is not grotesque or unnerving.

If I knew
if I opened my eyes and knew
I would walk up the driveway
and into the trailer to stand in front of him.
“Your luck has run out.” I would say.
He would be in his bed,
the sheet pulled
all the way past his head.
He would turn his head toward me
from under the sheet
making me flinch.
I would turn and walk
out of the trailer, back down the driveway
to the road below.
The raccoons would be gone,
only bones under a thin moon.
I would feign a magnificent smile,
my teeth crumbling in my mouth.
I would look away and up,
understanding the sun.
It will burn holes in you if you let it.

There is no luck in this world.
Only God and His decisions
on cruelty or kindness.
I’m not sure what
He
has decided, yet.
We are all just waiting for
Him
to make up
His
mind.

This is what lives under the rot of memory.
The black moss on a wooden dock.
The calamity of lament.

Some People See Them

I broke a knuckle crossing my fingers,
waiting for my luck to suit up
and set the red carpet on fire.
Lucky turned into “Hey, I’m
alive.” and I buried all the tricks
and signs and checkered thoughts
right along with the gimmicks, somewhere
safe, where I would not be tempted to look.
Today I stumbled across them, in an X-ray
folder, Dr. Somebody
said there was nothing in them
but I saw them
taking a bow;
the rabbit’s foot
the clover with all four,
a cross, slightly bent
three magic beans
my grandfather’s photo
an unreadable poem
two shots of Bushmill’s finest
an old necklace
from a woman who squeezed my heart flat and flung it skyward
a black Bible
a brown snarl of hair
from a white horse
and a crystal ball
held
with praying hands
that were creased from neglect
and bathed
in
light.
I will not claim them.
They have served a higher
purpose.

All the Features You Love Plus More

Mrs. Doris Hussein (no relation) doesn’t know me
And I don’t know her, but it seems
We have been thrown together in a kinda of strange
Zany comedy of errors and strangers,
I won’t lie, it’s good to meet new people,
Make new contacts, and try to be of help to someone

I guess this is more of a black comedy,
Because the reason she’s reaching out to me is cancer,
No, not her sign, but her symptoms,
She wants to get my attention to help her set things up,
A trust in her name with me in charge,
This could be the beginning of a beautiful premise

Convention Outline

The program directors reflect on what they’ve learned
And the paths going forward from here,
There’s the Chicago commitment and looking at the forest,
Followed by a detailed and lengthy solutions seminar
That discusses why cooperation with China is critical on security

Before lunch, get ready to listen to a speech on criminal justice,
And how local police forces are forging
A new path on racial equity (not just equality) there,
During lunch, (you thought you could escape?)
You’ll hear about the impact of investments on enterprise

Level on down to the breakout sessions, for experts
In small rooms who will regale you all with tales of the media,
Such as how to challenge the master narrative,
Support creative collaborations, or facing up to challenges
Of the nuclear variety in the decade that awaits us

Back in the main room for cocktails and the last round
For presentations from our final experts, saving the best for you,
Learn about Nigeria and taking stock of accountability there,
Before listening to the rants of Benjamin Nardolilli,
Who will tell us we’re all doomed, hopelessly, hopelessly doomed

Solo Shows

An old man in an old painting is looking straight at me
with oily eyes that seem to judge
my oily skin getting too close to the red silken furniture
he once owned before departing the earth in spirit
and leaving this image of his former body on the wall

I hate to think I’m being disrespectful, should I honor
him and leave the room immediately?
A violation of sorts probably occurred when I walked in
with wineglass and cheese cubes in my palms,
on the other hand, I’ve done worse things in here before

Motherfuckin’ Murder Hornets

crisp air creeping through the windows
sun blazing on a cloudless morning
an invitation I can’t refuse
grab a novel pen and notebook
hoodie the dog and hit the porch
attending to the bird music pen in hand
staring at the landscape stones
bulbs planted that haven’t yet bloomed
inspiration there somewhere

the buzz so loud so close
I’m afraid to turn my head this
is not the sound of an everyday bumblebee
A goddamn motherfuckin’ murder hornet
white knuckles clenching the sides of my notebook
the buzz gets louder closer
synapses popping the impending drama plays out:
a two-handed swing connecting full force
large insect body flinging off the notebook
Crashing into the front of the brick house
Slumping to the cold porch cement
Convulsing shuddering then nothing
the dog comes to sniff the corpse
Whose murdered now? Bitch!

I’m ready a covert glance to get the
trajectory of my swing just right

Wings almost invisible rapidly rotating
little body perfectly still suspended
needle beak mere inches from my face
tiny head twitching studying
curiosity streaming in both directions
a quick nod whirls and zips away
back to the bush from whence it came
so beautiful simple peaceful

What if I hadn’t looked? What if fear dictated
a wild and blind swing? The slideshow plays:
it’s feathered body quivering on the cold slab porch
tiny beak snapped broken kazoo sounds emanating
disapprovingly the dog growls and snaps at me
I look to the heavens asking why?

I nearly murdered an illustrious hummingbird
this is why I shouldn’t watch the evening news