My Mother
 
My mother always bought grape jelly
and on special mornings
made scrambled eggs with pig brains,
which is better than it sounds.
She read to my sister and me every night
and that’s what got me through college,
because what she read was Shakespeare.
When I was maybe nine years old,
I broke a plate from her set of good China,
something irreplaceable,
and confessed in tears.
She kissed me and held me
and told me not to worry,
said the plate was just a thing
and it didn’t matter at all.
Sometimes she made vegetable soup
and I have never tasted anything better,
and I loved her salmon croquettes,
though she left in the vertebrae,
which was gross,
but gave us a little extra calcium.
She and my dad got in awful fights
now and again,
with their own tears and screaming
and great slamming of cabinet doors
but they stayed together until the end.
She had a heart attack
when she was almost fifty, a bad one,
but survived, and now, at 91,
remembers none of this.
My mother grew up poor,
poorer than anyone you ever knew,
but gave me riches.
I always buy strawberry preserves,
and they are delightful,
but maybe will try grape jelly
next time I go to the store.
There is so much that I have lost
with the years.
It’s been so long since I was home.




Not Zen
 
Maybe you see me
and wonder how I am serene.
This is the silence
of one absorbed into walls.
I wander between the hours
and feel nothing.
I look out the kitchen window.
I feed my dog a treat.
The world is full of music
but it is very poor music.
(Not bad, just poor.)
Maybe you see flowers
and believe they are beautiful.
Maybe you think of the bee.
I think of nothing.
This is absorbed into walls.
This is serene.
Maybe you see me
and decide I am old.
Maybe you see the cracks in my history.
Maybe you see me crashing into walls.
Poor music is everywhere,
but only old people
remember the disappointment
of warped records.
You don’t see me at all.
This is what I mean.

All the Things You Are

As uncertain as a question mark
As unbroken as a fledgling
As imaginary as a leapfrog
As buoyant as a second chance
As giddy as the last day of school
As creative as a conman
As mysterious as a silhouette
As complacent as an incumbent
As happy as a flat tire
As shady as a grifter
As resigned as a final draft
As certain as this handful of ashes

blue light special

the beautiful multi,
facially pierced
black girl wants
to know where to
get off the bus
for Aquarius Lounge-
plants her feet
on an Adidas
gym bag across
the way says, “I
got a long night
ahead of me &
I need some rest
how do you like
my hair? just
got it done today.
Matches my nails,
Midnight Blue,
that's my stage
name. Even my
piercing rings
shine under
the right lights.
Usually, I don't go
for none of that
New Age shit
but I hear tips
are good there
& that's all
that matters.
Hell I'd work
a K-Mart blue
light special if
the tips were
right

Lost in Memories


love songs blasting from the headphones as I
delve deeper into intoxication, as a handle of
ouzo gets dangerously empty and it’s still
only 2 in the morning. memories arrive like
tidal waves,  familiar faces flash onto the yellowish from the
nicotine wall and I encounter smiles I have
Forgotten and a pair of glistening eyes I could never forget.
it’s alright, I drink some
more, crack open the second handle; my liver gets
the message: time to die, motherfucker, and it doesn’t
obey. once again, against all medical odds, it
processes the alcohol like a fine-tuned machine.
whispering ghosts fill my apartment, reminding me of
stories I shouldn’t remember, of incidents better left
untold. it’s alright. I drink more; the voices turn
bellowing. hollering at me, begging for me to
remember them
all. I can’t. too much booze, too many substances. I drink
some more, getting lost in the music and half-jaded memories
of different times disappear into the blue vapor rising from scalding spoons
and alcoholic fumes being evacuated with every exhalation.

We Find Ourselves in Dreamtown

The rules are clear: You have 20 minutes. Use them. 
Forget the talking man behind you on television
hawking sleep aids. Better to remember past
afternoons you loved, walking under tall pines 
the crunch of dead bees under your feet. 
An owl’s shadow flies across the wall; doesn’t mean
the raptor is actually in here. 
Your dream, which you won't remember, 
will feature a long-dead appaloosa mare calling you
across the pasture. Think what you’d like to tell her. 
Have your answer ready just in case. 

Camelot

 
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
The Mayflower pilgrims knew about
that as they fled the corruption of the
Old World, bound for the New. So, it
was a shock sometime later, to find
Irish Catholic neighbours. In Hyannis
Port they plotted, only to be felled by
a blast inside a Liberator, a hot day in
Dallas, a humdrum hotel kitchen in LA.  
The pilgrims progressed in a different
way, becoming the roots but not the
blossom, the sturdy foundations of a
palace – immune from scythe or sabre,
built to last, and safe in the knowledge,   
that things rarely end well for saints,
or celebrities. 

I Speak in Tongues Now 

 
Crow comes to steal my dream
He breathes a rank stew

of artemesia and amanita,
of scars he has eaten from

my eyes, my hands.
The wave breaks hard,

cuts me apart,
stirs me into his stew. 

I won’t be able
to piece myself back

without more
feather-shaped scars

whose breath will betray
the new shape of my tongue

striking new words from
unfamiliar molds, if they

can be called words.
I speak in tongues now,

awake as I am

and still groggy.

Trail of Tears in the Snow
 
Footprints in the snow, fresh.
Will your divorce lawyers talk
to Jesus this night—
set me chain-free.
Set you on your traveling ways.
Searching, we'll both be curiously searching.
Even hell has its standards burn with grace—
jukebox baby, we'll meet again
in the end, in that big black box.
Jesus suffers with the poor and the lost.
Jesus is the lead tempo rubato
4 both of us now bounce around
robbed of our stolen time.
Let me drive you home for the last time.
Coming home to go on separate paths.
Footprints fresh in the snow, 2 paths
forked off in different directions.
Hear diverse sounds —
on the FM radio, our favorite tune,
with age, it will become a classic
'Sympathy For the Devil,' The Stones,
jukebox, baby, put another quarter in.

The Old Poet Laments His Declining Poetic Output
 
The poems used to flow quite quickly
But lately they’re slow and sickly.
And though the Muse has not withdrawn—
She doesn’t speak so much as yawn.

 

 
A Romance That Changed the Town for the Better
 
When the book-banning, bigoted barbarian
Fell in love with the loquacious librarian—
We weren’t sure it would last, but now time has passed:
And the bigot sounds practically Shakespearean.