Ghost Runner

It’s an ecclesiastical mystery why God chose to deposit the longest stainless steel bar in the world in a place as remote as East Grand Forks, Minnesota. Scholastics have overworked their brains wrestling with the question. Hey, I want to shout, too much logic spoils the poem. I’m underfed and twitchy as a result and wear sunglasses indoors. There are things I dislike just on principle: “best of” lists, the ghost runner in baseball, roadside litter, any kind of flavored potato chip. Even strangers will tell me, Lighten up. A fast-buck culture like ours treasures imposters and thieves, remembered moments that never happened. I can’t tell what’s a real name, what’s an alias, but I don’t care that I can’t tell. The sky today is a bottomless blue, dotted with scattered white clouds that belong in a painting, and that’s enough.

 

Days of Future Past

You don't need to
have read Proust,
Remembrance of Things
Past, to have all
inclusive memories
as I do and my madeleine
are all aural ones,
unscented songs from
the 60's and like
I'd be sitting in
this cafeteria, doing
a chef's salad for
lunch and I'd hear
this canned Musak,
Sounds of Silence
and it will bring me
all the way back to
NYC between basic
and The Tour, passing
out drunk on a subway
platform, stupefied by
a summer's bake of human
vomit and piss, my neck
bent by a weight of
last rounds for the long
and winding road that leads
from nowhere to here,
the concrete platform
I lie on shaking out
of control as the express
milk train to hell bypasses
my stop at full speed:
the grit and the dirt,
dried blood and bile in
my throat, fear sweats
and incontinent piss,
scuttling rats and monster
rats, all the details
of a living dt's flash
forwarding my life,
broadcasting the unmistakable
message, the hardest of Facts:
this is the Future now

Morning at Seaside


An old man sits on the beach
Under the cloudless blue sky
His hands worn, his back stooped
The warm morning sun
Brings him memories and fantasies—
Is he yearning for youth again
Or thankful to have safely grown old 

Chorus of the ordinary__

Idle time pounding into days
Unawake unshaved and inevitably
Mortal

Living for the movies
Living for the future
Present

My pen ignites a blue fire
Music that embeds truth
In all action
Idol thoughts over flow
Brim broken
Heart

Chorus of the ordinary
---

Coffee percolates
It’s beast song of spitting
Steam & jittery hands
Lends speed
To the psychic automation

Of the morning
---

Revisionist

“The present wins every battle, but the past always wins the war,” Mick Herron, The Secret Hours 

“It was a successful marriage,” his sister said. 
“We bought a house, raised two kids...”
Sharon let the history hang there,
an almost visible ellipsis suggesting a future
of one accomplishment after another,
each succeeding victory outdoing the others.

Bobby only nodded, not in agreement,
remembering the howling fights, the infidelities,
the tears and picked-up pieces,
but why argue? Why disagree?
Whatever’d happened happened,
no changing any of it now.

If it helped her to rearrange
the living room furniture,
then who was he to tell her 
she’d misplaced the coffee table
beside the wrong chair?

George Frank

had built a house
with his hands in Vermont.
Stone foundation,
gravity fed water from
an artesian spring,
every board milled
from trees on the property.
He was the kind
of laborer who rich men
would pay by the hour
to spend three months
building a stone fireplace.
He’d take a long time
choosing each stone.
He was a craftsman.
Of stone, lumber,
and the needs of
rich men’s wives
for a man who
knew how
to pay attention.

***************************

Jesus

Jesus, I hope the truck runs.
Jesus, I hope the generator starts.
Jesus, I hope the well pump runs.
Jesus, I hope the horse isn’t lame,
the drought ends,
the rain ends,
the hay isn’t moldy.
Jesus, I’m beginning to wonder
if I’m unqualified
to be the atheist I aspire to be.

*******************************

Tattooed

I see the stars,
I wonder,
About my fall.
A height that is literary
Speaks like
A sacred duty.
Come to kiss away
The pain,
The chaotic universe
Is still awake.
I rest my head
On a dewdrop,
Everything is fragile
And hilarious,
If life is a freedom walk.
I want to drown my fear,
In the river
Of joy and pain.
A flower grew back
In my garden,
And I tattooed it
On my bare chest.

 

First snow augury__

The first snow of the season
A fine powdered mix w sleet
Arrived with such fury
& Then melted so quick

I think of anger and egos

Mashing together like some sort of emotional smashed potatoes
Well salted and ready to devour

I think of a possible end of days
And then I smile
Knowing like love &Beauty
It never ends
---