A Near-Forgotten Craft

Destruction is space, allowing new horrors to emerge
yellowed pages can no longer be turned
invisible ghosts make you cough incessantly
the painted landscape keeps shrinking
until real places become indistinguishable:
a century-old iron bridge as dark as a bagpipe
now creaks like a knee by the water’s edge.

Punish life by writing everything down
let the sunset hover forever in a still cave.
As long as this book is opened once
everyone will be resurrected, the precise machinery of hell
will start again, with wild winds, hail, and flames
with the asphalt stiffening their joints, the suffering of others continues
unbeknown to anyone.

Reliant on the reader’s sympathy and testimony
time continues like dashed lines in the snow.
Snow falls, falling forever,
yet never falling on the bent heads of pedestrians
always walking in the same place, never avoiding a snowfall.
Few believe in these kinds of games anymore.

Perhaps it’s just a harmless game
which offers us the image of time
like a watchmaker with weak eyesight in his workshop,
where metal parts and various-sized gears reflect the dusk light
through the carved glass revolving door, candlelight, flickers
at the door, an unidentified white horse appears
snorting with contempt, carrying the decay of generations.

The Opposite of Stars


The line of people turned the street into a catwalk
A Gothic walkway clinging to the venue’s wall
Velvet and leather buzzing within the dark

That was where we met, waiting for the doors
Seven-thirty entry, lights up at eight
Nine for the headline

We left before the first encore
Black-clad singularities spilling into the night 
The opposite of stars

You were a statistic from the moment of our meeting
A possible end already coursing through your veins
An ambulance our taxi for the night

Namelessly you waited on a hospital floor
Sterile mockery of love; or lust, too early to tell
Apologizing to an omniscient nobody, pleading for your mother

The realization when questioned by a nurse
That I don’t know you at all
Your name as uncertain as the substance you’d taken

I stayed only a short while
Long enough to see them shoot you with Naloxone
A solution, perhaps. I did not wait to find out

I left you there, in that hospital
Walking away before my heart’s defences weakened
A blank angel of indifference

In uncertainty you’ve persisted
In memory, as in worry
An accuser of my own creation

There is a blank tombstone in my head 
Capping a black hole
Where the off-switch to your memory should be 


***
 

The Lost Harbour


The soft hour of the night
Reaching maturity
When the train station platform
Takes on a truer aspect
Dropping the mask of the day
Revealing the nothing underneath
A non-place for non-lives, victims and strays
The wordless music of the wind
A sleepless lullaby for all those gathered here
Some marooned by a last-train missed
Others by a lifetime of misses
Flotsam of the city one
Jetsam the other 
The morning will decide 
Who is to be salvaged


***

My Newspaper Days

 
Flog my dusty Super Beetle to the Register parking lot,
stay in my car to eat a ham sandwich, dry shave my stubble,
knot my grease-specked tie, flatten my flaring brown hair.
Grab the day’s first Diet Pepsi, stride into the newsroom 
with its clusters of metal desks, cigarette and cigar puffers
exiled to a cloudy corner under the relentless wall clock,
lift my cold can to greet others who didn’t sleep in 
after covering a meeting that dragged into the wee hours.
Sigh into a swivel chair in front of my typewriter if it’s ’80,
my computer if its ’83, read a note left by my editor,
sometimes clipped to a press release or a letter about a girl 
selling her pictures to pay for her brother’s kidney transplant.

When you’re a general assignment reporter, you know
your words will get good play envied by those whose stories 
about school boards and city councils are buried in back.
You better be clever, swift, empathetic, careful not to burn out
or make an embarrassing blunder requiring retraction.
Missed deadlines will get you demoted to a small-town beat
that forces you to keep a poker face while windbags 
grouse about traffic flow, drainage ditches, trash pickup.

With a narrow reporter’s notebook tucked into my pocket, 
sipping a fresh Diet Pepsi, bobbing my head to radio rock,
I maneuver on bald tires through Orange County, a region
of beaches, mountains, megachurches, oil rigs, Disneyland.

Cover a hillside brushfire, ride in a helicopter with a cop 
hunting drunk drivers, listen to a cat greeting me by name,
squint as a circus flea is harnessed to a tiny Ferris wheel,
interview shopping center Santas about what makes them cry,
watch the Super Bowl with boisterous inmates in a county jail,
attend an emotional graveside service for a murdered boy,
experience being a nobody at the elegant Academy Awards.
Stricken by poison oak tromping through a forest to waterfalls,
sunburnt on sensitive parts pitching horseshoes at a nudist camp,
where I feel like a windswept Apache without a loincloth.

A man strips to his swimsuit, revealing tattoos from ear to toe.
(Says he has more ink under his trunks, I take his word for it.)
Paid for sex, a middle-aged man tells me about a husband
who wept in his wheelchair watching him pleasure his wife.
Accompany a pilot scattering cremains over the ocean.
(Get dusted with bone and ash, experience an epiphany.)
At a county fair animal auction, a teen says goodbye to Aspen.
(She leaves with a check, her beloved lamb has a dinner date.)
Swear off sushi after the director of the county health lab
informs me diners can be infected by parasites, gag up worms.
Two female schoolteachers explain the changes enabling them 
to lose a hundred pounds each. (Following up months later, 
find them excavating large bags of barbecue potato chips.)
A mother worries her daughter will be the eleventh generation
in her family to be slowly blinded by retinitis pigmentosa.
A single parent lets a loving couple adopt her six-year-old son 
because she’s afraid she’ll unleash pent-up violence on him.

For a week down and out in Santa Ana, eat and bunk in missions, 
work day labor beside a guy bedeviled by psychopathic thoughts,
befriend Art, a white-haired hobo, ex-con who sleeps in the weeds.
(My series leads to a reunion of Art with a mother he fears dead.
Later, learn he wants freedom more than a roof, job, leisure suit.)

Present the truth, but sometimes not all the truth entrusted to me.
Should I trouble readers of my story about show dog breeders
by telling them of a young woman seeking comfort in canines
because of sexual abuse from a dad who ridiculed her naked body?
What about my article about a restless retiree who daily departs
his nursing home to ride buses along routes with familiar faces?
I choose an upbeat ending rather than his reply to my question
about why he keeps moving: “Because my son never visits me.”

You can’t avoid a sad closing when you write about the coroner 
or a vet anxious to die so he can rejoin his buddies killed in battle.
But I prefer to leave my readers smiling so I volunteer to compete
against a little mutt in a log-rolling contest at Knott’s Berry Farm.
While a crowd watches, Penny spins me into the pond six times. 
Afterwards, holding her shaking equally wet body in my arms, 
I have an insight: Penny’s victory is no different than my defeat.
We’re all running on a log that will one day flick us off like a flea. 
I walk away full of wisdom…and water. People stare. 
A prophet often is not recognized or honored in his own hometown.     

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.

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.