Poems: Works in Progress
“Remember”
I remember the stream behind our apartment
on Douglas Avenue
how when it rained hard enough
I thought that it could take me to Sesame Street
where Grover would welcome me
and, finally, friends...
I remember the smell of candy apples
at the St. Francis Carnival
where I stole a dollar from my father
because I wanted to win that Pat Benetar poster
but never was able to knock down
those three frozen bottles...
I remember the tree in the lot next to my home
in Warwick, how it was bent low to the ground
and I could climb it and it was "my tree"
and after they cut it down
to build a new house
I snuck onto the lot
and saved some of the sawdust
for as long as I could....
I remember Sister Elizabeth John
how she broke the little finger of my right hand
because my desk was dirty
and when I tried to cry
she took out that ruler,
the one with the raised metal strip
that made perfect lines
and kept me quiet....
I remember scoring the winning goal
in the pouring rain
and it didn't matter that the goalie
couldn't see the soccer ball as it trailed
fire from my feet and I was mobbed
by kids who used to pick on me
but for that minute, became their hero.....
I remember wearing that red zipper
Michael Jackson jacket on the first day
at a new school where I learned that
words hurt more than the open hand slaps
that made me throw away the jacket
and lie about where it rests...
I remember the science fair
when Alex forgot the jar of crickets in his car
in December
their tiny frozen feet suspended through the
thin layer of ice that doomed his grade....
I remember the mattress
in my first college dorm room
how the sheets my mom bought me
were too short and I realized
that I was now
all on my own....
I remember the limo ride
on the day of my wedding,
how when I stretched my leg
to try to turn on the television
to see the Pats play the Dolphins
I was introduced to "the look"--
the one husbands need to remember
to remain un-couched....
I remember my first student in my first class--
Tommy, his red Mohawk spiked almost
as loudly as the poem he wrote
about being misunderstood....
And I remember my last student yesterday--
Austin, how when he got up in front of the class
and gave his speech about video game violence
I watched as his hands
which once shook papers in wild spasms
were now rock steady, and as he raised his eyes to meet
his audience, he spoke slowly and forcefully
and I knew that he was ready to remember
something awesome.
=============================================================================
"Dreams"
The dusty diamond
holds our secrets
tightly:
of bases stolen
with graceful ease
and balls scorched
so badly
their blood red stitches
spit New Jersey mud
in silent sufferance,
but no one reminisces about the
Babe's risky home run call
or Reggie's October heroics
or Curt's shrouded bloody sock
when Alan,
drag footed,
slowly makes his way
to the black rubber tee
that waits at home plate
which shudders
as the crowd begins to
rise and clap and cheer
in thunderous unison.
It takes Alan seventeen and a half
minutes
to race his way around the bases--
his eyes keenly affixed to each
white square of victory--
his walker slides against them
as the ball
(which Alan has launched
two and a half inches from the tee)
follows him in a fury of errors.
A third base coach's arm
fervently waves
and Alan knows that he
has one chance to make it--
one opportunity
to follow the Babe and Reggie and Curt-
so he and his walker and years of watching everyone else slide safely home
dance on a freshly chalked line
and as he sails over the plate--
as he looks to the crowd for his mother
whose face rests buried in her palms--
the diamond steals another secret
and another poem is written
praising dashing
dreamers.
May, 2013
====================================================================
Moments?
What must they have heard
Those French families
From their Occupied chateaus
Overlooking Omaha Beach--
The dislodging of sleep
From cannon fire
As the gray dawn crept upon the
Ashen beach
A dense cloud of airplanes
The blinding hiss of shells.
What must they have seen
As the boats hit the sandbars
Their own breathe on
That miserably cold June morning
Clinging to the dust in the air from\
What used to be their sun room
Now a new trench for the Germans
To bunker.
Did they see Uncle Alfred
As the front of the boat ramp
Failed to keep the machine gun carnage
From ending his tour
His but only a drop of the blood
That made the sea an open vein that day?
And did they see Uncle Bill
On another boat
Who dove over the side--
Did they see him stagger
Dodging a swarm of bullets?
Did they see him
Dive back into the water
His comrades a body cover
As he made it through
The entire Theatre of Europe
Physically unscathed?
And when you stand,
My students, today,
After the pledge for that
Moment of silence,
Do you see the ghost
Of the uncle I never met--
Like I do?
Or my father
Holding post on an
Air Force Base in England?
Or my pastor
Saying mass in Iraq?
Or my former students
In Afghanistan?
South Korea?
On an operating room table in
Ramstein, Germany?
November 2015
==================================================================
Turning the Clocks Ahead
Is not so much about
the hour lost
for in slumber
we can't see the seconds leap
from minute to minute
hanging on to the clock's arm dangling and half passed six
like Harold Lloyd
gripping for dear life
the arms
that rocked him to sleep
and fed him strained beets
and slid warm blankets over his cold nose
and tossed side-armed unstitched baseballs
and passed love notes
and eased gold onto delicate finger
and swore oaths
and battled foes
and swung in anger
and cupped his own head in silence
and when you wake up
you will pour your coffee
and knot your tie
and scan your mail
without caring about Harold's fate
because you fell asleep and couldn't explain
how strained beets stained your poem.
March, 2014
===========================================================================
"It was All about the Rake"
how his hand enveloped mine
on the staff of the six tined
quahog magnet
and we scratched
with fury the surface
of a relationship
and when we pushed through
the ocean floor
and a dust storm erupted
under a shallow inlet
in Jamestown
my father's friend
would dive through the ocean's clouds
and we waited to see
what treasure we had found together,
but I don't remember the clams--
their shapes, their numbers, their smells
the meat housed between
the pliable hinge
that hid their secrets--
it was all about the rake
and the slow scratching of a relationship.
=======================================================================
"What Ever Happened to God Bless You?"
Sister Elizabeth John
did not care about
the waxing and waning
of my humors
when I, ten years old,
sneezed and propelled
with phlegamatic ease
a cold, moist wintry blessing
upon her right hand
and while Hippocrates
understood that phlegm
fundamentally symbolizes
relaxation and peace,
Sister Elizabeth John
took no such oath
and with ruler of wood and metal
took choleric joy
in aggressively teaching me
that neither blood nor bile
nor phlegm can outweigh
the peaceful forgiveness
of a Christian blessing.
May 2014
=======================================================================
“The Writer’s Touch”
Sometime around late August
we get the list--
a faceless
alphabetical
random spectrum of
gradeless names
we check for gender equity
familiar surnames
the occasional denotation of an IEP
and we imagine that
this year will be better than last
as we prepare our first monstrous writing assignment:
What did you do on your summer vacation?
You fear for the mark we may give you,
but what mark will you leave upon us.
Today I found a gem
tucked between misspelled words,
awkward syntax, and an amazing run-on sentence:
“writing to me is like a bad cold that just keeps coming back.”
Good.
No, great.
No, spectacular
No-- jubilance.
I hope you are sick forever
a clean white sheet of paper
at the ready to capture each germinating idea
each indelible pressing of the pen
will draw inked blood to the surface
so that you can leave your mark
like Jefferson
craft your dream
like King
note your score
like Coltrane
even now
as you stare at your notebook
I dare you to draft deftly
your poem of the day
your manifesto
your rock opera
your blog
your tweet
your love letter
my rubric
my random thought to be turned
into a poem someday
my memo to my child’s teacher
my note to my wife
that I will place in her lunch
beneath the cellophaned Wasa crackers
hoping that she has a beautiful day
and that I love her more
than the silly love song
that I have been crafting and drafting
and balling then tossing
in the trash with everything else
I wasn’t satisfied with
because I too
like you
am plagued by
perfection’s Faustian gaze
and so now
I will sit and listen
to your metaphor
your allusion
your words
as they explode from the page
with more passionate persistence
than I could ever elicit
from a lifeless list
compiled by a computer
that could care less
about the pox you leave
upon my house.
=============================================================================
"Dynamic Genes"
I am from the grease
of fried bologna sandwiches,
yellow brown mustard on day old white bread,
crusts
left intact.
I am from years of Catholic School guilt,
a Baltimore Catechism in one hand,
a stolen ruler in the other-
the one with my D.N.A. splotched all over it
like the wine that dripped onto
my plaid tie on a dare from Tony, the boy who told me that
Jesus
wanted me to slip slowly his blood—
a tasty salvation.
I am from a stubborn grandfather
who never balked at sign after sign after sign which read:
“NO IRISH NEED APPLY"
“NO IRISH NEED APPLY”
“NO IRISH NEED APPLY”
And I am from hair.
Long haired hippie uncle.
Militarily buzzed father.
Nair upon her upper lip mother.
And myself—
I was the long, proud, curly mullet
today shorn
so a ten year old girl
dying from Cancer’s random claws can now say:
“I am from the grease of fried bologna sandwiches
somewhere."
==========================================================================================================
"I am not the Greatest Generation"
I sit on my couch with my son on my lap
And remember the times with my dad,
Reclined on a paisley red love seat, 1975
Far too young to be awake so late
To watch Pudge Fisk wave a gallant final swing
Against the dreaded Big Red Machine.
I went to bed that night with the spray of half a can of Schlitz
Dotting my pajamas,
But I didn’t care.
No one else in my second grade class could share my adulation
Nor would the Jesuit sisters say, Out loud,
"Did you see that boy raise hands and pray to sweet Jesus for that
Son-of-a-bitch to fly over that glorious Green Monster.”
No, they were 76 prayers into their daily novena
Started to save my soul from eternal damnation.
But I wasn’t interested in salvation.
I just wanted to hear those tv tubes fire up
And eventually fall asleep, couch bound,
A slave to that tiny white dot which never seemed to disappear
And would cast the promise
That tomorrow it would be
Magilla Gorilla and not Tennessee Tuxedo
Who would be my new best friend.
How that television has taught lessons far
Beyond the greater good of the sister’s
Baltimore Catechism,
Whose machine guns of love would dispelled gracefully
Projectiles of tacit cartoon grace.
I learned that even in space, the final frontier,
Women still wore mini-skirts
As Uhura could not break through the glass ceiling where no woman has gone before,
Maxed out on an intergalactic switchboard:
“Hello…Starfleet…How may I direct your call.”
I learned that Maude’s abortion was
Somehow more monumental than Little Ricky ’s birth.
That not everyone was enamored by my
Impressions- a chubby miniature Rich Little-
As I walked up to Billie Sullivan
The boy with leukemia
And rapped him on the head with
My five fat fingers
Mimicking the theme to Benny Hill, speeding around the room
Waiting for him to chase me.
But he didn’t.
He couldn’t.
Because his father never let him, at seven, watch
British comedies on PBS.
Ever.
Because of television I’ve learned that
Chico could never truly be the man.
That when Fonzie got a library card, I needed one too.
That Ralph was a punk
And that I like spunk.
I’ve learned that the greatest American heroes knew good times and
That love American style
Took growing pains.
I learned that Daisy Duke couldn’t make me forget about the message
Of the Confederate Flag
And that maybe the NAACP got it wrong when they went after Amos and Andy.
And so I sit on my couch
With my son on my lap
And read to him stories that
I wish my dad read to me
Far beyond the jeers and cheers
Of TV Guide's vacuous intoxicating pages.
=========================================================================================================
"Katrina"
Walking on sunshine used to feel so good
until the levees broke and the Biblical flood
became more than mere mythology.
After jazz clubs closed,
drowned out by the sounds of the
National Weather Bureau’s sirens of perfunctory silence,
After the president ‘coptered in
days later
luncheons later
aftershocks later and shook
Ray Nagin’s tired wrinkled hand
promising aide and comfort
comfort and security
security and spin,
As FEMA sank New Orleans
deeper into a mire of red tape
red like the awkwardly painted crosses
blasted upon homes indicating
search and rescue,
a base number telling
CNN there are
three
dead
bodies
within,
After days
After weeks
After the levees broke and the
Biblical flood became the devastating reminder of the ships
that sailed slowly into New Orleans’ harbor
up to Congo Square
where they dragged off the survivors
of the most torturous shipwreck of American history
and placed human chattel upon wooden blocks
bound with iron shackles
and sold to the highest bidder,
After the men, sold
After the women, raped
After the feeble, killed
After the music, silenced
The levees broke again.
But after the levees were damned
and the waters receded
and families recovered and reclaimed
the bloated corpses of nephews and grandfathers,
of daughters and stepmothers,
aren’t we still left with the chains?
aren’t we still left with the block?
aren’t we still waiting for our holocausts to end?
====================================================================================================
"Who's That Girl?"
Women and Men
Girls and boys
Listen up:
When Eve took that fruit from that tree in that garden
And bit into its sweet, wet flesh
She didn’t do it because that snake told her to.
She did it for you.
She didn’t do it because Adam said,
“go ahead.”
“it’s alright”
“I’ll be there for you, baby”
She knew as soon as the thunder and the lightning and the voice of God
Started to rain fire and brimstone down on their bare backs
He’d be the first one pointing his bony, naked finger at Eve.
No. She did it for you.
For every man who tells you:
“You can be whatever you want,
Now get in here and get me a beer.”
For every man who says:
“Baby… I didn’t mean it.”
For every man who says
Nothing
And means it.
She bit into the core of that forbidden fruit so
You would
have to
work hard for your money:
No easy path to success
No road less traveled
No glassless ceiling.
She did it for you
And so did those who came before you:
Jane Addams
Who dared set up adult education
In Chicago slums- her Nobel Peace Prize
No match for a filled belly and a solid mind;
Mary McLeod Bethune
From daughter of a slave to college founder;
Carrie Chapman Catt
Without whom the 19th amendment
Might have been a dream deferred;
Rosa Parks
From seamstress to heroine; and for
Betty Friedan,
Dolores Huerta,
Helen Keller,
Alice Paul ,
Margaret Sanger,
Muriel Siebert,
Gloria Steinem
No, Eve ate the fruit so your pain would matter to my daughter.
And what does my daughter know about woman’s rights?
She knows that Dora can be an Explorer
That Rosita is not going to take any shit from Oscar the Grouch
And that Barbie is as far from the ideal woman as Paris Hilton
Is as far from a role model as anyone could be.
But Eve even ate the apple for you Paris and Nicole and Brittany and Lindsay.
So remember that
the next time you’re going the wrong way
on a highway,
blood alcohol level spiking the meter
so you can try to add to the pathetic 15 minutes
we have already doled out to you.
And what does my daughter know about strong women,
Real role models:
Shirley Chisholm,
Geraldine Ferraro,
Sandra Day O’Connor,
Jeannette Rankin,
Janet Reno.
What do you know about them?
I know Eve ate that fruit so they could
Go toe to toe with the men on the Hill,
Kicking asses,
Taking names.
Now Eve never got to tell her story
Her history.
She never got to put ink to paper
There is no E True Hollywood Story
About the Garden of Eden
But she ate that fruit anyway so other woman could pen their messages:
Emily Dickenson,
Maya Angelou,
Pearl Buck,
Harper Lee,
Toni Morrison,
Alice Walker,
Sandra Cisneros,
Louisa May Alcott,
Willa Cather,
Anne Bradstreet,
Phillis Wheatley,
Sojourner Truth,
Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Kate Chopin,
Gertrude Stein,
Edna St Vincent Millay,
Eudora Welty,
Gwendolyn Brooks,
Anne Sexton,
Sylvia Plath,
Jamaica Kincaid,
Rita Dove,
Cathy Song
Your pages drip Eve’s
Sweet bloody inspiration
Through your own perspiration
Despite the masculine nation
Which provides no emancipation
For your brilliant words and powerful orations.
But what does my daughter know
From literature?
What do you know?
And no one was around to record Eve’s songs.
She was a siren.
A muse.
She bit into that fruit so you could sing the blues
Joan Baez,
Joni Mitchell,
Ani DiFranco,
Indigo Girls,
Bessie Smith,
Ella Fitzgerald,
Ruth Brown,
Queen Latifah ,
Salt and Pepper,
Aretha Franklin,
Gladys Knight,
Carole King,
Janis Joplin,
Tina Turner,
Billie Holiday,
Bonnie Raitt,
Pat Benatar,
Loretta Lynn,
Mahalia Jackson,
Big Mama Thornton,
Lauryn Hill,
And you, Helen Ready.
But what does my daughter know about music.
About dance
About painting
About architecture
About fashion
About rights
About wrongs?
What will I teach her?
What will I teach you?
What will you teach me, Eve?
About being a better man.
About being a better husband.
About being a better father.
About being a better teacher.
About being a better voter.
About just being better.
======================================================================================================
“Too Much Faith in Time”
Time slices through this minute
Without bias
Leaving lost moments to fend for themselves
In our minds
Like tattered, yellowed photographs
Dog-eared and worn.
Time does not cry for loss as
This second is history now
And without trying
Another second has fallen
Now three more before this line is through.
What we were depends on you
In your time.
Looking around our
dinner tables,
Our classroom fables,
Our coffee shops,
Our old lap-tops:
Can you smell the moments?
Can you taste the friendships?
Can you feel warm breath or arms around tired, aching shoulders?
Look at the time.
The second hand dashes around the face of this clock
Like a middle finger
Taunting you to dare mess with its destiny.
It thinks it is in control
As its pulse
Lets the moon know when to
Look full upon young lovers holding hands
Or old lovers rocking to the rhythm of its sonic silence.
It thinks it is in control
When the tide rushes in as predicted
And carries out to sea grains of sand
Which upon civilizations are born.
It thinks it is in control
When we let it win
When we let time hold us captive
When we let ourselves be pushed around by minutes lost
And not hours gained.
No, it is time to take back time.
It is time to make the rules ourselves
To break the rules ourselves
By using memory not as a crutch
But as the essence of our resistance
As the purpose for our existence.
Time will not stand still for us
But we can make this second matter
We can make this hour count
We can make this day significant
We can make this week be the difference
Between lost moments which fend for themselves
And memories which make us better human beings.
-======================================================================================================
"Notes on Noticing"
with apologies to Sheridan Blau
Noticing
Rows of coffees and waters and among them
One nearly finished
Diet Coke and one
lone
Yogurt breakfast drink
Lined up to the left or to the right of warm summer scribes as they
Recount the verbosity of
Nightly readings
And their own wrestling with language.
Noticing
Books of poems
Scattered on tables-
A weathered and worn copy
Of Norton’s staple anthology
and the many dog-eared pages of verse
which takes us from
Donne’s Valedictions to
Maxwell’s Mistresses to
Blake’s Little Boy
To Ginsberg’s Howlings.
Wondering
Did these poets need similar
Drinks before them
When they wrote?
And did they have to stop, take a sip,
Sigh,
And search for their next word too
All the while
Noticing
Rain falling lightly
on roof shingles
Music that had stopped playing
in the background
And the last bitter sip
Of someone else’s now
cold coffee.
========================================================================================================
"Katrina Blues"
Licking imaginary wounds,
an emaciated stray Delta cat waits for an owner
buried under a flooded roof
========================================================================================================
“In Recognition of Duality”
from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter
Life strongly tempted her fall.
Our righteous laws doomed her--
A mark of shame upon
Her moment of intense, visible burning.
The token of infamy,
Her sin-born infant.
A voice behind her;
A loud, solemn tone proclaims
The impulses of youth.
While the stern and tempered
Energies of man
Distinguished the sadness of divinity:
Just and sage,
Wise and virtuous.
A mesh of good and evil,
She lifted her eyes, the unhappy woman,
Pale like a man of spirits
In the unadulterated sunshine.
The darkly engraved
Volumes of sermons--
Questions of human guilt, passion, and anguish
Touch the vileness and blackness of sin.
The tenderness of terror,
An authoritative voice
Tempered responsibility.
Like an angel, the mystery of nature
Is silent and tender
While a pedestal of shame
Hides a guilty heart
Through silent, tempting hypocrisies--
A triumph over evil.
Sorrow without repentance,
Pale as death,
A poor culprit’s mind,
A discourse on sin--
New terrors shelter voices
Thundering nervously,
Piercing the air with its
Wails and screams
Whispering a lurid gleam along the dark way.
===========================================================
“All He Wants To Do Is Think”
from chapter 3 of NIGHTJOHN
He buys them
With a pistol.
He thinks he’s big,
The overseer.
Use the whip.
Use the gun.
We hate him
Badly.
Riding the big brown horse
A rope
A shackle
A saddle
Into the main yard near the quarters,
Yelling and swearing
Yanking on the rope around his neck.
Tired dust flies
Around his back scarred from old whippings,
Raised in ripples,
Thick as my hand,
Brown as dark sassafras,
True black,
Beautiful,
Like marble stone.
Late night,
After dark,
Food at wooden troughs--
Take your turn licking the bottom--
Don’t sit or rest.
Overseers,
Drums,
Whips,
And clubs.
At night
From the fields-
Prayer.
Lick the night light.
See faces from the stars.
A whisper cuts the corner.
A word,
Low and rippling
Like wind through willows--
Soft wantings.
I knew something the
White House did:
We weren’t allowed to understand anything.
That whip-
Skin like torn rags cut off
Led to the light by fingers remembering dirt
Packed hard,
Rubbed out.
Make a sound
That sound
Those sounds--
That same low roll of thunder way off.
That’s all for us.
We get to want
What they got:
Fine clothes,
Food,
Forks,
Spoons,
Knives,
Wiped mouths,
Sleep,
And thought.
=====================================================================================================
“The Day Maya Angelou Saved Tupac Shakur"
Born blind, alive no jive,
two black men draw bloody fists-
an angry attempt to survive while
forgetting in the holds of slave ships,
men, women, and children lived
spoon-like in their own shit and piss and menstrual flow--
A sorry soup of pestilence.
But these two were born blind,
to their own salvation--
to the reasons that bind,
to the seasons that find us
scarred by the trappings of the R wind.
But it will be the poets who will wake up lazy eyes,
hazy sighs,
and they will teach us that we are metaphors
for our own brilliant mistakes in the knowledge that we still can rise
From “Time to exterminate my foes/
I can't stand you hoes"
to
"i gotta work with what you gave me/
claiming i'm a criminal,when ur the one that made me/
they got me trapped in this slavery/
now i'm lost in this holocaust, heading for my grave"
and then maybe we won’t be so blind
and treat in kind
others unlike us
bound with love in mind.
===================================================================================================
“Reading Jack Kerouac to my Dying Grandmother”
Where have you gone
Bohemian imagists
Transcendental madmen
Affixed upon wave
And wind and
Wild smoke over mountain
Crags breathing in
Keats
Exhaling plastic waste
Where have you gone
Mindful beasts
Revolutionary lovers
Mobilized individuals
Chanting naively
Over the din of
Apathy and gunfire
And teargas
And spiteful roadway deaths
Bridging them in Chicago 1968
To us in cold dessert conflicts
Ill-equipped to haunt fragile
Philosophical smiles
Where have you gone
Sacred characters
Cut through my mind
Like a priceless path of purpose
Poets and parents
Who words and silences
Are the blood-ink of
hope
Where have you gone?
Or are you always
Here
In simple budding wild flowers
In free frothing lava flows
In the gull which spills
Its waste upon my freshly
Washed windshield
I swear, smiling wryly as it flies
On the wild winds of
Nature’s effusive passion.
=======================================================================================================
"During the tenure of billionaire mayor Mike Bloomberg, the number of homeless people in New York City's shelter system has increased to more than 50,000, an all-time high. An astoundingly high percentage of those people have jobs."
Her day is a clown car maze
of shifting uniforms:
the 3AM to 7AM
white pressed airport security screener button-down blouse
the 7AM to 9AM
yellow reflective crossing guard vest
the 9AM to 2 PM
chocolate brown Dunkin Donuts apron
the 2PM to 4 PM
return of the yellow reflective crossing guard vest
the 4 PM to 9PM
sweats she wears to tend to the
toilets-desks-rugs-windows-vents-lamps-computer-keyboard-crevices
that feed on dead skin sloughed from
the 7AM to 3 PM crowd
which cash their checks
and drive their cars
and turn their keys
in locks
to doors
to homes
with beds
that don't smell like
the dead skin sloughed from dozens of blistered feet
that have reached their 120 day shelter limit
just in time to
duct tape bandage themselves
before putting on their
3AM to 7AM
white pressed airport security screener button-down blouses
again.
April 2014
======================================================================================================
"Progeny"
--a 2 line poem
Two arms envelop my legs, python-like;
a silenced voice speaks in soft secrecy: "I love you, daddy."
=======================================================================================================
“Bedtime Stories with My Daughter”
Just before bedtime
as I tucked her away for the night
ready to steal off on my own
she reminded me
it was story time;
with eyes brown and wide
attempting to steal a few more waking minutes
she began to read:
A is for alligator
B is for bobcat
C is for crayfish
in that sweet phonically driven voice
and I half listening
half thinking about my own work
until “D” drove me out of slippery slumber:
“D is for the dung beetle that eats poo”
and she laughed that laugh
we had been trying to catalog and match to her others:
the happy witch, the chuckling clown, the girlish tee hee hee
but as soon as she said “dung beetle”
I flashed back to August
before the daze of school
when I started a poem about the dung beetle--
how unlike humans
the weakest knows how to battle the bully beetles:
how they never let them kick sand in their faces
how they don’t let them steal their lunch money
how even the tiniest tunneler gets the girl in the end.
After a brutish beetle offers her a giant brood ball of doo
they roll away together, the female riding the ball--
a surfer’s safari
but after they burrow their fortress
and the female rolls sausages of manure
for her un-hatched children
a tiny tunneler burrows past rough rollers
who guard the tunnel from marauders and other like studs
who want to steal eggs and poo and his woman.
It is a gladiatorial scene
inches below a giant mound of steaming doo
as manly males lock horns,
push and pull as if Shakespeare wrote a fencing scene
for Sumo wrestlers,
and once our tiny friend cuts through,
behind a wall of iron barb-meshed legs and horns
this scrawny scavenger
makes mad dung beetle love
until polarized patterns of moonlight
enlighten buried treasure in this miniature world
of sex and violence,
but before I knew it
E was for elephant
and F was for fox
and I would have to wait to tell her the story of how
boys would someday break her heart
because all they wanted to do
was win.
====================================================================================================
"Sorrow"
I am sorry, Haiti
For January, 2010
When my son asks
If earthquakes will ever hit Rhode Island
And I turn off the television
So he can play games
And color pictures
And not worry about
The boy with no arms
Crying for his mother
Who lies buried in
Dreamless tin tombs.
I am sorry, Haiti
For November, 2008
When 93 students and teachers
Die beneath
Three floors
Of a shoddily designed school
While I complained
Again
That one of the three
Copy machines in my school
Was still broken.
I am sorry, Haiti
For March, 2007
When sports talk radio
Breaks the news of
Charles Barkley
Owing 10 million dollars
In gambling debts
While it takes
25 cents a day
To feed a hungry child
In Port Au Prince
Who survives
By eating sand
And hope.
I am sorry, Haiti
For January, 1986
As Ronald Reagan
Loads the gluttonous Son of Voodoo Jesus
On an Air Force Plane
After his cronies chase
And kill schoolboys
On playgrounds
That overshadow
The cemeteries that
Sing to the 33% of
Haitian children
Who will die
Before they turn 5.
I am sorry, Haiti
For July, 1915
When the United States
Invaded for fear
Of losing sugar cane investments
To coup after coup after coup--
Their Peasants were our slaves
Your nation’s income paying American debts
While 167 political prisoners are gunned down
During riotous revenge.
I am sorry, Haiti
For August, 1791.
We were young but we could have helped
You
When your slaves cried for
liberté,
égalité,
fraternité
Toward their continental French colonizers--
You were a nation looking
For self evident truths--
A reminder of
Our youthful
Revolutionary faces
But our African slaves
Were far too valuable
And you, you were our nightmare
Come to life
Singing from fields of poison
Black generals rising from sugar cane plantations
To stop the pruning of mulatto slaves
And like our British brethren
We could not give credibility to an all-black republic
So we would support thugery
under the cloak of protection.
And I am sorry, Haiti
For right now
Because I don’t have a
Cell phone to text you 10 dollars
And I am sorry Haiti
That I had to research
You for this poem
And I am sorry, Haiti
That when the rubble is cleared
And the bodies are
Bulldozed into a transcendental
genocidal vacuum
that countless cruise ships still dance around
your ports
while pasty white women with umbrella-d drinks
float by calmly on relaxed rubber rafts
and I am sorry Haiti
that we will forget you
like so many have
so many times before
when the cameras
stop selling sympathy
because the price of a barrel
of crude oil has spiked
another 2 dollars
and I might have to settle
for only a 2 percent raise
this year
and while I am not
spending my money
on the opulence of cruises
I am not telling my children
That for supper
They must eat
Dirt
Behind an old tin shack
So this poem will have do
For now
Until the next disaster
Begets another revision
Of a sorrowful, sorrowful history.
===========================================================================================================
"If I Had More Time, I'd a Taught You Something About Music"
I can't believe I told you to write a poem
about music
like in less than 3 minutes
anyone could define the power that
sound has to capture human emotion
as if music was a Venus fly-trap
and your pains and joys were its life-blood
as if running through a list
of artists could ever symbolize anything
other
than a list
because music is more than earthbound sound
it is celestial
it is a golden album
hurtling into space on Voyeger 1
eager to share with extraterrestrial life
Earthly culture
so when
aliens find the album
they will hear
Bach, and Mozart,
and Stravinsky, and
Navaho Indian chants,
and Beethoven, and
Australian Aboriginal dirges, and
a Peruvian wedding song,
and eventually
they will hear
"Dark was the Night
Cold was the Ground"
by Texas bluesman
Blind Willie Johnson
who wasn't born blind but
whose father beat his stepmother
after catching her going out
with another man
and, angered by her own adultery,
she picked up a handful of lye ,
a toxic, caustic powder
which dissolves flesh at first touch,
and threw it,
not at Willie's father,
but into the face of young Willie
blinding him for life
and we want to cut NASA's
budget because space exploration
is a game for children
but somewhere
out there
is Blind Willie's song
like an open vein
his wordless moans
numb and desperate
against a bottleneck
slide guitar that hurts
to listen to
like a match to gasoline
after the gas has been
poured through you
so you can feel the lye
that Willie felt
and maybe writing a poem
about music can be more
than an exercise--
it can be more
like a crucifixion--
a moment of death
followed by a life-time
of rising.
=======================================================
“The Last Dance”
She simply wanted to dance
To spin to the rhythm of sound
To be the notes
That fall from cello
And harp
And timpani
Like snowflakes
That blanket the promise
Of New Year’s Day.
She wanted to bend her body around
Your eyes, her arms
Like ribbons
Could tie your mind
To your heart until
Its pulsing beats
Percuss choreographed
teardrops of blood.
She wanted to point her toes
To the moon’s static glow--
To draw your eyes to
Celestial promises
As you sit in your seat,
Bound by the fear that
If you blink,
You may miss God working miracles
With muscle
And bone
And skin
And dreams.
When the smoky blue
1975 El Camino with tinted windows and
Missing hubcaps
Barreled erratically across
The dividing yellow lines
Worn lightly by
Time’s tepid fingers
She said she could
See the music--
An aura of notes and keys--
A melancholy aria
Bruised and broken.
The wail of saxophone--
A cacophonous call
Sent her mangled body
Through city streets--
Lights dashed through signs that read
“One Way”
“Do Not Enter”
“Stop”
Trailed by the bent notes
Of dirges that would
Eventually follow
Her through
Crumbled earth.
And as they played one last hymn,
Three daughters sat motionless
Unmoved by the angels’ song
That would mark
The last dance of fate,
A festival of stolen memories,
A final, elegant bow.
=======================================================================================================
"Sometimes the Pen isn't Mightier"
Consider the pen
resting against his right breast
as its gnawed cap
stands markedly calm
yet slightly embarrassed
inside a plastic ivory buttoned pocket.
Maybe this man will
someday forget you
on the counter or by the bed stand
but this shirt look new
and those bites
mark time
better than the old watch
his dad gave him
before this man went to college
and his father just
went.
These gnawed impressions
draw a roadmap
through misty memories
telling tales taller than
his voice or
his poetry:
one day--
an alimony check,
the next--
his bucket list,
then--
the phone bill,
finally--
a suicide note
penned and thrown away
then penned again
and buried in his wallet
behind yellowed photographs,
dog-eared mirrors
that bend broken smiles
like the pen cap
that doesn't want
to be eaten by
ghosts anymore.
11/30/11
===========================================================================================================
"Salvation in the Background"
In Flemish painter
Quinten Massys'
"The Crucifixion"
when your eyes
finish scanning the beautifully
frail yet symmetrically
perfect body of Christ--
his pristine
pedicured feet,
his bloodless palmy
stigmata,
the blue-greenness of the crown of thorns
which matched his gall-stained lips
which matched his swollen
bruised knees with which he hauled
his wooden calling card,
when your eyes finish scrutinizing those
who were there:
the virgin--
stoic in blue,
Saint John draped in red--
looking up at Christ,
his fingers intertwined
the way a 1950s
mad scientist would
hold them just before
he told the world where
the damsel in distress
was hidden,
thinking that no one
would ever find her in time,
never imagining that
he was revealing evil's secrets
much like Saint John himself would
after his exile to Patmos where he penned
the mysteries of Revelation,
after you gaze upon the three Marys:
Magdalene-- the assumed prostitute
kneeling beside a lone gap-toothed skull
her clean white fingers clutching for Christ's
perfectly staked feet
and Mary of Clopas and Mary Salome
one looking upward in horror
the other looking downward
a wry smile, her hands clutched
unsympathetically.
When you finally move to its background--
the place where a painting's puzzle muses
microscopic thrills--
there you will see a man,
walking bent back,
holding
a long white ladder.
I wonder what he's planning?
Is he hunting for souvenirs?
Will he graffiti the sign of the cross?
Maybe he wants to see
Christ open an eye,
give him a wink,
float to Earth,
smite his oppressors,
and get the girl in the end.
Or maybe
he's just a workin' stiff,
a simple man who never reads the paper,
who was headin' off to paint the home
of some random Roman gladiator--
but quit
because he got tired of the one percenters
thinking only
they
could occupy salvation.
January 2012
========================================================
"Hey, Spider"
I never expected to see you
this Winter morning
as chilled air
whispered a crystalline alarm
against my kitchen window--
your eight bristled jointed limbs
flexed against
scattered beams of sunlight
as you eased your way
across my tiled kitchen desert.
You didn't even stop to examine the
disregarded soggy Cherrio--
nor were you tempted by the
sliver of diced onion, the
dust bunnies which stood
like stationary tumbleweeds, the
drop of blood, or the
second disregarded Cherrio
not as soggy as the first,
but just damp enough to stick to
the floor-- a
potential oasis but you stepped over without
even a fanged nibble.
I wonder where she was headed,
how she survived last night's
thick, snowy Winter web,
what was she looking for,
or if she was really a spider at all.
Maybe you were the small dust broom
I took out a week ago
and maybe the scattered beams
of sunlight are not shining
off the crystallized window pane
but the wedding ring
I finally removed and placed
on the sill of our window
that looked out
upon the beams of sunlight,
the snowy web of our backyard,
the displaced promise of an oasis--
just another wondrous mirage.
December 2010/ February 2012
===================================================
"Phasing out the Pieces"
While shrines of myth and science
motion heart strings to resurrect
George Bailey's iconic desire
to capture you
to control you
to need you--
I've always known that you were truly mine.
Your round mouth, wide and cold,
sang when I needed love
and your fullness spoke incantations weaving
fertile trails across a night sky.
Even during day light's jealous
conspiracy to rule temporal dreams
I could see you
tucked away behind a Spring tree's plumage
resting coyly among thundering cumulus clouds--
And I was so happy that Bailey's plan
to carve an hourglass into your Rubenesque frame,
to steal you away for another's affection, failed
because you are mine--
but that was weeks ago. Today
I can't believe you're screwing around
with another guy.
Two weeks ago we were one,
whole and hungry,
and it wasn't a cosmic joke--
we were perfection
you with your spectral thumbprint
brilliance
and me with my
secular imperfections--
and I didn't care that my friends said:
dude, she's like
really old
but it didn't matter that I was twenty five
and you were, like,
created by God on one of those
six days and if I were to guess
I would say it was on the first day
so He could see how
His other creations
might thrive in the darkness of night
when the carnal meets the nocturnal--
a carnival of fancy.
Two weeks ago it didn't matter
how many other guys you've been with
because you draped me
with white magic fingers
the same way you lit up
cavemen and apothecaries,
Bolsheviks and Tories,
hell you even gave Christ the eye once--
then you realized where you came from
and thought that
hooking up with
the son of your creator
wouldn't sit well with
Rossetti, or Shelley, or Byron--
so you moved on through
time and space and you kissed
the foreheads of so many men
but I don't care about them
because two weeks ago
it was just us
and a blanket of snow white love.
Then came the distance--
the darkness--
I looked up, you turned away
not even enough of you left
peeking out from under a
quilted night sky
to stop the wind from
ripping through a tree's boughs
playing hungry saxophone melodies
as I stand with lasso limply resting
among the bones of all of the poets
who wrote of your lore
before you phased them all out,
too.
========================================================
"Loneliness Crucified"
Golden fire
moves the stilted air-
lifeless,
emerging,
shapeless.
Strong hands are
flamed with something
immediate and
delightfully satisfying
until loneliness
gestures faintly
from the darkness.
We throw dust
like unbuttoned coats
pointing deliberately,
grunting coldly:
"YOU'RE WEAK"
is heard
slipping out of chains
rattling feet
like Christ, framed,
crest-fallen,
his back suspended
between slats of wood--
the buzz of flies,
quiet cries
rock sorrow--
a lonely death--
stolen gestures
trailing his face,
struggling violently--
his hands,
battered,
shake in fright--
a cry, crouched,
crept and disappeared--
his body stiffened helplessly.
Christ's heart
turned quickly
and his voice
repeated old words:
"I know
I am going
to end....
and live."
April 2012
from Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men
============================================================================================================
"Hello Darkness My Old Friend, My Ass"
Maybe, darkness,
you are my old friend,
and I can finally stop sending
hate mail to Paul Simon
as I blamed him
for making me reevaluate you,
my enemy:
rethinking my father's boozy breath
as I hid under warm navy blue blankets,
cursing dark clouds, gray plaque
boxing out the sun's desperate penmanship,
waiting for bold ink to dry promises
on love letters never addressed.
But love eventually conquers liquor.
And clouds keep shadows from embroidering time on city streets.
And poetry always trumps pathetic, desperate musings which popular girls feast upon.
And so,
Paul Simon,
I'll give you a pass
for the friendship of darkness.
But I will never forgive you
for the lie that everything looks worse in black and white,
for the idea that I'd have my poetry to protect me,
and don't even get me started on
the notion that
bridges
could have stopped
the levees from falling,
darkening New Orleans'
purple spirit
as an unmoored love letter
stamplessly bleeds
"I need you"
through the Lower Ninth's
forgotten avenues.
May 2012
===================================================================================
"As She Sits Listening to Her I-Pod"
I wonder what she is
listening to today,
alone--
eyes closed to
the worldly sounds
of hallway banter,
sneakered footfalls,
air handlers that
could drown-out
Basho's ancient frog,
whose great-great-great grandson
sits stoically tanked in a
biology classroom,
wishing the air handler
would rest for one moment
so he could praise
breaking silence.
Is she listening to
an artist who now
rests ashen--
bones reaching for high notes
which slide--
white-gray clouds
against the
gray-blue palette
of a mournful sky?
Is she randomly
searching for
one song to speak for her,
to untie the straightjacket,
to erase the blade marks
which dart her arm,
to scream primal into darkness'
hollow borders?
Or is it all a rouse?
Do her headphones just
lurk around her ears,
leaving enough room
to hear our noisy instruments
blow empty notes
as we walk by her
failing to see
the airy slits of her eyes
stalking us sharply
or the uncapped black marker
which darts her arm
as a splayed smile wryly plays
to the amplified crowd.
Brian Callahan
June 2012
==================================================
"The Day the Poet Laureate Spoke"
I held open the door for the first young lady
then the rest followed
and
out of obligation
held the door for them as well:
she with cane and braced knee,
she with friend who snorted when she giggled,
she without friend who never laughed
because loneliness stopped her from lifting
her head, to register a thank you
though I was in a hurry
and wanted to let the door go
if only to see if she would melt through the glass
if she was a ghost and I was being tested
to see how long I would hold this door
before another man bared my burden.
Powering through the crowd
toward another conference room
to hear the former poet laureate speak,
I raced cold breath
as I passed the ghost
whose head was still lowered--
black rimmed glasses
resting crooked on her tiny red nose.
The poet sat pensive
outside his room
maybe watching us--
fleshing out metaphors
for his next poem about unseasonably warm Rhode Island winters
or the man who was late to his reading
because he held the door open
for every
woman
at the writing
conference.
This room--
large and frighteningly sterile
with long white tables
placed in even rows
all facing a stark white board
was not a poet's room
but it was the room chosen
and anyway, the poet's voice
isn't dictated by space--
it's driven by
untouched white sand
the slow, dramatic birth of a foul
one's first electric kiss or
your final, exhausting breath.
When I entered this room
the automated
hot fluorescent lights buzzed awake
aggravated by my bravado.
And I was alone.
Ten minutes ago
Four hundred and sixty three teachers
sat with warm muffins
and cold coffees
and pens and notebooks
and an eagerness to learn
and the poet laureate sat
alone
outside his room
in a gray suit jacket and old black jeans
eyes drawn
maybe dreaming of a day
when teachers of writing
would again place value in poetry--
in racing cold breath,
in carrying burdens,
in the buzz of fluorescence,
in electric kisses,
and the shadowy women
who make all poetry worth writing.
March 2012
=========================================================================================================
"So Much of Me Depends Upon You"
-to whomever developed the print face used in every anthology of poetry written by William Carlos Williams
I want to press myself into
Your print--
bold italicized titles
dreamy and fluent--
I want to trace my finger against
the letters of the words on the pages
trying to feel the force of metal against ribbon into onion leaf paper.
I want to sink into "Paterson's"
"a"
swim in its hypnotic solitude
left indented with rigid precision.
I want to smell the mercurochrome
that stained Dr. Williams' fingers
as he tapped away in candle light
against the keys of his favored fold-up typewriter
after delivering twins:
one girl
one poem
both smelling of Chrysanthemum--
both given a rarefied voice
rendered by the rhythm of nature's
truthful breath
cataloged in a font as familiar
as rain water
and Icarus' fall
and the
"fading memory of flowers"
I know in my heart is the rose
I named my daughter after.
==================================================
July 2012
"Why Couldn't Cupid have been a Stenographer
rather than an Arrow Wielding Troublemaker?"
It wasn't
a great idea,
the way
the fountain pen
froze in my hand
even before
starting
the first swoop
of the
"L"
or the way
thin ink ran through
cheap
stationary
pooling mockingly
on my obscenely large
wooden desk.
I watched as the whiteness
of paper surrendered
to its thick well,
as your name melted
into the reservoir
of Spring,
and I wanted to lift
the pen's stainless steel nib--
to commit
to the rest of the word--
but when the
well emptied
and the wind rattled
open windows
frosted white
and the ink
overran the
obscenely large wooden desk,
the well worn carpet,
the horsehair plastered walls,
and finally the night sky,
erasing moon
and stars,
I lifted an arthritic hand
to wild gray whiskers
wondering
if she would have ever
written back.
September 2012
====================================================================================================
Neutaconkanut Hill
resting buried between
used car lots
and overpriced condominiums,
you can't see its glacial rocks,
black sheened boulders
dotted with milky white quartz,
nor can you hear its
stony brooks and mysterious ravines
worn by time and weather,
but with a careful ear pressed to history,
you can hear the cold steps of the
three hundred and seventy six year old
ghost of Roger Williams
stumbling through the stillness
of falling fruit
of bitternut hickory and scarlet oak;
Williams, that London city-boy,
nearly frozen in a wooded trance,
distressed of conscience,
scorned by Salem's intolerance,
saved by Providence
and Narragansett Sachems.
But Williams could see it all:
To the south of the Hill--
the Bay of Narragansett
and 40 aboriginal men
rowing in unison
housed in the hollowed trunks of
chestnut trees--
and Eastward,
rising like salmon,
the flames of Fall River--
as tribes trekked
through trails marked with
the bent trees of warriors.
But neither Williams
nor the Wampanoag
could have ever imagined the graves
of two stolen 1982 Camaroes
torn open with bullets--
a case of Schlitz entombed
under buried wheels
or the Styrofoam cups that
sink beneath lazy footfalls
choking the beauty
of a Connecticut Warbler,
its slate-gray hood and
yellow underbelly
no match for the
faded orange and pink
of an extra-large Dunkin Donuts relic
or the sad sirens that herald,
just at the base of
Neutaconkanut Hill,
another attempted murder
of another teenager
by another warring tribe
of another
forgotten page of Providence's
long legacy of
coming to the rescue.
August-September 2012
======================================================
"Why Don't We Mourn for Film's Nameless Victims?"
In the morning, before his scene was canned
before he slips into his role
as bank-teller number eight
skin tight movements
he knows his director desires
he stares at a stiff blue and yellow S.A.G. card
neatly tucked into a clean clear wallet sleeve
then an electrically charged squib of corn syrup blood
is placed under his white button down shirt
by Rita
who chained-smoked Winstons
and who wasn't particularly interested
in his 15 minutes.
Then he falls
in a hail of gunfire
with twelve other extras
and he never meets
Eastwood or Bronson or Willis
because in the film's final rolling credits
he is banker-teller number eight
and who cares about banker-teller number eight
except for his fictional family
his fictional child and his fictional dog
who waits at a door that is never constructed
because nameless victims fall everyday
and who mourns for them--
we just want to see
Eastwood or Bronson or Willis
avenge the kidnapping of a fictional mogul's grandchild
who we do see
close up
wide-eyed
mouth taped
dirty blonde hair neatly trimmed
and how soon
have we forgotten about
banker-teller number nine
who almost never made this poem
who has become just another victim
who will never have a funeral
who will never be prayed for
whose affair with banker-teller number seven
will never matter.
Not even to us.
===================================================================================================
"When the Leaves Turn"
against each other
battling for every stolen second
of daylight
as they clash
to be the last to abscise,
to scar branches,
to fight freefall--
they dance dangerous games
sharpened stalks and blades
revive old rivalries
and as they
in a transformative Armageddon
struggle to retain
dark-green chlorophyll
before New England's
October air
reveals truths
beneath red-orange
veins--
one
lone
leaf
hangs over the fallen
who rest in a decomposing heap
like toppled tombstones
that we try to rake into
disregarded piles
and bury
like secrets
but our
children
fall into their
hypnotic fluid decay
not caring
that the leaves have turned on each other
as long as they can run
and jump
and fight freefall
like the last leaf does
like I wish I could
until my children coax me to join them
and as we hug the dead together
and I rethink this metaphor
I just let the leaves be a memento
of autumn's final order.
========================================================================================
“They Were Looking For People To Test Hunting Products”
The free rain suit would have been a blessing
on dreary New England Spring mornings
when Winter tries desperately
to dust freshly budding blue violets
with icy tears.
But what would I do with the free bottle of animal urine?
Do I truly want to hail the lone
grouse, whitetail deer, wild turkey, caribou, or black bear
with your gift of golden bouquet?
Do I truly want them to scamper, trot, lumber, or gallop across
highways, strip mall parking lots, a Dunkin Donuts’ drive-through?
And when they arrive, which do I greet them with:
a free knife
a free bow
a free rifle and free box of ammo?
Should I beforehand watch my free Whitetail Pursuit DVD,
Then attack with my free unsheathed 4 ½ inch Field Knife,
Then savor with my free Wild Bounty cookbook?
But when is hunting season in Warwick, Rhode Island?
Is it before or after the Gaspee Day Parade?
Should I pass along my alleged love for hunting
To my children’s elementary school classmates
So their Children's Colonial Costume Contest
Can finally salute authenticity?
And my friends and family.
When did they let the North American Hunting Club
Know of my “secret dedication” to hunting?
Was it before or after I petitioned the Diocese of Providence
For the conscientious-objector paperwork
before Operation Desert Storm?
Or was it before or after I taught my sophomores
About Transcendentalism’s virtue of nature
How the Over Soul connects the leaves to the trees and you to me?
Or should I just send it all back
With a little note
Telling them that the titles of periodicals
According to the newest MLA handbook
Should always be italicized
And never bound by quotes.
===================================================================================
"The Day Science Ruined Mona Lisa's Smile"
I used to trace my finger across
my lady's faultless skin--
the softened transitions from
cheek to chin--
gently grazing her bottom lip,
pale pink.
But her eyes just look away
cast toward an icy mountain background--
and her thinly veiled red hair
falls curling
against
wide open shoulders housed in
swaths of dark silk
trimmed in gold--
and even though you wouldn't
meet my subtle awkward glancing,
we shared a smile
and you were perfection--
no harsh brushstrokes
to reveal you as
a photograph
or a dream
or truth.
Then with x-ray fluorescent technology
scientists peeled back her layers
micrometer by micrometer
deglazing her pure forehead
decomposing the arch of her nose
stripping away her complexity
and with a
two hundred and forty megapixel camera
they revealed oily eyebrows
plucked by time
and eventually
she sat,
a bare boned
canvas of poplar wood,
and as I tried to remember
how she rested bent elbows
or how her dimples disappeared
into tomorrow,
I frown
thinking someday
scientists may peel away my layers
revealing that I was nothing more
than an empty smile.
=================================================================================
"Slavery... 2012"
He is disposable.
He is the coffee cup
you toss
underhanded
into the trash--
your lipstick tattoo
pressed into him
like a branded steer
as he in Nepal
ten years old
loads shale
up the Himalayas
and as he in Ghana
also ten years old
hides a river of scars
that weave around his scalp
from a sturdy fishing paddle's
brandishment like a
Middle Passage road map
and as he in India
is born into the chain's rattle
a third generation
sewing the soccer balls
you leave on the front lawn--
but when the rain
hits it just right
like a crystal ball
its stitches march
armies through history--
where will we find the
10.8 billion dollars
to save them:
the 10.8 billion dollars
we spent this year on blue jeans
or potato chips?
and why can't
we be Fredrick Douglas
to the 27 million slaves
who have never tossed
a coffee cup to the ground
because nothing is as disposable
as lip serviced promises
couched as their destiny.
=====================================================================
“The Transformative Power of Necco Wafers”
At four
simply chewing
those lemon yellow discs
would transform me
from lonely child to
crime fighting super cop
as I leapt from worn out
pieces of mismatched furniture,
karate chopping invisible
invincible bandits like
Hong Kong Phooey--
binding then with
customed handcuffs
of recycled aluminum foil.
At six
the orange powdered
circles rocketed me to
Houston and I, in my backyard oasis,
with hands of sandpaper
gripped an invisible Louisville Slugger and
with two outs in the ninth
down by two with runners
at the corners,
would take Nolan Ryan's caustic fastball
deep into the bright white lights
of the Astrodome, and as I rounded our
neglected garage, the bees
from my neighbor’s beautifully
manicured rose garden
celebrated my victory with a
symphony of joyful buzzing.
At eight
the entire cylindrical pack
became my lightsaber
as I joined Han and Luke and Chewy
in the Cantina bar
moving stealthily through
my sister’s bedroom
wielding my plasma Excalibur
with precise elegance
so no foe could escape our legion,
not even Cynthia,
the doll who could talk her way
out of any fix
who, with purple velvet bellbottoms,
was just as ominous as
Greedo, the socially inept bounty hunter,
Labria, with be-deviled horns and a bright red overbite,
and Wuher, the bartender whose bulbous nose
reminded me of too many uncles I knew
wasting work days surrounded by
empty cases of Schlitz
and half scratched lottery tickets.
And at ten
a burnt umber cinnamon candy
would remove
from my face
all of the Barbasol shaving cream
I had piled
white pillows of comfort
against my cheeks like
dad did when I would stare
through the crack of our bathroom door,
and with each slow, smooth stroke
I would remove another layer
of youth
until I looked down
and saw my own son--
and wondered if his dreams
were as tasty as mine.
======================================================================
"The First School Dance"
It was all fine
until "Every Breath You Take"
transitioned from "Electric Avenue"
and gravity tugged
the boys toward the girls
as I stood motionless by the punchbowl
plastic
transfixed by its ladle pointing compass-like
toward Susanna,
herself cafeteria corned,
gnawing long braided hair
through steely braced teeth
and I hoped our eyes would not meet
and when "Beat It" spun
so did I
hoping Susanna wouldn't watch
every desperate step I took.
==========================================================
“A Shell Half Empty”
We suspect that the storm is blown over,
and that we shall soon take
our oysters to our hearts again, as ever.
New York Times: October 28, 1854
Maybe it was the dying oyster beds
in Manhattan’s harbors
that Iron Eyes Cody
cried for
as brackish beds of life
(turned by the effluence
of expansion)
filtered through their gills
straight through their souls
and out to New York estuaries
whose fiery fumes would blister the paint
off nearby houses
turning the Transcendental treasure
of oysters into
a toxic scapegoat
fueled by the acidic greed
of progress.
I remember the stream behind our apartment
on Douglas Avenue
how when it rained hard enough
I thought that it could take me to Sesame Street
where Grover would welcome me
and, finally, friends...
I remember the smell of candy apples
at the St. Francis Carnival
where I stole a dollar from my father
because I wanted to win that Pat Benetar poster
but never was able to knock down
those three frozen bottles...
I remember the tree in the lot next to my home
in Warwick, how it was bent low to the ground
and I could climb it and it was "my tree"
and after they cut it down
to build a new house
I snuck onto the lot
and saved some of the sawdust
for as long as I could....
I remember Sister Elizabeth John
how she broke the little finger of my right hand
because my desk was dirty
and when I tried to cry
she took out that ruler,
the one with the raised metal strip
that made perfect lines
and kept me quiet....
I remember scoring the winning goal
in the pouring rain
and it didn't matter that the goalie
couldn't see the soccer ball as it trailed
fire from my feet and I was mobbed
by kids who used to pick on me
but for that minute, became their hero.....
I remember wearing that red zipper
Michael Jackson jacket on the first day
at a new school where I learned that
words hurt more than the open hand slaps
that made me throw away the jacket
and lie about where it rests...
I remember the science fair
when Alex forgot the jar of crickets in his car
in December
their tiny frozen feet suspended through the
thin layer of ice that doomed his grade....
I remember the mattress
in my first college dorm room
how the sheets my mom bought me
were too short and I realized
that I was now
all on my own....
I remember the limo ride
on the day of my wedding,
how when I stretched my leg
to try to turn on the television
to see the Pats play the Dolphins
I was introduced to "the look"--
the one husbands need to remember
to remain un-couched....
I remember my first student in my first class--
Tommy, his red Mohawk spiked almost
as loudly as the poem he wrote
about being misunderstood....
And I remember my last student yesterday--
Austin, how when he got up in front of the class
and gave his speech about video game violence
I watched as his hands
which once shook papers in wild spasms
were now rock steady, and as he raised his eyes to meet
his audience, he spoke slowly and forcefully
and I knew that he was ready to remember
something awesome.
=============================================================================
"Dreams"
The dusty diamond
holds our secrets
tightly:
of bases stolen
with graceful ease
and balls scorched
so badly
their blood red stitches
spit New Jersey mud
in silent sufferance,
but no one reminisces about the
Babe's risky home run call
or Reggie's October heroics
or Curt's shrouded bloody sock
when Alan,
drag footed,
slowly makes his way
to the black rubber tee
that waits at home plate
which shudders
as the crowd begins to
rise and clap and cheer
in thunderous unison.
It takes Alan seventeen and a half
minutes
to race his way around the bases--
his eyes keenly affixed to each
white square of victory--
his walker slides against them
as the ball
(which Alan has launched
two and a half inches from the tee)
follows him in a fury of errors.
A third base coach's arm
fervently waves
and Alan knows that he
has one chance to make it--
one opportunity
to follow the Babe and Reggie and Curt-
so he and his walker and years of watching everyone else slide safely home
dance on a freshly chalked line
and as he sails over the plate--
as he looks to the crowd for his mother
whose face rests buried in her palms--
the diamond steals another secret
and another poem is written
praising dashing
dreamers.
May, 2013
====================================================================
Moments?
What must they have heard
Those French families
From their Occupied chateaus
Overlooking Omaha Beach--
The dislodging of sleep
From cannon fire
As the gray dawn crept upon the
Ashen beach
A dense cloud of airplanes
The blinding hiss of shells.
What must they have seen
As the boats hit the sandbars
Their own breathe on
That miserably cold June morning
Clinging to the dust in the air from\
What used to be their sun room
Now a new trench for the Germans
To bunker.
Did they see Uncle Alfred
As the front of the boat ramp
Failed to keep the machine gun carnage
From ending his tour
His but only a drop of the blood
That made the sea an open vein that day?
And did they see Uncle Bill
On another boat
Who dove over the side--
Did they see him stagger
Dodging a swarm of bullets?
Did they see him
Dive back into the water
His comrades a body cover
As he made it through
The entire Theatre of Europe
Physically unscathed?
And when you stand,
My students, today,
After the pledge for that
Moment of silence,
Do you see the ghost
Of the uncle I never met--
Like I do?
Or my father
Holding post on an
Air Force Base in England?
Or my pastor
Saying mass in Iraq?
Or my former students
In Afghanistan?
South Korea?
On an operating room table in
Ramstein, Germany?
November 2015
==================================================================
Turning the Clocks Ahead
Is not so much about
the hour lost
for in slumber
we can't see the seconds leap
from minute to minute
hanging on to the clock's arm dangling and half passed six
like Harold Lloyd
gripping for dear life
the arms
that rocked him to sleep
and fed him strained beets
and slid warm blankets over his cold nose
and tossed side-armed unstitched baseballs
and passed love notes
and eased gold onto delicate finger
and swore oaths
and battled foes
and swung in anger
and cupped his own head in silence
and when you wake up
you will pour your coffee
and knot your tie
and scan your mail
without caring about Harold's fate
because you fell asleep and couldn't explain
how strained beets stained your poem.
March, 2014
===========================================================================
"It was All about the Rake"
how his hand enveloped mine
on the staff of the six tined
quahog magnet
and we scratched
with fury the surface
of a relationship
and when we pushed through
the ocean floor
and a dust storm erupted
under a shallow inlet
in Jamestown
my father's friend
would dive through the ocean's clouds
and we waited to see
what treasure we had found together,
but I don't remember the clams--
their shapes, their numbers, their smells
the meat housed between
the pliable hinge
that hid their secrets--
it was all about the rake
and the slow scratching of a relationship.
=======================================================================
"What Ever Happened to God Bless You?"
Sister Elizabeth John
did not care about
the waxing and waning
of my humors
when I, ten years old,
sneezed and propelled
with phlegamatic ease
a cold, moist wintry blessing
upon her right hand
and while Hippocrates
understood that phlegm
fundamentally symbolizes
relaxation and peace,
Sister Elizabeth John
took no such oath
and with ruler of wood and metal
took choleric joy
in aggressively teaching me
that neither blood nor bile
nor phlegm can outweigh
the peaceful forgiveness
of a Christian blessing.
May 2014
=======================================================================
“The Writer’s Touch”
Sometime around late August
we get the list--
a faceless
alphabetical
random spectrum of
gradeless names
we check for gender equity
familiar surnames
the occasional denotation of an IEP
and we imagine that
this year will be better than last
as we prepare our first monstrous writing assignment:
What did you do on your summer vacation?
You fear for the mark we may give you,
but what mark will you leave upon us.
Today I found a gem
tucked between misspelled words,
awkward syntax, and an amazing run-on sentence:
“writing to me is like a bad cold that just keeps coming back.”
Good.
No, great.
No, spectacular
No-- jubilance.
I hope you are sick forever
a clean white sheet of paper
at the ready to capture each germinating idea
each indelible pressing of the pen
will draw inked blood to the surface
so that you can leave your mark
like Jefferson
craft your dream
like King
note your score
like Coltrane
even now
as you stare at your notebook
I dare you to draft deftly
your poem of the day
your manifesto
your rock opera
your blog
your tweet
your love letter
my rubric
my random thought to be turned
into a poem someday
my memo to my child’s teacher
my note to my wife
that I will place in her lunch
beneath the cellophaned Wasa crackers
hoping that she has a beautiful day
and that I love her more
than the silly love song
that I have been crafting and drafting
and balling then tossing
in the trash with everything else
I wasn’t satisfied with
because I too
like you
am plagued by
perfection’s Faustian gaze
and so now
I will sit and listen
to your metaphor
your allusion
your words
as they explode from the page
with more passionate persistence
than I could ever elicit
from a lifeless list
compiled by a computer
that could care less
about the pox you leave
upon my house.
=============================================================================
"Dynamic Genes"
I am from the grease
of fried bologna sandwiches,
yellow brown mustard on day old white bread,
crusts
left intact.
I am from years of Catholic School guilt,
a Baltimore Catechism in one hand,
a stolen ruler in the other-
the one with my D.N.A. splotched all over it
like the wine that dripped onto
my plaid tie on a dare from Tony, the boy who told me that
Jesus
wanted me to slip slowly his blood—
a tasty salvation.
I am from a stubborn grandfather
who never balked at sign after sign after sign which read:
“NO IRISH NEED APPLY"
“NO IRISH NEED APPLY”
“NO IRISH NEED APPLY”
And I am from hair.
Long haired hippie uncle.
Militarily buzzed father.
Nair upon her upper lip mother.
And myself—
I was the long, proud, curly mullet
today shorn
so a ten year old girl
dying from Cancer’s random claws can now say:
“I am from the grease of fried bologna sandwiches
somewhere."
==========================================================================================================
"I am not the Greatest Generation"
I sit on my couch with my son on my lap
And remember the times with my dad,
Reclined on a paisley red love seat, 1975
Far too young to be awake so late
To watch Pudge Fisk wave a gallant final swing
Against the dreaded Big Red Machine.
I went to bed that night with the spray of half a can of Schlitz
Dotting my pajamas,
But I didn’t care.
No one else in my second grade class could share my adulation
Nor would the Jesuit sisters say, Out loud,
"Did you see that boy raise hands and pray to sweet Jesus for that
Son-of-a-bitch to fly over that glorious Green Monster.”
No, they were 76 prayers into their daily novena
Started to save my soul from eternal damnation.
But I wasn’t interested in salvation.
I just wanted to hear those tv tubes fire up
And eventually fall asleep, couch bound,
A slave to that tiny white dot which never seemed to disappear
And would cast the promise
That tomorrow it would be
Magilla Gorilla and not Tennessee Tuxedo
Who would be my new best friend.
How that television has taught lessons far
Beyond the greater good of the sister’s
Baltimore Catechism,
Whose machine guns of love would dispelled gracefully
Projectiles of tacit cartoon grace.
I learned that even in space, the final frontier,
Women still wore mini-skirts
As Uhura could not break through the glass ceiling where no woman has gone before,
Maxed out on an intergalactic switchboard:
“Hello…Starfleet…How may I direct your call.”
I learned that Maude’s abortion was
Somehow more monumental than Little Ricky ’s birth.
That not everyone was enamored by my
Impressions- a chubby miniature Rich Little-
As I walked up to Billie Sullivan
The boy with leukemia
And rapped him on the head with
My five fat fingers
Mimicking the theme to Benny Hill, speeding around the room
Waiting for him to chase me.
But he didn’t.
He couldn’t.
Because his father never let him, at seven, watch
British comedies on PBS.
Ever.
Because of television I’ve learned that
Chico could never truly be the man.
That when Fonzie got a library card, I needed one too.
That Ralph was a punk
And that I like spunk.
I’ve learned that the greatest American heroes knew good times and
That love American style
Took growing pains.
I learned that Daisy Duke couldn’t make me forget about the message
Of the Confederate Flag
And that maybe the NAACP got it wrong when they went after Amos and Andy.
And so I sit on my couch
With my son on my lap
And read to him stories that
I wish my dad read to me
Far beyond the jeers and cheers
Of TV Guide's vacuous intoxicating pages.
=========================================================================================================
"Katrina"
Walking on sunshine used to feel so good
until the levees broke and the Biblical flood
became more than mere mythology.
After jazz clubs closed,
drowned out by the sounds of the
National Weather Bureau’s sirens of perfunctory silence,
After the president ‘coptered in
days later
luncheons later
aftershocks later and shook
Ray Nagin’s tired wrinkled hand
promising aide and comfort
comfort and security
security and spin,
As FEMA sank New Orleans
deeper into a mire of red tape
red like the awkwardly painted crosses
blasted upon homes indicating
search and rescue,
a base number telling
CNN there are
three
dead
bodies
within,
After days
After weeks
After the levees broke and the
Biblical flood became the devastating reminder of the ships
that sailed slowly into New Orleans’ harbor
up to Congo Square
where they dragged off the survivors
of the most torturous shipwreck of American history
and placed human chattel upon wooden blocks
bound with iron shackles
and sold to the highest bidder,
After the men, sold
After the women, raped
After the feeble, killed
After the music, silenced
The levees broke again.
But after the levees were damned
and the waters receded
and families recovered and reclaimed
the bloated corpses of nephews and grandfathers,
of daughters and stepmothers,
aren’t we still left with the chains?
aren’t we still left with the block?
aren’t we still waiting for our holocausts to end?
====================================================================================================
"Who's That Girl?"
Women and Men
Girls and boys
Listen up:
When Eve took that fruit from that tree in that garden
And bit into its sweet, wet flesh
She didn’t do it because that snake told her to.
She did it for you.
She didn’t do it because Adam said,
“go ahead.”
“it’s alright”
“I’ll be there for you, baby”
She knew as soon as the thunder and the lightning and the voice of God
Started to rain fire and brimstone down on their bare backs
He’d be the first one pointing his bony, naked finger at Eve.
No. She did it for you.
For every man who tells you:
“You can be whatever you want,
Now get in here and get me a beer.”
For every man who says:
“Baby… I didn’t mean it.”
For every man who says
Nothing
And means it.
She bit into the core of that forbidden fruit so
You would
have to
work hard for your money:
No easy path to success
No road less traveled
No glassless ceiling.
She did it for you
And so did those who came before you:
Jane Addams
Who dared set up adult education
In Chicago slums- her Nobel Peace Prize
No match for a filled belly and a solid mind;
Mary McLeod Bethune
From daughter of a slave to college founder;
Carrie Chapman Catt
Without whom the 19th amendment
Might have been a dream deferred;
Rosa Parks
From seamstress to heroine; and for
Betty Friedan,
Dolores Huerta,
Helen Keller,
Alice Paul ,
Margaret Sanger,
Muriel Siebert,
Gloria Steinem
No, Eve ate the fruit so your pain would matter to my daughter.
And what does my daughter know about woman’s rights?
She knows that Dora can be an Explorer
That Rosita is not going to take any shit from Oscar the Grouch
And that Barbie is as far from the ideal woman as Paris Hilton
Is as far from a role model as anyone could be.
But Eve even ate the apple for you Paris and Nicole and Brittany and Lindsay.
So remember that
the next time you’re going the wrong way
on a highway,
blood alcohol level spiking the meter
so you can try to add to the pathetic 15 minutes
we have already doled out to you.
And what does my daughter know about strong women,
Real role models:
Shirley Chisholm,
Geraldine Ferraro,
Sandra Day O’Connor,
Jeannette Rankin,
Janet Reno.
What do you know about them?
I know Eve ate that fruit so they could
Go toe to toe with the men on the Hill,
Kicking asses,
Taking names.
Now Eve never got to tell her story
Her history.
She never got to put ink to paper
There is no E True Hollywood Story
About the Garden of Eden
But she ate that fruit anyway so other woman could pen their messages:
Emily Dickenson,
Maya Angelou,
Pearl Buck,
Harper Lee,
Toni Morrison,
Alice Walker,
Sandra Cisneros,
Louisa May Alcott,
Willa Cather,
Anne Bradstreet,
Phillis Wheatley,
Sojourner Truth,
Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Kate Chopin,
Gertrude Stein,
Edna St Vincent Millay,
Eudora Welty,
Gwendolyn Brooks,
Anne Sexton,
Sylvia Plath,
Jamaica Kincaid,
Rita Dove,
Cathy Song
Your pages drip Eve’s
Sweet bloody inspiration
Through your own perspiration
Despite the masculine nation
Which provides no emancipation
For your brilliant words and powerful orations.
But what does my daughter know
From literature?
What do you know?
And no one was around to record Eve’s songs.
She was a siren.
A muse.
She bit into that fruit so you could sing the blues
Joan Baez,
Joni Mitchell,
Ani DiFranco,
Indigo Girls,
Bessie Smith,
Ella Fitzgerald,
Ruth Brown,
Queen Latifah ,
Salt and Pepper,
Aretha Franklin,
Gladys Knight,
Carole King,
Janis Joplin,
Tina Turner,
Billie Holiday,
Bonnie Raitt,
Pat Benatar,
Loretta Lynn,
Mahalia Jackson,
Big Mama Thornton,
Lauryn Hill,
And you, Helen Ready.
But what does my daughter know about music.
About dance
About painting
About architecture
About fashion
About rights
About wrongs?
What will I teach her?
What will I teach you?
What will you teach me, Eve?
About being a better man.
About being a better husband.
About being a better father.
About being a better teacher.
About being a better voter.
About just being better.
======================================================================================================
“Too Much Faith in Time”
Time slices through this minute
Without bias
Leaving lost moments to fend for themselves
In our minds
Like tattered, yellowed photographs
Dog-eared and worn.
Time does not cry for loss as
This second is history now
And without trying
Another second has fallen
Now three more before this line is through.
What we were depends on you
In your time.
Looking around our
dinner tables,
Our classroom fables,
Our coffee shops,
Our old lap-tops:
Can you smell the moments?
Can you taste the friendships?
Can you feel warm breath or arms around tired, aching shoulders?
Look at the time.
The second hand dashes around the face of this clock
Like a middle finger
Taunting you to dare mess with its destiny.
It thinks it is in control
As its pulse
Lets the moon know when to
Look full upon young lovers holding hands
Or old lovers rocking to the rhythm of its sonic silence.
It thinks it is in control
When the tide rushes in as predicted
And carries out to sea grains of sand
Which upon civilizations are born.
It thinks it is in control
When we let it win
When we let time hold us captive
When we let ourselves be pushed around by minutes lost
And not hours gained.
No, it is time to take back time.
It is time to make the rules ourselves
To break the rules ourselves
By using memory not as a crutch
But as the essence of our resistance
As the purpose for our existence.
Time will not stand still for us
But we can make this second matter
We can make this hour count
We can make this day significant
We can make this week be the difference
Between lost moments which fend for themselves
And memories which make us better human beings.
-======================================================================================================
"Notes on Noticing"
with apologies to Sheridan Blau
Noticing
Rows of coffees and waters and among them
One nearly finished
Diet Coke and one
lone
Yogurt breakfast drink
Lined up to the left or to the right of warm summer scribes as they
Recount the verbosity of
Nightly readings
And their own wrestling with language.
Noticing
Books of poems
Scattered on tables-
A weathered and worn copy
Of Norton’s staple anthology
and the many dog-eared pages of verse
which takes us from
Donne’s Valedictions to
Maxwell’s Mistresses to
Blake’s Little Boy
To Ginsberg’s Howlings.
Wondering
Did these poets need similar
Drinks before them
When they wrote?
And did they have to stop, take a sip,
Sigh,
And search for their next word too
All the while
Noticing
Rain falling lightly
on roof shingles
Music that had stopped playing
in the background
And the last bitter sip
Of someone else’s now
cold coffee.
========================================================================================================
"Katrina Blues"
Licking imaginary wounds,
an emaciated stray Delta cat waits for an owner
buried under a flooded roof
========================================================================================================
“In Recognition of Duality”
from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter
Life strongly tempted her fall.
Our righteous laws doomed her--
A mark of shame upon
Her moment of intense, visible burning.
The token of infamy,
Her sin-born infant.
A voice behind her;
A loud, solemn tone proclaims
The impulses of youth.
While the stern and tempered
Energies of man
Distinguished the sadness of divinity:
Just and sage,
Wise and virtuous.
A mesh of good and evil,
She lifted her eyes, the unhappy woman,
Pale like a man of spirits
In the unadulterated sunshine.
The darkly engraved
Volumes of sermons--
Questions of human guilt, passion, and anguish
Touch the vileness and blackness of sin.
The tenderness of terror,
An authoritative voice
Tempered responsibility.
Like an angel, the mystery of nature
Is silent and tender
While a pedestal of shame
Hides a guilty heart
Through silent, tempting hypocrisies--
A triumph over evil.
Sorrow without repentance,
Pale as death,
A poor culprit’s mind,
A discourse on sin--
New terrors shelter voices
Thundering nervously,
Piercing the air with its
Wails and screams
Whispering a lurid gleam along the dark way.
===========================================================
“All He Wants To Do Is Think”
from chapter 3 of NIGHTJOHN
He buys them
With a pistol.
He thinks he’s big,
The overseer.
Use the whip.
Use the gun.
We hate him
Badly.
Riding the big brown horse
A rope
A shackle
A saddle
Into the main yard near the quarters,
Yelling and swearing
Yanking on the rope around his neck.
Tired dust flies
Around his back scarred from old whippings,
Raised in ripples,
Thick as my hand,
Brown as dark sassafras,
True black,
Beautiful,
Like marble stone.
Late night,
After dark,
Food at wooden troughs--
Take your turn licking the bottom--
Don’t sit or rest.
Overseers,
Drums,
Whips,
And clubs.
At night
From the fields-
Prayer.
Lick the night light.
See faces from the stars.
A whisper cuts the corner.
A word,
Low and rippling
Like wind through willows--
Soft wantings.
I knew something the
White House did:
We weren’t allowed to understand anything.
That whip-
Skin like torn rags cut off
Led to the light by fingers remembering dirt
Packed hard,
Rubbed out.
Make a sound
That sound
Those sounds--
That same low roll of thunder way off.
That’s all for us.
We get to want
What they got:
Fine clothes,
Food,
Forks,
Spoons,
Knives,
Wiped mouths,
Sleep,
And thought.
=====================================================================================================
“The Day Maya Angelou Saved Tupac Shakur"
Born blind, alive no jive,
two black men draw bloody fists-
an angry attempt to survive while
forgetting in the holds of slave ships,
men, women, and children lived
spoon-like in their own shit and piss and menstrual flow--
A sorry soup of pestilence.
But these two were born blind,
to their own salvation--
to the reasons that bind,
to the seasons that find us
scarred by the trappings of the R wind.
But it will be the poets who will wake up lazy eyes,
hazy sighs,
and they will teach us that we are metaphors
for our own brilliant mistakes in the knowledge that we still can rise
From “Time to exterminate my foes/
I can't stand you hoes"
to
"i gotta work with what you gave me/
claiming i'm a criminal,when ur the one that made me/
they got me trapped in this slavery/
now i'm lost in this holocaust, heading for my grave"
and then maybe we won’t be so blind
and treat in kind
others unlike us
bound with love in mind.
===================================================================================================
“Reading Jack Kerouac to my Dying Grandmother”
Where have you gone
Bohemian imagists
Transcendental madmen
Affixed upon wave
And wind and
Wild smoke over mountain
Crags breathing in
Keats
Exhaling plastic waste
Where have you gone
Mindful beasts
Revolutionary lovers
Mobilized individuals
Chanting naively
Over the din of
Apathy and gunfire
And teargas
And spiteful roadway deaths
Bridging them in Chicago 1968
To us in cold dessert conflicts
Ill-equipped to haunt fragile
Philosophical smiles
Where have you gone
Sacred characters
Cut through my mind
Like a priceless path of purpose
Poets and parents
Who words and silences
Are the blood-ink of
hope
Where have you gone?
Or are you always
Here
In simple budding wild flowers
In free frothing lava flows
In the gull which spills
Its waste upon my freshly
Washed windshield
I swear, smiling wryly as it flies
On the wild winds of
Nature’s effusive passion.
=======================================================================================================
"During the tenure of billionaire mayor Mike Bloomberg, the number of homeless people in New York City's shelter system has increased to more than 50,000, an all-time high. An astoundingly high percentage of those people have jobs."
Her day is a clown car maze
of shifting uniforms:
the 3AM to 7AM
white pressed airport security screener button-down blouse
the 7AM to 9AM
yellow reflective crossing guard vest
the 9AM to 2 PM
chocolate brown Dunkin Donuts apron
the 2PM to 4 PM
return of the yellow reflective crossing guard vest
the 4 PM to 9PM
sweats she wears to tend to the
toilets-desks-rugs-windows-vents-lamps-computer-keyboard-crevices
that feed on dead skin sloughed from
the 7AM to 3 PM crowd
which cash their checks
and drive their cars
and turn their keys
in locks
to doors
to homes
with beds
that don't smell like
the dead skin sloughed from dozens of blistered feet
that have reached their 120 day shelter limit
just in time to
duct tape bandage themselves
before putting on their
3AM to 7AM
white pressed airport security screener button-down blouses
again.
April 2014
======================================================================================================
"Progeny"
--a 2 line poem
Two arms envelop my legs, python-like;
a silenced voice speaks in soft secrecy: "I love you, daddy."
=======================================================================================================
“Bedtime Stories with My Daughter”
Just before bedtime
as I tucked her away for the night
ready to steal off on my own
she reminded me
it was story time;
with eyes brown and wide
attempting to steal a few more waking minutes
she began to read:
A is for alligator
B is for bobcat
C is for crayfish
in that sweet phonically driven voice
and I half listening
half thinking about my own work
until “D” drove me out of slippery slumber:
“D is for the dung beetle that eats poo”
and she laughed that laugh
we had been trying to catalog and match to her others:
the happy witch, the chuckling clown, the girlish tee hee hee
but as soon as she said “dung beetle”
I flashed back to August
before the daze of school
when I started a poem about the dung beetle--
how unlike humans
the weakest knows how to battle the bully beetles:
how they never let them kick sand in their faces
how they don’t let them steal their lunch money
how even the tiniest tunneler gets the girl in the end.
After a brutish beetle offers her a giant brood ball of doo
they roll away together, the female riding the ball--
a surfer’s safari
but after they burrow their fortress
and the female rolls sausages of manure
for her un-hatched children
a tiny tunneler burrows past rough rollers
who guard the tunnel from marauders and other like studs
who want to steal eggs and poo and his woman.
It is a gladiatorial scene
inches below a giant mound of steaming doo
as manly males lock horns,
push and pull as if Shakespeare wrote a fencing scene
for Sumo wrestlers,
and once our tiny friend cuts through,
behind a wall of iron barb-meshed legs and horns
this scrawny scavenger
makes mad dung beetle love
until polarized patterns of moonlight
enlighten buried treasure in this miniature world
of sex and violence,
but before I knew it
E was for elephant
and F was for fox
and I would have to wait to tell her the story of how
boys would someday break her heart
because all they wanted to do
was win.
====================================================================================================
"Sorrow"
I am sorry, Haiti
For January, 2010
When my son asks
If earthquakes will ever hit Rhode Island
And I turn off the television
So he can play games
And color pictures
And not worry about
The boy with no arms
Crying for his mother
Who lies buried in
Dreamless tin tombs.
I am sorry, Haiti
For November, 2008
When 93 students and teachers
Die beneath
Three floors
Of a shoddily designed school
While I complained
Again
That one of the three
Copy machines in my school
Was still broken.
I am sorry, Haiti
For March, 2007
When sports talk radio
Breaks the news of
Charles Barkley
Owing 10 million dollars
In gambling debts
While it takes
25 cents a day
To feed a hungry child
In Port Au Prince
Who survives
By eating sand
And hope.
I am sorry, Haiti
For January, 1986
As Ronald Reagan
Loads the gluttonous Son of Voodoo Jesus
On an Air Force Plane
After his cronies chase
And kill schoolboys
On playgrounds
That overshadow
The cemeteries that
Sing to the 33% of
Haitian children
Who will die
Before they turn 5.
I am sorry, Haiti
For July, 1915
When the United States
Invaded for fear
Of losing sugar cane investments
To coup after coup after coup--
Their Peasants were our slaves
Your nation’s income paying American debts
While 167 political prisoners are gunned down
During riotous revenge.
I am sorry, Haiti
For August, 1791.
We were young but we could have helped
You
When your slaves cried for
liberté,
égalité,
fraternité
Toward their continental French colonizers--
You were a nation looking
For self evident truths--
A reminder of
Our youthful
Revolutionary faces
But our African slaves
Were far too valuable
And you, you were our nightmare
Come to life
Singing from fields of poison
Black generals rising from sugar cane plantations
To stop the pruning of mulatto slaves
And like our British brethren
We could not give credibility to an all-black republic
So we would support thugery
under the cloak of protection.
And I am sorry, Haiti
For right now
Because I don’t have a
Cell phone to text you 10 dollars
And I am sorry Haiti
That I had to research
You for this poem
And I am sorry, Haiti
That when the rubble is cleared
And the bodies are
Bulldozed into a transcendental
genocidal vacuum
that countless cruise ships still dance around
your ports
while pasty white women with umbrella-d drinks
float by calmly on relaxed rubber rafts
and I am sorry Haiti
that we will forget you
like so many have
so many times before
when the cameras
stop selling sympathy
because the price of a barrel
of crude oil has spiked
another 2 dollars
and I might have to settle
for only a 2 percent raise
this year
and while I am not
spending my money
on the opulence of cruises
I am not telling my children
That for supper
They must eat
Dirt
Behind an old tin shack
So this poem will have do
For now
Until the next disaster
Begets another revision
Of a sorrowful, sorrowful history.
===========================================================================================================
"If I Had More Time, I'd a Taught You Something About Music"
I can't believe I told you to write a poem
about music
like in less than 3 minutes
anyone could define the power that
sound has to capture human emotion
as if music was a Venus fly-trap
and your pains and joys were its life-blood
as if running through a list
of artists could ever symbolize anything
other
than a list
because music is more than earthbound sound
it is celestial
it is a golden album
hurtling into space on Voyeger 1
eager to share with extraterrestrial life
Earthly culture
so when
aliens find the album
they will hear
Bach, and Mozart,
and Stravinsky, and
Navaho Indian chants,
and Beethoven, and
Australian Aboriginal dirges, and
a Peruvian wedding song,
and eventually
they will hear
"Dark was the Night
Cold was the Ground"
by Texas bluesman
Blind Willie Johnson
who wasn't born blind but
whose father beat his stepmother
after catching her going out
with another man
and, angered by her own adultery,
she picked up a handful of lye ,
a toxic, caustic powder
which dissolves flesh at first touch,
and threw it,
not at Willie's father,
but into the face of young Willie
blinding him for life
and we want to cut NASA's
budget because space exploration
is a game for children
but somewhere
out there
is Blind Willie's song
like an open vein
his wordless moans
numb and desperate
against a bottleneck
slide guitar that hurts
to listen to
like a match to gasoline
after the gas has been
poured through you
so you can feel the lye
that Willie felt
and maybe writing a poem
about music can be more
than an exercise--
it can be more
like a crucifixion--
a moment of death
followed by a life-time
of rising.
=======================================================
“The Last Dance”
She simply wanted to dance
To spin to the rhythm of sound
To be the notes
That fall from cello
And harp
And timpani
Like snowflakes
That blanket the promise
Of New Year’s Day.
She wanted to bend her body around
Your eyes, her arms
Like ribbons
Could tie your mind
To your heart until
Its pulsing beats
Percuss choreographed
teardrops of blood.
She wanted to point her toes
To the moon’s static glow--
To draw your eyes to
Celestial promises
As you sit in your seat,
Bound by the fear that
If you blink,
You may miss God working miracles
With muscle
And bone
And skin
And dreams.
When the smoky blue
1975 El Camino with tinted windows and
Missing hubcaps
Barreled erratically across
The dividing yellow lines
Worn lightly by
Time’s tepid fingers
She said she could
See the music--
An aura of notes and keys--
A melancholy aria
Bruised and broken.
The wail of saxophone--
A cacophonous call
Sent her mangled body
Through city streets--
Lights dashed through signs that read
“One Way”
“Do Not Enter”
“Stop”
Trailed by the bent notes
Of dirges that would
Eventually follow
Her through
Crumbled earth.
And as they played one last hymn,
Three daughters sat motionless
Unmoved by the angels’ song
That would mark
The last dance of fate,
A festival of stolen memories,
A final, elegant bow.
=======================================================================================================
"Sometimes the Pen isn't Mightier"
Consider the pen
resting against his right breast
as its gnawed cap
stands markedly calm
yet slightly embarrassed
inside a plastic ivory buttoned pocket.
Maybe this man will
someday forget you
on the counter or by the bed stand
but this shirt look new
and those bites
mark time
better than the old watch
his dad gave him
before this man went to college
and his father just
went.
These gnawed impressions
draw a roadmap
through misty memories
telling tales taller than
his voice or
his poetry:
one day--
an alimony check,
the next--
his bucket list,
then--
the phone bill,
finally--
a suicide note
penned and thrown away
then penned again
and buried in his wallet
behind yellowed photographs,
dog-eared mirrors
that bend broken smiles
like the pen cap
that doesn't want
to be eaten by
ghosts anymore.
11/30/11
===========================================================================================================
"Salvation in the Background"
In Flemish painter
Quinten Massys'
"The Crucifixion"
when your eyes
finish scanning the beautifully
frail yet symmetrically
perfect body of Christ--
his pristine
pedicured feet,
his bloodless palmy
stigmata,
the blue-greenness of the crown of thorns
which matched his gall-stained lips
which matched his swollen
bruised knees with which he hauled
his wooden calling card,
when your eyes finish scrutinizing those
who were there:
the virgin--
stoic in blue,
Saint John draped in red--
looking up at Christ,
his fingers intertwined
the way a 1950s
mad scientist would
hold them just before
he told the world where
the damsel in distress
was hidden,
thinking that no one
would ever find her in time,
never imagining that
he was revealing evil's secrets
much like Saint John himself would
after his exile to Patmos where he penned
the mysteries of Revelation,
after you gaze upon the three Marys:
Magdalene-- the assumed prostitute
kneeling beside a lone gap-toothed skull
her clean white fingers clutching for Christ's
perfectly staked feet
and Mary of Clopas and Mary Salome
one looking upward in horror
the other looking downward
a wry smile, her hands clutched
unsympathetically.
When you finally move to its background--
the place where a painting's puzzle muses
microscopic thrills--
there you will see a man,
walking bent back,
holding
a long white ladder.
I wonder what he's planning?
Is he hunting for souvenirs?
Will he graffiti the sign of the cross?
Maybe he wants to see
Christ open an eye,
give him a wink,
float to Earth,
smite his oppressors,
and get the girl in the end.
Or maybe
he's just a workin' stiff,
a simple man who never reads the paper,
who was headin' off to paint the home
of some random Roman gladiator--
but quit
because he got tired of the one percenters
thinking only
they
could occupy salvation.
January 2012
========================================================
"Hey, Spider"
I never expected to see you
this Winter morning
as chilled air
whispered a crystalline alarm
against my kitchen window--
your eight bristled jointed limbs
flexed against
scattered beams of sunlight
as you eased your way
across my tiled kitchen desert.
You didn't even stop to examine the
disregarded soggy Cherrio--
nor were you tempted by the
sliver of diced onion, the
dust bunnies which stood
like stationary tumbleweeds, the
drop of blood, or the
second disregarded Cherrio
not as soggy as the first,
but just damp enough to stick to
the floor-- a
potential oasis but you stepped over without
even a fanged nibble.
I wonder where she was headed,
how she survived last night's
thick, snowy Winter web,
what was she looking for,
or if she was really a spider at all.
Maybe you were the small dust broom
I took out a week ago
and maybe the scattered beams
of sunlight are not shining
off the crystallized window pane
but the wedding ring
I finally removed and placed
on the sill of our window
that looked out
upon the beams of sunlight,
the snowy web of our backyard,
the displaced promise of an oasis--
just another wondrous mirage.
December 2010/ February 2012
===================================================
"Phasing out the Pieces"
While shrines of myth and science
motion heart strings to resurrect
George Bailey's iconic desire
to capture you
to control you
to need you--
I've always known that you were truly mine.
Your round mouth, wide and cold,
sang when I needed love
and your fullness spoke incantations weaving
fertile trails across a night sky.
Even during day light's jealous
conspiracy to rule temporal dreams
I could see you
tucked away behind a Spring tree's plumage
resting coyly among thundering cumulus clouds--
And I was so happy that Bailey's plan
to carve an hourglass into your Rubenesque frame,
to steal you away for another's affection, failed
because you are mine--
but that was weeks ago. Today
I can't believe you're screwing around
with another guy.
Two weeks ago we were one,
whole and hungry,
and it wasn't a cosmic joke--
we were perfection
you with your spectral thumbprint
brilliance
and me with my
secular imperfections--
and I didn't care that my friends said:
dude, she's like
really old
but it didn't matter that I was twenty five
and you were, like,
created by God on one of those
six days and if I were to guess
I would say it was on the first day
so He could see how
His other creations
might thrive in the darkness of night
when the carnal meets the nocturnal--
a carnival of fancy.
Two weeks ago it didn't matter
how many other guys you've been with
because you draped me
with white magic fingers
the same way you lit up
cavemen and apothecaries,
Bolsheviks and Tories,
hell you even gave Christ the eye once--
then you realized where you came from
and thought that
hooking up with
the son of your creator
wouldn't sit well with
Rossetti, or Shelley, or Byron--
so you moved on through
time and space and you kissed
the foreheads of so many men
but I don't care about them
because two weeks ago
it was just us
and a blanket of snow white love.
Then came the distance--
the darkness--
I looked up, you turned away
not even enough of you left
peeking out from under a
quilted night sky
to stop the wind from
ripping through a tree's boughs
playing hungry saxophone melodies
as I stand with lasso limply resting
among the bones of all of the poets
who wrote of your lore
before you phased them all out,
too.
========================================================
"Loneliness Crucified"
Golden fire
moves the stilted air-
lifeless,
emerging,
shapeless.
Strong hands are
flamed with something
immediate and
delightfully satisfying
until loneliness
gestures faintly
from the darkness.
We throw dust
like unbuttoned coats
pointing deliberately,
grunting coldly:
"YOU'RE WEAK"
is heard
slipping out of chains
rattling feet
like Christ, framed,
crest-fallen,
his back suspended
between slats of wood--
the buzz of flies,
quiet cries
rock sorrow--
a lonely death--
stolen gestures
trailing his face,
struggling violently--
his hands,
battered,
shake in fright--
a cry, crouched,
crept and disappeared--
his body stiffened helplessly.
Christ's heart
turned quickly
and his voice
repeated old words:
"I know
I am going
to end....
and live."
April 2012
from Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men
============================================================================================================
"Hello Darkness My Old Friend, My Ass"
Maybe, darkness,
you are my old friend,
and I can finally stop sending
hate mail to Paul Simon
as I blamed him
for making me reevaluate you,
my enemy:
rethinking my father's boozy breath
as I hid under warm navy blue blankets,
cursing dark clouds, gray plaque
boxing out the sun's desperate penmanship,
waiting for bold ink to dry promises
on love letters never addressed.
But love eventually conquers liquor.
And clouds keep shadows from embroidering time on city streets.
And poetry always trumps pathetic, desperate musings which popular girls feast upon.
And so,
Paul Simon,
I'll give you a pass
for the friendship of darkness.
But I will never forgive you
for the lie that everything looks worse in black and white,
for the idea that I'd have my poetry to protect me,
and don't even get me started on
the notion that
bridges
could have stopped
the levees from falling,
darkening New Orleans'
purple spirit
as an unmoored love letter
stamplessly bleeds
"I need you"
through the Lower Ninth's
forgotten avenues.
May 2012
===================================================================================
"As She Sits Listening to Her I-Pod"
I wonder what she is
listening to today,
alone--
eyes closed to
the worldly sounds
of hallway banter,
sneakered footfalls,
air handlers that
could drown-out
Basho's ancient frog,
whose great-great-great grandson
sits stoically tanked in a
biology classroom,
wishing the air handler
would rest for one moment
so he could praise
breaking silence.
Is she listening to
an artist who now
rests ashen--
bones reaching for high notes
which slide--
white-gray clouds
against the
gray-blue palette
of a mournful sky?
Is she randomly
searching for
one song to speak for her,
to untie the straightjacket,
to erase the blade marks
which dart her arm,
to scream primal into darkness'
hollow borders?
Or is it all a rouse?
Do her headphones just
lurk around her ears,
leaving enough room
to hear our noisy instruments
blow empty notes
as we walk by her
failing to see
the airy slits of her eyes
stalking us sharply
or the uncapped black marker
which darts her arm
as a splayed smile wryly plays
to the amplified crowd.
Brian Callahan
June 2012
==================================================
"The Day the Poet Laureate Spoke"
I held open the door for the first young lady
then the rest followed
and
out of obligation
held the door for them as well:
she with cane and braced knee,
she with friend who snorted when she giggled,
she without friend who never laughed
because loneliness stopped her from lifting
her head, to register a thank you
though I was in a hurry
and wanted to let the door go
if only to see if she would melt through the glass
if she was a ghost and I was being tested
to see how long I would hold this door
before another man bared my burden.
Powering through the crowd
toward another conference room
to hear the former poet laureate speak,
I raced cold breath
as I passed the ghost
whose head was still lowered--
black rimmed glasses
resting crooked on her tiny red nose.
The poet sat pensive
outside his room
maybe watching us--
fleshing out metaphors
for his next poem about unseasonably warm Rhode Island winters
or the man who was late to his reading
because he held the door open
for every
woman
at the writing
conference.
This room--
large and frighteningly sterile
with long white tables
placed in even rows
all facing a stark white board
was not a poet's room
but it was the room chosen
and anyway, the poet's voice
isn't dictated by space--
it's driven by
untouched white sand
the slow, dramatic birth of a foul
one's first electric kiss or
your final, exhausting breath.
When I entered this room
the automated
hot fluorescent lights buzzed awake
aggravated by my bravado.
And I was alone.
Ten minutes ago
Four hundred and sixty three teachers
sat with warm muffins
and cold coffees
and pens and notebooks
and an eagerness to learn
and the poet laureate sat
alone
outside his room
in a gray suit jacket and old black jeans
eyes drawn
maybe dreaming of a day
when teachers of writing
would again place value in poetry--
in racing cold breath,
in carrying burdens,
in the buzz of fluorescence,
in electric kisses,
and the shadowy women
who make all poetry worth writing.
March 2012
=========================================================================================================
"So Much of Me Depends Upon You"
-to whomever developed the print face used in every anthology of poetry written by William Carlos Williams
I want to press myself into
Your print--
bold italicized titles
dreamy and fluent--
I want to trace my finger against
the letters of the words on the pages
trying to feel the force of metal against ribbon into onion leaf paper.
I want to sink into "Paterson's"
"a"
swim in its hypnotic solitude
left indented with rigid precision.
I want to smell the mercurochrome
that stained Dr. Williams' fingers
as he tapped away in candle light
against the keys of his favored fold-up typewriter
after delivering twins:
one girl
one poem
both smelling of Chrysanthemum--
both given a rarefied voice
rendered by the rhythm of nature's
truthful breath
cataloged in a font as familiar
as rain water
and Icarus' fall
and the
"fading memory of flowers"
I know in my heart is the rose
I named my daughter after.
==================================================
July 2012
"Why Couldn't Cupid have been a Stenographer
rather than an Arrow Wielding Troublemaker?"
It wasn't
a great idea,
the way
the fountain pen
froze in my hand
even before
starting
the first swoop
of the
"L"
or the way
thin ink ran through
cheap
stationary
pooling mockingly
on my obscenely large
wooden desk.
I watched as the whiteness
of paper surrendered
to its thick well,
as your name melted
into the reservoir
of Spring,
and I wanted to lift
the pen's stainless steel nib--
to commit
to the rest of the word--
but when the
well emptied
and the wind rattled
open windows
frosted white
and the ink
overran the
obscenely large wooden desk,
the well worn carpet,
the horsehair plastered walls,
and finally the night sky,
erasing moon
and stars,
I lifted an arthritic hand
to wild gray whiskers
wondering
if she would have ever
written back.
September 2012
====================================================================================================
Neutaconkanut Hill
resting buried between
used car lots
and overpriced condominiums,
you can't see its glacial rocks,
black sheened boulders
dotted with milky white quartz,
nor can you hear its
stony brooks and mysterious ravines
worn by time and weather,
but with a careful ear pressed to history,
you can hear the cold steps of the
three hundred and seventy six year old
ghost of Roger Williams
stumbling through the stillness
of falling fruit
of bitternut hickory and scarlet oak;
Williams, that London city-boy,
nearly frozen in a wooded trance,
distressed of conscience,
scorned by Salem's intolerance,
saved by Providence
and Narragansett Sachems.
But Williams could see it all:
To the south of the Hill--
the Bay of Narragansett
and 40 aboriginal men
rowing in unison
housed in the hollowed trunks of
chestnut trees--
and Eastward,
rising like salmon,
the flames of Fall River--
as tribes trekked
through trails marked with
the bent trees of warriors.
But neither Williams
nor the Wampanoag
could have ever imagined the graves
of two stolen 1982 Camaroes
torn open with bullets--
a case of Schlitz entombed
under buried wheels
or the Styrofoam cups that
sink beneath lazy footfalls
choking the beauty
of a Connecticut Warbler,
its slate-gray hood and
yellow underbelly
no match for the
faded orange and pink
of an extra-large Dunkin Donuts relic
or the sad sirens that herald,
just at the base of
Neutaconkanut Hill,
another attempted murder
of another teenager
by another warring tribe
of another
forgotten page of Providence's
long legacy of
coming to the rescue.
August-September 2012
======================================================
"Why Don't We Mourn for Film's Nameless Victims?"
In the morning, before his scene was canned
before he slips into his role
as bank-teller number eight
skin tight movements
he knows his director desires
he stares at a stiff blue and yellow S.A.G. card
neatly tucked into a clean clear wallet sleeve
then an electrically charged squib of corn syrup blood
is placed under his white button down shirt
by Rita
who chained-smoked Winstons
and who wasn't particularly interested
in his 15 minutes.
Then he falls
in a hail of gunfire
with twelve other extras
and he never meets
Eastwood or Bronson or Willis
because in the film's final rolling credits
he is banker-teller number eight
and who cares about banker-teller number eight
except for his fictional family
his fictional child and his fictional dog
who waits at a door that is never constructed
because nameless victims fall everyday
and who mourns for them--
we just want to see
Eastwood or Bronson or Willis
avenge the kidnapping of a fictional mogul's grandchild
who we do see
close up
wide-eyed
mouth taped
dirty blonde hair neatly trimmed
and how soon
have we forgotten about
banker-teller number nine
who almost never made this poem
who has become just another victim
who will never have a funeral
who will never be prayed for
whose affair with banker-teller number seven
will never matter.
Not even to us.
===================================================================================================
"When the Leaves Turn"
against each other
battling for every stolen second
of daylight
as they clash
to be the last to abscise,
to scar branches,
to fight freefall--
they dance dangerous games
sharpened stalks and blades
revive old rivalries
and as they
in a transformative Armageddon
struggle to retain
dark-green chlorophyll
before New England's
October air
reveals truths
beneath red-orange
veins--
one
lone
leaf
hangs over the fallen
who rest in a decomposing heap
like toppled tombstones
that we try to rake into
disregarded piles
and bury
like secrets
but our
children
fall into their
hypnotic fluid decay
not caring
that the leaves have turned on each other
as long as they can run
and jump
and fight freefall
like the last leaf does
like I wish I could
until my children coax me to join them
and as we hug the dead together
and I rethink this metaphor
I just let the leaves be a memento
of autumn's final order.
========================================================================================
“They Were Looking For People To Test Hunting Products”
The free rain suit would have been a blessing
on dreary New England Spring mornings
when Winter tries desperately
to dust freshly budding blue violets
with icy tears.
But what would I do with the free bottle of animal urine?
Do I truly want to hail the lone
grouse, whitetail deer, wild turkey, caribou, or black bear
with your gift of golden bouquet?
Do I truly want them to scamper, trot, lumber, or gallop across
highways, strip mall parking lots, a Dunkin Donuts’ drive-through?
And when they arrive, which do I greet them with:
a free knife
a free bow
a free rifle and free box of ammo?
Should I beforehand watch my free Whitetail Pursuit DVD,
Then attack with my free unsheathed 4 ½ inch Field Knife,
Then savor with my free Wild Bounty cookbook?
But when is hunting season in Warwick, Rhode Island?
Is it before or after the Gaspee Day Parade?
Should I pass along my alleged love for hunting
To my children’s elementary school classmates
So their Children's Colonial Costume Contest
Can finally salute authenticity?
And my friends and family.
When did they let the North American Hunting Club
Know of my “secret dedication” to hunting?
Was it before or after I petitioned the Diocese of Providence
For the conscientious-objector paperwork
before Operation Desert Storm?
Or was it before or after I taught my sophomores
About Transcendentalism’s virtue of nature
How the Over Soul connects the leaves to the trees and you to me?
Or should I just send it all back
With a little note
Telling them that the titles of periodicals
According to the newest MLA handbook
Should always be italicized
And never bound by quotes.
===================================================================================
"The Day Science Ruined Mona Lisa's Smile"
I used to trace my finger across
my lady's faultless skin--
the softened transitions from
cheek to chin--
gently grazing her bottom lip,
pale pink.
But her eyes just look away
cast toward an icy mountain background--
and her thinly veiled red hair
falls curling
against
wide open shoulders housed in
swaths of dark silk
trimmed in gold--
and even though you wouldn't
meet my subtle awkward glancing,
we shared a smile
and you were perfection--
no harsh brushstrokes
to reveal you as
a photograph
or a dream
or truth.
Then with x-ray fluorescent technology
scientists peeled back her layers
micrometer by micrometer
deglazing her pure forehead
decomposing the arch of her nose
stripping away her complexity
and with a
two hundred and forty megapixel camera
they revealed oily eyebrows
plucked by time
and eventually
she sat,
a bare boned
canvas of poplar wood,
and as I tried to remember
how she rested bent elbows
or how her dimples disappeared
into tomorrow,
I frown
thinking someday
scientists may peel away my layers
revealing that I was nothing more
than an empty smile.
=================================================================================
"Slavery... 2012"
He is disposable.
He is the coffee cup
you toss
underhanded
into the trash--
your lipstick tattoo
pressed into him
like a branded steer
as he in Nepal
ten years old
loads shale
up the Himalayas
and as he in Ghana
also ten years old
hides a river of scars
that weave around his scalp
from a sturdy fishing paddle's
brandishment like a
Middle Passage road map
and as he in India
is born into the chain's rattle
a third generation
sewing the soccer balls
you leave on the front lawn--
but when the rain
hits it just right
like a crystal ball
its stitches march
armies through history--
where will we find the
10.8 billion dollars
to save them:
the 10.8 billion dollars
we spent this year on blue jeans
or potato chips?
and why can't
we be Fredrick Douglas
to the 27 million slaves
who have never tossed
a coffee cup to the ground
because nothing is as disposable
as lip serviced promises
couched as their destiny.
=====================================================================
“The Transformative Power of Necco Wafers”
At four
simply chewing
those lemon yellow discs
would transform me
from lonely child to
crime fighting super cop
as I leapt from worn out
pieces of mismatched furniture,
karate chopping invisible
invincible bandits like
Hong Kong Phooey--
binding then with
customed handcuffs
of recycled aluminum foil.
At six
the orange powdered
circles rocketed me to
Houston and I, in my backyard oasis,
with hands of sandpaper
gripped an invisible Louisville Slugger and
with two outs in the ninth
down by two with runners
at the corners,
would take Nolan Ryan's caustic fastball
deep into the bright white lights
of the Astrodome, and as I rounded our
neglected garage, the bees
from my neighbor’s beautifully
manicured rose garden
celebrated my victory with a
symphony of joyful buzzing.
At eight
the entire cylindrical pack
became my lightsaber
as I joined Han and Luke and Chewy
in the Cantina bar
moving stealthily through
my sister’s bedroom
wielding my plasma Excalibur
with precise elegance
so no foe could escape our legion,
not even Cynthia,
the doll who could talk her way
out of any fix
who, with purple velvet bellbottoms,
was just as ominous as
Greedo, the socially inept bounty hunter,
Labria, with be-deviled horns and a bright red overbite,
and Wuher, the bartender whose bulbous nose
reminded me of too many uncles I knew
wasting work days surrounded by
empty cases of Schlitz
and half scratched lottery tickets.
And at ten
a burnt umber cinnamon candy
would remove
from my face
all of the Barbasol shaving cream
I had piled
white pillows of comfort
against my cheeks like
dad did when I would stare
through the crack of our bathroom door,
and with each slow, smooth stroke
I would remove another layer
of youth
until I looked down
and saw my own son--
and wondered if his dreams
were as tasty as mine.
======================================================================
"The First School Dance"
It was all fine
until "Every Breath You Take"
transitioned from "Electric Avenue"
and gravity tugged
the boys toward the girls
as I stood motionless by the punchbowl
plastic
transfixed by its ladle pointing compass-like
toward Susanna,
herself cafeteria corned,
gnawing long braided hair
through steely braced teeth
and I hoped our eyes would not meet
and when "Beat It" spun
so did I
hoping Susanna wouldn't watch
every desperate step I took.
==========================================================
“A Shell Half Empty”
We suspect that the storm is blown over,
and that we shall soon take
our oysters to our hearts again, as ever.
New York Times: October 28, 1854
Maybe it was the dying oyster beds
in Manhattan’s harbors
that Iron Eyes Cody
cried for
as brackish beds of life
(turned by the effluence
of expansion)
filtered through their gills
straight through their souls
and out to New York estuaries
whose fiery fumes would blister the paint
off nearby houses
turning the Transcendental treasure
of oysters into
a toxic scapegoat
fueled by the acidic greed
of progress.