Okay, I know You’re around.
No need for me to worry or to seek or to sing psalms.
You’re around.
Don’t get all poetic on me about You being reflected in everything I see.
Or that You dwell in every heart.
Whatever.
.
My indifference will not effect You in anyway.
Grass will grow, clouds will form.
Animals will mate and sleep.
Humans will be kind
Humans will declare war and kill each other’s children.
.
But my God, Your indifference cuts deep.
Behind him a brick wall drips with old colors,
He is facing West 82nd Street.
His lashes droop down, his eyes are closed.
All I can see is the blackness where his face was,
.
As if his face had been cut out of the brick
And the brick holds his face for me.
I stare, and the shadow stares ahead,
.
Daring me to remember the color of his eyes
The cut of his hair, his name.
Philip, I say to the picture,
Philip, with blue eyes.
.
This forest is so young
My hands can reach around almost each tree,
My arms can tightly embrace even the oldest.
Yet such quiet pervades the forest
That I forget time.
.
Quiet is itself older than trees and forest,
Yet chooses to live here,
Comforted by the slow growth of maple and pine,
Hiding in the rustle of wind-shaken branches.
.
I’m working on the final draft of my first book. Crowds are waiting for release:
I’m working as fast as I can.
Floor tiles are mismatched
An old man stands bewildered
Which way to go now?
.
.
A woman passes
In the cafe filled with diners –
A breeze melts my skin
.
skeleton bones
rattle as they roam
‘til they come back home.
the last time i saw one
he, she or it shone in the sun.
he, she or it was having fun
until he, she or it shouted a curse
it was so much worse…
it’s supposed to be a skeltonic verse,
you dummy old bones,
stop all your groans.
go back to your graves in that thick thick thicket
‘til you find a poet who’s not dyslexic
Skeltonic verse consists of short rhyming lines that just sort of flow on from one rhyme to the next for however long one chooses.
.
They sent us forth under false pretenses.
They sent us forth with the false idea that we knew the world,
knew where we stood,
knew what needed to be done.
.
In truth, after graduation, we landed like turnips off a turnip truck:
stunned by the world,
confused by reality.
.
Some of us stood stock still, rigid in the pretenses.
Others floundered, running blindly toward any sacred security.
And what of those trying to collect meaning as a little boy tries to capture frogs?
.
And me, dumb as a doorpost, hanging onto the strap on a subway car,
Letting the coach sway and shake and screech around me,
waiting for a stop that looks good,
getting off for a while to look around.
.
Each stop had its own smell, its own dirty tiles,
Its own people to walk past as they slept.
Back Bay, Dorchester, Waltham, Roxbury, Manhattan, the Bronx,
Mexico City, Bangkok, Hanoi….
“Oh the Places You’ll Go” doesn’t begin to cover it.
.
I settled in a town much like Middlemarch,
surrounded by flower smells, leaf color, neighbors,
far from the madding crowd,
on ground that does not move.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground –
-Rumi
There are hundreds of ways
to touch a leaf
to hear the sea
.
Hundreds of ways
to breathe
to sigh
.
There are hundreds of ways
to touch your skin
to want
to melt.
.
Sun’s out,
hummingbirds are humming.
.
Then one stops,
Stares.
One eye
Stares at me
Staring at him.
.
He hovers,
flicks away.
What was his name?
.
Either
Ruby-throated Hummingbird, or
Nano AeroIvironment Spy Drone,
.
Which looks and flies
like a hummingbird
with a camera behind its eye.
.
Either the wild is
Welcoming me back home or
.
The insurance company is
Ensuring I’m
Helpless.
.
Preaching to the Converted
The Houston flood is killing and destroying. Yes?
The refineries are spewing toxins in the air and water there. Yes?
North Korea blew up a hydrogen bomb. Right? Flew missiles over Japan.
Nazi attempt to squirm out their holes. Yes? [Let me hear you say, “Yes.”]
The western forests are burning up.
300,000 Muslims [illegal immigrants, Yes?] are being slaughtered in Myanmar
by Buddhists.
.
Relax.
.
Luckily,
in response,
we will deport 800,000 young Americans as illegal immigrants. Yes?
.
Because
that will make the waters recede,
the toxins turn sweet;
the bombs will misfire,
the Nazis retreat,
the fires end
and make everything great again.
.
Oh say can we see through the rockets’ red glare?
.
A Poet's Indulgence 