Results for category "2015"

We’re on our own

                1.

We’re on our own
Looking back, here’s
where our roads clashed
Here they intersected,
here they cut or crashed
Seriously ill, the strongest thing he’d take
was aspirin because if he took the opium
they offered, he couldn’t think
It’s the littlest things, the serendipities,
the desired, the inscrutable yearnings
We act like dilettantes sometimes,
flower to flower, like bees

                2.

The first woman I made love to,
Carol, studied dance
She taught me that
the more I turned her on
the more turned on I’d be
She was serious about dance
but didn’t have that ultimate it in her—
not enough uncanny,
not enough wild technical savvy
She couldn’t let
her wondrous interior grace,
her intimate animal fires, dance

                3.

The forces that draw us toward
and away from one another,
are much stronger than us
The hidden qualities
the unique voids,
the fiery ardors,
the salient, valiant connections
The physical trainer with
her gray haired balding client is
happy enough but in brief moments
looks like she’d rather be
anywhere but here

                4.

When she hums to herself
Grandma hears the orchestra and her young voice
gorgeous in its articulated, classical French
“Fucking sonofabitch—bad reference?
Not only did he give you a bad reference,
he fucking called back ten minutes later
to bad mouth you again—
fucking sonofabitch!”
Grandma always took the leftover
restaurant rolls “for later” she said
Raised in the depression, she
knew hunger and didn’t forget

                5.

I thought I saw my dear,
late friend Patricia walk towards me—
her sophistication, intelligence, the lightness
of her gait; but the woman who
approached didn’t actually resemble her
Yes, the same shy vivacity but Pat wasn’t
blond— her pale skin and similar gait though—
So, what if it had been her,
would I be happy to see her again?
Then I thought “yes I would”
Though we never did connect
I’d be glad to see you again

                6.

Mom spent a lot, but she made a lot,
just like me
Rachel, remember when you and I fed
the pigeons in Venice?
We drank beer and fed them crackers
Good times for us like these
Grandma, whatever else, surely knew how to sing
Serious, focused, disciplined and optimistic
we all, depending on our sect,
have our ingrained visions of success
Together and apart—
hopeful, animated, unique

-December 26, 2015-

We perceived

We perceived, we heard in the news—
a stridency that became everyday
smaller, nastier, meaner, and so dangerous
“You’re married so, ha ha,
you know how it is”
Some walk in the crosswalks while others
go diagonally across

“There I was cut off from the cosmopolitans
who couldn’t confuse or torment me so
I was forced to become original”
Those are some of the crumbs he left behind
Now when I walk on uneven ground
my foot sometime scrapes the road—
Jeez, pick up your feet old man

Life can thrive with little oxygen,
without light, in the blare of extreme light,
in the brutality of caves and
in an airy buoyant chemical cloud,
in the frozen pressure of the sea,
or in some airless high space at 400 degrees
Fahrenheit above or below freezing

Lady, I had a boxer dog just like yours as a kid
but unlike you my parents stupidly
trimmed her ears and cut her tail
which made her vicious
Howard held strong convictions and because
our backgrounds were similar
our disagreements were strong

So he dully went here and he dully went
there and he dully wrote something bland
about it which his dutiful biographer
scrupulously records
And that’s what we know about it
and him other than his work which, really,
is the only reason to remotely care

I no longer meet Michael and see him
drink his wine with such deep enjoyment
Real happiness may occur, I know,
when I’m alone
“Wine” he said, “is such a civilized drink”
His voice and others past can clarify
when I’m alone

And I no longer get to resolve
some quandary by arguing with Howard
except in the recesses of my mind
where people we knew in this life
become just what they symbolize
This is how I got here and this
is who I am

-November 29, 2015-

There’s a place

                1.

There’s a place where some of us go
Some call it the “zone”
others the “endless river”
He was a master painter but that
wasn’t enough—he became a master
sculptor as well

We yearn for the symbiotic,
the “not us” that we always need
Like the thinness between the must
and the parasitic
Like the sharpness, the toughness, the resilience,
like the gnawing in my heart

It’s an accident, this life
What if I had to eke out my living instead?
Would I scrounge from the tourists on the beach,
sell them cigarettes ($10 a pack), Cuban cigars,
small trinkets, or beg and sing to them, or sell them
marijuana or small sacks of real Jamaican coffee?

It ain’t all right if the beach ain’t raked
My job is to rake the beach
My skeleton will press in upon itself
bone upon bone— the old crone parody
like a thin wrinkled monster,
with her squats and heavy shoulder weights

It’s an old fashioned place with metal keys
and metal locks
She’s a conductor who starts the orchestra
and abruptly stops them
“No, no, no this is all wrong— start again”
because she hates what she hears

Like a hunted deer, like a bear in his cave,
like a duck who can no longer fly,
she carries her walking stick
to the river’s edge
Gradually his memory of her will fade,
he thought, and he won’t think of her again

You can’t just play the notes, damn it
or recite the words as you were taught
If you make it look like it matters
but can’t get behind the words
or under the notes
you’ll never get there

                2.

It’s a matter of kinetics
Even in a picture that just suggests
movement—her way of moving
moves me to the sexual,
the give and take of natural lust,
so erotic and so sensual

His actor friend, the one with visions
of Shakespearean epiphanies in his head,
is often hired to do advertisements
When he first had to meet with a
marketing suit, he held his head up nobly
and thought he might vomit

Gene R never met a funeral she didn’t like
If she just barely knew you,
you poor deceased bastard, or anyone who
knew you, never fear, Gene R was there
The saint was a big man
The artist painted him in red

Dad started to cry
when he saw the hospital bills
So sick and now this
Though his feet touched the ground
the saint is elevated and well
on his way to heaven

She sometimes gives the impression
of one not understood and injured
“We have a problem,” Marge wrote
She meant Mike had a stroke
My brother ignores my work
and I ignore his

Relationships are fragile—
Remember that guy who smoked
in the doorway?
Unthinking darkness
He leaves his blue bag on the subway
Realizes it right away

Ascends the stairs to report his loss
Maybe they’ll find it
The stairs are endless
He ascends and he ascends, he climbs
and he climbs, until the blue sky and a
sharp cramp in his leg wake him up

-October 31, 2015-

You swear

                1.

You swear and lose
your temper like him
You act all tough like him
But that doesn’t mean you’re him
Why don’t you copy some
of his good qualities, instead?

I dreamt the platform sundered apart
Which part, for me, is best?
He was a fighter-man often confused—
addicted to booze, the ladies, tobacco
Very often sad, just a little wistful
The gambler in him

always hoped, waited—
waited for something good
that wouldn’t come
Why can’t you kids imitate his
compassion, for one, his empathy,
courage, integrity, loyalty and wit?

                2.

Let’s flatter each other—I’ll start:
Babe, you’re lookin’ magisterial, even
a tad imperial, mysterious, uncanny;
you’re so uninhibited, you’re on fire,
you’re all sex, you’re pleasure itself—
you’re the best, love, the best

Would our fathers, who never met,
would they have gotten along?
Yes, I think they surely would
For one—they were both businessmen
who served in the Second World War
and both made their mark in advertising

Her religious piousness, her sure condemnations,
her disdain for the sexual, homosexual,
her revulsions, obtuseness, rigid fears
of anything that even hints of perverse,
made me hate religion, its opacity, recoil at
her capacity, her obtuseness, for bigotry

                3.

The old man, still outgoing, upbeat, still has it—
He can still make his ad-work zing
But his contacts drop from view or retire
and no one hires him anymore
He doesn’t need the money but sometimes,
when she looks at him, he seems kind of lost

My Dad— a good writer, creative, the quintessential
public relations guy, yours, creative, also a writer
whose specialty was direct mail
Your father was outgoing, cultured, and funny
My Dad, a doctorate in philosophy, intelligent and witty,
if somewhat, like me, rigorous and introverted

In the end one likes or dislikes people
for who they are, not for this or that reason
The way they look, speak, their expressions,
what one feels when they enter a room
It’s like a light that shines in the light—
mostly unnoticed, harder to see

-September 27, 2015-

In the morning

With the flowers,
with my dogs
I drink black coffee
in the garden,
in the summer,
in the morning
after dawn

I ceaselessly erase you,
as I ceaselessly erase me
The only rejoicing
is involuntary rejoicing
The only true joy
is spontaneous joy—
unplanned happiness and joy

In a closed hierarchy
everyone knows who’s who—
where they sit, where they go
But from outside we look alike
The rules here changed
Total certainty, total commitment,
total revenge, total blame

I was so sure
I was so wrong
When life has no sense
I pick nonsense
What nonsense shall I pick?
Those who don’t know what
throw what they don’t know away

We didn’t grow older together
I see her face again
in that temperamental, sparkling place
In my mind’s reflections
odd and rash —
meticulous, slanderous,
ravenous and sharp

The guy in the high school cafeteria
used to call coffee “coal”
“That’s good coal” he’d say
“I made that coal, myself”
As the leaves begin to change
maybe love will come for me again
There’s still time

We’re nature’s eyes and ears
We’re the animal perceivers, her recorders
Without us nature’s blind,
dumber still and deaf
Plenty of time, yes
There’s plenty of good times left—
Oh well, not now, not yet

-August 29, 2015-