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Results for category "2017"

26 Articles

Opportunities seized

Admin 
My nurse friend said,
“You know, Peter, you have
a pretty good life”
and I guess she’s right—
I’m comfortable, well-paid,
respected and even, by
some, well-liked

So if I’m yet to relinquish
childish visions of unending
love and sweet earthly paradise,
so what? She and I tried but
couldn’t find a rhythm, the right
electricity, that goodly earthy sync
and give and fiery sexual prism

For that old curmudgeon politico,
Dick Nixon, truth became a kind of hate
When Eugene McCarthy took on
the murderous Lyndon B. Johnson
he was asked why he couldn’t give
a great rousing speech like the one
he gave at the convention

years before and he said something
like, “I’ve seen too many things and
can’t speak that way anymore”
He felt it then though, we all did
“We had great sex though, yes?”
Sorry my dear, after all these years
I don’t remember much good

about us, out and about the tender swirl
of those dark, dank, hurt-filled days
Like a calf born with two heads
her love for me wasn’t just love
Once vanity and boredom
slipped in, how easy it was
for her to “move on”

The operating room’s different
than what I expected, not really like
TV—it’s full of equipment, for one thing,
electronic, medical, harsh lights overhead,
lots of people, blue gowns a lot of blue
masks, the team scrubbed, expectant
standing wherever they could,

professional, determined, in anticipation
of their tasks, some joking it seemed
And as I go under I’m moved to a
metal looking stretcher bed much
narrower than I expected and, as
I’m placed there, a tube is placed
down my throat and I’m out

That “learned me,” as Gramps
used to say, that “learned me”
She and me in the freedom of time
Once here you can dream it all again—
her powerful offer of sprightly paradise
Opportunities seized that didn’t pan out
Opportunities seized that did

 

 

-August 5, 2017-

Fear

Admin 
Fear exhilarates my passionate
freaks, they who love speed and
physical risk and panic just to
shock themselves towards happiness—
their damages, bruises, their hurts
to them, just a series of not yets

Humanists like me don’t
think humans think very well
We’re greedy, inquisitive beasts—
complicated, godawful,
faulty and easily misled
We overreach, we overspend

Mistakes are monsters
One day I follow Dad all around
the house—“Kid, cut it out!”
We experience one thing
and remember another, our
younger lives so close to yet

Never got the real point—
to obliterate myself in that 1960ish crowd,
in the thump, thump, thump of the rock
guitars— so much louder than a melody
that could rouse herself in my head,
so loud that I couldn’t hear her

We sat around and smoked
strong French cigarettes—
so knowledgeable, so cool
So we glimpsed at the end
and didn’t predict and didn’t
explain and didn’t pretend

When he got the diagnosis he
referred to himself in the past tense
He said, “I didn’t have to drive a cab,
I didn’t have to be a waiter,
I never had to work in a laundry
I honored what I couldn’t understand”

When Grandma heard the adagio
of the Brahms violin concerto,
she cried true tears a bit after the violin
stole the opening melody from the oboe
and returned her to a more
vigorous time in this life

Half feint moon in the summer daylight
Morning sky blue as her eyes—
No clouds
Howard wrote: “These hills are
pigs asleep, the snow is deep,
the mountain lions crouch”

 

 

-July 22, 2017-

Opportunities

Admin 
An after-mask of my obsessions—
Sweet miracle Kate, like an
after-current in dark streams,
she resonates within hidden dreams
You know, Kate, we gamblers
always detest the easy,
the break even, the staid

Injury to injury
she grits, laughs and dances
He proudly swims within her roiled waters
and she shows him her surgical scars
These two, their delicacy, sensitivity, sadness—
Say what you will, our mortality’s just
another story, until it scorches us past madness

They built that little five story
all white tile and brick
How bad it looks now
after years of city soot
like an old man’s yellowed
tobacco stained teeth,
like a memory of illness

When they trained Willy to sell
They taught him to shout to himself
“Hey, I’m Willy the king salesman
I have a hundred dollars in my back pocket
I can sell, sell, sell”
Time is inexorable, it moves
like a ghost that leaps

“No, there’s nothing wrong
with this bottle of wine,”
he said, as he sat alone,
to the waiter in this expensive,
vulgar, Manhattan steakhouse
“I just don’t like it
Please, take it back

I’ll pay for it and,” he points to the menu,
“bring me this one instead”
What if I embarrass myself to myself?
How will I learn to accept her gifts?
Her eyes are blue like mine and get this—
When your body bets it all,
and your cancer is curable, you win

 

 

-July 9, 2017-

Self-portrait with…

Admin 
You see, it returns—
all structured and squared,
as precise as the cubists,
impressionists, abstractionists,
their futilities, their agonies, finally
numerical—all seen through
tightly stretched webs

Although we found
a right level of caring,
aggression and sexual heat,
being my lover lent her
none of the prestige she
expected and her friends
didn’t envy her in the least

In this she’s no expert—
She’s a tourist
We waited for him to
return from his usual
bike ride but he was crushed
by a bus and didn’t— our
bitterness comes with a price

He suffered fools not at all and
couldn’t tolerate a compliment
We learn to tolerate and cherish
what is unknown and unknowable
in those we most love
She’s not stylized like
the Gypsies when she cries

We use our obsessions to survive
rampant, general catastrophes
Our politics are disgusting, extreme
The philosopher said “The world
is everything that is the case”
For “The world” should we
substitute “God” instead?

“Suds” as we called Mr. Sudborough,
our high school English teacher,
said that when a song or a poem
gets to him he gets goose bumps on
his arms and his legs—we collect
things so pleasure becomes a kind
of hardy, chaotic control

A little pain here tips us off
to where the actual injury is
When the accountant came
to see Maurice, Maurice, bored
mightily, left the room and told him
“Keep on talking, I’ll be back” but
no one was there to hear the man talk

I make a self–portrait with, at
my side, an imaginary older brother
Wendy moved out in a huff and
settled, finally happy, in Karachi
Where worldly rewards are nil,
some otherworldly sparks may,
instead, flare up and descend

 

 

-June 24, 2017-

My love

Admin 
I saw the old man, Sol, my friend’s Dad,
as he intensely reads a real estate journal
in his living room— so I asked him
about it and he said it’s highly technical,
its language, so you have to concentrate
It’s not too difficult when you do and,
often, it’s hardly worth it

Her pictures caught me up
They showed her with a life
and concerns that weren’t with me
They showed she could be perfectly
okay without me —a ruthless sense
of intimacy, a happiness, some glee
even, so spontaneous and fine

Leaving, I’m leaving…
They follow me here as though
my leaving meant nothing,
as though I  hadn’t really left
They say the billionaire Arab playboy
craved so many women because
his loneliness was “profound”

What about their loneliness?
Sometimes there’s no one
from across the horizon,
a person for whom everything
about her interests, worries and
pleases you and sometimes there
she is, so wild, happy and sweet

A flower within the weeds—
No weeds, no flower— no flower
then just a meadow of useless weeds
“Air” “sure” Howard liked the way
these two words sound together
I’m supposed to like
that sort of off-rhymey thing too

Sometimes, in the right mood, I do
The flower needs the weeds to flourish
For the weeds, the flower’s their purpose
If you want to send money to a
federal prisoner you use Western Union
When you visit a federal prisoner they’ll
make you change your khaki pants

There he walks—that dignified man
with his cane—careful, deliberate, slow
Sol used to call strangers “friend”
as in “You know, friend, this house
could be what you’re looking for”
My love for you Rachel is unencumbered,
spacious, expansive, real

Sol manned the guns in an airplane
turret in the Second World War
Each mission scared the shit out of him
When he came back home he wasn’t the same—
volatile, somewhat crazy, often angry,
serious, quite often funny, caring and,
at times, just a little bit sad

 

 

-June 17, 2017-

You forget

Admin 
“You forget people as you go along
So the pictures kind of keep me up
even when I’ve forgotten their names”
When you look at her ragged, ugly face,
you see her ragged, ugly soul—
like some clichéd melodrama of old
where appearances are everything

I’m sorry, my dear, but I don’t
think it right the way this peacock and
small lion are stuffed, mounted and
displayed for your astonishment, in
your apartment, day after day, while
you wait to add some dead, stuffed owl (held
up in customs, you say?) to your collection

Galway taught me—
“Few things are like other things”
I immediately agreed
We need the individual thing, to know
how it moves and changes, how
this fire doesn’t go out, doesn’t
yet stop and isn’t yet done

I awaken somewhere different
today—there’s the sun and yes,
it’s the same sun, but its colors and
textures aren’t the same, and twice
a year the setting sun aligns with this
ragged, rigid city grid and illuminates
everything through to the river

What nature does as a
whole easily, isn’t so easy—
A Michelangelo must arrive
to wrench the life from stone,
a Beethoven must come to
wrench the life from sounds
The life we, as individuals, seek

I saw two white swans in Alley pond
They were feeding together
I saw another swan later
It was nowhere near the pond
It was asleep, I think, or dead
“Don’t ask big men for small
things” alive or distinct

Sometimes a chasm opens
up towards my back and
the back of my neck and a
deep sadness fills it like
a fissure so ingrained that
I start to cry and must pause
to regain myself

The big man reaches to take
his wife’s hand and she publicly,
meanly, swats his hand away
and I think these two, they’re
even cruel to each other and I think
about the people I’ve  loved and
what I didn’t mean to do

There she is, seemingly off
her head, no longer admired or
looked up to, as though money for
her was the only true symbol
of regard—now trapped in a hospital
system’s surgical machine, like some
frail, sad, unknowable thing

 

 

-June 3, 2017-

Closer

Admin 
You can’t get closer
to what you already are
As the passions grow
only the disciplined
know real pleasure

Early Spring and I know
why the birds twitter, as
someone fries bacon, as
somebody sings in a cascade
of rage and something breaks

An old determined lady
grips her walker, her
hair wisps of red, as she
strains through the make-up
caked on her face, as she

grimaces step by tedious step
up this relentless hill
And I wonder if this is her
daily marathon of ascent and
not some new found challenge

Beth’s hot—
exotic, erotic, pierced
and tattooed; and she dazzles
you at first, as she casts off
all kinds of self-mortification

Rage, demand, control,
her riotous compulsion to depict,
so mired in her perspective
that she won’t be content
until she discovers you

She knows you’re good to her,
this electric life, this essential season
Her inferiors are dark,
weak, unclean and obscure as she
shrinks from them into quiescence

“You know, John” the head rebel said,
“my men have been protecting you
all week and you didn’t even know it
Now write truth when you leave us
because the best magic tricks

have no magic in them at all”
Been thinking about my brother,
again, his peculiar, shameful, descent
Did he tire of our slow ascents,
step by tedious step?

Beth’s a red-haired tattooed lady
Her light white skin is covered
in tattoos; her body’s a canvas,
a medium for art,
each part another story

What does it take to
restore myself to myself—
to make clear the confusions I bear
over successes in the smallest hard part,
over what I naturally hold dear?

 

 

-May 20, 2017-

A cavalcade

Admin 
A cavalcade of castaways
scorned in the mists,
fragment into tribal tapestries
that interweave within all
things that must persist with
their essential inborn violence,
with their battle-scarred rage to live

Left my shoes in a rush
on the 18th floor— dreamt I
had to get out of there quick
If the elevator won’t stop there
again then I can’t go back
We ate together, had sex together,
vacationed together, loved each other

Mostly old people eat here
None of them recognize me
so they leave me alone
There’s no time when some live
thing isn’t devoured by another
I feel good when I’m inside you and
this universe has reason

Each sleeve contours its limits
Saw myself mirrored in some glass
as I left the train and realized that
I look radically different now
The tulips that thrive around a dank,
dirt hole are like an equation that’s truer
than the reality it describes

I saw the Capital in the DC mist
Glad to see it still there despite
the shits who lord it over us now
So I took a picture with my phone
In the picture the Capital disappears
She ignites my hunger and
this game owes me nothing

I remember how Jean Ray
looked forward to the officer’s meetings
This one was funny, that one insightful
All of them so ethical and intelligent
Harry was especially brilliant
Called her Mrs. Ray and always
made her feel worthy

The further away in time and space
the further the big structures illuminate
We delineate our precisions
like a broken heart bashed long ago,
like little drops of rain that drip
on spare Spring branches—
like a florid ratio of motion and rest

Prime thoughts are everyone’s thoughts,
how what we are to ourselves
can’t be sustained and how we can’t
even truly entertain imaginary thoughts
of non-existence—neither random
nor senseless, our best work is
found—not made

 

 

-May 5, 2017-

I’m grateful despite

Admin 
I’m grateful despite the all
grasping con-game where
indifferent house guards always win
She’s a con artist but she’s my
con artist – like a sordid guide
who disrupts and delights

Bloody face guy stumbles down
the aisle of the plane all stunned
“Take me home, please,” he
whispers “take me home”
You may love her now
and hate her later

His raw dog emerges boldly,
growls foully within her sleep
There’s no day exactly
that inspired her to get old
If what you say is all made up
you’re a genius with insights

too fine to waste on me—
You needn’t raise your precious
mind to fool this naïve old guy
A half-moon like jewel shines
perfectly white in the night sky
Early morning darkness is

studded with emergent Spring pastel
purple, yellow and orange flowers
Today, it will be her allergies,
not some tragedy, that makes her cry
“Moulin Rouge” from 1952
was the tune that tinkled

from Mom’s music box
as a golden ballerina twirled on top
Magical stuff’s in the seer’s eyes
as we lay across some big slob bog
Are you trapped if you don’t know it?
Great changes slowly emerge

The description’s more real
than the ruins it describes
What if it turns out that
the day on the beach with you,
your kids and mine
was my happiest day?

We are assets to be used
as some corporate wizards dictate
while hicks, rubes and drivers of
second-hand Fords elect some
billionaire shit to lead us
This has all happened before

in an infinitely repeating
spire that cloaks in new
signs old stuff
In some other universe
I’ve figured this all out and
gotten the balances right

What do we want from celebrity?
When you look at the jewels in the sky
you see violent, magnificent fires
When she left I didn’t feel
empty this time—I used her and
she used me— all’s fair, I think

 

 

-April 22, 2017-

In what ways

Admin 
In what ways do you flourish—
in between no longer and not yet,
where what’s not becomes what’s been?
At least I’m not that guy,
asleep in bitterness on a sidewalk
near concrete city steps
on a flattened cardboard box

with a dirty fleece blanket on my head
“She broke my glasses” he says
Then he shows them to me
(lucky me), then to my grown son,
as we wait for the subway train
and yes, they’re broken alright
In a review of a new biography of Nixon

the reviewer said Nixon’s father
was such a bad farmer
he couldn’t even grow lemons
I wonder whether it’s really
easy to grow lemons
The passage here between these
two stops is difficult, slow,

stop and go, always congested
Glasses guy gets on another train
and I’m not sorry about it
Our outward courage is a ruse
Our deep faith only shadows
I see no angel crowns
within these city lights

When electronic games first came
out, Lon’s fingers moved faster
than the console could follow
I willed it so, I made it so,
I argued for it and the only
thing to stop me was, it wasn’t
The relentlessness of sunshine

strikes hard after a loss
Once I found someone with whom
I could interlock
We were perfectly tight
and together like one person,
like a story out of Plato, so little
air was there between us

Grey days better cover
our rigidity and fragility
After she breaks their marriage apart
Cliff stares out the window for a year
he said, and it nearly cost him his job
If it’s precious you can’t command it
You can’t command love

He became bored, crazy
Hopelessly, relentlessly bored
I used to steal quarters from Dad’s
dresser, some of the ones he
saved for the laundry
Now she steals pot from me
Kind of the same, I think

At the airport they won’t sell
me my ticket—“You can’t go there
I sold your seat to someone else
So sorry—you can go tomorrow maybe”
They would put Robert Lowell in
a straitjacket when in one of his fits and
take him to this temporary jail

There, confined with other madmen,
he was given over to the doctors
who, after a few months, some
shock therapy and some drugs
would set him free again
“Why can’t I fly there today?
I reserved my ticket yesterday”

There was this little apple tree
I thought it would last longer than me
Not true—a freak tornado ripped it up,
its little fallen yellow ornamental apples
strewn all over the sidewalk and street
So I wiped one off and tasted it
Not bad, little tree, not bad

 

 

 

-April 8, 2017-