A
- A cavalcade of castaways
- A country that descends from
- A desire to have a perfect lawn
- A fly flies fast against the clear, blank window—
- A garish Fall—
- A good way to play me,
- A mysterious man sans past or future
- A pall settles over us
- A train clacks through darkness
- A vision so clear, true, savvy, correct
- Adults can quarrel without a ripple,
- After I nearly drowned
- After the cold cruelty
- Always enthralled by the original, the profound, the difficult,
- Always the mediocre girl, almost ugly
- An after-mask of my obsessions—
- An empty metal supermarket cart
- An indispensable lover
- An old black door
- And then the same sadness—
- Are you naturally gorgeous
- Art at the center
- As any noxious totalitarian knows,
- As I get older the docs fix
- As leaves dry and die
- At a funeral feast given to
- At what point did he become so strong,
B
- Being gradually diminishes, dissipates
- Brain flares, shrill voices
- Burn ‘em
C
- Cars like clutter angle like sharks
- Cockroaches and beetles
- Creation is contrasted coordination—
D
- Dates, names, faces come to mind—
- “Disappointed! You’re kidding, right?
- Don’t talk to me of love, liar
- Dragon lust, dragon dreams
- Dry, sour opinionated men—
E
- Each of us is dedicated
- Each part echoes the whole
- Early in the morning and
- Early sunny air
- Emaciated runner, sweat ringed white baseball cap
- Every day on the way to high school
- Every surface, a cloak
F
- Fear exhilarates my passionate
- Feisty pigmy goats will bite and butt,
- Fighters aren’t always pretty
- First the mast broke—
- Fog of the childish mind
- For us, Richard Nixon was major
- Forged narratives, collages, corruptions
- Frustration in wide hospital corridors resonates into
G
- “Go ahead then—tell it
- Grandma close to 83,
- Grandma had no taste for wine,
- Grandpa used to joke and say
- Grief is the pain we pay for love
- Gullible and acute at once,
H
- Had he never met you—
- Hair and beard alluded to here
- Harsh sunlight makes me sadder
- He didn’t give a quarter
- He dreamt of caresses and sweet words
- He drops the bag
- He feeds the demands of ego, strife and
- He felt himself, at times,
- He focuses on their distortions, their greys
- He follows a colorless highway
- He gets up in the night, cold—
- He has an ability to see
- He knew their names but little else—
- He politely waives goodbye
- He preferred to live in a world
- He refers to his thoughts
- He relaxes now in the rubble,
- He retreats to that place
- He seems tan, trim, happy, fit
- He sees Mom push the empty stroller
- He swore—
- He wakes at night, squints
- “He wanted to know everything
- He was incandescently relentless—
- He’d write out his prediction of
- He’s an old lion
- “He’s gay,” grandma scowls,
- Helpless, hopeless people,
- Her apartment is decorated with dry dead flowers
- Her empty words are thought to carry weight
- Her face is in my dreams again
- Her skeletal face
- Her smell is in my nostrils–
- Here’s the way it is—
- Hilarious mendacities are a god’s
- His greatest role left them all exposed—
- His name, hammered in gold,
- Howard sang of “Dutch cigars”
- Human is wolf to human—
I
- I am to leave the resort today
- I can’t believe that subtle, fine mind is gone...
- "I did not know the necessity.
- I don’t really like the park
- I had never met Watson, certainly never knew him
- I hate the sun when my
- I hated that goddamned son of a bitch
- I lived in grey shadows
- I saw the old man, Sol, my friend’s Dad,
- I sit on the subway and read my newspaper
- I stumble first and then
- I too shall not age gracefully…
- I was just over 12 when Dad died
- I watch the eminent mythologist
- I’m an entertainer, she said
- I’m grateful despite the all
- I’m nine or ten and Dad
- I’m no Donny Q
- I’m the naïve sucker who bought
- I’m told that 99.9% of earthly
- If he never breaks bread alone
- If I could hold death in my hands
- If it happens to everyone...
- If they were made of glass, the new Spring
- If you only want what everyone wants
- If your utopia requires a broad transformation
- In high school Matt acted as though
- In my make-believe world
- In relationships what matters is what
- In the afterglow of spaces I’ve been
- In the days when cigarettes, cigars
- In the first act she’s shy, withdrawn, trapped
- In the late sixties two luncheonettes
- In the musty brown liquor shop
- In the very middle of winter
- In the waiting room, Room 239,
- In the waiting room, Room 239,
- In this fiery world
- In this game, you only lose
- In this idyllic scene
- In this soft twilight place
- In those days...
- In what ways do you flourish—
- Intelligent and fleshy,
- Intentions don’t make her beautiful
- “Is the Pope Catholic? Does a bear
- It makes no difference at the pinnacle
- It was about 4 months ago
- It was aggressive and suggestive
- It was not moonless or cloudy that night—
- It would be easy to assassinate me
- It’s concealed in a labyrinth
- It’s not exactly a heart—
J
- Joy, so close—
- Just because this cruel sick world
L
- Life is order
- Life, that comedian
- Like a dog before he snarls
- Look, look, look and look again
- Love has no beginning
- Love has no mother, no father...
M
- Matt died today
- Matt gambled, everyday—for him
- Memories get distorted
- Memory and regret are
- Mine is a winterish soul
- Misty night mountain,
- Mostly, I don’t find it
- Mother to daughter—“How would you feel if I screamed in your ear?”
- Mourning for the time when
- “Move on”
- “Muscle memory, guided by intuition”
- My father in shadow
- My nurse friend said,
- My snowflake—
N
- Never speak of it
- No one can quite visualize just what
- No one understands humans
- “No, no, they wanted to have kids
- Nostalgic remnants pervade
O
- Oblique corridors
- Of course, there are fierce wars
- Of course, we all loved her
- Oh that crescent moon,
- Okay, they numb themselves
- One bird squawks
- Only through the deepest, dank dark
- Other people, other minds—
- Out of balance, balance
P
- Pain isolates—
- Passionate love, he thought,
- Past struggles, feeling othered,
- Picasso, the learned curator said,
- “PIZZA!!..What ya doing with that Pizza?”
- Plague days—
- Planning is essential
- Presently wolfish
- Prestidigitations, slights of hand,
- Primitive gifts make power
- Pulsating bodies—
Q
- Querulous, discontented days…no tears,
R
- Real pleasure requires at least two—
- Relentless—
- Reopened wounds
- Rocks, dust and stars...
S
- Said the touchy, tough lady activist,
- Schubert wrote this strange song
- Shadow town, shadow city
- Shattered—like an ill man of
- She appears, disappears
- She comes to him with kisses, whiffs of alcohol,
- She didn’t want to listen that day,
- She hated her looks and always the clown
- She hated solitude and wouldn’t retreat
- She learns to get them on the stage
- She makes love to me with her eyes shut
- She quietly blazed
- She sits tensely curled against my windowsill,
- She speaks in pungent slang
- She stands in front of the waves
- She tattoos essential words to her skin
- She uses her arm to push him violently away
- She wants to drive her motorcycle
- She was short, old with white hair,
- She’s my origin, my flame—
- She’s sexy, funny, smart and sweet
- She, like me, lives in a world
- Simple oblivious ruins
- “Sing it like a nightingale with
- So striking the blind can see it
- So this is how it ends
- Some people illuminate—
- Some things...
- Something dies beneath
- Spider spins webs of delight
- Stars fade into dawn
T
- That dog’s no dog— she’s a wolf
- That love I sent you yesterday—
- That old disrupter,
- That winter glare low in the sky—
- The actor, Jon, viscerally
- The border between life and death,
- The call to battle hits
- The cool breeze, the old trees,
- The day dad died
- The drinking life will kill her, she thinks
- The faces of the dead in the clouds
- The fallacy is this:
- The flag is unfurled
- The forgotten city sleeps
- The ideal breeders shown
- The ideal is unyielding melody,
- The insolence of beauty
- The mark is naïve and doesn’t
- the masseuse who told Mom
- The old black subway beggar in a manual wheelchair—
- The old theologian trances and preached
- The only time I saw him he
- The pattern’s broken
- The performer’s mantra—
- The steps are white marble, marble plate
- The sun retreats behind these mountains
- The toxic Spring sky
- The virus isn’t always vile and strong
- The word “miraculous”
- There’s a place where some of us go
- There’s persons worse insulted than you
- There’s something so obtuse
- There’s something wistful about the motherless
- Thermal winds do nothing for the hummingbird;
- These days it is usual
- These things can stop
- They kept what they knew
- They must cause
- They say the Gypsies know my future
- They see a god’s face in the mountain
- They shared, she and he, an
- They’re gone—
- “They’re not ready but they’re gettin’ ready”
- Things happened before life—
- Think about it:
- This is a language I no longer speak—
- This is no world for the sensitive
- This isn’t what was supposed to be
- This love’s gone viral –
- This plain old room
- This sad, classic world
- This time of year
- Time rips all masks—
U
- Unlike his dad, he was
V
- Vibrant colors,
W
- We are encased in our own minds
- We don’t know where we are when
- We don’t see—
- We drove out to Pompton lakes
- We forge rivers through winter snow melt,
- We live life forwards, understand
- We love freedom for its own sake,
- We perceived, we heard in the news—
- We reach forward for love
- We see scorched, eclectic visions
- We sense it like the waves to come—
- We set a bona fide signal, a special,
- We were such good friends, all of us
- We yearn for each other
- We’re just crooners—
- We’re on our own
- What do we say to each other
- What gets you through the night?
- What if all of my bad choices
- What is my am I?
- What the singer hears as she
- Whatever she feels,
- When a little over seven,
- When asked why he plays
- When he didn’t need you anymore
- When I closed my eyes
- When I lived downtown
- When I turned around to find mom,
- When I was eleven my Dad wore
- When she could contain her movements
- When she lived in California
- When the team was losing we’d go
- When the weather isn’t too severe
- “Where did you go?”
- While I was lifting weights
- Who comes here?
- Who dares to challenge the
- Why do such faraway places exist?
- Why do they waste their time to pray
- Wild apples rose at dawn
- With our instinctual indifference
- With the flowers,
- With these old teeth,
- Within each other’s lives,
Y
- Yearn so yearn...
- “You and me” she said furtively
- You can’t get closer
- You deserted me
- You feel my anguish when we part
- “You forget people as you go along
- You held that fine jewel
- You know Gary,
- You look at her portrait and think
- You may think you’ve seen every
- You must take it while you can—
- You see, it returns—
- You swear and lose
- Your mother, your father, were born to die