Big Fish

He drinks water

And pretends he has gills

Thinking he’s a big fish

In a small pond

Until he sees her

She breathing things

Too deep for him

To swim in,

A drowning man

Gasping for air,

Forced to survive

On each breath

She lets out,

Learning to be content

As a small fish

In her small pond,

Learning to breathe deep

Without drowning

What’s it all about, Alfie? (with video)

What’s it all about, Alfie?

With a name like “Alfred,”

I struggled a lot growing up,

Especially after that stupid

Song came out:

What’s it all about, Alfie?

People never stopped asking me that

What’s it all about?

As if I was some kind of wise man

Instead of the class clown

As if not getting a date

With the most popular girl

In high school

Didn’t hurt

What’s it all about, Alfie?

Some names just make you

Work harder

To get over or around them

And when you’re like me

And didn’t show a lot of talent

For much of anything

Trying was never enough

What’s it all about, Alfie?

And maybe I am still a little jealous

Of people who get where they got

Without a bad name

Like the girl from college I did date

Whose long legs I last saw

Climbing into a stretch limo

In front of Trump on Central Park west,

Or the bully I had to beat up

When he wouldn’t stop trying to beat me up

Who got honored as a hero cop,

Or my best friend who stepped in shit

So often he never worked a day in his life

What’s it all about, Alfie?

I keep trying to find something

I thought I’d lost

But maybe never had,

Something that always slips out

From between my fingers

Each time I think I’ve got

A handle on it,

Something I can’t get

Good name or bad,

Something I want more

Than life itself

Always I’d be hard pressed

To put a name on it

What’s it all about, Alfie?

Beats me.

A tulip in the yard (part of the Spring series)

I poke the yellow tulip

With the tip of my forefinger

The soft silent bell

Ringing loudly inside me

A drip of dew dripping out

From its center,

My finger as curious as

Any bee’s, seeking

The secret nectar

From far down inside

A hurried in and out

As sunset threatens

To close the flower

Around me

And keep us both contained

Through the cold, chill night,

And I wonder what

It smells like if indeed

It has a smell at all,

Or tastes like

As I press my face into it

My lips against its lips,

Then my tongue in its mouth,

It shuddering almost as much

As I shudder, this precious

Bit of life poking at me

Out of the rich brown loam,

This testimony to rebirth,

That fills my mouth, my lungs

My heart, this one lick

Of rising spring that flows

Over me, inside me, through me,

Giving rebirth there, too

Mudflats (with photos)

 There is no help for it

The tide rolls out

And leaves the world exposed

The bones of this river

Mudflats dark

With my most secret thoughts

Blessed by the scalding sun

And the squawk of sea gulls,

Who mock all they see,

This unholy world

Filled with the disguised

Urges, the scrapping crab claws

The always vulnerable silver gillies,

And the foot prints of scavengers

Scrawled across the brown surface

In a covert language of their own,

The remnants of tiny dinosaurs

Not yet extinct,

This deplorable inner beauty

I deny in waking, but always return to

In my dreams, stirring up

The most savage desires shorn of

When the rich blue water covers it,

This elemental truth

Each of us must face,

In our struggle to survive

Or even thrive,

Our lives flushed out

By the movement of heavenly bodies,

So we can examine it

Take comfort in who we are

Regardless of what others think,

Or how we should be,

Knowing that in this ebb and flow

It is simply glorious

To be alive

  

A cup of coffee (with video)

All she wanted was a cup of coffee

And some quiet conversation

To make that dark night

Come out all right

We seated in the front seat

Of my Ford Pinto

As if on our first date

That woman I never saw

Before or since

But think about often

Feeling regret over someone

Whose name she only mumbled

And whose face I barely saw

She needing this to be something

More than what it was

Not love so much as

Something not meaningless

As if she saw something in my face

She missed in all the other men

She’d shared front seats with

A cup of coffee

And a bit of conversation

To make it all come out all right

She would even pay for the coffee

On that cold New York City night

When everything seemed strange

And remote, and I

Foolishly lonely,

Did what every other man did,

I said, no.

Reading the river (with video)

I read the river
The way gypsies
Read tea leaves
Searching the surface
For signs of truth,
Omens of things to come,
Remnants of what once was
My life lost in these eddies
This backwater
Of bobbing soda bottles
And expired condoms
Bits of me washing away
In the sudden flash flood
Of a heavy rain,
I walk here,
Searching the sides
Of this utterly dark stream,
For signs of what comes next.
Should I hunker down?
Or like the reeds
Stretch out to bend
With the gusts of wind?
And I am always surprised
By the outcome,
Always somehow managing
To survive
The worst of storms
 

Stars do shine

  

I can’t always see the stars

from where I sit on my front stoop,

Although I know behind the heavy clouds

or cast of lights from the big city,

they are there.

Sometimes, I catch glimpses of them blinking

As the cloud cover parts, reminding me

That they are always there

Remote, often invisible friends

I can’t always see or touch,

But sometimes might drawn warmth from

In the deepest need,

Icons to come greater

And more powerful universe

Of which I am still a part,

Fixed elements in some universal plan

I am too small to see in whole,

A plan I have not devised

But which has devised me,

Who on this side of that great divide

Can merely wait, and watch

Patiently.