Getting it right

I sit on hard splintered wood

Even in winter

Cup of coffee in my hands

Steam rising up my nose

With each sip

Liquid usually too hot to drink

In a gulp

So I linger over it

the way I ache

to do with love,

Feeling always like

Goldie Locks

With love either

Too hot or too cold

With me waiting

On the bears to complain

About me being in

Their kitchen.

I can’t get Indian food

Right either,

Asking for mild

Only to get slammed

With spiced that tears

My insides out,

Some meals

You’re only supposed

To dabble in

Not plunge in,

But I always

Jump in head first

Always hoping for that

Perfect cup of coffee

Or a dish spiced

Just right,

And despite

The steam up my nose

Or the fire in my belly

I’ll always ache

For perfect love

Corruption

They ease in

and take over

a couple at a time

pictures on

the front page

as if fair warning

of what they intend

to do over time

seducing all those

who get in their way

blackmail for later

when the real push comes,

when they can move

more openly,

knives fully exposed

glittering in the bright light

their teeth dripping blood

no more need

to be shy or sly

no more need for fear

with no one left

to fear

except perhaps

for themselves

always looking

over their shoulders

at which one

of their own kind

will wield the knife

at them.

Before the change

He walks the dog

Like my uncle did

Before the world changed

Before everything

Needed to get sold

Before anybody

Could make an honest buck

Before the landscape

Got raped and over developed

When the air still

Smelled clean,

When he stroke

The back fields

Before he needed to

Keep everything on a leash

Need to mark everything down

In an account book

Of who owes who

And for what

Before the change

When he still believed

This path led to someplace

Other than where it leads,

When we all believed

We had what it took

To get somewhere

Other than what we did

When we all thought

Love was enough.

Recruit (how to get dirty rich quick)

My best friend’s

Best friend

Thought he knew

A good thing when

He saw one

When Hank dated

That “dirty rich girl” from

Roseland,

Our friend telling Hank

She was too good for him

The whole time

Hoping to hook into her

Himself in order to

Get a piece of the action,

Offering to get Hank

Into the rackets

Where the two of them

Our friend and Hank

Would make a killing together,

Just another scam

To make up for how

Lonely our friend was,

Telling Hank how

Great things were

When it was all a trap,

Telling Hank how they

Would clean up

Knowing that if things

Worked out between

Him and Hank’s gal,

Our friend would leave

Hank holding the bag

All by himself,
while our friend

Got to be dirty rich, too.

The Golden Goose

 It rains

Stiff cool fingers

Blister the skin of the world

Tears upon a sullied cheek

Glass beads on the windshield

Wiped away, only to return

Filled with reflections

Of the real world,

Blue eerie glow

That casts nets across

Each street

Light and dark

Shadows letting

Brown leaves

Dance before the rain

Contains them

You shiver slightly

To the patter on the roof

Drenching you

Despite closed windows

With something other

Than wet

A mood your high beams

Can not illuminate

You light a cigarette

Seeing your own face reflected

Back at you

Seeing your own

Haunted eyes in the glass

Watching you watch,

You are alone

Skating glass-like asphalt

Swerving with each

Gust of winds

With each new curve

Shaking at each reflected warning

Vague horns

Of ghostly shapes

And sirens blaring

From beyond invisible islands

As faces appear along the roadside

Full of circumstance

And danger,

You are alone,

And peer into the night

At twisted veins of bright light

That crackle and fall from the sky

Rolling like military cannons

Are they aimed at you?

The drum beat

Is your heart responding,

Beat for each beat,

You are alone

Sealed in a steel prison

Traveling at fifty

Feeling the cold metal rust

Behind you,

Shedding long red

Muddy tears

Behind you,

Expired rivers

Filled with dead leaves

And rattling soda cans

The thunder coming again

A giant’s rage

Over the lost treasure

The golden goose

As your hands tremble

On the steering wheel

As you round that last corner

That last stretch

Bringing your finally

To home.

Seeking warmth

Seeking company,

Seeking never

To be alone

Again.

The best presents

 Some presents don’t come

In pleasant packages

No ribbons and bows

And even after you

Open them up

They don’t offer

Immediate appeal,

And perhaps

Some presents

Are not gifts at all,

But what you

Already have

Left alone

Unmarred

By life’s persistent

Spirits

Sometimes

The best presents

Are the ones

You give

With no questions

Asked

Peace on earth

No racket of reindeer

Rising from the roof

No ‘ho ho ho”

Either

Just quiet

Titanic

We are always one step ahead of you,

Dragging our excess baggage on board

Like we own each ship we sail on,

Imposing ourselves on the most fair

While keeping you in chains,

We sailing first class

making our way around the world

with stiff cigars gripped

between our grinning teeth,

Wearing straw hats and white gloves,

As we sip wine from glass slippers

We make you wear,

You eyeing each strut

From behind cage of steerage,

Unable to break free or have

Any of what we have,

Until some old sea hag

Gives you the key to the gates

That keep you down,

A master key letting you

Make your way up to where we are,

letting you feel what it’s like

to ride on top even as the ice guts us

And with too few life boats

to accommodate us all,

who can blame you for scrambling

into the last seats you see,

before the cold water pours

over the last deck,

before it dawns on us all that

it has always been a matter

of sink or swim,

and first class is no longer

a luxury, but a matter of survival

(from Slow Drowning in a Fast River -- a work in progress)

Tomber (note book poem)

April 24, 1977

The night bends softly around a single glowing headlight approaching me in the dark, misaimed, with its partner extinguished and invisible in the night, staggering like a drunk over pothole, an unpredictable advancing stranger along unpredictable roads I must drive.

The drizzle makes it hard to see, dots of wet against the windshield as a drive, tapping on the glass between each wiper swipe, turning the dark world into smears through which nothing is certain.

And when the approaching headlight passes, and the car to which it is attached, gone, then comes darkness, and the moan of tires against the rough road, a wail of rubber against asphalt I feel in my bones, followed by singing as the tires mount the honey-combed surface of an expansion bridge, a bridge only barely visible with rusted arms rising along either side.

It stretches on endlessly, as if the steel was rubber pulled too tight, ready to break somewhere in the dark ahead.

My headlights illuminate nothing but a brown reflection, as if I am driving a boat along a river in the dark, and I am a drunken sailor, feeling the slosh of wet flowing up and over me, drowning me in a flood of feelings I can’t quite describe.

I think of you, like the missing headlight on the car I have just passed, leaving me half blind and alone, my moans matching the moan of the tires as I plunge ahead, without real direction, somehow knowing that I don’t know what I need to know most, feeling my way west to where you might be, feeling the tug of wind against the car steering me -- if not away then to one side, against the rusted arches that holds up this bridge, threatening to plunge me into the abyss beyond, with fingers clutching the wheel to keep moving straight, to ride through this  dark world, this endless passage, with the vain hope I will end up in your heart.

World’s end: September 21

They tell me

the end of the world

will come today --

As if we could

Put it out of

Its misery

The strife and selfishness

The tick tock inside my head

Foolish notions and fear

I always have

The wants and needs

And my inability

To tell the difference,

This wheel of Karma

This hamster cage toy

Upon which I spin

All coming to an end

Because some

Ancient calendar has stopped

I need something

To tell me what to do next,

How to embrace the end

When it comes as it must

How to face myself

In the after life

When I can’t yet

Face myself here,

To somehow find

Guidance

Etched in my heart,

No fixed date chiseled

Just the courage and wisdom

To face life here

And in the here after.

Riverboat Gambler

Tom tells me

He never knows

The game

Until he sees

Who the players are.

Me?

I’m always blaming

The wrong people,

That sucker

At the card table

Where everybody

Cheats but me,

Looking up the sleeves

Of the waitress

For aces

When she delivers

Me my drinks,

And no mater

How much I

Apologize later

I’m so broke

From gambling

I can’t even

Leave the tip

Swinging comets for Christmas

I trace my finger

across the face

not of Davey Crockett,

but of the boy I used to be,

sitting up in bed

at four years old

my aunt's pretty face

hovering over me

holding the book

so I can see the pages

can touch each image.

she trying to be a mother

my mother cannot be,

trying to give me a childhood

my mother's madness stole,

All these years later,

you give it back to me

for Christmas in one big wooden box,

a small thin golden key

to a past I forgot I had,

unlocked and overwhelming

my heart aching for it

now that I have found it again

my fingers slowly tracing

those spaces where my fingers

traced long ago,

bringing back Christmas

and snow,

and all those lost souls

who have since gone on,

leaving me here

the way mother, aunt,

uncles left me,

ghosts of past, present

and future,

and only the tiniest chain

to drag behind

me into the next world,

me swinging comets

like Davey Crockett did

(best present I ever got -- even better than the bicycle I blackmailed my family into getting me when I was seven)

Live to lie

There is nothing

in my voice

but volume,

single sentences

pronouncing

words I

no longer believe.

I used to live to lie

 because

I could trust no one

with truth,

lies splattering

inside of me

like slashes

of cold rain

against steamed glass

with my small ear

listening to the chatter

Of distant thunder

beyond,

lies and thunder

rumbling through my

childhood

enraged reason

rising and falling

like red running tides.

These days

silence prevails

inside and out,

storms long waged,

and lost

in the name of reason,

leaving lies

like loose threads

behind me.

I can live

with losing,

learning the game

from master players

who still

after all these years

teach me

how to survive.

Under the imaginary mistletoe

  

She was the girl next door

That longest lonely night in 1973

Who latched onto me at the diner

After those many months of me

Ordering buttered roll for breakfast

Who tipped me with her smile

And suggested we get together

Some night when neither of us

Needed to work, and when we did

I could do no more than sit

In the rooming house

Next to my rooming house

In that all too suburban Montclair,

Still wounded from a marriage

I could not make work,

Me unable to understand why

The woman she called “mom”

Kept popping her head through

A doorway that had no door

And kept asking if I was done yet

And reminding my waitress friend

That she had the mayor coming

Later and needed to be done with me soon,

And how that waitress and I

Shared that lonely Christmas Eve,

She whispering how much she

Despised this life and how she wished

I could do for her what her mom did,

And now, these three decades later

I still think of her, and the kiss we shared

Under that imaginary mistletoe

We both needed at that moment

To exist.

I Wish

I wish I could spend one day saying

I wish there was nothing to wish for

I wish that it was all the way

I dreamed life would be

I wish that each moment worked for itself

I wish I could live my life and not need to pray

I wish for you to hole me

I wish I had remembered you

When it counted,

When it did some good

I wish that would call me and tell me

“I wish you were here,”

I wish I could end this poem

With a wish for happiness

And that it is a wish that”
might yet come true.

Sandy Hook

I hear the sound

of shattering glass

Inside my head

But not the shot,

I can’t breathe

For thinking of that time

When I got lost

On my first day

Of school in a hall

So long I could not

See the far end

For the deep shadows,

My Kindergartener footsteps

Slapping on the dark tiles

As I plunged down it,

Calling for someone

To find me

Scared the man

My aunt said

I should never

Take candy from

Would, coming

Out at me from

One of those dark

Doorways I could

Only creep past,

and now all these

years later

that man came

but not for me.

“If” is not a blade of grass

I guess there’s something wrong in me,

Some distorted bit, an ugly flaw

That bites both you and painfully me

In different ways, a bit you’ve caught

And I have not, that’s my fault

I’m afraid. The blindness of a lover

Who has missed the glaring signs to halt,

I see them now, too late, and you’ve another

Way of living set in your mind.

I can’t blame you, I can only sit

And wonder if I’d been in time

Would fate have changed that little bit?

But bits and ifs are not enough

To turn you back to feeling love.

If I was only a wide pine tree

With needles jutting from my finger tips

I could stab myself and remove from me

This terrible, ugly, frightening bit.

I could grow new bark to heal the wound

That flames now from my chest

Where once a heart like a flower bloomed

Out of sorrow and loneliness.

But I have neither limb nor bough

That can stiffly stand your leaving

I have no roots that I swiftly grow

To seal this gap that’s bleeding.

I’m just a simple man, it seems

Who burnt his wood to light his dreams

If I was but a crow that sounds

Harsh and bitter and brooding life

There would be no heartless flame around

To ponder you and crave your like

A blind man must crave his sight,

I would never had you

Near me, touching here, and there, a knife

Cutting with pleasure, cutting me through.

But I am not a crow that caws

Or a bird that can fly away,

I’m hooked upon your feline claws

With words not wings to sway.

But you who once had a softer side

Have hardened into another’s bride.

If I was but the yellow sky

Glowing with a pre-dawn light

Growing into an ocean wide

Of love and warm and smiles bright,

Maybe that would change that mind

Which thinks long thoughts with short replies,

Maybe I could scorch and blind
and melt the frosting from your eyes.

But I am only a flickering flame,
a short match’s light that forever longs
for you to help me ease the pain

That comes with being forever wrong.

But the flame that flickers learns to die

Without much warmth, without much pride.

And I am, too, the sprouting grass

Not a lawn, mind you, but a ragged

Bit of green that grows and wiggle past

The granite blocks and crags, it

Doesn’t matter. I’ll still grow

Though yellow with you the light

And part of me will always show

Your passage, your blinding bright.

I am not crushed or greatly damaged

But bent again in my old ways,

Hurt and lonely yet able to manage

A future filled with dull dark days.
For you, my love, are the only ray

Left to raise this humbled blade.

Poetic salvation

I know Poe

Life’s love lost in Tarot

Faith’s fate traded away

Like bubble gum cards

But without super stars

Or God or jest

Symbols need systems to exist

I need a new religion

Not Christian or Jew

Buddhist or Muslim

One without flying saucers

Or desert temples

One that praises

Enlightenment

Over entanglement

Purpose over pain,

One that says

There are reasons

For everything

Even if I can’t

Figure out

What they are

Santa’s sleigh

The trees are dark and empty

Their branches slim and bare

The frost has caught the sparrow’s next

And lingers in the air

The horse trodden path is icy

And snow fills up its cracks

The soft brown doe from the frozen lake

Has hit the southern track

The golden wheat fields have gone to sleep

Beneath a clear white frozen crust

The old pump handle is trimmed with ice

And must surely turn to rust

By breath is warm and steady now

As I breathe upon this pane

I draw a picture of Santa’s sleigh

With Santa at the reigns

He’s short and round like a circus clown

With a red and wintered face

His full white bear like a snow man’s ear

Is slightly out of place

He totes a bag of red and gold

Which he carries inside his sleigh

And he struggles down like a chimney sweep

With bag getting in his way

The small reindeer with their reigns and gear

Stand ready in the snow

For when Santa’s sleigh makes its getaway

Before anyone can know

B's

The buzz in my head

Like bees in a jar

Wings flap trapped

Against the glass

I think

Therefore I must be

But am I really?

And how many am I?

Trees falling

In a silent woods

A mute madman

With a scream

He cannot release

Forever buzzing

Forever waiting

For the glass

To break

In what do you believe, if not in me?

Am I a ghost, a set of bones, that rattled

With words, their unions, an accident

A matter of chance?

Or am I something other

Than what I am?

A dull professor profession truths

For a bid-weekly check

A cold, hard, forgotten dreams

Who has no dream left to dream?

Who am I ?
What is the worth of love?

Am I to be transformed, realigned,

By the mallets of reality,

The less than perfect accomplishment

Of practicality?

The failed dreamer

Who gives up the dream?

That isn’t me,
nor will death itself stay me

When the dreams still stirs,

No more than exhaustion or that sick

Perverted life of labor which I must endure

What is to love when the dream is gone?

Who do you see in my shoes,

But an empty being with empty eyes

And nothing left to live for,

Working at nothing but empty phrases

For doctors or lawyers
or judges or fools?

It is those that can’t believe

That don’t believe

I will not be turned into a statue

I will not be turned like a car

I have my lived life very clearly

A pool of unmoving water

Out of which words spout.

Do not turn me into bread and butter

Do not demand what I cannot give

Do you dance with a poet

While wanting a banker,

Reading about us in books

But never really knowing

Who we are.

Motel magic

Oct. 6, 2012

The bed groans

And so does she,

Pounding fists or feet

Against the wall

My sleeping head

Rests against

In the room next door

Each exaggerated

Breathe like a monsoon wind

Blowing straight through

The cracks as

My imagination

Paints in all the details

The heap of clothing

The entwined limbs

Woman astride the man

in an expression

so intense I ache

just thinking about it,

aching to be there,

dreaming later

I was,

Lost in the limbo

Of that early morning

Magic

A gift of the magi

I never expected

Checking in

email to Al Sullivan

Real Fortunes

I read my life

In weekly fortunes

The grinning Chinese lady

Issues me

Each Friday night

Cookies crumbling

Beneath my thumb

Leaving fragments

On my dirty plate

Telling me big truths

In small bites

“Take no shortcuts

To success,” one says,

While another warns me,

“In order to take,

You must give first,”

and a third

telling me what we

all need to know,

“Whatever your

Life’s work is,

Do it well,”

And I try,

As in the fourth

Cookie I eat to feed

My need for sweet,

“Including others in

Your life’s work

Will bring great

Happiness,”

Perhaps the wisest

Of all

In this me-first

At all costs

World

In which

We all live

These days.