Sunday flowers

The petals kiss my cheeks

As I pass beneath

This Sunday morning ritual

Of flowers and fruit

With me, a persistent bumble bee

Buzzing above each glorious opening

Breathing in the pollen

That churns up honey in me,

Stirring in these aisles of green

Dotted with reds and yellows and blues

Sunflowers like faces in a mirror

Staring back with broad smiles

As if to say it’s okay to feel this way

This urgency, this lust for life

That grows most acute

As I press my lips to the tips

Of each flush bloom

To taste and take into me

All that each opening has to give

To fill myself up with it

And its pungency

Until I overflow

And explode

Me and Charlie Chaplin’s ghost

1

Life’s ironies twist in my stomach like a knife.

I’m a fish being gutted to cook in someone’s emotional chowder

And the idea makes me puke.

Everybody tells me how nothing lasts forever, especially love.

The pain does, I tell them.

I still feel towards my lover like I always did,

But not she hates me for it.

If I didn’t feel so bad at losing her, I would laugh.

I’m a sucker for sit-coms and slap stick

Except when I’m the guy who gets cheated on

Or the man who doesn’t see the banana peel on the street

And falls on my face.

I haven’t got the hang of seeing lovers come and go.

I think each one is it and plan on an eternity together,

You know, all that muck greeting cards sell

When love fails, I’m crushed.

And there’s not a damned thing I co do

Except to roll up in front of the boob tube

With a tub of rocky road ice cream

And dull my senses on old movies

Yet each time I catch Charlie Chaplin’s tramp

And know deep down

He’s me.

2

The road from here to there

Is a convoluted mess

Littered with years of

Going back and forth

My footsteps wearing a path so deep

I get swallowed up in it

The reason for my trek

Lost years ago among the weeds

Reeds and rubbish

I feel seat breezes

And hear the waves

I step across sand

That turns tan with the

Occasional drip of my blood

Sometimes I see myself

As a sinful bull

Whose soul purpose

Of coming and going

Is to satisfy myself

Those times when I dig too deep

I actually feel ashamed

Most times, I do not think at all

My feet the only thoughts

Each step drumming

Out all other sounds in my head

So all I have is

The coming and the going

And the road from

Here to there.

3

I have abused the colors of my life

Painting my living roach couch blue

And the floor beneath it, red

A baroque Christmas

For family members who are not here

The globs of pain as vivid

As Christmas ornaments

While streaks of dripped brush stokes

Make for mocking tinsel

The room, perhaps, is a self portrait,

Of what I feel inside,

That me who perpetually

Misbehaves while my parents are away

My message to them

Over their perpetual neglect

Each drip like a drop of blood

As if I had cut their throats

And used their blood for paint,

With me sitting on the only

Uncolored chair in the room

Admiring my own handiwork.

4

I dream about dead poets

As I drive along the river side

In my daily routine of coming and going

Humming pop tunes to the radio

As sunlight strobes across my eyes

Through tall reeds and purple red weed

Wordsworth from high school

Intrudes when I stop at the light,

Recited phrases ticking off the time

Until the light turns green,

The clock tower bellowing its harmony

Along with the factory whistles

My mind shaping the tap of

My boss’ impatient foot

Or the click of his fingernails

On the top of the time clock

Asking why I’m late again

Refusing to accept the excuse

Wordsworth made me do it.

5

I’m not laughing because I’m happy,

My laugh echoing

In the chamber of horrors inside my head,

Like a madman’s.

I want to be circumspect

A cool customer with calm composure

Grinning in the face of adversity

When the best I can muster

Is this laugh

When deep down, behind it all,

I’m crying.

But even the tears aren’t real,

Bits of glitter self pity creates

To fill some void I can’t explain

I have worn so many masks for so long

I’ve forgotten which face is my face

When I try to take them off,

Misplacing the real me in a pile of strange faces

I know aren’t me.

I used to believe love was a flower

Diminished when the last petal fell off

So that each rendition of that old daisy

Kid’s song was a torture to me,

She loves me

She loves me love

She killed love with the last pluck

I remember walking a garden grove

With you once

Where cherry blossom petals flowed

Around our feet

You saw them as a flood of love

I saw them as love’s bleeding

I still can’t look a rose in the eye without blinking

Or thinking of the day I tried

 to save our love with a rose

Petals pour off and onto my hands

As I handed the rose to you.

I always annoyed you

By loving autumn colors

Even when I knew leaves red now

Eventually turned to brown

You annoyed me by pressing flowers

Between the pages of my favorite books

Preserving them so I never know exactly

When – if at all – they were dead.

A dead leave at least looks dead when it dies

This, of course, always amazed you most

My seeing dead things before they have lived

Summer love in fall

Spring blossoms rotting

Thunder storms never scared me so much

As spreading grass see.

I always see the brown remains of dead grass

Before the grass as time to grow.

Even on the beach we disagreed

For you the waves always washed in

While for me they always washed away.

While rainy days cheered me

Because I knew they would never last,

Sunny days depressed me for the same reason

Yet my logic came unlatched that day

You told me good bye

No sunny or rainy days to come and go

No waves to flow in or out,

Only petals falling on my cheeks

Withering there without you.

6

For all I do I still feel

Like a leaf trapped in ice,

Kicking myself for that last chance

To flee when fall’s winds

Still blew

Perhaps I miss summer

Or mistook Indian summer

For my glory days of green

I see my veins reflected

In the Smokey cold around me

Rain and snow dripping over me

With no sunshine to warm me

As it once did

Some say there is life after dead,

A thaw after the frost

But I don’t feel it

Or believe I can hold on so long

To see the sun beat down on me

As it once did,

Nor believe I can ever

See myself grow green again

7

I keep thinking the world ends here

This bit of spilled ink

As my last drop of blood

I keep waiting for the earthquake, the asteroid,

Or the world war that never was,

I keep seeking rising oceans or growing deserts

To drown me or dry me out

I keep hearing the sound

Of my own voice

Droning on and on

About how much

I have not yet done.

When young,

I feared heartache,

Now I dread the attack on my heart,

Waiting, waiting,

Yet not knowing

For what.

8

You never quite know

What might show

When those red lids open

The lost, losing dilated eyes

I last saw in the late 1960s

Full of worry and political slogans

Full of hope I no longer feel

I sit on a loose seat

On the uptown subway

Wishing for a screw driver

To stop the squeak

My cheeks vibrated

Into the same numbness

My head already feels

The sound track,

The announcer’s voice

Laying out my life’s routines

Amid static and curse words

With me unable to tell

If my stop’s next.

9

She wanted to know if I really was

A hippie when I was young

And if I was, she wanted to fuck me.

She would have fucked Jimi Hendrix

But she was only ten when he died

This makes her 21 now

Although she still looks 16.

This is the reason all rock & roll boys love her

She never fails to love them back,

In fact, she makes love like a crack addict

full of rage and religion

Raised on the alter of 1960s nostalgia

She was too young to experience for herself

Sucking the marrow out of bones

Of men like me

Giving new meaning to names like

Cream and Deep Purple

Her eyes growing wide as if I was

Always the drug she needed.

10

If I dream a dream of beauty

I think of you

A word that kisses leaves

With fragrant leaves

Of air so drenched with love

It drips

When stars shine stark

In a winter sky

I know each has a heart

Of heat so intense

No frost can freeze it

No ice can seize me

As to make me

Forget you

I have always been a prospector

A gold digger hunting treasures

In remote soil,

Pounding down rock in search of wealth,

Heartless in my need and greed

After mistaking

The glitter of trivial

For something real

At night, when horror strikes

I still cringe under cover

As wolves howl and cold winds

Chill all I expose

My limbs suffering

The frost bite of life

Each important person and thing

Dropping away from me

As I pound away at nothing

Stones crumbling at my feet

My greed so gripping my heart

I sometimes forget you

Each chip of stone

A piece of me

Worn down into dust

By foolishness and pain,

And yet,

I still think of you.

Poems from my old hood

One

News from the wire is always hot

Filled with scalding phrases

About terrorist’s plots

Names, places, events

Rattled from the tv screen

Or spit out in newsprint ink

Like blood

Droning on to keep the pets company

Or folded under the litter

To keep the cat’s pan dry.

Two

City hall’s windows

Look out on a fractured city

Tatters of once great buildings

Blowing in ashes of convenient fires

Redevelopers knocking on every door

Like a social disease

Asking poor and old if they want to sell

A new age of door to door salesman

Selling bullshit instead of brushes

As cold, indifferent political people

Look on as if already statues

Shoulders for people to cry on

And pigeons to poop on

Providing shadowy relief to

Bag ladies driven out of their homes

By eminent domain and outrageous taxes,

Fire the last resort

A modern day urban renewal

Plowing poor to make way for rich

Like Panzer tanks

Igniting the embers of the near dying

Leaving ashes in their wake.

Three

They stand outside as you enter the clinic

Taunting you as murderer,

Their words cutting deeper than  

The doctor’s knife ever does

You mind filled with the bending spectacles

The cool fingers probing

As the cold eyes stare up at you, asking:

“Are you sure this is what you want?”

“They don’t teach these procedures

In medical school any more,”

The doctor says, as his unsympathetic hands

Maneuvering you onto the chilly metal table,

Yanking your legs apart

“Are you sure this is what you want?

Have you thought about the consequences?”

He and others ask again and again

As if you could go home the same, unaltered

And not face consequences equally bad.

Their smart hands divide you,

Driving their sharp instruments deep into you vital statistics,

Until finally, they tell you they’re done

And send you home bleeding,

A red bandage between your legs

A cloth that swishes, rubbing at the missing pieces

Your passport of stinking silence

Your hair stiff with the spray

But you do not go directly home

You wander the streets

Wondering who will whistle at you next

Or to where those at the clinic whisked

That excess three pounds of flesh

You left behind.

Was it a living thing? Did it die?

Or will it grow again outside of you,

You the Dr. Frankenstein

And it a haunting monster

Waiting to catch you unaware

At some future moment.

Four

She hadn’t seen downtown

Since it had happened,

Her life torn from its roots

Like that girl from Kansas

A twister filled with jet fuel

Curling around the stem

Of the tower in which she worked

Snapping it off at the roots

Like a twig

She sent sprawling into a new world

Without dog or red shoes,

Always wishing in the back of her brain

She could go back,

Walking streets of a new world

Full of gaudy colors,

Store displays filled with

Golden trinkets,

Lights winking warning as her

As if another storm could strike

At any time,

Natives from every land

Walking, talking potential terrorists

On every side,

The old Italian section

Filled with cafes and flapping flags,

Thick with strangers

Whose languages she no longer understood

She now the alien

Seeking the wizard, the emerald city,

And the munchkins she knew as a child.

Five

We live in the electric age

Despite atomic reactors

Boom boxes blasting on my bus from work

Or cars that pass my window

As I sleep,

The river top echoes

With the chant of rap

And back beat

So that even the fish can’t sleep

Gray haired veterans

From The Good War

Grumble at the disturbance of peace

Fish refusing to bite

For fear of being bitten

The sound leaving ripples

On the water’s surface

Speed boats would envy,

Some men seeking solitude

Wishing to be soldiers again

Just to create silence

With a few blasts of M1s

Vanquished is that romantic notion

Of reflective thought

While waiting out the fish with bobbing bait

Poor Wordsworth and his pious den

Drowned out by this disco din

No patient waves to wait out

Or lines of poetry to spout

No high brown pens scribbling

Between each tug of line

Just the rap racked out

Full of inner city torment

And ceaseless sound

Everywhere

Six

“Son,”

the old corner stone said

sitting on the corner of the porch,

“never get married.”

His marble face

Perpetually pointed towards the sun,

Drawn from east to west each day

Before retiring,

An icon of the hood

Upon whom passing masses could rely

As well-built as a Depression-era

Public buildings

His deep eyes always glowing

With inner meaning

Like the light of a warm kitchen

After dark

Sometimes porch side

Littered with dusty tomes

He has read or wanted to read,

Or yellow pads filled with scribbled fact

Even he can no longer translate.

Always talking about his young

Days as that

“love em and leave em” sort,

more fearful of a broken heart

than a mugging or murder

wed to the same woman for

forty years now bearing up

under weekend visitations to her grave

his thick tongue licking at dry lips

each time her names comes up,

fists gripping tight the rocker arms

as the world would vanish

if he ever let go.

Seven

A strange face shows in the window

Its curious eye trying to focus

Through misted glass

Crime street rolling passed outside

With the flash of lights

All points of vision stained red

As if splashed by blood

He never feeling safe

Despite the door’s dead bolts

And barred windows,

Claiming the wrong body is in jail,

Cold airs sweeping under the door

To chill him, the scent of chemical companies, too,

Waiting for the mugger

Who has his name craved on the edge of a knife,

Yet shocked, when the red light of the police cars,

Like angels of death,

Stop outside his door

Eight

We make space reality

McKluen says

Trees stropping against the sun

As I jog

Like lines of poem,

Each inch a space

Filled with bright blue sky,

Stained red around its edges

Where factory smoke spreads

My self declared exile

Along the river side,

Where gull wings,

Flashes of rabbit,

And duck down floating

On the water surface

Lull me into thinking

I am somewhere else

Interrupted by blaring radios

At the bridge light

And honking horns

Of white boys buying drugs

In dark side of Passaic

No geese going south

For winter

Nine

The hard part

Is making green wood burn

The trusting ragged eyes

Turning sour for lack of hope.

I see their young faces

Everywhere, perched

In deserted doorways

Like newbie pigeons

Learning the ropes of the street

As if life here

Was a high wire act

I keep thinking of abandoned buildings

Their eyes bearing the look

Of darkened windows,

Full of barroom jest

And desperation.

Where do you come from?

What are you to do next?

No belt or shoe laces,

Each boy tripping over his own legs

Each step a prison sentence

Already predestined

Feeding the fast people

From the white faced city

Across the bridge

Stuffing their noses with snow

As they drive off

I feel empty and lonely

Walking in this place

Despite sidewalks thick with people

It is like walking though a city

Filled with ghosts.

Ten

You come at night

The wet air emphasizing

The sound of your step

A slick slosh against city pavement

That stirs even the cats

To my door

As if we could predict your coming

Some inner sense of knowing

Which all animals have

But we humans have forgotten,

A trust, a taken for granted feeling

A whisper of something

we fear to believe in

you walking these dark streets

me, waiting inside myself,

hoping you will actually

arrive.

college notebooks: poetry studies

When studying poetry in college, I used to try and write the form that we were studying. These are a few pages of my notes from that period

Blue Genes

1

My genes shatter on these rocks,

Swirling around in the turbulent currents

Of my scattered thoughts,

Spilled down my sides,

My seed wasted in polluted waters

Leaving only the broken glass

Of abandoned dreams

Tearing me up inside

2

My life is a word

Whispered in the dark

Not ruled by rhyme,

But plainly spoken

By plain men

From the rude corners

Of my world,

Where young men

Gather at night

Faces illuminated

By flickering

Theater lights

Or cracked

Yellowed window shades

Hotel rooms

Where shadow dancers

Dance to each passing

Headlight,

My fingers weaved together

Like old friends

Linked to crude

Phrases of hope:

Tits and ass

Aching in me with lust

Mingling inside of me

With things I cannot

Put into words

The voices of young men

Echoing in my head

Like madness

3

The glass gleams

So squeaky clean

I see no glass at all.

And have to touch it

Each time to make certain

It is really there,

Leaving a thumb print

Of my touching

As if from a crime,

I see my life outside

Full of lust and lack of luck

A loveless love child

Struck dumb

Locked up behind

This window

Of shame

4

I tell Susan, I’ll stop writing

It is an empty threat

I cannot stop –

I would be like ceasing to breathe

I walk wet streets this morning

Looking for answers in the fallen leaves

Each brown-veined face

Pressed against the pavement

Like a glued penny,

Impossible to pickup only ponder,

I read these leaves

The way gypsies do tea leaves

Finding no truth in them.

Why do people have to choose between

Love and romance,

Art and sexuality,

Susan and what I write

Her head full of theories

Text books from which

She interprets the world,

I am just a figment

Of Freud’s imagination

A collection of impulses

I can never resist

Writing and breathing

In a continuing flow of life

A wet day pinning me

Against the background of my life

Just one more fallen leaf

For people to ponder

And read,

My life pressed

Between the pages of a text book

Just a memory

Of an impulse

Long forgotten

5

I grew up a Paterson child

Locked in a Straight Street

That ran from park to river,

The stone wall too high to climb

On one side of me,

And the slope of a river bank

Too steep on the other

Me, a struggling three-year-old

Clinging to tree trunks

While stepping over the shards

Of shattered booze bottles,

Drug dealers barking out

Their wares

Like newspaper boys,

Each delivering a headline

Of high hopes I was still

Too young to understand,

My mother clinging to church doors

Crying to find them all locked

The face of the Virgin Mother

Scrawled with street gang talk

As I peered into the fountain

As Holy Mother’s feet

Searching for coins I knew

Other small hands like mine

Had already plucked out

My hands rising from the water

Wet and empty.

6

I couldn’t keep my fingers off the cash

Once I saw my uncles put it in the safe

Grandpa when alive had let me snatch

Coins – even dollars – from the dining room

Cupboard, pretending he never put them there,

Some of his sons got beatings for taking less

Perhaps he’d grown too old to terrorize

The young the way he once had his own kids

Or simply forgot where he put things

If indeed he had put anything there at all,

Such as store keys or eye glasses,

Though years later I think of it as love

As with tie I bought him with newspaper

Delivery money other men might have

Hidden in closet or trash,

But he insisting on wearing it daily

Until it wore out around his neck,

The stripes fading under splotches

Of motor grease his finger prints left

He was even buried in it

With me afterwards sneaking downstairs

To the safe where my uncles buried

Grandpa’s cash,

Taking away all I could carry

For the long trip west

And my long anticipated

New life without him.

7

I was born out of a cactus

Inch-long needles up my butt

My fingernails could strip flesh bare

In one swipe.

My mother had flowers for her head

Pink and white fading

Whenever the sun got too hot

Or high in the sky

I never knew my father

Although mother called him tall

With the most handsome

Green face she’d ever seen

And needles so long as to

Knock your eyes out

Then one day a wind came

And blew him away.

8

I wasn’t even high

When we threw pennies

At the stone people

In front of Paterson’s City Hall,

Just tired,

As tired as the town seemed

Like a pool of muddy memories

But of which I could

Barely draw recollections,

The old Fabian theater

Rotting in ruins,

The Garden reeking of

Bank deposits instead

Of old film,

Vaudeville giving away

To performances of greed,

Alexander Hamilton installed here

When he envisioned this a city of silk,

Banks barricading the city center

Like jail guards,

The faces of each building

Crying tears of bird shit.

I miss Woolworths, Grants

Kreskes and John the Bargain stores.

I miss the Stop the World headshop

Where I always left my head

Getting myself high on the fumes

Of incense and joints

Other people smoked,

I miss the moments when

Me and Hank, Pauly and Garrick

Met in front of city hall,

Each of us waiting for a different bus

To take us in a different direction,

Us finally paying tribute to the stone mayors

By bossing our pennies as their eyes.

9

Early morning streets reek

After second shit

Blank, hot, wet

With me coated in donut sugar

From a night-long

Love fest with grease and flour,

High as any junkie on caffeine

Addicted to a work ethic,

Worse than any drug,

Too weary to dance or drink

Or think of lust,

Though the click of my heals

Over glistening asphalt

Makes me ache for love

Loneliness linger inside my head

Laughing at my lust

No cure for the common cold in me

As I watch the whores pass,

I make donuts not money,

I explain in vain,

Too weary to give chase,

Too broke to pay for what

I cannot catch,

Feeling every bit of the death sentence

Birth pronounced

A ticking clock inside of me

Waiting for the moment

When I run down

Feeling dead at 37, instead of

57, 67, or more

living life at a rolling pin

rather than a rolling stone

me and Bob Dylan

hiding under manhole covers

living out our dreams,

both of us always careful

to pay the parking meters.

10

They come and go

Injecting a hint of summer heat

Onto the frosty snowy beach

A striped stranded beach tent

Made prisoner by frozen sand

Overturned lifeguard towers

Testifying to the assault

That has taken place here

Even the row boat, upside down

Rots from lack of care

Overhead the gulls cry,

Dive

And come up empty,

Picking again and again

At the corpses of empty shells

That litters the beach,

Flipped and turned so often

like perpetually toppled grave stones

The vacant boardwalk hums with

The music of crashing waves

Moaning and groaning wood,

Glittering concession stands

Tinted winter gray

The empty amusement rides

Like bones of dinosaurs

Just dug up

The rising tide drags in

Pieces of drift wood

Red and white deflated balls,

Wax paper wrappers

From salt water taffy,

And occasionally,

A twig of green

Hinting of spring

Willows and other wanderings

1

I lift my hands to touch the leaves, but never do

Pulling my fingers back from the finger-like leaves

That have always awed me,

Willow so full of grace, crafted like work of art,

An impressionistic masterpiece that steals my breath

Incomplete, always lingering unfinished,

So sad I nearly cry each time I see it

Each season giving it a new look though

No look is so tragic as that of winter

When its thin limbs are bare

I love the autumn best when its golden tears

Fall like rain to the ground

My feet easing though its flood as I walk

The river surface mirroring each sloped limb

So I cannot tell which side is up or down

And which side is the real me,

Sometimes this time of year

I stand at the bridge side and stare down stream

Seeing the rain of tree after tree

Like a gold frame around a natural masterpiece,

Individual leaves setting sail on the outward tide.

In the rain, I watch the water wear down each limb

To its nub, forcing the evacuating of leaves.

The river runs gold with their bleeding,

Making me ache as if each is a piece of me,

Each day sailing away

Hinting of winter.

2

Turbulent squawking fate

Forms around my fingers in the shape of an egg

Inside, the flesh, bone and marrow,

Moves with life

In May, it hatches a hand

A whole hand complete

With opposing thumb

And frivolous pink fingers

What quiver ceaselessly

The nails, soft yet easily broken,

Grow again much like the original

Each finger flirting with the others

Each one showing the bulge of additional eggs

My life is continued his this hand, this egg

As if I could keep existence gripped firmly

When I know in the end

It will always get away

3

This is not a love poem

Although love lies in it

Like an embryo in a shell,

Fertilized by love-making parents

Who have come together

In time to seed it

With their affections,

Patient parents hovering over

A speck of dust

Waiting for it to grow,

How so much comes out of so little

Remains one of the great mysteries to me,

How love making leads to love

How out of the beastly desires

We find tenderness,

How we manage with a little taste

To drink in each other whole

How out of this remarkable ache

We find happiness.

Sometimes, walking alone afterwards

I feel so full I could burst,

Wishing for your mouth on my mind,

For me to get inside of you,

Perhaps to remain there,

Like the embryo of an egg

Destined to explode with love

4

I got sick to my stomach by the time the bus reached Las Vegas

California’s smooth roads a soothing deception to the unseaworthy,

Hard seats jolting each bump to my brain.

I wished to have walked the dusty desert flats instead,

My blue jeans clinging to my sweating legs like snake skins

Even the windows provided poor relief, a bitter autumn sun

Beating at me through the tinted glass, me a voyeur to grim sights

Glass streaked with pale lines of too many cigarettes and greasy heads

Each stop dropping in on us a new population of strangers

Dusty tourists blown in from other states

By Salt Lake City autumn had passed into winter

Snow grinning down at us from the sides of canyons,

Each making me ache for my home back east.

California is a figment of my imagination, a looking-glass world

Filled with dreams dreamt from a distance turned into nightmares close up

I cannot live in a world without winter, on sea scapes filled with tan perfection,

With the illusion of perpetual love,

I’m always looking behind the curtain, up the yellow brick road,

For the man twisting the gears inside of me to make the illusions work.

Maybe that’s why I like leaving California

Stumbling out of that dreamscape into the real world

Where the cold still stings my face when I step from the bus

And the rarified air of Denver’s 5,000 feet high

Makes me feel clean again,

Clean enough even for you.

5

I refuse to write you one of those sour poems

One of those “I’ve lost my heart & soul,” pieces of crap

That ask you to pack your bags and hurry back.

The airwaves are stuffed with such muck in the guise of music,

The collective subconscious heavy with the ache of a million broken hearts

All those note books filled with verse of should/could/would haves

Making enough confetti for a Wall Street ticker tape parade.

Although if I could I would arrange such a parade for you,

Aching to stretch you out in the back seat, the world’s best cover girl

Coveted by the world’s most needy man: me

I carve you out of Ivory soap bars, as I dream of you in my shower,

You seeming so pure to me I would sip you as if apple wine,

You straight out of an American classic painting, cheeks red, eyes bright,

My stem so proudly displayed, aching for you, a perfect still life,

Me aching down to the roots and rotten to the core.

6

Worms crawl over asphalt in the dark,

Park closed at dusk as if for them

Their journey safe from human penetration

Although fishermen here know the trick

Of sneaking here after hours

Having their pick of worms to hook,

Plucking each up with high hopes they might catch

Something to bring home from the polluted water

Overhead, hawks hover while other night birds watch,

Hooting owls searching the riverside with wide eyes

For the scurrying of rodents, fluttering up, clutching in claws

The prey that came to prey on worms,

Each pathetic crawling creature struggling to get across the walk

Before doom comes upon them,

Seeking to dip their heads into rich wet soil,

Safe and sound,

Sometimes, I envy them, having no such safe ground

For myself.

7

From the posts of the old dock

The gulls watch the fisherman.

They look like distorted Hitchcock characters

In dirty white cloth coats and bent beaks

Laughing to the cast of reel and fruitless expectations,

Curses over lost bait and tangled lines,

Talk over “the ones” that got away

As the gulls take to wing,

Cast their gaze across the flat water

For the ripple of water, dive, then steal

The fish the fishermen could only talk about,

Rising and falling in the failing light

So light, so tender, it might make a love story

With only the fisherman suffering the broken hearts

8

I can tell the temperature by the cry of gulls

They seem louder with each degree below 50

Like children crying for ice cream,

The river side so covered with ice I need spread only sugar

To make their wishes true

Winter has caked in both banks and stretched a sheet of ice

Across the river top so tight a breath could shatter it,

Gulls reflected in its surface like rude guest ready for bed.

Their cries break the silence, but they cannot break the ice

Or get at the mocking catfish whose webbed backs

Shivering under the surface as quietly as ghosts.

The only hope glitters on the far side as a robin’s red breast

Breaks the monotony of white, hinting of the change of season

Soon to come upon us, when this frigid bedspread with draw back

To expose the underworld again.

I ache as much as the gulls do, shivering on this dock

As traffic rumbles over the highway bridge, sending shivers through the air

And slivered icicles down upon the flat glassy water.

I wait and watch for the car I know will carry you,

I know you always come this way,

I know that like the seasons, even your heart must sometime thaw.

9

For want of water I might even pray

Or lay down along the dried river bank,

Suffering for sins I cannot comprehend,

Stones, hot and sharp under me,

Like swords stabbing deep into my soul

I watch the children dance in waves of  heat

Dreaming of water, a myth told of times past

Few remembering when water ran free

We remember only the shriveling,

The sour strip of blue down the middle of where

Water had been,

Even the factories have surrendered,

Unable to hide their pumping stench

Instead of water, the air moves

Filled with the scent of withering willows

A fool’s hope that things will become flush again

As crows caw instead of gulls

And old men with backs flat against gray stones

Wonder if water had ever washed these waves of dust

10

They talk of love,

Teenage attractions

Spoiled on the vine or

Picked too soon,

The bitterest always the ones

Who bought wholesale

Male macho’ boasts

Fast cars, fat muscles,

Now ages later,

Dodging the reaper

And Cupid’s arrows,

Shopping around for

Egoless males

The way they might

Sugar substitutes

Always with that

Bitter after taste

Always with the remembrance

Of things past,

Every man an echo

Of the man who came before,

Back to that first man

And that first unfulfilled promise

Trading virginity for empty air

That in memory is as sharp

As a stab in the heart

Yet each still talking of love

As if love was even possible.