Same time next year?

  

Oct. 21, 2012

Changing leaves,

Ringing bells from schools

This time of year so sad

Dragging me back

To the most desperate questions

Who am I?

What am I good for?

Feeling bad enough

In the cool wisp of wind

Without eating crow,

Hearing them as I walk

These leaf stream paths,

Wondering if my feet

Will lead me here

Again, year after year

September 29, 2012

And here

I am

Again

email to Al Sullivan

Blessing

The minister needed no holy water to make the flock know he loved them, he just stood there and held his hands in the air, and they knew, their eyes looking up with hope, not of salvation so much as understanding, he glowing a little in his white and gold vestment, while I stood to one side taking in whatever rays bounced off those others. Sometimes, we deserve no more, but certainly, we deserve no less, blessed by something beyond our comprehension, knowing that in the end all will turn out right, despite all we do to the contrary, and that’s all any of us can hope for.

Train ride to Manhattan

The train pops out of the subway tunnel with a gush of air, flooding me with the warm, stale scent it has collected over its plunge through the dark, stirring up abandoned newsprint like soiled bed sheets, the siege of sudden light making me blind, making me feel for the doorway when finally it all comes to a stop, and I take my place inside for yet another plunge, another ride, another blinding explosion I ache to feel.

The dirtiest part

Frank Zappa was right

When he asked about

The dirtiest part,

My mind reeling

With visions

That make me ache

And scrub as much

Or as tough as I must

I can’t make it clean,

A man can drown

In a tea spoon,

And here I am

Over my head

Breathing deep

Seeped in tea

I can’t stop dipping

Myself into,

Feeding not the soul

Solely, but also

That dirty part

For both always

Feed from that same troth

And drown in it

Together.

Shaken

 It is soft
It is hard
It is what you make it
When you shake it
The quake
Inside that
Explodes out of me
And into you
Neither knows
What to do
This thing so hot
Yet sooooo cool
A dip of fingers
In this molten pool
Stirring it never enough
It must be shaken up
Bringing it
All to a boil
To explode like
Newly discovered oil
A gusher
A rush
A blush so deep
In stains
The soul
 

Rubbed Raw

How do I do this,

Touching this or that

Without exposing my self,

Rubbing myself raw

Against something I can

Barely imagine,

Aching to ache in that way,

To sweat and sweat until

It all comes out of me

In one great, wondrous gush,

How do I do this,

Waiting, and rubbing,

Making myself raw

For something I can

Only imagine

Will ease my pain?

Midnight

The cool air

Presses against my chest

With both hands

Sharp fingers

Making me pulsate

With their touch,

Breath gushing

Out of me

Until I am

Expired,

The darkness

Illuminated by my

Own need

To see

And I see

By feeling

The cool touch

That grows hot

With each

Closing

finger

Alter Boy

I only wanted to become one

Because of the wine

And the pretty girls in white

Who always sat in the front pews

So pure they made me ache

To watch, kneeing beside

The priest, my eyes unable

To remain down even when

The host rose before all,

the stench of alcohol

hidden only by the raised

chalice and the muttered words

in Latin, I could not memorize

or remember their meaning

and so made up meanings

of my own, always too dirty

to ever repeat aloud

in such a holy place as that,

always aimed in the direction

of those girls, who could not

keep their eyes down either,

or later, after services

prevent my fingers

from going where

they might go

as long as I never

went too far.

The real you

I am always walking through mists even sunlight,

But in this world where you and I are, sunlight

Doesn’t exist, and we spend our lives protecting

Ourselves by staying hidden, keeping our real

Selves out of view so no one can hurt who we

Really are, painting phony images so that when

The blows come; we can pretend it isn’t the real

Us that gets wounded, but some façade of some

Phony person we know isn’t real,

But sometimes, in the midst of all this, the mist

Sunlight cannot clear, I see the real you,

And hope, you see the real me, and I realize

How very important the real you is to the real me.

Inspiration

In the dream

I always come back

To the same place

The throb of it

Deep inside the root

Like a tooth ache

No ointment

Or potion can cure

Beyond reach

Of science

To understand

what makes it work

or not work,

unlike the tick of a clock

that operates on gears

or springs,

this thing springs

from the seams

not as a functional

rational or logical

being, poised to go

wrong or right

of its own volition

unpredictable

except at the core

where it will rise up

like fire

reborn each time

sometimes

with very little

inspiration

First impression

I lied when I said

What I said

Way back when

Ashamed to think

What I thought

Was not what was

Wanted of me

The first thing

I think

When on the brink

Is not swim or sink

Or even what you’d think

But like a jerk

How it works

What makes a clock to tick

And how would I fit

In between its hands

Or of any elaborate plans

Just what makes it go

And my need to know

If I can go as fast or slow

If I can learn just how to grow

And if so

How then to make is so,

You know?

2

Please excuse my eyes,

They stare,

It’s a mechanical thing,

like one of those

carnival games

where the levers

stick,

always going to the wrong place

when you mean

to look at something else

a rick, tick, tick

in my head

Rusted from little use,

When what I think

Is not what it seems at all,

The first impression

Covered in newsprint ink

So it is not what it seems

At all

3

Soft fingers on my arm

Makes the most sense to me,

A pause, a laugh,

A sense of truth exposed,

I play chess in my head

With bedposts I don’t always

Want to lay down next to,

Sometimes because the chase

Feels better to me than the catch,

And sometimes the best moments

Are those spaces in-between

When there is no chase,

When people lean against each other

Just to catch their breath,

The rest is an illusion,

The rest is all we need,

A breath and a sigh

Before the game begins again

And we rush about in anguish

Over nothing worth having

In the first place

4

The car lot lights are lit

Even in sunlight,

Towering, defiant gods

Who illuminate nothing

On this chill morning,

A damp I still need

To shake off to wakeup

Like a wet dog does

wet fur,

the illusions of a luxurious

Saturday, clinging to me

Like the remnants of a dream,

One from which I only

Reluctantly wake,

Feeling better sometimes

When cloaked by shadow

Feeling exposed when

The clouds shred

Sometimes it is better to believe

Than to know,

To dream over and ponder on

Things that seem impossible

At first impression

Which are, after all,

The only ones that 

last

Twisting love until it hurts (notebook sketches)

1

I don’t always want all of you

 just your mouth

Or whereabouts,

But the mouth out of which

Your words flow

Telling me things I ought

To know,

Blistering, beautiful

Words that wind around me

Like high winds

Leaving me spun

Inside the eye

So I can’t see

Only hear the screeching

Deafening wail of words

All I want is the mouth

Out of which those words come

And I’m undone

2

It scorches like acid

But I can’t stop it

My lips blistered

From each kiss

The tip of tongue

As piercing as

A saber,

Cutting me

With each

In and out,

A perpetual

Hari kari

That splits me

In two but always

Leaves me

Aching for more,

Never getting enough,

Always begging

To continue

Rather than mercy

Making me dip myself

Into that fire

Until I am

Totally

Consumed,

Whole

And forever

3

In you let me touch it

I can’t promise

It won’t hurt,

Locked into

That soft embrace

With all of me inside

Eyes closed tight

To let me feel it all,

My hurt your hurt,

Both burning together,

To get so hot

We melt together

As one,

Needing to lubricate

Only those parts

That need to move,

To keep us moving,

My fingers spread

Around both uprises,

My tongue plunging

Into where your tongue hides.

We easing in and out,

Up and down,

Eyes closed tight,

Burning  both ends

Of this insane candle

Until we both

Turn to wax.

4

I feel your warm breath

On my neck and I wither

Still stiff and unable to resist

A complete surrender
to something overtly superior

Bushwhacked by my own need,

Shackled by my desires,

Lost before any shot is fired,

Or expired, drawn in until

Totally spent,

That one breath,

One little breath,

All I need to survive

5

I spread you like a blanket

Soft side up,

My fingers weaving through

Each entangled strand

Until I am entangled, too

Struggling to rub that fabric raw

Until the shreds spread translucent

So I can see straight through

Warm not from the covering

But the uncovering.

6

So smooth it makes me ooze

Like a used up tube of tooth paste,

I can’t even stop when you

Have squeezed me dry,

I keep pumping all the more,

Quaking at the need to fill you up,

So I won’t feel empty,

All of me inside of you,

All of you around me,

So smooth I would choose,

To let you use me up,

Always coming back for more,

For you to squeeze dry

To make me ooze,

Used up and still wanting more

The fire inside

 We set it on fire

Then don’t know what to do

We thought the world

Would expire

With still greater fire

Nuclear holocaust

That would leave

No one to witness it,

Instead we got

The world’s end

In bits and pieces,

Crumbling steel and glass

And then a gush of dust

All of us would carry

Deep inside ourselves

Long after we washed

It from our hair,

A piece of eternity

To carry with us

Our former world’s ending

While “the real” world

Continued on

With some fools

Fanning the war flames

To some new fire

We know will come

Again, and

We are helpless

To stop.

She has to remember

(This is a poem I wrote at the end of last year and something I perhaps should have posted sooner)

She has to remember to tell herself that someone else did this to her,
even though she has repeated it over and over ever since,
staring at famous paintings on a not so famous wall in a very famous museum in NYC.

She keeps seeing herself here every time she looks,
her features linked to the rolling hills that looked like waves
and are trapped in the borders of the frame.

She has to remember to remind herself to tell herself that like the painting,
she, too, is a masterpiece, crafted and still baring the marks of camel hair,
each stroke wearing the perfect patterns of a perfect life
that doesn’t ever seem to turn out perfect.

She has to remember that crying isn’t a crime,
But perhaps a waste of energy and space,
Perhaps she is a masterpiece someone set aside
before the artist had time to put in the finishing strokes
always something incomplete,
and she always trying to steal the missing pieces.

She has to remember to tell herself that she was meant to lead a wondrous life,
because it is rarely wondrous or fair or right,
or anything else that trickles up or down, tears or paint dripping at her feet.

She has to remember that for every painting on this wall,
there are many others half finished the way she is,
So she must not feel ashamed of being  incomplete,
or assuming that she ought to be somewhere or have something
 when she aches for it so much
She has to remember to remind herself what it must like to feel complete,
to reflect the perfect sunset, to know each master stroke, each note of music,
each move of dance, each piece of perfection is meant to be
when nothing is ever meant to be, but shaped and pounded, and built.

She has to remember to remind herself to light the candle at night,
to sip wine that is no longer wine, to let the night come calmly
and filled with dreams, master strokes on her canvas
 she just can’t manage to create in the daylight.

She has to remember…

I’d love to change the world…

(this is sort of a companion piece to another poem I wrote last year)

The Ten Years After song keeps playing n my head

The same line over and over

Like a skipped record when we still had records to skip

But in this digital age mp3s I have to live with it\

Like the indigestion of my own inability

To be anything other than what I am

And to do what it is I can

And not to assume I can do more or should do more

Than I ought to,

To know more than I actually know

Indeed, if I know anything at all,

But to let things be and accept what is

For what could be, and take pleasure

In the world as it is and learn to live on it

I have to learn to accept it

And love it as it is

Or if not love, then not at all

And being is better than not being

I have to learn to take what I can get

And not expect to get more than I deserve

I have to learn

Shake, rattle and roll

They say you can’t

Reinvent the wheel

That the best anyone

Can ever hope for

Is that what you shape

Won’t rattle your wagon

And yet will still get

You where you

Need to go

Faith

Sometimes,

All you have is faith,

Even when

Jericho’s walls fall down

Faith that there is hope

Even when there is none,

Faith in the father’s

Who have lied

And cheated

And been lied to

And cheated on,

Even then

Telling you

Everything will be

All right

When the dust pouring

Out of the cracks

Of the crumbling walls

Tell you different,

And the hosts

That have encircled

This city for so long

Are about to bring

Justice to a world

That doesn’t know

Right from wrong

Hope prevails,

Shaped out of the smoke

And like smoke

With evaporate

When you most

Need it,

Hope going up

In smoke

As sacrifice

To gods

You never thought

You would need to

Believe in,

Except now

Finding faith

When it’s

Too late

The rat’s trap

I came here because it is safe,

Giving up one thing to get another,

For you a tool, for me an inconvenience,

A distraction that still distracts,

A rat trap you get to trap rats in,

I mistook for addiction,

Both thinking the other needs it so badly,

It might lure the other out,

When in truth it’s never meant as much

Most people make it out to be,

A tool, a distraction, a rat’s trap,

While the real thing slips out the cracks,

Almost impossible to get back

Regardless of how much we want it.

If this be a dream

(after reading too much Shakespeare)

If this is but a dream,

Why can I not dream it?

Is this heart so hard

That it would deny me sport,

that transpires

Only in my own mind?
If it be love,

Then it is enough

That I feel it,

and in feeling it

make it real,

to peal it

like a precious pear,

to savor each slice

in the darkness of night,

to keep mine company

to become real

if only in this dream I dream,

where none other

need feel it but me.

If this be a dream

It is the best of dreams,

The sweetest of dreams,

A dream that I must dream

or cease to exist.

In the heat of it

In the heat of it

It all goes away

Like water to mist

It slips into the air

The more heat

I make the less

There is to

Hold onto

This thought

Of real

When all I can

Do is feel

Touch, press

In and make

More heat,

Each

Movement making

All thought

Vanish before

My eyes until

All there is

Is you.

Not invincible at all

2/21/89

We and our machine

We like to think we are invincible,

the, the reason four our

Grand advance,

An alliance between flesh

And that other
more bas material

We have forever called

Earth,

We, from early times,

Beating gold and preciousness

From it,

The real discovery,

The real innovation,

Fire

By which the gods feed on

Spirit

And we feed upon the dull

Remainder.

Never forgets

November 27, 1988

Rosy always comes in for coffee and donuts, every morning after a hard night selling cocaine out of the near empty bar she claimed Babe Ruth used to hang out in on the Garfield side of the Wall Street Bridge.

She was a young girl back then, before all the bullshit happened, and she got caught up in stuff she doesn’t talk a lot about, all those years trying to reinvent herself so she can go on with life the way she feels most comfortable doing.

But she always comes back to the Babe Ruth stories, as if that was the last moment when she felt honest about herself, before something snapped inside of her, and she woke up a different person.

She talks about how men from New York used to come to the bar to haul inebriated Babe down the bar’s narrow back stairs, wiping mustard and lipstick off his face in the hopes they could sober him up enough to play the game, and how small she felt in the shadow of a truly great man, a 15-year-old girl in love with a man who would not remember her later, even sober, even the next time he came to the bar and repeated the pre-game warm up, always asking what her name was, and immediately forgetting it. But she never forgot him, not one detail, even in the lonely mornings like this, hutched over the cup of Dunkin Donut counter – staring at me through the glass where I roll out the dough for the next batch of donuts. She never forgets.

mob men

3/3/89


Mob men come
in three piece suits
speaking school room
Spanish
in dark back
of dilapodated
laundry
knowing the name
of every painting
lady
upstairs,
and how much
they take in
at
night

Hanging on by the tips of my fingers

I taste the sweat as the tip of my tongue moves over the soft surface, where my fingers first explored, a brave act done in the deep dark where the only light comes from the projector above us, as it casts James Bond against the large flat screen below, my hands moving as his hands move, over a landscape nearly as sweet, but with far less a provocative name like Pussy Galore, although the hair my fingers weave through fits her Sandy colored name, and places my tongue reaches must taste as sweet – each sweep raising my heart beat and more, so that I ache for more, and plead for more, but can only go so far before yes turns to no, and I want to get to that place very slowly, tasting every inch of it, hoping she will, too, even if it takes forever to get there, even if I have to hang on the edge of it, and let only my tongue and fingers reach the places I most want to feel, even if in tasting and feeling, I come near to explode, hanging on to it with the tips of my fingers that I later can taste, long after the heat has expired.

Breathing

I can’t breathe right

This close, the air

Stifled by the scent

Of something sweet,

I can’t breathe at all

If I press too deep,

Gasping between each

Heave,

As if drowning in

Something far

Softer than petals

And much too deep

For me to

Every breathe

Right again.

Morning rain

There is nothing in my voice but noise

The patter of rain against the glass

Easing me into easy sleep

If not dreamless, then unconcerned

A life lived in simple declarative sentences

As to what to do next and after that

Each morning rising to rain a blessing

Unexpected and moody,

A gift from some spirit elsewhere

That knows me deeply enough

To know what I need most

And to spread it over me in moist dots

Sometimes, I sit in the car and refuse

To turn on the windshield wipers

So as to have this world smeared over me

Like a special skin, each drip filling me up

And making bringing me awe no dream can

The morning rain is always a special rain,

And when it comes it feels like prayer

Filling my voice with meaning I cannot

Do at all for myself,

As if I need to wait for these spirits

To fall down on me to complete me
to give me visions that I cannot otherwise see.