Retirement
Bartering for more time,
Slow, disgruntled goat
Among the sprinters.
A weeping clock,
Refusing,
In your own time,
To be the last
Creeping wrinkle
Of defeat.
In the scorched land
Of stained notes,
Ragged files,
Bruised finger-tips,
Your aching bones
Limp into
The coffee room,
Listening to your
Taut Monologues of
Sweet revenge
Against the
Arctic wind
Of old age.
To My Dear Occasion
“Discipline,” my partner said,
“Is the necessary content
Of a full life.”
Like the raw sun
Bored by the earth’s
Dazed circling?
Or the summer’s knuckles
Chafed against
The walls of Fall?
Or low-hanging fruit,
Without a second chance
Against indifference?
I will remind you,
My dear occasion,
That love has no
Routines.
Departure
November is memory for me
When I see a flock of birds
Moving, en masse,
Towards the tired South,
Disarmed of their certain solitude,
An ensemble act, wide in its swath,
Buffetted by resistant winds,
Cradling their lazy departures
From frozen nests
And breadless sidewalks.
Magdalene (10)
Her wedding happened,
Formality dimming
The brazen light
Of her floating world.
Now, decisions
Would be made,
Finality descending,
Like a rabid eagle,
Upon weightless chance.
Escorted to the
Resting place
Of unbending oaths
And exit-proof promises,
She would learn
To wander
Into the craggy patches
Of her restless mind.
Magdalene (9)
She would not
Talk of fathers,
For they were
All dodgers,
Hoaxes,
Accidental lovers
With golf carts,
Their thumbs
Numbed from
Channel surfing.
Magdalene (8)
Casual goodness
Was all she could manage,
Steeped as she was
In forgetting
The hard-core gifts
Of kindness
She performed
With bee-sting
Reluctance,
Carefully carved
On the belt
Of her demon mother's
Notched obligations.
Magdalene (7): Menses
She felt
The pool of blood,
Because the moon blinked,
She thought,
Or the stars
Rubbing against the sky
Like needy cats
Around her legs,
Timed with the
Spring's release
Of its tight buds
And green sprouts
From the wet,
Fresh mud.
Magdalene (6)
She dated men she disliked
Dragging her trained fingers
Along their fertile thighs,
As she thought of ways
To disembark
From their lives.
Magdalene (5)
Her first love,
She knew,
Would be her last.
Dashboard odor,
Red leather seats,
The cackle of
Drive-In speakers,
Cemetery walks
Among the murmurless,
The eye-watching moon.
Even when she married,
There would be no rivals
To her first surrender,
Who stormed his way
Into her deaf heart.
Magdalene (4)
When I was horse-drawn young
On a careless summer night,
Promises slipped from my tongue,
Like random, drenched branches
On hurricane streams,
Fidelity waiting patiently
On the arid shore.
For you demanded symmetry,
I, in the angled shadow
Of your sun-bleached certainty.
This artifice of order,
Sapping my desire,
Jostled me to turbulence
And humid winds,
Breathing life into
My canvassed heart.
Magdalene (3)
In her sunrise bed
She could
Reinvent the
Deft possibilities
Of her birth,
Searching for
Friendly apertures
Along a fluid canal
To be exhaled
Into the welcoming world.
How shall she appear?
Brief-case ready?
Pedestrian-cautious?
Starled as a stray cat?
Or be what
She would be–
Her mother's
Resented gift,
The slow-faucet-drip
Of nine months,
Dawdling with her
Stretched-stomach's burden
In front of daily television
Weather reports
And news alerts.
Magdalene (2)
Her memory,
Like a maimed horse,
Was put down,
Itself, a faint recollection
Of things forgotten,
Misplaced, a frayed pocket
Beyond repair.
Tubes of frozen toothpaste
In the freezer,
Dusty combs
Under the hot-water heater,
A letter from a
Teen-age boyfriend
Under her mattress,
A wristwatch
On a windowsill,
Catching the precision
Of the sun's lazy arch.
Fear
I look out my window
After the tornado–
A bent tricycle,
A refrigerator handle,
A stained mattress,
A Coca Cola can,
A rusted sled,
Slabs of cardboard,
A confused cat.
Like all the contents
Of my fears,
In disarray,
Always something new
To surrender.
Epiphany
A woman on the train
Told me she had found Jesus.
He arrives, I am told,
In the middle of things,
Unfolding the silences
Of our apathy.
An excuse, really,
For paying that attention
Denied by relatives
Too busy
Handing out checks
In tiny cards
And ribboned presents
On familiar birthdays.
Magdalene (1)
She was too frail
To live by herself.
Stairs eluded her;
Stoves became
Fireplaces;
Shadows on the
Bedroom wall,
Fragments of
Ancient lovers;
Headlines, wind-swept
Streamers,
Pulled by blimps
Across her kitchen table;
Voice-mail messages,
The whispering gossip
Of foreign doctors
In surgery.
The Tearless Stars
In all this vastness,
We are the ones who weep,
Salted fragments among
Colliding stars where
Nothing is missed,
No god who cries
For his lover's return,
A memory of former days,
When the angle
Of the afternoon sun
On your unbruised neck,
Or the touch of
Your damp hair
Reminds me
Of lounging books
On a summer porch.
Homo Faber
I am reckless in
My daily acts to
Undo nature,
Cutting flowers,
Trimming silent hedges,
Leveling grass.
Unable to mold
The clouds
To my liking,
I wait
For your mistakes,
Rare as they are,
To test the metal
Of my moral symmetry,
Bound only by the
Covenant of
Your words to me
That things close
Are not always what
They seem.
Domestic Domains
I tried to love you
In ways that moved
With the unrushed wind
Of the open air,
Void of interferences
And tales of other
Men's conquests.
Plainly, I thought,
No mystery,
No surprises,
Meeting you
On the hills of
What we thought
Would never end.
Here we are,
Long dead to our
Faint desires,
Alive in our loyalties,
Domestic as two
Used brooms.
A Wish
Unblemished by the
Morning fog,
My wish moves through
The bullet's unblocked path.
Like the certain snap
Of hurried lightening
Across a numb sky,
This daunting wish, unafraid,
For the bruised past
To disappear.
You Will Not Know Me
Saddled by my hard secrets,
Like roving balls of dust
Under a firm bed,
I try to hide myself
Before the rising sun,
Avoiding others who will
Notice my angular walk,
Arms hanging like tired branches,
My eyes
Sighting the city’s
Empty arched bridges
Above the rippling sheets
Of slow-moving rivers.
I will not be known.
“Lunch Widows”
They had banded together
As lunch widows every
Second Sunday afternoon.
Miffed by empty wills
And a husband’s
Slim legacy,
Some sat silent
In their thinning possibilities.
Others, portfolio-strong,
Bought annuities
And shiny calculators
Morphing themselves into
Math Maenads
And genteel moats
Against an avalanche
Of loss and shy memories
Of their very, very dead
Mates.
Poem, “A Drunk’s Promise”
I’ve heard it all before,
The flaccid promises
To change.
Repeated regrets
Are a child’s oaths,
As you dangle permanence
And fidelity’s long-haul
In front of my drained face,
Fox-holing yourself into
Short-lived fears,
Daily purges of remorse,
Like used concert tickets,
An amnesiac’s memories,
The false covenants
To refugees
Of better times to come.
3 Poems, “The Trinity”
I buy things
To defeat austerity,
Too sparse
For my itching hands
That require gifts,
Some return on my
Desires.
____
Attics are homes
For domestic indigents
Who find food
Among old diaries
And signed Bibles.
_____
Basements are for bicycles
And tedious tools
When there’s nothing
On cable
Poem, “Voluntary Servitude”
Against my will,
I wandered into love
And your frail breasts,
My limbs leaning into
The April rain,
As I kissed the
Mat of your pliant stomach,
Pulling the sun’s faint rays
Into the melting rings
Of my surrender
Poem, “Who We Are”
Something in the bramble
Of who we are
Says, “leave.”
But, curling up
Against each other,
We choose, rather,
To curdle our venom
And false starts
Into slow amnesia,
Domestic chores
And tender rituals
Of coffee breaks,
The evening news,
And late-night snacks.
Poem, “Blessed Fault”
I often fool myself into sanctity,
The credo of the stainless,
That whistles tenderly in the morning,
Hastening my giant strides of will.
But I am less inclined to virtue
When I am presented a complete score
Of innocence, every instrument allocated
Its brief moment of holy affirmation
In old, familiar bowdlerized tunes.
Perfection will just not do,
No matter how lovely the rose’s odor
Or the fresh lips of my last lover,
For catastrophes draw me more into
The ragged corner of my undoing,
Where the tilted ground
Of my uncertain heart
Is scorched a tender shade,
Bruised back into possibility.
It is there among the culpable
That I pray to live out my days.
Poem, “My Heart Will Not Rest”
I have chosen
To wander in silence
Tonight,
Listening to the
Sweet drone of the
Spaces
Where you once
Sat,
Defenseless against
The pruning
Laughter and my
Lean suspicions
That you would not
Dock
In the harbor of all my
Doubts.
Donc, Je Suis Seul
I have been alone before,
Nothing strident, for now,
In the thinning air
Of your absence,
But I am mellow
As an autumn oak,
Or a discarded penny
Hugging a sewer grate—
A black crow,
Spare in its grief,
On a low-hanging wire,
Or the solitary cat
On a window sill,
Startled back to
Its indifference
After a fleeting hailstorm.
C’est Fini
I feel obligated to give some background to the poem, “C’est Fini.”
As some of you know, I am sympathetic to those who choose assisted suicide because of the finality and severe chronic pain of their illness or disease. In such cases, I believe any rational person has that right. I wrote a blog post, Assisted Suicide defending that right.
“C’est Fini” was jump-started after a recovery meeting in which one of the members revealed that his alcoholic brother had committed suicide. It brought back many memories for me in my journey through alcohol recovery.
About twenty years ago, one of my close friends, cross-addicted and a compulsive sex addict, asked me early in our program if I would help him to commit suicide when the time came for him to make that decision. I told him that I would not. Many years after he was diagnosed HIV, his body was found by a group of hunters not far from a porn video store.
Another friend had hanged himself from a garage rafter two days after asking me about therapy. And one of my sponsees, a cocaine addict, had died from an overdose.
My only experience with a suicide impulse happened about a year into my alcohol recovery. About twenty-five years ago when I was teaching at a community college, an older student, a Cuban immigrant, had become despondent over having lost everything when he came to this country. His body was found in the gorge not far from Niagara Falls.
At the time, I did not realize that I was profoundly affected by his death. Within a couple of days after the older student’s body was discovered, I became compulsively drawn to jumping over the Falls. I called my alcohol counselor who agreed to meet me at a local hospital, even though he was off that day. I asked my office-mate to follow me in her car to his office.
I wrote “C’est fini” as a kind of metaphorical transcription of what it must be like to withdraw into that dark cave of isolation and secrecy before actually committing suicide. I chose the inanimate “pallbearers” (the furnace, the lawn chair, the three unmatched socks) to suggest the devastatingly silent witnesses to that final act of desperation. And the charcoal portrait of the father, to me, is the final sad affirmation that the young man wanted from his father in the same way that a loving parent would show grief and love watching their death-row son or daughter being given a final injection.
Finally, I now realize that for so much of my adult life, I lived in a very dark world of low-level depression. I may not have wanted to literally commit suicide, but I was drawn to all kinds of real and virtual self-destructive behaviors. It wasn’t until many years into my recovery program that I began to feel this wonderful surge to live.
So, for those of you who may have thought I was going off the deep end in “C’est Fini,” I am here, today, to assure you that I love being alive. And thank you for your loving concern…John
C’est Fini
You chose tonight
To end your gaunt battle
Against oblivion,
Deciding, as you did,
To have your neck
Bear the burden
Of your solitude,
In a quiet cellar,
Your pallbearers,
A silent furnace,
A tool box,
A folded lawn chair,
Three unmatched socks,
Your father’s charcoaled
Portrait against the humid wall,
Gazing at your dangling body,
His tired affirmation
That all things end.
Wednesday’s Purpose
On Wednesday,
In her simple
Red dress,
Scalloped below
Her long
Dark neck,
She had forgotten
To erase
Her lover’s
Voice-mail message
With her word-
Deleting thumb
As the sun set
Below the clear
Edge of this
Certain night.
The Other Woman
Concubined into silent lunches
And ardent price tags,
I come to you
As I always do,
In the dying heat
Of one more fall,
Summer-tired from
Our anxious spring.
I am, as they say,
The new addition to your house,
The extra winter scarf,
The second pair of
Comfortable shoes.
You, my sweet occasion,
The odor of vacuumed rugs
In air-conditioned motel rooms,
Still lingering on my bald feet.
You, the choice I made
Never to commit
To another fatality.
Poem, “The Unmowed Grass”
The unmowed grass,
In its drowsy gathering
On numb summer days,
Is tethered to the same earth
As the clipped sprig
Reticent in its symmetry
And matted certainty,
But envious of the
Belly-dancing waves
Of green
That freely chant
Under the nickel-plated
Sun.
To My Son, “Back Rub Before Sleep”
I remember rubbing
Your sweet back,
Soft against
My steady hand,
Child innocent
As an unspent day,
Warm rhythms
Against the grainless
Folds of your
Soft-leathered skin.
Poem, “A Dead Man’s Soliloquy”
I will return
In the wily spring
Of your memories,
Delayed, for a time,
By shuffling tasks
And the patient murmur
Of my still-pulsing heart.
It is the sleeping lilac
That defines me now,
Leading me gently
From the dull crowds
Of forgetting
To the plains of
Your fevered dream
That I am here
Dressed in my own
Lover’s stubbornness,
Unwilling, now,
To let you go.
(Writing, as many of you know, is an art. It is also a profession, a career that, because of the internet, may give the impression of being more of a lite-weight hobby than a serious pursuit. If you believe, as I do, that good writing is hard work and deserves to be compensated, please consider donating to this site. Thanks.)
To Norman Farmer
You were here once
And then gone.
Some sinister plot,
I had assumed,
To keep me guessing
About the proper quest
To leave
Before the hostile
Bedroom light
Was dimmed
Or the tireless
Porch lamp,
In its summer languor,
Mumbling for sleep
Against the feathered clutter
Of anxious moths.
May 14, 2011
Poem, “Just Passing Through”
Annoying, this brief life,
All angry tulips deluged
By fast-forwarding Spring,
Making our quick glances
At the instant sky,
Guest visits and overnight stays,
Too brief to grieve
The missed mornings
When I once looked at
Your certain face.
Poem, “Memento Mori”
I will die on this side
Of my silenced breath,
Not the other side,
Where stories scramble
In traffic-stopping
Marathons of panting
Joggers, frantic,
In their drenched bodies,
To win my dazed
Mind over
To the simple truth of
What will happen next,
When I close my questioning
Eyes for the very last time.
Poem, “Je me souviens”
I remember you once,
Your nut-flavored hair,
Jostled by my hands
Sliding to your
Bare shoulders,
Straps falling like
Patient rain,
Rumpled silk and lace
Descending to the willing floor,
The sweet summer melon
And hive-dripping honey
In the soundless flesh
Of my one desire.
(Writing, as many of you know, is an art. It is also a profession, a career that, because of the internet, may give the impression of being more of a lite-weight hobby than a serious pursuit. If you believe, as I do, that good writing is hard work and deserves to be compensated, please consider donating to this site. Thanks.)
Poem, “The Goddess”
She had raised the bar,
Or so she thought,
Hands moving above
The restless table,
Weaving through her
Tidy argument like
A sly dolphin,
Self-assured, in the end,
Against the rabble
Of our inquisitions.
But our pliant concessions
Would not hold,
For she had decided,
Like a street preacher,
To strip us of our assents,
Unworthy, as we were,
To hear her gilded message.
Poem, “Memory”
Before her last breath,
She made her case
For falling gently
Into the nimble space
Of her forgotten image,
Redeemed from
The family photo album
By a careless hand
Looking for an old
Love letter promising
A quick return from
An ancient war
Poem, “Just Between Us”
He was caught again
Staring into the beaded
Spaces of
His airbrushed mind,
Solitude playing on him
Like a fingered harp,
Neither blunt nor loud,
Like city traffic,
But plucked, cordial,
Hesitant at times,
Escaping the prickly
Gadfly of a
Stinging response
March 22, 2011
Poem, “Look Surprised”
I suppose I could want
You more than I do,
But I’ll drift for a while,
If you don’t mind,
Shop among the tourists,
Walk with stray cats,
Look surprised,
When you walk
Through the door
March 22, 2011
Poem, “Texting Iphigenia”
A text-message was discovered on an ancient Blackberry found in a dumpster behind a Greek restaurant outside Athens by a group of roving teenage scavengers. The message was sent by a girl named Hermione to Iphigenia, the classic heroine, who was sacrificed so that the winds would begin in Aulis harbor, allowing the Greek ships to set sail for Troy.
Although Hermione was believed to have been illiterate, Anthropologists and Linguists both agree that the message contained some brief poetic possibilities. Upton Simpson, a philologist from Greenland, has even suggested that Hermione’s text message “most assuredly, contained a tone of formality and high seriousness.” Continue reading
Poem, “Change”
You will, of course, change.
We all know it.
From ragged-edged coat,
Smelling of beer and car oil,
Tested every day
In the blustery wind, near
Old, dank harbors,
To rose-odored concert-goer,
Your main of hair
Waving with each breath
Of lush spring air,
Not wild as the wolf,
But tenderly, as the pliant,
Nipple-sated child.
Poem, “Another One-Night Stand”
Meeting, as we do,
Under the shoals of
Silent blankets,
We hear a simmering
Gideon from a motel drawer,
Whispering warnings
Of ancient avatars
Descending to the earth,
Their rights unearned,
To play among the herds.
We, after all,
Are no different,
Disloyal to a fault,
Staggering in the rinks
Of our desires,
Welded to our transience,
Baffled, at times,
At the world’s indifference.
Poem, “Sturdy as the Kitchen Stove”
I am, today, steady as a
Mushroom rain,
Even regal, I think,
Holding court
To sibilant rumors
Of my demise,
And feeling sturdy
As the kitchen stove
In its unburnished
Solitude,
But weary as the old oak,
Or the aging Labrador
Attacked by children
With lightening-rod
Fists against their
Favorite punching bag.
February 20, 2011
Poem, “I am here”
Je suis ici
I am present
Like a confused cat
Circling its
Full water bowl,
Rejecting the
Unscrambled obvious
Of what is given,
Not like a wrapped gift,
But as the raw,
Naked sun
Opening its glazed eyes
To an ungrateful earth
And then lumbering,
As I do,
Across the slow
arch of another day.
February 20, 2011
Poem, “My Right Hand’s Response”
I am, you know,
The elder child,
Having refused
A long time ago,
To abdicate my duty
To protect my sweet
Owner’s assets
Against the lithe advances
Of the puerile sibling
Who would own
Father’s prickly advances
When he stole a
Luscious red apple
Or touched Mrs Garrison’s
Unattended breasts
On any day in August
When she floated naked
On her supple back
In the blue-tiled
Condo pool.
1st poem of 2010
Poem, “Always a Bridesmaid”
I was told by the orthopedist
That I would eventually
(Read inevitably)
Favor my left hand
If I didn’t have surgery.
I never knew enough
About my left hand
To give it a monarch’s
Supremacy or even
A gilded moment.
Nor could I say
That I would have doubts
About its latent competence
Against a hearty sibling,
The self-assured strutter
Among the unelect,
Not ill-favored, exactly,
But just not chosen,
Over weary time,
To lift the lids
Of the hottest
Teeming pots
Poem, “Last Call”
It was four in the morning
When he called his friend.
Bending over the phone booth
With five quarters in his hand,
He wanted to be rescued
One more time, to hold his hand
Pouring the scotch down the drain.
For one brief moment
He remembered his mother
Talking about the first night
They brought him home
When he was born.
She had stayed up all night
Listening to every spastic gasp,
Every rustle and creak of the crib
The chiming hours of the clock.
Mortality followed him
Again,
In the languor of women’s hips
The slow ticking of the cabs,
Pigeon feet on city sidewalks
The wet air of the August night,
And the sour
smell of levis
Clinging
to
his
thighs
Poem, “I wait”
I’ve been told to be patient
Among the shards
Of my quick pulses
And galloping thoughts.
Not having been trained
To covet silences,
I am drawn to
To wistful spectacles,
And unbridled words
That leap into the grainy
Alleys of snoring dogs
And uncluttered nurseries
As I uncork the raving chaos
Of all my loud urgings
Wanting to dazzle,
But fearing, after all,
The ancient reprisals
From those who would
Grudgingly prefer
To sit turtle-still
Poem, “Fear”
Can’t say I’ve
Sequestered myself
In more than three
Or maybe four
Caves of fear.
But lately, outwardly mute,
I’ve been mind-pacing
In my bed like
A frenzied rabbit
Hemorrhaging all kinds
Strained possibilities,
As I hang from a cliff,
Naked to the burly,
Hissing caps of
Wind-driven waves
Waiting carelessly to
Swallow me whole.
Poem, “I am Old”
I am old
In my brief certainties,
Destined to short debates
And blemished toilets,
Once brazenly clean.
I am a one-pair-of-shoes guy
With lazy underwear,
Two missing combs,
Ivy-growing nose hairs,
Mounds of pills in orange tubes,
Toe nails hard as turtle shells.
My ties are too wide.
I cough at movies.
My body slides out of chairs,
Reluctantly. My pen hesitates.
Headlines will do for today.
Television shadows invade
My bedroom.
My mind wanders
Into my father’s garden
Or into the basement
As I hear his fingers
Rattling through
His tool box.
June 2009
Poem, “A Boy with Huntington’s”
I was afraid for you
As you twisted your face
With your cupped hands,
Your right foot jabbing
The unsuspecting wall.
Arguing with the opposing day,
You said your dervish prayers
To Shiva of the dancing arms
To stay your frantic legs
And thighs buzzing like bees
In a lidded jar
How would I hold you
In sweet contentment?
After, in your feathery calm,
You were like a lazy lizard
Sleeping on drift wood
Or a string snapped from a shoe
Laying limp on a wood floor
Too tired to talk
As you gazed into the
Summer glaze of daffodils
And castles along the Hudson River,
Watching impish, howling cats
And two spastic squirrels
Darting across telephone lines,
One running from love.
April 2009
Soldiers Returning From Iraq
They had learned
From desert stars
That nothing matters.
Now they are asked
By ancient mothers
Trained in doubt,
To turn their heads
From the arbitrary dark,
Once dripping in shadows
And fresh blood,
To turn towards
Unsuspecting love,
The dusty marriage-vow world,
Before the clanking war
Danced its death-beats
Against the sifted ground
Of mangled bodies
Like slim, pale puppets.
September 13, 2010
Teenager’s First Date
Showing up on time
Is the easy part.
The dashboard of
My rented car
Free of dust,
Wax-clean,
Vacuumed carpets
And a lemon smelling
Tag dangling from
The rear view mirror.
One more look
In the sun-visor
Mirror, an angled glance
At the straggly sideburns.
Fly firmly zipped.
Spitting on my closed
Index fingers,
I drag them along
The creases of
My black pants.
I pull out a hanky,
And shoe-shine the tips
Of my eager shoes.
Gently tugging
The bottom of my red tie,
I firmly wrestle
With the knot
To shield the
Top button from
Strangers looking
For flaws.
I open my sport coat,
Lowering my head
Into the dark corners
Of both arm pits.
I turn off the
Impatient ignition,
Open the door,
And look up at
The scoop of a moon
Glancing down at
Familiarity.
