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, “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, “Play it again, Sam”
So, if I get it right
The first time,
I’m not required
By any dusty law
To do it again.
Repetition doesn’t always
Work like fearless
Branches stuttering
In chatty unison
From an aging trunk,
Some curling
Towards the sun,
Others, insecure
In their laziness,
Weighted with memory
Of last April’s
Freezing rain.
They’ve all been
Somewhere before,
Some yearn for the sky,
Others for the
Grumbling earth,
As they did
Last year.
If I repeat the right thing,
I become the surly branch
Scanning the wrinkled trunk,
Defeated by the
Crusty chance of
Being too common
In my frantic mimes,
Just another water-logged
Dog paddling its way
Back with the same
Haggard stick in his mouth
He had twenty minutes ago
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, “Morning Chatter”
Some marching-band cadence
In your voice this morning,
Candied, like
A fresh apple,
Jaunting talk, really,
Of tasks to be done
From scraps of
Stainless papers
On a refrigerator door,
Or jobs completed,
Not curfewed, but
Cashiered, coffined,
Into the glazed silence
Of a dead grandfather's
Gray eyes
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.
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.
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
Tea Party Patriots, Part II
In my last blog essay, I attempted to unravel the many complaints of the Tea Party followers. Three issues, however, seem to stick in the craw of those who believe in their heart of hearts that America is on the road to self-destruction: (1) The continuing loss of freedom because of big government and what appears to the Tea Party followers as a move towards socialism, the inevitable political paradigm that will only exacerbate that continuing loss of freedom (2) The desire to return to a golden age of a true America (3) The end of Patriotism in America Continue reading
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.
Roberto Bolaño, “By Night in Chile”
I jokingly made the comment to a friend of mine that English majors, like myself, seem to revel in literature that’s hard to get the first time round. That doesn’t mean second readings don’t enhance our understanding of a work. It’s just that we sometimes distrust our I-get-it reactions as being superficial because they’re too immediate. For some reason, we seem to require wallowing around in the miasma of linguistic challenges.
Maybe it’s masochism or maybe we just have to prove to the world that we have some kind of secret knowledge of texts that are just beyond the ken of most mortals. And “stream of consciousness” writing is often one of our favorite genres. Similar to academic art theorists commenting on abstract painting, it leaves us ample room to show others just how brilliant we are when the rest of the world doesn’t have a clue what the hell we’re talking about.
Che Guevara, Hero or Villain?
A biopic, a non-documentary film that dramatizes the life of a real, historical person, presents a challenge not only to film-makers but to audiences as well. Accuracy issues are always at stake when a director decides to do a dramatic narrative about a famous person, particularly about someone who carries a lot of mythological baggage.
If movie audiences have even a faint knowledge of the historical character, they will come armed with predisposed beliefs about how a character should be portrayed. Hagiographers and groupies are going to be particularly difficult to convince if a film’s portrayal violates their own notions of their heroes.
The Bicycle Thief
Vittoria de Sica’s classic 1947 film, The Bicycle Thief, has probably been written about more than any other film in history. At one time, film audiences considered it to be the best film ever made; unfortunately, it has slipped off the charts in recent times.
I have longed maintained that films consistently use visual and auditory images as stories in and of themselves. They often become complementary social plots replete with cultural values and world-view perceptions. The central story line in many classic films becomes more than just ornamented with these visual and auditory images, it often becomes a kind of call-and-response complement to the less evident images of a film.
John Wray, “Lowboy”
Insanity as a literary theme has always had an audience—those ardent peeping-Toms who love to wallow around in somebody else’s mania. And there is something about the draw of a house fire or a mangled car on the Interstate that seeps into our indifference with the power of a jackhammer.
