16.1.18

Ruthless (for Babe Ruth)



Charismatic Babe Ruth runs hard and burns,
going good on subatomic energy, good as gasoline,
the homer baby of Babylon, playing Baal
in front of the unholy fences, no longer
a young being bowing to the crowd at Fenway,
during the later years as the unberman hero
at Yankee Stadium, which he built swinging
his bat like a hammer, a mirror to his time
when photos featured haggard stares
a prima donna, manpower in his belly
raging in the rag time, taking in a plug,
feeling his impatient behemoth beneficent guilt,
his soul a razor, at war with gravity,
thinking about walking unlimited miles
to whiskey in the bars near Central Park,
searching for the living among the dead:
History comes in threes, a Roman Catholic thing,
as there are as many anti-christs
as the uncountable stars in the sky ...

O great genie, over the fence man,
a poor boy but genes set right,
his fine-tuned antenna to the natural world,
his roaring twenty appetites scorching
Victorian-styled city streets,
humming New Orleans Dixieland rags ...
all on fire, unsatisfied, kicking the clay
out of his cleats,digging his pigeon toes
into the box, pointing toward
centerfield bleacher dandies

Go ahead and ask me if it matters:
I provide power: Power! Built this damn house
and they gave me everything but wanted I wanted,
to run the team, to be free to walk alone
in the back alleys at night to speakeasies,
to get a big drink so I can forget
that blond broad's name, to remember
who really loves me, though they all say
they do, but some future historian
may suppress my true memory
in order to maintain my superman myth ...
Good thing the common folk understand everything,
that it's no great feat: I just do what feels easy
Duly warned, returning to the box, straining
to keep from scratchin', spittin', and hell,
even sweatin', and thy mind off drinkin'
Next pitch, I hit it foul, but you won't
read about it here, kindly change all
strike counts to zero ...

Did he command the universal flux
cavorting with whores along Congo Square?
Did he find his Elvis there?
Black holes subtract starlight,
animal magnetism flirting, flicking,
kissing bits with flash powder,
avoiding the good Cardinals' cathedral,
igniting the musty atmosphere,
slouching toward home plate to be born,
uttering God's inviolate immaculate
sense of a woman's softest parts,
penetrating the thin veil masking
man made laws we believe, tentatively,
to exist: He had the heart of an anarchist

Taking Stock of Bonds

Ten warm-up pitches
ascend ten Dante-esque
levels up the screen
behind home plate
and Barry Bonds
took a look
and his mega-salary
was mistaken for humble
and human; his life as pure ego
was at stake, make no mistake

He waved to manager Don Baylor
in the opposition dugout
in the sunny half-joke
in spring training in the desert:
hard to reason with the risk
of certain beaning
as limousine Barry
goes up to the plate, the pitch,
and Bonds does straight-into-the-air time
and lands back down to do the earth dance,
an element of fear enhanced, gets up
and his earring shines from some light
beamed from far up in the sky
since, with nobody on, there are only
so many points a ball can be thrown
through the atmosphere as the next pitch
was down the middle of the strike zone

After Bonds had swung it landed near
a western wear store west of Apache Junction:
So much for the element of surprise

Later that day at the ballpark, frankly,
Barry Bonds almost trampled my son
trying to get his autograph
and my kid said, What a jerk!

It made me so proud

Practice

How many brain-dead
baseball diamond drills
do we need to run, rookie?
Do we need to purchase
for you an insurance policy
to protect you against
the sorcery of blurring
curves, the chin music
of mommy balls
coming in fast?

Spring training
is the hope-forming time
to scrunch scar tissue,
to test aches subtracted
from the totem death-dance
of old brown city street snow,
of writer's block shaped
into three white bases,
to take into our nostrils
the sweet fragrance of March

And after the vets have tapped
the buzzing fridge of free cokes,
turning terminal pains
into mere dietary disease,
we must line up trainer's tape
to meet and meet together
at the left-field foul pole
to intensify the muscle memories,
the heated up PFP, PFP, PFP ...
the endless ritual
of pitcher-to-first,
pitcher taking the lob,
spiking the bag

This is how we practice
each thin temporal moment,
experience to ascribe antidotes
for thoughtlessness into decisions
because only repetition can influence
our grace before ownership's
remote octopus lens
so if we can make it to October,
if we get lucky,
maybe you'll thank me

So don't be a loud-mouthed rook
wasted for higher purposes
beyond the reasoning of mere mortals
Don't talk back to me!
Don't think to much!
It's bad for everyone concerned
Don't carouse with wild women
sent to stand on your bases
and don't talk money with me
We pay you plenty
and candy comes after

Because I knew John McGraw
Who fussed himself silly
Made teammates enemies
But they played great
Despite his tyrannical self:
Gawd how I loved his glare,
like Joe Torrie's blank stare;
a poker face almost saying, man,
I loathe baseball, I wanna go home

I heard stories about such skips:
See, this pitcher, this catcher,
they hate each other, so they throw
harder and harder to each other
and surely at some point
there's got to be a limit,
a point where their palms
turn red, maybe even bleed
until all innings end, unforgiven

By the time they get back
to the bench they are screaming
at each other so ol' skipper
comes over, spits, and says,
"Okay boys, you go back
into your pretty clubhouse
and have at it. May the worst
man win. I'll warm up Johnson
and Mack, get the equipment on."

So the two embattlers
go behind closed doors
and end up killing each other
The general manager calls
new recruits up from Triple-A
to replace them both:
Everybody wins

My Cup of Coffee in the Majors

A shadow passes on opening day
as the umpire screens the views
of new scores coming in,
old scores settled long ago,
as the heartbeat of the homeland
counts the day's receipts
checking for signs of mischief,
as angry Aztec gods
make a point, hiring lawyers
for copyright violation,
as spring birds bunt,
turning snow into drops
of sugary sweet wine,
as the ball comes down
the third base line
with just enough gust
to push the ball foul
as ice cold beer sales
flow into the face
of forever: O sure,
I had a cup in Euphoria
but didn't stick for the Stixx
and the banks were all closed
at sunset and I couldn't
get a grip and the previous
night's bright lights
could have been a trick

Sandman

Sing a dainty dirg
for the New York Yankees,
but note the fact
the sun arose the next day
are all the victories
stand, sure as yellow sunflowers
in the fall, falling away ...
Now that the best team
money can buy needs
first aid from the tip jar
for the daily
emergency management
donut fund, the Bombers
and the Joker
are on the run,
and the gangster managers
of U.S. Banks are running
from pranks organized
by mischievous teenagers
running out of bullets
playing digital games,
the bragging rights
now a toss up into the air,
a toxic point-and-shoot affair
of agents so say it ain't so
the best team in baseball
needs to reload, since the Sandman
can no longer come in the Ninth
to ice over the Show
and those who gave a flying f ...
about football can stand
and listen to make sharp yelps
about how I'm paying my own price
with wobbly knees, posts as painful
as typhoons out of season
as we ask a Navajo woman
draped in a royal blue
Dallas Cowboys' number nine jersey
in a defense against the sound and fury
of the noise of the laundry room,
focused on her cell phone like a weapon,
a fence against the outside world,
which sends in scores and more
as the rocking horse hick drones
on about how much his Saturday morning
hangover hurts over the radio,
and neither of us can see the country
crooner because today, sponsored
Ford trucks, is the anniversary
of the day I confessed to crimes
I never committed, places I never
will see, to things I can't remember,
forces I have no knowledge of, waves
I can sense but not see, feel or hear
churning up the winds, the rains, the snows,
falling from above, pushing up from below,
in patterns beyond my science,
no longer local, just passing through,
not on the ball, like Lucy removing
the football to make me look like the fool
after your ice-cold Bud is just another
beer can on a giant empty parking lot
where gas-guzzling lads, ladies in cheerleader
uniforms are stripped, cloned and sent
on their way for a full day
of prayer and fasting, knowing:
The sports godz have had their say

Flame Delhi

You made sweat dry in the strike zone
at great, zipping distances
And the copper company in Harqua Hala
Gave you a lifetime guarantee

If you loved baseball like life
Back then
The desperate diamond of cliche and stone
Wasn't so hard on your clay feet

If you wore black-laced boots at the top
of the mound
The heat would leak out in the sunshine and fame
Screamin' your name, ol' Flame

You came to Arizona long before Prince Hal
And his black-soaked bum friends
came to play ringers,
Cheatin' ore boys outta their nickel wages

They were cruel men, never shaved
They were thirsty renegades, restless;
With neither the guts nor style
For California

But you were good, solid folk
And when seven hits in three innings pitched
Was all you could squeeze outta
the shoulder at Comiskey
You returned, the nine-point-zero hero
of Harqua Hala

Cashing in your guarantee
The company re-armed you
with an engineering degree
and you built boats boats in San Francisco Bay
To keep the boys dry during the Great War

Ballpark Receipts

Read my memorandum
regarding the way echoes
in spinning wheels across
the desert of empty words
between the lines
of the "National Anthem"
populate the aisles
at the ballpark
filled with people
lucky enough
to afford to see you

I was wondering
if I can get my quarter back
or at least a phone call
in the bullpen
to get back into the game
See the falling stars
the dead lights of stars
falling off the diamond
the millionaire stars
with big broad foreheads
stunned into silent speech
taking the fifth,
announcing asterisks
for records erased
for their little lies
the Jose Consecos twittering
their tweets in the long hall
near the dugout, ducking
the limelight to get legal advice
where Will Clark once asked:
"Can you imagine hearing that song 
one-hundred-and sixty-two times
a year?"

In the press box the muffled
crowd sounds are a continent
in sway, swinging left or right
and a hard-boiled cynic sports writer
comments, "Just like the Branch Davidians
when you just felt as if something screwed
up is going to happen, you just know it."

Barry Bonds' last home run ball
is running, still flying around,
on sale at America, up for auction
as a foul ball strikes the plexiglass
and more dead light falls off the diamond
the entropy sponsored by Bud light

Security has been tight
at the Ballpark in Arlington
since nine-one-one, as the FBI
shanks off a few foul tips,
and home base is buried in red dirt
as the manager goes to speak
to the pitcher, who has big ears
about everything from Hollywood
to Homeland Security
as the scoreboard's eternal
motor churns and churns and churns:
"Braves two, Reds two, in the Fifth
and the apocalyptic ghost of Ty Cobb
goes on an invisible walk
to get his free suit
at five-hundred feet
and it's beginning
to look like rain

Regarding this invoice
about the day I got lost
in the dugout right
before the endgame began,
or do I have to wait
for the eternal
seventh-inning hook?
If Christy Mathiewson
refused to pitch on Sunday
why should I?

12.1.18

Rio Grande Wind and Three More (from Ipswich at War)




Rio Grande Wind

In the Dallas airport,
I’m on the way
to greet my mother’s death.

Three accused priests
by the pay telephone:
One of them says
the sky is falling,
The other two say,
“No, we are rushing
To meet the wind,
moon, sun and stars
With a gravity
We’ve come to call
Forgiveness.”

It was a horrible, horrible ride,
God throwin’ stones
in the sky. Every passenger
had a tale to tell about the way
the wings rang cell phones
and the fuselage buckled
in the Rio Grande wind.

Stuck at the terminal
I had an “estresso”
and thanked the Lord;
the small things being
just small enough.
DFDubya was a zoo
with American animals,
Cold and huddled,
dumped off like refugees
in the Rio Grande rain;
a hub of darkness,
as total darkness glows,
when it covers flesh
close to the ground.

So I floated around,
the lost and lonely
disembodied ranger,
Wild and terrified
at the fragile fullness
of being me, exposed;
pulling my coat over
my left shoulder,
imagining how I must
seem to the gray-bearded
masters of Judaic lore.
The Rio Grande wind
had never rolled a leaf
quite this far before.

That’s the thing
about airports:
All of that anxiety
and bad energy.
Sometimes,
we have a life.
Sometimes,
you don’t want
to leave or wave goodbye.
But death is a meal
on the jittery flight,
the Rio Grande wind
Blowin’ ya, outta sight.

Do You Know Me?

Night basement
alley sweats
meet on
the fashionably iced
mountain resort street.
Our time together
is the fate we keep

Strolling circles
bone to bone,
the Maker is making
our Time together;
Time that bends
with the wind.

We got silly with sin.
You played a game,
puckered and stroked
and waved me home

You know where I live,
and lived with you I did.
My penny price
was a plastic flower,
and poetry …

Enough!
Magic in a broken
bottle of vitamins.
Enough!

William Blake
kissed and ran,
ran and kissed.

Albion’s son took
safe harbor
in the box canyon's shadow
of mountain and mist;
Lingering there in early
afternoon cold shade;
and in the darkness,
howling at his phantom's
fire by electric streetlight.

His mind got quiet
out there, somewhere.
She saved a single
scrapple of soul,
petting his dry skull
as the river ran by.

He starved her,
got sorry later,
and fell in love.

Creek water ran
through their veins
and cleansed the salt
from his tear-duct dreams

They matched steps,
and in stepping claimed heights,
then showered to be sanctified,
then wined and dined, borrowing
on Telluride time ...

He wept and feared
and feared what she wept.
He wrote up a list of his faults,
or fell dead asleep trying:
Pride, shame, manic moods,
moments of empty bliss.

She pegged
her donkey
to a target,
sealed it
with a kiss

He was stunned
by the beauty
and purity of this.

Ulysses in Post-Industrial Hell

And this day,
this week of
the hammer of the law ...
a traffic ticket
for a miniscule complaint,
in which he,
a magnificent lost king,
was in virtual compliance,
now requires two different
court appearances
to avoid paying the fine ...

A far-flung Capricorn goat
on a tethered telephone line

“Massachusetts is a liberal state,
so there are many, many rules ...”
sayeth Ulysses, observing
the fallen coastal city
from a submarine periscope
within the wine-dark sea.

But then Poseidon's
sea-lash brewed again,
agonizing Ulysses anew
in his port of complaint:
“Six dollars! For what?
Breathing the air in Concord
home of the First Shot
Heard Round the World.
Paradise Lost, indeed!”

With great care Ulysses
crawls the water-rim of earth,
because the state will not let him be ...
Judgment cometh upon us all,
and we must all face Zeus alone,
Prometheus bound to wave-wet rock
In shackles and taxes and pay
and an unfortunate lack of shame.

He cries out to the shore,
“Make your hand close,
and my hand will closer be.”

He wished to see thy face
by thy river, in hopes she
were still dwelling there,
so that late at night
he would fall upon thee
in care and kisses
as seeds planted for evermore.

But he could ask not what
sick psychophants
dwell there, nor will you
lately, find he, for you see,
wind in a bottle becomes
a stale thing to breathe.

He slumbered off-shore
Afraid but safe, humdrum and alone,
safe from the doldrums of summer
or the Salem hangman’s scythe.

“Make your hand close,
and my hand will closer be,”
he still cries there,
lashed by waves,
chain-ganged along a highway,
told to sit still in a chapel,
an impertinent gull
eating dry scallions
by a poisoned pretty sea.

A Paranoid Plan for the Day

Yes,
there is a Santa Claus.
When you see him,
run as fast as you can.
You must trust me ‘cause
one such clown
killed my dad.

We will take the train.
It's cheaper. You can carry more things.
We don't need cars. They are dangerous,
foul smoke chokers, Satan's practical jokers,
unbreathing earth-eating unbeings.

How can you be a free-blowing leaf
if you are munching the bark of the tree?

When our work is done here, we'll escape,
perhaps the first part of the year. Before the bomb.
But I won't rush, or plan, till then we'll make our stand.
I'll just let the wind spirit make it so. Let the leaf blow.

In death, as in life,
before winter, beneath a blanket,
we will pretend we are dead.
we must till the soil. Bury ourselves.
Let each morning's bright light
tell us what we need to know.
Let the darkness instruct us
like the devil to his foe.

You seem to be
knowing less all the time,
sleeping more.
I'll bet you are sleeping,
but then, it's 2:30 a.m.

The muse has come to visit.

Wake up! Rise and wake up.
Get out of that house
before you become
a complete cynic,
a non-romantic robotic being.

You are not saving your family
by being Narcissus' siren
mirror to them now.

You write beautifully,
but that is a mere shadow
in the distortion machine.

I know. I cannot tell a lie
when I get inside.
In the real world,
the truth is a snake
that must uncoil its tail.

I was at the fire mound
last night in Ipswich,
and a man told me
an interesting story there
while we both watched members
of the Cape Anne Task Force
prepare for another raid.

He said the first secret agent of fire
left a Tyranosaur's claw in the rock,
and this geological imprint is known
to the local churchgoers
as "The Devil's Footprint."

Apparently, say the legends,
a great hoofed Satan
blew out of the fiery earth here,
broke out through the ground,
burning down the church.
The fire liar landed on the stone
and his hot talons
melted a scrape
into the molten earth.

I told this crazy guy,
"Hey, give the serpent a break.
It could have just been
the spirit of fiery Orc,
of poetic imagination,
fighting its way
through the logical
cold sphere of Urizen."

I told him: " these very churches,
pointing to the other one across the street,
were elements of those same cold waters
that dim the human spirit
as a necessary and beneficial
element of earth-bound control.

Then, he told me something even stranger.
He said, as a janitor
for that high-steepled church across the street,
which we visited, well,
there are five telephone lines
in the telephone tower, and catacombs
of freemason-like layers
in the basement and downward,
to the center of the earth.

That once, MIBs, who came
in unmarked black vans,
came to the church
bearing metal suitcases.
That they refused
to acknowledge
his humanity.

I told him: "Hey, do not fear
just because you've seen
something you do not understand.
All sides, dark or light,
are a part of the same unknowable plan
to immenitsize the escaton,
which is, translated,
to make ready and speedier
the return of Christ.
That the church tower
is simply an undercover facility,
due to its great height,
for U.S. government surveillance.
That is, Echelon, for lack of a better term,
on Great Neck, overlooking the bay."

He said people have seen
a great satellite dish come out
from underneath the ground
on Great Neck,

Which shouldn't surprise anyone, anymore.

Except for you skeptics out there
who can only see the sun,
and not the sun behind the sun.

Now, you have all that you need.

On the grey rock overlooking Ipswich,
the Devil’s footstep reveals the science
of the October spirits,
born when the black moon,
vanished from the sky, holds her
wintry horn. Wake up, it's morn.


Jail Pace on a Sunday

Wet snow falls in clumps
on a barbed wire fence;
Eyes through mesh,
a dream of democracies
crushing grim,
grim in the throat,
choking up, flowing out
In discountenance.

Once a prisoner pushed
his Shakespearean heart
through an electric fence;
His face turned to muck
and blood, and crossed a sea
to meet his hard-headed woman
at the palatial prance pace
of love’s familial intolerance.

But the snow fell harder
and the twisty tin wire
became a shovel,
the shovel became a plow,
the plow became a motor,
and the motor drove
the car over the edge.

Just as Aaron Burr shot
Alexander Hamilton
right above the heart,
the pendulum of law
is a swinging limb
of steel and foul weather.

The snow sticks upon
needle threads of green grass.
Middleton prison is summery
warm in January, even as cattle cars
are loaded with witches from Salem,
and even as shooting range guns sound off
in the distance and we trade
German Shepherd shouts,
for brief bouts of Gaelic ire
to cause of lost love is punished.

Shout. Shout out for plainspoken truth!
The Constitution is a cold and wet tissue
in the lavatory bowl of the discontented and damned,
and that carcass out there, over the fence,
marring your view due to the barbed wire,
is a twinge of agony over the breeze,
while Lefty here, taught to swing right,
he paces out his misfortune across the floor.
Unfortunate in the choice his DNA made,
unfortunate in the dice that fell the day he was born.
He’s sneezing up dustbunnies, phlem and TB,
straining his eyes through his jail cell's glass
to catch a glimpse of primal football on TV.

The newly unbearded Aaron Burr is in caves
somewhere, in Pakistan, Maui or Peru,
flicking out a light, turning on a flashlight.
The preamble of love is a target on a sheet,
the sheet becomes a bullseye on a wall,
while the guard dog sniffs, his master pouts,
the FDA nurse shouts, “Meds only! Meds Only,
If that doesn’t mean you, lock yourself down!”

Lefty leaves the big metal door open, to resist
is to enhance sanity and salvation. The clamp
may disfigure his hands, yet he abstains, feigns sleep,
waiting for the breathy dream of the whore
to dream up sex, slithery and sleepy,
shaking off the conspiratorial frame,
from the other side of the door.

Quantum Quandary

Great poetry is a failure
Of perception

Great perception
Is a failure of poetry

Great failure is the poetry
Of perception

Failed greatness is
The perception of poetry


11.1.18

Eleven Poems from a Town by the Sea at a Time of War



The Trouble With Laundry

The trouble with laundry
Is that I let you see my soil
And you told me I never
Learned to fold.
Now I fold in my own way

On a windy Sunday morning
After a short drive to see wave caps break:
I got home, turned off the car, and sighed,
“I’m free.” No more technology.
Then I went down to my dank cold cellar,
Hauled a blue laundry bag over my shoulder
And pulled taught its string. I skipped a peace
Down the hill to the ’mat, remembering.

It isn’t easy being clean, this much I need to see.
Can’t even tie my own shoelaces. It’s a motherless thing.
But more than that, this ongoing entropy
Is a shudder in the halt of who I will ever be.
I have to practice the art of being slow.
Around me now even the tossed churchgoer,
The hurried newspaper I never completely read,
Forgets to know.

And somewhere back
In the long gone dung of my brain
I recall a bum who called himself, “Change.”
He told me about what it takes to survive,
A laundry list better than at least three
Commandments. The first was sleep,
A good night’s sleep, and a place to bathe,
A post office box, and you can always
Stay warm in the library (which is why
Many destitute men are so well read).
But more than anything else,
A place to shower the baptismal self,
And a laundry, now boy, that’s the key.

I enter the rows of circles and machines
And carefully pry my prickly dirty things apart.
This takes so much care, Oh God, the anguish;
My shoes are untied again. My mother gone,
My father isolated in a city of noisome dream.
All things I failed to learn, I’m really learning
Laundry now. I crawl a pace, buying
A little orange box of sandy blue and white soap.
My dirt is the cause of a loss of no small fortune.

Then I remember to take out the change
From my pockets, I’m richer than I think.
Small wrappers and pocket tumbled follies
Spill into my hand. I’m just a beat up shirt
and wreckage in the wrinkled land.

What else, there’s this: The little shortcuts
I learn from making mistakes. Not my mistakes,
So much, but the machine’s.
Not so much the machine’s mistake,
But a failure to meet the tumble dry
needs of man. Redemption goes on a spin
and returns again as you fumble for buttons
at the bottom of the pan.

Then I wait. Then I wait some more.
Then I walk down the street, smoke,
Buy a fifty cent piano for my daughter’s
doll house. The wind up part still plays,
“Memories of the Way We Were.”
I wince but I do not weep.
My laundry is my dirt to keep.


Cat and Andrew’s Ring

Your ground is weeping
The humid air soaks
Wrinkles into all my
Categorization. I am
The air, ever changing
And it’s easy to see
How my inability
To be ever present
On the earth
Is enough to send
You beneath the surface.

He was a fair-faced man
With a smooth baby face
And a soft tone of mouth
That would easily shatter
But he could shatter none.

They bought a wedding ring
And experienced love
Well before the mildew
Of everyday things
Could wear the heat away

She would talk talk talk
About the little things
I couldn’t see, or believe
My wind heart hardened
Into storm clouds
Into a rain of gloomy
Terror in a private sky.

Mostly I was jealous
But realistic, knowing
Love is a survival game
Old as the dirt and sun
And if for just a while
I consider the trees
As I blow through in ill ease
Of temperature and pain
Let me for just this once
See the majesty
In the impermanent
Pebbles, and in tenderness
For just this one day
Of weather, remain.


Ipswich In a Time of War

Rebuilding a doll house
Piece by piece
Little wood beams
Adjustable walls
Suitable for child safety

Out on the street
Flags at half mast
Raised after one official
Week of mass mourning

Cinematic violence
Blowing a red leaf
Through the dented car:
You know,
Our separation
Is bigger than
The both of us

We are memory,
Clinging, clutching
And a prayer
Each stranger
We meet have
The same stones
Of shock
Eye to eye


Birth Canal

Before I was born
I was an anxious
young man.
A premature baby
Crawling in a toxic
Sea of sand.

Oh harsh light.
Oh mother. I left
You for this?

The panic I feel,
The destruction
that saves me,
Is older than I.

Now my birth
Is wearing me out.
I leave the birth canal,
And looking back,
Am born again.

Which is why
Creature comfort,
The soft, wet womb
Is a fire that lights
A furnace beneath
My eternal arse.

Which is why
My escape imprint
Has been lifelong,
A pattern to understand,
Address and alter.

So I don’t gasp
For air in your
Loving arms,
Or take the back door
out the burning fort.

Boston Harbor

So I descend into the dark city
Beneath the sea
Singing and swimming
Asking, to myself
Why do I want to go
Down there, the deep diver,
saying, to the first fish I see,
“Jeez, my wife says
I gotta quite diving
Or she’ll divorce me.
God how I’ll miss her.”
Then I return to the surface
All mangled from the currents
And dodging sharks and seaweed,
Navigating by sun streams
Of electrical light through
Green eddies and mysts of mirth
All wrecks down there,
Oh lord, I know. A lot of them.
And sunken treasure, too,
But not much worth taking.
A lot of it is heavier than whole
chains of rusted anchors.
My tanks of air get clanking
Silly, all choked up and gasping.


Sanctuary

Alone in a one-room sanctuary
A girl wants to give me a TV
And I resist
I say no, I need to hear, well,
More like filter through
To find
The voice
Of myself
In my head

Life in war sharpens senses
And I am well prepared
All stocked up
On shock

The city is a skin
I embrace or feel
Or shed, depending
On what time of day

A leaf falls outside
My window
I take this
as a good sign

Everything amuses me
And the ephemeral
Clutter of my life
Reminds the voice
To remember
clearly


The Fire Mound

Stand on this mound of stone.
Look around. Energy is fire,
And fire is everywhere.

You are afraid of fire.
Do not worry. A fire hydrant
Stands nearby.

Controlling mechanisms
Are everywhere. Public
Safety is ubiquitous.

This quarry is holy land
Overlooking the city center,
Once a great seaside harbor.

Mitigating factors include:
One park sign full of don’ts;
A church, an Odd Fellows hall.

We tolerate witches now.
They, too, are needed:
Human spirit pushing up.

The fearful want to burn us both.
Hot and cold is the way. No matter.
We walk the stones, simmer down.


Your Moral Authority

O haughty hard one
Why add to the troubles
Of the world?
Seems to me all vessels
Draw from the same well.
Your pinched fundamentals
Squeezed me out
Like a pressurized pop bottle
At an impossible altitude.
And as you fret and threaten
And beat me over the head
With a sequence of sequined
Dreams, a Bible black.
Your lesson of God’s love
became a lesson to avoid,
an institutionalized
classroom, a system,
a lie. Better to live
with plastic forks
than silvery knives.
Better to walk
In the rain and woods
than put on a hood
and cover my eyes.
All winds blow
From the same
Direction. This much
I know, this much
Is wise. Self-same for me,
Prophets and gunmen,
Cathedrals and wives.


Deirdre of the Sorrows

Hello. You must be Deirdre.
Don’t be scared. I stole your name.
I’ve been looking at you.
Stunned me, really, yes,
I know, even without
Your makeup on. All
Tumbled red lock
And breasts as in
The promise of an
Unfortunate evening
That never lets go.
Even without makeup,
Jesus, how they cheat us
With paint on the face
And the faint memory
Of the afterglow. Deirdre,
You become a slick magazine,
All shiny and glossy,
Tantalizingly so. But then
I get inside and struggle,
Swimming upstream
Like a salmon, working
Toward a deadline
That never ends.


Cops and Lovers

The first
casualty
of love
is war
Irrational
bonding follows
Whole families,
Neighborhood
policemen
embracing
the big lie
And when the truth
is gone
Nothing left
but a cubby
Little hole
Where God
is the last safety net
a security,
a delusion
We need
like light
in the darkness
as love dies
with a whimper,
when you really
need a bang


The Time Capsule

My car is covered
In autumnal leaves,
Stuck wet in the morning,
Wind-plastered, reds, yellows
And faded brown bumper stickers.

My car is just me, being natural.

Your car has a tempermental sound,
A whine, just coming from the hood.
Runs hot, and oh how it purrs.

Another’s car is a time capsule
On the passenger side.
These crates of care,
Being all that we are
Or ever will be.

Coffee cups, papers, flyers, books
We’ll never finish reading,
Crumbling crackerjacks,
All the things we’d rustle around
To fix in shame, because nobody
Wants you to see their dirty car.

My car is clean, ‘cept for the ashes
That have gone out of control.
Leaves just blow through
And I leave them there, amused.

My time capsule is tapes and little scraps
Of nature. Once, I just threw everything
Into a pile because I was consciously
Concealing myself. No more.
I just open the door. Let nature ride
On the passenger side.

When the plague or atom bomb
Or sun burns out, some future
Archeologist will be able
To read us this way. That is,
If we are truthful
To our car carpets.