He ate corn porridge slowly–
Why hurry when there was little awaiting
Cold cement floors, no window coverings,
No family, no sense of wonder or longing
For what was never known.
Love, kindness, not even sibling rivalry–
The Truman Show without the cameras
Yet the world watched
Because Google Earth, Anderson Cooper,
Arbeit Macht Frei memories
informed on humanity that forgot itself
And Sally sat sipping her Southern ice tea
Content that equality ruled the land
That freedom rang in the guilty, apathetic ears
in America.
Shame. Shin.
Wake up you sleeping giants
Move the mountain
Free the slaves.

What does it mean that he threatens me with a bat
9 pm and I’m “dead”?
What heavy words have landed
at his heart that pricked his
reptilian brain, that limbic
level ego, crushing his rational sense
killing me
killing me
killing me

Put the boiling water down.

He said he changed his screen protector–
Scratches, relentless air bubbles,
smudges or permanent damage
precluded clear visibility for its user.
And we, like his phone, sometimes need
our outer layer peeled off; the scratches, smudges,
signs of wear, removed.
We hope someone will come along to help us
see clearly again, but until then
we read our lives through hazy
plastic; communication filtered through experience.

Boy, who had tinsel for teeth, copper wire for lips, fine pewter for eyes,
Sat listlessly at Milan’s train depot, waiting for the locomotive
With three passenger cars to stop; offer him a ride to Rome.
Boy, when his limbs had flesh, with hopes the size of China,
Read Plato, Aristotle, Paul of Tarsus, set out with an actor’s verve
From just this side of North Hollywood. “I am Homer,” he thought.
But Boy did not know that he was not Homer.
He was, in fact, destined for something Homer could not achieve.

But right now, he needed to board the train, get to Rome,
Rest for an hour or so while the sleeper car clacked away southward.

Aboard, he floated through dreams of puppy dog drool, wide cliffs
Covered in oversized ferns, aquamarine pools deep with cold water,
Piles of mangos, melons, pineapple, bananas.

Stopping at the train station, he awoke refreshed
As he stepped to the platform
To perform the play of his life
Clinking, clunking, and rattling away.

Window shutters clap as autumn breezes
Sing their meloncholic tunes. Gingham clad
Girls giggle gleefully
As tiny land tortoises tuck their leathery
Heads against the blasting roadside sands.

Middle America curls up nightly around glowing
Hearths, waiting patiently for coastline risk-takers
To invent magical elevators that bust ceiling
Glass as they shoot the girls skyward
Toward their dreams.

People who pair penny loafers
With peddle-pushers perpetually
Portray preppy pubescence
Without wearing wardrobe warning
Labels literally licensing looky-loos
Freedom to follow fifties flavored fashions
From forty-fourth to forty-
Second Street secretly spying sassy
Pants and pretending that popularity
Matters little or mayhaps more
Than thick ties to time,
Talent, or
Tradition.

Not much can be done
When alliteration alone
Dictates the direction of the dance.

Horny toads do not sit on lily pads
Just about the same way
rhinoceros do not climb trees
but if they did,
if beets grew above ground
or pineapples shed their own skin
the way snakes do,
how unfamiliar the world might seem
The whole “time and place for everything”
does more than keep order
It makes us feel safe–like we know something
so well that we are all capable of being
an expert in
the way the world works.
But, when Henry David said, “men are like ants,”
he saw our too frequent incapacity to think larger,
dream bigger,
occupy a lily pad.

Early morning hours in strange places
inundated with bad smells, dull colors made
duller by the daylight starved wallpaper.

From the Bard and Other Minds

“Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great,
some achieve greatness,
and some have greatness thrust upon them,”
shared the Bard with Boy on his twelfth night day.  Boy
who sat, silently, on greatness’ edge, pretended to hear–
“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none,”
Will counseled–in hopes that surely
All will End Well.
And so it goes.

Then Boy, who lollygagged around
backstage doors waiting for his momemt to mount the stage,
spied the moon, then howled, “O, she
doth teach the torches to burn bright,”
and wept his own crocodile tears–he wanted fame more than anything– believed not in the witches prophetic words that “something wicked this way comes,” as everyday folks chided him to take the stage, to show is stuff before Birnam Woods began to move.

“To weep is to make less the depth of grief,” chided Will,
but your tears protect you not. “Your life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.” But when the public doors lay wide…
“God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.”

Guard yourself, your ego, child, lest you must proclaim,
“Presume not that I am the thing I was,”
for “I can’t change the direction of the wind,”

and even he who knew his limits could not,
“adjust (his) sails to always reach (his) destination.”

And the first Boy ran The Little Bastard into a Ford on his way

somewhere; and a new Boy came round the stage hungry for more.

My beagles hate the pen;
freedom to roam, to be with their people,
commences the howl, the way I howl
inside when I need to be freed from
my cages, cages that exist in my mind,
that exist in the world around me,
cages that have locks made by conformity,
keys swallowed by the Kraken,
bureaucracy of higher ed,
rejection of personal history,
mundane-ocrity of loathsome jobs,
bitter partners.

If I slay the beast, I can gut him,
find the keys, and jump off the roof
for good.

Oppression is bad. Get it?

Frustrated pop culture rings
hollow in the ears of youth
who eye every moment of pseudo sex
appeal as invitations to imitate poor taste,
poor thought, poor sense of their
birthrighted self
Instead they wallow in adult created
images they now think cool, snap
vulgar innuendos atop mean spirited
jabs that powerful people sell them
in their movies, songs, sports
We set them up for civilization’s failure
And they don’t have the experience
to know the difference between
a good joke and cheap laugh
because they are, after all, yet kids
and they trust what they see
because adults put it there
and act as if it matters or is benign,
or worse yet, worth money,
to let the little ones watch, listen
inhale.

And the building blocks of goodness
were eaten from the inside out
by marauding adult termites
who eat wood and youth.

Muster patience
Calm claustrophobic urges
to bolt for the padlocked door
Blow hot air into that balloon
and get me the heck outta here…

Popsicle season nears its end
While Indian summers prepare for battle
On weary minds still unfit from
prior struggles.
Cool nights remind travelers
That winter will round the bend
Momentarily.
Popsicle sticks will make fine

kindling for the burning of
our wayward souls.
It only takes one outing to
Ansel Adams’ favorite
landscape or to the valley known as

Death

to remember that
life, uncomplicated when
in the desert or woods,
exists precariously between
the rock of ages
and the devil.

I don’t want any more friends.
I can’t keep up with the ones I have,
the best ones died,
And the few I do talk with
Have busy lives–far too busy
for casual conversations.

It must be easier to do this alone,
Places like work or church or the grocery
chain me down to “Hi” and “Hello”
or pseudo sincerities

I think home is where I need to be.
Home

Fourteen thousand dollars for the university’s
grueling block of hours eating
away at my love of learning, at my core
happiness, meanwhile
joining the masses in the free,
delight of Plato and Dickinson,
Whitman and Williams
Churning my thoughts into more
matter with
less art
than the masters-
Unfriend me here when you
unsex me there
And tie me down with golden ribbons
when you tell me how much
longer I must do this lest I
hop the cliff with my own wax wings
knowing full well how the
story turns out.

I stick my tongue out at you,
Plato, because in that, you were
right. The gods’ behaved
atrociously, and I may want to
be just like them.

Peeking through my window
Who would guess you’d visit me
Perched on just the ledge
With your little squiggles of wishes
And “Nostalgia,” “Scotland,” and “The Pavilion”
Each waiting his turn to tickle
My inner consciousness with your
Natural rhythm of love and death?

And Billy, you promised next time
To write me an exposé about life
And then invite me to tea with
Friends

Of course, that was eons ago
And now, your visit comes at just the perfect
Moment to open the final wound
And let the floodgates of the week
Unlatch the hardest look into my
Mirror lined psyche–
And then, like the death spiral
Over Croatia’s Adriatic Sea,
Observe the ruins magnified beneath
the blue-green waters
Before crashing like Icarus,
Whose wings would have failed him
No matter how near he flew to
You, into the depths of

Oh, to see you makes me believe in you

But faith requires more.

What were you thinking?
Why so quickly?
Don’t you realize it’s permanent?

Symbols with rounded, straight,
curved lines scripted together
to make meaning
inexplicably different from
one continent to another–
from Latin, German, Mandarin,
letters–like Hangol
combined in infinite ways
to transfer ideas, create emotions,
wound or woo

So, when I say “I love you,”
I just may mean it–
But when I write it; be certain I do.
And the language that I use
matters little to me-
I love you
Ich liebe dich
당신을 사랑
Te amo…
Because love is,
after all,
more than what we
strive to give and feel–
it’s what we strive
to be.

Those denizens of innuendo
With their bushings, couplers,
male and female adapters–
Their spigots, spouts, and
lubricants right next to the
aisles of screws and nails.

No wonder men go there–
It’s not just the tools;
It’s the constant reminder
that they’re more human than not
so bang with the hammer
and tap the driver some–
If his wife knew the lingo
She’d be sure he stayed home.

That five a.m. alarm heralds the day
And instantly, years magically compress
into one or two dormant photo albums
of road trips that now sit,
waiting to be dusted while children
grow up, buy cars, leave home, and
forget that not too long ago you wiped their
noses, taught them to count pennies, then
nickels and dimes–and when they understood
quarters, you were almost home free because
mastering fractions is a sign of some budding maturity.
And then, thoughts of young adulthood, the adventurous life-
the life that still resides in your brain despite
the onset of wrinkles and forgetfulness–
seems to call out like a nostalgic siren’s song–
teasing the now “mature” self into thinking
fifty is really twenty with a little more money
and a greater sense of self.
And then the clock hits midnight and
the year begins, and nothing
really changes because everything
already has.

And it will happen to you
if it hasn’t already, so be glad
for the goodness,
sing songs of the days
when friends filled the hallways                                                                                at odd hours of the night,
when responsibility meant
doing your homework, feeding your dog,
and washing your sheets
more often than once
a semester.  (…. gotcha 😛 ).

I guess it’s Australian,
a meringue dessert topped with
red and black berries
sweet, like those I know;
It, shaped like a pie
and as easily sliced
like the daily serving
of their kindness
that is never taken
for granted
and that infuses every
second with the tart
stuff of life.

Pickled onions piled hign
on carne asada tortillas tonight
Tossing ’round the thought
that travel and freedom
come at high costs.
Born to be happy
Yet inexplicably not
While chariots of liars
Cart the greatest one off.

When there are no words.
Silence manages an audible
That tricks the mind into believing
That the mind’s thinking is faulty,
That its thoughts, (oh, how vain
the contemplation) are not Everyman’s thoughts,
but rather the lone musings of the poet–
misunderstood today just like
they were yesterday.

And the daffodils handle
spring
Better than winter had ever even tried–
Spoiled flowers with their earthy, exotic scents
Nod gently at the passage of time
Then wither away.

When the gods of creativity reminded him
That he was given the gift
And with that came an apartment in NoHo
And a baby black lab puppy
And two cups of designer coffee
From the Republic of Pie
The actor laughed and kept reading
While the playwrights and poets
Filed by looking for the genius
That sat just inside the door of the cafe
Engrossed in Lolita and King John.

The city bustled with artistic color and colour
While the boy pondered the possibilities of a life in
Theater unaware that the gods had already
Figured it out and were buying tickets
In advance for opening night.

Crossing the Rainbow Bridge to
the Canada of my life
I found myself immersed in a flood of colors,
deafened by the pounding
water of my own ignorance.
But before long, enlightenment
descended like the discovery of
A new character, a new creed,
a new group of “influentials”
who suddenly, without warning,
had the ability to steal my loyalty
and drown my soul as if
a whirlpool of charisma had
locked onto my psyche
and drawn me away from
the past, the people, the passions
that I once knew.

And then the water fell
and woke me up
to the reality of what I
had, have, will have,
drenching me in new relief,
new knowledge, new love
of what I’d forgotten for that
momentary trance of the new.

And then I thought to call my friends
And tell them how lucky
I was to have been soaked
in their kindnesses my entire life;
that having friends like them
felt like puppy breath, campfires,
mocha almond fudge–

And then I closed my eyes
for just a fleeting moment
and realized they had died
creating that awful flood
of loneliness despite
the people all around.
And I smiled because
I do that when there’s
no one to tell this to–

and hoped before long
new strangers would move in
upon the currents of my life.

When night takes over its duty
And evening has turned from cool to cold
When most have found a pillow
And a love
I write.

It begins with a poem-
short, banal
A warm up really
Then an email, or two
Then a private blog or two
And finally a stab at another work of fiction, a play, a story
Or part of one that’s been in progress
And the hours tick by
And the thoughts mulled like the
Holiday wine
So sweet and so addictive
That tomorrow comes too soon.

Writing must happen
Or else nothing else will
As I think it through—
All of it—
The people, the plans, the purpose
Of what it is
We are about.

And then I write
About the young man without arms
Who in 1974 sold typewriters
And quite successfully
Pulled his wagon with his chest
Harness and plucked away at the
Keys with a pencil in his head harness
While his neighbor, the charismatic
Spinster who had two cats and a pair of
Double D knockers that turned the
Heads of the old geezers in the building,
Made him dinner and taught him what
It means to really love one’s
Neighbor.

So, why I write
Is just what it is.
It’s the same as why I breathe
It’s because I must.

Spiderman, Batman, Green Hornet, (me too)
All grew up with Mighty Mouse; while Underdog,
Bug’s Bunny, and Yosemite Sam won the children’s hearts
even after Felix raced away.
And fairy tales and story books
and Mr. Green Jeans, too,
taught the little ones the same lessons
that Mom and Dad had learned
a generation before.
What has happened to the story tellers?
Have they disappeared?
Can only commercial dynasties
Make their statements clear?
Are there no Rocky’s left to pull
the rabbit out of hats?
I guess I don’t like cartoons as much
If the story they tell is all sap, but-
Give me good and great and save the day,
So when things go south in my “real” life
there’ll be some rays of hope–
and maybe Mighty Mouse
With his “Here I come to save the day,”
can help this poor, believing muggle out.

 

Habits, by their nature, are not bad
Oh, some are
Like the habit of turning the other direction when someone needs you
Like the habit of waiting until the day of to send the birthday card
Like the habit of sleeping instead of dreaming

But good habits keep the world turning,
keep the teacher always reading
keep the friend always close
keep my dishes clean and laundry done
and bring old reruns in like the favorite neighbor
who moved away but now returns for a little stay.

Good habits may cause profound change.
Good habits, while often hard to forge,
are always worth the time they take.

An easy way to stop the masses from reading
Is to call a poem or play a classic.
Why is that?
Is it because they are works read in school?Because they are called works which implies effort?
Because they speak of Icarus or Viola or
Ophelia; because they delve into the tortured
Psychology of Hamlet or the twisted unsexing
Of Lady Macbeth? What is it about Thor that makes him
A superhero, but Diane stands abandoned, holding her bow
In the cold, and Miniver Cheevy sits thinking alone
On his textbook page while Henry David and Ralph Waldo
Vie for the consciousness of mostly apathetic teenagers?

Give me a classic, give me the richness of the page,
The fading warmth of the universal heart as he slowly
Realizes that he has killed his love or his love has died
Or his wife has turned to stone because of his own, avoidable
Actions.

Give me a classic, give me unspeakable loves between tutors
And students, between Houseman and Jackson,
Between Poe and his Lenore. Ignore the rhythm of my
Distress and pluck the pathos of my inner soul
One bleeding heart string at a time until the music
Lifts my spirit to the greater understandings of who I am
And why I love.

Figure it out.
Parakeets flip upside down on their dowel ladders
While flip-flop footed tourists stroll along at Hollywood and Vine
Searching for Indian curry, the red not the yellow,
Scouring unfamiliar faces for the moment of recognition
not realizing that no one just walked past them
with his sun glasses on.
How is it that blindness is worse than death?
How is that loss of memory, anyway?

What are you doing in your fancy roles and
schleppy relationships? Okay, I won’t ask.

Be a dear, and close the door behind you.

That poem about your daddy
Is dark and twisted with unmet
expectations and anger–
we certainly experienced childhood
differently.

My Dad rocks.
He is the captain of his own ship,
The fixer of his own car,
The king of his own castle,
The Go to Guy of Go to Guys.

But most of all, he’s nice,
he loves my mom,
he loves me,
and he can catch
a salmon like no one’s
business.

I guess the world ain’t fair.
I win.

 

*Sylvia Plath gets a lot of attention for having such a miserable life.

Entering the wild woods of Thomasina’s
search for Newton or Copernicus or Einstein’s laws
Curious cravings about carnal embraces,
uncovering the theories of the raspberry puree’s swirling demise
A lone traveler spies the gazebo of her past
and unwinds the memories in an attempt to
Un-whirl the fruit from the whey, disconnect the known
from the hoped for
Watching the play unfold itself as it should
with the young one advancing first
And the aged, but only slightly,
taking up the cue to
dance.

They could cut off my arm
And it would not hurt as much
They could hack off my ear
but I could still hear
They could topple my height
By detaching my legs
But the ache of the loss
Would not match that of today’s.

Ironically, I must smile through it all
I must not whimper like now
as the guillotine falls.

I made the bed…

Not feeling particularly poetic tonight
Lousy flu’s got me down
And I almost lost a finger
Helping to install our new cast iron
bathtub this morning–
hurt like Hades in a snowstorm,
swelled up like a polish sausage–
I don’t think I’ve ever experienced
true shock before, but that’s what I must have felt-
nauseous, cold sweat, almost passed out–and that
was just my finger…I can’t imagine the pain some
people have gone through with traumatic injuries.
Oh well, such a wimp am I.
The great irony, of course, is that I’d just finished grading
what will undoubtedly be my last take-home set of writing
in my entire career. When there’s nothing left to do,
I can’t do it anyway.
Oh, and this has been a wonderful exercise of hunt and peck
with the good hand.
I’m including a photo below
of the Foucault Pendulum located at
the Griffith Park Observatory.
Why? Because time, good people,
keeps marching on and will not wait
for us to catch up or keep up
or pause. And that, is by design.

I’ve been thinking about you today
About the loss that came your way
About the strength you show
And the love that flows
Despite the pain of moving on

I realized just by chance
That you have given me a gift
A sense of how it is
To lose yet walk anew–
And that new found strength
In your stride,
That confidence in life,
Comes from things anchored
So in a faith
That truth to know we can all overcome,
Not just the grave, but the little
Pricks that life inflicts.

Today, I am happy to know you,
I am lucky to know you,
To watch you teach me
how it is to accept, to move on,
to love fiercely without fear.

A big shot.
“It takes courage to become who you are,”
he said as he strolled down the
si
de
wa
lk
playing
h
ops
c
otch.

Oh, e.e., why must you
tell me that?
I thought I was already
brave enough
just living
today
just surviving;
hopping
along the
bunny trail
toward the hole
the girl just
tumbled into

headlong.

Cliche: Life is a game
I don’t like solitaire
Nor Risk, nor Dominoes
But the latter at least makes sense.
The rest of them are strangely confusing
like Bridge,
or simple like
Kai Bai Bo.

Mind games,
now there’s something for the pros–
tricky to detect
And often unscrupulously played
And if you’re reading this,
then take a card and slide
right back to start.
I heard you say it,
Shoot.

On this your birthday
i can only say,
i miss you, lady
i miss you, friend
how could you have gone so soon?
before us all without a word?
makes me wonder about living more
makes me long for deeper dreams
Where you’d laugh and conjure plans
To paint the town in that red Chevette
that dusty vinyl collection at the roller rink
Broadway’s best at the piano seat
Remember, I will always be
the one who thought that
you were the smartest girl
I ever knew
And loved your sass
your laughter, too.
Happy Birthday, Barbara, dear,
good tears flow with thoughts of you.
Let your spirit tarry near.

It’s just a number, 300.
Written at night
When the air turns cold-
Written in love or anger or spite
Written to vent or praise or delight
300 poems mark the way
to 400, 500, or perhaps one a day.
Poetry, simple but sometimes
sincere;
thoughts of a daughter or parent
or seer; poems about pirates and
Princes of light, rhymes with purpose
or haphazard or trite–
It matters not if the reader is thrilled
It matters only that the truth stay concealed–
The truth about heartache or fear or impossible days
all boiled together with half stewed forays
into quagmires and quick sand
of one’s own free will–a poem will
engulf you or free you or still
remind you that beauty abounds every day
in friends and relations and casual play.
It will lift you and steer you, enlighten
your way…

So, 300 moments of one’s inner thoughts–
ridiculous ramblings and monotonous plots
All come together on this night to shout–
“Just a few hundred more and you’ll reach
the recluse, Ms. Dickinson’s spot.”
(Well, not in quality, of course, but in
number of starts.)

So, the goal was 300 and that’s met tonight–
Will I write more? Perhaps.
Why not? It helps sleepless nights.

Pounded down–
That’s me.
Stomped on and spat upon
Degraded and defiled
Crumbled by coarseness
Belittled by bile
I will not wake
I will not rise
I will not heal
if all I have is myself
to rely upon.

Where are you when I need you?
Where are you?

Not that long ago, eight years to be exact,
Alex and I went into a dingy meeting room
and waited for a little girl
with long, brunette hair and wearing a newly purchased purple dress
to walk into our lives.
She was keen–her eyes darted about the place and
rarely glanced at us;
she had no words
to tell us what she was thinking.
We laugh now because we have to shush her
constantly–her chatter box giggles with excitement
when her grandpa calls to sing his wishes for her Happy Birthday,
or friends Skype in to say, “Hello.”
She has a million little stories about the
kids at school. Normal stuff. Kid stuff. The stuff that
all kids have. And that is miraculous for our little Bre-
Just yesterday, she (all four foot eight of her) put her sassy little hand
on her hip and exclaimed to her dad, “I’m a teenager, Dad. I can take care of myself.”
Right, missy, Go for it. She, of all people, probably could.
She’s feisty and indomitably happy.
She is sweet–she does nice things for kids she thinks are being
picked on–even when others pick on her for doing it–
She’s funny–
She has more fun hanging out with her brother Bruce
than he even realizes.
She’s the light of our life
She’s strong and sweet,
She’s our Bre and we love her.
Happy Birthday, you teeny-bopper you!

He should have stayed in Egypt
With Cleopatra
Instead of playing war with Octavius
and the silly Romans.
Cleopatra, on the other hand,
Should have stopped the histrionics
and left the asp alone,
for the love of a man
ain’t worth the pain.

After leaving Wittenberg,
he headed north to Denmark
where he found his dead father
waiting on the roof.
“remember Me” cried daddy dear
and Hamlet killed the wrong one
in an effort to do just that.

have you ever wondered
why?

Why the struggle?

To sleep. Man, that makes me tired, too.

Moments, minutes, hours, days,
Each passing time frame I feel you
slipping away
Do not go quickly,
Do not go quietly
Do not go
Please…do not go.

Rivers run, ponies trot, climbers repel,
And I wait for the perfect minute
to bolt.

What I wish for and what I have
Often are the very same thing
But sometimes I want a little bit more–
A chance to learn something new-
A minute or two with a friend-
Breaths of ocean air
Rich, fresh, wind-cleansed breezes
On rocky, Oregon coastal bluffs
Or salty, churning seas
A smile, a look, a knowing
glance-a wisp of authentic love.

Not so high or wide or deep
Hurdles of life rise to meet my feet
I keep my eye on the setting sun
I move forward with clipped run
Bold in thought as darkness falls
Hurrying on as the next life calls.

Silent.
Trapped in sheets of 1000 thread crimson.
Waiting for the sun
To illuminate my path
Despite the rainstorm
That brews above.
Give me one audible note
And I can save myself.

If you ask me today what the difference
Might be between hating and
Loving
I’d confess that I have a hard time
hating
So, maybe ask a tree.

Certainly, there are things I don’t
like
But if I dwell on those too
long
I’m bound to find something worth
delight.
I guess I’m not a hater, nor a
lover
for that random matter, but I try to
look
for good in others–even when the
look
is unwarranted or wrong.

Teetering near midlife’s edge
Tipping irrevocably into insanity’s abyss
She reaches out in frail attempts
To grasp whatever twig might save her,
But to her horror she realizes, too late,
That the twig is not rooted in solid earth
but the sandy slippage of pseudo-friendships
Tilled with manure from ravenous youths
who, unknowingly, take and take and take
without a thought about it
And leave her empty, unable to lift the weight
Of her own heart out from the cavernous canyon
Of Dante’s spiraling pathways or the certain
plummet to Hell.

What was she thinking when she jumped?
Was she thinking?
Or, was it feeling that let her down,
down into that inescapable well
of self-delusion about piteous, odious
forbidden love?

What do you think Paolo and Francesca?
Were you, too, left hanging?