A Wrinkled Man - Un Hombre Arrugado - Un Homme Ridé - Un Uomo Rugoso

Buoy Hood

2012-02-02T11:02:00.000-05:00

Old friend,
I only have the back-when days
to go on.

Since my watch,
all your years of history,
all the events of your past
the boy I knew plus decades more boy and man,
100 times the time we've spent together
were yours alone,
a stranger,
I wasn't there.

In high school
I had not become myself
everything happening for the first time,
as when I first flew in my sleep,
my will dreamlike and insubstantial,
compelled as if living in a script
to which I paid close attention.
You were there. In it. Welcome.

I have the old scripts to go on,
when we all thought we were separate units of will,
when we were full of life,
a novel idea,
one of a kind within a subset of all the same.
You always seemed happy then,
buoyant, no sink in you at all.

So tell me,
old friend,
tell me how you've stayed afloat
and sunk,
then I'll do the same.

Men

2012-02-01T11:00:00.000-05:00

I like the vengeance in football,
the private battles in the open arena,
the players doing everything they can
to move the ball forward,
or push against it,
at times being beaten,
at times climbing on top of the pile with a magnificent thumping of the chest

human as the gentle kiss to a baby's forehead
unrestrained urge
intimacy, primacy on display,
their faces to faces, with masks removed,
their mouths to ears, their warm embraces and their tears,
men who love each other
in public, for their joint pursuit of a single end.

Anthropologists, your text on paper pales beside the game!
You cannot tell me anything I don't know in my wires
about the jubilation in outrunning, out-jumping, out-thumping, outwitting
an opponent. How it ripples in our lives and wins all our affection.
Study me, they are my tribesmen,
my strongmen,
and we are on the hunt.

Putting Up A Stink

2012-01-28T19:31:00.001-05:00

When the librarian told the boys to be quiet
they resolved to be silent, but deadly.

Here's the Deal

2012-01-28T15:13:00.000-05:00

You don't want to know me,

you want your driveway paved.

You don't want to tell stories

to your grandchildren

about the exploits of the

concrete salesman.

You don't want but 75 per cent of my material,

the other 25 being hot air.

You don't want my friendship,

You want my pervious concrete.

She Flew the Atlantic

2012-01-28T15:06:00.000-05:00

There was her husband

who'd conceded,

me,

and a man from elsewhere, U.S.A.

whose mention alone raised my hackles.

I wrote the words,

on which she flew the Atlantic,

no more.

For a moment,

my head
that I'd been spinning out for heart
easily given
was easily won.

She came,
parlayed,
but would not keep it.

faith

2012-01-28T14:57:00.001-05:00

Who are the people without questions?
Point.
I'll avoid them.

I'll not follow someone
who isn't nervous about the outcome,
who doesn't know the
truth in doubt;

He doesn't know me. I can't know him. He'll
not get my fealty.

I'll be a man like men
I've known
who are afraid
but go anyway
first, last, sooner or later,
following or leading,
come what may,
doubt in hand.

Man of Letters

2012-01-26T14:29:00.000-05:00

She will not write to me
as a peer would,
her assessment made
without conversation,
her boundaries drawn
before meeting,
her core a finished nut
whose shell would rot
before opening
to me.

On Meeting the Widow for the First Time

2012-01-21T09:11:00.001-05:00

At my ex-brother-in-law's burial
we were five mourners:
my sister, their two grown boys, his widow

and an imam with a contingent
of poor professional strangers,
sober men in somber clothing.

When the widow's smile
appeared at the proceedings
like a mouse in a hushed courtroom,
I turned toward the men,
then back to her eyes,
her lips dissolved.

The imam stood in the finished hole,
the top of his head at ground level
hunched over a shovel
digging a trench,
a grave within a grave,
end to end,
half the width,
the depth of a man
lying on his side.

Carefully but without ceremony
he dumped the dirt graveside
onto a collar of plywood
laid out for the purpose,
then handed the shovel up
and invited each of my nephews,
to stand with him
to receive the casketless body
and lay it in the ground.

When they declined,
a man dressed for the purpose,
hesitated, then volunteered to go down.

The clot of standing strangers
re-organized to carry the corpse
to the edge in a fine oak open top box,
its only use to bear an endless supply of dead.

They lifted the shrouded form,
its clean white purpose at hand,
it did not resist
nor cooperate,
as it was passed man to man.

When a hand slipped
and the weight of a dropped limb
sagged into the linen
we held our breath,
forced to imagine
the life departed.

Grip regained,
they fit our brother into the grave's basement
and the imam leaned a pristine ply
from ground to wall
against the further indignities of piled dirt
and our eyes.

The young imam,
calm, assured,
sprung from the routine grave,
and brushed himself off.

He and the strangers filled the hole.
The other mourners took turns with a spade,
the sound of falling dirt growing quieter,
the scoured wood, louder.
I wanted to finish with a soft bristled broom.

He crouched beside the plot
and drew us down and close,
his eyes giving each of us
all the time we'd take,
his Arabic flowing rote,
prayers understood by strangers
and the widow,
flying fast and precise
in hypnotic verse.

Bereft of meaning
but filled with rhythm and tone
we considered the hole,
the dirt, ourselves, the man.

Under the full weight of the earth,
the solemn imam told us
finally in plain English,
our brother's future rested on the good deeds
we'd do in his memory;
only the light he passed to future generations
could save him.

When the widow's smile found me again
somehow I knew, later confirmed,
she and I were thinking,
blood no matter,
we are kin.

Fruit or Vegetable

2012-01-17T20:09:00.001-05:00

There's a man down the lane
with a belly of cash,
a dash in his step,
a fine wool suit
and a bucket of eyes.

Bucket of eyes?

He spends from the bucket
that he keeps by the door
filled with sand and excuses
and mighty fast keys
to the life
his father and mother bequeathed
since decades before
they departed.

They departed?

He runs down and around
with bags full of wool
children behind
succession of dogs
and reams of numbers
belonging to others.

To others?

He might be a goat
in a long line of goats
who've grown beardless and bitter
like kale or cucumber.

Cucumber?

There's a man down the lane
who tries nothing at all
does only what's done
like a sheep biting louse
but is really a wax cucumber.

Only a wax cucumber.

2012-01-17T16:16:00.001-05:00

Excess money pales beside every other love or adventure.

2012-01-17T15:14:00.002-05:00

Saving for the next generation

is a gift in dying

especially if they don't wish you gone,

if your money's not poison,

life's better for a moment

for leaving them alone to consider their loss

with a little bit of cash

while the bigger gift,

dispelled illusion,

your great foray into the void is

impossible for them to dodge.

Next.

Discovery

2012-01-13T11:51:00.001-05:00

I'm not a light coiled muscle
anymore,

so in mid air

just before landing
wished

I'd never leaped,
wished

I'd waited one second longer
and considered the fate
of being a bag of falling bones.

And though I landed well,
(didn't fall or tilt)
a day later had a foot
with blood rushing down.

Ohh, walking.

I'm happy to report
x-ray discovered a flake.

Every Second Skin

2012-01-13T11:24:00.000-05:00

The new year
is like an old coat,
the one I've tried on every January,
and all the time between,
the one I've been wearing ever,
same sleeves, same skin,
mine from birth
stitched and re-stitched,
always new, always used, always changing coat,
more colors, finer cloth than Joseph's,
immutably and forever
transient, every second starting over,
new year, new moment, new coat.

Teetering

2012-01-03T09:34:00.002-05:00

You have noticed that man looks like a buffalo
shaggy and mystified, angry and proud,
and a whale, sleek and wet and round,
trusting small and oblivious large.

Supplicants

2011-12-31T15:59:00.002-05:00

We play Yahtzee,
a game of chance,
none with the upper hand,
cupped black dots on spare white backs
sprinkled across a granite table.
Strategy a small role.
Choices matter,
periodically tricking us into believing
we will numbers and combinations.

We grow silent as they
clack at us,
rat tat on the rock altar,
rat tat, rat tat.

Self Hypnosis

2011-12-27T09:31:00.000-05:00

When I joined
the support group for failed self hypnotics
I thought I might teach them a thing or two,
mesmerize them
but I couldn't,
of course.
Together we reached an understanding
we'd go under
the spell
of the others,
be convincing.

A Feature of My Walk

2011-12-23T14:05:00.003-05:00

The corner of my street, a daily visit to the finest art within walking distance of my house.

Looking deep into the accidental reflecting pool.

In the Is

2011-12-20T13:20:00.001-05:00

In the clearest point of view
there is a cornea with no occlusions
nothing cluttered.

The value of everything is square.
All of everything is a vast neutrality that simply is.

I will go on in the is.

Mingus

2011-12-19T11:43:00.000-05:00

No B.S.

leads with thumping irony,

a bit of contemplation drumming

warning there's a lion down there,

whose tail mesmerizes,
a mask for each closer step,

then off toward his meal

at loping speed.
Prey, how you gonna get away now,

join the pursuit,

the music of fear,

the chase,

the flight of the hare

and its brilliant mate

who darts into the race

outwits the king

tempting him to change direction

and in a long second, he does hesitate,

while the rodents make a quick getaway.

Thanks to Charles Mingus, II B.S. (II/Two/too/to Bull Shit)

Farm Hands

2011-12-17T13:46:00.000-05:00

I lived through the year
when there were no apples.

That spring there were buds,
and flowers,
tiny fruit
that froze solid
in twelve degrees after a hard rain.
What didn't break, rotted.

The trees raced to catch up.
All their missing leaves regrew.
More than a month behind,
they were off like a shot from a new starting block,
sprinting into a northern summer,
aiming to right themselves before fall frost,
new buds, new flowers, small fruit,
big green fruit,
looking in every way like money in the bank.

We counted
and exhorted them
when just before maturity,
it happened again:
Hard rain, twelve degrees,
almost every apple broken from its branch.

My mother cried. My father sobered.
I thought the pain we felt was for the trees.

The following year
all the trees in the orchard
were more gnarled,
grayer with blacker knobs,
sinewy fibres
lovely and strong
like muscles
on long lived hands.

Fallow

2011-12-15T14:22:00.001-05:00

I've been wandering in the bare orchard,
trees like twisted wire,
knuckle grafts exposed,
apples merely memories,
promises from past seasons,
stones sucking cold from air,
matted grass laying for snow,
prints from house to barn
bald as sunset.

Two Sticks

2011-12-15T12:04:00.001-05:00

Everything is a stick.

I've never made fire with sticks
but believe it
because of the heat I can generate
with just a little effort on a saw,
neighbor against neighbor,
my hand on your back,
or a precise word
in your ear.

Lightning develops over hours,
the atmosphere works itself
into a zzzz it cannot hold,
sibilants in a fricative split,
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzap.

House of Worship

2011-12-12T12:06:00.000-05:00

Now we fear the story
inside each other's eyes
the jagged white,
the murky brown,
the frozen blue,
the tiny black,
dots
that drain
the basin empty
out the mouth, out the eyes,
out the massive brain cavity
where terrors are stored.

Art

2011-12-12T11:03:00.002-05:00

All these treasures
are free:
thought
sound
sight
smell
touch,
all the vibrations that fill us,
any one a vast universe.

The Runs

2011-12-12T10:52:00.000-05:00

Put a pen in my hand
and hope I'll become incoherent
before incontinent
so you won't hear all about it.

Po Structure

2011-12-10T15:54:00.000-05:00

These are acts of will.
This is a mistake.
This is how it reminds me of mistakes I made in the past.
These are intellectual and emotional illustrations,
hopefully unique, original and useful,
capturing the spirit of something as if for the first time,
the naming of an essence.
This is a lament
that neither the form of the thing or its tricks
are up to the task of imagining.

Christmas Shopping With Jesus

2011-12-10T14:23:00.001-05:00

I went Christmas shopping with Jesus,
believe it or not hear me out.

He was playful like a child,
tugged my hand,
pulled me from shop to shop,
he would have it all
and think only of its joy,
no costs.

I scolded him.
He smiled and grew up a little.

Shotgun

2011-12-10T13:30:00.005-05:00

When we were passengers
in a car driven by a freaking ghost
we stared at him, then each other.
His skin drained white,
his mouth went wide,
he burst into a sound I'd heard once,
the shrieking wail
my father attributed to an alarmed rabbit
about to become prey,
silence risen to the peak of terror.

Each of us beseeched him to brake,
but he accelerated.
If not for the narrow road
and descending evening
I might have convinced myself
we'd survive,
but in the fading light
his knuckles shone on the wheel,
the gray sky blurred,
rushed our heads,
the stone wall sudden and explosive.

Now we fear each other's eyes.

Henry

2011-12-08T12:19:00.003-05:00

There is a man,
Henry, a broker,
of real estate,
who lost his business partner,
Ron, with whom he spent decades
sharing customers back and forth,
frequenting my restaurant.

They were there when I opened,
there when I finally closed.
Henry was the first patron I told.
I've seen him several times since.
Ron, not at all.

Today, almost three years since I shuttered,
the wind is blowing cold,
I bumped into Henry.
Ron died a month ago.
Henry is thinking of leaving town,
going to Phoenix,
where all the worthless real estate
is worth less.

He said,
"shit, Jim, I'm seventy."

Process Wizardry

2011-12-06T23:30:00.009-05:00

Went to the city
with the chief caramel guy
filing papers for the candy factory.

Required disapproval
on zoning grounds
to initiate appeal to a body
with more authority
but were advised,

coffee stained bureau
and smokey fingertips,
by a leather tanned dolly
who peered into the screen
of everyone's identical future:

"It'll be two weeks,
uhcough, uhcough,
before your case reviewer,
gets a chance to properly reject you."

In One Way or Another

2011-12-01T15:49:00.000-05:00

What exactly, is a thrown away year?
I cannot imagine that.
All of them have been used.

Inside Night

2011-11-30T12:22:00.008-05:00

It's the inside of night,
the night inside night,
where terror lives,
not darkness,
circling away from the sun,
but the idea of darkness.

There is no real darkness.
Light is there when you look for it.
The world, our eyes, exist by light,
light and being are one.
Sound is light to the ear.
Bats fly to their own light,
there are no blind men,
but the idea of darkness
convinces us otherwise,
that darkness is real.
It is not.
Life is the absence of darkness.

Sleep,
our closed eyes,
our turned off brain,
our immobilized limbs,
our love of daytime and our fears
are the night inside night.
Life is real.
There is no unreal thing called death.
Death is simply the absence of real.
It is only a figment,
a magnificent subtraction
that does not go further,
otherwise we'd call it
life after life
and there'd be
first person reports.

Speculation

2011-11-29T11:37:00.001-05:00

Dear Children,

I've been keeping track of things
some of it quantifiable,
the really valuable stuff, not.

I know that you don't read these pages.
Please take the time some day
and if there is value here
you'll know it,
even if it's only to save for the next reader.

If there is value,
something I can give to you,
and it is not lost,
it's in these hundreds of pages on this blog
where I've tried to the best of my ability to describe a unique man,
his singular and common thoughts,
his evolution as a writer,
his fantasies, addictions,
mirrors, dreams, daydreams, urges, lusts,
mild pleasures
and immense passions for life in small and large expressions,
sentiment, yes, sentiment,
which grows old with years,
mysteries that go unresolved,
and one or two truths which become profoundly more stark,
clearly understood, increasingly often,
call it wisdom,
call it what you will.
If I have it,
if I've said it, it is here,
as well as I can say it so far,
all the short and long
of a single life
at a singular time,
struggling with the basic questions
of health, faith, love, money and art,
and why earth is heaven for some of us.

I've wanted to know almost every person I've known.
My parents were the exact parents I wanted.
You are the exact children I want.
This is our story, our legacy,
my love letter to the universe.

The Changing Substance of Hope

2011-11-27T11:07:00.003-05:00

My father said to me

"pay it early"

and his life came tumbling down,

only a little left by the time he recovered,

climbed back up

as high as he could,

far lower than before.

I've paid some.

I'm climbing now

lower than before.

Footsteps cross the ceiling above me

distant voices

travel down

a hallway,

a flight of stairs,

another hallway,

a doorway,

the pleasant sound of radio,

unintelligible but sincere.

I am reading the past less often,

making fewer choices

savoring more.

I hope the end will not be torture.

I hope it can be done

and I'll have paid it early.

Ed V Peck

2011-11-21T20:12:00.005-05:00

Today I met a man named Ed V Peck whose business was candy
(but whose pleasure was spite) He enjoyed it
in bite sized pieces served on a variety
of plates adorned with a V
which stood for
nothing
When he was
a boy his parents said
that it would do as a middle
name no period; they said brightly, it could be
Victor, or anything he chose, when the strong boys
told him to peck this or called him pecker head he exercised the V

Either Or

2011-11-20T09:35:00.002-05:00

It's easy to see the magnificence of god in nature
but then you must accept
capricious, callous,
and destructive
or the absolute insignificance of humanity.

Maybe Dolphins

2011-11-17T09:34:00.002-05:00

After a brief discussion,
Natasha and I decided
that dogs would be the first mammals to speak our language.
In one world, it will happen.

Lucky Dog

2011-11-17T08:38:00.000-05:00

Lucky likes Mary Kitchen Corned Beef Hash.
And carrots,
warm radiators,
public shivering,
believing that humans can read his mind.

Fall Light

2011-11-16T12:31:00.003-05:00

The light says "come to me."
So Sam and I go for a walk.

Slipping Polls

2011-11-16T12:08:00.000-05:00

Cain is making a shrewd exit,
effing up
to draw attention to everything but his
fidaddling
the real reason
he has suddenly grown weak.

Extreme Unction (or my captor's hands)

2011-11-16T10:46:00.014-05:00

After he starved me to the point of death,
I couldn't lift my body from the bed.

He came into the room and talked to me
in a warm water voice.

I was silent past fright. One muscle keeping me.

He used his fingers
like legs, his palms to raise me.

I was a heartbeat in his hands
imagining love one last time.

heightened

2011-11-14T11:39:00.003-05:00

When the witch doctor stares at me
I pretend to be immune
but I am cowed
by the intensity of his gaze
and feel all my evil humors express themselves.
I smell myself
and sit rabbit still.

the witch doctor

2011-11-14T11:32:00.000-05:00

the poet is the witch doctor,
i am the witch doctor,
i am the witch doctor's patient,
i am the witch doctor's cure.

Wheel

2011-11-14T11:20:00.004-05:00

Money has its own appetite,
why it's best kept nearby
but at arm's length,
neither too much with or without.
It could grow fat
and eat me,
a little at a time,
or suddenly
all at once.

Or I
can take from it
as I need
like a wheel of aged cheese,
use it,
make it last.

Devil's Door

2011-11-12T17:37:00.021-05:00

I'm almost ashamed
of my dependence on the witch doctor,
the wild hair that halos his head
the dead white bone
the eloquent dance that means nothing
until he explains.

I realized today
the post nasal drip
that haunted me for years
has vanished and my favorite aunt
no longer seduces me in dreams.

I am not superstitious
nor is the doctor
so that when he told me to knock
on the devil's door every day at dusk,
I asked "What's the joke?"

He said that no devil needs a door
and he did a dance to demonstrate
how honeybees find nectar,
shaking his abdomen
in an ever widening circle
until my time was up.

I paid and left,
flying straight to the florist.

Dinner Party

2011-11-12T09:15:00.016-05:00

We were stupid again last night,

three men breaking off

to smoke cigars and sip cognac

which we each hate separately

but love together

and three women

talking shoes and bags and sweaters

keeping the best in the closet

in creamy kid leather

thin skin impossible not to fondle

like tongue cancer

or inebriation.

Our Theater

2011-11-11T23:45:00.005-05:00

In our town,
there is no theater,
but if there were it would have soaring ceilings
and be kept cold
running only shows worth shivering through.

Actors would blow foggy breath
between them and wish for a secret donor
who'd specify heat
and no artistic anything.

Sometimes, a sparse audience of astute strangers
would clump in a corner near the stage,
under high lights,
stamping and clapping for warmth.

A Simple Walk

2011-11-10T17:51:00.002-05:00

http://photos.jimlewis.net/main.php?g2_itemId=2792

If bruises had been snow

2011-11-04T01:42:00.026-04:00

When he brought you home
in the dark,
whimpering,
it was his face
that made me cry.
If my aching shoulders had been wings,
I'd have wrapped them around you
and flown.
If bruises were snow, I'd have
brushed them off.
If I could,
I'd make you a baby again.

How did I,
once upon a time in heaven,
create this hell for you?
I held you as long as I could hold him off.
Keeping you was impossible.
His life is no longer mine to lead,
but it's ever yours to follow.

Why are we beaten in love, you and me?
Can a man in his right mind
murder his own son
and call it his grandson's protection?
Is your health
worth his broken life?
Can a man steal a boy from his father
and call it solution?
Can anything
heal a broken man
who wails on his son?
What world is this
where less than perfect love fails so perfectly?

Commentary: because people tend to mistake fiction for reality, take note, my son is loving and healthy;
he has no children. This poem is the result of a terrifying nightmare. Unfortunately it is a nightmare
drawn from the world's realities.

Irresistible In the Land of Plenty

2011-11-02T17:37:00.001-04:00

Lately,
grapes are the first to go.

My Take on Citizen Cain

2011-11-02T16:08:00.003-04:00

The problem we all have here,
is that lynching a man for his color
basically only goes one way.

Herman Cain has a plausible argument.
Color could be in play.

But I'm banking on truth.
And I have a feeling, Mr. Cain is not.
For him, color is a comparatively pleasant distraction.

His campaign is over,
but he cannot quit without fighting.
It would give over the lie
too easily.

Time To Move

2011-11-02T16:00:00.000-04:00

I don't like feeling as though I'm in the way,
but I am,
in this doorway where
people started by begging
my pardon
and apologizing
before they shoved
and finally kicked me.
Truly,
I am in the way.

Misfit

2011-11-02T15:55:00.003-04:00

In our house,

everything goes with everything else

or else it is destined to be gone.

I am one of those.

On Poetry and Art and Change

2011-10-31T15:24:00.003-04:00

Last night I saw a history of a time when great painters kept company with great poets. It spoke of the time being past, but it seems to me that that time is ever now as art proliferates and even the most intrepid arm of state bows before the goddesses of love and art. No one wants to be insensitive to the wrong people. Everyone wonders how the other guy can be so wrong about who the right people are. Righteousness is thicker than any belief.

Every poet knows a dozen others, every painter scores more, every singer, every writer, every sculptor and collector, every soul who grasps for the sublime, for the deepest revelations about life finds artists everywhere among us. Art has a billion billion faces. We don't have to look far to find a great poet or a great painter. Greatness abounds.

We are at a crossroads where we must turn onto the right road, go to the community where our words will do the most good. We must be heard by the people who don't usually listen, the ones who need our motivation to help them participate in their own future, the complacent millions. Us. I am one. We have to create a new level of listening and a louder voice that speaks with a capacity that corresponds to its ability to listen. We must use our voice to tell truths.

Every man should hold himself accountable for the artfulness and the products of his life. This rises above religion, although religion can and must participate. It rises above work. Certain works are done solely for survival. But it must be incorporated into work. It rises to the essential nature of people. What do we do when things go bad? How do we add our moral voice to what appears to be an amoral world, a world that is always promising to be moral but almost never delivers? We must tell what it's like to be disappointed in our lack of progress. Tell how it feels to be a navigator who knows exactly what sea he is in, but whose only influence over the ship depends on how well he can convince the captain who isn't accustomed to listening.

We must stake out moral territory. We must define new commandments, additions, not subtractions. We must become the future man so the future man can become himself.

Beach House

2011-10-31T13:30:00.012-04:00

Table grapes.

Babies in basins.

Light at dusk moments before rain
swept by black and thunder
into summer closets.

Incandescent bulb
shining through cracks
and around doors,
rhythmic shadows.

Steamed ears of corn.

Clams on bed of seaweed
over hot round stones.

Grapes again.

Sun warmed puddles of rain
rinsed clear through soft green grass between toes.

Sand all the way to vineyards.

Beads of water funneled into fruit.

Grapes!

Now

2011-10-30T20:38:00.000-04:00

We are the evidence.
Someone is accurately predicting the future
and the true nature of the universe
is being discussed.

TV Repair

2011-10-29T12:45:00.005-04:00

I told the service man
that I wanted more empathy.
My TV doesn't understand me and is acting
as if all I care about is the line count of the picture,
the fidelity of its colors,
or how fast it redraws.

I told him that my TV
had given up on my moods
always the same crappy programs,
even after I'd told it that
I was ready to change my life.

Yes, I said I could leave it with him,
but I was hoping to teach it empathy myself.
If he would only tell me how,
I would pay him for the advice.

full feather

2011-10-29T12:17:00.005-04:00

on the day she walked away
i was imagination
perched little on a fence,
with legs and wings.
then i hopped to a wire
strung from pole to pole
and flew off.

When the Crows Came

2011-10-28T15:41:00.000-04:00

When the crows came,
I fell in love with their
shiny blue black
their bouncing haunches
and their wisecracks.

I grew impatient with their distrust
and their off the cuff remarks.

I thought I might learn
to tell them apart
but I only succeeded in making myself
an odd sort of human.

Nursed

2011-10-27T15:35:00.009-04:00

In recovery
the light is white
sudden but soft
no windows or clocks
in sight
but the hum of women,
murmurs, suggestions, facts,
at desks, at beds,
a roomful of nurses,
each in her time,
turning toward me,
clear in her eye,
as I awake,
another one safe.

Whispers

2011-10-27T02:11:00.004-04:00

Let’s get this straight, I am
not much, but I am
God’s neighbor

and there’s a skunk
that lives between us

who wanders around my garage
and has sprayed my dog.

Today I heard whispers
from under the car

telling me to write

and now I'm afraid to leave the house.

First, I'll give it all to you

2011-10-26T12:31:00.001-04:00

Everything.
But I won’t let you know that you have it.

Then I’ll take it away a little at a time
so that you’ll barely notice.
Sometimes I’ll take several things at once
and you’ll perk up.
I might even give you something back for a time,
or perhaps you’ll “earn” it back,
running on some treadmill somewhere.

You might think
that you really can change
the way that this is going to work.
It’ll be quiet, you'll think
that it could go on that way indefinitely.
You’ll forget that I’m here,
but then I’ll take something you didn’t realize you had,
bang, like that, and you’ll remember me.

Don’t feel singled out,
I’ll take from your friends
and from your family, too.
In fact, I’ll be taking from your parents
at a faster clip than I take from you.
You won’t be alarmed, it’ll feel natural.
Occasionally I’ll take from your children.
Sometimes I’ll even take your children…
That will get your attention.

I’ll be fair,
I’ll take your enemies, too.
I don’t discriminate.
There are no qualifiers, or disqualifiers.
Chance is a factor,
but of no lasting consequence.
I’ll winnow you out, all of you,
sometimes in great devastating events,
sometimes in little nips and bites.

If you’re lucky,
I might do things in a completely different order,
maybe take you at birth.

If you’re unlucky,
I’ll take it all slowly and painfully,
then I’ll let you live bereft
with your dribbling away self
for a while…

when

2011-10-25T13:27:00.001-04:00

When we are all wearing our phones,
walking antennae,
we'll be more easily found than ever,
more pitifully lost.

how many ways

2011-10-25T13:11:00.000-04:00

We know a tremendous amount about
our cities, our lives on this planet,
the intimate lives of minuscule creatures,
but we don't know
what we are,
or if we are anything at all,
a spec,
or less?

Memory

2011-10-24T11:20:00.005-04:00

I am flummoxed by my sudden divorce
from reality. My body has become the repository
of some other mind. My mind wanders back and back
through the past seeing colors and motives
I didn't know I'd missed.

Smells once vivid and many, now and then appear
like wraiths with faces, alive again among things.

But what I remember from the highest emotional plane,
the birth of my son, is the immediate and abiding awareness
of having lived a moment forever out of memory's grasp.

The Great Negotiator

2011-10-22T15:41:00.005-04:00

In the myth of the great negotiator,

there is always a trade.

For some things,

the most you can expect is nothing.

And for some things,

nothing is a victory.

Aha!

2011-10-22T15:15:00.000-04:00

I have a genetic predisposition
to give up.
My mother did it.
Her mother did it.
I was there,
both times,
didn't understand it,
until now.

Meteor Shower

2011-10-22T06:24:00.005-04:00

The stars
are always groping
for some other portion of sky,
sometimes even swiping at Earth.

A Naked Woman

2011-10-21T15:03:00.011-04:00

A woman in her bathtub
thinks of me and shudders.

Her husband has been gone for years
and no one sees her naked.
That she knows I imagine this
turns the water to ice.

Against the chill,
she grasps the spigot with her toes
and twirls hot wide open
until steam floats across the surface.
She drops the soap,
and gropes across the bottom.

Post Loving Caress Disorder

2011-10-21T12:40:00.004-04:00

I think everything and everyone loves me.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

2011-10-21T12:38:00.003-04:00

when you are struck
when you see the event

when you hear the word

when you open the letter

addressed or not to you,

you bear the contents

like little pebbles, rocks,

or boulders

whether you know it,

or not.

to K.S.

2011-10-21T12:37:00.004-04:00

Your smile has been there since we met,

some thirty years ago

and though I saw it working
three thousand seven hundred and fifty times

over the course of that year

and then not at all

until the promise of tomorrow,

it inspires me to tell you how vivid

it still is, what a warm synapse you have made in me.

I'm all anticipation. A gift is coming new again.

Amazon Bees

2011-10-21T10:20:00.004-04:00

Though you are a mated,

modern warrior,

a UN beekeeper,

African queen,

I want to gentle you,

all that honey,

perfect combs.

I’m on your landing board

your narrow entrance

turned toward the sun,

our secret flowers

and the buzz

that follows you,

all those useless drones.

It's 25% nothing!

2011-10-19T14:13:00.002-04:00

Pervious Concrete

is a system of interconnected voids.

Encased aggregate, coarse, touching.

Water passing.

Lighter, cleaner, greener.

(contact the Pervious Concrete Association for more information)

_____________________________________________________

To A Woman I Know

2011-10-19T13:31:00.004-04:00

I am not a boy,
I do not want to be a boy.
But I would enjoy being a boy around the woman you are now.
You would have been a fine mother to me.
A mother I'd love without question.
The boy in me feels very safe,
Loved.

man

2011-10-19T13:26:00.004-04:00

I’m after the disembodied voice

into the long forever,

being kept around

for having said something new

perfectly well at least once.

What women are also after,
and do make, in flesh and blood, too.

mama's boy

2011-10-18T11:35:00.012-04:00

I tell the others

I don’t use “bitch,”

I don’t talk with anyone who uses “bitch”

and I don’t know any “bitches.”

They look at me

like my father used to do

when he was that way.

“Betcha you do,” my brothers say.

“Betcha use it all the time, and just don’t say it.”

I say, “I don’t ever think it. I hear it.

A slap, followed by sting and shame.

I feel it.”

I won’t tell them just how much the word hurts,

that when it comes to “bitch”

I'm a woman,

worried by who they are.

They rip me up

and piss me off.

Forest Hills Station

2011-10-17T18:21:00.036-04:00

A man was stabbed
again and again,
killed,

left in a parking lot,

blood all over.

On a news web site,

someone hates the victim.

The writer's IP address

is sent to the Boston Police

who are now investigating
as if why is the answer.

Hands are dirty.

Someone is paid to clean up the blood.

On another day,
under the bus way,

a man approaching through
the waiting crowd
pauses at each

unknowing neighbor

to ask if we live in Boston.

I am the first to say yes.

He makes me understand,

in some kind of English,

he is running for office.

He asks for a write-in vote

and hands me a word filled
eight and a half by eleven,

poorly written,
stating his ambitions.

The other riders

turn away, one after another.

He reaches for my hand.

We shake. I think,
"Why does he bother?"
I want to tell him
to lead with his identity
not his question,
but cannot summon myself.

A few feet on

at the bottom of the stairs,
coming off the high platform,
a man with chronic alcohol poisoning

croaks a loud announcement:

“A Private Citizen”

Everyone turns
toward the red faced voice.

We are compelled to heed
as if by a single colored thread
stitched loosely through a shroud.
“A Private Citizen”
clears a wide seam.
Everyone forms an opinion.

As I turn to watch
him nobly make his claim

a woman behind me

makes a face
I don’t understand,

it needing words

she leaves unsaid.

The candidate meets

a voter who seems

to misspeak the same language

and together they discover
they need a pen.

He turns back toward me.

The bus is on the horizon.

I give him mine,

which happens to be red.

Another woman

taps me from behind
and points
to an earring on the ground,

dull and shiny,

open tattered hoop,

barbed like a large fishhook.

I pick it up and hand it back to her.

The bus loops toward the station.

I’m anxious to retrieve my pen.

The voter
is giving him number

after number, and name after name.
He cannot keep up,
writing on the cover of his red folder.

She takes the pen, finishes finally

and fumbles it to the ground.

The candidate picks it up

and hands it to me while glancing at the bus.
I'm worried about the felt tip.

I've told you about his black and white paper,

but I haven’t read it yet. Now I will.

For a moment I want to vote for him.

"A Private Citizen" staggers away.

The bus fills quickly.

Two transportation men,
looking up,
wrestle a ladder to vertical
as we exit the station.

I wonder where they will walk it.

I don’t know where the earring went

and I didn’t even tell you
about the woman with a sleeping baby

whose repeated glances
were warm, inquiring

and overlaid by fear.

__________________________________________________________________________________

(alternate layout)

Forest Hills Station

A man was stabbed again and again, killed, left in a parking lot, blood all over. On a news web site, someone hates the victim. The writer's IP address is sent to the Boston Police who are now investigating as if why is the answer. Hands are dirty. Someone is paid to clean up the blood.

On another day, under the bus way, a man approaching through the waiting crowd pauses at each unknowing neighbor to ask if we live in Boston. I am the first to say yes.

He makes me understand, in some kind of English, he is running for office. He asks for a write-in vote and hands me a word-filled eight and a half by eleven, poorly written, stating his ambitions.

The other riders turn away, one after another. He reaches for my hand. We shake. I think, "Why does he bother?" I want to tell him to lead with his identity not his question, but cannot summon myself to it.

A few feet on, at the bottom of the stairs, coming off the high platform, a man with chronic alcohol poisoning croaks a loud announcement: “A Private Citizen.” Everyone turns toward the red faced voice.

We are compelled to heed as if by a single colored thread stitched loosely through a shroud. “A Private Citizen” clears a wide seam. Everyone forms an opinion.

As I turn to watch him nobly make his claim a woman behind me makes a face I don’t understand, it needing words she leaves unsaid.

The candidate meets a voter who seems to misspeak the same language and together they discover they need a pen.

He turns back toward me. The bus is on the horizon. I give him mine, which happens to be red.

Another woman taps me from behind and points to an earring on the ground, dull and shiny, open tattered hoop, barbed like a large fishhook.

I pick it up and hand it back to her. The bus loops toward the station. I’m anxious to retrieve my pen.

The voter is giving him number after number, and name after name. Writing on the cover of a red folder, he cannot keep up.

She takes the pen, finishes finally and fumbles it to the ground. The candidate picks it up and hands it to me while glancing at the bus. I'm worried about the felt tip. I've told you about his black and white paper, but I haven’t read it yet. Now I will. For a moment I want to vote for him.

"A Private Citizen" staggers away. The bus fills quickly. Two transportation men, looking up, wrestle a ladder to vertical as we exit the station. I wonder where they will walk it. I don’t know where the earring went and I didn’t even tell you about the woman with a sleeping baby whose repeated glances were warm, inquiring, and overlaid by fear.

Goodbye Letterpress

2011-10-14T15:33:00.015-04:00

I asked the typesetter:
Who is Elrod?
And what did the "D" man do?

And he told me:
the D man handled Ds and only Ds
except on days when the F man did it,
and then D became L.

The L man was pushed to the Ts
all the rest of the alphabet his,
though Zs were what kept him awake,
never regular, always needed.

As for Elrod, it's a machine.

NO, here's how he really answered:

"The 'D man' would distribute foundry type.
When slow and no composition
to be done, compositors would help.
The D man would routinely bring an lc, b, p, q, d to comps
who he suspected didn't know the difference
and returned the q to the b box in the CA job case."

Frankly, when he mentioned Elrod, I thought as much, but of the wrong guy.
I expected the D man to be more serious.

"The Elrod was a machine used to make the spacing material,
ie: 2pt, 3pt, 6, 12, 18 and 24pt
cut off at about 3ft. lengths.

Most medium sized shops had their own smelter
to make pigs for the typesetting machines."

I always suspected that Elrod would come to no good, now sure, him really a machine.

av a s tw h i t e__s k y

2011-10-14T14:21:00.038-04:00

At sunrise,
a thin fog hangs
on Truman Highway.

The Neponset River lies
in a thigh-deep
basin of chemical filth,
shoulders hunched under bridges,
an old osmotic sewer
left to its dark leeching
into weeds and trees.

But its vapor
haunts the hillside
caressing a flattened doe
whose timid eyes are gone to mud.

It lays up in doorways,
stickying porch lamps, veiling windows.

Everywhere
sunlight weeps
into a v a s t w h i t e s k y.

Catching Up

2011-10-13T14:17:00.000-04:00

She took the doctor to me,
and told him, "this is all he does now."

He took out his stethoscope, which I enjoy against my chest,
and the thump of his heavy thumb behind his hand,
the little taps below my kneecaps.

I said no, that I did many things
and would only write about all this later,
then left the room to write, things to catch up on.

Dementia

2011-10-13T14:09:00.002-04:00

Poetry is what's left of my sanity,
after that, I wonder.

Poet Laureate at the Roast

2011-10-13T11:38:00.011-04:00

At the Pervious Concrete dinner,
I was seated at the head table
with the contractor of the year,
her husband, my wife, the director, his partner,
and the witch doctor
whose elderly daughter was there to hold him up
and tell him when to incant.

It was my usual work, although I can tell you
now that it's over, I was shaking with nerves.

It was my pleasure
to introduce the contractor of the year
who had won the award,
not for volume, although her volume is high,
not for expertise, although she is technically proficient,
but for artistry, for which she is yet unsurpassed.

The dinner being a roast,
I was instructed to tease her mercilessly.
Thinking this very unpervious,
I chose instead to roast the industry
that had not imagined itself creative
before her.

Her young son came with a camera and a box of crayons,
took photos of everyone at the ceremony,
printed them in black and white,
then colored and distributed them
to their owners
with chalk,
souvenirs of the night.

I told the association that we had much to fear
from this woman.
While we've all been thinking about flow rate,
and footpaths,
she has filled our pedestrian product with life.

Gutter Repair

2011-10-11T12:09:00.008-04:00

When you google the words "gutter repair"

and fill out the form,

we are alerted.

An estimator is sent to your home,

who will make veiled references to the operation

as he makes a drawing of your house and takes photographs.

He will then artfully defer

the genuine estimate to a third party.

We’ll call him "the expert,"

who will climb a ladder

to tell you how much it will cost

to actually have your unique gutters repaired.

If you contract for gutter repair,
and perhaps downspout installation,

one third deposit is exacted,

scrutiny intensifies.

In any event,

your home's particulars
will be stored in the Langley cloud,

wires tapped,

satellite surveillance regularized

and your profile routinely updated.

The fact is,

gutter repair is googled

and engaged

by a statistically-impossible percentage

of suspected terrorists

who own their own homes.

The reason has yet to be found,

but monitoring all people

in need of gutter repair

is already paying off.

Motivation

2011-10-11T11:49:00.001-04:00

The honeybee gives willingly
when she is treated with respect.

Post Cliché

2011-10-11T11:32:00.000-04:00

Six steamed Brussels sprouts,
cold,
on a stoneware plate with half a sweet potato.

Home

2011-10-11T11:17:00.002-04:00

Where you focus everything,
an ocean at the center of the universe,
infinite emanating in all ways,
hot, cold, away, inside,
where your kernel
where your vast emptiness
leaves the physical behind
where your only love
hugs the coast
of another.

Being Here

2011-10-09T09:09:00.003-04:00

In heaven, the reward is life.
In hell, death.

Indian Summer

2011-10-08T15:13:00.000-04:00

On a hot October afternoon
winter is the shade of shrubbery
and the cold side of the house.

It hangs in roots
and out tips
when my accidental hand
at the ground
feels nascent air
whose freezing is as fact
despite warm sun walls
that belie it.

Some Silly Jig

2011-10-07T13:31:00.002-04:00

Now that you are dry

and your skin is pouched
from the weight of your life

what do your new cells do?

Do they work like the old ones

or do they dance out on the edge

some silly jig that the old ones never knew?

Old Story

2011-10-07T11:58:00.000-04:00

She died. I quit.

My blood pump useless.

Stopped meals making.

My cloth frayed, wore.

Her seep not linger out open doors.

Our dog incontinent, laying down.

All over everywhere,

each sad mission,

no one waiting,

and bad wine drinking.

Ever meeting a stranger.

My only person.

Everything is Broken

2011-10-06T12:01:00.000-04:00

Schools are broken, full of kid-size cracks.

Colleges are financial engines, foremost.

Government is in crisis. Red, right,
blue, everyone is angry.

Money spends in tightening circles.

Insurance has built a heavy steel tower on all our bodies.

We administer a justice that frees murderers and executes innocents.

The financial health of the state depends on vice
burning through addicts.

Agriculture is a massive endeavor in shriveling hands
upon which everyone depends. All its problems are monsters.

Families shatter everywhere in all ways.
Parents pass down bruises after constant pummeling.
The unborn are infected.

Countries bloodied in hate
heap sin upon women and children.

Disease. War and domination. Oppression.
Men are stunted children.

Evil roams free and sleeps soundly.

Do Love and Art still work?

Restaurant Owner

2011-09-30T05:32:00.006-04:00

A morose chef
has settled in my kitchen.
He sees no humor in my limp,
or the way I slosh his soup.
His wife has perpetual cancer.
His children are too many,
requiring the long form and specialists.
He's in the cellar
complaining about the windows
in all weather.
His pants are baggy where it doesn't matter.
He cooks what's left of my joy
in a giant pot filled with bitterness.
His bread is moldy.
His time is short.
His god is angry.
At night,
I cannot shake him.

On Lovers Lane

2011-09-29T16:23:00.002-04:00

Come with me to New Salem.

We’ll sit on a wall

thrown tumbled and straight

where trees anticipate

another season’s cidering.

We’ll fly like yellow jackets

from tree to under tree

getting drunk on drops
of McIntosh and Gravenstein.

We’ll float

between black rock clouds

counting jays

in steam and passing rain.

We’ll sleep

in the field hand’s room

at the top of the house

where summer’s heat survives.

We’ll dream

the end of autumn

white as paper in our arms

as another winter flies.

Come stay with me ‘til spring

at old South Main and Lovers Lane.

Quabbin From My Favorite Place On Earth

2011-09-26T10:23:00.002-04:00

Spider

2011-09-25T19:29:00.000-04:00

Gladiator

2011-09-25T13:23:00.000-04:00

On my foot,
heel to be more precise,
a posterior calcaneus lat left,
in layman's language -bone spur,
grows where my Achille's tendon is attached.
It burns like a spear, as you might imagine into your own foot.
Its fire pulls me up lame.

Almost always associated with Haglund's deformity,
it isn't rare; we limp around in legions.

I'm happy
because for most of human history
I would have already been eaten by a lion.

Patrick Makau

2011-09-25T12:11:00.001-04:00

Berlin, September 24, 2011

Amazing Patrick Makau ran back in time to warn the Greeks ahead of Phillippides, Pheidippides, Thersipus, Erchius and Eucles, and set a new world record: running 2501 years, 27 days, 11 hours and 23 minutes into the past. He collapsed after the race, stuck in Athens, 490 B.C. New Greek artifacts have been found bearing his likeness. It appears that several other runners collapsed in other centuries in the nearer past and have so far disappeared from history, although search for their remains continues. Haile Gebrselassie, perhaps the most accomplished marathoner of all time, dropped out of the race early in the first century A.D. He reportedly told another runner that he knew he couldn't win and wanted to look for Jesus Christ. His wife said that he had been complaining about his failing stride for some time and has been depressed. Biblical searches have turned up a number of possible references to the African.

Red Sox

2011-09-24T23:26:00.003-04:00

Now do you see how much magic there is in baseball?

No Matter

2011-09-24T19:27:00.000-04:00

When I was a boy

I thought joy

was to be sought

and then selected

like a shopping trip,

the money of days

in a pot by the door

as easily spent as breath.

When I was a young man