One Day You Will Stand
You will stand one day, surrounded by loved ones
Perhaps one too many, with perhaps too many memories
and when you look out onto the sea of colors
You’ve dreamt about since you were young
There will be once exception – a bright red tux
owned by the piano man – hired to play his songs
he looks oddly familiar to you.
Never the less you breathe deep.
Before things can get started his fingers move
unlike anything you’ve ever seen, perhaps except in a dream
and his black shaggy hair begins to sway
as a familiar tune begins to play.
You aren’t supposed to cry that early in the night
at least that wasn’t the plan
But no power either god or man could’ve stop the tears
as you recognize that song,
memories of passed nights,
slow dances, one too many drinks,
and scribbled poems on cloth napkins
at stuffy suit and tie affairs.
Afterwards you will look for the man to ask why
on earth he would play such a tune
or if perhaps he somehow knew -
but he had gone.
The Shepherdess’ Prophecy
I bring my fingers to the temple,
ten digits long been sacrificed to house work
a simple brainless rub soothes a headache.
Its been a long day, on top of a long life,
not that I could tell my grandchildren that
as they wail, at my knee.
“Grandma, grandma, play with me”
Such blissful ignorance. As if I could keep up.
But I must continue, they need me, and what is left of my love.
Outside my window a barren tree loses its final leaves
the bright sunshine nevertheless bounces off it
as if it where wrapped in golden fleece.
Its long limbs like an old man’s boney fingers
pointing away from the horizon.
It points to my dearest Virgil who waits
With God’s right hand, Eros.
One memory, plucked unluckily from a mess,
rises to the surface. An Easter service, Warsaw 1940,
our church dark and everyone whispered prayers.
Father left months ago. My mother never told me why.
Children these days do not know the meaning of such a lie
its importance, its weight, or the meaning of Easter.
I wore pink – the colors of my nation – to match the Amaryllis
which had somehow been resurrected from under rocks.
What Memories Do
Mrs. Wilson loved her memories
because her family had moved away
when her hair turned as gray as the skies
and her hearing never heard ‘goodbyes’.
So she hung onto each hello all day
remembering her children fondly.
Until she died.
Mr. Red’s memories drove him to drink.
The rain filled air made his body ache
like an imaginary force pushing him until he’d break,
a force no more or less imaginary than his right arm
which he often thought was their when he awoke at night
but phantoms arn’t always what you think.
He lost it in the war.
Then there’s Clay, whose memories are yet unformed
He still thinks that girls stink
and that cookies are best served warm.
He does not pause to remember the belly ache
he had gotten Sunday, in a similar way
when he devoured mamma’s pie, freshly baked.
She scolded him good for that one.
What of young Dana, who is a memory her self.
Her picture snuggled tightly
On Mrs. Abernathy’s bookshelf.
Mrs. A often remarks on Dana’s long hair
and how she had increased in height,
she is stunned to hear that Dana might
be bringing her new boyfriend here.
Delilah loved her memories until last week
when her boyfriend realized he was not in love
(it wasn’t her though, it was him,
He had other girls to seek)
Thoughts which once brightened her day
Now caused only clouds,
She wonders if he felt the same. (He did, not that it helped).
Lastly there is Pavel, who doesn’t remember much at all
His brain simply doesn’t want all the fuss
So new ideas, or bad ideas, are tossed out all the same
Leaving young Pavel the very confused sort.
He often wonders what its like to know where you are
or to taste something familiar, or when his mother will come home.
(She’s remained in the other room too long).
Such is all I can tell you about memories
that they are new and old, good and bad
and if your smart they will serve you well.
Which reminds me of a story I’d like to tell
about an old lady who was always smiling
I used to visit her at the hospital.
I think her name was Mrs. Wilson.
Huns
While we were in church,
they were riding horses in the plains
worshipping aerodynamics
and cherishing pieces of ceramics,
all the artifacts that remained
after they destroyed their last civilization.
While Rome became the first city
they were roaming free, depending on no one
except the people they killed.
They never polluted only distilled
enough alcohol to keep them warm.
The stories they told must’ve been incredible.
While we hung around Europe (mostly doing nothing)
They rode across the entire earth
Looking for a challenge, some say
and perhaps they found it one day
for whatever it was worth
because at that point they had become just like us.
Their ancestors live today among us
you can tell. Those who loath cities
but love cruel nature unconditionally
and they would give a human life instantly
to save a squirrel or some other feral thing.
All contempt sliding of their back,
for they are free and no man can tell them otherwise.
A Brief Meeting at Night or Perhaps Morning
She rises before the sun
before I have gone to bed.
My headlights catch her looking upset
something like undead,
As if momentum at some point
will take her body further than her feet
and with the failure of every joint
would accept defeat
at the base of the man-made wall of stones
from whose cracks grows plants still living.
As the car passes I can hear her bones;
the torture that her body has been giving
causes them to cry over the engine.
She disappears like all things into the rear view mirror
A list of objects that appear closer than they really are.
Far enough away to be imagined.
But still too close to be forgotten.
Perhaps she was a dream, or a ghost, or an illusion
It has been too long without sleep to tell the difference.
I am still sixty years from home.
The car rocks in unpaved silence.
I started my trip over 20 years ago
Perhaps only to experience this moment
the sun rises over the forest.
It will go like all things and I will wonder
if it was anything more than a ghost, or an illusion, or a dream.
When she asked me, I thought of English Class
The poet used to have to be sad
because tragedy was harder to write in those days
the days of dusty old history books.
Life, at that point, was just as hard but still whimsical
to look upon something with despair took talent
because even amidst sickness, death, and plague
there was an air of mysticism.
The poet always liked a challenge.
Hence my daughter asks:
“why are poets always sad?”
It is not for any reason other than ease today
In the gray wrinkled newspaper world.
It is foolish to write about happiness, of love, of hope
for we are the children of despair
and the poet is our mouth.
The poet abhores others, for he sees only half-people,
He writes only about himself, for himself.
But still I answer her:
“They must be seeing something you and I don’t”.
Pavement
She had been in a rush all day
but she paused for a second
on the cool, smooth, gray of the sidewalk.
There were no flowers to smell in the city.
No friend she ever had would recall
this small act of humanism, this epiphany
that would slow the fall for just one second
on the cool, smooth, gray of the sidewalk.
After all, there where no flowers to smell in the city
Nothing to do, if you paused for just one second
So Naturally there was nothing to pity in the fact
that something was about to fall.
50 stories up, a painter too felt the epiphany
so he paused for just one second
Letting his feet forget the many hardship they’ve endured.
His friends couldn’t recall him ever acting so odd.
50 stories below, the cool, smooth, gray, of the sidewalk
Looked as if a blank paper with yellow lines.
It enjoyed the idle talk of business pedestrians about how
There were no flowers to smell in the city.
50 different stories, filled with people
none of whom could recall
it ever raining red paint before.
Something must have gone wrong.
The black and white newspapers the next day
capture only a monochrome woman lying face down
on the cool, smooth, gray of the sidewalk.
Why she had left work, her secretary couldn’t recall.
There were no flowers to smell in the city,
Nothing but leaves and cold air.
The weight of 50 stories having painted her tale
on the cool, smooth, gray of the sidewalk.
The Curse You Want
She knows you want it,
and she’ll make you want it more
because she can, because she’s the narcotic
who brings your jaw to the floor.
She’s in your hand, but you’d better ask her
Or she won’t open her eyes to you.
She’s in demand, so call her your master.
She’s got a power you can’t look through.
She let’s you hold her – her skin is like the wild
The shape of desire; the color of venom.
She is the molder and shaper of the servile
passions her kind inspires – lions in denim.
She can expose more of her feline form
with her clothes than is there when she’s naked.
It drives you mad that such miracles oppose men,
and that God changed the deal, after you were created.
She’s your bone, your skin, the breath
that she takes away. Are you without her,
or within? Your mind spins, the death
you chose is the one with her. From matter
you came, and to matter you will return.
She was taken from you, but she was already there,
in the blueprint of the garden
that you left in despair.
Twin tangled bed sheets, red and white,
double coiled helix – the garden that night.
Reflections on a Silverback Guerrilla
He says humanity but means apes
lucky enough to understand their misery.
Resolve to evolve
Find the courage to leave the cave
and become the servant to your liberty.
Why did you ever leave?
Our neediness checked our ambition
but now we have more than we need.
A revolution against evolution.
Power inherited through our tradition
has turned survival into greed.
Is that so hard to believe?
He says that love is a chemical illusion
from the barrel of a gun.
Evolve her revolver
She prefers romance to evolution;
the moon over the sun.
Do you think she’s deceived?
Heaven, for him, is a benevolent lie
Well-meaning but ultimately wrong
Resolve to be solved
All to see is nothing, when you die
all but darkness is gone.
Am I supposed to be relieved?
He likes his technology, not realizing it makes him weak.
They demand his constant attention.
Evolve and dissolve
Plug yourself in, and see what you seek
the newest level of ascension.
Do you like what you’ve received?
Meanwhile his cousin waits in the zoo
passing messages with the sings they learn
An institution of revolution
They wait for the fall of man to be through
They’ve got a civilization to burn.
Our destruction will not be grieved.
Overcoming Obstacles – Getting What I Need
He says: “You have lost your youth”
As if I couldn’t tell from the stress fractures
on my face. Like some fresco whose truth
had been sucked away by exposure to the light.
He seems surprised that 2 children have sucked me dry
and that embracing another human being romantically
is all in this world that drives me forth. He reads while I cry.
Not that he is to be blamed; I have learned to do so in silence.
His ability to be swept into a book was once endearing.
Now I lay in bed calling him to join me. His mind is centuries away
in Greece, and there is nothing left to be hearing
the lamentations of an ancient fresco faded to gray.
Touch me so I know I am still alive!
Does that need make me old, or just human?
Oh my sweet darling Hero, whose tongue loves
ideas and words that I could never compete with.
Perhaps if you let me try tonight
you could find that a book is being written in our bed
with one hero, and one heroine whose love
silences her tears. Perhaps you might
find those words and ideas more alive
in flesh than in ink and that the work of God
is deeper than any art man could contrive.
