If every good-bye is practice
For the final farewell
Savor every moment and others, too
Hang a decorative calendar
From your front teeth
You can’t field your position
With hands full of homework
To anonymously report
Unsafe conditions at this site
Look behind the bed
For the missing numbers
Of the bingo game
Striped bands of clouds
In the roseate light
Of the setting sun
A pale crescent moon above
This was mine
Because I could not abide the crowd
In the yoga class at the Barnes and Noble
I went to airport jail, a medium security purgatory
Where families wandered
Aimlessly in their night clothes
My mother was checking people in. I could tell she was annoyed to see me. She wore striped flannel pajamas and plaid slippers, cozy and comfortable, the way I like to imagine my mother even if she is clerking behind a counter in some species of hell on my account.
By accidentally entering the women’s toilet and going back through the wrong door I stumbled out to a trash-strewn pier where the kids hung out. I gazed across the water and wondered if I’d get poisoned if I swam to Brooklyn.
My teenage daughter asked me to help her get an old table lamp from an abandoned house. I was lost by the time I came to a muddy pasture beside a busy highway. Truck traffic forced me into the path of an enormous bull that pushed me into a small shed where I expected to be gored and stomped upon.
teenage daughter table lamp
abandoned house muddy pasture
lost
busy highway truck traffic
small shed enormous bull
gored and stomped
me
In the morning kitchen the power is off
Coffee maker, toaster, fridge, all dead
The floor is wet and warped from melted ice
Yet a vacuum cleaner whirs in the living room
Candy-coated springtime
Came early with an audible pop
Of star magnolia blossoms and summer heat
Dazzling us uncertain citizens
Beneath still leafless trees
A nervous pleasure
But pleasure nonetheless
Skipped the microwave Carousel
Put the fins on for the swim across the bay
Drove down the hill and straight into the water
If we are not our bodies
I hope not
Nor our thoughts
Thought for the day
Then what
Performers glimpsed in passing
Open windows
We thought we had packed all our stuff
For the ever impending journey
But the room was still full of furniture
Pictures on the walls
Shelves lined with souvenirs
We needed more boxes
A hawk hunted for its dinner
Above our rooftop restaurant
A diner snatched it from the air
And pinned its wings flat on his table
The waitress said let’s enjoy the half-light
I’ll bring you ice cream sodas
The very best drug said the man
To tear down a house
Is not an acceptable game
I pinned the young destroyer to the floor
And tried to make compassion plain
But you can’t tell kids anything
Fire-eyed they fanned out over the gym
Crawled in contortions, tossed their cards
In perfect arcs across the court
Rooftop ranges of silver chimney pots
Like ornamental headstones on the march
Reminded me that
Cemeteries offer the seduction of order
The dead are considerably tidier than us
It’s part of their charm
Living can be so damned messy
Content to live
With no afterlife
Why
Did I wake, heart-pounding
When I dreamed I was forever
Forgotten
Sidewalk shadows painted long letters
On the blank page of morning,
Walking people like pets
Behind ideas in silhouette.
Wandering at the ashram I stumbled
Into the Academy of the Sacred Heart
Where Mexican boys polished windows
Too narrow for me to squeeze through
To get back to meditation school.
Tortilla marzipan, perhaps.
That was some wedding party.
The stacks of yoga mats flat like gutted fish.
Kids jumped off the bandstand and slid
Down microphone cords to the street.
Order was what I craved.
Disheartened by cold chaos
I would not have been surprised
To find Lucifer’s hairy legs sticking up
From the blackening snow
Banked at the bus stop.
Underneath the swing set at the farm,
Waiting for the kids it began to rain.
The Monopoly board got covered with slugs.
My sister said it was ruined
But I brushed off the slimy things
And took it inside.
We never played that day.
From my tree I could see
A distant tower and I dreamed
Of the cozy observatory at the top.
It turned out to be the factory
Where my family had always toiled.
A tiny boy like a baby chick in a suit
Ran away from his unperturbed parents
And disappeared into a hole in the wall.
His dad said he’d come out when he’s hungry.
Like vacationing with a baby,
The routine is the same
But it’s nice to have a change of scene.
Lost on the outskirts of Paris
In my flowered underwear,
Late for my acting class,
Women in the metro dissed my hair
While crocodiles waited listlessly
For me to cross the river.
I carried a walking stick.
I talked through my hat.
Did I really want white duck pants?
I rose out of the desert commune
In a hand-stitched hot air balloon.
I played a shoe box slot machine
That paid out fortunes but no jackpots.
The wedding guests walked the frozen pond
As it grew dark beneath the pines.
(for Blarneypalooza at the Old Stone House, March 18, 2010)
When I was a boy taught to pray,
St. Patrick posed with shamrock and staff
In the pantheon of avatars to whom I appealed
Beside God the Father, Jesus, The Blessed Mother
And the martyred young President Kennedy.
The saint was gray and sad-faced like Grampa,
Who often presented me to my stained glass patron
After mass at Holy Trinity. My birthday was his feast day.
I was part of him and he of me.
Of late I saw Saint Paddy on a Hudson River pier.
He was smoking a cigar, sipping a beer,
Not Harp but Bud in a brown paper bag,
The old bodhisattva seemed rather distracted.
Top o’ the morning, holiness, I said, why the long face?
Said he, it’s my allergy to Saint Party’s Day,
The green bagels, green beer, green skyscraper lights,
Those damn leprechauns from the Lucky Charms box:
Marshmallow hearts, moons and clovers and the Baby Jesus fer Christ,
The floppy green and white toppers like the Cat in the Hat,
The pimply teenagers too drunk to stand up,
The Hallowed Hibernians deathly afraid
Homosexuals might spoil their policeman’s parade.
The pipes, the pipes are callin’, Danny Boy,
I’ve had my fill of that caterwauling once and for all.
I like it out here by the water with the tugs and the gulls.
Once I saw a cormorant catch a tremendous fish.
I thought the black neck twisting out of the water,
The flapping brown fins held tight in the beak,
Were a particularly lively piece of New York harbor trash
Until I saw the bird’s gleaming eye
Register grim resolution
To shift its prey in the lock of its jaws
To hold it just right, rear back, open wide
And gulp the fish down in three big bites.
Still it’s just as nice when nothing happens.
Collect your flashlights to set up camp in the dark.
Put your gear on a cart at the pier to embark
For a planet of ice run by bureaucrats where
The president smiles and pulls out his hair.
The radiator whispered I should leave but I declined.
Furniture rearranged itself; sofa arms linked and let out the cat.
Nothing to read but baseball news with the front page excised
And an old number of Jailer magazine, the prison trade rag.
While searching for my cell in a Subaru’s backseat
I fell asleep. When I awoke the street was dark and someone
Was opening the door. Be not afraid said the stranger
Or might have if I hadn’t bolted from there like a bat.
Dull office afternoons of unpleasant expectations,
A cloud of dirty confetti pushed out to sea
Leaving me a tiny dot on a timeline stretching infinitely
Back to a smudged past and forward to a darkening future.
Cross the canal at low tide, climb easily on the drawbridge
Counterweights, lose a sandal in the muddy bank.
Make a choice at a crossroads beneath the trees:
A white knit coat with a French dictionary in the pocket,
A crunchy fish like a crab that is eaten while it’s still alive,
A lawnmower that one rides behind a Japanese boy
From Armco Steel to Monroe High.
En route examine a sunflower mutated from exposure
To pollutants until it resembles a squashed basketball.
Stand on the roof and strain to see fireworks shrouded in smog.
Like the panic of finding a kid in the trunk of a borrowed car,
Or a waterbug I couldn’t squash with a wet newspaper
The future used to offer so much fun
Our closets would be bigger than our bedrooms.
How happy to be riding in an open car, sunny Brooklyn
Floating past my elbow like Oz, down the rabbit hole
And off to school through a secret library passage
To a natural nether world where I traced arabesques
In the air unafraid of the ever-changing technology.
I kept my balance and turned on the lights.
A seagull, a pigeon and I, another common bird,
Shared the sheltered river sun on a frigid afternoon.
After the seminar with beastly Bill, the sage-like old satyr,
My thesis, wrapped in plastic like a bag lunch and
Tucked into a warm green leather satchel,
Was promptly stolen by embittered farm boys
When the cops stopped us out on route four. My thesis.
Ice on the river, carried off by the current
I inflated the inevitable rubber raft
For an anxious ride down subterranean streams.
Like serving a tennis ball with a kitchen broom,
I used what was given to me.
Ice on the river, melting messages
As Hermes said to Aeneas sidetracked at Dido’s,
Grampa wants to know what the hell you think you’re up to.
On the steep beach cliff I could see down into a vortex in the surf, at bottom was an industrial yellow cylinder, black numbers stenciled on the side. I heaved a big stone that struck the waves with an ominous low gulp.
Ice on the river, pallid spirits
In the green room before my interview on mental disorders,
My cowboy shirt on backwards, my guitar unstrung,
Kindly musicians retuned my mettle. Imagine.
Ice on the river, broken items of time
Thread the wire through the mouths of the couches.
Give away free parking vouchers
To lucky motorists on Joralemon Street.
Ice on the river, crack the cold off of me
The information was up to the minute.
The information was unreliable.
The information made us ravenous,
For more information.
The information had no effect
On sunlight scattered like shards
Of happiness across the rippled river.
December dawn cloud
My puffy rose friend
I’m glad I was up to see you.
A man made of grass blew by
The kitchen window while I
Angrily ate cold fish from a dish
In the sink and anticipated
The pies I had to bake.
Wondering about the import of what I had experienced—what to do?—I waited on the pier for my party clothes. I so wanted those images and feelings to signify something about my days at the farm/school/clinic.
We couldn’t get to Uncle Johnny’s because a boulder was in the way, so detoured through a farmyard where the dogs were as cute as any I’d seen—big woolly heads like cartoon sheep. When I couldn’t drive the car I pushed it in front of me like a baby stroller. Easy.
Tangents turn vinegar,
Said the smiling singer.
Try to tie a string across a pond.
Crouched over in the camping tent, teenage Pete was awkwardly pulling on his swimsuit when the backyard was invaded by a hostile band of bearded medieval warriors. Thinking quickly, he defused the situation by launching into a spirited rendition of the Beatles’ “Fixing A Hole.” The brutes were dumbstruck and soon joined in the song.
Swim a black paint pool.
Emerge white as sky.
Monitor the reservoir of ink.
I ate the strychnine apple while waiting for the next attack. Set up all my dolls on a corner of my desk. Studied the spines of the books on the shelf and decided it was time.
Embarrassed egg on his face,
Arms full of sweaters and a hanging plant,
He pulled pieces of a ring from his skin.
After our host, an aging glamrocker, had snaked an electrical cord around the hall, he led an edit meeting. Cousin Siri pitched a return to the tainted meat in the tropical war zone—green flesh in the frying pan.
Fungi grew from the small of his back,
Morel mushrooms (Morchella) and
Alder Bracket (Inonotus radiatus).
I twirled my special curve with the nasty inside-out break. I thought it was a kingfisher at its work, but as our boat drew closer the bird became a bald eagle rushing like a dolphin just beneath the surface.
Dark stillness of the river
Before rain. Drove a roadster up
The narrow winding stairs.
Aunt Kaye asked for a blanket and a broom and surprised us with her clowning camel impersonation. She fashioned a portrait of Goethe from a fried egg and warned that bugs would bite if we went barefoot on the old boat.
Everybody understood the urge to draw
A satisfying conclusion, yet
Who said you had to say good-by?
When the civil war rail car rolled
Out to sea as planned, could be I blamed
For fearing things got out of hand?
The tracks were laid upon sand.
Bedroom lamps would not light up.
We wrapped small toys in colored thread.
The lay of the land was thin enough
To see babies in their beds.
What ensued when a boy cooked up
Vegetables in a Tupperware bowl?
A mess in the ancestral kitchen,
Volcanoed produce on the stove.
We understood you had to find an angle and frame your performance properly. Even then a high dive often ended with your ass on a splintered plank.
And me in a seersucker suit,
Meeting my maker from school.
Who was the sucker and who was the seer
As a cataclysm rolled through the room?
Lightning flashed across the screens,
Flames reflected in window panes.
Pin-striped spokespersons were dispatched
You could smack them with a hurricane.
But my gimlet-eyed judgment
Poked unreliable holes
From which to see in the moment
What really mattered most
To the well-dressed men who met the train
Brandishing Mason Pearson hairbrushes.
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