A Poem For Friday

1 hour and 17 minutes
Life is passing by.

Ambulances scream to corners
and howl their way
to waiting open mouthed
emergency entrances
where nurses wait with sign in
sheets. The place is a freakish
resemblance of a hotel with
helpful yelling old folk volunteers
who always know best. Huffy Henry
hid the day and off went pop like a
seething sports father whose only
son is gay.

xi psi

You are a fraternity looking for a sorority.
I am a dead poet looking for a live reader.
You are all sports and no action, and I
am all books and no fiction. You are a
mechanic, fixing parts with nimble fingers,
but I’m a performer with quiet audiences.
Despite such vast differences, in the now
in-between places where we meet, far
down the road from Greek Row.

As We Turn

In the close world
I no longer need glasses.
I see everything clearly:
hair of pillar strength
and planetary universes
gleaming from glowing
orbs within orbs . . . .
Up here where the air is
thin I get high with
anticipation breathing you
in and out. In this world
there are no others,
but they will come.

God of Words

The hours roll up the sleeves
of beauty, and your Words
are cutting and pertinent. I
watch the ticking, taking the slivers
with them, and I’m forced to
watch your entourage get bigger after
every session.  Something that
I yearn to do in a quickening of
steps and a running after you, but
I have nothing to offer you god of
Words.  God of all I don’t want to be.

Untitled, 2008

Because I never lived through it
Never heard the sirens
Nor saw the spiders under the
stairs, I can see how they were
innocent like us, and hated the
father and knew his lies.

Because I never ran for shelter
during school or dinner or
midnight rendezvouses, I can
feel their horror matched to ours,
and know some had hearts
enlarged to hide just a handful
of Jews.

Because I never starved on
rations for years after
Never struggled to buy eggs
or flour, I can understand they
were rationed too, and children
played despite the mires.

A Dreamt Song

Shells are what we are with shattered insides.  We both
lost something, and I can never get better like Lowell on
benders or Burroughs on poppies.  A recurrence like life.

The Ruins

– For Hugh Cook of Farringdon,
the last Abbot of Reading.

The watery part of air swallowed
us in gigantic cold bursts that
we sat body to body in the smooth
oval of the ancient window.  Parts
of the abbey were buried under
mounds of soft grasses and rich sopping
sod, but our window sat proud
of its barrow so we could huddle
in the dead of winter night,
and watch the silent rain.

Bigger Than You and Me

The roots of the trees will continue to
break the concrete, and cause bumps
that cause giggles in the back seat of cars.

A Murderer Among Us

The sound they make are a warning
to their indifferent strength.  When
they start to clack like thunder
clouds I begin to run like the piper,
except here there are only pebbles,
not the type that has been beaten
for centuries, pulped into a refined
culture.

The Friend That Never Was or I Love You Irene

She distances herself from me
because I’m leaving and
because she does that to
everyone, I’m not that
special.  She likes to party
quietly as do I, but she owns
serious to a point far beyond
mine.  Her presence proves
my inability to compete, but
I’d rather listen and learn
from her.  She would find the
notion of poetry in her honor
quite sickening, so with Evil
Emily I write my goodbyes.
I wonder what she will be like
when she’s my age.