Life and Fucking Love

The Little Things

Loving
Respecting
Giving and taking
Compromising
Traveling
Exploring – in all kinds of ways
Enjoying
Stillness
Hours upon hours of silence
Plays/museums/arts in the fucking park
Dinner out and in
From a song to complete albums
Scrabble
NPR
Sunday headlines in bed
Flowers
Poetry and poetry and poetry

Denouement

Whimsy n’ Cal

Whimsy in the garden
one day heard from Cal,
his message blew in on
the west wind from the east.
He said he’d met a gal
named Practi and they
were actually very happy.

Whimsy never cried.
She played and she
stayed in the garden
until Moonrise, whereupon
she danced with herself
and her familiar.

Beautiful Mankind

Poem

The everyday always seemed so banal
to me, but Frank O! O’Hara you saved
me and I ponder the whimsy and hear
the laughter. The every day everyday
is no longer matter, but listening to all
including you, reminds me to believe
in the sparkle and the brightness, the
shiny and the twinkly of every day.

Forgotten Moments

I lay in the darkness
trying to find
them, but sight was
sensitive and lightness
seemed far away.

Quickly to lust
but in century’s time
it’s a snail’s pace, and
the forgotten moments
are still lost.

So when the lightness
returns and melts the
parts that I think
are forever iced over,
the moments will find me.

Yeah, I Said It

The worst things that I do:

I don’t articulate my
true feelings in a
sugar coated way.

I find it incredibly
hard to forgive
myself, and in
particular, certain
members of family.

I see the systems of
the world, and know
their hidden agendas
and evil emperor
realities. And remind
people, when I have
the opportunity, that
Brainwashing is real.

And I am
the bigot who really
despises tea party right
winged Zealots along
with the neo-nazis and
the KKK. And all that
they stand for. I’m the
bigot because I cannot Love
them, nor send Love
to them.

These are the
worst of the worst things
that I do.

Remembered

Found Poems

You real
like moonlight
twice light.
Full funny moonfaced
she say, six sank
secret, nine times.

He blinked, knowing possible
yawning editions of his
broken, uncorked changes
driving Route Seventeen,
plainly grumbled, why her.

Memoria

Where I’m From

I am from the silver birches
and the white willows,
the beet beeches in towering
majesty – their leaves raked in
mounds for years.

I’m from meat and potato
pasties and lamb chops.
From Imelda and Stanley.
I’m from the Children Should
Be Seen and Not Heard,
from quiet restraint and
the belief in happiness.
I’m from all day Sunday walks
and the summer Dawn Chorus.

I am from old Roman roads
and red pillar boxes.
I am from the grim
and the grime of a dead empire
(the losses piled high,
slowly forgotten.)

I’m from men who fought
in trenches and men who
built ships of war.
From those that survived
on rations and triumphed
the barrage of The Blitz.

I am from the millions of
war dead and from fragments
of civilization not left behind
in the foreign fields.

Famille

In Memoriam, L23

To most that haven’t lived there it is a cesspit, a broken, rough, rundown sort of a place. I would stare at the ruined buildings from an old war and think, are they the reason my parents left? There are graves in the rough, rundown city that mean something to us, and every now and then we would drive to the graves in the broken city. Seemed like hours spent in daddy’s car to get to what looked like a forgotten patch off the high street in the district of Crosby. St. Luke’s Church Cemetary, L23. And flowers were brought as my sister and I skipped in matching mary-janes, holding hands. We would glide to the back wall and find them, lying there, waiting for someone to remember. Minutes were spent cleaning and maintaining, and I would read and read and read. I would follow the names, most had two, then tried to find the oldest date, or the youngest death. But mostly I re-read their names and their years on the one that was ours. They left behind a son and five daughters, grandchildren, and siblings. Only two of the daughters remain in the city, the rest left, like us. In the end we moved too far away to stop by those graves that mean something to us, and I would like to think the living that remain still visit, as we who are not can no longer bring flowers.

Extra extra

Temporal

Your bed sheet carvings
engraved on my arms,
and bite sized bruises
placed intricately upon
my flesh. Dissipation
prevails, and I forgot
the rest.

Whimsy n’ Cal

Whimsy set Cal free one night and he never came back. He took his instrument and played to the darkness, no doubt got sidetracked and hitched a semi down a three thousand mile stretch. Now Whimsy sat, waiting for Cal to return.

A Recurrence Like Life

From The Garden

In the heat of the day one feels
icky, the heat is unbearable and
yes, sticky. The plants die out
quick, when the temperature hits

but by now the baking is ready.
All browns and reds rounded
softly, and you pulled out all slimy in
pinks and perhaps maybe some yellows.

Chilled on ice, whites elegantly
gleaming, I can see your pirl
cut loose in your tresses, and the caul
around her nose refinedly mellow.

But come again and come again,
this one’s always on schedule to
comfort. Life renews and prepares
in all kitchens, and never quite can forget.

Night and Day

It’s never as it seems,
and the light in gleaming
wonder knocks out the
fuzz from all that buzz.

The Mistaken

I honestly thought you were someone else,
but in the hot sticky afternoon light I
see through the many veils to the frail
skin beneath, and there in the shadows you
entice me beyond the white picket fence.
I pass bunnies and kittens, soft materials and
grasses. The light has altered and billowing
clouds obscure the source, so all I see is hints
of skin and blueberries too. I’m already inside
when like a switch you turn me off.

In Conversation With My Cat

In conversation with my cat I asked about
Eliot and if she’d met him, but she bit me
and told me she was just a cat who had
drank from the waters of Lethe. To which
I replied, “Yes, I gulped them too, but I
don’t think I drank that much.”

Known Self

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’re 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.