For You and Me

unspeakable

2012-01-29T12:32:00.000-05:00

i had been reading
that book about jfk why he died
when the new preacher
paid a visit completely unannounced
and there was nothing
to do but let him in although
i do my best to keep
everybody away from here
a house which like
the title of the book is
unspeakable and
i stopped him at the kitchen
i mean i don't even
visit the living room myself
with its clawed-up furniture and powder-white
turds and the lingering
smell of cat piss and the preacher
an erudite man obviously
(what lutheran minister is not?)
asked me if i liked the book
and i said yes but like most of
the jfk efforts what else can
it reveal still it was far better
than that chris matthews
pastiche he calls a labor of love
and hawks at every opportunity
while unspeakable
has a distinct point of view
evolving from its title
i said which
is drawn from thomas merton's book
raids on the unspeakable
a concept he defines as a disorder of such
magnitude it can be broken open
only by a miracle
but when i mentioned merton's name the preacher
crossed his arms in front of him
and pursed his lips and brought forth
a reaction i could only
describe as unspeakable loathing merton he said
that papist monk!

he's maybe even older than i

2012-01-29T11:09:00.004-05:00

he's maybe even older than i
in dog years
but his health is
remarkably good
and he sleeps soundly at
night after sleeping
soundly all day
and he never complains
if my foot should graze him in the bed
except to give out a soft growl
of warning
so unlike the way it used to be
with us when
you would wake up screaming
bloody murder
if i tried to fuck you in my dreams

in front of me, at my feet

2012-01-28T20:21:00.000-05:00

in front of me, at my feet
in a narrow trench
stretching horizon to
horizon
poets are holding back
their screams
drowning in dry lye baths
of irony
whilst i yelping like a hyena
can only come up
with the worst borscht circuit jokes
they've ever heard

when all you've got to talk about is death

2012-01-28T18:43:00.002-05:00

when all you've got to talk about is death
you've finally got to
the place
where you've got
your whole life waiting out there
in front of you

what happens

2012-01-27T17:54:00.000-05:00

what happens
when the pillow
becomes
the wife the concubine
the best friend
no pledge unanswered
no loss but born
of love
no life
to start over what
then

if i speak openly

2012-01-27T15:27:00.010-05:00

if i speak openly
of my youthful
racism
am i not still a racist
even if just a teensy bit
would it help
if i were a catholic
and could leave
confession
clean or lean
on your love
and tell you i’m no longer
that person that
you must forgive me
i was only 24 (who were you
at 24?)
or go the last mile
alone nobody left to
say it to but
jesus but christ he is
so easy just opens
the door to anybody
for anything and i don’t buy that
because just because
if somebody claims to be only half
a murderer
and he can nod off into the here
after
with a smile on his face
knowing jesus wept
but jesus loved him bless jesus thank
you jesus and that
is all that counts
no no you know that’s not right
cause jesus can pray
all he wants to and he can maybe
save my soul like he says
but there’s nobody i know of not
even him can fix
this brokenhearted heart or take back
all the times i said
and keep on saying even now even if
in jest fuck you nigger
because the past
does not die just because we say so
not even because we believe it
and i’ve come to see
finally that every rotten moment
in my life
goes on breathing
to the last breath
of denial and whatever was
will always be because
i am not just the sum of what i am and wish
for but every molecule
of every particle
i can no more help but smother and bring out new
than the very
color of the eyes sometimes
green then blue

just so you know

2012-01-27T13:50:00.005-05:00

just so you know
when you go
i'm planning first thing
to nail all
the goddamn furniture to the floor
so everything will
always
be where it was the day before

and when you go
when those outlaw neighbors you adopted come
around to use the phone
i will show them the bits and pieces left
over when i threw the thing
on the cement
and stomped it to smithereens

and i will get rid
of all the night lights so when
i go to bed at night
it doesn't look like a landing strip lit up
for drug dealers dropping off
a shipment in somebody's field
where you used to could see just the yellow moon
looking down
through the trees

and those clothes
jesus all those clothes in three sizes
that you go up and down in
always practicing for the one you're going to
settle for and not be caught off
guard and have to
go out and buy everything all new
those clothes not just
yours but your sisters' both your sisters'
clothes and your mother's clothes
and her sister's too
taking up every closet in the house those clothes
will not go to the salvation army
for people to steal out of the collection bin before they even
get sorted no no those clothes
are going to get
burned up in a fire that started strangely
one day nobody knows how
just all of a sudden there it was
the recycle container behind the food lion
going up in flames

so i guess you can guess
there won't be any more recycling
around here either no more
peeling labels off of cans or saving
newspapers and bottles that the city by rights
ought to be paying us for
dammit no
everything goes in the trash who cares anyway fuck the world
look at it a little
country like iraq on top of all that oil
but their pumps don't work and they can't even get
enough gas
for their own cars much less ours
and the ones that aren't trying to kill each other
are busy planning on
killing a bunch more of us and the glaciers are melting off
into the sea but what do you care you
don't even watch the stuff anymore
and just yesterday when the amc was running butch
cassidy and the sundance kid
you won't remember this but you said
which one is that one talking now and when i said that's redford you
said redford who
the one on the horse or that other one

and when i crawl
out of bed every morning
i will curse all i want
and talk to god out loud with every mea culpa
that comes to mind and nobody there
to say pain you think you got pain
best way
to get rid of pain is to get up out of that chair
and make yourself useful

ah christ and tomorrow
starts
february all over again acting like
it was never february before and what about
that trip to the doctor's office
last week
and you said you could drive yourself and i said you will not
drive yourself and when we got there
and you said
you were going in alone and i didn't let you
because i wanted to
get in my two cents worth
but christ the last thing i expected to hear was you telling him to ask me
how come i never want you anymore

some things the body remembers when
the mind forgets

but you won't see me try to duck out
on the task i dread the most
getting rid
of all the animals you hoarded and fed
and made the rest of us
have to watch over and clean up
after and give our love to
same as you
young ones and old ones the maimed
the crippled the poor little
baby orphans with their sweet precious
faces just looking up at you
so adorable and the ones that can't
help leaving a piss trail on the carpet before you can even
get them outside
everything and everybody adjusting to your schedule
and theirs it's not that i hate you
and a clock on every wall just
to remind us damn them all and damn you
damn you too
why can't it be you
instead of me standing by
helpless
while the first person i ever fell in love with turns out to be
the only one i've got left i can even talk to
and she just up
and fucking leaves it to me
like usual
to do everything alone
robbing peter to pay paul to pay for
the headstone

it's not that i hate you

2012-01-27T13:43:00.000-05:00

it's not that i hate you
or love you
it's like everything else in this life
mostly, some
in-between thing or combination of the two
like this poem itself where
all the fractured elements i want to let out
are the very ones
it will seek to deny,
so that no matter how i try to nail the moment down
the reader is almost bound
to conjure up another life entirely
one that has almost nothing to do with either
me or you

i wish

2012-01-26T22:01:00.002-05:00

i wish i had a place
like
church
to go to a church
like you

it's down to thirty-four

2012-01-26T09:35:00.003-05:00

it's down to thirty-four
when i take the dogs out
this morning and i pull on a corduroy shirt
to cut the chill
and the day is already rising before us
bright and filled with
the wonders of approaching fall birds
chittering and the dogs
full of energy and leaping about
and of course
i throw up a little prayer don't we all do that
now and then saying dear god
i don't need a thing just wanted to let
you know i'm grateful
and suddenly i remember where i got the shirt it's
not my shirt at all but something
i brought home one winter's night from burger king
after a guy left it there
and quit or got fired or whatever and i didn't have a jacket
with me and wore it then to take the trash out
to the dumpster wondering
how a shithead like him
had managed ever to pick out something that
felt so good next to me but maybe
that's how it was meant to be
like what if
our prayers themselves are only the words
we leave behind
for somebody else to find

bagatelle

2012-01-25T15:40:00.001-05:00

i spent much of my youth
rejecting my name
not wanting to be a james
or the middle one either
which was even worse
but somebody the others on the playground
would see as one of their own
a jimmy
though even then
i knew i could never be what i thought
they wanted
oh lord whatever it was
something beautiful i guess if not
divine
but there i was
that bucktoothed lineberger boy in knickers ("why
doesn't that child's mama git him
some braces?") who even
the teachers were forever
calling james because they either
had a jimmy already
or else they could sense that here was somebody who
would never get
his multiplication tables right
or remember which ones it was he had to forgive
his debtors or his trespassers

daddy's sister ethelda

2012-01-24T12:40:00.003-05:00

who we always just called
aunt miss
was one of those people who
when i was a kid
already had a refrigerator in her kitchen
and kept cold water inside
in a glass
bottle so when you wanted a drink you never
had to take it from the tap

and she had a television too
where you could see
milton berle that uncle milty
he made us all

get the giggles

and her house had three whole
separate bedrooms
and a screened-in
patio porch with a cement floor where if you were
barefooted

it came right up through your feet to your
chest it seemed like

and whenever aunt miss had a cold or the flu
our uncle george who
was the pharmacist at black's drugstore
uncle george would bring home
green bottles and little brown ones
that would make aunt miss
sit up and wink at people and sing oh
the doo dah
somebody bet on the bay

if you had the option

2012-01-13T14:27:00.000-05:00

if you had the option
of asking for
just one minute more
to live
how much would it be worth well maybe
a lot maybe not
and if all you could do is
ask for a single
memory to cling to which one would it be
when every millisecond you
spend flipping through the past is taking you
closer and closer
to the end but you can't
choose it's all
too much until suddenly a single
image comes into view and holds and oh god it's him
on the day he died
and he's come back now to reach through the haze with a soft gentle smile
saying don't worry you'll see it's not
so bad it's okay
just as the sweep hand
clicks its last
and for the first time ever you don't trust your son at all

i know i know

2012-01-13T14:24:00.002-05:00

you're trying not to stare
at my floppy old
circus shoes
but you can't help it oh my child
i know
and soon as we're in bed
you'll pull
the covers away
and kneel
sitting on your tiny crossed feet
to lick
my cloven toes

i usually post this on 1/11

2011-12-29T13:33:00.003-05:00

but my thoughts seem to be racing backward and forward all at once this year, so just to let him know, here we go, one more time...

Judgment Call

I don't know why you won't show
your face maybe you
don't know how maybe there's some
rule about it
or you might be still sleeping or lost
somewhere in
between but if that's the case
then why do you send these butterflies
to land on Barbara's
arm and make her candle-lights
switch on all
by themselves at four a.m.
and Robert said just yesterday
that you pop
up now and then in his dreams hands
in your pockets
leaning against a wall
and when he asks you what
it's like you shrug and say it's
okay which
is all right with me I don't care how
much you share
with everybody else but unless
you mean to shut me out altogether
then isn't it about
time we decided on something for
ourselves because
the way it is now I close my eyes
and I can't even make
out your features your face is just a blank
like somebody wearing
a fencing mask or else I'll try
to call you up
and you come on the screen
with my daddy's eyes
and nose and if that is some
kind of cosmic
joke I'm sorry I don't get it I mean it's
a waste of time not
to mention energy and shouldn't
you be conserving
your energy that is if you're
still getting adjusted
or lying there in a trance-state
or whatever it
is because I do now and then have
this image of
your body stretched out on
a gurney in some
pearly-walled holding room and on
your blank
face they've left the mouth wide
open in a scream but
I don't put too
much stock in things like that
because if you were
still in agony frozen in the moment for
all these years what is it now
five then you couldn't at one and the same
time be off playing
games with everybody else
like it was some kind of coming-home
party so I'm going
to insist you can't be suffering
all that much goddamit
that you can't
make a little time for me too
unless of course you
want to dwell on the past and bring
up all
that shit all over again
about me leaving home when you
were three or the other time
when you were
fourteen and if that's how it is hey
fuck it life
goes on you hear me because
if you think I'm going
to get down on my knees and beg you
can stay blank
far as I'm concerned I don't
care if you never get your face back
and the other
night when I was mopping
the floor and found this penny that hadn't
been there five
minutes earlier if you think
for a minute I really
believed it was from you well I didn't I
didn't think any such thing
and it isn't I have to have a sign
but why not dammit why
the hell not and if you only knew how
far I was prepared
to go if we could really get
together again you would regret
this if you
aren't already somebody else by
now which
worries me too but I have to trust
in something don't
I and if you're there if you hear
me just reach out somehow
please baby any
coded message any fashion you choose
and I'll change
my ways completely I'll be a new
person become a believer
again go to church every Sunday and really
listen to people
when they speak to me and if
somebody needs me I'll do anything
I can to help them just
like you like
you did honey don't you remember
the day your son
was born and they had to rush him
in the helicopter over
to Charlotte
Memorial for surgery and Christ
how you broke
down in the waiting room and threw
your arms around
me and you were praying out
loud oh God you said just
let him live please God don't let him die take
me take me

yes you frank

2011-12-22T22:39:00.002-05:00

you new york fucks
always autumn
by the time you
get around the next corner
how could you ever see
things as
i do wind howling down
eighth avenue tore up
fucking field jacket no wonder everybody
froze in korea
gotta make it out of here lord god
please
no cash left for cigs or a trailways
nobody who knows me
to borrow from
answer the goddamn phone bitch
if not you
who

ever notice how musicians

2011-12-18T00:19:00.004-05:00

ever notice how musicians
love to share how
they can't get together without giving
ballplayers too same
sort of thing
and kids with their yo
yo's and bubble gum and texting each other
so fast it makes the head spin
but poets
poets can hardly bear
to stand next to
one another
and can't seem ever to do anything
but steal and kiss
and tell and wish every day
of their lives
they could sing and dance
or even set up an easel on the boardwalk
and make charcoal portraits
that make the subjects clap
hands and suck
in their breath and swear it looks just like
if you took it with a photograph
but it won't be will it
same way we vow not to take
the lord's name in vain
and slip up again
the very next day if not the next hour
and forever be wishing
all our lost ones
would drop by in the morning
to surprise us
or we still had the breath and the energy
bottom of the ninth
to catch one more long one
on a clear summer's day
with the only person we ever truly loved
sitting in the bleachers to cheer
us on

what do we do

2011-12-16T14:19:00.003-05:00

what do we do
when things
are more real
than they ought
by rights to be
when some moments
hurt more than
we can explain
like the mortally
wounded meg ryan
saying leave
me your m16
in courage under
fire like warren
oates in two lane
blacktop saying he
was sick and tired
of people getting
in his car and
telling lies or
like in the wild
bunch when pike bishop
said let's go or
when that three-year-
old boy stood by
the open coffin at
his father's funeral
in a bad translation
called the wrath of god
and told the preacher
his daddy was going
to heaven in a boat

father of the man

2011-12-05T11:44:00.002-05:00

my son had a schwanz
as big as mine
when he was ten years old
but as he matured
how was i to know
i would one day grow
even smaller

whenever i reach back

2011-12-02T14:31:00.000-05:00

whenever i reach back
into the past
to beg forgiveness
from one of you
i'm often stupefied
that those i've wronged can recall
how great it still feels
to be so fucking pissed off

if we cannot

2011-11-22T16:35:00.001-05:00

if we cannot assail others with our
memories, what good are we?

death is not

2011-11-11T19:12:00.002-05:00

death is not
a person to me not
an individual like lucifer which
is kind of odd
i guess
for i give names
and faces
to most all of them
god jesus mary
mother of
excepting of course
the "holy" ghost
but ghosts aren't
supposed to be real anyway
are they and death
is not much different
you might agree
but when we're off and gone
i do have to wonder
if any name is waiting there
to tell our names to

here we all are

2011-11-05T17:57:00.003-04:00

here we all are
scribbling in rapturous release
and blood red love
over the loss of our children
which is heartening
in a way for there was a time i thought
i was the only one
now here comes mary jo bang
here comes wanda coleman
and multitudes more
holding hands like compassionate friends
until we each
are given to know
how things are meant to be
that this death
bestows the very breath
in you and me

part of world war ii

2011-10-22T22:07:00.008-04:00

part of world war ii
was the taste
of hershey's chocolate
when i was in the third grade
at berryhill elementary
and would get off
the school bus
at logan's dairy farm
where mr. logan kept
melted hershey chunks
in a big vat
to measure out into
the milk cans for
chocolate milk and most every friday
he would give me a wrapped up
broke off piece of hershey's to take home
that was bigger than
two candy bars
which mama made me save up till
saturday night
when she would pack a picnic basket
and daddy would drive us out
to morris field
to watch the a-20's come in
and crash which happened
a good bit maybe
three or four times a month with
the saturdays being
the best of all
and drew some pretty big crowds
not that the army would
ever let you get near them
except that one time a pilot overshot
the runway and went down
in the middle of wilkinson boulevard
and had traffic so tied up
it took forty minutes till anybody could get moving
so much time that i ate
all my hershey's and got
sick and had to stand outside of the car
in the red lights from
the ambulance and mama said well that is
the last time you ever bring that stuff
home with you
but daddy put on his deep foreman's voice
like he would use at u. s. rubber
and said now eva
where is your heart anybody can see
the boy has got the flu
aint that right jimmy i told her
to bring you a sweater
but that was the last time i ever ate hershey's
and to this day i tend to favor
the kind they make in england
that has these bubbles in it that
you can't taste the chocolate right at first
and then it explodes
when you don't expect it
till all of a sudden it's all inside your cheeks
and it has a real different taste too
but if you don't have
any teeth like me and you're not careful
it will sometimes drool out
the corner of your mouth like the blood used to look
in a black and white movie
when a jap pilot got shot down which
made people feel good and forget some of the awful
things going on
in the rest of the world
like after the war mama and daddy were running
a little convenience store
in kannapolis and living
in two rooms at the back when daddy
fell over and died from a stroke
before i could even get there
and by the time i flew in from atlanta for the funeral
somebody's little kid
was sitting in the candy aisle at the store
with a whole box
of hershey bars between his legs
but mama didn't care
not me either not even if it
gave him the flu

well at last

2011-10-18T10:01:00.000-04:00

at first i thought
it was just me
but i'm beginning
to sense it
in the others too
a gradual acceptance
no more pretense
just watching waiting
the way jennifer is
quick to forgive me
for wanting to skip
one of my days
or when robert says
don't feel guilty
dad mom doesn't know
if you're there
or not like say
somebody stops by
to surprise her
and she goes how sweet
why don't you get
under the covers
with me where
it's warm even if
the visitor is only
her dead sister
patsy ruth
and it's back
to when
they were just kids
and used to play
little women
trading places till
they forget
which one is it
wading out
to greet her death
their jo
or
their beth

we ask them

2011-09-30T13:31:00.002-04:00

we ask them
to forgive us
for dogs and clubs
and shootings
the innumerable rapes
and lynchings and the ones
we drug off
behind our pickups
and we beg them
please
to kneel down great god free at last
just like one of us
in remembrance of our lord
white jesus

what you think

2011-09-30T12:13:00.000-04:00

when you try
to help a walker-clinging
woman
cross the street
and she
jerks her elbow away
what you think
is if she only knew
how much
she resembles the you she never
thought
she would be

khan job

2011-09-23T13:00:00.006-04:00

this overcast fall morning
i thought at first
to get a take-out breakfast
but if i did it that way
what assurance
would i have that my hash browns
would be soft enough
and light enough
i could eat them without any teeth
pretending as i do
that i'm almost like you
like all the other like-you's when
you really get to know us
like that six hundred pound haitian
woman on tv who could
no longer walk and lay in her bed
surrounded by audio recordings
of bird-sounds and poetry
her daughters brought in to soothe her anxiety
but try as she may
could not stick to her supervised diet
and snuck fried food and two
liter fruit drinks
under her mattress saying
you i be more
beautiful than you
and you don't
watch out i taken your little man away
and hide him in my
xanadu

the real you

2011-09-19T12:36:00.002-04:00

in our high school art class
back in 52
you hardly ever spoke
and kept your eyes lowered
especially
when the teacher would hold
up your work
for us to admire
so later on when we were seniors
and started to date
i had no way to anticipate
the fights you
would have with your mother
screaming matches
the neighbors could hear two houses away
and only fell silent when you'd
take my hand and pull me outside
to my daddy's
olds futuramic
and our usual friday night at the drive-in
where time and again
trembling with rage
you'd swear that when you got your
teacher's degree
you were going to leave this linthead town
and never come back and you
wouldn't have to
jack me off anymore and we could do everything really really
for real

all of you

2011-09-19T12:30:00.002-04:00

it wasn't till after you died
that somebody else
told me the meaning of that perfume
you wore
left bank she said
but you can't
find it hardly anywhere anymore

i dont know much

2011-09-18T09:47:00.002-04:00

i dont know much
but i know what i like
not like some who
cant tell
a rc from a coke
or a beretta 92 from
a glock 17
which are not complicated things
at all except to that guy
who says
he is dying to own
that plain white canvas over there because some
bullshitter
like that
woman with all the hair over there
said in a article in the sunday times magazine
the white
could dance a solo
fandango
around whatshisnames green one

when you talk to the animals

2011-09-17T15:06:00.001-04:00

when you talk to the animals
i act like it too they're
still with us and how i care for them
the way you used to and call
them by name and tuck them in every night
cause what good would it do
to tell you the truth
that i had them all put down except
your old pom rex
or that he sleeps in your place now
where i can feel his faint little heart
close to mine
when i beg him please baby
please
don't leave
let me go first one time

the way it felt

2011-09-12T14:20:00.000-04:00

the way it felt
when i thought
i was falling in love
the last time
is so far gone i can't even
recall her name
just the tiny glass gazelle she had
with three legs
that would shimmy on
the glass-topped dressing table
and fall over
every time we fucked

the quickening

2011-09-10T21:21:00.001-04:00

my body is sloughing away
even while it gains
but waste as it will
what's inside
is fading faster still
and listen don't tell anybody i told you
but only just yesterday
i had to go look
in the bible again to make sure when it was
mama died

over there

2011-09-05T12:21:00.006-04:00

what good is it
for her to say
she never wanted anyone but me
in her whole life
when that nobody over there she's talking to
has stolen my name
and i'm just the one who stops by
to close the blinds and turn off the light
and tell his hunny bunny
night night
don't let the bedbugs bite

sitting here with a people

2011-09-04T14:57:00.002-04:00

sitting here with a people
from last year
i am suddenly aware of all the excellence
in the world
how each of us no matter how low
will get our reward
before it's all over
if not the presidential medal of freedom
why then a scholarship
in animal husbandry
or half an unrestricted mil from the macArthur foundation
all the way up to
us blessed few
with perfect attendance
in sunday school

the laying on

2011-08-24T17:55:00.007-04:00

first time i really took notice of her hands
was back when she was trying to put
together a project with
her father and brother both of whom
were somewhat wary
because this wasn't the first time she
had pulled this shit
her brother said always some sneaky ploy
to make herself the old man's
favorite but it won't work bitch
not this time count me out
so he turned off his beeper and stopped
returning her calls
and her father well forget that
first you had to go through the new wife
a former flight attendant
who was suspicious of any move
for fear it would undermine her own shaky position
on the pedestal and what's more this was after
the patriarch had taken up beekeeping and no matter
who was on the phone
he was not to be disturbed if he was out there with his net on
tending his hives
and that's how things stood
a total stand-off
when the daughter decided on a new tack
and tracked me down
on stanley's old rolodex saying stanley says you are the best
writer in the valley
neglecting to say that stanley had also added
he's the cheapest but let's
not tell anybody shall we which she later told me
herself in this really dead-on
impersonation that anyone but maybe stanley
would recognize immediately
so of course i accepted not only because
burger king had just fired me
which meant no unemployment check but really and truly
i mean how often had such an opportunity
come my way i mean never
like i said to stanley stanley i owe you one big time
but he put an arm around my shoulder as he
led me out of the office
saying forget it lad do i look like i need a favor am i not
the person who said you will never work
in this town again only lemme make one little request
mano a mano
in light of the fact
that you are about to be ushered into the confidence
and downright joy of creation not to mention
a weeky per diem
with one of the premier families
ever to migrate to this den of cuthroats and tinsel
what i want you should do
is at one point say your second or third meeting
she will enter barefoot wearing
one of those long flowerdy
peasant skirts like jean simmons in viva zapata!
and sit on the floor facing you and as legend has it
she will cross her legs at the ankles
and spread open her knees drawing that skirt up tight
to give a full view
of her fabled bush which the way i've heard it is a test
of your manhood
to see if you will either look away
or show her some wood
well i never told stanley cause a real man
from the south does not reveal
his intimacies but
all these years later i can testify that yes
she did and i did
and stayed on the payroll for almost eight months
until the project just rolled
over and dried up
from lack of interest but before we parted the ways
there was one great thing
that happened from all of this
and that was on
the morning after my birthday
december 30 nineteen and seventy nine
which i had celebrated all by myself
with beam and beer till
i blacked out
and woke up face down in somebody's driveway in one
of those neighborhoods like in
e.t. where everything looks the same
which i found out later was
forty miles
from my apartment on franklin avenue
and i only had just enough
time to make it to her house
for an emergency meeting stanley said
holiday be damned he said
and don't forget he reminded me
the time on taps when he
demanded i come in on easter sunday and fired me after i refused
and called him
a dirty cocksucking jew
but here i was deja vu
all over again
and when i got to her place -- she was still
living in venice then --
she had left a note on the door to let myself in
so i made it to the kitchen
and fell over one chair
and sat down in another trying to stifle
the birthday shakes
when all of a sudden there she was knowing already
just what to do
kneeling to place a coffee and cognac before me
as if serving her master
and that look on her face oh jesus was i up to this
but it wasn't getting laid she had on her mind
no she said just
close your eyes don't move
and she stood up behind me and put
her hands those shockingly real
long-fingered hands
on my shoulders and for all the words i've written
over the years
i will never be able to fully convey
how her touch lifted me
from the shivering dark and took me back to what
home used to mean
fingers like a man's like i could feel the touch
of her soul within
but the "emergency"
she said was to let me know it was over
no more project
the financing had fallen through her father too frail
to guarantee its completion
but she had wanted this moment alone with me
to convey her gratitude
and jim she said oh god jim you don't know how i hate him
for getting old and never a word of praise
or gratitude even when
i was a child and i'd come up
stretching on tippy toes
to reach his shoulders never a word not even
when i'd whisper
love you i love you daddy
and then she
she just let her arms fall to her side
and i couldn't speak
but i was weeping out loud
and i said oh god thank you
thank you
my body shaking with it
and she said that's it let it out just
let it all out
i know how you feel because he
would cry too when he thought i couldn't see
but all the gratitude
he had to give he placed in the hands of whichever wife she is
and a boxful of fucked up bees

kinnell

2011-08-13T09:51:00.011-04:00

reading the poetry
of galway kinnell
again
at random
on this soggy saturday morn
his work as it
invariably does
brings on my little rain as well
these tears of a old man
not quite as long gone as kinnell
(what is he now eighty something
seven?
five?)
but certain still
i will never
catch up
(turn to his rapture and feel
my despair)
though i sense
he too even one such as he
must still wish he could go back
and repair some things
for who among us
ever reaches the end
where it was we dreamed we could be
like the surgeons who
found a way to amputate a boy's leg and reattach it
backwards
so he can walk again
soon as he can teach himself which way
he's going

When I Got on the Bus to LaGuardia

2011-07-23T16:25:00.001-04:00

When I got on the bus
to LaGuardia
there was a guy in an aisle seat
both hands waving up and down
with a chopping motion
as he pleaded with the woman beside him
saying but that's not me that's
not who I am can't you see
except when he glanced up and our eyes met
we both knew
if the woman did not
who was who
and what was what

threesome

2011-07-10T14:41:00.006-04:00

been so depressed lately
which has to do
with several things
withdrawal
from the oxycodone for one
and then when i went to visit barbara
at the nursing home yesterday
she didn't recognize me at all staring
blankly trying to understand
who was this smiling and holding her hand
and then this place
i've come home to
none of it the same somehow
even the dog doesn't trust me
and back on prednisone for the gout
waking up drenched
in sweat and robert sleeping
all day and terry awake
early coming upstairs babbling to herself
as much as to me
so what do i do but turn to the past
seeking some relief
in what used to be and for some reason apart
from all the others you
came to mind so i went to the white pages first
and found two addresses right away
with a shared phone number
but it was disconnected and then i googled
for a while and found this lovely
formal portrait you had made
back in '92
when you were what 58 your hair already white
wearing a corduroy dress with
the zipper undone just so
not at all a sexy photo to anyone but maybe me
so i took a stab
in the dark and called your ex
remarried now but hope-a-hope he
had stayed in touch
and of course he was out doing a documentary
for pbs but his wife said listen
they did have your number for all the good it would do
cause didn't i hear you have alzheimer's
poor thing
and who will be next she wonders cause wasn't it you
(meaning you)
that kept saying don't cook nothing
in aluminum or drink diet drinks and nobody now
to look after you
but this guy called bob
and what she wants to know is what happened to that woman
you said you were married to which
is against the law in carolina so who was
fooling who
if it's not between a man and a woman
where is the truth in it anyway
and when you get old and crazy what does your queer wife do
but call up somebody named good
ole bob to leave you to
(or gunga din or one named jim i think)
but if ever you should wonder
why i don't call
(if you can still wonder at all)
it's cause i can't bear to be a stranger
one more time
and settle on this poem instead
in the wiggly hope
it will live at least as long as there's a barbara or you or me
if not our dead and gone memories

titties

2011-06-25T21:08:00.016-04:00

when i was a child
i used to watch them
(surreptitiously
i hoped)
as the women
towered above me
in their adult splendor
often braless
cantilevered and swaying the way i imagined life
must be in hawaii
or california
framed in isolate wonder
against
a verdant horizon shimmering with bananas
and grass skirts
such a confusing metaphor i see now
chalk it up to a confused young mind steeped
in national geos
but back then everything
came into view as vivid and conflicted as betty
boop or painted velvet senoritas
from cabo san lucas
yet with a fascination that lingered as i matured
and found me asking women
if they could bring the breasts to their lips
if the kisses
turned them on when
the nipples were their very own
but the answers varied
with the person and also whether she
was drunk or sober
or dangling helplessly upside-down out of her window
and the mystery remained
until the day i woke up
to pinch-me-can-i-really be this old
and beheld
my sagging senior magumbos
in the mirror
and cupped them in my palms
and yes by god
could damn near kiss them for real
just praying for the moment
when some stupid jerk would sidle up
with a smirk
and try to cop a feel

ode to my new poem

2011-06-23T16:28:00.011-04:00

i like everything
about you
so much except the way
you keep saying
and and
but and such to weave things
together that don't
really fit like the ordeal of getting used to
all the stents as if
they really went together
with that broken-hearted woman who said she
could never have
another "relationship" that would even begin to replace
what she had for all those years
with her husband who died way back in '95
and if that was what
i was sniffing around for i may
as well just forget it because the only thing that would make
her happy would be to be
down there reaching out to him
in the grave
and what was i to say to that but
i love my wife too
on her way to kingdom come
same as me and you
except her dementia kind of accelerates everything
and i have to admit
i'd rather get laid in the here and now
instead of a hospice bed or beneath the ground
but poem o my poem!
neither entombed love nor my own diuturnal mementos
can hope to match the joy
of your wanton kisses
and all your ands and buts and iffies

when i got my dentures

2011-06-17T12:11:00.006-04:00

when i got my dentures
they fitted perfectly and everyone
said how handsome i looked
sans the protruding
uppers that had been such a part of me
gone now mirabile dictu
each tooth evenly spaced
nor did i have any difficulty getting used
to chewing apples and steak
and the ritual
of gluing the things in
every morning
and storing them away for the night
was no greater effort
than a good flossing
but there was one problem that never went away:
the disguise wasn't really me
and the lie got to be such a bother finally
that i stopped being my new self
altogether
and became just another toothless old coot
but secretly i would
congratulate myself on the courage
and truthfulness of my act
until the day came when i was waiting for a light to change
and i saw her there
jogging in place ahead of me
nipples showing
through her marine corps tee shirt
steel legs
glowing
brazenly in the sun

miracles don't care who you are

2011-06-11T13:11:00.007-04:00

miracles don't care who you are
like don't forget
measles whooping
cough
mumps chickenpox yes
we had them all
plus i have to add in for me
personally diph
theria which got us
quarantined
signs posted all around warning normal
people i was conta
gious nailed on the door
by the public health nurse while
the doctor stuck me
with this enormous needle
and i can still hear
mama asking will he die is this how
he ends and he hardly got started
but i came through of course
just like buck puckett's sister with her polio
stuck away in a iron lung till we about
forgot all about her
but next thing we knew there she was in the back
of buck's pickup helping him
deliver the charlotte observer in
the early morning dark
with nobody around but the milk man and the ice man
who she would wave at curled up
like a pretzel surrounded by the news of the world in stacks
taller than she was and then poof
one day she was gone and everybody thought
she had a relapse
and died but buck said no nobody would have guessed it
but his little sister
had got married and moved to
the skunk works they called it
where her husband worked on the you too
a plane that flew
higher than ninety angels
which buck's sister's husband said is about as close
to heaven as it gets