Uncle's Birthday

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Uncle’s Birthday

Clarity, that aging cohort who sat cross-legged
on his bed every night with pen and pad in hand
jotting down notes into a daily planner

now dresses in gray flannel and one slipper,
now wheezes every time he speaks, now coughs
a rosy tinge into his lace handkerchief.

Strange companions, these sounds and shapes
passing through a room he doesn’t occupy.
Strange soul mates, confusion and chaos.

Uncle tries to remember his last birthday,
tries to bellow his weakened rib cage
into a small engine of effort and purpose.

Riding on air, tiny sailboats of memory;
faint glimpses and telltale remnants.
Smoke’s furtive swirl, as the wicks collapse.

EDN, 11/09


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Poems in OCHO

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My poems, "Dialectics of Reason and Doubt," (p17) and "Dark Thoughts That Illumine," (p44) just appeared in the latest edition of OCHO. If you look closely at the cover, my mug is pictured along with some other poets, painted by Didi Menendez, editor and publisher (middle, first row). Click here to view OCHO: link to OCHO

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Block

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Set upon my crimson throne
in purple robe betwixt early
sparks and latent explosions,
my pen an inky shadow cast
upon a white wall, my memory
an image-conjurer, tied by knots
in the hierarchy of its own
futility, set poised to write
or not to write, omnipotent
if only for the sake of a few
well-positioned words made
illustrious by my own muse.

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Mortis Operandi

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Mortis Operandi

Red wren. Dead wren.
They die on windshields and sliding
glass doors, but rarely fall lifeless
from trees or cloudless skies.

Seals die at sea or on ice floes
but seldom in backyards or parks.
Amphibians rarely drown.
Reptiles can freeze to death.

No one knows how elephants die.
When they finally tumble over,
nobody knows what to do with
their enormous carcasses.

Ants die all the time without notice.
Whole anthills have perished
without one word said
in the office or grocery line.

We don’t know for certain if beetles
accidentally die or willfully give themselves
up for the good of the fossil record.
And what happens to all that dead krill?

All those marauding bees,
one day buzzzing their final demise
into the warm August breeze.
Still, it’s hard to find a dead bee.

Who knows how many deer have died
in the forest’s thick underbrush?
Cockroaches , on the other hand, die
more easily than urban legends belie.

Scientists immortalize cell lines
in a petri dish at 37 degrees centrigrade.
To cheat death, viruses self-replicate
and bacteria mutate.

At the other end of the spectrum,
mammals must be cared for at birth
and watched closely for many years.
Some require lifelong attention.

When humans die, ceremonies
and eulogies mark the occasion.
Names appear in newsprint.
In sad instances, humans die like ants.

EDN, Oct, 2009


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Morning Has Never Been Electric

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Don’t need alarm clocks anymore.
The morning, in its own peculiar way,
through blinking lights
and a dozen harping birds
(by hook or by crook)
always manages to infuse
something warm and fuzzy
into my brain’s medium-rare
pork loin. The dog, whose
lateral spine forms a wedge
between two old lovers,
never minds the morning,
but sleeps on through
showering, brushing and shaving.
Down the stairs two human
figures follow the light
through the morning's narrow tunnel.
Near the bottom, they hop over
a steel grate posing as a cold-air
return. But all know if they slip
on a bone or the dog’s slimy tennis ball,
they stand a good chance of hurtling
through floorboards and into the furnace.
I stumble trying to avoid the peril
and turn my ankle for the umpteenth time.
Coffee is made and poured.
Forty-five minutes on the couch
wondering how cold this winter will get.
Forty-five minutes of peace and quiet−
if not for mice in walls, sleet,
oil in furnace air, hiatal hernia
and a hundred cars shortcutting their way
through our neighborhood like wolves
through sheep herds.
I want to lean my head out the window
and take one to task, but all I can do is kick a ball
accross the room for the only one around
with alacrity and spunk.
Unlike her human counterparts,
she hops over the furnace trap with skill and grace.

EDN, OCT, 2009

Time in a Blue Raincoat

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Time in a Blue Raincoat

Drudging down familiar streets
dragging eons in wheelbarrows
and nanoseconds in silver spoons.
He stops to scan the gray
horizon, scowling mercurial eyes
into the dark distance.
Is it light underneath a cloud
or history’s bouncing big bang?
Is it dawn or the end of days?
It rains in all directions.
Intangible vectors in the past tense.
He turns to take a thousand
frozen frames for his memory
book, a folio of frolic and distemper.
He dodges teeth from an angry dog,
ducks into a damp alley scuttling
among city shadows and granite
walls, cardboard boxes and trash cans,
scanning the beat of each generation.
Every succession of thought,
every momentary glimpse.
He runs through rain-soaked streets
yet remains dry beneath the gun barrel
night, ears pinned back,
adrenalin-stoked,
under a hair-trigger’s caprice.
He runs through rain-soaked streets
darting from danger in rabbit mode,
spliced between fear and wonder,
twinkle and shiver.
Fatalist and realist wrapped into one.
Trapped by ultimate limits
and hope’s slender harmonic,
wobbling on a self-made wire,
half-notes from syncopation
and a beautiful lyric.

EDN, October, 2009

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Yellow Raincoats

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Yellow Raincoats

Rain bouncing off umbrellas, the sparse
crowd scanning cumulonimbus.
Gas guzzlers queued-up along
the perimeter of his cemetery plot
idling like panting dogs.
For all his time and effort,
an embarrassing turn-out.
He who founded and ruled an empire.
His word, fiat. His product, unrivaled.
He who lived large,
influenced many, got sick
and died alone.
Unforeseen outcomes, gloomy weather.
Circumstances beyond our control.
The coffin returned to its sepulcher
with dispatch, the dim lights,
the beige walls, the unburned candles.
Crinkling coats, cupped hands,
the wind mounting a final surge.
And the low rumble of combustion
slowly increasing, drawing nearer.
Surround sound for the living and the dead.
Nobody gets wet with high quality PVC
and nobody remembers the bad weather.


EDN, 9/09



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