On the Third Ring
The late phone call brings the voice from China, from Illinois, from Intensive Care. The snow has stumbled south from Seattle. The airlines hold their passengers as collective breath while sleet marches southeast to Los Angeles as rain where county commissioners count storm drains as items for next century’s budget, and news cameras will turn tosporadic rivers in concrete beds mounting current enough to sweep away children impervious to warnings against the fascinations of waters rushing garbage from the city into the sea. The news crews wait through clips of...
Read MoreThe Sanity (1967-1997)
Remembering Nam, the vets, the regulars who did not come back. Hadn’t the flutes fragrances the seasons drawn in pencilled lines and Telemann / the fathers in smoky yards / the villages dressed like Halloween been scares enough to him / the sky-high flames arranged in drumspeak and guitars / ...
Read Morenight flowers
how strange that line of night where dreams flesh and dance to inner rhythms where all seems consequential bits and pieces of here and now fall on waiting soils to seed and bloom and flourish night flowers whose long shadows tease in quibbling irritations day lit hours Wild Transitions...
Read MorePossibilities
In the first parallel universe I took my father’s advice studied pharmacy at the University of Buffalo moved to New Jersey to work for Pfizer and have lived here ever since. In another one Sister Emiliette managed to convince me during the eighth grade retreat. Now I awaken each morning at six, put on the white and black, go down to chapel take my place at the organ. In May I’ll make my final vows. In the next I came of age amid the lilacs of Christ Church Meadow watching the spring regatta. After one year of walks among the domes and spires I decided to stay. Now I live...
Read MoreA Neighbor’s Death
They fall like toy sentinels, one by one, before the entrance to the battered door that traps in heat and keeps away the hoar frost of impending grief. Youth’s taped rerun of first bliss is worn. Spring’s warm, schoolmarm sun now sports the wan demeanor of a store clerk. Life grants me just enough light to pore over receipts before the workday’s done and the store closes. Former bustling streets are empty and their neon signs torn down along with delis selling ice and sweets. Grown kids have moved their own kids out of town. I’m at the crossroads where the graveyard...
Read MoreTonight’s the Night We Begin!
From tar roof tops people lean and watch in the soft summer afternoon heat below them I crusade in full-color 3-D through the holy land of NYC St. Mark’s Place across town I am a warrior bound to take back CBGB’s from the unbelievers I am a warrior bound (and there’s Mojo’s the scene five years later of our last fight ever, when for your birthday I bought you for your birthday I bought you What the hell was I thinking? I bought you a cheap Chinatown red dragon night light and it only got worse from there) The sidewalk grate cuts loose a roar a...
Read More