Refugees

       

They walk down small empty streets

with ruined houses.

The clock in the square has no hands.

Rats at the end of the alleys

eat their dead,

the grind of their teeth in the flesh

the only interruption

of the humid afternoon

silence of retreat.

No more drive-by,

not the carts full of plague

long gone to shallow graves

and cried over,

not the car bombings, no Jihad,

only crippled insurgents

left with limbless occupiers

only gray lines of brutal aging

slow lifeless exit,

and in the undisturbed

brick and limestone

everything quietly waiting

for the nocturnal,

the gutters to run clear

and shadows begin to crawl

as innocence tries again

to sneak in, to root,

to find an infant footing

Dreamboat

         

going the wrong way

on the Baltimore beltway,

choking on carb-flooded gas -

over-heating over first date curfews

as we left Carlin’s Drive-In

already an hour late.

a death trap ’60 Falcon [appropriately black]

was not only my first car

but the first on the drug store corner -

made him a celebrity,

and yes definitely a ‘He’-

lost half the time, on the make the other….

anyway He’s straining brittle-bone ball-joints

and bald tires while I’m keeping

right white buck and pedal to the floor,

rubbernecking to spot that landmark…

that yes-we-now-know-where-we-are

building or corner.

‘the little engine that could’

all the time switching channels,

constantly on alert for the right hot tune

or ‘Wild Thing’

or anything by the Stones

which was always right.

your father home cursing hippies to your mom

belting shots of bourbon

would have been loading his gun

and waiting in the driveway

if he had seen the feature from our back seat

and those coming attractions in your hair.

Two friends

   

parting, one young

one younger, and beginning a pilgrimage

in search of himself.

Come with you?

I’m not that young –

though the rest of my life

will not be what I intended,

and I’ve intended nothing.

I would not have wanted

to see you die

but would have wanted

to know you ‘til death.

You know,

men are harder to replace

than women, but women

are irreplaceable. 

Perhaps on my holiday –

only two weeks a year

to visit far-away old friends,

that are always too far.

Maybe we’ll meet again at 40.

In a bar. In Athens.

We’ll drink Ouzou

and share a Greek whore.

We’ll celebrate this moment then

pulling at our youth,

and reflect that every moment

is a poem,

that only need be written down

as a reminder.

Apéritif

   

Great art is inspired

by the sub-conscious,

she nonchalantly mused,

lying naked on

the pink comforter,

sipping Pastis and water,

head propped on her palms,

a tiny glowing sphinx,

reading poems

with Cleopatra lips.

I half listen,

knowing the words,

knees at her waist,

molding child-like

cleavages with id,

tracing illusions in

firm, tan sand of spine.

Clue

                    

The mysteries and, of course, the murder

are all revealed in a parchment envelope

marked ‘Confidential’

and placed beside Mr. Boddy

along with his deceased wealth of knowledge

in the cellar.

Professor Plum, noted metaphysician,

sipping sherry in the conservatory

points out that we see only the tip

of the iceberg and miss the berg.

It’s there in the brain, filtered,

unintegrated.

Colonel Mustard belting single malt,

his seed larger than

the kingdom of Heaven,

is preoccupied in the billiard room

with the hiked skirt of Miss Scarlet

who leans into a massé shot,

reflectively pointing out that,

reality only exists when

it bumps into another reality.

The colonel in a whiskey rasp retorts

Poppycock, balderdash, it’s all just

deductive reasoning,

Mr. Green is sure that matter

is mostly empty, fluffed probability,

more like thought than thing,

and that the government knows all

but refuses to tell,

at least this generation.

Mrs. Peacock practicing saying

Good evening in the mirror

says that she can prove it

if we join her in the library

and that the height of arrogance

is creating God in your own image.

Mrs. White, busy inspecting

the table settings in the dining room,

is convinced that while there is no

out there out there independent of in here,

her main concern is that no one suspects

her of stealing the small shampoos and lotions.

Interview in a Bar

  

To extend life

is to multiply death,

he postured his Guinness

in front of his lips,

but did not sip.

You don’t sleep do you?

It goes unnoticed though

like your contempt for food

and conversation.

You sit here sober

but see a different room,

only you hear the rats,

their disease infecting

shadows, scattering scared

through the walls.

In your nips of dream

you’re catatonic

in silent coma,

skin grey like the fog,

serpents eat monkeys as

you walk uneven stairs

to a granite landing,

the moon is the

color of lava,

the sun in your belly

burns your eyes,

reddens the night,

jeopardizes the stars.

Library before dawn

It is still, all asleep,

Cabernet relaxes against the glass.

The books facing me

remind me of the girls,

dresses all different colors,

lined up across the hall at

CYO dances, facing the boys,

standing straight, short and tall,

giving a certain flavor

and aroma to the room,

while waiting to be chosen.

Full of words, but too shy

to speak aggressively -

always the whispering though

as now the shelves

begin to faintly vibrate.

Dorothy Parker quietly denigrating

Pound about his politics,

Pastan to Dickinson about the

economy of her pain and

Plath very low to Sexton

on the craft of death.

I vaguely make out Eliot

criticizing my choice of wine

when Whitman hushes them all

and wants to get back to the

slow-dancing of teenage boys,

first gropes to ‘Wonderland by Night’ -

comparing it to my handling

of their volumes and my occasionally

taking them individually to the car

apparently for closer inspection.

Evening alone

             

It was a third floor apartment

with patio doors off the living room

to a porch looking out onto a 4-lane,

busy with traffic, Moravia Road.

Evening’s gray was giving an edge

to the exiting orange-glow of the day

that was leaving through those doors

at about the same pace the Sunshine Acid

I’d put on my tongue a half hour ago

was coming-on.

In harmony with this transition

I left the lights off, a bit anxious,

synapses popping behind wet eyes, 

that when the total dark of night

controlled the room I would be

peaking in its grasp.

This tic was replaced by

a dawning sense of warm euphoria

as the room settled into a soft humid glow

and Eleanor Rigby’s scraping bows of violins

were totally liquid within me.

I was as alone with its pulsing

as Father Mckenzie and the other lonely people.

The darkness, now part of my psyche,

gave a nocturnal life to the walls

blooming with energy,

textured like fog -

even the nap of my flannel pants

was quivering with a warmth

and life of its own.

I opened the curtains

as the beige street globes came on

adding color and definition

to the traffic that flowed

down roads connecting

the parking lot below to the planet -

trailers of headlights branching out

in all directions to everything.

Turning back to the sofa

I felt a squash under foot

as the large-leafed fern

let out a faint scream of psychedelic mishap,

bleeding green ooze under my now heavy,

traumatized Cole-Hahn suedes.

Library before dawn

  

It is still, all asleep,

Cabernet relaxes against the glass.

The books facing me

remind me of the girls,

dresses all different colors,

lined up across the hall at

CYO dances, facing the boys,

standing straight, short and tall,

giving a certain flavor

and aroma to the room,

while waiting to be chosen.

Full of words, but too shy

to speak aggressively -

always the whispering though

as now the shelves

begin to faintly vibrate.

Dorothy Parker quietly denigrating

Pound about his politics,

Pastan to Dickinson about the

economy of her pain and

Plath very low to Sexton

on the craft of death.

I vaguely make out Eliot

criticizing my choice of wine

when Whitman hushes them all

and wants to get back to the

slow-dancing of teenage boys,

first gropes to ‘Wonderland by Night’ -

comparing it to my handling

of their volumes and my occasionally

taking them individually to the car

apparently for closer inspection.

Walgreens

           

Joan asked if she could

help me –        

a friendly enough clerk

at Walgreen’s,

with a ‘ JOAN ’ name tag -

and I’m trying on sunglasses.

Try these with the pink lenses,

she hands me a pair

I would not have chosen

and as I lift them to my nose

to model them in the mirror

she explains that,

You’ll be able to see God

and the pink glow will warm

your understanding.

Morning epiphany.

The afternoon spent

in a pink haze of holiness,

contemplating all those stories

of Zen masters and their

eccentric methods,

time journeys by association,

scribbling poems about everything,

formulating new life priorities,

and wondering about a shrine

and candles for St. Joan.