Checking the Calendar

 

Evidence of death pops up on the Internet

Your page or mine, it’s no different

In a couple of months a pretty face

Puts on weight, looks older

 

A deer leg on the path down Kennedy Peak

Images of skulls in the barks of trees

Dates of death in the sky above

The river meandering into nowhere

 

Then yesterday breaking through the mulch

And hard ground these green prongs, promises

Of the seasons still alive – Next comes spring!

I leave the mulch for what warm cover

 

Might still be warranted by cold and snow

A bit of February and all of March yet to go

Side-stepping The Confessional

Back in my gigolo days

Young, clean-shaven & smiling

I’d spend my money on clothes

Dark sunglasses, party favors

And a haircut that looked like

Yesterday was my twenty-first

Not that the ladies I worked for

Reminded me of mother

I wasn’t into much but happiness

When those mature women did laugh

My wallet grew fat with Grants &

Benjamins that I’d trade for rent

& painting supplies…whiskey,

smoke, smokes, five or six beers

Best were those early morning posings

Those young models who knew my game

When I studied the female anatomy

Of course, such knowledge

Has various values these days:

I’m rarely at a loss for ways

To amuse my selves

Love to post the daily plays

Got volumes on my shelves

Oh so busy making nothing happen

Aphrodite

I dream of you again young and lithe
as early afternoon sun streams in
through these half-blinded windows

How well I know that dreaming does not mean
I will actually do, actually have, as I wish

There is nothing else on my mind but
your body and your mind set on mine

Autumn/Spring Romance

By the grinding and clacking I can tell
my equipment breaks down, planned
obsolescence at its most insidious

Like a Dahlia in full bloom, a vibrant
bunch of flowers asking me when I might
be available sometime tomorrow

and I remain tentative – a fan of
one day at a time way back when
most were busy forgetting it all

My elder and now dead mentors
would advise that in love
there are no fools – rush in! always

Soon I’ll be older than their living
by even more years…and next spring
and summer such beauties may reprise

The End of Hurricane Season

It’s a Tuesday and the forecast is rain till Sunday
which I can manage as long as Sunday gets here soon

I know the test is to see how human I can be
in these less than human situations
but I’m not sure I care that much

Lilies of the Valley a sight back in spring
sweet smelling like female flesh in the shower
now, nearing autumn, just plush green blades
turning brown, the front garden withering

Without the jazz of Mingus doing his east coast
winding thing tonight would be all ideas
no things in themselves daring to hit the mark
– dance steps across the past, into tomorrow

where all the what happened dissolves
like a story unpublished, like flounces
out of focus and too far off to consider

It’s another Tuesday night – a few hours to myself
with nothing to do and next to nothing done so far

Artistic Statements

I.

She’s only happy giving it away
The thing she’s making with all
the junk in the basement
keeps changing, getting busier
with details that don’t go
together but then make a lot
more sense than any intention

He’s only happy giving it away
even though he knows no soul
lasts forever – as untouchable as
those eighteen year old breasts
the words themselves but words
he’s only happy giving them away

II.

It’s one of those nights when friends
all gone out of town or off the earth
even those a phone call away
are not feeling all that well

One left alone with but oneself
conjures up stories that don’t need
to be either written or painted
lovely…so let’s find food to eat

III.

It’s the human condition
the windshield replacement
guy says to want to clean up
we reach right into the fire
we dirty the last clean pants
what fools we fools be

Seems a bunch of people
don’t want to care for the un-
fortunate – let ‘em die!
seems a bit harsh but so
goes democracy these days
no longer happy giving it away

Getting Lost & Carrying on

1.

Why bother going solar
when the world’s on fire?

Rather than writing being a remnant of its past
it could be a composite of other disciplines
reuniting, reconfiguring, or new – you tell me

Grant me fair lady two nights
One to see how good I am
The other to love again

To your family and your father
I make no apology or threats
What was remains as true

2.

What value we give to truth
How to know what is and isn’t
How to explain? thereby refine

Walking together wooded paths
various sunlights blind green shades
running the grey-scale bright to shadow
we might’ve made sense – maybe in a better
world….or maybe we did and what was then
is surely something different now…maybe
even more. Let’s walk together and find out

3.

This summer started with great expectations
A number of projects were going to be tackled
brought to fruition and wrapped up and out

quickly tripped up by my father’s demise
Months handling business I detested
But did what had to be done – got a lawyer

Now I do as I’m told, then I wait and wait

4.

The near final phase of summer
approaches – birds go crazy at the feeder
light turns back from its sharpest angle

less of a shock on back deck littered
with early browned oak leaves – Still
crickets crank up as night rises a few nights
Morning arrives well-rested, eager for

coffee and news of the world but slowly,

first the crossword puzzle before the

puzzles of economy and war…let the brain

click in — do today’s medium Sudoku

5.

Liked my coffee cold – no sugar, no milk

just the bitter dregs of the brew that sat

as long as I liked coffee – forty-five years or so

A quiet afternoon moves into a late evening

Got stuff to do tomorrow but now I’m on my own

I still know most of the lyrics to the old songs

Great myths we middle-class believe in

6.

I call it quits to a day reading articles on teaching
and learning, and put the notes away reaching for
a book mark for the journal entry I failed to make

Someone for sure is making tons of money today
chipping away at our little nest-egg stashes
We’ll have to work till the hospital or nursing home
where we’ll ride ice floes toward tropical isles

That stretching feels great – like painting strokes
across a sky neither day nor night – arms around
the world, embracing and embraced…seconds ago

7.

If this spread had a dinner bell, it’d be clanging

Partners in the production, we’d put away our vices

and get with the program ‘fore next weekend arrives

(The usual means of secret communication will

continue as per the third month’s recommendations.

We’ll talk later on a more secure line. XXOOX)

Seeing What’s Up on a Late-July Afternoon

As I chuff these halls and batter any walls put up

to get though to you as the ice cream truck chimes by

that only the phonies want to hear what happens next

and even their interests quickly wander

in a place like this

All the bad things, magnets, and vices still work for me

even-though I refuse to go shopping for a fedora

listen to this though

the timbers come down through out the great house

dust accumulates back into bone, skeleton voices whisper

like wind from the north, like death’s steed huffing this way

and I think how like a story life goes, how slow then quick

then quicker than say the shift to a new chapter, each story

takes on the life and death of itself from beginning to end

almost every time   in a place like this

able to picture disaster before it happens

There’re drawbacks but we can get into them later

How sure are we that we should go up against any one

being so sure of things being what they are tends to be

not so sure – or might the cure have something to do

with the methods and manners as well as the intentions

despite all the resultant debate about a question mark or not

Mid to End of June

After my father dies I stop lying to myself

and go to the doctor about my kidneys

or at least I plan to go but get side-tracked

Approaching trains whiz by. I realize I’ve been saved

once again by the forces of you lucky mother f*cker

Weeks later I no-show a visit to the urine tester

unsure that all the creatine’s out of my system yet

sure that destiny has a plan that ignores any of mine

and anything I might do just puts off the inevitable

I’m not prepped for my exit – the lights’re too bright

Besides the ever changing bodies, their short flowers

the way the music fades in and out as the images blur

I’m dancing inside myself – you glance a shoulder

at arm’s length melding into an immoral crowd

Finding Out

I’m stuck on a dancer whom I’ve only seen dance

one evening, but I know her face and spirit and her moves

somewhere deep inside a past I’ve no doubt long forgotten

I watch for announcements of her upcoming shows

But, as of yet, I do not go…I’m still working on what I’d say

when I get to meet her and let her know how I feel:

I saw you in Philadelphia and in your videos on youtube

always dancing barefoot and saying something

about being a woman — and I like to watch you dance

You do special things with balance, humor and motion

Today I put weight on my knee while planting flowers

in the front bed alongside the walk to the driveway

for but a short moment, yet that knee hurt into evening

I think that dancer can help me, can cure me