Category: Poetry

Art Lesson

You take a step into the Chinese scroll
That used to be San Francisco. A gray
Wall over a grayer bay and some small holes
Punched by bridges, barges, hints of mountain
Or hill, prison to your right as views unroll,
A little worn at the curled edges. Stray
Ribbons of fog float through clouds. It’s not cold—
It should be—but when surprise runoffs drain
From roofs, you shiver. You seek a dry way
To climb down this slope, enter the picture,
But give up. Damp shoes are the price you pay
To beauty. Someone is out there, you’re sure—

No dark beauty out of movies—no, it’s
A missed dream tugging at you. Or you read
Something once—three old men, a cat, some mist,
Maybe cranes or swans.…

...continue reading

Death

A summit of light
built before her.
A canopy rising higher
and higher as she looks up.
Her hands press
against her eyes
trying to swipe the brightness
away, but her fingers
are bathed in it,
They smell like light,
bright, burnt sugar,
they sizzle against her eyelids
setting them on fire
like the thinnest of papers.

For Shadow

A goodbye written in water
moved through me.
A chase of words
and things I’d like to have
said and done for you.
I breathe through this night
with the leftovers of you
at my heels.
They have taken over my room,
my house,
so there’s not a spot
that won’t tear skin from my limbs.
There’s only goodbye left,
I know,
just the tail of our time together
to try to wrap around us
as we are yanked apart.…

...continue reading

WAITING       

on the steps of the bar,

eating peanuts from a brown bag,

tossing the shells onto the sidewalk

Friday, your payday,

in rumpled gray, red uniform,

school satchel on my back,

some people stop to stare,

sum up my story in an instant

and you’re inside,

on your fifth beer, your tenth joke,

your twentieth glance up at the

painted naked lady,

wondering why all women didn’t look like that,

especially the ones you marry

maybe, when you’re done,

you’ll be sober enough to drive,

or to order pizza

or to remember my name

at least

one time you got so drunk

you passed out on the counter

I walked home,

went to bed hungry,

was nobody.

——————————————-

JUST BEFORE THE ACCIDENT

 

Skis and feet dangle from the chair lift

and there’s no such thing as danger.…

...continue reading

My face in the mirror looks raw

as seafood. The dawn feels limp

against my skin. Yesterday a friend

reported that his liver cancer

has claimed his other organs,

revising and reordering them

in defiance of their Latin names.

Six months to live, if he’s lucky.

If it would help, I’d let him look

through my gaze at this image

too unfamiliar to kill him.

Nose bulbous as ginger root,

mouth a gash imperfectly healed,

eyes lifeless behind glasses

thick as the soles of old shoes.

On the far edge of America,

he lives with a mother almost

a hundred years old and doomed

to survive her eldest son.

The slush of the timber-heavy coast

of Oregon soothes most wounds,

and Mount Hood spikes the horizon

with a ghostly presence subject

to the censorship of weather.…

...continue reading

(version 3)

Someday Jesse wants to go home.

I see his world,

all it’s hidden concepts

embedded in Jesse’s aging facelife

has whispered by leaving

memory trails

wrinkled forehead,

deep as river bed ruts

dried with years, weather-beaten,

just above his bushy eyebrows

that are gray and twisted

much like life drawing memories

across his empty face.

Jesse has a long oblique

Jewish nose with dark

blue opal eyes,

that would pierce

even the pain

of his own crucifixion.

Life tears flow though

a whole new ghoulish

apparition, a vision

of homelessness plastered

east of Dearborn Bridge,

near Lower Wacker Drive,

downtown Chicago

where affluent citizens

seldom go unless inebriated;

puke-stained, or in a taxicab.

————————————–

Jesse’s hair sprouts skyward,

groomed like an abandoned

dove nest in wild Chicago

meandering winds.…

...continue reading

Elegant autumn silhouettes hang around like little men
in bars, unsteady, anticipating the season’s departure.
They fall at any opportunity and the sun, always there,
secures the dapple-drunk-dancers into cool afternoon festival.
The harvests sleep; leaves have curled. The bruised past
flickers now through scratched, monochrome re-run.
Earth, still in motion; weary and ripped, shivers.
Dead spirits form low blankets of clouds –
they keep watch over the hollow creatures.
Spellbound, they, marveling new skin.
Eyes freshly gouged from wars stitched with ego-thread,
see the wandering babies collect fallen, colourless irises.
Miniature weapons of hate and fiction – undesirable gewgaws.
Then small distractions shatter tall visions like sudden,
burnt toffee and shadows ascend once more.
They fade fast into yesterday without hope.
And the hollow creatures, bloated with clichéd
placebo, expire like the little men’s smoke,
billowing skyward at the bar.…

...continue reading