these stairs are designed to murder a man
who’s had too much to drink
narrow, they wind like a medieval dungeon
to a bathroom that smells like death
upstairs where i left my wife alone
you can hear the six german men laughing
crowded around the tiny bar over their bottles of astra
and that black liquor the bartender keeps pouring out
i can still eat their cigarette smoke in the air down here
fourteen years off of those things
and i still think about cigarettes every day
think about them more than love or my own mortality
i wonder what i’m doing here clasping the sweating wall
in a german dive bar where i don’t belong
four thousand miles away from brooklyn problems
beers deep into an early hamburg afternoon
i’ve understood next to nothing that anyone has said to me today
i’ve done nothing to make myself heard
the light from the bottom of the stairs
looks like an oubliette
and i’m tired of trying to make this world my own
if i ever make it back up those steps
i think i’ll grab one of those german’s cigarettes
smoke it until i’m sweating and sick
like the first time i ever had one of those things
ask those laughing bastards
what their german word is for sadness or loss.…
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Clinging to my mother’s arm
I watched the blood orange sky
blot out the twinkling stars.
Out house burned.
Ashes of our tall, proud crops perfumed the air
Rebel soldiers, creeping dogs in the night,
shot my brother.
His crimson blood stained the river.
We were never to drink from it again.
We left that homier shore.
I did not understand
my parents whispering and furtive eyes.…
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Hand- me- overs from a learned brother,
they lay cracked and misshapen
in the bottom of the dark closet;
a symbol of some latent sadness.
It was there, but hidden from
the innocence of youth.
They spoke of a man in need of
something above and beyond the
benefits of comfortable footwear.
I can remember his facts.
He never drank milk.
He denied my sister a trip
to the shoe store in the snow.
He wouldn’t say why, couldn’t reveal
the fear, the compassion. He was
unable or unwilling to console his wife
when her anxiety surfaced late at night.
So, he would do deeds for the needy. …
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Winds cut through thick fleece,
the sky is dirty-cotton-ball gray,
but it’s two days past the vernal equinox.
You want to see the daffodil fields.
We heave the youngest dog into the back seat
but leave the older two behind,
ask the iPhone, “Where is Wye Mountain?”
Pointing the sedan toward the gold, we go.
Twelve years ago
the daffodils were blooming
in St. David’s, Wales,
for the saint’s day.
Anointed, we were honeymooning,
touring the ruins
of the Bishop’s Palace,
clambering up the split levels
of former sanctity,
wondering about the hearts of the holy
buried below.
Bickering now,
we forged out of town,
on a road we’d never traveled,
but you had cycled this way with a friend.
“There’s the turn to Houston,”
you pointed.…
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For seven long years
she was my client
I counseled her for naught
As she said, You’re just a
paid friend.
She loved nothing better
than taking medication
she thought it would fix her
a woman who could never
be fixed.
In utero, she was doused
with a diet of caviar and
booze, by a brilliant mother,
also named Julie, who won the
advertising account for
Look Magazine.…
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In terms of an overall number from 1 to 10 on the happiness scale
I’d say that if I went back as far as I can remember up to the present
day, I’d give myself a 4 overall. I’d give myself a 4 because there
were times in my life in which I felt extremely depressed and even
suicidal. Then there were times in which I didn’t think very often
about suicide, yet wasn’t ecstatic about being alive either. The decent
times and the bad times came and went throughout my life, but I’d
have say that if you averaged in a mostly unhappy childhood, young
adulthood, including my twenties, but with considerable improvement
in my thirties, forties, and fifties, you’d have a guy who was a solid 4
overall.…
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No one travels to this part of town anymore,
not since the 5:06 has been rerouted
and the filling station removed its pumps.
The sole radio station plays mostly static
cut with echoes of a distant broadcast,
the excitement of a local sporting contest.
Here it is all phantasmal and bleak.
I clearly hear the double screech overhead
and see proud brown wings flap in aerial attack.
Yet the underbird here, the smaller crow
caws loudly, like a chatty old woman
shouting out feats of raffish grandchildren.
This cackle draws an immediate response.
Black dots appear as if called out of thin air,
flying from distant branches to gather in force.
The twenty birds that populate the branches
of the early spring’s bare maple tree
understand how there is comfort in numbers.…
...continue reading