Photo by Ellen Martin

Word to the Whys

At night they set sail

in bodies

made of salt,

in a sea

where nothing

can be understood

but surrender.

They dare not

look back 

at the fool lying

full of questions,

confusing as they do

the forests

for the trees,

these slumbering 

lumbermen

so ill at ease.

If someone

were to ask them

 what it all means

(and they will),

they never tell

as they’re

literally discontented

not being

under a spell.

Though they build 

their integrity

during the day

only to be fortified

in their malaise,

they can never

give up the ship

nor stop

needing answers,

never realising

poetry

a remedy

for paralysis. 

Some things

take shape

only in silence

like a soul.

For instance,

would you take

the weather

personally if you'd

no propensity 

for control? 

Only then

can a storm

be a thing of 

terrible beauty,

like some angel

sans its wings

or one memory

for eternity.

For those who

always ask why, 

consider this

prayer for

assuaging the sting:

“With all I’ve seen

and all I’ve done,

please grant me

the hope

of the

unexpected

thing.”

6/25/21

 

The Loss 

that Makes Us

Whole Again

Wholeness has a hole in it from the start.

The day we lose something, its absence 

draws in new air like an iron lung

filling us up again with restorative silence. 

Ill prepared for the privilege of living,

there’s nothing more debauched than thinking,

but a loss can make us whole again;

the unforeseen realization that the negative

is merely the diary of our own shadow.

6/12/21

 

Advice from 

the Down Hearted

"Love has brought us to this silence

where the only obligation is to walk

slowly through a meadow and look."

~Rumi

There’s no understanding one another,

so don’t kid yourself.

When leaving the house entails a safari,

summon a smile.

The sidewalks meet your shoes 

as a stranger,

the clouds couldn’t care less

who they float over.

Even the birds will shit

on genius, but

stay vulnerable.

How far can you go on alone?

The price of understanding is:

no one wants to be understood.

Trust me, who would?

When we’re so willing

to file each other away in a drawer.

One wrong move and

you could lose everything.

From here on out

best to live without

needing to know more.

How accurate it is

to be alive and in charge

of nothing but oneself.

How simple.

Make your work

your innocence.

Pray to deserve 

what comes.

Even if it’s not happiness,

your life will make sense.

Rise quietly in the morning.

Dress yourself and go to work.

When you want to walk, walk.

When you want to sit, sit.

Hanker after nothing

and be free.

6/5/21

 

True Confessions

of an Imaginary

Child Star

“It’s gratifying that I can always

wake up before dying.”

                     ~In Praise of Dreams 

                                 by Wistawa Szymborska

Some days my aging feels like

watching Shirley Temple turn into

Humphrey Bogart in the mirror,

a magic act that I’m forced to enact

for reasons never made clear.

All this before one’s very eyes.

Only slowly and without the curls,

the broken promise that youth abides

to boys as vulnerable as girls.

“Here’s the floor

and there’s the steeple.

Open the door

and see all the people.”

Like Shirley, I too prayed by moonlight.

It’s an irrefutable fact.

Surely aging out of the business

 wasn’t meant to be our final act.

One night my thinking took a turn.

I grit my teeth and asked:

Which thought fills me with more concern?

The one that compares me

to a summer’s day, or the one

that re-jiggers my mask?

True, I’d spent the last 20 years

trying not to panic,

to keep my pretty little head intact;

to best save face and not get frantic.

Why should I look like a holy ruin

if I haven’t got a prayer?

Would they still love me

a wise old elder man

sitting cross-legged in the hills

far above the village

like a Gandhi without the frills?

What could he know 

about starlight dimmed

after so easily

curbing his every whim?

Lately my stem has begun

to grow stern.

My back seems always up,

what with all my bridges burned

and my innocence vaguely corrupt.

How could I not help but impose

my own unreasonable standards

on others as if all my lessons

were nothing but animal crackers!

Better I should sort a drawer

than dress down another neighbor,

let alone fans I’d once adored

who’d made me this shop-worn fable.

Won’t someone meet me 

on the stairs

and dance me back to the stars,

instead of climbing Jacob’s ladder

and ending up on Mars.

Plagued by constant sour thoughts.

Do you really think you’re not

all orphans in the end

the same as I in every teary story

I was ever in?

At one point I went to a medium

hoping for some sage advice.

Hatching my plan the moment

I heard her say:

“If you’re there…tap on the table twice.”

“Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake

I pray my Lord my soul to take.”

And so I vow to wake myself up

by an itty bitty pinch to the thigh,

that way I’ll assure I won’t be cross

when I cross over to the other side.

“Row row row your boat

gently down the stream,

merrily merrily merrily merrily

Was life just a lovely dream?”

What better way to greet

the new morn than by tapping

my way back from the brink?

Not going gently into that good night

but with moves I learned with my feet.

May 11, 2021

 

Two Versions

of a Single

Truth

Who named this country

"morning"? How apropos

to begin each day 

with a departure;

the puppet no longer

threaded to the puppeteer.

What if bewilderment 

is the only assurance

our feelings 

remain intact?

We're kidding

ourselves

if we think our

feelings are ever

in consideration.

Dreams are

a melodrama.

Why else

would we be

left stranded

amid their

shoddy stagecraft

in broad daylight?

What was oak

now plywood. 

If night is theatre,

the gist of days

happens backstage

behind the flats.

Psyche

as performance art.

Abduction by sleep

 is night's

dirty little secret,

its catechism

of randomness

defies logic.

Did I mention

melodrama?

Think about it.

You’re blindfolded,

often drugged.

Two pills 

to make you sleep

admittedly, by 

your own hand.

Better to

play your part

like a blind man

more self-assured

than the sighted

at navigating their

own darkness.

Every evening 

you enter

the play, off book,

yet promptly forget

your lines. 

Still

the body is

resigned to

hitting its marks. 

What actor doesn’t

hide behind

the part he plays

on stage,

even if the role

itself remain

un-named 

he is ready

to awaken 

a truer self

under the

lights.

One may die here,

though the promise

of an after-life

keeps things playful.

Some 

have tools

in their arsenals

trained to

remember 

its just a play. 

Funny then, that

every evening's

performance 

is nothing but

a dress rehearsal.

Mornings are 

 ouroboric;

the end comes

round to begin

again.

If we 

swallow the tale

by retracing our steps,

recalling the sounds

we heard along

the way:

the churning

of a windmill,

the exultations

of a public street,

horses snorting

in a stable...

we shall arrive

at the place

we started. 

Two versions

of a single truth.

April 26th, 2021

 

READERS ON:

“The Art of Being Able”

“It is as if you read my mind. Sometimes what you write is exactly how I am feeling. 

I have had questions in my mind most recently about belonging nowhere.

I love this, between two places - here and there. 

Not only do I adore your poetry and how it is written but as well - 

how it makes me feel. Your poetry is my companion.” 

 ~Melanie Futorian Film Maker & Choreographer

“A beauty of a piece with an amazing riff on the word “belonging”.  Belonging is interpreted as included, or part of. but longing is the desire for something, someone, need!!!!  Once again your brilliance is a marvel!!!!” 

~Barnet Shindlman 

“Excellent. Seemingly simple, but ever so profound!!”

 ~Marion Darby

“I totally see myself in this poem. A beautiful piece of work. So well done!”

 ~David Garfield

 

                                                          Painting by Konrad Biro

The Art of Being Able

I survive by belonging nowhere.

If family is a quaint theory 

for the under-privileged,

then why should I care?

I survive by 

belonging nowhere.

I will be land;

not region or country,

not city or town.

I will be land, sky-bound,

I swear.

I survive by 

belonging nowhere.

I’ll live in two places,

both here and there.

That way no one

will pin me down,

nor bother to care.

I survive by

belonging nowhere.

I am all eyes 

descending a stare.

How else am I to fare?

If you were a snowman

formed out of thin air,

you too would survive by 

belonging nowhere.

With no such thing

as endurance in time, 

made no less true 

by becoming aware,

I prefer the floor over a chair.

Still I survive

belonging nowhere.

I learned to love

in increments of loss,

not knowing that grief

was the price 

of the cost.

In that I expect I’m not so rare.

I will survive by 

belonging nowhere.

April 22nd, 2021