My Skivvies

Lay like a discarded Dear John letter from an x-con determined to start a new life,

a squashed white rabbit on a Carolina backroad rolled by a speeding Buick,

a page torn from the diary of a lonely depressive wishing to remain anonymous,

a seagull blown so far off course that it holds no hope of returning to the sea,

an envelope stamped with the lingering smells that identify a day’s hard work,

a damp map of the moon flaccid as beach litter after a dense morning fog,

a snow drift sullied by a lost dog who’ll trace his way home by a series of leaks,

an albino snake skin shed like a bridal veil at the foot of an empty marriage bed,

a used handkerchief dropped by a cleric on his way to inspire a congregation,

an abandoned white lily kicked to the curb by mourners at a funeral procession,

the love letter of a pained man who felt he should have said these things instead.

~from Poems I Mustn’t Show Others

 

Sometimes a Poem is No More

than the Diary of a Beautiful Idiot

Left Open on the Lawn

“Our times are still not safe and sane enough

for faces to show ordinary sorrow.”

                               ~Wistawa Szymborska

My dreams tell me I’ve been hiding

my outlandishness just to get along.

If anything, psyches favor travesty.

See how a broken heart goes on 

banging its drum

beneath a camouflage of cloth

like some beautiful idiot 

meant for sacrifice.

I have to remind myself

that what I’m writing is 

not a flagrant diary

filled with dichotomies

too unwieldy for memory to hold,

each line easily devolving

into a way to see

where the next line will take me.

For instance:

Last night I shat myself

on my way to visit my mother.

I could tell she could smell me.

Wrapping myself in a peacoat

like a fetid blue cocoon,

I woke convinced 

I could not be loved.

So I keep trying to be ordinary.

Not realizing what makes me different

is what could make me great.

Still, I embrace my vulnerabilities,

my wounded intelligence,

my historical youth

crowned in mid-age by

a heart full of stents;

 a tarot card

wounding me

for the better

with it’s swords.

6/2921

 

So Much World All at Once

So much world all at once,

it barely requires a self

to be a part of it.

Granted we’re slow 

to comprehend,

so slow that many

are the caterpillars

who’ve out-crawled us

only to find 

no finish line. 

That said,

there’s no leaving

anything behind, 

only a chronic begetting.

No need to crave adventure

as small experiences

and less of them 

are what the world is

really made of.

We can’t stop ourselves

from happening 

even if we leapt

into the void

we’d not impede the flow

between A and B;

un-dissolvable stones 

licked smooth

by misplaced hunger.

Our memories can’t recede,

not really,

instead they’re kept 

safe and sound

in the custody of a 

covetous giant God

who’s one disability

lies in refusing 

to consider

anyone of us 

as clutter.

6/27/21

 

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