Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Red Wheelbarrow for William Carlos Williams

So much depends upon                                           Sept 29 2015
a red wheel barrow
glazed with rain
beside the white chickens.

Dust road shimmer, another dry afternoon
Cloudburst enough for runnels
And rotting spilt grain,
A week’s worth of grain
On the ground, near the coop
But not enough for new corn
Or unshrivel beans.
She sends the children,
Barrow tippers of grain, now
mixed with rotgut bottles in the
knobbyshade tree roots,
to a neighbor, and watches
the chickens peck peck peck
at precious scattered gold.
Yellow marks and cigarette ‘O’s
on her arms and ankles
wait for new color.

There was no money to paint the house
but, soon, she would be vivid as sunset.

Cutting the Cord

Your long silence
You could be dead.
But, so could I.

Awake alternatives a stately reel
in quarter time. The fiddler
switches to a dirge and a
rotating paceline parades
through places I have lived.

It passes your door, pauses.
You do not emerge, not even
for the cymbals, not even
for the hurdy gurdy man.

New York October


We spend the equinox together
testing, toes frozen in puddles,
testing if I can live in
darkness, on streets of quiet except
for the trash collector and the
cries of pimps beating the last few
pennies from crack whores.

You have already rejected my
sunrise. It made you squint and plead
for inner corridors and musty Victorian
drapes and carved doors locked with
fobbed keys.

We share a $2.95 breakfast special at
Moondance.  You pay the check.
I leave a $5 tip before I dive into the light.

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Waiting for the Rapture

You tell me,
with a certainty I envy,
what you'll change,
what you’ll do:
Stay awake,
watching the clock click random numbers,
as the ducks,
a family of old Muscovies,
Gramps and Tricky and Jeanette and
Ambrose, who has only part of one foot
because feral cats ate the rest,
curl up under the tree next to
the retention pond filled with
fish hiding under the algae
to avoid becoming cormorant breakfast,
southwest breeze rippling the moonlight reflection.
You'll stay awake while I sleep, half on top of you,
just like every other night.
"Not a blessed thing different," you say.
"Not a blessed thing."

Glass Slivers and Glue

Ship in a bottle, relic
Of a visit to a whaling museum, relic
Of a relationship once
as whole as the spigot,
small piece hidden
under the carved wooden stand,
bottle turned to conceal
its unwholeness.

Glass slivers and glue
Applied with fine brush
toothpick
canting needle
But all the precision
Concentrated in his fingertips
Cannot make one
That which is broken.

Tommy Salami

Unaccompanied, she wanders into
The children’s room,
Violating rules written and unwritten
But the Librarian doesn’t stop her.
She wanders into
The children’s room
Takes a seat at the low table
Opens books at random
Disarranging the piles.
The eighth book, familiar to tears,
Scarred into her memory,
Tale of a lost child,
abandoned
taken by strangers
rejected
returned to the grocery store.
over and over,
until he is claimed by his
rightful mother and
carried home to tea.
She has no child to carry home
And brews her tea with the
Warm salt water streaming from her eyes.

It is closing time. 
The Librarian asks if she would prefer muffins or
toast for breakfast tomorrow

Vacation 1963

No matter how much gas you put in the tank,
it does not mend a broken piston.
Two or three or four or five days for a
replacement, here on the northeast side
of We-Got-Lost, Canada,
or a local farmer might maybe make
alterations to a tractor engine
sufficient reshaping for a
Sturdy American Sedan, crammed
full of adults, teens and one
small child, who wonders if the bats
flying against the window
are vampires and if they
break that window,
will they kill her?

The small child, wrapped
smaller still, huddles under the
bed, so she can’t see those
fluttering wings or hear the high
pitched squeaks, just like she
hid in the backseat footwell
to avoid her brothers’ pinches.

Perhaps the farmer can reshape her
small enough to box her
and ship her
home.