BREAKFAST WITH OATMEAL
It is a morning for coffee, eggs and bacon.
But since the doctor has forbidden me
the pleasure of life’s small vices,
I eat my hot oatmeal, grimacing as I wash it down
with bland, watery decaf.
Upstairs I hear my wife’s feet
shuffling towards the bathroom.
I read the morning paper while I finish my oatmeal,
passing over the bad news for the sports page,
then the funnies.
I hear the toilet flush just as I reach
Pearls Before Swine.
My wife stumbles into the kitchen
looking as if she might really be on the hunt
for some tasty brains.
I distract her with oatmeal and decaf.
The oatmeal looks very much
the way my brain feels most days.
As she sleepily spoons the mushed cereal
into her gaping maw,
it suddenly occurs to me
that as much as we’d all love
coffee, eggs and bacon,
most of the time,
we have to settle for oatmeal.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
A Comedy of the Absurd
Suppose a man awakens
some anonymous morning
and finds the world has slipped
into one of those off-off Broadway plays
where nothing makes sense
and everyone speaks
in melodramatic non sequiturs.
At first, he is confused
by what he sees,
it is as if the world has been
turned upside down and sideways.
He begins to fear he is losing his mind
and soon they will come
to lock him away.
But as the day goes by
and he becomes acclimated
to the rhythm of this strange,
Kafkaesque universe
he realizes that this is the way
the world has always been
and it is he who has been
out of step all this time.
Published in Poem, November 2009
Tonight's Feature
The clouds separate, like the drawing
Of the curtains at a movie theater
And the sky is suddenly flooded
With a cavalcade of stars.
Elizabeth Taylor as Cassiopeia
Lounges seductively upon her chair
Casting come hither glances towards
Steve Reeves’ Hercules who is locked
In mortal combat with the Hydra –
Special effects courtesy of Ray Harryhausen.
Kirk Douglas as Orion the Hunter
Pulls the string of his great bow
And sets fly a flaming arrow
That impales Ursa Major’s rump
Who rises up roaring and with one
Giant paw swipes the Big Dipper
From the sky, spilling a shower
Of shooting stars all across the sky.
A 1950’s science fiction rocket
Blasts past overhead,
Disguised as a satellite or an airplane,
But we know it’s an invasion
And only the teenagers down at the Soda Shop
Led, of course, by Steve McQueen
Can put a stop to their nefarious scheme.
Later, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
Traipse across the blue face of the moon
Then it’s intermission and the night
Is filled with burlesque popcorn boxes
And dancing hot dogs.
Published in California Quarterly, Spring 2010
Finding Home
How far will a bird fly to escape
Winters arctic display?
A thousand miles or two,
Following the same
Migratory pattern year after year.
Yet we are surprised when a man
Changes his skin to escape the past.
That the earth continues
Its seasonal cycles whether
We are here or not is miracle enough
Or that salmon know the way
Back upstream to their spawning pool.
We will never understand the conversation
Between the trees and the wind
Or how far we will travel
In our lifetime, a million miles
or only a dozen, so what can we
Ever hope to understand
Of our own lives?
That we always find our way home
Is miracle enough.
Published in Poem, May 2010
This Island of Tears
The moon rises over the twisting spirals
and minarets of the old gods.
It is the quiet solace of their
ancient sanctuaries that call me
from my hotel room to the streets below.
The warm tropical heat is like
stepping into a blast furnace
after the cool air conditioned climate
of the hotel, I can smell salt
from the sea just a mile distant.
A truck rumbles by, spraying me
with cold water from the evening’s rain.
Up and down the avenue,
hard muscled men with olive skin
gather on the stoops of tenements,
listening to loud, lively rap music
and chattering jovially in their
exotic, alien language. But I’m
the foreigner here, an intruder
in their world. I pass by silently,
a ghost tourist, keeping my eye
on the pavement at my feet.
There is a hint of agitation in the air,
a barely restrained sense of menace
in their posture and voices,
as if at any second they could explode
in a fury of fists and violence.
But they pay me no mind
and I soon pass by their neighborhood
into a narrow row of shops
and bars, leaking light
from open doors and plate windows.
An old woman with two snaggled teeth
and a scarf wrapped around her head
offers to tell my future
for ten dollars American.
But I already know my future.
It is behind me in the shadows
left by my passing.
My feet come to a stop on the stairs
of a looming, majestic cathedral.
The stained glass depicts St. Michael
brandishing a flaming sword.
I reach out and grasp the ornate handle
of a huge oak door.
But the door refuses to open.
Heaven has denied me entrance.
The moon drifts behind a cloud
darkening the street around me.
I can travel no further.
Published in Ship of Fools, Fall/Winter 2010
Disclaimer
No one was injured
in the making of this poem.
Whole families were not
wiped out by computer guided smart verbs.
No soldiers were fragged by friendly nouns.
No innocent bystanders were accidentally
gunned down by stray adjectives
from some random drive-by.
No women were beaten to death
by jealous prepositions
and absolutely no children
were harmed by conjunctions.
All stunts were performed
by professionally trained
parts of speech
to bring this poem to you
100% injury free.
Published in Poem, November 2010
Work for the Day
The way the twisted cords of yellow twine cut
into the fingertips, the weight of the body
as it turns and tosses
the tight packed bales from the wagon.
On the ground, your partner stacks
as fast as you can throw. Sweat
seeps down your back
into the crack of your pants.
You can smell your own
clean, sweet odor like a field of timothy
drying in the hot sun.
The cows keep watch, their heads
dangling over the fence, wondering
what curious creatures we humans are
to be expending so much effort in such
a seemingly meaningless task.
Three hundred bales by noon,
unloaded and neatly stacked
to the barn’s wooden rafters.
You go inside for a quick lunch
of a cold meat sandwich and a bottle
of icy beer downed in a single
long, ecstatic drought
that leaves your head
slightly swimming and pleasantly buzzed.
All the long afternoon stretches before you
like those endless rows of Indiana corn.
Sighing, you push your ball-cap
back on your sopping forehead and right then
the evening seems a distant promise,
but you know the day
will not be long enough
for all that’s left to be done.
Originally appeared in The Rockford Review, Winter/Spring 2011
Rattling the Bones
onto the scarred mahogany table,
bends his bald head to study the results.
The dry, scaled skin stretched
thin as vellum across his glistening
black dome which begins to bob
up and down like a mesmerized cobra.
He mutters something in unintelligible Cajun,
looks up and tells me,
with a wide toothless grin,
that I’m under a curse
that’s why bad things keep happening to me.
He tells me it’s a generational curse;
something my grandfather
or great grandfather did a hundred years ago
is the cause of all my misfortune.
He hands me a small bag
called a gris gris,
that smells of earth and herbs,
tells me to wear it close to my heart
but if I really want to be free
I have to bury an egg
in a cemetery at midnight.
He takes my forty dollars
and sends me away.
Beneath me I can feel
the bones of my ancestors
rattling their innocence.
Published in Abbey, 2011
Necromancy
his sins and transgressions.
He’s Catholic and didn’t receive last rites.
I tell him to shut up, it’s too late,
his body is now an empty bag of meat,
his soul having flown the coop, crossed over,
gone to that great Disneyland in the sky.
Things got weird from there.
The moon was casting a double helix
and a red caul covered the sky.
The cadaver of a young girl cried
that such a thing hasn’t been seen
since Romulus Augustus was deposed by Odoacer.
I should have removed her tongue when I took her eyes.
Now she thinks she’s Cassandra
issuing dire warnings of the apocalypse.
All around me, the dead begin to babble excitedly,
trying to climb off the tables where
I had so carefully arranged them.
I command them to get back,
but like sulking children they start to whine
and pout, stamping their feet,
demanding to go outside to gaze
at the portentous moon.
The rebellion continues until
I threaten to remove their brains.
I think I really need a new line of work
Published in Abbey, June 2011
The Magic Guitar
Itinerant, John Wanderer
strums his guitar all day long,
a penny a song, a dime a dance
while Napoleon Socrates prances along
in time to the music.
When they have collected all they need,
John takes Socrates by the lead
and off they ride
to the next town down the line.
And all the while John continues
to sing and play.
One chord changes night to day,
another and Spring become Fall
and still another turns the blue sky gray.
Every so often he frets a special chord,
a secret and awesome chord
that he and he alone knows.
And John, who is neither young nor old
any more than he is really a man
but something beyond our reckoning,
plays the song which will bring
the universe to an end.
Published in Storyteller, Spring 2011
The Hypothetical Suicide
On the day I suicided, I woke early,
showered, shaved and put on my best suit,
went down to the kitchen,
sat at the table and ate breakfast as usual.
After cleaning the dishes,
I went into my office to kill myself.
The day after I suicided,
I took a walk around the neighborhood
and found the world
still spinning on its axis,
the sky in its proper place and the sun
staring its accusing eye down on my guilty head.
The neighbors averted their gazes
ashamed to see a suicide, so recently dead,
up and walking about.
When I got to work
someone else was doing my job.
“We really didn’t expect you in today,”
they said, “the dead are normally so unreliable.”
At home, I found my wife
had remarried and given birth to triplets.
“I’m so sorry dear,” she said,
“I couldn’t stand being a widow.
See what wonderful children my new husband and I have.
But you can stay in the attic if you like.”
I went to my attic and contemplated suicide.
But I had done that yesterday
and hated to be redundant.
Instead, I lay down on a bed of nails
and slept until I forgot I was ever alive.
Published in Chiron Review, Issue #95 Summer 2011
Among the Many and Ulysses Redux
AMONG THE MANY
Outside my bedroom,
the first robin warbles a canticle to spring.
We have traversed the snowy catacombs
of dark February and come out safely on the other side.
Only a stubble of wintry frost remains as a reminder
how like a woman is March, nurturing and loving
yet capable of such violent storms.
In the dim,
early dawn light, the sun and moon
stare at each other from opposite sides of the sky.
I flourish my hat and bow, offering a polite
“Top of the morning to you, Madam Moon.”
And for one brief moment, I am
acutely aware of my place in the universe.
The only sentient being
in all this vast, ever expanding galaxy
who is in this exact spot,
who is at this exact time
thinking these exact thoughts.
Then the moment is gone and I am
free of such existential philosophies.
Once again I am
a happy, ignorant fool among the many,
just another Spring drunk imbecile
out for a walk on a pleasant March morning
while the sun sits in lotus, a grinning
yellow Buddha hanging in the eastern sky.
ULYSSES REDUX
Has it been twenty years since you went away?
And not a word in all that time – no phone calls,
No letters, not even a postcard. Been exploring
The nine circles of Dante’s Hell to hear you tell.
Did you really believe time would freeze
Like a snapshot, awaiting your return before resuming
Its relentless motion. The old gang that used to gather
On Saturday nights down at the Sunoco for beer
And poker have all gone on with their lives
And your sweetheart has married your enemy
Who sleeps in the bed that was meant for you
And the child that should have been yours
Calls him “daddy.” So tell me then,
Do you still love your Penelope
Now that you’re home at last?
"Among the Many" and "Ulysses Redux" originally appeared in Poem, May 2011
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