chapbook sneak peak -- "breathing out"

he flew into the bus shelter,
blinded
by his passion for flight,

crashed into the glass,
hit the ground
and hopped, flapped,
stunned.

he offered no resistance
as I lifted him into my palm,
and changed plans
so I could take him
to the Nature Center
on the #26.

he just sat there,
warm and pulsing,
yielding.

the bus driver,
when he saw him cradled in my hand,
shooed me away,

but that was alright;
I laid him on the ground
near a sprite little tree
on a breezy, park foliage-island nearby
and walked away.

She Heals with a Word -- my second chapbook

I will be creating a new chapbook soon, filled mostly with what I call my more "pretty" or "healing" poems. They will be twenty pages at five dollars and proceeds may be going to a mission for orphans in Kenya. If you'd like a chapbook, please contact me at jazzcoffeefreak@yahoo.com as I am only creating about 50 and will make more if need demands.

when I am difficult

I actually don't feel this way more than 25% of the time.



Indifferent,
I turn away
from the levers
that control the Heavens.

One pull,
one crank,
and you could thank me
for making your life better.

Yet I refuse
to put myself in the mood
that contorts my face
into a warm smile,
that lightens my limbs
to the point where
they raise of themselves
to reach those levers.

I am indifferent, but I am not selfish.
I am simply sluggish with melancholy,
lacking vision to see any
hope
in any venture ventured today,
in any attempt at the supernal,
whether lost or gained.

"donkey" and "tantric healing" (two haiku)

first, it's the carrot,
then, Friend, the whip: Dear Donkey,
find your true longing



I wanted you to
heal my heart through tantric love.
You did, you said, "No."

What She Knew

Bless Mark Hopkins soul for wanting to publish this in the Cleveland Reader, while his dratted foil (okay, Nick's a cool guy too) passed it over. I remember things like this to the minutest detail. I can tell you how it felt to be there. this happened circa -- 29 years ago, written four years ago.





The kid had skipped out of practice
and had just arrived, halfway through, out of uniform.
But with one sentence to coach Terrengo,
all was forgotten.

“There’s a girl choking by the lower field.”

We had never seen coach T. run,
let alone run so fast.
He was a huge guy, in height weight and muscle.
He just flew down that hill
and the other coaches managed to keep us up there
until everything was alright.

We followed down then
to find her on a bench,
turning back from blue to peach,
coach T. standing next to her.
The story was that he’d
Heimliched a piece of gum from her throat.

The next day,
I looked over at her a couple of times
in Spanish class.
She sat there in a grey sweatshirt,
and I remember noticing how frail
and, for the first time,
how pretty she looked.

The drone of Ms. Coffey’s voice
hovered over the room,
odd and dull,
while Ginny gave off this aura of humility,
real and palpable,
as if she knew something
it would take years and years
for any of us
to understand.

ZION

Gee, another Cleveland transit one right after another. An old one but one I like. At least I'm learning how less to use commas.





Hands-down,
the
most
beautiful
scene,
with soundtrack,
in Cleveland –
riding
the Red Line
over the Cuyahoga mouth,

graffiti
unfurls
down below,
buildings emblazoned
with words,
misspelled, meaningless,
non-existent non-sequiturs –

ZION
DIZER
GERL

not all of which I understand,
but they seem to belong,
along with
this river of suggestion,
the dirt and grime,
the hands of ghosts
worked to the bone,
the businesses,
restaurants and clubs,
trying to keep hold,
boats,
towing freight
out to the lake,

and me,
30 yards up, looking down,
humming, REM’s “S. Central Rain”,
to myself.

transit, TV and graffiti

an old one which I think I read once at a poetry reading then never shared with anyone else. self-inventory -- I put the boring ones in books, send the boring ones to contests, and generally keep the good ones to myself. must remedy that. may that this be a start --




houses appear behind hills;
snow lauds, litters brush-strewn narrow ways;
brush, brown and bright red,
usurps like a tangle of bodies in Purgatory,
longing, reaching for release.

warehouses graced by graffiti,
schoolhouses,
bored spouses behind hidden windows,
TV screens onto TV queens
watching machines that make them forget,
carrying a nonsense of history,
a litany of
the banal, the barren, the crude, the crud,
clogging memories down to the pixels.

and more graffiti, more,
“VERBS” and “DANK”
and things I can’t even make out or understand.
the sides of sitting trains and abandoned factories
where it is scribbled,
comprise a television for our time,
for two decades of RTA rides.

and in this space, these artful young hooligans
are the producers,
are the stars,
and the set designers
of shows for which
the commercials are the show itself.

but no money flows in
or out
of their hands;
barren of all but a glimmer of hope,
their hearts starve for the doing,
for the living, and the aching;
and no respect remains
for the walking of other peoples’ straight lines.