I find her this way

face drawn in deep concern, something being turned over in her mind -- the memory of a lost loved one? pain over a relationship in transition? I find her this way in Walgreen's, feet set apart, body pulled back, staring at the chocolate rack in the candy aisle.

end of an era

My last day at the office,
trying to say goodbye to callers,
lying, saying,
"Au revoir" instead.

Scribble notes to myself on the backsides of used notebook paper --
RE: autobiography --
make it true, but make it sad....
No,
make it sadder than sad...but funny!

Lettie calls
three times,
once to talk about her cats and then to say goodbye,
a second time to say goodbye again,
a third, to hear me say, "Hello, this is Marc..." and then hang up.

I am reading a poem out of "The Big Book of Daniel".
I read, "Didn't I, your thief of thieves, your dream thief,
Share sleepless nights, mumble in the moonlight,
'Reach for the sky?'"

sparkler

There is something intimate
about holding a sputtering, silver sparkler
while on your balcony
at night,
alone,
on the 4th of July.

My case manager had put the idea in my head –
“No plans for the 4th?
Come on, Marc,
light a sparkler or something.”

Truth is, at 44,
I had never lit one.

When we were kids
(it always starts with “when we were kids”, doesn’t it?,
as if past parental negligence could explain
why we are lame today.)
When we were kids,
my sister and I weren’t allowed sparklers,
not even matches;
no snap dragons, let alone bottle rockets…

(…so of course only my best friend knew of my pyrotechnical propensities,
honed in the back yard on the stones
with wispy, flying Kleenex’s, alive with flame, floating toward the house,
and little plastic cupfuls of kerosene spilt over the rocks and then set afire...)

Even a mama’s boy can get his hillbilly on at age 44 –
let that pyro out of the closet in a little 4th of July tribute,
share a moment with his inner child
on the balcony
with his lone starlight spewing against the darkness,

coincidentally,
at a time in his life when his love has finally become a thing to explore,
sweet strange strawberry
to be kissed
before tasted.

yeah, yeah boys

yeah, yeah boys

boys don’t really know
the secret of their wanting,
of summer girls in jean shorts
with long, chestnut hair
and sweat propped on their upper lips

but they do know that Aslan
and the Beatles
and expensive whiskey, stolen by the thimbleful
from Dad’s unlocked liquor cabinet
hold them…
(tumbling somersaults down
ravines they were warned to stay clear of)
…eye level with the mystery.

The Rescuing

You couldn’t force it in your life,
couldn’t change her for all your might,
your wisdom wasted, your heart fated
to scorn of angels, to fading light

Her own self grown older
her colors grown bolder,
you didn’t say what you needed
in the thousand times you told her

Name your poison,
choose your weapon
night, it reckons,
your voice, it beckons you home

You are the one this night will change
not the world, not its ways, not hers,
but for certain
your own

at the frequency of unmade babies

the naked branches of trees
float, reflected in the fluid
of forest pond,
the panorama of sky
drifts in the retina of a young man
thrown out into the world

by a father, wasting his allotment of humanity

couch-surfing in friends' basements;
he often walks the woods as penance
for faults not his own



but today,

stoned to the bone and amazed,

vibrating at the frequency of unmade babies

in the flux of womb waves,

of amniotic nirvana,

his awareness opens

to the scintillating energy around him,

a sparrow alights on a tree branch…



he stops

to count his breaths;

he deliberates

and then smiles…

he is remembering a time

when he was not breathing

as we do,

with lungs greedy and isolate,
when his heart was beating
in synch with another's,
with a mother’s,
to the rhythm of the Universe,
when all was well,
when she still knew possibility
and could feel
pain

OUT

Home bound

Stone ground

Laughing til it’s holy

Loving life only

One way down

From the upper room,

Climbing out

Your father’s womb,

All that noise

All that crying

Pop stars mop bars

Wrong way moon down a one way tomb

The light can’t see

The fingertip feel

Itself, it’s sealed

It sells

Like sex on Sunday,

Gloria Mundy,

Solomon Grundy

Driving a Hundai

One more word --

third eye groping,

And heaven opens --

OUT,

I am out,

Inside out

No doubt,

No dust clouds

Hanging over me

And I burn and am free

In the strange, incidental truth of it.

Driving through the Bronx

Driving through the Bronx









Driving through the Bronx,

parks run for a couple of miles,

rolling woodlands and open fields

in a 500 foot strip along the freeway, slumped

beside broken buildings,

piles of projects,

products of some god’s idea

of a joke

or of a tentative mercy –

house the poor, but don’t keep them safe or happy…



And the poverty and the crime

are hidden from the night

in daytime, a deluge of light

just past a week of bad rain

and overgrown anxieties

and domestic pain

skulkers

They skulk

And that is the only way to describe it.

Cats at night,

Homeless and home-free,

Prowling the Universe, the hood,

The protectorate of Isis,

They, pussy-footing down driveways

Across street ways;

What is their point, what are they trying to say

Why do they look at me that way?...



…Like I’m crazy

Well, it’s not my idea

to fawn over the cute little f'ing things, “Well, HEY there, cutie. Well, HEY there,”

As if I were talking to a one year old child;

It is they who cull this ninnyish salutation from me,

They who make me feel like a warm mammal in pajamas,

They who, concurrently, make me feel like…



…I am an affront to sanity, talking to stupid, skulking, prowling, pussyfooting,

Conniving, feline, fraulein, fornicating, free-basing, drug-smuggling, embezzling,

adulterers!, adulterers!, MURDERERS!!

They think they’re so fucking intelligent,

Pretending they know what the hell I’m saying, what I’m thinking,

Then looking at me with necks haughtily cocked back a fraction of an inch,

With eyes appalled,

never thinking to validate me in my insatiable hunger to feel okey-dokey.



Well, all I want, after all, is just to pet them.

But they spot it. They sense the neediness. Run off like beauty queens

From an old pimp.

Not so unintelligent at all really.

Self-protection. Intuitive creatures, indeed.



The short of it is, she’s gone,

And I dreamt about her last night,

Petting her, she on her back, pawing my hand.



And if I would have only held it together in 1999,

If I wouldn’t have kept cutting my wrists, I’d have kept that apartment,

Not had to give my poopy-butt,

my black cat Audrey,

up to the APL for adoption

or for slaughter.

haiku for Nenette

Nenette, subject of the film "Nenette" is a rather large, 40-year-old orangutan. Bored-seeming and coyote-spirited, she looks out on the passers-by at the Paris zoo.





you laze on the cross
of your daily lassitude,
orangutan-Christ

objets d' desire

I will be trying to post at least a few poems a week, to see if that increases readership. I think it's a worthy experiment, and certainly a harmless one, as I have a lot of old poems unread by anyone besides myself.

temple of ants

hear the chanting of clacking pincers,

guiding the way to

bits of broken pretzel,

crumbs from Hostess Twinkies,

sugary goop from a root beer Dum-Dum

all dropped by a small child

wending his way home, not wanting

to lose the trail back

out to the world



and the ants marching home,

with offerings for the One,

the mother,

never breaking free from the womb,

the scent of the great mother,

larger in her fecundity

than 20, 30 male workers,

fragile in her vulnerable

centrality

to life under ground

to the mound

to the hearts of thousands,

to the health of devoted followers

running unpatterned unpatterns

through sand, through soil,

through composting matter

and constant, exacting chatter

first blue

first blue
written one morning -- about the process of sun rising






a taint of quavering navy,
blue of ghosts and blue of dark, sad thoughts

the part of the brain that distinguishes color,
discerns an infinite shades of azure,

the flight of birds
against the punctured sky,
the inception of creation
at first blue light

a palpable powder-blue, incurably rising now,
a baby-boy-blanket blue, a faded blue-jean blue,
a sentient hue



it knows its own self,
and it may know me

better than I do

leaving Sarasota

Written in ATL (Atlanta airport) after leaving my Mom and Dad in Sarasota, my Mom, in the hospital.




ATL,
courage, brief
candle,
out-out,
come together,
nothing short of Apocalypse
could tear us apart,
but it will
because
all things must pass,
all matter degrade,
dissolve,
to the finest essence, to the poorest street-corner hustler,
to the thing inside,
the soul that hides
waiting for us
in our paper-bag coffins

some bombs are good bombs

some bombs
are good bombs,
the ones that don't go off,
for instance,
or the ones that are left incomplete
on the assembly line,
the factory workers
gone
to celebrate
the Armistice

long wait

long wait

for infinity to end



might as well wait

for her mind

to change

or for your heart

to choose another,

for your mother

to stop loving you



better to accept

what will not change

as fixed,

the rotation of the Earth,

the tilt of its axis,

things that can be tested

and measured,

meeting the standards

of infallible science



yet there will always be anomalies,

those places where the Universe bends

such that 1+1=3,

where infinity ends,

and heart’s mend,

our love, a hypothesis

that has been proven correct

more

more





more –

more more

more less

more sex

more less sex

more renunciation

more meditation

more self-abnegation

more excruciation

more ascetic bliss

more nothingness

more suchness

four more lines of this

more stigmata

more zenyatta mondatta

more holy Madonna

more nirvana

not much to say

my mind --

not much to say,

to sing



unbring this

conflict,

undo its

denouement,



arms entwined,

a mass of struggle,

pushing,

urging

upward, inward



no dawn

for a sleepless night,

no day --

too much light,

nothing ventured,

nothing right