POEM: Storytelling (1)

Posted 30 August, 2010 in Family, My poems, Poetry

Storytelling

telling stories in our hotel room
keeping my game face on
my Superman fights a giant robot
John’s defeats a huge gorilla
Bernie’s Man of Steel takes on a fire monster
he’s tired so he forgets
sometimes his villain is a robot, too
I’m wearing a necklace made of Kryptonite
my powers are fading
keeping my game face on so they won’t notice
never expected this hotel room
never expected the hurricane
and yes, that’s a metaphor
what kind of kit do you pack for a storm of rejection?

Another poem accepted (0)

Posted 24 August, 2010 in My poems, Poetry

I’m happy to announce that an updated version of my bicycling poem “this two-wheeled life” will appear in the next issue of Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac. I’ll post details here when it comes out, which will likely be in October.

POEM: Life Is Whirling Around Us (2)

Posted 20 August, 2010 in My poems, Poetry

I wrote this poem after the Third Thursday Poetry Reading tonight, based on a comment Dan Wilcox made during the reading as the sound of sirens faded on the street outside.

Life Is Whirling Around Us

While we are reading poetry,
an elderly woman in a flower-print dress
is clutching her chest in a kitchen on Hamilton Street
she knocks over the pitcher of cream she’d just poured
for the cup of coffee she’ll never get around to drinking

While we are reading poetry,
he finally gins up the nerve to lean toward her
and she leans toward him and the moment
they both spent the whole night thinking about
is even better than they’d thought it would be

While we are reading poetry,
the passing sirens are responding to a cigarette
left unattended in a bed already stained with cheap wine
as flames lick the newspaper he hadn’t really wanted to read
but had fished out of the trash can anyway

While we are reading poetry,
the newest father in Albany feels his knees weaken
and his heart grow three sizes as the doctor
places his crying daughter in his arms
and the man turns to show her to his wife

While we are reading poetry,
a kid from Sioux Falls is taking his first major-league at-bat
in a city he’s never been to, in front of a crowd of strangers
and back home his mom is wiping her eyes – and so is his dad –
as everyone he’s ever met gathers around the family television

While we are reading poetry,
a housewife is discovering a stack of letters
she never would have found except that she’d finally decided
to clean her husband’s dresser drawers all the way to the backs
and now she’s hunched over sobbing on the suddenly massive bed

While we are reading poetry,
a kid is coming in the door from his job bagging groceries
to find a letter in a fancy envelope from the college
he’d applied to without telling anyone
he runs up to his room to open it behind his closed door

We are reading poetry while
life is whirling around us, depositing the ore
we’ll mine for the next stanza, filling the good earth
with a rich lode of the precious materials we’ll find
with lamps mounted on our helmets, down there in the dark

Two of my poems featured at Poets For Living Waters (2)

Posted 18 August, 2010 in My poems, Poetry, Politics & Activism

I’m pleased to announce that “The Last Piece Of Ice Under The Sky” and “deepwater horizon” are now featured at Poets For Living Waters, a poetic response to the oil crisis in the Gulf.

POEM: Tennessee Horizon (0)

Posted 5 August, 2010 in Audio Poems, My poems, Poetry

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Tennessee Horizon

I am a little bit in love with everyone, including you
and this Tennessee horizon will no let me go.

Who is the giver of names for the things we most cherish?
In the dawn light I can’t see you clearly enough

to know whether you are crying or maybe that’s the rain.
It’s raining in everything I write.

I could take shelter in you, if only time is a circle
and I’ll have this all to do again.

Tennessee is a terrible beauty and you are a fleeting gift.
Whosoever has cause why this couple should not be joined,

let him speak now. I loved you in the dim and bright,
in the thick silences and the sticky-sweet mornings.

Sailors always knew the world was round
because ships disappeared over the horizon.

That’s how I knew it was time to go.
I’m still a little bit in love with you and with Tennessee

and with this dawn light and with this rain.
If you let me go, I’ll come back to you

because time is a circle
and the world is round.

POEM: I never heard Buddy Bolden say a goddamned thing (3)

Posted 2 August, 2010 in Audio Poems, Jazz, Music, My poems, Poetry

Listen to this poem using the player above.

The music in the audio version of the poem is “Buddy Bolden’s Blues” performed by Sidney Bechet.

I never heard Buddy Bolden say a goddamned thing

never saw Count Basie swing
never felt Duke love me madly
never heard Prez bend a note so sadly
never saw Miles though I was alive
never watched Mingus struggle to survive
never danced round and round with Monk
never moved to Lockjaw’s roundhouse funk
never smelled the flower in Billie’s hair
never tasted Coltrane’s thickly burning air
never swung my girl to Chick Webb’s drums
never stared amazed at Tatum’s thumbs
never laughed as Ella made up the words
never cried as Lacy called down the birds
never asked Jackie what made him tick
never nursed Charlie when he was sick
never bopped when Dizzy beed
never copped what Dexter’d need
never thought they had it made
never forget a note they played

POEM: dust to dust (0)

Posted 29 July, 2010 in Audio Poems, My poems, Poetry

Listen to this poem using the player above.

dust to dust

ours is not to wonder why
though of course we do wonder
why?
because we like you
and when we say we, we are speaking royally
as in screwed blued tattooed
an indelible mark that reminds one –
or more –
of who one is and what one was and why
are such pretensions necessary?
it’s OK to say “me” and “I”
and to cry for spilt milk
ours is both to do AND die
I never understood the “or”
as if the doing could avoid the dying
when all light collapses into the black hole
in the center of it all
nothing can escape
all lights falls as night falls the light falls
as falls Wichita so falls Wichita Falls
and Niagara Falls and Sue falls
if she’s not careful
ours is to do and to die and to wonder
to stumble over coffee tables
on the way to the bathroom
when the rest of the house is sleeping
even our mouse
even the king’s mouse
and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men
will return to ash when their chips are cashed in

POEM: What I Would Give For What We Had (1)

Posted 27 July, 2010 in Audio Poems, Family, My poems, Poetry

What I Would Give For What We Had

In Lenox, Massachusetts, on the picturesque corner
of Main and Housatonic Streets,
is a building with walls made of butter-yellow brick.

Looking up from the sidewalk to the second floor,
you can see the windows
through which my family used to see the world.

There was a drop ceiling in the den that gave way
under the weight of rainwater,
dousing my grandfather as he removed a sodden panel,

standing on a chair to get a better grip, while lightning
lit the windows of the pharmacy below.
There is a shop that sells art photos and gourmet chocolate

where the garage used to be. “Home again, home again
jiggety jig,” my grandmother would say
every time. Back when she used to ride in the car, back when

she used to have places to go. I am so old I can remember her
driving herself, the modern woman, cigarette
fashionably cradled by elegant fingers, red nails catching

the sun that elsewhere lit trees on our famous hills.
It was only in the leaving that I realized
the loss, only in the black-and-white grandeur of deco

living rooms and dancing at the Crystal Ballroom.
Now I would trade anything for that place,
that time, those days when a street corner was the world
and all I knew was safe and protected within it.

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