Memorial Day

All the family, except one
gathered in the back yard
in a put-together tent
providing shade but not
stopping the flys or the
cigarette smoke breeze
blowing accross the years
seeing all these freckled
sisters, more serious than
they should be givien up
on forging a newness in their
30s, 40s, and 50s, just the
same as if they were all children.

I, an outsider, newcomer
and first-timer soaking in
the show, little ones falling,
crying, and laughing, too much
food, and Bachi Ball, Oldest
sister, with no children of
her own, spending all her time
with neices and nephews giving
their parents time to worry
about the emphasima smoking
refusal to see a doctor, teen
boys fleeing the scene after
their duty is done, leaving a
silence of paper cups, potato
chip crumbs and mustard
in memory of fallen soldiers

Wicked little sklitcher

He proceeds to skitch and he sklitches
and nobody knows where he sklitched
He's a wicked little critter with a sklitchy bar
and he lays a patch on the tar

He shoots the puck to Bobby Orr
He shoots he scores wicked little sklitcher
and Hamelsklitch is used and abused
He's a wicked little sklitcher with a sissy bar
and he lays a patch on the tar

-HF-

The Empire State Building is Big and Blue, Sklitching Happy Blood Spilled over the Sad Ground

HI Hello
I'm making a grappling hook
Out of business cards and rubber bands
I'll let you know how it goes
When I'm done

What?
What should I say?

He's a big George Washington Head
I don't know.
The most awsome thing I've ever built
They're cool.

-Henry-

Fungicide

I have an itchy foot that usually bothers me
For some reason I have neglected my left
Not just a bug bite or a rash from rubbing
But something spongy growing in between
Mostly white, but some reddish where I
Have scratched and shuffled and poked
I can scrape the cake of irritation well
But I cannot scrape off the itch and burn
That is somewhere deep under and down
Where no amount of rugburn can evict
An unwanted tennant from the Baltic of
My body and won't fork over the 6 bucks
So I find the 2% solution and begin the
Slow burn, controlled in the safety of the lab
If it persist, see the man and cross yourself
The lovely culture of athleticism not going
gracefully into that goodnight on the left

Penguin Sounds of the Deep Well

Deep, deep in the lounge of the ten o'clock well sippers
Veterans all, dusking on the dance floor and the bandstand
Sipping the one last drink, it tastes like twenty years ago
Cream upon cream that is now smooth as it ever was
Remember? It tasted so good you couldn't get enough
Now it goes down like nothing, but you remember the cream
When did we drink that stuff that changed our lives?
Sometime in the eighties I think, and nothing for it
Except to keep on searching for the home we left
Long ago somewhere deep in the milky sweet
lounge of the ten o'clock well sippers

Sincerely Cheerful (for Lisapie)

I was skipping through the flowers
breathing in the humid air
of early summer
dancing with sunbeams
smiling and carefree

My heart was overflowing with joy
the smell of verdant life
like the magic of a flowing
river of love swelling
with melted snow

I was singing in the glow of nature
dreaming my forgotten dreams
tears of joy welling up
to magnify the beauty
of the morning dew

Jessica's Special Poem

It was your birthday
It was a crappy day
at work anyway
but now in the post
morris pub with
sugar and alchohol
you are blooming
like a flower in the
warmth of ten o'clock
gator bating sportshine
firtilized with a shot
and a suck and some salt

In your thirtieth year
unhindered by the illusion of time
bursting forth with all the energy
of a twelve year old schoolgirl
squeeking over a friend's taste
in men, oddly spoken of in
the third person with a quick
nonsequitor to the frozen
diner of star-spangled
podunk reliving the
your glorious youth
of last week

Summer is nearly over
lady J
your petals drying into
a misty halo of spores
to be carried on the
coolbreeze to populate
the otherwise green
and boring lawns
of the world with
an unlikely deluge
of red and joyfully
noisy red daisies

In any event
I'm glad you were born

Globe

My globe is wrong
Neatly tilted with
Everything in its
Place solid now
No ripples in the
Ocean no crawling
Things and most
Notably no wind
Scarred with arcane
bits of Zimbabwe
U.S.S.R. (C.C.C.P.)
Elm Street and Tibet

My globe does not
Move the daily
Track of the sun
A fixed spotlight
On the birthplaces
Of Kunks, Vus
And Davidovas
Living now in the
Shady Twilight of
California unable
To return to thier
Countries that no
Longer exist

The Midnight Apparition

The swelling air of summer
Pressing on my heavy head
The weighing of a halo
Sinking in the swelling air

The feeling that I'm only
Waking in a useless bed
Insisting that I stay low
Squirming in the feeling there

The quieting of midnight
Falling like a block of lead
I'm resting in the faint glow
Sitting in the rocking chair

That's when the ghost of Summer
Ghost of Summer comes again
That's when the ghost of Summer
Comes around, comes around again

She's singing sweetly to me
Hearing voices of the dead
She's wispering soft and low
Fading in the failing light

In Between Ticks

My exotastic remulator
was pushing the red
when overoad went
into effect in my projetic zone

Switching to manual
I pugated the column
much to the astonishment
of bwildered council

If I am to be decrastinated
for deviation from the plan
then so be it, I will
accept my fate.

The Dedicated Few

The dedicated few
circled round
the last left standing
of fifty would-bes

The survivors
next year's crew
hard now
and ready for sound

The seeds are sewn
and watered daily
will I return to see
the ten year trees?

It doesn't matter
I have done my part

Wednesday (every wednesday)

The hard road
North and South
Every week
To do the right thing

My one true love
Cold as ever
My pride and joy
Warm as ever

Cold cash on
The end of my fork
I am reduced to
A walking Franklin

But not for long
My time is good
My tree bears fruit
It will be sweet

In 2014

When the Time Comes

Feel it wrapped around the
Dream you had when you were young
Feel the tar between your fingers
Silent cat has got your tongue

Feel it
Close your eyes and feel it

Hear it shouting in the
Hollow pipe that's echoing
Hear the voice repeat your mantra
No one hears the words you sing

When you stop to see the
Flower trembling in the wind
Don't you turn your head away you'll
Miss the dance beneath the skin

Feel it
Close your eyes and feel it

Leaving town tomorrow
Evening when the sun is low
Don't look back you won't be back now
Can't deny you have to go

Feel it
Close your eyes and feel it
And when the time comes
You'll know

When

My seat in the flickering light
The ragged pop of a bad cut
Spilling into the sidling chairs
Before the loves turned friends
Before the art house megaplex
Before my one true love at all
White spilling onto the faces
Blank unison of American culture
Waiting for the rolling credits
When I wore a wrist watch
And uncomfortable clothes

Now, I am far from home

Gutter Ball

My fingers are meant for something else
Sliding into cool holes, the wrong size
The dull chipped black of New Brunswick
Weighing on my upturned praying palm
Stepping in someone else's shoes faster
To the line where my plan begins to fail
A long undone lace creeps beneath my sole
Changing the glide and stride to a stumble
The too big holes escaping my grip midstride
To spin with wild abandon in the free air
A battle scar black smudge on the wood
Leads to the left and into the trenches
The low road home, no spoils of war
Unmoved, my enemies have nothing to fear

Friday the 13th

It is odd that the sight of something beautiful should make me sad.
A delicate and tender flower grows without my sunlight, without my soil.
I have stayed out of the garden all year long, distracted by other things.
Now, in Spring, I have returned with undue bravado to that very bloom.
The hammer of beauty falls heavy on the unwise, and harder than ever.
The flower cannot know that my absence has made it stronger.
That it is with love that my black thumb has been withheld.
I should not return like this to cast a poisoned look upon the very thing I love the most.

And so I will walk, and walk. Everywhere but the garden.

The Box

It is not that the box itself

contains no wonder, for it

is a thing of beauty that

contains my feelings

although they are not

perceived when it is opened

by those who are looking

they think I love emptyness

because they don't know

that I have a love

of the rather odd box itself

using it in roundabout ways

devoid of expressing normal

sentiments that I myself

would rather not expose

The Dark Road Ahead

It was just before daybreak
1971 when I pretended to sleep
so that my father would carry me
to the back seat of our Galaxy
I looked up through the window
to read the signs for the last time
"Turnpike" & "Howard Johnson's"
Stew's gas station, never to be seen
again, growing smaller, smaller
still, and then gone entirely.
I can't remember Stew's face
but I remember his missing
fingers and the chewing gum

The sun rose in a new state
and as the years wore on
I always wondered if it were
a dream, one day waking to
find that I was still three years
old, yearning to aggravate my
brother with a frog in my pocket
but the waking never came
and many days passed before
I dismissed the notion entirely
frowning on the sunset, looking
at the dark road ahead.

A History of Slippery Fish

I am not much of a fisherman
but here I am with a bobbing line
to reel as quickly or slowly
as I please

I was not much of a runner
falling behind in the cool light
of a winter's moon in the rain
falling, falling all the way

I was not much of a dancer
not knowing it was over
before it started, lead flowers
falling with a clunk, leaving town

I was not much of a suiter
too slow to catch the racing
rabbit, La chasee to much
like dancing with reluctance

I am not much of a fisherman
but here I am with a bobbing line
to reel as quickly or slowly
as I please

A disturbance on My Inner Plane

I was in a white space
There was nothing else
Completely endless
With no walls
or anything else
for reference

I could not tell
If i was moving
or standing still
No wind
No horizon

My homogeneous
world, timeless
for lack of differnce
Nowhere to go
Nothing to measure
No reason to think

But then

I imagined
A red dot
growing to
a spot
and this disturbed me

even though
I believed it was not real

Collecting My Bread from D.F.

I'm on 30th right now
I can come by and pick it up
Kansas, just north of Adams
Sorry to hear you're jobless
18 years and a "here's your hat"

In your Tuxedo
Oversized bowtie
Flirting with the rich
Going to Kansas City
No one would guess
It has come to this

Deep down, low down
Things are still moving
Hard to turn your unused wheel
That pride needs a little salt
Noon now, on..what is it now?
Thursday

You just gotta push on through.
Man
Push on through

May

Race run
Last inches
to break the line

Burnt detroit
Smoke trail
against the clock

Break up
Roll
out comes the flag

All for 5th