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June 23, 2019

WHO WILL BE KING?

Tell me what you see, he says,
and be as precise as possible.
I suppose I see exactly what you see,
we are looking at the same thing,
at the same time, so how can it be
any different for me then you?
Are you seeing through my eyes?
He smiles, for if so, I’d like you
to get out of my head immediately,
it is already too crowded in here.
You have a pondering look, you probably
want to know why I would like
you tell me what you see.
See, I have only one working eye
and in the kingdom in which we find ourselves,
that hardly makes me King.

June 22, 2019

FOR THE BIRDS

I’ve always been a bird person,
perhaps it is just jealousy
their ability to fly unencumbered,
encased, to lift up by will alone.
Here it is all about water,
the Muscovy ducks waddling
up to me each morning, pleading
for the handout they should now know
will not be forthcoming, at least
when anyone else is around
to cast disapproving glances or worse,
and the coots, pairs swimming
in the fountain ponds are not ducks
they claim, we of the lobed toes
and flashes of white
between the deeply set eyes.
But above all it is the Egyptian goose
his old Jewish man clearing throat honk
that catches my ear and not
just any old Jewish man, but Billy
Crystal as Miracle Max, and I half
hope his partner warbles like Carol Kane.

June 21, 2019

TOUCH

I would reach out
in touch you
but as it is
my fingers
barely
reach the keyboard.
I would take
your picture
the next time
I see you, but
it would appear
instantly, no waiting
for someone to tell me
as you were merely
a blurred image
appearing days later
pulled from an envelope.
Perhaps I’ll leave
a posting on your
digital wall
and simply hope
you are still alive
somewhere just
out of reach.

June 20, 2019

OCCLUSION

After the stroke
he couldn’t remember
much, was the woman

in white who bathed him
his wife or someone
he slept with once

before he had gotten
married. Monogamy
was a word that he

remembered, though not
its meaning, or why he
had sworn to abide it.

When the aide brought
in the flowers, they smelled
familiar, like the odor

of capon slowly boiling
on the Sabbath stove.
He heard the concerto

small radio tinny, but it
sounded strange, gut
of cat sawed across strings

crying out against
the injustice of it all
and the chair against

the window, was it one
he sat on at the edge
of the stage, bowing

to the audience as
Mozart’s crescendo
still echoed in his ears.

First appeared in the May 2019 Issue of The Broadkill Review
June 19, 2019

HUH?

The problem with youth
isn’t that you misspend it,
or even don’t appreciate it
as it is happening, or even expect
it to go on forever, for those
would be the simplest hurdles
to leap even at your now advanced age.
The true problem with youth
isn’t even those around you,
grandchildren, high schoolers
that overrun the Starbucks near campus
are caught in the midst of it
while all you can do is jealously watch.
The ultimate problem with youth
is that you recall it so well,
the sights, sounds, the textures
but what you did last Thursday
you can’t recall for the life of you.

June 18, 2019

VERBIS, VERBIS, VERBIS

Whatever you do, do not open the closet in the back room. If you do, what would happen would rival a scene from countless bad comedies. Things pent up within would come rushing forth, a tidal wave that would certainly engulf you and leave you wishing you had never laid a hand on the closet door knob in the first place. So now that you have been forewarned, I will not be responsible for the consequences if you are foolish enough to ignore me. Just remember, I am a man of words and that closet is my repository.

June 14, 2019

STYX IT TO YOU

They clearly don’t get it
and odds are they never will.
They think perhaps prayer will work
or youth will provide some
sort of immunity, maybe
an executive decree, good
luck with that given the
swinging there to that old White House,
with the ridiculous spiked fence
in the middle of an avenue named
first state that’s actually a Commonwealth.
They can’t imagine I have a list
And all I do is make pickups
and drop offs, no thinking, no planning
just show up, tie up to the pier
and then it’s off down and across the River
all day and night, in and out
for a payment you ‘llonly make
begrudgingly, as if I care, for I
have a family to feed too, remember.