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October 11, 2020

AN E-TALE

I have been repeatedly told
by many that in this hyper-
electronic age, the best way, if
nit the only way, for the little guy
to buy and sell is online.

I’m not one to argue so
I decided to try it, and quickly
learned that Amazon had
cornered the market on sales
so Craigslist was my best hope.

I also learned that those willing
to pay anything near what an item
was worth didn’t bother with
Craigslist, but I didn’t care so I
listed under curb alerts, free

to anyone who wanted it, and
I stood by the curb for hours,
watched cars pull up slowly,
then drive quickly away, and
my heart is still unclaimed, searching.

October 10, 2020

STRANGE NIGHT

It was a most unusual night
in the city, and a surprising number
of its residents took note of that
which in itself was unusual.

By 2:00 A.M., those awake and
those who had awakened
strained to hear it, but there
was nothing at all, no sounds

to which they had become
so accustomed, and some imagined
they had been transported
from the city to its suburbs.

The EMTs grew nervous,
the trauma center staff laughed
nervously at the lack of gunshots
and the shock of the silence.

October 9, 2020

IN THE WETLANDS

Walking through a nature preserve
like Wakodahatchee Wetlands you
must always keep a sharp eye.

The birds are everywhere, they are
unavoidable and even the alligators,
imagining themselves coy are

soon enough easily recognized,
snouts appear just above the surface
wary eyes scanning the shore.

Here you are also surrounded
by poems, but they are far more
able to hide, among the eggs

the wood stork carefully tends,
in the purple iridescence
of the gallinule, trailing behind

the uplifting wings of the great
blue heron as she lifts skyward,
and in the spray of feathers

the snowy egrets dangle always
drawing our eyes like a bride’s
diaphanous veil, but we, at

a loss for words in the midst
of all of this, cannot see them
awaiting us to give them flight

October 8, 2020

SENSELESS

You place the shroud
over my head,
it is dark, but I
can still touch her cheek.

You cut off
my fingers, leaving
only stumps, but I
can still taste her tears.

You pull out
my tongue, there is
only bitterness, but I
can hear her morning laugh.

You drown me
in a sea of noise
nothing breaks the din, but I
smell her sweetness.

You fill the room
with the acrid smoke
tearing at my nostrils, but I
can remember her love.

Publshed in Mehfil Issue #8, August 2020
https://medium.com/mehfil/two-poems-2f60ad081ee7

October 7, 2020

POETS GATHER

One deep and abiding beauty of dreams
is that it is entirely logical for
Marina Tsvetaeva to be engaged
In an animated discussion with
Corso and Ginsberg where none will
acknowledge that the world they
wrote and imagined is a total mess.

Over in the corner, Mandelstam and
Reznikoff have agreed that for eternity
every game of chess they play will
result in a stalemate, if only
to drive Brodsky to distraction, that
and having Osip say he prefers
Reznikoff’s free verse translations
to Brodsky’s ponderous rhymes.

I am looking forward to a cup
of espresso with Sylvia Plath, but she
says here she only drinks single malt
Scotch until it’s at least 5 P.M.

October 6, 2020

MIRROR IMAGE

Each morning when I look
into the mirror I imagine
I see me, but of course that
is impossible, for in that moment
only the mirror sees me
and I see the mirror.

How deluded I must be
to assume that I look at all
like the mirror, but it is,
I know, just such delusions
that enable my sense of self,
and that is the grandest illusion.

A morning will come when I
look into the glass and nothing
is there or a face I have never
before seen and the mirror
will laugh, as will I, at this
game we have played for years.

October 4, 2020

A STEP TOO FAR

He knew, the minute he stepped off, that it wasn’t going to end well. He should have realized it two steps earlier, but hindsight was of little use to him now. He knew he had to keep looking up, to focus on the sky. He knew he had to hope it would be like entering a black hole, where the end is certain but time slows and almost seems to stop. And, he remembered, the laws of physics break down inside the event horizon. What he knew he could not do was look down and see the ground rushing up at him. Even when you are 11, walking off the garage roof was not a really bright thing to do, the dare by your friends notwithstanding.

October 3, 2020

AROMA

What I want, no, need actually,
is to remember the smells of youth.
The images I can recall, but they are
aged pictures, run repeatedly through
the Photoshop of memory, and
cannot be trusted only desired.

The old, half ready to fall oak,
in the Salt Lake City park had
a faint pungency that lingered
even as I departed my body as
the acid kicked in, and drew me
back from the abyss hours later,

and my then wife, cradling our
first born in the hospital bed,
the scent of innocence and sterility
that neither of us dared recognize
as a foretelling of our denouement.

Those moments are lost in the sea
of time, washed away from memory’s
shore, but the smell of a summer oak
still promises a gentle return to self.

October 2, 2020

SONGWRITER

Bob Dylan is, to the best of my knowledge,
the only songwriter to successfully rhyme
outrageous and contagious, which doesn’t
explain why I knew I could never be
a successful songwriter in this life.

The explanation is far simpler, it was when
Leonard Cohen served me tea and apricots,
said he hated the river even living in Montreal
and said I should pack off to Florida or
California if I wanted oranges, though he
said, if I ever visited China, if I’d see
where their oranges came from.

We’re all older now, Leonard is dead
and even Bob admits he’s not sure
he’s younger now, but he says, Bob that is,
that I need to get over keeping up
with the Joneses, because in the final
analysis, we are all Jones at the end.