store

June 2, 2023

FORGIVE ME

There is always a certain level
of guilt when the Amazon
package arrives, as they did
almost daily, since I
mostly avoided stores
during the pandemic.
My guilt arises at the sight
of the face of the driver
rushing to leave the package,
leaping back on the truck,
knowing he is graded on
the speed at which he
completes the far too long run,
relieving himself in a bottle.
I wouldn’t take his job
for any pay, but I will
expect to see him tomorrow
when the item I could
have lived without arrives
only a day late, to my frustration.

May 27, 2023

UNDERWOOD

When I stood in Hemingway’s study
in Key West, I was certain that
the old Underwood portable probably had
at least one if not more
great novels in it, and I
would gladly be the one to unburden it.
Then I paused to wonder
wouldn’t Ernest have taken his
Underwood portable with him
to Ketchum, Idaho, and how could
Mary be sure none of his blood
was splattered on to it, and if so
the one in the study in Key West
was probably bought at an antique store
sold to them by some failed writer
who had given up on it, or on writing,
with no great literary works lying
in wait, just the mundane, and I
have long mastered that alone.

March 5, 2023

LEFT HANGING

Why is it that so many songwriters
have an intense need, a desire really,
to leave the listener wondering
in frustration at how the story ends.

I can forgive Leonard Cohen for his
Hallelujah for no one is quite certain
how many verses he wrote, although
more than 80 seems to be the number,
so perhaps a missing one or ten
concludes the various stories
the song has told through time.

And Harry Chapin did give us
an ending of sorts to Taxi,
in his song Sequel, but even there
he left the door ajar, but he died
too young, so any subsequent sequels
went to the grave with him.

And one offender I cannot yet forgive
is the Ode to Billy Joe, since really,
he’s gone but that wasn’t enough
for brother, and you’d think
he would have a name since
he married Becky Thompson,
and what kind of store did they buy,
why in Tupelo, was she from there, and
what, if anything, do we know about her?

December 29, 2022

BUSINESS SUITS

“What do you think is the likelihood
of success in the long run,” she asks,
and I watch the fly land on my forearm,
perched on hairs that barely

bend under his inconsequential weight.
His wings are a perpetual twitch,
almost unseen, and felt only as a faint
breeze in my imagination, while a world

is created, a reality collapses, a butterfly
is born and dies, and the fly stares at me
a thousand faces the same, each processed
in turn, digested and stored in

a finite space, overwritten by
the next face, flower, while
his tongue unfurls, flicks and sucks
on a bead of sweat at my elbow.
“Not very good,” I respond.

First Published in the 2005 Scars Publications Poetry Wall Calendar

December 27, 2022

SHOPPING

One of the hidden joys
of being a vegetarian is that
for us the grocery store is
smaller than it is for many.

There is no meat counter
to visit, no butcher to engage,
and the smell of fish is
weaker at even a small distance.

I do eat cheese, but not
the sliced sort at the deli
counter, I don’t want cheese
shaved from a massive block.

We all meet in produce,
but I tend toward the organic
which makes my visit shorter
and far more productive.

June 1, 2022

MADE IN

You learn to shop carefully,
always searching for where
an item is made, avoiding places
you know are not socially responsible.

The search is complicated
by the lack of nearby stores,
by the ubiquity of Amazon,
by the certainty that the product
won’t arrive for some time,
and when you find one
you like, you scroll down
and see the magic buzzword
“Imported” and you know
from experience that
is another way of saying China,
and the search goes on.

June 25, 2021

MIX TAPE

There is an art
to creating a mix tape,
more so to day, when
tape is usually only
found in museums
and antique stores.

Then you chose carefully
aware of the sonics,
aware of the limits on time,
weaving a musical tapestry.

You can do a mix CD
but everyone knows
that with tape you listened
all the way through,
for fast forward was only
for getting to the end
of the cassette to play
the B-side, and CD’s
have no B sides to play.

June 18, 2021

JUST ONE MORE HAND

My parents, well my father,
always felt is was necessary
to stop on the way to our summer home
in the Western Adirondacks
to visit Uncle Morris, who may
or may not have been an uncle
in the blood sense, it was never clear.
It was he who sold my father the cottage
near the small lake, he who now
lived in a nursing home  in Schenectady.

Morris was sweet, frail, but still
wanted my father to play 
a couple of hands of pinochle,
which drove my mother crazy,
but she loved the cottage, 
and Morris sold it to them 
for a song to keep it in the family.

I liked watching them play,
never understood the game,
and hated the name Schenectady,
but we’d always go for an early dinner
at the Chinese Buffet across
from the store Morris owned for years.

June 2, 2019

MAGIC

The money wasn’t really real then,
it came in a box with a board,
dice and property deeds, and it
was in colors, one for each denomination,
(kind of like and Canada and other countries).
It was fun having a lot of it
until the first time I snuck some
out of the house and went off
to the variety store, I’d had my eye
the magic kit they had tucked
in the front window, forgotten, now
clearly the only one of its kind.
I asked the shopkeeper how much,
he said it’s been here so long
I can’t remember, so it’s yours for a buck.
I gave him a 10, pale yellow
he laughed, said that’s foreign
so it will be 990 for the magic kit
and I can’t make change but I’ll
throw in a Mars bar if that’s okay.
It was the one and only time
that trick worked.

February 12, 2017

DISCOVERY

In a small storefront, in an older neighborhood of the city, I found it.  Sepia coated with a fine sheen of dust and neglect, it lay on the table amid a stack of others, as though a leaf of phyllo in a poorly made stack fresh from the oven.  I knew it as I looked at it, touched it gently, that it had once held a magic incantation, that if you allowed it, could take you on a static journey where stillness was infinite.  I read it though it was wordless, but clear, it was a map to the country of dreams.  Not mine, I knew. Mine had the mundaneness of Chinese menu ordering, column A, column B, or sorting socks still hot from the dryer.  I saw in it possibilities, where ties and restraints could have no meaning, where crawling and flying were coequal skills and walking was so evolutionarily regressive.  I thought of purchasing it.  The price was certainly reasonable.  I thought of framing it with archival mats, and encasing it in museum glass, hanging it on a wall, or placing it behind the mattress where it might seep through like a ferryman plying the river of night, never quite touching opposing shores.  I left it in the store that day.  I haven’t gone back to see if its patina has grown.  For me it could only be an artifact.  A map is of so little use, if you have no destination.