Cake of soap,
wedding ring,
gold filling,
so much to be amused about
and, for having the blood sucked out of me,
there is a charge:
don’t spill the ash,
beware the stain –
for your concerns,
there is no comeback –
just my flesh, my bones,
the scars where you can see them,
the scars where you cannot –
a doctor listens to my heart,
the enemy that I love
takes pleasure in its pain,
pain in its pleasure –
oh my God.
my Lucifer,
your red hair
is both the color
and the cause
of where I burn -
and your green eyes
are both hugs and punches,
while your mouth
works both miracles
and their opposites –
in the same face,
the charmer, the brute,
the whisper and the shriek,
the most valuable and the fool’s gold –
as I said,
there is a charge,
one you sometimes
give back
as a refund,
or toss back
as a bomb.
ON A MISSION
as I grow I just
never get finished
with the sun and tides
as a five-way street
becomes an obsession
before I die -
between the starlight
brushing my cheek
and the course
of these whole changes,
I’m swapping out all I know
for found wisdom –
I’m never finished
so don’t ask me
for this is my entire life
and I’ve not
time enough for yours –
all this unlearned stuff
I’ll tell myself
before I go public
and I’m not ready…
tired some times
eager at others
as I peer in the cracks
of walls and clouds
and ancient earthquakes
for a blessing
of some fair-weather truths
but mostly a concoction
of all lies –
He has no time for the internet,
what he calls, “words on screens.”
He misses magazines,
like Life, like Saturday Evening Post,
and especially the car ads,
not cheesy photographs
but paintings, lovingly detailed,
of a Hudson or a Buick,
their colors bold red or sky blue,
fenders, hubcaps, hood ornaments,
gleaming veins of silver.
He remembers the renderings
of Caddies from the fifties,
cars that seemed to stretch
from sea to mountains,
shark fins to air-brushed front bumper,
and headlamps like lighthouse beacons.
Nothing pops off the page anymore.
Vehicles still fill the roads
but no longer the imagination.
Once he was every driver
cruising the highways,
flying by giant billboards,
top open, breeze blowing,
fluttering flat cap on his head.
As for the lovely women
in the passenger seats,
he married each in turn.
He doesn’t understand
that the kids with their cell phones,
I-Pads, tweets and Facebook,
are making their own nostalgia,
the times of their lives
for future years to look back on.
To him, there’s only one past,
only one man missing it.
NO ALTERNATIVE
In my alternative history,
I’m not Napoleon nor General Custer,
but merely husband number two
of some madwoman named Lucy
who clubs her spouses on the skull
as they’re bathing,
holds their heads under
as they struggle to recover from the blow.
I don’t conquer other lands,
vanquish their armies
nor am I slaughtered
in an ill-considered skirmish
at Little Big Horn.
But I do make the newspapers.
Too late, in this case,
so save the clippings for my scrapbook.
I much prefer my current life,
anonymous as it may be.
I can take a bath without the threat
of it being my last time in the tub.
Not that everything’s serene in the household.
My wife is angry with my bad habits,
bursts into the bathroom waving
a smelly, unwashed sock over my head.
In its alternate history, it’s a hammer.
OFF THE BOOZE
I go by the bar
on a wave of extreme self-control,
keep my nose to the sidewalk.
I’d like to have my halo now please.
I keep moving on the straight and narrow
and that’s where you come in
taking me aside like a cop many times
and saying, “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
So I’m headed to the restaurant
where the two of us will meet up
and I’ll order…no I won’t…
no beer no whiskey, no mixed drink,
just water from the tap for me.
Then you arrive
and the meal comes.
And the conversation goes on
between forkfuls.
And all through my lasagna
I’m thinking how a hot toddy
would finish the night off exquisitely
But I order a decaf coffee instead.
So what if my knees are shaking,
my hands are trembling,
my throat is crying out for salvation.
“Keep this up and you’ll
feel like a new man,” you add.
The truth is there a lot
of new men I could feel like
and only half of them are unwillingly sober.
Now all I need do now
is find one of those who loves you for it.
CAN’T KEEP A GOOD MAN HANGING
Matt’s alive and well I believe,
living some place in New Jersey,
selling second-hand cars.
The stories of him hanging himself
in a motel room in Colorado are patently false.
That was just his idea of the ultimate selfie,
a snapshot with death.
But he left the scene once the cops were done
with his body.
That’s when he hitchhiked across country,
just like in the old days.
Matt always had a convincing tongue
so I expect he’s doing just fine
passing certifiable lemons onto the unsuspecting.
Didn’t he sell us all that line about
how depressed he was, how the drugs
didn’t do it for him any longer.
We all bought it. So we wept.
But that was before his stint
at “Burke’s Guaranteed One Owner
Reconditioned Dream Cars.”
He doesn’t call or send emails.
We figure he’s too busy fooling
all those New Jerseyites.
Like he fooled us with those grim messages.
But so what if he laughed behind
that hand that tied the knot.
That was Matt,
just the thing he’d do
if he was contemplating a career change.
His sister came by,
asked if anyone had any interest
in taking his old guitar or his vinyl collection
or the box of all poetry he wrote.
She spent an hour or more crying on my shoulder.
Must have bought a crappy car off him, I reckon.
