Flight.

Flight

A master in flight

High above the city

He dreams of places

He hasn’t been to:

Hawaii, Guam, Mexico

In his mind he is already there

Soaring through the sky

Like a bird with songs on his mind:

Beatles, Queen, Jon Bon Jovi

Learning How To Live.

Learning How To Live

I could not find myself becoming

Immersed in the poetry that has

Large hands.  Like drops of crimson,

The shadows dwell within all of us-

The shadow of defeat, the shadow of

Work, the shadow of fear and greed.

I try not to remember all those bad times

That I was kept locked in the cave of myself,

Locked amidst broken promises and half-assed

Dreams, in order to have a dream I discovered,

One must have money.  I had no money.  I was

Homeless for quite some time, living in my car,

At shelters, or at my niece’s, who was only seventeen

And had two children.  She was more well-off

Than I was, and I was the proud uncle, telling her I would

Buy her everything once I got the money.

Once, I say, once this happens, then we’ll be rich,

And she dreamt of that day, and so did I, but nothing

Happened except she worked six days a week at the local

Drive-in, and dated a man named Bob who had a tattoo

Of a mythical god on his arm.

The Dutch Floor, Circa 1984.

The Dutch Floor, Circa 1984

And we still had the floor that the Dutch

Had given to us three decades ago-it sat

Morose in a corner in the living room of our

House, where we walked on it every day.

It wasn’t the kind of floor that squeaked.

It was quiet as a whisper on a cold night,

Where I would lay naked in bed, drinking

Vodka or a Tequila, wishing I was with

Someone, wishing I wasn’t by my lonesome,

Wishing for thousands of dollars.

The floor would be there still, looking up at

Me forlornly as if to say, “Get off your ass,

You lazy bum!” because it was a floor and

It didn’t know anything about jobs or working

Or paying taxes, because it was a floor and floors

Didn’t know about such things.

I wondered about the Dutch who brought it to us

All those summers ago, if they were still alive,

If their children had children, if their children’s

Children had dogs and toy cars.

That’s what I thought about on those lonely nights

In bed, while the Dutch flooring muttered to

Itself in its own room.

True Love Is Like a Dinosaur.

True Love is Like a Dinosaur

This is lit.  It’s colder than cold.

The light is lit within the oven,

And we are baking a pie for Thanksgiving.

It was the first Thanksgiving without

My aunt, who died tragically in an automobile

Accident earlier that year.  Some things

Go left unsaid, like being in love,

You just can’t tell the person you love

Them because their response might

Rip you to shreds-they’re kinda like a

T-Rex dinosaur, metaphorically,

Because they tear you up inside.

Love will do that to you.  It tears you

Up inside.  But it makes you feel better

About yourself as well,

And sometimes you have to go through

The bad to get to the good,

And the good will be all right in the end.

That’s how it works,

That’s what we know to be true.

Only true love will last.

On Reading the Poem About William Carlos Williams’ Plums.

On Reading the Poem About William Carlos Williams’ Plums

The plums are ripe

And juicy and sit on

The wooden table

In a bowl.  I take a spoon

And dig right in.

Bees buzz unhappily by my kitchen window,

But they can’t get in.

I munch happily on my afternoon

Snack, it is not yet time for dinner,

And I am starving.

My Photographs.

My Photographs

There is no patience here like

Single blocks of geese.  Temptation is

Wrought with food and ill,

Blinded by the temporary pain in my right foot.

Nothing is sacred as a photograph,

So still it seems to capture the sentience of

Life.

My father would have been proud of my photographs,

That I take each and every day on my journeys

Walking from place to place, to the park, to the

Grocery store, even to the neighbor’s yard,

He has a huge tree in the front, that bears

The plums of summer.

And it was summer. 

A red-hot Indian summer

In the middle of September,

And everyone was waiting for it to start to

Get cool, and the trees to change their colors-

Red, yellow, brown.  Then the snow would fly

And Christmas would follow.

Yes, my father was proud of my photographs,

Especially the ones I sent out to everybody

For our Christmas cards.  They were especially

Special to me.

My Great-Grandfather’s Mince Meat Pie.

My Great-Grandfather’s Mince Meat Pie

I make mince meat pie from scratch from a recipe

My great-grandfather had brought all the way from

Turnpike, New Jersey, back when he was a wee child

And had bought the recipe for forty cents from a

Bake sale.  His mother was so proud.  Every day

After school, he would practice making the pie

With his little pan, and with the help of his grandmother,

He would put in the right ingredients and cook it

Exactly the right way and it would come out, nice

And sizzling, from the stove. 

They had older stoves back in the day,

Not the new ones they have now,

With their digital timers and self-cleaning ovens,

No, he had to clean his grandmother’s stove himself,

By hand, with soap and water.  But the hard work

And wait would be worth it, because every week,

After trying hard to get the recipe to come out right,

He would eagerly come home from school on Friday

Afternoons and sit down at the table, his legs swinging

Over the edge of the seat, waiting in anticipation for

The great piece of food to enter his cute little mouth.

DNA in Space.

DNA in Space

Stars are forming in space like a riveting

Dark brown river that folds and bends like

Taffy.  A star is born after a catacomb of

Vices collide.  Yesterday becomes today.

Nothing is quite so simple as all those broken

Promises, wrapped in tar paper, wrapped in

Christmas presents to be handed out on

Christmas day.  Maybe space is a lot like

Dna, twisting like a ladder.  Some people

Say don’t walk under ladders, that it can

Give you bad luck, but I wonder if the luck

Is all in their minds, as if it is created by

The thrusting outward of imagination.

I guess maybe you could say I believe in alien

Life forms in space, something simple yet quite

Not so complicated, something that forms on

The breath of it all, the breath of a heart,

The breath of lungs, the breath of touch.

And then maybe there are aliens and maybe

There aren’t.  No one knows for sure.

Someone Mentions My Face.

Someone Mentions My Face

Somebody once said my smile lit up an entire room, but I didn’t believe them.  I think who said it was my college roommate, but I couldn’t be too sure.  She had bleach-blonde hair and blue eyes that twinkled like the bluest sky.  I wish I had eyes and hair like hers, but especially her eyes.  Mine were burnt brown, like mud, like the kind of stuff you would find at the bottom of a swamp, full of seaweed and muck and dead fish.  I didn’t think my face was particularly pleasant, I thought I looked a bit like a pumpkinhead, with large, disc-shaped ears and buckteeth, even though no one said so outright.  I wasn’t exaggerating.  My face looked like a giant squished pumpkin ready to be devoured at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and as I said this to my mother, she would laugh and say you’re being silly, not caring at all about my feelings, only caring about the feelings about herself.  I suppose that was how it was with most families.  They didn’t bother to care about you at all, only what you can do for them.  Or how they would say “Smile and be happy,” when you didn’t feel like smiling.  And then they would mention my face and I would become angry and counterproductive, wishing I was somewhere else, in some different family.

The Coffee Daze.

The Coffee Daze

I used to drink a lot of coffee back in college.  Those were the days when I wanted to be something, to be someone or to go somewhere-anywhere but there.  I wanted adventure.  I wanted excitement.  But none was to be had, because I was a poor college kid living off of ramen noodles and coffee, doing errands here and there, wasting away over textbooks that cost more than my car.  I was hoping for something to change, but it didn’t, and I slaved away over my homework, and by the end of the week I was so overwrought that nothing was better than anything I have been through, and I wanted to get out, to go, to be.  But where was that?  That seemed to be nowhere.  At least I was away from home, I would think, and shudder at the anger of my mother, the absentmindedness of my father, the strangeness of my brother, who would lock himself in his room all day, playing his unhappiness through video games.  

The Poet's Mother's Lovers.

The Poet’s Mother’s Lovers

As if words are not enough, I am now

Considered an emerging poet.

I found this out yesterday while I was waiting

On the train that would take me to Nowhere,

A hop, skip, and a jump away from New Jersey.

I missed my mother, but she was long gone-

She traveled all the time, from Japan, to China,

To Guam, taking pictures on her new iphone

As she went, gathering souvenirs.  She was recently

Widowed, recently married again by an older man

In his fifties with hippie-length long hair and a cool

smile.  “Boy,” I said.  “You sure got back

On the love train fast!” the last time I talked to her on

The phone, and she agreed with me and giggled a little,

Saying she thought she finally found her true love.

I wasn’t about to argue, but I wasn’t about to agree,

Either.  I flash-backed to the memories of my true loves;

The boy who didn’t talk to me in high school; the guy

With a ring in his nose; the one who read books at

The local café.  I had all sorts of lovers, but the books

I read were the best, taking me to far off places that

One could only dream of.  And I did, and then I wrote

My own words on my own piece of paper, and I started

A journal, and now I don’t know where I will end up.

It will be a great adventure.

Hercules.

No, Hercules, I am Not In Love, Thank You For Asking

I did not want to wait for the right moment

To break it to you:  that I am not in love,

That I had not been in love, that I will never

Be in love.

We can still write letters, we can still take long

Walks on the beach, we can still dance in

The moonlight.  But only as friends.

You think maybe I’m being too harsh,

That perhaps one day I will fall in love with you.

This I have my doubts.  It’s not that I don’t want

To be in love, I’ve just never really considered

Being in love due to my abusive background,

That my parents were never really in love,

That they didn’t really love us.  I ran away from

Home when I was fifteen years old, got a job

As a bus boy and never looked back.

I can only continue to go forward, and maybe

One day I will write that love letter to you,

Maybe one day I will sing you a serenade,

Maybe one day I will give you what you want.

So no, I am not in love, but tomorrow is a different

Day.

Adrift On the Ocean.

Adrift On the Ocean.

Finding the island this far away would require

A heavy debate.  I didn’t want to debate anything

Right now, I wanted to get home.  The sun was

Stretching low over the horizon, glimmering red

Like a ball of fire, and our boat was drifting farther

Away into the great ocean, and we were getting low

On rations-we still had some worms left in the bottom

Of the color, and one spam sandwich I happened to

Snag from the fisherman on-shore.  We were a little

Too far away from the shore for my liking, but the map

We had gave no indication of any off-shore island,

And nothing was above us but clouds and a perpetual blue

Sky.  We were lost.  I knew it without glancing at

My mother or my father, knew it without certainty that

We would never find our way back home.

The sun was warm on our backs and our heads, but the sun

Was sinister in our minds-it could kill us, the longer we

Stayed out here.

Suddenly there was a breeze, ever so slight, and my mother

Took up the paddles and started rowing towards shore,

Her laughter ringing in the quietness.  We were all glad.

At the Height of Summer.

At the Height of Summer

1.

I feel myself slipping

            Away from it all.  Not caring if I ever come

Back.

            I see a vision of myself ten years from now,

Raking leaves in a garden.  This is a promise

            I must make to myself:  to overcome all odds,

            To get out of being broken, used, abused.

Sometimes I see myself as someone else,

Giving myself a second chance at life, a second

Chance at success.

            Then I realize the only thing I eat for dinner

            Is ramen noodles.

2.

At the height of an Indian summer,

You are there, lost in a midst of twine.

            You staple out hunger like a sieve.

            End over end, you begin to sigh.

It is the sigh of the long-lost dying,

            The sigh of someone who has seen

Defeat and risen from the ashes.

            The taste of summer is heavy in your mouth.

The Sight Within the Summer.

The Sight Within the Summer

The smell of summer fills my lungs.  It is like

A night without stars-the sunrise is a gorgeous

Array of colors that perpetuates the sky.

The summer apples are golden in the sun,

And the sun is golden, and everything around it is

Golden, too.  The grass smells of sweet summer

Rain.  Rain is etched with dew.  This is the end of

August, but summer is still here-still standing.

There is a light at the end of this reach,

Where every color matches everything else,

And the rain falls smoothly into a waterfall of

Crisscross colors.  Nothing is mismatched.

The apples are ripe for the picking, and the wildflowers

Need to be picked, too.

A light surrounds everything-in the grass, in the trees,

In between the bright-spoken leaves.  The leaves

Are bright green, so bright you have to wear sunglasses

To see past them.

This is what I imagine in wintertime, when it is so cold

I have to have the heat on 24/7, and when I go out

I am encircled by the coldness that reaches out into

Everything I touch, everything I see.

So forgive me if I want to see a little bit of summer

In wintertime.

A Pool of the Universe.

A Pool of the Universe

In the darkness, we dwell in a pool of

The universe.

The universe is vast.  It fills inside us like

A deep pool of water.

So deep, there is no ending or beginning.

It fills us up, up, up, and does not want to end.

There is a science of understanding that

The universe is vaster than this planet.

The planet whirls, spins, twirls.

Sometimes, it jumps off its axis and does

A dance near the sun.  It comes back again.

What little do we know about the universe!

How vast it is!  How grand!

DNA does not exist beyond the simplistic forms

Of it.

Aliens are on their alien planets-perhaps,

First on Mars or Jupiter.

Maybe they have their own space shuttles.

Maybe they dance with the universe-

As the universe dances.

Winter.

Winter

The sight and sound of color does not exist.

It is a make-shift promise that belittles all else.

The wintertime is cold, colder than Hades,

And it goes through your entire body and into

Your bones.  Your bones are colder than you know.

The straightness of it, the grandness of winter-

Everything is moving slightly to the left.

The deceased will not dwell here,

The shadows will not move, ever so slight.

Some things are better left unsaid.

Color is like a movement that bends and waves.

Everything waves as if in a dream. 

We are born here, and then we die. 

The dying is simple in form; and then we rise

From our ashes.

Heaven takes flight.

No bones about it.

How To Break a Promise.

How To Break a Promise

This is the man that breaks the promise,

The time that is forgotten before the man.

Hope is not a withered stem of roses,

That glitters between the thorns.

We make leaps and bounds and sometimes

Fly through the sky on rocket ships,

And the quietness is so great that it makes

A loud boom-a sonic boom, if you will,

That gravitates towards a blackhole.

The understanding of time is nothing more

Than a blank page of misunderstanding,

I thought I was a scientist yesterday but today

I am a human being.  Or maybe I am an alien,

Trapped in a veil of withered veins,

An old man on his last life.  Sometimes he screams,

Sometimes he cries, sometimes he doesn’t realize

He is doing these things.  His arms and hands

Are a mesh of simple things,

And my dreams are hoped with vines.

The ravine is deep and dark and I can swim in its

Depthness.  Sometimes I can see my hand in front of

My face, other times I can’t even breathe.  The withering

Of time is broken, just like all those broken promises

And yesterdays that turned into storms of youth-

The rain was pitter-pattering on the ground,

The glass, the roof.  I couldn’t find my gloves until

Late January, they were packed, hidden, in the attic

Upstairs, and it took me so long to find them that I almost

Gave up.  But I bounced back and went outside in the cold,

And it felt exhilarating.  

The Learning.

The Learning.

What now is learned, cannot be unlearned.

The grips of understanding are the lack of man.

Turn myself over the other hand-and judge yourself

Lest ye be judged.

The forest is full of wild beast, and just like man,

Finds himself wandering cold and alone.

His head is carved from Tempest’s stone.

The wandering is not the time for anything,

And I have set to myself to fall into an abyss,

The abyss that is myself.

She who cannot think deep thoughts will never

Understand the goddess of divinity, or the purity

Of the notion that one can be born without rule.

The color of the mind bends, and darkness is quiet.

Without us, darkness cannot rule.

Do you understand that the doubt in your mind

Creates rule, without a lack of understanding?
Without a lack of passion?  The thought is forsakened

By man alone, and judging what he wants,

He shall be ruled by greed.

Greed is the ruler of the planet, the ruler of the lion.

He stalks his prey.  He is a wonderer, not a wanderer,

And bleeds like a goddess bleeds.

His heart is not his own.  He dwells somewhere,

Far away into the nothingness of doubt.

Published poem!

Here's a copy of my published poem:


http://threelinepoetry.com/issue.php?id=46&issue=46

Headache.

Headache

The headache can be pinpointed to the back

Of my mind-a memory that slowly resurfaces.

Clutching a small doll, walking like a monkey

Towards my mother, all smiles.  Then I say, “Up!”

And she picks me up and takes me over to the couch,

Where I flop down and watch cartoons as my parents

Talk over morning coffee.  It is Saturday, and the bright

Sunshine pours into the small house-small, compared

To some, but large enough for me, because I didn’t

Understand money then.  No one told me what it was.

As I wait for my breakfast to be made, I watch cartoons,

Trying to find some sense in Wile E.

Coyote and the Road Runner-dumb names, I thought.

They should make up more interesting characters.

That was when I started making up stories to myself,

Then, as I grew older, I would write them down on paper,

And sell them for a nickel to my Grandma, who was

Always there for me, until she grew too old to take

Care of herself.  I remember the cookies she used to send

Us as care packages all the way from Florida,

Especially chocolate chip, which was my favorite.  The headache

Is pounding at my brain and I take some aspirin, trying

To keep myself from going into the alcohol cupboard for

A bottle of gin.

“Does alcohol age?” I ask myself, and I search for the answer

Online.

And She Thought of the Names of Her Children Would Be…

And She Thought of the Names of Her Children Would Be…

She sat staring at the parking lot, in the middle

Of winter, thinking about all the names she could name

Her unborn children.  Rome, Monte Carlo, or Garden City-

These names rolled off her tongue like red wine,

Places she dreamt of visiting before she would have the children

She was destined to have.  She thought she was supposed to

Have children.  She thought it was supposed to be her dream.

But the names of children-Sarah, Robert, Poinsettia-they didn’t

Feel right, they gave her an unsettling feeling in the back of

Her mind, the way a spider bite would, as if it were biting

Her insides, slowly emptying in the void she called her heart.

Even though she was married, she was bitterly lonely and thought

She might visit Mexico City one day and paint a portrait of a homeless

Man, perhaps someone she met outside a soup kitchen one day,

Just strolling around as if he had no care in the world.

That’s how she wanted her life to be like.  Walking about with no

Care in the world, homeless, but living off the land.

And She Was Thinking About the Man Who Said He Drove the Mercedes.

And She Was Thinking About the Man Who Said He Drove the Mercedes

“You need to leave the mountains,” he said to the girl behind

The counter, who was wearing a blue suede vest with sequins.

She had just gotten back from a party and was just starting her work-

She downed a cup of coffee, and asked him for his ID.

“I don’t have an ID, I have a driver’s license, stupid,” he said

In proud disgust, and handed it over to show her what he meant.

“What do you drive?” she asked him quickly, trying to steer

The conversation in another direction-perhaps from her earlier mistake.

“A Mercedes,” he replied.

“That’s good,” she said.  “Maybe I will leave the mountains.  I don’t feel

Like I’m doing anything worthwhile here, what with all the crime and

All, everything is getting chaotic.”

And everything was chaotic at the café.  There were people from all over

The place who came there to drink coffee.  Coffee made up of

Hopes and dreams, coffee made up of broken promises.

Sometimes, couples would go there, kissing and holding hands,

And the waitress would look on at them with a sigh in her mind,

And she would dream of the day when she, she would have someone

To kiss, to hold, to talk to, but she was always alone, alone in a way

That implied she was lonely, always reading books, going out alone,

Watching tv alone, taking a shower alone.  She would remember

The times a man would talk to her, and she remembered a man,

The one who said he drove a Mercedes, and she thought maybe he was

Single, perhaps not taken, but that didn’t sit well in her stomach and her

Mind drifted elsewhere, to another time and place.

“You need to leave the mountains,” he said.

She thought about that some.

Freedom In the City.

Freedom In the City

The lights from the glow of the city streets

Beckoned me from my window.

I was a Scottish woman, driven to America by hate

And greed, and this was the first time I felt a little

Thrill of excitement at being on my own.

I had just arrived to Columbus, Ohio, the night before

From Scotland-having nothing with me but a garbage

Bag full of old clothes and food I needed to take

With me.

I wasn’t looking for anything but freedom, which was

Rare in those days, rare in the way that women weren’t

Really supposed to have any freedom, that my parents

Just wanted me to marry someone I wasn’t really in love

With, an older man with a degree in Engineering and who

Slept too much and drank too much and wanted me to cook

And clean.

I didn’t want to live a life like that.  I wanted to live a life

Making my own decisions and doing my own thing, marrying

Who I wanted and taking any job I please-anything but a

Homemaker, I thought, as was the style at the time for young

Women exactly like me.

Most women weren’t like me at all, I was a red head out of so many

Brown heads, a duck in a meadow full of swans.

I even walked like a duck, but I didn’t talk like a duck, I had an

Extensive vocabulary that my mother didn’t much like-she was brought

Up to be a homemaker and not focus on schooling, which was

What I was doing.

I moved to get away from her, to be able to think and do as I please,

And to find my own light in a world full of darkness.

The city lights beckoned me and I jumped out of the window of my

Apartment and climbed down the ladder, and wandered about

The city until I found a place to belong to.  Which is really what

We’re all trying to do, isn’t it?  

A small request.

Please vote for my nephew he can win some money:


https://huckleberryjunction.com/2017-halloween-contest-winners/

Just click on the stars.  He is the police officer.

Rebelling Against My Parents.

Rebelling Against My Parents

My father used to work at a radio station before

He became an author.

Standing six foot two at two hundred pounds,

He was my mother’s only lover-long, black hair

And a black bomber jacket, he rode around in a Harley,

Shouting slurs to dumb blondes and country waitresses,

Wishing they would ride on the back of his Harley

With him.

He thought there was something going on between

Every woman he met-online or in person, from the grocery

Store to the library, which I forced him to take me to every

Sunday, just so I could get my hands on a copy of poetry

Magazines that I wanted to submit to as an adult.

I wrote poetry as a child but they weren’t nearly quite good

Enough as the best of the best as I called them-Sylvia Plath;

Phillip Levine; Maxine Kumin, whatever I could get my hands on,

Even the underground poets of the dark web, as my mother referred

To it, since, as a teenager, I wasn’t supposed to talk to people

Online, but I did it anyway, deep in the night when the

Darkness all but thrums in my head, getting me drunk on the

Excitement of getting caught, but not getting drunk from

Alcohol, since I wasn’t supposed to drink any at

That age.

I still don’t drink, and maybe that was one thing that my

Parents taught me, how to be rebellious without getting

Yourself into too much trouble.