Category — Poetry

Oh yes, Yes, I knew
you were the moon
oh-faced and slivering away
night by night until – gone
I pray you back – tomorrow
14 times – again you sang
the old song mouth full
with silent lyrics – a name
perhaps or none at all
but the stars. you leave again
I watch – it is your nature
to be new again

a man in chinos and a button down shirt
told me, passionately, how we should save
the country by sterilizing anyone
who has more than 2 kids – unless
(always an unless) they could prove
sufficient means to support them.

we have to pay for their damned healthcare
for their housing, for their clothes,
we have to pay and pay and pay –
it’s immoral. They have no right
to have kids. None.

isn’t that evil? i asked him
no. it is evil to let them keep having kids
So, we are all slaves?
We’re already slaves – we have to pay
for all of them.

Do we really?
yes.
No, we don’t. We choose to.
It seems to me that you’re saying
society owns each baby – that we are responsible

We are responsible,
he said. We are. Whether we like it
or not.

So, you have authority over my body?
You can tell me no more children? You can tell a woman
no more babies? You can abort or save
which ever baby you’d like?

Who chooses? Who decides? A bank statement?
A bureaucrat?
This isn’t freedom – this is tyranny.

THIS is tyranny, all this money
taken from me, given to this bastards
fathering 8 children by 8 different women
and all of them ending up on welfare.

Perhaps the women would keep their legs closed
if they worried more about how they’d pay?
No, they wouldn’t. The only solution
is to sterilize the punks spreading their sperm.

And you don’t see any problem with this?
No.
You don’t see the evil of it? The Nazi-germany-style horror?
No.
You don’t see the problems with making babies
into commodities?
You’re an idiot.
Fine, I’m an idiot, but you don’t see
that your solution is a path to diabolical serial killing?

…

Ok then.

i only die on wednesday
when the gray sky lies
about waiting for a train
to skitter through lowell

i would call out, i would
for thursday, for sunlight
for the last black kitten
hiding in the rotting shed

i would, but death is here
and wednesday feels it tightly
like a warm willing noose
and a man without hands

death is a honest grope
for God – this i swear to you
if i still swear at all
in the aftermath of wednesday

a soul, a stagnant air,
monday’s prayer whispered and
forgotten – you are with me
death, you and cold loss

if thursday only knew this
sadness this want – politics
would be the kindness of faith
not the religion of liars

alas, i only die on wednesday

I was more Vegan that time I was in the hospital
having my tonsils out – living on softserve
and butterscotch candies.

I watched that kid next to me
in his red plaid Dutchmaid pajamas
read comic books full of talking animals
and tell his mother to bring him something
to do – anything that didn’t involve reading

Later, she brought him a radio
and the little bastard listened to talk radio for hours

When my mother came in, she asked me
If there was anything she could get for me
i shook my head, glancing at him,
“wait…” i rasped, “my red pajamas.”

the smell of the sparrow song
the taste of lemon on the edge of iced tea
the sound of bare feet thumping
the color of each breath inhaled through sunlight

the smell of sinful green
the taste of tomato off the vine
the sound of a frisbee through the air
the color of hope before dinner

When I was 10 years old, I discovered
that Bobby Orr could not fly
My father was there, my grandfather too,
behind the net, when the picture was snapped

Jubilation, exultation, ecstasy and bliss
trapped in black and white for all time
- a lie.

The Bruins, for a moment, were the greatest
of all time, the black and gold statement
of a perfect moment proof of the wild
over the ranger, riffing jazz over the blues

I was still the inkling of me, the wish, the dream
the maybe poet in the angry womb
waiting for the old man to get home
half-in-the-bag and giddy

For ten years, Bobby Orr, could fly
he soared in all my dreams on stainless steel razor wings
over smooth gentle honest ice

The Bruins were Gods, until dad told me
the truth about Bobby Orr.

I didn’t argue with you when you told me
Robert Todd Lincoln had a summer home in Vermont
but I didn’t really believe you until I read it
in that travel guide we picked up at the House of Cheese

He’d been there with his mother just before his father
was shot in the head – he’d stayed at that gorgeous inn
right near the fly fishing museum.

We passed by and talked about stove-pipe hats
old photos – and how small the green mountains seemed.
“His birthday was a couple of weeks ago,” I said.

“Whose?” you said. I laughed at you.
“Never mind.”
“you’d look good in a hat like that,” you snicker and run
your hand through my hair.