he doesn’t see me
watching him look around
for whatever it is
that isn’t nuts

i remember other squirrels
on other days
beneath this same sun
warm and heartening
as it proclaims spring
you nasty son’s of bitches
spring is here

i watch him burrow
his face into his armpit
wonder if his fur is soft
wonder if his belly is full
wonder if he knows
love is being seen

eyes closed, a dark haired man
with dark brown eyes
stands in the darkness
imagining the world
upon a turtle’s back

this is Lowell, Massachusetts
he thinks, he thinks he knows
he thinks everyone knows
reality is this — but this is not
anything but now and here

he opens his eyes
pushes his hair back from his face
sees the world he could not imagine
and wonders if that feeling in his gut
is the motion of the turtle
through the starry sea

this is Lowell, Massachusetts
he reminds himself, he reminds himself
he is reminding himself everyone is forgotten
this is reality — but this is not real
memory is a fickle friend without anybody
really.

Jerry is wearing blue jeans
and a white button down shirt
when I hear his gentle Irish accent,
“Hey man, how are you?
what can I get you?”

“I’m doing ok. Thanks.
I’ll take a Hennessy’s neat,”
I smile.

I settle onto a stool,
push my elbows onto the polished wood
and listen to the sound of everyone
cascading over the room like water
playing its way over a dam.

Liverpool is running
down the field in red
past the boys in blue
— a goal is coming
a goal is coming
a goal is coming

The announcer yells, “GOoooooaaaal!!!!”
and a few people look up and smile.
I want to care
more than I do
then Jerry pours the hennessy’s

I care less but smile more
who knows if I’m being watched
or by whom — all that matters is this smooth heat
and this moment alone
surrounded by people who could not care less
about me.

When the storm is over, the afternoon is fading and it is time to walk downtown. Schlepping through the miserable mess, Pawtucketville is sloppy with slush and snarling coeds angry at the last gasps of winter chilling their bones. I pass through them and by them like the spirit of the city unrecognized and unwanted in the moment.

The river is a friendlier local.

I stop on the bridge to stare at the water flowing over the rocks. I can hear it like some whisper from a stranger, but I can’t tell if it is the rocks or the water muttering under their breath.

There is meaning, but I can not repeat it.

I stand on the bridge by the river for an hour or more. The sun is setting, the shadows grow longer, but the voice remains the same.  I glance up at the smoke stacks lined up down the other side of the river, “Do you know what the river is saying?”

The smokestacks laugh at me and the evening comes with a smattering of stars.

The slight man with glasses
slender and short and smiling
says, “Hey there,
how are you?” When I answer
“Fine, man, it’s great to see you,”
he seems happy enough
and keeps on heading down
the street toward city hall
his dark hair tussled about
in the thick push back of winter
into the early spring.

He stood there, black-haired
blue-eyed and not quite
old as yet — but soon enough —
on the sidewalk near
the cobblestones all cobbled
together into something
like a road or a path.

“Man, ” I said to him, “what are you
watching?”

He tilted his head to the right,
“Same thing anyone watches
when they’re not watching anything.”

I nodded, “I think you’re probably
right.” “Oh yes,”

he said, “Yes, I suppose I am.
Good thoughts. Good words.
Good deeds.  What else is there?”

A lady pushing a baby carriage
speaking Spanish to a little baby boy
passed by quickly.

I noticed the artificial red in her hair
and the tattoo of a man hanging upside down
from a gallows on her right shoulder.

My thoughts veered into the most
ungood. I stepped back.
The man saw this too,

“Good thoughts. Always that
first. Without that, nothing else good
will ever happen for you.”

Depending on how you count, there are 11 major religions in the world today — of course I don’t count that way. I prefer to believe the slightly larger estimate of world religions which suggests there are a bit more than 4,200 different belief systems bouncing around int he heads of man.

I don’t know if any of the current religions involve talking animals wandering about the edges of reality, but if one of them does, that’s the one I want to believe today.

Part of me is certain that I’m not a man at all, I’m just an odd little story being told by an enormous turtle to an audience full of fat people muttering how they need a cigarette. The certainty raging about inside my gut is uncomfortable and a bit dangerous I think. There’s nothing more dangerous than certainty.

I’m looking for the 4th wall in hopes I can look past it or through it and into the eyes of the turtle who intones my life. A lot of people would probably think that’s a strange way to pass a day. Walking around an old mill city, talking to random passersby, smiling, laughing, wondering which real thing is most real, which true love is most true, which kind word is kindest — which unbelievable thing is most worthy of being believed.

A girl with blue hair becomes a pastiche of Picasso and when she laughs with her friends I see Les Demoiselles. This is normal if anything is normal in a city.

A boy with an acerbic grin feigns gut pain, but I know he’s just afraid and so I tell him, “Dali said you don’t need to be afraid of perfection you’ll never reach it.”

He is confused, rolls his eyes and walks away without swearing at me, but I know in his heart he hates me a little bit now.

This is life in a city, brief touches of word on ear, breath on breath, and never heart on heart because that is to risk the calamity of being known — or worse, never being known at all.

It is snowing on Merrimack Street when I step outside without any God at all. None of the major religions or any of the thousands more offer me any solace. Today is today, and I don’t know why I am, never mind why  I am now.

I don’t bother to ask anyone for help with this. I sketch 3 goats and figure that must be a metaphor for a big sacrifice I’ll make at some point. I don’t want to tell myself what I’ll sacrifice or why and spoil the story for me.

Everyone knows Ed McMahon and Betty Davis
were son and daughter of Lowell — before
they traipsed the path to Hollywood and fame

Betty didn’t even bother to stay in Lowell
long enough to graduate from Lowell High
or  attend the college there.  Perhaps she hated
being from Lowell — perhaps she didn’t care at all?

Ed stuck around a bit longer, and even came back
to visit his aunt. Whether he loved Lowell or not
he loved his family — perhaps that is enough.

For decades, the two of them stayed
in Hollywood for the sake of career — and maybe
love. Love would be enough, I think,
but Love in Hollywood isn’t so real as there
in Lowell. It’s a plastic bauble that bends and breaks
to be quickly disposed of and forgotten.

Love in Lowell, that’s a courser object
made of heavier things — the weight of family
and history, the rusted scuffed up finish
that weakens the body but leaves the piece
more beautiful. I wonder how Betty and Ed
could be happy in a place where love means so little.

I suppose it doesn’t matter now, seeing as they’re dead.

Che wrote his mother a letter
apologizing for his unforgivable behavior
fully understanding if she never wanted to speak to him again.

Whether she did or didn’t,
i don’t know, I just know he was drunk
and out of his mind.  I know

he thought his behavior was an atrocity.
He was right (of course)
about the wrong behavior.