Poems December 2012

It's funny coincidences
Like a Law and Order episode
With a father and son
and the trinity
visited by the unholy ghost
in the morning
I could have had coffee
Instead, children's milk for me
from some night years ago
When my toys were smashed
We try to be the best we can be
But some presents are the gift that keeps cursing
And will I give it forwards too?
Or will it end with me
Or is it too late?
What have I done?
What has been done?

The day after it all ended
Is the day to sip coffee
Breath in the air of coming snow
And pretend that it will end tomorrow
And this is my last day
My last night
And what will I make that survives me?
And I go out like a light
Over a square in Europe
With people strung by chains of locked arms
Surrounded by music and sharing one idea:
To move forward ever in the hope that life gets better

I sat there
Like it was the end of the world
As final as virulent cancer or a bouncer enforcing last call

These days I don't know if friends are visiting to say hi or goodbye
If they hover over me in a chair or in a box
If the night is quite because it's unspeakable or nobody has anything to say anymore

And if it is the end
Then what comes next?
Because there is always something next
Even if it lonely nothingness
Which is no worse than this lonely waiting for nothing in particular that might or might not happen.

Somewhere else better
after that journey
and the creaky sailboat oceans
the meals hard to stomach
the mouthful of bread
dry as tinsel

Always looking over his shoulder
the hero crept into town
just like a sacred dog
visions of sugarplum lust in his head
plans for everyone

Now hiding behind a toilet
wet mammy to the doctors
you trade your dreams for your ticket in
and you jump up on the table and cough
measured for sutures rather than custom clothes

Young
Alone
Like I'm not around no more
And with the switching off of the electric lamp
I wander the halls past the bedded down people
Sleeping and drifting away
Fishes caught in the sky
Between heaven and hospital ward

Boys boys
Settle down settle down
Soon you'll be sad older men
Settle down
Soon you'll regret what you did and didn't do
Settle down, calm that tongue, settle down
The idea of a house and a wife to
Settle down
With the chimes and the churches and the fights too
Settle down
And the kids with their coughs
And the house with its creaks
Settle down, settle down
It's unthinkable undreamable
That we rock n roll animals
Have all settled down

The procession of lazy slugs of trains
And a sky with birds and planes the same gray, the same size

The magic of today isn't the possibilities of what could happen,
But rather the slow, inevitable escape from what's occurred already

And the train now hums and vibrates at speed, sprinting from
the God Damned to the God knows what.

That tell tail pulse
in my ears at the top of the stairs
on the days the hungry ghost eats too much

Can one wish for things one can never possibly get, things prohibited by both physics and miracles? Or is it only in dreams we forget that the genie appears and feeling a bit generous from drinking spends like a sailor

Tall things - towers
we pass through them
turning sideways and pulling in our stomachs
squeezing between molecules
with our very normal blood pressure
and our very average complaints
eating chips at the goodbye party
for that guy who's heading home to die

I look small from the height of that tower

Love
Life
Content
Joy

Perched like birds between the barbs

an older student
sent me a love letter once
silent I shower
my memory still chooses
to do the wrong thing

29 years ago I saw the most beautiful girl
A waitress at a Friendly's
I cannot remember what she looked like
Other than that she was blond and breathtaking

It is an anniversary of sorts.
There's a blond, and I can't breathe.

Would I be as gentle?
In my 70's, getting a coat for my retarded son, now in his 30's
Waiting in silence at the door while he puttered with the sleeves and his cap, and then holding his big
hand that never got any older, my face inscrutable, worn expressionless