I am paterfamilias
which I guess makes me the Latin Pope
of the living room
where I’m growling out these prayers

Crap! I just baptized
the armchair with spilled coffee,
frightening the dog and Mother Superior
with my vulgate benediction

When they were young
I would sell absolution
to the children
for the price of candy Easter eggs

If families are a religion
then we are catholic to the OED,
sermons of the word
blessed by constantly interrupting

Long ago shouted down from infallibility,
my mitre a fool’s cap –
they just tolerate my preaching,
pontificate meter on foolscap

For April Poem a Day

This bergamot,
looking so green
but tasting so orange,
hoax-nosed you
like a street juggler,
like dizzy lemon-lime
snout dancers and
now-you-smell-them-now-you-don’t
sniffpockets
whiffing you the rind,
this fruit
the biggest
slight-of-snoot trick
of all time

 

 

For April Poem a Day

At the end of each day
when the angels are done drinking off
the sunset, Heaven’s Chardonnay,
are they tipsy with sunlight?
A little high on sky,
that rumbling now,
all ribald and bawdy
under cloud cover.

 

 

For April Poem-a-Day

I thought I could write water
out of thin air,
wring rain from this morning’s
perfect sky
into a bucket of words –

Might come in handy
if I get lost in the desert,
or need to put out a fire
or two.

Then, in my ambition,
could my verse claw clods and stones
from the earth
and dig my own grave?
Or at least shore up
the fastness of my heart?

From the other room
you remind me, my love,
that I’m not a smart man.

A smart man would put down his pen
for the nonce,
and come back to bed.

 

 

For April Poem-a-Day

Out on the road after I fixed up
my old jalopy of a heart

Bandy veins and
gappy ventricles
don’t seem to hold down
my baggage too well

Just bounced out
a case of the willies –
and now the ghosts of women
dead from love gone wrong*
litter the road
with their lost red shoes

Dang, and a case of the heebie jeebies
broke open too
a bunch of random legs and arms –
no one wants any part of them!

My running board of love
is hanging from the chassis
and the Blues Brothers
refuse to play on my radio

Will you love me anyway?
Will you still say, “I do?”

 

 

 

*One theory of the origin of the expression “the willies” is from “wila,” “vila” and several other variants, the “wilis” have been staples of Slavic folklore for centuries. “Wilis” are usually depicted as the spirits of young women who have died from love gone wrong in some respect and haunt the forests forever after, luring young men to their deaths

 

For April Poem-a-Day

You have to stop skydiving
Into my heart.

Ok, no, don’t stop,
it’s amazing, but

Picture this:
I am a haystack,
and you are on fire

Picture this:
I am the eight ball
and you are a pool shark

Picture this:
I am the chowder,
you are the spoon

But I can’t seem to paint you
Even with words –

Your eyes have no parachute,
no ripcord, no harness

and I don’t know how to color
in freefall.

 

 

 

For April Poem-a-Day