Mud clods my eyes – the Old Year gallops down the home stretch harder than a filly in the Belmont Stakes, hooves adventing dirt from December’s frozen track.
I’ve wagered these poems – Grief to win, place or show. Death and Taxes the Daily Double. My betting slips are puny with rhyme, tattered from rubbing them for luck.
Behind the window it’s Jesus, my bookie – takes bets in his green dealer shades, garters on his sleeve. He winks at my Trifecta – no Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, but Jazz, Blues and Rock & Roll in the third. The fix is in.
Failing light and wind whip my cheeks. I taste the bit’s steel in my mouth. Rider, oh Rider, I have given you my all. Rider, oh Rider, forgive me if I stumble.
Oh Holy Night
BBC – What Do We Know About the Drones Over New Jersey?
Drones over New Jersey are cellos – Yo-Yo Ma bass strings humming Cantata for All Mysteries.
Aliens feeding us eye candy – peanut M&M's of light flashing red/green, red/green – extraterrestrial Morse Code for "Take and eat, this is my body."
Their bons mots and comic relief – "Hey, everyone, lighten up [sic]!" Let's get our Lenny Bruce on, that bit from the Cuban Missile Crisis in '62, him screaming "We're all gonna die!" into the mic, which may or may not have been hilarious at the time, or now.
Lab leak theory – distracted researches let the AI escape with the keys to dad's Volvo and a CIA credit card. Clone the car, fit it with wings and rotors. Presto! Sky's the limit!
Don't let the drama fool you. It's the holidays and we need everyone to keep shopping. Heads down at the mall folks.
Connect the dots and soon we are playing hangman, a string of holiday lights growing inch by inch until tied into a noose, draped from the gallows of suburban porch lamps like vigilante justice.
Let's go the miracle route – did we miss our cosmic cue? Flashing stars in the east above Bethlehem PA. Where are the Wise Men? Stuck on the Path train like the rest of us, late for work and PowerPoint frankincense, sipping their Starbucks pumpkin myrrh lattes.
It's Amazon after the Santa Inc. takeover. Sleds giving way to tech that strafes us with staccato pleasure packages, Rudolph the Red-Nose fly-by-wire rooster tails across the sky.
No, I think it is the old sagas – the centenary of our man Eliot droning on about the Waste Land – Trenton, Newark, Port Elizabeth, we follow his lines like taillights streaking past refineries on the NJ Turnpike.
He says, finally, to lift up our eyes, be not severe. Shed fear, soften our hearts. Together, listen to the great, whirring Om of rotor harmoniums. The sky leads our chanting:
"Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih"
Exodus 41:13
It’s 3AM, walking the dogs (yep),
the riverfront hotel plays
Mambo No. 5 on loop into the void
from its terrace speakers –
“A little bit of Rita’s all I need…” What greater
truth could a scalpel of freezing wind
cut from the body, hold up like a gift
or tumor in the cauterized starlight?
The dogs sniff the rushes for rats,
but why not find Moses this time? A basket
with a baby to lead us to the promised land
of dancing Instagram and TikTok memes,
A prophet to part the Red Sea of pixels,
or at least walk the streets ranting
until the bars shut at four, poking
in the trash for empties.
The speakers are crooning Sinatra now –
“I Did it My Way,” but I don’t know
at this hour what way that is or how
the wheel of night might roll me home.
Trust the dogs I guess, follow them
back to our door, bed, you. Congas
and Ol’ Blue Eyes closing like an ocean
over our heads.
On walking a beach of decimated clams, Gettysburg comes to mind.
Strewn before me, a Civil War of clams –
thousands dead and dying, blue and grey
in the November wind, their broken shells
failed white flags of surrender.
We brought this on ourselves, though
we might not say "here I lie, clam brother
raising arms against brother" because clams
only have feet, the moaning of their limped
tongues silenced by amputations of seagull
field doctors. Here, clam – bite this bullet
and wash your pain with whiskey.
Clam bellies swirl with Jack Daniels, jealous
As denial In the throat. Were we always
bivalves, but only know it now? We are two,
no longer halves of one? Ligaments torn,
our grit and pearls a house divided.
How will we love with two hearts, pray
with lungs that breathe such different air?
Our shells split wide like spatchcocked angel
wings, roasted without thanksgiving.
From the Weehawken Book of the Dead
I asked my Chinese neighbor
if he draws chalk circles, burns
paper clothes, pagodas, money – joss
for hungry ghosts in winter.
He said “do you crawl on your knees
to Guadalupe and kiss the steps?"
This morning I breathe smoke
from fires in parks and trash cans
across Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx –
dismal tributes to autumn
gasping for cigarette butts,
dumpster diving for rain.
My cough, the rattle of dead newspapers,
obituaries and memory of ancestors
dry as leaves awaiting a match.
There is no circle chalked around me,
city, the here and now. Nothing
that can hold us sacred by much.
Parchment heroes and hierograms
torn from the book of miracles
leave a fine ash on my tongue.
Leaving the apartment, I genuflect,
touch each station of my body’s cross:
“spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch”
As the sun rises over the haze,
I summon my grandfathers by name:
Hans, Johannes, Axel.
What is their instruction
for penitence? Where must I crawl,
what stones must I kiss this day?
Dumpty
My wife said to chop some thyme I heard time –
hew the woody stems off years, months diced
in one inch cubes then tossed by day with olive oil
on a sheet pan, mince hours into dill, chill seconds.
My alarm at this recipe for disaster, this word salad
history – citrus Renaissance bitters; crisp, apple fall
of the Roman Empire; the blade whacking out French
Revolution Dressing: Robespierre & raspberries.
Maybe a steel grater better than a knife –
risk my finger tips and childhood quietly sliced
Into impossible radish backstories, peeling potatos
or skinned knees, carrots, not I, lacking nerve
to ask for a dance in 7th grade. Then what will make
me whole again, spin my life into a single yarn
from wool roving. Who will put me together again,
me oh Humpty Dumpty my.
For Shay’s Word Garden
All Saint’s Day
It's Halloween’s sweet tooth hush
the morning after – werewolves curled
at our feet, snuffling and stretching
for belly rubs, shedding hair
and happy animal sounds.
Our bones return to their homesick limbs
and sleepy, yawning graves.
We soak our fangs in Polident to fizz away
the gore. Ghosts in their BVD's await
warm sheets from the dryer.
Shy monsters are crafting back in their crypts,
witches switched on Bewitched in the den
and practice wrinkling their magic noses.
Zombies tally their overtime pay –
they will winter in the Azores or Belize,
Somewhere they can catch some z's
and the sun is as yellow as their eyes.
I walk with scarecrow back to his place
among the cornrows, stand with him
at his cross, his Golgotha.
He hands me a sliver chain his sweetheart,
the fairy, gave him when they kissed,
then watched her die against the porch light.
Love finally for him, flickering, fleet.
Trick or treat, without answer.
Better man than I, he mounts the ladder.
Crows toss dice for his robes.
Heaven’s Little Helper
Uh oh SpaghettiOs! God grabs
a Bounty™ paper towel
to clean up the mess.
Yanks open the kitchen’s
junk drawer, hands me pliers
rusty with stigmata,
A jar of leftover screws labeled
“Inquisition,” boxes of mismatched
church bells and hunchbacks.
How is this all my problem?
Must I crawl under the world’s sink, clear
clogged pipes of brotherly & sisterly love?
Damn it! Can I get some lightning and thunder
under here? ”Filius canis!” Vulgar Vulgate Latin
for my blood-blistered thumb.
No way to unsee God’s plumber-butt.
Winking, hands me a monkey-wrench –
“My favorite.”
Rummaging in the tool box –
“What this?” I ask.
“The stud finder they used
on Jesus’s wrists.”
OMG!! Drop it like a hot
fallen angel.
Am I heaven’s husband now,
with a celestial Honey-Do list?
And how is that different
Than any other
Sunday afternoon
with my wife?
Pass
Fluttering like a heart about to still,
an autumn leaf lands at my feet.
I understand it’s a ticket
on that very last ferry,
That the ferryman will punch a hole –
another chip between the dry veins.
The leaf crumbles, scatters. Remembering
begins to drift on the scent of smoke
From a damp pile of leaves set to burn.
Wasps flee from a hive deep in the mound.
Squirrels nearby hoard walnuts
and fragments of bone
To keep their teeth sharp
through the winter. Grackles and pheasants
bind their nests with ligaments of dried vines
pulled from the freshly turned dirt.
I walk each evening by the river, watch
the ferries parry tugs, barges, sailboats, ships
mixed with phantom pilings just under the surface
risking holes punched in their hulls.
I hear the horn calling for departure,
gangway about to roll back,
impatience of the first mate’s yellow
grimace, and his fist of tickets.
Atomic Pinball No Free Game
| Left Flipper | Right Flipper |
|---|---|
| Let’s start with facts: you love it when I say aubergine | |
| Aubergine | |
| The flavors of sky melting when I speak in tongues | |
| Tandoori dawn, borscht dusk, light so finger-licking good | |
| But today, clouds above the river sag with rain | |
| Old jockey shorts, sad and grey, their elastic shot | |
| You were still asleep when I bumped a jar off the counter | |
| Meteors, bright starfish, streak above the ocean of your dreams | |
| So sorry | |
| That’s how the celestial cookie crumbles | |
| I yell glue will not fix the jar | |
| Or God’s cookie, so tasty | |
| You bat an eyelash | |
| Left, right, tilt | |
| Our day, like the rain, drains | |
| Down the center |
qbit 