1.I Remember

Couldn’t have been more than a few weeks,

Some event, we stared,

Brushed hands, we were young,

Didn’t know what was what and forgot.

Then there were devices, found out she died.

I wonder about the in-between,

I wonder about the 40 years;

And remember.

2.Dream

Precipice ahead, mob behind,

The wrong guy I tell you,

She lied!

3.Parole

This may be the time, up again,

Couldn’t even defend myself the last

With no advocate assigned the game was rigged.

So, did she lie? I used to know. I thought I knew, but now

Deeply imprinted connections veil my ability to know.

So, after a lifetime of ignorance, it comes down to this,

A measure, a decision, a negotiation,

The will to close the deal.

4.Born today

Conjoined twins were born today

With one body to share

With two heads to say

With one lung to breath

With two hearts to love

And forever inseparable.

5. Truth Visited

She stood by the door

The blood indistinguishable

From her own hand.

Standing firm as he turned

Unable to rise

She raised the gun

To God.

She prayed for relief from the actions

Required of her.

Soon the sun rose, she fell into a dream

Where each shape took part in her inquisition.

Lawyers battled each other’s arguments

Truth one said, cannot be denied.

The retort:

Senses, nerves, cords and probability

Is all we know.

6.Parole

Yeah, I guess I committed the murder

So I’ve lived confined.

Dwelling in what could have been.

Then a halfway house to what?

Unless, unless, but can a deluge

Be stopped mid drizzle?

7.I Know

Almost 30 years and each day

Dwelling in comfort thinking of you

I know why I drink too much.

8.Portuguese Porcupines

The porcupines of Portugal

Delay movement to display futility.

Raccoons who comprehend quills

Display fantastic abilities to sort through diabolical plans.

Then while walking past a crevice

Near mount heron, the cradle of humanity, I see

Lying together, a communion,

A dwelling of two never known before.

The Raccoon and the porcupine sleep in peace.

9.Corners

Hysteria was the main cause. The room sparse but with enough

Corners for still life, especially the desk she used to record the necessary

Answers. Maneuvering the pipe was mastered, got her through the day

The pages piled randomly then in a wagon based approach

Assembled into a storyline, an approach a parable always a parable

Sometimes an allegory when all goes right.

Still the corner called her, the bluntness attracted her,

And as the allegory developed and passed from tribe to tribe

The message grew first a story, then a history

Till a way of life centered around the peristyle.

Then in a flurry of thoughts, electrons flying through stem fluids

She flung herself into the bluntness.

10.Family

When I arrive, the staff is busy

I sit I wait. The corner assumes me

I fall for the silence. We talk. Why we talk I can’t explain. Why

A cave of extraction I can’t tell.

Some say what God? Some say a remarkable phenomenon.

The relationship between the newborn and its parents is a phenomenon.

11.Finding

Well, here it comes, how the years crept

So silently secretly creating the me.

I myself do not assume but together we cannot otherwise.

Stranded in a corner my child my love

I behold crooked fingers, the rejected touch

The flames rushing and the more I know

In vain I am me.

12.Ruined Landscape

I left and never looked back.

I left behind all the ruined memories.

I left behind your hatred for everyone I loved (years of analysis lightened the load).

I left behind a weighted circumstance.

I can’t remember you.

I can’t forget you.

I can’t forgive but mothers never ask.

I sit under a ginkgo tree while the ancient Chinese women collects the fruit before the decay.

13.Veterans Day

We live unlike our parents.

We live unknown ways.

We think we know the difference

Between cold steel and butterflies.

14.But Bondage

We are stuck together two

Organic molecules that bound

By integration, though statistically it

Could have been different.

Covalence of organs and thought

It just happens.

Desires fall short of covalence.

And here we are.

Something inexplicable.

Denying need in lieu of bondage.

But bondage is everything.

So they say.

15.I paint a picture:

A mass, equal parts beignet

Metastasis, fetus and abscess.

The incubation period unknown,

The result from this ungodly mess

An angel.

Soon flights begin from the breeding

Field, elders resolve variation and selection.

Can death be the only answer?

Dirty it’s all dirty how can a god

Make the immutable dirty?

And of cleanliness, the ruined of ruined

Seems to be my joke.

16.Weeping

A weeping willow

Being from NY

Was an awesome sight.

A head full of dread

A crop of nine tails

A strange uncle thing

We circled swung pulled

And whipped. First the leaves

Off the low branches

The advantage to the fastest.

Even though close, family, blood

Was let laughs were heard

Eyes nearly popped sockets

The plug was play.

Play was war.

And when I was drafted ( years later)

I used the same technique

Blood became wine

Choking a way of life

Hiding, shaking, cold

The end never came.

And I re-live moment by moment

All the past, all the time all

My sins the torment

And the torture never stops.

17.Dwelling Place

I simply snapped and shot

The relationship truly dead, lol.

Regret set in three years later

Why three years after?

Those three years were baren

And the infinitesimally quick

Decision seemed unnecessary.

After all, more thought, much more

Thought could have expired before

That fatal decision. And you lay there

Beautiful, each day growing more so, even as we decay.

And I dwell in a place where the thought of:

The almost, the why did I?

Prevails.

18.I paint a picture:

A mass, equal parts beignet

Metastasis, fetus and abscess.

The incubation period unknown,

The result from this ungodly mess

An angel.

Soon flights begin from the breeding

Field, elders resolve variation and selection.

Can death be the only answer?

Dirty it’s all dirty how can a god

Make the immutable dirty?

And of cleanliness, the ruined of ruined

Seems to be my joke.

19.In Memoriam – Howie

I know exactly where I was when I heard.

Then an echo of your call “here it comes”.

Throwing the wire out of your window on 5

Around the corner up two flights to 7

We assembled an intercom between our apartments.

No need for a phone!

Constant open communications, and we could eavesdrop on each other

Which we never did, I think.

It was an amazing neighborhood.

I won’t tell the time you tapped into the cluster of telephone wires that ran through each closet up and down the building and gave free calls to India for your friends.

Or the time we compared. Man I was shocked! (I suspect some ladies out there can concur).

But it was Tull, the 1977 MSG concert,

A baggie full of pins each

“Songs From The Wood”

That is my fondest memory.

High up, the cheapest seats, after all what else could 15 year olds afford.

We caught up after college for a bit.

You were always a great guy and after college a great man.

I never told your parents that or how much you put others first.

Maybe you needed relief.

Maybe one too many for an old heart.

Maybe it just was.

But there is no maybe that I shake while I write.

20. Time Takes A Cigarette

The phone rang from ten years ago

I asked the same question now

As then.

The answer was the same as well

And still lent no advantage.

But mom there are no humanist left

Nor gods. All witnesses have been

Disabled and the great reboot has begun.

He talked in silence to the angel

Of NY. And he wrote the name

Upon the city wall and named all

The bridges after his father.

The phone rang from tomorrow

It was a matter claiming to be

The goal.

Denial was the theme of his discourse.

My denial, of what, he wouldn’t

Come clean.

Laying clean sheets on the floor

He wrapped the eternal foundation for my inspection. Expecting a reaction

He startled then burned like gun cotton

When I broke into taps.

The phone rang this morning.

When I heard the news

I broke into tears.

Seven of us gathered in song.

Under heavy influence

Seeming a thousand years off

We marked seven undulations.

Each a fictitious movement

Toward eternity.

21.Dwelling Place