untitled for now

First red. A new Mazda.

Then the uprooted sidewalk

and Taylor Swift from a boom box.

A red, white and blue paper lantern

fading in a tree. The eye contact is friendly

this cool summer evening,

and I let the story of the game stop me.

Who is ahead? How many are out?

The pitcher wants to throw strikes

but he wants her to put the ball in play too.

The bench cheers the batter in the box

Shorts, T-shirts, flushed skin under lights--

they’re not thinking now of their day at the office.

She singles to center. A run scores.

From the chain-link fence applause.

A net rigged above the fence

keeps the street safe from foul balls.

A polite but insistent siren makes a wake of cars.

I am ready to move on but see a dog’s bandaged paw.

The dog paces while his owner talks on the phone

about how much the minutes cost.

Eau de Joy

Eau de Joy

My girlfriend picked roses from the landlord’s garden and put
them in a vase. The roses were mostly yellow; the petal tips,
fuscia. Stems were bent by lush ripe blooms. Some buds
hadn't opened. As she packed and boxed things up she moved
the vase until when I arrived it sat on top a bookcase under
a vent. That was nice. As the heater warmed the room, the roses’
fragrance displaced the smell of cardboard and dust from
normally out-of-sight places. The forced air stopped. And then
the noise of petals falling two or three at once from the most bent
bloom. In seconds the ruckus is over, and the silence starts this time
for real. Do roses die when she cuts them, or when the petals wilt
and drop? What if buds dry before they open? I've been told
my son Jack, yes he is dead but he lives on inside you, like a rose
inside Patou’s Eau de Joy, where I can’t hug or wrestle him.

I think I should speak

I cannot breathe.
I am swaddled in paper
dark in a box
with mummied glasses
and candlesticks.
I am not upset with you
stowing me here,
but you never smoked did you?
Why do you keep me?
I understand
your need to move.
Certainly the situation
is untenable
and the new place,
with her family,
well, that will be spectacular!
But they don’t smoke do they?
I’m not so pretty you’ll miss me.
Start with me.
Let go.
I’m easy. I never met Jack.

For the User Experience

For the User Experience

The UX artist chose us

because we’re ripe and isolated.

(Or did she step our siblings flat

then shoot from below

to obscure the act?)

Our stems are green and pliable.

She posed us so we touch

as if to say when I am with you

there is nothing else.

Our petals are office orange

under windows blue.

I’m happy. If the wind rose

we'd lean apart. If our stamen

stirred, we’d pollinate.

We'd follow the sun.

Like wallpaper on desktops

our life in waiting still

does not exist. I can see

why you feel we need some

real time--where we would display

our affections privately.

You ask me about the weather.

It is all spring--sunny and warm.

Please don’t ask me to marry you,

or why our sepals, like mini-skirts,

hold the bloom in the best light.

The Sense of Grief

The Sense of Grief

                “The countless that love caused to lose their lives” – Dante Inferno, Canto V

Cinderella and other countless tales

that end happily thereafter

are forgivable lies I told my son

until through living he grew less naive.

When a playground bully first dimmed his light

or when he heard me call from the sidelines

Who wants the ball more!

he listened but refused the lesson.

A mother killed the son she loved

not in any abstract or metaphorical way.

I so share the sense of grief

I cling like a last winter’s leaf

twisting crazily this way and that

The first to die, losing, still believes.

Shipwrecked

Shipwrecked

Bone-tired, salt-sprayed for years

exhaustion washed longing from my body.

I listen for a siren

and welcome rocks.

I take the broken mast and scattered timber

and build a bridal suite

where some day a tree,

resilient of her marriage bed,

would growing, start to die.

This is a time, though stubborn,

when my spirit could be won over

and yet I drown again

at home where the ships all burn.

Short sermon on the mount

"God came; she saw; she conquered,” said Jesus. When asked about the meek and all the other blessed people, his mom wouldn't elaborate.

(Thanks to Anne Carson & Sierra Nelson & Colm Toibin.)