"Fluid Skin" is a reflection we all share at some point (or several points) as we recognize our advancing age.  This one really was a reflection, inspired in the mirror one morning, shaving. November 2011. Alone, growing old.

Fluid Skin

Fluid skin
Bags my soil
Tents me poorly
In downhill slide
Hot fudge sundae
It's balanced cherry
Atop a silken mound
Vanilla ice cream
Melting


"Evuncularity" is a word I made up one day.  I haven't really even assigned it any meaning or definition.  I just like the sound of it.  The significance of this piece is that it is the first one I wrote for the title. Decide for yourself the success of the endeavor, but I liked the process enough that I have utilized is several other times. I won't advise you about future entries that were written this way.  See if you can spot them for yourself. December 2011

Evuncularity

Raindrop rolled
Pregnant, pear-like
Apple green amplified leaf
Slinky, oozing
Reminiscent of gravity
Tumbles every which way
Along the leaf
Drawn to earth
Dangled a split-second
From a syrup-like string
Single, elongated drip
To earthen origin
Free fall
Into Crowned splash
Of murky water

"Saw Grass and Sea Birds" was inspired on Long Island, not far from JFK Airport.  Seagull were circling  a street lamp well after dark on this bright, moonlit night and the wind was likely blowing twenty-knots. It was beautiful and surreal. Late 2011. New York on Business.

Saw Grass and Sea Birds

All Diamonds and surf
The Sound whipped, sparkling
Moonlit chiffon
Sweeps in gentle swell to the north
Atlantic Flash-fire
Glancing water and earth
The saw grass more heard than seen
Gulls in bright flashes
Circle through  low, man made light
Blown dunes shifting
Stars tumble through
An hourglass
Lovestruck

"Trees for the Dead and Other Species" was written very quickly after I had visited my Mother, Rita, one day in the the dementia treatment facility where she lived out her life.  When I wrote this she was already bedridden and really didn't know me.  This piece is just about futility.  There were days like this. May, 2012.

Trees for the Dead and Other Species

Leprous indignity
Roots driven
Straight
Through
Hell
Lovingly watered
Daily

Unwitting
Bird
Sings

Broiling sunshine
and Santa Ana's relentless
Threaded
Entangled
Throughout the leaves

"Blank White Page" is a simple moment in time; walking in the snow at night near Big Bear Lake. Winter, 2012

Blank White Page

Midnight snow
Underfoot
Steps manufactured
Note my having been there
Outside my man made jurisdiction
Sole-checked
Stamped
Prints
At odd angles
Under the obtuse beam
Of the setting moon

"First Bird of Morning" is a tribute to a bird who so pleasantly awakened me so very many mornings before the sky barely had any morning blue hue to it.  I know my birds pretty well, and their sounds, but I don't know what bird this is nor have I ever seen her.  I like her better as a mystery. Spring 2012.

First Bird of Morning

My "First bird"
Erupts in darkness
Every pre-dawn
As if she fancies herself
A rooster

This morning, half asleep
I coughed and  she was silenced for a long moment
Pondering my intent
We had startled one another

She soon returned
To her crisp
Rehearsed
Morning ritual
Stark, two-syllable chirp
announcing a faint, blue dawn

Song and day's toil begun
She issues a statement,
"I'm alive."

Fossil-fueled newspaper
Slaps my door

"Tumbling Fence Post" is quite often interpreted as a negative statement but I have never seen it that way, nor was it conceived that way. I see it as another slice of life, based on a real  fence post in disrepair but with the good fortune to overlook the sea. I was at the beach for a day and it had been standing sentinel there for who knows how many decades. It occurred to me, the post had very likely out-survived the person who had sunk it into the bluff; thus the reference in the second half.  Spring 2012.

Tumbling Fence Post

Sun blanched
Sea Bleached
Single-surviving fence post
Cold driven into bluff
And precipice
Decades ago
Aged upon entry
Driven
Against will
Stood slicing Into
Rock and bluff


Muscle behind the drive
By now
Rigid and boxed
Sea has approached the post
But not toppled her
She, subject to rain
Wind
And gravity
All at oft times,
 stiff
As the post herself

I had a lot of fun with  "My Unemployed Future." I just felt like throwing some words around.  Think of it as a mirror maze. They had one on the Boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey where I spent so many summers.  In my single-digits, I spent enough quarters going through that thing that I taught myself to be able to run through it without emerging with a bloody nose. They don't have them anymore.  Kids today have no interest in that stuff. Then I became a "Bad ass" in my teens and got into a lot of trouble, only to become an executive in my adult life.  That is what this one is about.  Yes, I can still poke fun at myself. Spring, 2011.

My Unemployed Future

I divest
Myself
Of my corner hoodlum
Diversified
Cantankerous
Smug
I may pass through this world
Undetected
Unceremoniously
Nondescript, as preferred
Looming large
In shadow of myself
Through this improbable screening
For a real life
I slip away
Into the night

"Birds in Spring" is what I'd call a "set-up" for the reader.  I think of it as a 'pretty poem' with a punch-line. (So don't read ahead to the last line or you'll ruin it!)  By now, you've perhaps noted some of the underlying themes I referenced at the beginning of this blog. I'm intrigued (and often angry) about the juxtaposition of life and 'work.' If you've read all of the posts so far, you may be able to pick up on the suggested futility of loving life and perhaps sporting a job that get's in the way of that life.  It's a common affliction. Already you've perhaps read two poems involving the newspaper being delivered early in the morning.  There is the beauty of the morning and the reality of the morning. Spring 2012.

Birds in Spring

Wildly over-leveraged
In suspect discipline
I'm drawn into
An unrehearsed symphony
In my courtyard
A production
Of
Our birds of spring

Warm-filtered sun
Drenched
Overarching jasmine
Wafting its scent everywhere

Birds in happiest tumult
Nesting
Breed
And song
Gentlest warm breeze
Mountain ridge
With virtual crossed arms

I scratch like a ball-player
Return to the cool, dank
Task at hand
Bread upon my table

"Smooth, Warm Stone" addresses another fence post situation, very unrelated to the first. This is a relaxing piece, I think.  I emerged, slowly, from the darkness of the Fall with this one.  Spring 2012

Smooth Warm Stone

Cradled atop
A grayed
Surviving fence post
In a sweeping, circuitous row of others
Rests
A loaf-sized stone
Placed perhaps years ago
In gentle hands
Surface smoothed
In time
Sea
Blown beach
It warms
In the late afternoon sun
Royal path of clouds
Skim the Pacific horizon

"Workers on Manoa Bridge" is another genre piece. Don't read too much into it. This is one of a few I wrote while visiting Honolulu. I'll share a couple of others here. Don't try to find 'Manoa Bridge' on the map.  It doesn't exist.  I'm pretty sure this bridge has no name, but that isn't a very inspiring name for a bridge in a poem.Late spring 2012.

Workers on Manoa Bridge

At mid-bay
workers lower a new section of deck
Into place
Atop Manoa Bridge
Their evocative
Cranking of winches
Incite a controlled collapse
Of folded panels
Methodically
Into place
Warm wind trades through palms
Across the rise
Rustling impatiently
behind me

"Rummies" is a is a direct steal from Waikiki Beach where I spotted two women playing cards under an umbrella, on a blanket.  They reminded me so much of Rita and her Aunt, Jo, who were best of friends. The Waikiki women were mostly in their prime, as I like to best remember Rita and Jo.  Jo is long gone.  Rita a more recent memory. Late Spring 2012.

Rummies

Two white-haired ladies
ply their game
cards slapped and fanned
atop their beach blanket
Heads sometimes back
Laughing aloud
High stakes pennies
Toes probing hot sand
Outside confines of umbrella shade
Hustled by
The occasional pigeon

"Waikiki Beach" is another captured moment.  I was busy in Hawaii.  I think it speaks for itself. Late Spring 2012.

Waikiki Beach

Cramped jitterbug
Along the strand
Beer on Waikiki Beach
I raise a brown bag
For a passing cop
Waves lap feet
Wind sifts hair
Warm sun on face
Very bare-chested man
blows a conch
For no good reason
But show.

"Ghastly Pony" startled my kids.  They, all grown, are the keepers of my written stuff. They see everything first and are my initial critics.  I typically text or e-mail new poems to them and sometimes hear nothing for days or weeks.  I had two, quick, concerned phone messages after I sent this one out to them.  Yes, it's clearly a dark piece, but I simply wanted to try playing in such an arena.  No more or less.  It's kind of a tribute to William Blake. Maybe I should have stayed in Hawaii. Spring, 2012

Ghastly Pony

Small horse in Silhouette
Hooves itself fitfully in anguish
And pain
Dawn behind flat mist
Sun, a rising plum
In maroon ocean
A man with authority
And tools
Licensed to silence
Arrives
Pats her on the rump

"Vestibule" was written immediately on the tail of 'Ghastly Pony' (Pardon that pun.) Kids took this one seriously too, but were more accepting.  I'll not elaborate farther.  Yes, it is unsettling.  I couldn't sleep one night and wrote it nearly in the dark.  You may have to be Catholic to get it. And, no, I wasn't abused by anyone. Note another reference to being rung out of bed in the morning via alarm. This was April 2012.

Vestibule

The inner workings of the place
Reside behind a heavy door
Under which
Light escapes
In measured slices,
Angular
Geometric
Precise
In calculation.

Spectators in our lives
We hover above ourselves
Disembodied
Tapping into holy water
We cross ourselves
In genuflection
Rising in morning alarm
Temporarily
Distilled

So, after 'Ghastly Pony' and 'Vestibule,' I decided to lighten things up.  So I followed with the two selections that follow.  Big mistake. I was accused of being a redneck after the first, "Roaches with Fleas," and in the second, "Moon at Malibu," I was accused by kids of 'Too much information (TMI)." Some lives you just can't win. I was just trying to have some fun. Spring 2012.

Roaches With Fleas

I'd be surprised
If a roach could not bear fleas
After all, anything
Can breed anything
What is to stop the roach
From breeding fleas?
Its rights
And all

Moon at Malibu

Mooned hippies
At Dan Blocker State Beach
In Malibu
One Saturday afternoon
Probably in my twenties
And should have known better
They smoked pot
Happy fists pumped in approval
from behind 'smoked windows'
In a VW van
Curtains and all
I ambled on
In pursuit
Of a job johnny

"Accomplished" is really not a poem, but an interesting pairing of lines, dis ingenuousness and misunderstanding . Spring, 2011

Accomplished

So much singing of praise
No one reads the music


As I entered into the last year with Rita, I became frustrated. It happens because no one, no thing knows when a last year or last day is upon them or others. You can't celebrate a last year unless you function out of a sad plan or calculation. Rita had seemed neither to decline nor improve for months. I knew improvement was an impossibility and, perhaps selfishly, I hoped for a rapid decline for her.  I knew her well, though, and for certain, she would not approve of the place and situation she was in that June, 2012.  Thus the short, "Days With Rita."

Days With Rita

Every day
Exacted anticipation
Falls fluttering
With no other than
Myself
As sounding board
To measure its failing
Each day
I launch a scrutiny
Of myself
Bleachers empty