Category Archives: poetry

Spaghetti (Christmas Tradition at Chipparrelli’s)

In the dim light of Chipparelli’s restaurant
tucked in a busy corner of Little Italy,
we sit at a small table,
red tablecloth with white cloth napkins,
and a warm glowing candle,
reflecting in silver forks, knives, spoons,
another year of family tradition.

I realize that my parents are just
a man and a woman. Two people
with past lives and younger faces.
They retell a story
and I can see vividly their first date:
my dad with two plates of spaghetti
he worked so hard to make
for my mom waiting patiently
in their private Italian restaurant
and that sudden slight nervous trip
to send both dinners straight
to the shag carpet with a splat.

We pass the fresh baked bread.
My dad dives into his usual lasagna,
and my mom begins her usual manicotti,
and I turn in my spaghetti for
some exotic dish I’ve never heard of.

I twirl my pasta.
Before me, my parents, two souls I love.
Before them, a little girl in pigtails
drinking Chianti.

Dead-end Street

Collapsing darkness,
the kind that singes like a dying cigarette.
Orange
streetlights
smoldering
at the end of the block
in a city that seems to have eyes in the back of
its scheming
hard head. It has plans for you—

Did you ever think that
you, that effervescent infectious
set of arms and legs, those
legs that go
on
and on,
could be here? In a back alley,
where rats crawl
and sirens slowly drown your voice.

Hush without pity, touch gently
the wall, another brick in
ephemeral
hope;
only the rats escape with
a snitch and a rotten crumb
of gouda that
your neighbor no longer wanted.
There is no succor.

Pieces (in Point Lookout)

I wrote this in college, on a trip to Point Lookout in St. Mary’s City, Maryland. The lighthouse is on the site of an old confederate prison, and it is said to be one of the most haunted places in America [you can even request haunted campgrounds]. I went with one of my best friends one night out of the blue, and he was so scared of getting too close. The night was very vivid, cold, and we didn’t speak much because it would have spoiled the scene….

Pieces

I picked up a rock
and skipped it,
ripples in a frosted river
and us walking
sand between our toes
under a black velvet sky.
The night dead quiet
and not a soul stirring
except some lighthouse ghosts
and our own two beating hearts
pounding out the rhythm
for the stars
as they danced across the universe
and then tripped,
fell scattered to the ground–
as if God shattered a glass
and we were meant to pick up the pieces
carefully, one by one,
and skip them across the heavens.

complexity of the time-space continuum

Ok, I’m still working on the ideas/metaphors behind this one (started many years ago, still not even close to being finished). As it it deals with space-time, I hope you indulge me a bit. I have no business diving into these areas, but I like to anyway. The idea of relativity, of our clocks as inconsequential, all our fears, worries, anxieties all wrapped up in our own version of time, which we know only as a constant… then learning that it’s not! If you are into cosmology and related “light” reading, look up Mario Livio. [my fav astrophysicist/author]

complexity of the time-space continuum

I am a three dimensional solid although
many dark nights I feel completely flat.
I experience time, and it is blood pounding through my heart.

In the universe, all is light billions of years in the traveling
through space billions of miles empty.
Here, all is the idea of now.

So many times I say I have not begun what I set out to do,
that I’m wasting my life
sitting in this dark moldy stairwell waiting.

Waiting on the perfectly safe door to open.
Waiting on a perfect gentleman to lead the way.
Waiting on that epoch fear that my hours will cease
before I’m ready.

Some say “be patient and wait, in the future you will see.”

Future?
Don’t they hear the hours
while we stand still growing old.
Don’t they see sand swallowed by the tide,
by the moon,
All of us neither created nor destroyed
yet slowed by gravity, affected.
Don’t they understand by the end of this breath,
our notion of the present is the past
and by the time we decide to move,
the space is filled.

No one, not even Einstein or Hawking,
has this relativity figured. Us poets
are not exceptional. We witness
our space plowing straight ahead
to only come out bent.

Two Live, One Dies

He seemed embarrassed to call,

but now,
he clutches my hair painfully,
fistfuls of soft brown waves
twirled up and tangled in his white knuckle fists.

His head rests on my shoulder and
bobs gently in steady shakes.

I am crying,
but my tears are running down my throat
so he won’t feel them.

My hands pet his hair and face
like a mother and son
and I whisper nonsensical
like empathy is possible.

He is mumbling words,
prayers wet on my shirt,
for the friend in the backseat–
white sandy hair
bleached eyebrows
tanned legs
soft snores now permanent.

(r.i.p. dave hayes 2002)

HFStival 2004

[HFStivals were THE events in the DC/Baltimore area while I was in school, all thanks to the greatest alternative radio station that ever was, 99.1 WHFS (rip)]

Trade your aviator shades for
a Seattle radio station button during
Modest Mouse off-stage, grab a beer, and
settle down on a hill
next to greasy passed out bare legs,
and pick at French fries like sea gulls,
stumble off inside,
shoving through to the stadium floor
for a taste of mud mixed with beer mixed with weed
while you crowd surf and wipe-out.

We had such a buzz kickin cause it was 90 degrees and sunny.
We sweated body to body and our ears burned.

Collapse into a seat when night falls
and the sliver of a moon appears in the middle of the
open dome ceiling;
listen to the man with the black eyes and red lips
sing “i will always love you” with a gothic howl.

Finding Truth in a Darkroom

Am I the only one who misses film? Settling into the afternoon and thinking how much I miss the surprise of a new roll of film. I found an old roll sitting in my purse this morning, which I think was from a weekend trip to Portland, Maine. I wonder if it is still good? I wonder if there are any places left that will process it? I wonder what our faces will look like if I do get the prints made….

Finding Truth in a Darkroom

My eyes are a
shutter open as the world blurs by
and when I blink,
I capture your face in
black and white clarity—
your scars
etched carefully on film.

Then, if I use the technique
of solarization
I learned many years ago,
your expression can be exposed,
naked print facing forward,
before a flash of light.

Negatives will
become positives
by chance, in chaotic fashion,
meaning
you can’t know exactly
how it will turn out.

At first thought,
the Sabatier effect
may suggest a complete darkening,
a wasted effort,
but no, instead your face appears—
your pupils brightly opposite.

One Night in Mission Beach

In the shadows
Of a steaming bath with Turkish detailing
And palm trees framing its lovely face,
So gently,
Like my wet hair to my forehead and neck,
I was held in arms
Bigger than my own, bigger than my fears.
Arms
With strong muscles and hands
That seemed to seek out
My weaknesses and my dreams
On my wet appendages and
Underwear not meant for swimming.

And the jet stream pulsed around us with bubbles,
And the sky seemed to spell out in its stars,
You only live once,
Live it up.