Sending poetry to the world
fog rolls over the citta of Erice
it softly pets medieval steps and towers
streetlights glow with a
promise of ghosts and shadows
and a family like ours, like so many others,
melts into warm candlelight and homemade pasta.
(from the red journal, 2013)
i am
a predator
beside a frozen lake
masquerading as an ocean
[we are all so phony]
slinking up to frozen fingers of light
lips licked in luscious anticipation
one ship one mile out is
my only witness
and it is too frozen in place
to stop me, or care.
Boston’s Back Bay
gets left behind –
(how easily this train takes to its track
how slippery this movement through time)
Imagine Back Bay
in its watery wet past – we were there once (wistful) in a deep blue green bay full of life.
Such current land fill suffocates
makes all us fish happy to leave.
bluest sky touches water
of the same soulful – tangential color
cliffs of burnt orange sandstone
accept back rubs from salty air
and sigh easy from small windows
green pines – palms – ferns and the ever
buzzing tenants of the rainforest
commune and argue pleasantly
while the water
-always the favorite-
continues to splash playfully alone.
and in a sky powdered blue
it appears a child has fingerpainted
a relief of lines breathed into life
by those traveling
like the eyes still blue of a doll baby
looking for those leaving and
those coming screaming back to
the arms of their lovers
waiting outside looking up and up
lines powered white like lips smacking
sugary and sure, guilty
like a child caught painting on the walls.
Here in Texas the city shines on below
like a thousand studded jewels thrown off a
jacket and strewn across a dance floor.
spin your girl, and watch her go
Like a spinning top of legs in jeans and cowboy
boots. Watch the gentlemen with their quiet way
chew gracefully under shadded Stetsons.
and in california wine country
there is one cloud that spills rain
in a grey sheen on the horizon
while over here, sun sun on the vines
shimmers emerald with shades of
dark moss. the smell of fermintation
reminds us of the season; the constant
turning of one thing,
into another.
and one hand runs the wire
while the other swirls, and swirls.
train station waiting on the last
late train
woman in beehive
and daisy dukes
while another in
impossibly tall shoes long eyelashes batting at
the pretty men
business travelers
wearing a path in the floor
how they tour
and turn
making deals with the air itself
and Amtrak personnel
create a new sign
yawns
and how the screeching never stops
yet it’s never right
and how the light
reflects
another group of models in beehive
so fitting before a trip
back to Baltimore
and how the light reflects.
drinking real chocolate milk and it settles into my bones with
a sweet sigh.
everyone around me is in such a hurry; they race to another day,
like its just another flight.
i thought i just saw your face but it was another in a hat in an airport
far from home.
if it was you,
you were booking another flight without saying hello or goodbye.
If it was you,
i guess i would let you go and prepare for another restless sleep…
i would be the one
you’d watch who constantly searches, trying to figure out why everyone is in
such a hurry.
if it was you,
you’re finally out of sight and i can stop straining my neck to see the face
that isn’t you.
decadent memories rot teeth. here we go now. hurry up and leave.
(circa 2002 in sketch journal form)
we labor
up the medium
with a speed befitting
Spanish moss
languishing
in the steam of a summer
day dripping with
Gardenia
if i should
succumb to the
scent —
some parade might
saunter by
toss beads
round my skull
round the bend
drifting
as slow as
eddies on the great
Mississippi
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