30 Poems in 30 Days
Fund Raiser for Center for New Americans

Nov 1, 2018

 I AM FROM 

I am from loud dinners that shun propriety.

I am from the mob of seven others and one bathroom.

I am from the holy artifacts of words

and from the swinging rhythm of speech punctuated with

Italian words twisted with a New York accent.

I am from Seven Fishes at Christmas, and scungilli anytime.

I am from Easter Egg bread, 

and the house with an egg-beater for a doorknob.

I am from radiation, and surgery clips re-discovered each time

on the MRI. Every. Time.

I am from the Orange and Blue frustration of another New York Mets’ loss.

I am from blood and the unseen murderers in that blood.

I am from sacrifice that polished my life and now polishes my dreams.

I am from trust that is the grit we toss onto ice helping us stay upright in winter.

I am from solitude out of which daffodils and tulips and crocus grow.

I am from the prayer of the dancing juniper and mountain wind.

I am from Big Sky, the scent of pine and clear air and northern lights.

I am from dawn light washing everything clean just

as I am from twilight as it introduces me to the dark from which I grow.

I am from that which holds onto what is important; 

I am from the bric-a-brac of things left outside, angled against the house, 

that will not last, the kinds of things that never point to the quick of me.

I am from the gang of those who know this about me and share it without speaking.

Nov 2, 2018

THE CHARADE OF WALKING THROUGH WOODS

Before you know it, these trees will drop their pretense

and show us what they are really made of, instead of

shaking their pom-poms like cheerleaders for old man

winter. Soon enough, venous hands will scratch the

impossibly blue ice sky as one arctic front after another will

slap us square in the face and will ask: Well honestly, what did you expect?

And while we love our walks in the woods this time of year,

we know that we are no different. Despite our best efforts,

we lead with the parts of us that are most colorful, the parts

we want others to name and know. Soon enough, much will be

asked of us while claw-hands close around our throats, when we

will be faced with decisions we never dreamed we needed to make,

when we will be asked once again, to drop the charade and come totally clean.

NOV 3, 2018

 GRAVITY, LIKE MANY HINDU GODS, HAS MORE THAN ONE FORM

My fear is that gravity holds me too close to the earth but this

same force that keeps me safe and locked away will also send

me spiraling into a bonecrushing spin toward splintering annihilation.

Trust is a kind of wind resistance that will eventually will slow me down

or like the early Gemini space capsules, will threaten to burn me into a

cinder that will fall without notice into the vast, lonely ocean.

NOV 4, 2018    

CONNECTIONS

The boy with frantic curls grabs at his mother

who holds his toddler sibling after passing

me, busy writing at a table, drinking coffee.

“Mom, that guy over there,” and he points

to me, I can tell, but I am writing, “looks

just like…” and then I can’t hear the rest.

“Yes,” I hear the mother say. “He does,”

unware that I always listen,

unaware that most things in nature do,

The boy’s face is angelic, like lace.

He has made a connection from his own

private world to the larger, scarier one.

He has built a bridge into the unknown

and is satisfied.

NOV 5, 2018

ON THE OCCASION OF THIS HOUR,

WHEN WE CONSIDER WHERE WE HAVE BEEN

On good days this world blossoms, but on the others our voices are softened

by fear so large it’s mistaken for a thunderhead and carried off by the wind.

We go unheard, starting to look more and more like the sepia photos of my

immigrant grandfather, who at seventeen, came over many times bringing family

 to build a way out of his own predicament, who is young enough in these pictures

 to be unaware of his own death – an agnostic till the end, just like the rest of us.

On the occasion of this hour, there are impossible questions that age us all

at seven times the normal rate, like a dog.

Come sit beside me and tell me why you have made the journey,

risked everything or nothing to come. I will believe you.

I will not say a word, but will watch in terror as I listen. I will feed you

because your hunger is so expansive  it has become its own landmass

 that you can lay claim to. I will feel the breath of your language on me

like wings of the monarchs on their trip home to the caves of Mexico

this time of year. On this day, at this hour, there is a darkness that feels                                                                                                                                                                                

like coal,  that burdens us like lead.  We know your short, sleepless nights.

I will bake you bread. In time, when the yeast rises, and love is carried in the

aroma all will be fed. Our common blood will give off heat. Our luminous skins

in all their various shades of earth will  never be warmer than what we hold

in our joined hands together, when we are at last home.

NOV 6, 2018

FIXABLE

against the news of the plant closure

I slam down a bourbon and ice with

a couple of guys in shipping I have

worked with for years. on concrete

floors, from dirty coffee mugs we drink

making toasts to blush a seasoned sailor

at home the words barely squirrel through

my lips in numb disbelief that my job has

gone missing along with one-hundred others

but I am lucky

because like Leonardo DiCaprio at the end

of Titantic, I am riding the stern of this

behemoth straight down to the icy tines

of this Davy-Jones’-locker-of a job

when I am able to speak to my wife

my blessed wife

she looks concerned then sidles up

next to me, snakes her arm around

my neck, closing ranks, keeping out

the ruffian invader that is loss.

NOV 7, 2018

CRUELTY IS THE POINT

Cruelty is the point. There’s no law against it

(unless we are talking about animals)

Or else law has been stripped away from the meaty heart of justice

so that it’s a cold bone we shake without warmth, without skin to

press in embrace, no tear to shed,  unless it’s one of our own who’s died.

(The reservoirs of our anger are all tattooed: theirs and  ours.)

We wear a metallic edge of meanness like a confederate flag

– for which there is also no law against – that normalizes laughter

as the correct human response to suffering.

(even laughing when the other misspells the word as in the previous sentence as ass.)

I am at a loss for cruelty,  unable to respond.

Afraid, I let it slide, and I am sorry for that. Very sorry.

As if we are two different species, you and me.

How were you taught? Who taught you? What were you taught?

We ache for our tribe to include me and mine but at the exclusion

of difference  since this makes us safe, praying to the right gods,

for the right reasons, with the right people, for the thrill of thinking,

sure glad it ain’t me    when the fighting breaks out,

when hunger thunders through swollen bellies,

when disease takes our best and brightest and no one cares,

when one is shot for holding a cell phone in his Nana’s backyard.

Call me a snowflake, I dare you to provoke me.

I will break your hollow heart with kindness.  Laugh at my naivete.

Try to turn me into a cartoon piñata, easy to poke. Think I will break?

Tell me there is more to every interaction than what you hate about me.

Tell me you find more joy in pictures of my grandchild than harming all the

things in my life you don’t know and don’t even want to know.   Please.

NOV 8, 2018

THE UNBOUND HOURS

A coffee card punched with the tenth cup freebie.

The cowlick of a morning sun.

The barren shadow of trees in tender light.

The first fresh coagulate of river ice of the season.

The two-toothed brimming smile of my grandson.

The way light washes everything new, fresh.

A needle slick shape of a crew team at rest in the

                  morning river.

A chance to sit  quietly, alone.

NOV 9, 2018

I WALK OVER PAVEMENT AND

I WALK OVER GRASS

and over every surface I am someone else
and over every surface I change

and with each breath I am right 

and with each exhale I am wrong

and with every act I am good

and when I make amends I am not

I am a city-boy and your redneck brother

I am always your lefty sister

I walk over pavement and I walk over grass

I burst forth from the womb
speaking the tongues of ancestors

I lie still on my death bed waiting

for you to come

And from the same dirt we rose up

to name things and in naming take full dominion

&know the hurt you have kept folded

in your pocket away from others’ eyes

I walk over pavement and I walk over grass

I know what it is to bind to love and
I know the blinding light that is being in love

I am your enemy but also your hero

I am the home you are driven from

I am all of  these things and more to you
I am the cage that protects your rabbit heart

I am the respite from your worried wandering
I am the revelation to your wonder of things

I walk over pavement and I walk over grass

carved from your smile I am not me alone
carved from my smile you are my Holy Mass

carved from what I want is what you want
carved from what we think is how we are alone

we walk over pavement and we walk over grass

we walk for what is to be and we walk for the past

Nov 10, 2018

Letter To My Friend, The Doctor,

On the Writing Prompt Photo of Her Mother

I was thinking of the photo of your mother reading you posted online. 

You say she was in her late 30s, but dear God, she looks like could be twelve!

I was thinking of that picture and how it could be used as a writing prompt. 

The look in her eyes, so intense, and the color, (though this was a black and

white photo) is jet black, the kind of eyes night would have, if night had eyes. 

What color were they? Your eyes are more  like liquid, lucid in their promise.

But in your mother’s eyes there is a potency that makes me remember the

picture. What stresses did she gather into her fists as folded bed sheets,

to hold off for an hour of reading, I wonder? What worried her so that she

escaped by sitting alone, reading? From the photos of your father,  (whom

you resemble by the way – you have his gangliness, his length, his face),

some of those poses are ones I have seen you make and I have not really

known you very long, so it must be a genetic thing, but you are the doctor,

so you tell me.  The drill holes of her eyes speak of your ardor or ok,

we can call it compulsion, or OCD if we must be so twenty-first century about it,

I just call it your superpower.

You should know this though: it has a history. And this picture? It offers proof.

For all I know, your parents were powerful people, like you, and when others met

them, they would walk away thinking, wow, so much energy of the universe channels

through these two! But I never knew either of your parents. Or maybe they were not

so powerful, old photos don't work so well to capture the soul of a person, despite

what those Amazon tribesmen think, the ones who refuse to let moderns take their

picture, fearing it will capture their souls. Instead, she sits and reads, oblivious, finding

herself lost in the book, ignoring the photographer and the viewer of the picture.

NOV 11, 2018

OVERHEARD FROM A GRANDMOTHER TO HER GRANDCHILDREN ASKING

HOW SHE DID VISITING THEIR CLASSROOM TODAY

Was I kind?

Was I safe?

Was I neat?

I would settle for any of these.

OVERHEARD AT THE COFFEE MACHINE

I spend half of every day

Trying to be sure that I

Don’t replicate the mis-

Takes I made yesterday.

OVERHEARD AT THE DUNKIN DONUTS

When I add you to Find My Friends,

I can worry a little more

about you.

NOV 12, 2018

AFTER DRIVING SO LONG,

            IT’S TIME TO CHANGE DRIVERS

(Inspired by Amy Dryansky’s,  Past a Certain Point of Magnification,

All Portraits Become Landscapes)

I don’t feel like a holy spirit.

I possess the inspiration of a moth.

It’s not clear to me if the ringing in my ears is just me

            or some warning of an impending end time.

Please dispense with the desire to beatify,

            to  turn me into a relic whose bits of bone

            in one’s pocket brings one closer to God.

I must hang on to the cynicism, it will come in handy.

(I must remember to feed and nurture mine.)

Faith pulls me along like a tractor plowing fields

but I can’t risk leaving  what’s in store for me

             to the wind and shadows.

           

I need heavy objects or

three astrophysicists to haunt my dreams and

assure me that the sun remains an astronomical body,

that it will show its face again, that gravity will

not take off and leave us

(no magic, this, no miracle needed).

Life breaks apart and all the broken tree limbs are bones

suggesting that nothing ducks out the back.

The next act will sweep in, a rip tide pile of leaves

that rises and falls once more while

I hold on with clenched fingers, nails digging-in.

I will patch whatever comes my way and call it normal.

NOV 13, 2018

PARK HILL ORCHARD, PRE-THANKSGIVING, 2018

The sunlight at the  orchard is a shiny button,

crisp as a Gold Rush apple.

Trees have relented and given up everything,

a perfect model of stillness.

Everything visible. Everything so inviting.

It’s true that visitors come for the colors, but some come for the release,

the leaves’ great resignation to a winter

hovering off the shores of November. Brown hens scamper

while the cock of the roost makes

his presence known with a blood-curdling cry of male bravado.

The art scattered through the field is usually hidden

by the drunken abundance of summer,

but now, each tree is its own art installation, venous limbs at tippy-top

gyrate against a fat blue sky and

wraithy clouds, while terra cotta faces stand as if on

Easter Island, sunning.

There is still flora clinging to life (no matter what that life is, it seems).

Some living things are like that.

Buying apples helps. They are sweet but dry,

so firm, they crack between teeth.

We eat a few slices, while some fall to the ground.

In the end there are fewer second chances.

Thanksgiving is ten days away and soon we will be

among those who see us as redeemable as the latest CVS

coupon. This lets us hold hands,

call each other family

to close ranks, 

so nothing

gets in.

NOV 14-2018

SEASHELL

/There are words within every sea shell/

/that you are able to coax right out of the ocean/

/onto the white sands/

/like a sheet of paper./

/Even the stars are jealous/

/of how you spin beauty/

/out of thin air. /

NOV 15, 2018

The Day My Toaster Was Replaced With a Cactus

Today I went to make toast but the toaster had been replaced with a cactus.
I am not afraid of cactus, but toasters scare me to death.
When I was young, I’d heard stories of people being electrocuted
Sticking forks or knives into trap-like slots that hold bread for toasting.
I was certain my toaster would lure me into its mouth &
I would be the victim of its razor teeth.

Perhaps those living in cactus climates – Arizonans, or Nevadans – have their
Own horror stories about cactus, of those impaled on barbs & left for dead.
Maybe there are stories of hemophiliacs bleeding to death after
An angry encounter with a cactus, rescued from a local nursery.

We carry our orange-cone stories with us everywhere
The ones that warn us of the objects of this world that can harm us.
Things we learn through saturation are hardest to quit.

Nov 16, 2018

Book Making

we type everything into the computer

to produce professional looking works in

order to capture moments of sparkling genius

we take for granted. still, we bind copies by

hand whenever we can, sketch with pen

and ink, & affix & append & book-make very limited edition copies of the one work

that will shake up the world, then dole it out

with an eye dropper or flood everything

with world’s largest Super Soaker we can find. 

or perhaps  we show no one at all because we love what we make by hand without mechanism without artifice or prosthetics of any kind.

we love what it makes us.

NOV 17, 2018

POETRY CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Haikus are how aliens try to communicate with us.

5-7-5 is the nitrogen to phosphorus to potassium

ratio and that is what aliens are made of.

Too much nitrogen results in being too green

(and needing a hair cut in a serious way).

Centos are not breath mints, but poems made of lines

from other poets. Circular centos are poems made by

the same lines of the same set of poets, causing an infinite

loop of poesy, resulting in the urge to drink.

Ghazals are so graceful, bouncing along the

literary Serengeti, dispersing wide light

and dust, until night gently disrobes, and reclines.

It’s getting late, so write me a poem.

Throw out your voice, make a sound you won't regret.

It’s coming for all, you know and poetry is in on it.

NOV 18, 2018

 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA,

CAMP FIRE 2018

smoke rises like a prayer

building petition

so long as you don’t mind

a little asthma.

like the cries of a thousand

out of hot embers

heat thrums in waves like a wall

(who will go get them

those wanting to be found?

or at least the meat and

bone of them

what is left of them

the accident of them

what is remembered of them

what is recalled in

photos of them

what can be carried of them

who will go?)

loss the only story,

the one we are ashamed of

afraid to admit to

the one told in a sky

illumined by flames seen

from outer space.

even the laws of

physics cry out as

probability gives way

to dusky certitude.

then who will go get them?

NOV 19, 2018

FINALLY, ENGAGING THE GRIEF

my father was taken `

before i learned what it was to be a man

and my mother before my heart

grew to the size of the watermelon it is

trying to hold all the tears of a planet

after breaking down like I did you should know

i have needed to do this for some time

just not in front of  you all

and i am sorry for that

there are some things

that need to be whispered

NOV 20, 2018

SOMEDAY I’LL LOVE YOU, MICHAEL BIEGNER

(After Ocean Vuong, After Frank O’Hara, After Roger Reaves)

Hey Michael, heads up!

Others are on their way to  you, to crowd your space.

The line for solitude goes half-way around the block

but you will walk through them like Moses parting the

Red Sea anyway. A whisper is how things reveal  them-

selves to you, phantasm of collegiality, social butterfly 

of mysterious proportions, through radio waves of

irrelevance, you negotiate it all, man!

As a child, remember how those who searched for you

met with perfect stillness, an evolutionary trick of protection.

But you found a tribe anyway, and bought you lock, stock,

and barrel with the currency of kindness, and interests as thick

as primal forests, not the ones now, the ones before deforestation,

the ones before climate change, the ones before everything had an

IP address and GPS coordinates, before everyone had to be some-

place all the time, before you had to be unseen.