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Fievel Crane Posts

POEM: The Best-Laid Schemes Etc.

Published 9 April 2026 by Fievel

The Best-Laid Schemes Etc.

As a kid I thought I had telekinetic powers
because I’d never heard of a breeze.

As a teen I was pretty sure that “famous musician”
was in my immediate future.

(In my 20s I still thought that,
despite all the bars I was playing in.)

By my 30s I had started causing trouble professionally,
and I figured that would lead to, maybe, Congress?

By my 40s I’d been homeless once
and I’d given up on electoral politics.

I’m two years into my 50s and I’ve been homeless twice.
I’ve mostly stopped making music.

My retirement plan is death.
I don’t have the first clue what else is coming.

/ / /

9 April 2026
Charlottesville VA

Day 9 of National Poetry Month

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POEM: Navigating The Hellscape

Published 8 April 2026 by Fievel

Navigating The Hellscape

The Red Sox are trying to win
their first series of the young season.

Israel is carpet-bombing southern Lebanon.

I had a smoked salmon sandwich for lunch
and chatted with a friend,

then sent another friend a note
hoping his family in Lebanon are okay.

What even is “okay”?

Roman Anthony is up to bat.
He’s gone 0 for 2 in this game.

Iran has withdrawn from negotiations with the U.S.
because of the bombing of Lebanon.

The cat is asleep on the bed behind me.

Six minutes ago, Mosab Abu Toha posted:

“Israel has just shot a Palestinian woman
in the head in Mawasi Rafah.”

The sun is shining.

/ / /

8 April 2026
Charlottesville VA

Day 8 of National Poetry Month

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POEM: You Can Play A Shoestring If You’re Sincere

Published 7 April 2026 by Fievel

You Can Play A Shoestring If You’re Sincere
for Kittie Cooper

Or a sewing machine, as it turns out.
You can stick two contact mics on a Singer
and go to town, letting the feedback wail
as the crunchy needle sounds distort
through one of the many barefoot pedals.
One light bulb shines
through the holes in the paper
as it travels, threadless, through the machine.
The audience marvels like believers
watching a miracle.
If only Isaac were here
to see what he had (unintentionally) wrought.

/ / /

7 April 2026
Charlottesville VA

NOTE: The title of this poem is a quote from John Coltrane.

Day 7 of National Poetry Month.

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POEM: Lament For What Could Have Been

Published 6 April 2026 by Fievel

Lament For What Could Have Been

Who is doing what they would be doing
if they didn’t have to do what they’re doing now
just to pay for food and shelter and medicine?

Would you be filling out spreadsheets or
ticking boxes on a form or
saying yes to some asshole when you mean no

if it wasn’t for the fact that most of us
are closer to homeless than to rich
and we have to keep the hamster wheel spinning?

I think there’s a better than even chance I’ll die
never having seen London or Paris or Nairobi or Cairo
and that’s true for nearly everyone

who isn’t from one of those cities and if they are
they just have a different city on their bucket list
that they’ll most like never get to unless

it’s during the week of vacation they’ve stored up
to pretend that life is something other
than what the powerful require.

We were born to be the gardeners of Eden,
we grew up to be serfs
in the mines of Airstrip One.

/ / /

6 April 2026
Charlottesville VA

Day 6 of National Poetry Month

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POEM: The Little Things

Published 5 April 2026 by Fievel

The Little Things
for Stephanie

It’s the late-night chats
(that aren’t all that late).

It’s you crafting
while I read comics.

It’s you reading cozy fantasy
while I listen to an album.

It’s sitting on the porch,
waving at the dogs.

It’s road trips and train trips
to see the people we love.

It’s dinner with the friends we met
standing for something bigger than us.

It’s obsessing over the cat
as he lulls us closer and bites us.

It’s narrating your life to me
while I narrate my life to you.

It’s your hand on my back
as I fall asleep at night.

It’s the way we make it work
despite all the things against us.

/ / /

5 April 2026
Charlottesville VA

Day 5 of National Poetry Month

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POEM: Porch Of Babel

Published 4 April 2026 by Fievel

Porch Of Babel

The magic bird app
counts two dozen kinds of birds
outside our apartment
on this early Saturday morning.
I used to know
quite a few of their songs,
but like any language
it fades if you don’t use it.
Now it’s just chaos
and woodpeckers.
And mourning doves.
Sadness is universally recognizable.
And blue jays,
because so is being obnoxious.

/ / /

4 April 2026
Charlottesville VA

Day 4 of National Poetry Month

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POEM: The Ballad Of Artemis 2

Published 3 April 2026 by Fievel

The Ballad Of Artemis 2

four little humans
in their little tin can
gonna circle the moon
“one giant step for man”

that’s what Neil said
but not what he meant
he did the best he could
while he was hell-bent

on that little piece of heaven
or as close as he could come
at least until each of us
can stick out our thumb

and an alien will take us
on a trip to Barnard’s Star
you can’t see it from here
but it’s not all that far

for now though we wait
just a few days more
for those four tiny humans
in their tin can to soar

around the moon’s back side
you know what I mean
and go the all-time furthest
of any human bean

/ / /

3 April 2026
Charlottesville VA

Day 3 of National Poetry Month

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POEM: All Things Being Equal

Published 2 April 2026 by Fievel

All Things Being Equal

Keeping it 100,
I’d like to get the fuck out of here.

Keeping it real,
“here” means Charlottesville and life.

Keeping it another buck,
there are times
when I spend two hours
on the lawn with friends
and it all seems a little more bearable.

The sun is almost down.
The cat is on Stephanie’s lap.
A jay is doing jay things
in the neighbors’ tree.

All things being equal,
I guess tomorrow can come.

/ / /

2 April 2026
Charlottesville VA

Day 2 of National Poetry Month 2026

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POEM: Modern Love

Published 1 April 2026 by Fievel

Modern Love

David Bowie looks better in his mug shot
than most of us do when we go out on the town.
Then again, he doesn’t believe in modern love
so maybe that helps. Or helped. Of course.

It puts my trust in God and man, he said.
I don’t particularly believe in either of those
but if it had to stake it all on one or the other
I’d give homo sapiens a better chance

of fixing the cracks in the wall, the holes in the dam,
of pushing back the darkness we’ve created.
Not a particularly good chance,
just a better one than God.

The song has changed on the radio.
Time has come today.
Nobody’s coming to help us.
And Dave has left the building.

/ / /

1 April 2026
Charlottesville VA

Day 1 of National Poetry Month 2026

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POEM: Waiting For You

Published 21 February 2026 by Fievel

Waiting For You

Birds flee the rush of the train.
They leap skyward
from the roof of the record store,
circle the parking lot
once, twice, three times,
but the train’s still going,
hundreds of cars of who knows what
heading for who knows where.
A pedestrian in a thin black leather jacket
looks apprehensively at the sky,
headphones on, oblivious to the train.
The birds, tired of waiting,
move farther off
in a swirl
of black wings, forked tails.
After what feels like too long,
a bell signals the raising of the guard rails
on either side of the tracks.
The street is moving again.
The train recedes like a distant storm.

/ / /

21 February 2026
Charlottesvile VA

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POEM: Pictures Of The Gone World

Published 13 February 2026 by Fievel

Pictures Of The Gone World

There used to be apartments at Carnegie Hall.
Artists lived in them, photographers, composers.

There used to be apartments at Carnegie Hall.
Rent controlled, so people could still afford them.

There used to be apartments at Carnegie Hall.
Bill Cunningham lived there, the eye of fashion.

There used to be apartments at Carnegie Hall.
They turned them into offices, row and rows of cubes.

There used to be apartments at Carnegie Hall.
The tenants asked for help, but none was forthcoming.

There used to be apartments at Carnegie Hall.
Now the telemarketers call above the theater below.

There used to be apartments at Carnegie Hall.
There used to be apartments at Carnegie Hall.
There used to be apartments at Carnegie Hall.
There used to be apartments at Carnegie Hall.

/ / /

12 February 2026
Charlottesville VA

Watch this.

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POEM: Fielder’s Choice, or, Defensive Indifference

Published 12 February 2026 by Fievel

Fielder’s Choice, or, Defensive Indifference
for Stevie Smith

I do not write poems that rhyme.
It’s not that I don’t have the time,
It’s that I lack the aptitude.
And furthermore, my attitude
Is that rhyming poems just aren’t as deep.
They have a tendency to creep
Close to what we might call song,
And while that brings the crowds along,
It doesn’t pierce the constant gloom.
I prefer to sit here in my room
And scribble down my verses free
Of what has always seemed to me
Like poetry made for a kid –
Oh look at what I’ve gone and did.

/ / /

11 February 2026
Charlottesville VA

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Mental Health Day Haibun

Published 30 January 2026 by Fievel

Mental Health Day Haibun

There are moments — like right now when I’m drinking Earl Grey tea and reading Bao Phi’s poetry and listening to a young cellist play Enescu on the local classical station — when I can almost see what contentment looks like.

scrape of cello
over smashing ice
post-storm symphony

/ / /

30 January 2026
Charlottesville VA

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POEM: Nostalgia is a gun that backfires

Published 21 January 2026 by Fievel

Nostalgia is a gun that backfires

Alan Watts drank himself to death at 58.
Ralph Towner died at 85 years old.
My grandparents lived into their 90s.
Me, I’m looking through old photos
on a hard drive in my bedroom,
wondering where the years have gone
and what I was doing while they were passing.
I see my friends’ kids laughing.
My own kids laughing.
There are former lovers and partners,
friends and collaborators,
minor celebrities and major heartbreaks.
Ones and zeroes translated into
ones I remember and ones I try to forget.
But there is no forgetting, just incorporating
the names and faces and feelings
into a new version of who I am.
This version will be out of date
by the time I finish this poem,
replaced by a new me who’ll load
the same bullet into the same chamber,
having learned no lessons.
Nostalgia is a gun that backfires,
the shot echoing through the house.

/ / /

21 January 2026
Charlottesville VA

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POEM: Humoresque

Published 6 January 2026 by Fievel

Humoresque

Sometimes I see people in old movies
and I’m jealous that they’re surely dead by now.
They did it. They made it through.
Whatever was going to happen to them happened.
It either killed them or it didn’t. Eventually it did.

The two middle-aged music instructors,
just now entering a classroom in a movie from 1946 —
they’ve been gone for decades.
They died before the internet, before smart phones,
before social media, before the climate catastrophe.

Now sure, they died before a lot of good stuff, too.
The world getting better for people who looked different
than every single cast member in this film, for instance.
But the point is they just don’t have to worry about it anymore.
And I still do.

/ / /

6 January 2026
Charlottesville VA

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