Category: My poems

Listen to this poem using the player above.

This poem was inspired by Normanskill poet Alan Casline’s poem “My Navajo Butterfly Song.”

Seeing Eye
(for Alan Casline)

The Navajo sign said “no photos” —
I prefer to think of it as advice, not warning,

encouraging us to capture images with the lenses of our eyes,
to store them on our natural hard drives.

“Doesn’t anybody ever just remember anything anymore?”
George Carlin asked. He was right.

We’ve become victims of instant nostalgia,
our minds grown lazy, our brains soft.

It’s so bad that I’ve forgotten the first line of this very poem,
and the way my sons looked when they were born.

My therapist said chronic depression impairs
the memory centers of the brain, causes

gaps

in the remembered narrative. That was a relief to hear.
I always wondered why my life was a highlight reel,

the entire three-plus decades condensed into three-plus minutes,
like always seeing the bus but never being hit by it.

The Navajo sign said “no photos.”
Pretty smart, those Navajo.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Based on a recent New York City experience.

dead pigeon

dead pigeon on a gray sedan
gray sedan under a dead pigeon
dead gray pigeon sedan
gray dead sedan pigeon

heads turn, shake, pass
passing heads, shaking, turn
shaken heads pass, turning
shaken heads, turning, pass

soft feet slap pavement
soft pavement feet slap
slapping pavement, soft feet
slapping, soft, feet, pavement

head bleeding slow trickle
bleeding head trickle slow
slow bleeding head trickle
trickle bleeding head slow

gray dead sedan pigeon
dead gray pigeon sedan
gray sedan under a dead pigeon
dead pigeon on a gray sedan

Listen to this poem using the player above.

This poem was inspired by a tweet by trombonist Jeff Albert. His message became the first line of the poem.

Separation

The MacBook Pro’s headphone out does
not have clean stereo separation.

It cannot effectively separate the
left from                  the right.

Nor can it color-code cull the allowed from
the illegal.

Or sit at the base of the wall in the cold
desert night, waiting for what the coyotes bring.

The MacBook Pro’s headphone out sends
a steady stream of sound

straight to the bones inside your ears,
causing tiny vibrations that your

brain magnifies then translates into
language you can understand.

And yet, left                  and right
will not be properly separated. Will mix

inappropriately, causing some in the room
to murmur their disapproval.

Are you murmuring your disapproval? Casting
a sidelong glance, perhaps

catching the eye of another partygoer, who
responds with raised brow or a

cluck

of the tongue?

Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.

Can you separate
left                  from right?

Do you know where you bread is buttered?

Do you want to wash the dishes?

Listen to this poem using the player above.

McLemore, Fabricatore & Buttonwood

started out across the grassy plain

ate buffalo meat on the shores of Lake Erie

learned new languages & wooed exotic birds down from the trees

were of sound mind & body, were of sound body & mind

encountered the Kraken & debated the pronunciation of his name,
only to discover that he was a she, & really quite wonderful at chess

were undaunted in the face of adversity

sat beside the wine-dark sea, telling lies & braiding hempen ropes

signed their names in the guestbook at a hotel on the edge of an active volcano,
the ash settling slowly about their shoulders

could see the valley below, but could not state its true name

sailed across the ocean blue in a hastily built marshmallow canoe

were rescued from certain death by a one-legged man who knew whereof he spoke

are as real as you or I

exist purely for our amusement
do not exist at all

McLemore, Fabricatore & Buttonwood
will be back soon, will demand answers, will show slides of their trip
to an uninterested audience in the local library

will realize that the road is better than the rest stop & will start out again
across the grassy plain

Listen to this poem using the player above.

The title of this poem comes from the title of one of composer Andrew Durkin’s blog posts.

Image by batega

by chance and trembling

by chance and trembling
he touched her
though perhaps it was
not by chance

a design buried deep
beneath his skin
below the rush of blood
the pounding heart

intricate tracery
coloring his cheeks
as the tips of his fingers
hummed against her pulse

there are moments of clarity
instants when the universe is tactile
when nothing is left to chance
when the trembling stops

Listen to this poem using the player above.

pumpkin

she’s almost at the end of the poem
when she slips and says
“punkin”

just like that, all those careful years
peel away, she stands
in a flower-print dress her mother made

reading in front of the class
stumbling over the hard words
in her accent the kids made fun of

she spent years silencing that voice
replacing it with the calm, assured
sophistication that befits a woman of means

she catches herself – puts the “p” where it belongs
but it’s too late, everyone has seen
the scared girl behind the sophisticate

the sweat-soaked dress clinging to her past
the voice she cannot silence
pouring from her mouth

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This is the kind of poem you write when you eat lunch in a cemetery.

the ghosts of suburbia
(for Bunny, whoever she is)

the woman with bottle-colored hair
locked her car door at the cemetery

perhaps an overabundance of caution
among these long-sleeping thieves
on this false-summer day

like the bunny named on her license plate
she darted from the car to a grave
bent over momentarily and was gone

before the trumpeter playing on my car stereo
finished the first chorus of his solo

this visit was less about communing with the dead
more about checking in
either to make sure they were still there
or to confirm to them that she was

it looked like a visit to a silent parole officer
Sergeant Murphy no longer a desk jockey
now pushing daisies rather than papers
in triplicate, two extra copies to eventually
go to the landfill, as Murphy himself has

a few hundred feet away she stopped
at a second grave, repeated the ritual

apparently her relatives had hedged their bets
against the day when the housing development
next door would expand into the cemetery

they’d spread the family around
to buy the long-term mourners more time

in this oppressive heat their presence
is Bunny’s challenge — a test of her willingness
to leave her air-conditioned Lincoln

she passes the test and is allowed to live
until her next appointment
with the ghosts of suburbia, the spectres

who haunt Lincoln-driving women
with bottle-colored hair