....From The Tree Of...............Love & Family
|
_______________________________________________________ 32 Degrees You are snow and all the beauties that surprise and make the heart tiptoe with awe. This flake here on my glove is such delight: a wee you there- so intricate and clean. You melt to me just so. You're music, fire- but most ly, you are snow. In Any Wind Things hung in trees like hope, love, kites of childhood stay up there where no wind can dislodge them; they fly, are banners of the ghostship Gone Away, and I am there as well- lashed to a wheel: St. Catherine with her bosom torn. Moths of memory still hover at the light, pray for warmth, stay with me- whatever seas may lap this bow. Monte Carlo Night At The Church Bazaar We sat around a card table, metal legs kept banging at my shins; the air too thin to breathe. He sat beside me, black hair dangerous. The air was blue with smoke. My husband drew another card and dealt while I looked close at one who sat beside; he was playing off the largesse of the Gloria Swanson widow woman. Hair an Action Comics blue/black, sixty year old dowager dripped rings like fire, flashed wickedly from every finger, drunk and swaying in her chair. Her eyes half-shut with smug and boozy turpitude. Play another hand he said it's her money. Slid some greenback over toward me. He was twenty six and I, a pent up thirty one. The dealer at the table, I was married to- played croupier for charity, was forty eight seeing someone twenty five although I didn't know this. Gloria Swanson nodded, her cigarette dangled greasy from her Revlon lips, pushed backward from the table, staggered like a lady staggers simple to the bar to get another watered whiskey. The handsome one leaned in to me, breathed Heinekin and said: I can't believe that clown- and pointed to the dealer. He's my husand, I replied. I don't believe it, he answered staring hard. He looked us both straight up and down. I knew exactly what he meant. Three years later with the Roman collar gone- and me, without the husband laughed while rolling round in bold and mattressed harmony, remembering. I never did learn how to play a poker hand but I knew from that night just when to fold. Spell Before the sun pops greasy yellow in the sky, while eyes are at half focus before sleep, while you are banded 'bout the ankle by that slave keeper, Time and the awareness of his whip, I want to slip a bit of magic in your cup: Take that black scarab- tear his back and wear the shell. Never take it off. Bite off the bitter root you pull with gray fingered moonlight- ghastly on your working hands. Eat the red shreds of it. Pluck the dimple from a babe within its bunting and replace it with a thorn. Make a horn of poisonwood. Put it to your lips and blow .......... and I will come to you. House Of One and One There is space now, windy cracks, and distance enough to see the lacks and road weary miles of us. There is no forever unchangeableness. No marriage of true minds. I find the impediment is time itself, which will, with sand like hands on backs, ever so gently abade away cement as we push us farther from each other. We're the singular columns of a house that has no floor yet holds the roof up just the same: the question was, "Could you go alone if I were dead?" not "Would you go alone?" Individual need's the only chair here. It's a house of one and one, and that's a thing of which there are no sonnets sung. My grief's my own to bear- October my companion. ....You couldn't do it. You wait for me ....and spring to fill your pockets. We'll stay in a cottage in the place we love the most, and every ghost will be the kind we both can see: that isn't you and isn't me. Fathers Girls are always Plathing daddy hate poems: dad as coldest bastard. Dad as creepy romeo, or 'Father, can you hear me?'--Dad as God. Usually, he's some poor slob who's doin' the best that he can do without strange gifts or magic powers, not a unicorn in view ..... or help from the dad before him either. Mostly terrified of hurting what looks like petals on a rose, and wondering where all the pink goes in a world like his. Attrition Thirty six is not a big number. Three dozen in one week is not so large until you put the faces under the numerals: each one a son. A lover husband, brother fodder for the war that isn't even: they're peacekeepers, co ..... alition personnel so there now, Mr. Bush. Our men are stacked like firewood in a tinderbox, and you're the one sleeps at night. Jogs. Smiles for the camera. Makes speeches about . sacrifice, one eye on the Dow, our men are dying, but the dollar's doing well; I've a four year old grandson worries constantly about hell, and asks his mother, "We're the good guys, aren't we?". Daddy's off to war. Thou shalt not kill, now that's the stickler. That's a good one for the Lincoln bed room. Riding Dread Listen to your heart beat. Make it beat back wards. Cannot do it, no matter how you try. Nor can I control this clock that with each second, someone's slipping away in days stacked like a fortress made of cards; can't withstand the hand that with precise deliberation, will turn them one by one, face up. The deck is played until there isn't any more, the door will open- something awful .........will step .........through. For Sons At War This is the dire hour, this- and no other. This is the last inch of the ledge, the time the pledge comes due. This is the colors running blue and bluer, indigo to inky plum, the last one black as the devil's heart. To part ways with all that's home, to roam full into madness- this is the sadness, this the one I've dreaded all my life: my son, spun like a cannonball into the wall of it. Two Generals Schimmelfennig, name drowned in the Rhine, Germanic as the Kaiser, brings snickers when paired with Gettysburg as patron of the pig slops. Hid in the woodshed in the back of the Garlach house on Baltimore Street evading the enemy, while Bobby Lee and his boys were routing the Army of the Potomac through the town and up to Cemetery Hill. Schimmelfennig wanted to deny the rebels capture of a General, but history's dealt unkindly with his story, and I know how it feels: thursday night, my boy shipped out for Operation Freedom. I didn't call him, didn't trust my voice to speak. I knew a crow sound would come out- lots of snot and barking sobs, and so I didn't call ..............I wrote a poem. Poor comfort to a man gone off to war. Through all his courage, I've been craven, critical and angry. Matt just goes and does what he has to- he is Hancock. I am Schimmelfennig, lost in slops and wondering when it's safe to come out and breathe again, but I just read another Blackhawk was shot down: I know I'll never make it. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
|