Posts for June 8, 2020 (page 7)

My voice is eulogized in rooms and hallways
as I enchant ceaseless whispers
and guide them to dart among splintered remains of lost echoes.

My words will haunt the building’s final occupants
like a siren song
–irresistable and deadly–
Something to witness.

My soul’s astral projection
–a self-chosen extraction–
coincides with, as life would have it,
an endless sound wave upon which my messages travel.
I spit braided communications from my ghostly tongue
without caution.

The textured sounds shake off the sticky saliva,
cling to your ear,
and burrow through years of accumulated thick yellow wax
to form an undetectable perforation
that will keep you scratching at the ache you deserve.
Now that’s worth celebrating.

If you’re at the computer or on a device right now,
Feel free to Google if these don’t ring a bell:

What if Czolgosz had missed?
What if Princip had missed?
What if Harding had lived?
What if Hitler had been killed during the Beer Hall Putsch?
What if Carole Lombard hadn’t died in a plane crash?
Might have to do some research on this one,
But word is that Shirley Temple might have been cast as Dorothy.

What if Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy had died in World War II?
What if Dewey had won the 1948 election?
What if Frank Sinatra hadn’t gotten the role in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY?
That last one doesn’t really count,
There’s no way he wouldn’t have gotten that role.

What if Oswald–or the grassy knoll shooter–had missed?
What if Dorothy Hunt’s plane hadn’t crashed?
What if Mark David Chapman had missed?
Actually, he wouldn’t have.
It was close range.

Guns, movies, planes and elections,
How big a role did they play in changing the course of history?

Just a child scrambling
across my nightstand,
desperate for a drink,
his water dish chapped
and clammy. Just a kid
slipping on a cell phone
as he tries to sip from
a man’s glass, falls into
that dark unknown,
flails for any sort
of purchase, claws bared.
Needles in my face,
my nose, my forehead.
Blood on the sheets.
What did I expect,
leaving his bowl
empty in the night?

Lincoln’s green & gold wool
slippers, at size 14, were too big
to fill. Goats embroidered in gold
& beige, squatting on two
shades of cabbage. Two-toned
horns spiking up & ears lifted
& wide open. Remember
his formal stovepipe
hat & black broadcloth
coattails down
to his knees? His penchant for
melancholy & kids dead
too soon? He was also free

spirited & whimsical, a tolerant
parent. He allowed Willie
& Tad to raise Nanny, Nanko,
& Jack, pardoned turkey at the White
House. While Lincoln shuffled
from bedroom to study mulling
the days to come, Nanny
could be found chewing
cud nonchalantly in Tad’s
bedroom. The boys hitched
the goats to kitchen
chairs & darted across the main
floor causing well-dressed
women to pull up their hoop
skirts to make a wider

path. Abraham didn’t like
being called Abe but he loved
losing an hour on the presidential
lawn to play goofy games with his boys
& beloved goats. At times he greeted
official guests with hair
disheveled & slippered
feet. Does it matter
that he wore those slippers
down to his last day? That he
bragged about his goats for their
gentleness & intelligence? That he
was smitten with his pardoned
turkey? I will let you answer
those questions for yourself.

if i were blind

born without sight
i would grow old
knowing his smell
was different from hers,
personalities through barks
or bites, and lips-skinny
or thick-by the touch
of finger tips, or a day’s
toils and labors, tastes
blindness savors.

if i were born blind
i would know ugly
as a trait opposite
beauty and kind,
but if i became blind
today, i would be lost,
unable to find my way.
a life without colors
or even shades of gray
would be agony.

the pleasures of sight
make my world divine
as long as i remember
to close my eyes and see
I must live humanely.

To whom it may concern,   

     My sincerest apologies, 
     I know
     it was my fault.
     I let my heart
     speak, rather than listening
     to my brain—
     it’s only
     “book smart”
     though so you
     shouldn’t have trusted me
     in the first place.
     I was “selfish” you
     snarled as your teeth
     wrecked together. I guess
     it could be screwed that way
     if you think
     about it long enough.
     Once again,
     my bad.

Sincerely, 
       Someone who should
               have tried harder 

Champion of Breakfasts

The mysteries of Sunday breakfast include 
how to drain the griddle of grease,
how to fry the eggs without breaking yolk,
how to fold omelets into perfect half moons.

All these matters mystify me as much 
as operating a bush hog,
firing up the four-wheel-drive Kubota, or
casting a fly rod into fast-moving stream.

Yet, you’ve managed them all, first
with two hands, then after your stroke,
with just the left, right hand craned
into place from the shoulder,
your mouth set 
to fine-tune
and tight-line 
deliberate strength.

set up a call
early Thursday
senior leadership
sixty minutes
one-item agenda:
crash
attach latest data
track and record updates
action items:
determine next steps
define required resources
assign team leads
set deadlines

set up a call
early Monday
senior leadership
sixty minutes
agenda:
action item updates
staffing

set up a call
Monday afternoon
HR officer and lawyer
sixty minutes
one-item agenda:
layoffs

Turn intricate red
weeping lacy fingers to
touch the house it adores.

Pine Mountain Cemetery VII
                  Kelly

Circus clown, paints a grin, juggles with
Eye trick that take our minds from worlds 
Of pain we would not believe if told.

Kelly, a runaway, orphan, shock of golden hair,
Stocky, short, strong, angry, defenses always up,
Stormed her classroom and made sanctuary.

The briefest respite from the torture that cratered
His mind into chambers of forgetfulness. His stories
Took students, teacher, his world to another land.

He hid in those recesses that protected him
From blows from one who should have cared but
Instead sought release through Kelly’s stripes.

With his stories he bought a fragile fame,
A place to hide for time enough to heal and hope.
A tiny piece of his world held out a promise

Way too late to heal a broken boy alcohol
Soon found, and drugs and speeding cars.
College classes too weak to hold the damage.

Red balls of pain, fear, anger spiraled beyond
His reach. They sent his body back. Teacher
Found a place for what was left of the clown
With a song too sweet to save the child.

Thornton Wilder could write the boy’s cover
Stories told in this cemetery to those who rest
near him in his uneasy sleep.