Posts for June 25, 2024 (page 8)

Grandma returned
as a newspaper publisher
like Ethel Barrymore
in Deadline USA
She’d seen it all
elegant and battle-hardened
each deadline a Tiffany scar

I was her editor
her Humphrey Bogart
We sat in the newsroom
talking coverage
for the next edition
though I can’t recall
what made page one 

Then I woke up
our partnership dissolved
the newsroom darkened
the presses relics
a-holes with X accounts
fancying themselves
“independent journalists”

The real Grandma
didn’t write and would
never pick a printed fight
She probably watched
Studio Wrestling
more than she read
The Daily News

It was just a dream
thin like smoke
from a candle snuffed
a board game
with missing pieces
But in a wisp of time
I had a boss I loved

And who by fire, who by water –Leonard Cohen (from the Machzor Rosh Hashanah)
 No one gets out of there alive –Jim Morrison    

Stop worrying about
Inconveniencing the living who
Don’t want to be bothered by someone
Screaming, crying out, moaning, leaving messes  

Stop worrying about dying quietly, without fuss so
The living won’t be discomfited
Scream, rail, weep, gnash your teeth
Rattle, hum, wander, sleep  

Go gentle into that good night
Or rage, rage, rage, leave it with a fight
It’s your life, your dying, your death
Don’t worry about how You breathe your last breath  

The last exhale comes to one and all    

Walk into a forest, one

that hasn’t seen you before,

in a land you’ve never visited,

or, better yet, not heard of.

Where nobody will look for you.

There will be places, thinned,

where you can see the sun,

the trees beyond the trees,

a path worn across the floor.

Like the endless false apologies.

Don’t let these fool you, or

birth some hope of escape

that will nag at the parts of you

she left without atlases of scars.

Not that such parts survived.

Keep walking, then penetrate

so deep you can see nothing

past the crazy prism of colors,

the palette of the varied pains.

She was an experienced artist.

Stay. Let your self dissolve.

Be a fungus born of old leaves.

Then wake. The scars will stay,

until you’re reminded how to love.

Which is not the same as forgetting.

(after the 1901 painting, “Forest of Fir Trees,” by Gustav Klimt)

He drove off to college

She brings it to the woods where it does not belong
it does not smell like limestone
does not hear the ripple of flowing water
does not walk along the creek like cedar boughs,
it will never have the sex appeal of soaring hawk

She keeps it in her head and will not bring it out
it exists like quantum mechanics
and has a Roman numeral hiding in every black hole
it remains mute behind the face of her Latin,
stays motionless on the path of meaning like India ink

She wants to tie it up with the lace of her boot
but it’s birth canal is in the invisible snap of synapse
and grounded like lightning through the roots of trees,
it lives off the limes of delicious dilemma
and comes close to fiddling like old man Nero

She grows tired of it and leaves it where it does not belong,
it will become honeysuckle and root like wild boar
spread like moldy fungi through fiddlehead fern
turn the romance of the world against its own moon.
This is why there are jumbo jets and ermine clouds

Dishes delicious, tables laden with
nothing I want to eat, not even the
star treat, hot dog buns palming
“what purports to be sausage,” wink, wink.
(Supposedly, only the artsy who live in
lofts of New York City really
get it.)  

Forget it –
I’ve come for plum brandy.  

Everyone’s nice, I take a seat.
I let decanters of wine pass me by.
Come on, wouldn’t you like to try?
I shake my head.
I’m saving room for plum brandy. 

Then I feel the meal escaping,
my consciousness blinking.
I reach for the bottle, rude, seeing
I’m spent, useless as a bruised banana.  

I don’t even take a drink, I sink
back into dirt that birthed me, knowing
I never needed no
m_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ plum brandy.          

today it will rain
tomorrow, rain again. this
is irish summer 

On the table in front of me is a stack of books

The first authored by Bell Hooks,

Someone else taught me her name

In front of the fireplace is plant stand that I still need to give a friend

A house-warming gift now several months late

As I’m pleasantly entwined in a near constant exchange of things, ideas, and place

On the wall a photo of Tom Petty

Put there by the man who owned the bookstore

I learned to love in

A print of Claude Monet’s “the lilies” sitting in the floor

Mugs with coffee stains from each destination I’ve traveled for

A raven holding a lightbulb in its beak

Two pieces of granite on the shelf, carved to act as bookends

I’m an amalgamation of every token of affection

Stitched up by “I was thinking of you”

Parts of me are that are wholly mine are so few

I’ve been slowly built up over time

By lovers and dear friends

This house would not be home

If it were not filled with the things given to me by their hands

I hope that when they reach for the teacup, art, or the trinket I’ve offered

They know much I treasure this constant exchange of love and life

And know that anything I find beautiful will never be coffered

The trainer said my dog
Is really, really smart.
But watching him race
As fast as possible

In a circle
On the living room rug
Chasing his own tail,
Makes me wonder
How smart he really is.

Of course,
The same could be said about me
And a sizable portion
Of the population of our planet.

The Steinway grand,
under warm hall lights,
expectant crowd, murmuring

reviewing the program:
Bach, Mozart, Beethoven
in the first half

Chopin, Debussy, and Prokofiev
in the second

and, lately, he has been playing
the Schubert as first encore

the hall lights dim,
the stage door open,
his confident footsteps,
a roar of applause

he bows, a hint of
that charming smile,

he sits at the piano,
the hall falls silent,
he lifts his hands
to the keyboard

and opens
a new universe