American Sentence CXVIII
Cowboy thumb thumps the bass; a seat away, Woman hums; Railway Cat purrs.
A hundred years from tomorrow
hope will be illegal,
not because the act alone
has ever done enough
to change the world
but because hope does just enough
to disturb others from their lassitude.
That agitation is what they fear,
for tremors both predict and follow
those quakes that reset nations.
Hope is the thaw,
however temporary,
that cracks the asphalt
sealing earth away from sky,
a unison of two absolutes
that have driven humanity forward
since we had the words to describe ourselves.
Others possessions they can outlaw,
but interpretations of the very words
we use to fathom our reality
that bubble from our minds
so unnecessarily
cannot be calmed
quite so readily.
They may try to trim the language
we use to wire our dialectics
and think they limit our prospects
in the process of their subject subversion,
though they waste their effort
if they cannot limit
the depths our hope and imagination stir
as they see what may be
a month, a year, or a century yet.
Proscribing ideas never succeeds;
banishing hope certainly won’t either.
Cool air rises from the Palisades,
meets the humidity above,
and the effect is a shimmer of heat
by the interstate: a filter by which
I argue with ghosts. Boxed in, I say
hush, now, and outside,
the world grows wild without me:
I’m old and I’m home alone
hiding out
hanging on
and reading a letter
from dear Penelope
who left with her deported husband
and arrived in India
just in time to have a March baby
My Asian flu
creates dreams
of deer:
five of them standing
by Alligator Lake
watching the water
until a great snapping motion
causes them to startle and leap
the lake like flying reindeer
But in my real life, here
in Temple Terrace,
it’s dogs on leashes,
straining to tear each other apart,
that wake me to see
the orange glow of the blue moon
He stands on the suspension bridge
Poured from a mixed cocktail of stone wrought iron cables
In a manic rage the wind howls against a cold, grated steel deck
Beneath the deck’s open mesh
The river waltzes with its lover of the night heavy fog
Two stone towers—massive—carry the weight of the bridge
Below the bridge
An antiquated town Victorian brick buildings
Slumbers eyes woven shut when
A two-faced mechanical clock with weights
Hunter green cast iron base
Seated on Main and Market streets
Lifts its arms at midnight
The streetlights cast an amber glow lonely
On the pavement wet with fog
Earlier that afternoon
He sat outdoors at the pub under a patio umbrella
Tippling vodka neat
The night’s air bites
Dark like the bridge’s brown and tan stone towers
The stars Sirius and Vega
Decline the sky’s invitation to
To join her for the evening
The hands on the two-faced clock
Sway to the right
Fog retreats
The sun settles into the day
Glistening upon the water
Only the river knows why it convulsed last night
For now
______________________________
June is recognized as Men’s Health Month, and mental health is an important component of one’s overall health and wellness. I wrote this poem in memory of two men who were social media influencers and died by suicide this month. If you are suffering from depression or any mental illness, please text or call 988 for help. Your life matters.
The angel on your shoulder scorched its throat.
So it resorted to smoke signals and wolf whistles
And used hand gestures borrowed from minor league dugouts
Instead of the usual greeting card snippets
Delivered with the sincerity of mantra;
Which made moral quandaries more annoyingly obtuse—
Not only did you end up pocketing twenty dollars
Someone dropped at an ATM, but you ended up
Stealing second base as well.
The angel on your shoulder showed up
Jetlagged from the three valium it downed ease its fear
Of heights. It splashed water on its face
From a men’s room’s scuzzy sink,
And added makeup to conceal its pilled-out pallor
As its pupils bobbed in the mirror tilt-a-whirl style
Sha bop sha bop oop shoop sha bop bop boom—
People saw it perched there beneath your ear
Face distorted by deposits of gaudy cosmetics;
Some pointed and yelled, “gargoyle!”
The angel on your shoulder got its moral compass
On an app but loses its signal at least
Eight days a week, which explains its absence
At regular intervals—shortcuts
Down back roads en route to your shoulder
Vanish in the cyber ethers, leave him stranded
At Gulf Shores, Alabama on the deck
Of a seaside mom-and-pop seafood shack—
Hundreds of miles from the mark.
The devil on your other shoulder—dressed in standard
Red devil’s garb, cartoon pointy tail
And pitchfork in tow—finds hobbies to fill
The time you devote to keeping your angel
On task. It even wrote a play:
Amateur Hour
Scene: deck overlooking incoming surf, Gulf Shores, Alabama. A palm tree stands upstage left. Angel sits in off-white slacks and tee-shirt with wings pin on lapel center stage, bib with smiling crabs wrapped around its neck to protect it from seafood stains. Beside its varnished picnic table stands a coat rack that holds its halo like a fedora. A bucket, half-full of demolished claws, lies in the center of the table. It’s high tide, so the waves are quite obtrusive; every time one crashes ashore a person dressed as a seagull upstage right bangs two cymbals together.
Angel (glancing at his phone): hmmm, if I post selfies with palm trees in the background, he’ll surely figure out that I’ve got enough signal to find my way home. Maybe if I caption the selfie, “Drove and drove until I ran out of road. Sure wish maps would start working again” and frowned in the selfie he would sympathize with my struggles to reach home.
Angel walks over to the palm tree, snaps selfies with exaggerated grimaces and frowns. When he returns, he recoils ever so slightly—sitting on the bench opposite him is his owner, a sunken-eyed puppet that, rather than lips, has bandages forming an “X” where his mouth would be.
Angel: Oh, looks like GPS really works after all! I found you!
Owner (the puppet gently mumbles while his voice comes from the wings at a much greater volume than the mumbles): Look here, angel: if this keeps up, you’re going to lose that wings pin you received when you completed the Angels 101 correspondence course. You must leave the substances alone.
Angel (slouch straightens in an attempt to appear sober): I don’t know what you’re talking about. When I do blinkety-blink it’s because my eyes burn, not because I’m nodding off. Ow!
Angel reaches under his arm and pulls out a large rubber tick with x’s over its eyes.
Tick: blech blech blech (Falls belly-up)
Owner: Your blood is so narcotized that poor tick overdosed upon biting you.
Angel: All’s I wanted was for my every direction to be legendary. The serialized highs, meant to disguise that I couldn’t fly…
Owner: Disguise, or compensate?
Here, the owner carefully, as though trying to avoid pain, peels the bandaged “X” from his mouth, revealing no mouth underneath. Note that this is done in casual fashion and elicits no real reaction from Angel.
Angel: But I learned you can crash even if you haven’t learned to fly. If you see double when trying to land, just aim for the middle and you’ll make it every time.
Enter down stage left a big, somewhat mopey angel in an off-white sheet with a neck-hole in the middle and large, strap-on wings on his back. He walks over to the owner.
Big Angel (addressing Angel): Um, I’ve been called in to replace you. Oh, and these are the kind of wings you should have bought with your start-up kit.
Angel: Start-up? I earned these…oh my God!
Big Angel attempts to climb onto the owner’s shoulder, which results in him completely flattening the puppet.
Chorus: Oh angel, you bought a pin but strap-on wings are what you needed
Had you played it straight, your takeoff might have succeeded.
The End
The angel on your shoulder arrives decked out
In bruises and fortune teller garb, but with headscarf
Pulled down over eyes like Lady Justice’s blindfold—
Bad omen for one who dodges karma
The way a squirrel jukes rush hour traffic
When the angel on your shoulder advises
“Let’s just let things play out;” no,
You’re looking for fortune cookie missives
Mainlined into your consciousness—
Look twice before crossing the line, those pills
Don’t mix, remember to take Zinc and anxiety
Meds, lather in sunscreen, when in doubt,
Lean heavily on semicolons—
Misdirection and exit strategies.
You would will it into protector status,
But guardian angels are the domain of
Hollywood Sound stages and the tragically concussed,
More foil to the other shoulder’s fallen angel
Than fully realized hero. But what of the angel
On your shoulder? Well, you can go to Google
For a recommendation, toss a coin, just hope
For the best—a body primed for consequences
Knows karma’s inescapable as the bully on the corner
Eager to pocket your lunch money,
So you induce semi-comas in scabby blissed-out
Interiors and just watch the world go by,
Perpetual 5-second delay underwhelming
Yet intoxicating on its own steady feedback
Loop, priest’s play-by-play of the window carnation
Suffocating from thirst splattered by spittle
And other liminal Thursday afternoon miracles, just to show
You need neither angel nor agenda
To enjoy spectator sports.
The temptation to live a lawless life draws on nigh.
The fast, quick, in a hurry, way of dealing;
bets remain on.
Stakes are high.
Just a gamble, nothing but chance.
I mean, you only live once.
Instead of living to love, why not love to live?
Speed up the payout by days—
maybe even months.
No morals, no dignity, no abiding codes…
Being in charge of your destiny with no fear of the unknown.
Why not go big or go home?
Ignorance is bliss you know.
The thought of having all desires in arms reach,
hugs the ego so tight.
Unstoppable.
Prudence would not put up much of a fight.
What would you do if attaining every desire was acceptable?
What would be your pastime?
What would tickle your fancy?
… I absolutely know what would be mine.
