Just a LITTLE human condition

Man

Shards of city noise bend

Up into a room where a man

Sits finally in his chair to choke

Down another bitter day

And below in the street

Dogs nest in piles of cinder blocks

       And in this room

       The grappling of his hands

       And in this room

       A neck vein pulses violently

       And in this room

       His bellowing winter cough

And in this room

Blinking Christmas lights

Surround a crucifix like barbed wire

Sending red, green rebounding

Off walls, while wrinkles

Curl across linoleum in a shadow

Neck vein, hands and cough go

Placid, as a man bends into himself

Stark

       (A man dies)

Christ echoes screams through the red

Green of the room.  Horns honk

       Amen

A confined structure, just like the ailment.

I Know

     For my friend

I am constrained to tell you of my woe

You, proud Swede, erudite you—woe

About such plague that vexes in your veins

Hiding diffidently, roaming deep

Shading your shadow with implications

I am in a state of distraction, res angusta domi

You, good Friend, high-minded you—distraction

By eclipse of your round levity, and the tears

Elaborating your exile, blunt tears, holy

By the incongruous you; yes it’s true

I am out of humor, there is none more sound than

You, militant Saint, zany you—humor

Still, from your vertical depths, unleashed

Where vis vitae was built upon a precipice

The milieu of you, sure you, koo koo

I am lonely; can it be my friend has left?

You, generous Cynic, Spartan you—lonely

As a skull in pensive mood, dolorosamente

As a crier in your wilderness, but I

I will not raise a hue and cry about you

I am calm.  The very thought of you

You, true-hearted One, honest you—calm

I know the river’s peaceful end ahead

I know the sanctuary songs begin again

You’ll sleep tonight, though dark, and then

We construct for an end we construct

Constructing It

Constructing it can take some time

And time is all you need

And time is all you have at all

Alongside soul, the seed

And time can come by laying still

And still it comes by speed

And inundates constructing it

Though planned so carefully

Over tombs built down below

The cornerstone is set

From spaces god knows when ago

The time spills over it

Build on, severely, and in stone

So that it might last on

Under the blankets of the hours

Cooked by a drunken sun

So time pours over all of us

As pigeons who have come

To peck the crumbs from which we go

Constructing it, alone

Imagery from a rotten time is fruit for the present.

I Will Pick Their Flowers In The Sun

This July, when Alice died, we buried her

In the backyard and threw in a lilac bush

As the sun made sweat drip from bent

Bodies to the muddy soil

And in August, dogs were unleashed in the

Bedroom, gnashing at the chain link fence

Where I grabbed your arms for you to hear

As your ears were in another land

Like so much slush in the streets

A thaw howling gray for all to see

The winter prescribes cold therapy

Casting rock salt onto ice

Arms linked in incoherence, angry

We circle in confusion with our verbs

Growling with our choices in the rain

Dogs nesting in piles of cinder block

When the flooding stops, the mud line

Across my eyelids burns of sewage

Yet the surface of the water, still

Reflects the sun as a mirror

Branches above the flood line bud

Above the carcasses of bloated dogs

The aromas a crescendo with the spring

I will pick their flowers in the sun

This was then

Breaking News

Issues of Algeria, Dow Jones blare down on us, yet inside hides

Our breaking news:  Our story, imposed across a wrung face

Dormant in bed, arms tight up into chest, breath like an engine

Shut eyes keep out the demons—she is not asleep, but only wishing

For motherhood to become again the perfect parent it has proven

For the incubator to warm and hum another song

Mother Theresa has died; dead the idea done in memory of family

Mary cannot lay an egg; just as we’ve planned our nest for young

Deceased is the dream of seeing wife in child

We will dig up the decayed round of this grave elegy again

And again.  And she… she lives in the land of Why?

A lingering branch over a fallow, despondent ground

Despondent markets, seven hundred billion dollars

Negative advertising, global economic crisis

Congo, Taliban, coca plants, catastrophe

Our family we could never doubt will not become

They scream the young joy of us, but we cannot both hear

“Look Mommy!” will never mean like it should mean

Our breaking news:  Done, wrung, undone

I touch her eyelids, hiding those gorgeous eyes that shall be

Only ever born on her

What we say when we are afraid of just the same

What We Say When We Are Afraid Of Just The Same

     (For Ry)

On our walk from school

With your dirty face, you say

Papa, I don’t like two things

I like kindergarten, but not the grades

Like first grade and second grade

And third grade and fourth

Oh, yeah? Why not, Ry?

Because they don’t celebrate

Birthdays.  They don’t?

No, but we do in kindergarten

So I don’t want to go in the grades

And what’s the other thing?

Papa, I don’t want to die

Someone told me when a person

Dies it’s for ever and ever and

Ever.

You don’t have to worry about that

For a long, long time, Ry

Let’s just enjoy kindergarten

Since you get to celebrate

Birthdays.

Going away to college. Unloading.

Unloading

Dorms of concrete bake at summer’s end

While cameras click near double parked cars

Carrying, laughing.  Moving vans in tears

Their goodbyes: an end to childhood, hands wrapped

Around each other’s memories.  The children, full

Of Dad, full of Mom--assured--as luck would have it

A tradition carries on, parents taking their

Kid to college.  Like a bird leaving the nest

Where beginning, where self, where flight

I pass them for a while, one family after another

Arriving, lifting, parting stories, a prayer

As I haul my boxes by them all, listening

Some go out to lunch.  They all seem to have that

Quality.  I am not sure what it is, I wonder

How hot it is.  My car is almost empty.

What can one do but carry the burden

Along lanes stretched far and wide and clear

Hugging the stretch between From and To Be

My car was full of essentials.  Me and the 101

In a ’79 Rabbit, windows full of boxes

Each one hot and lifted out and up the stairs

Unaccompanied.  No one but I, carried off from

Childhood three hours ago.  Mom did wave

Across our wide lawn, when I flew away.