A Short Poem About A Cello, Or You

sad woman
mooooooaaaan
melodious
and warm
heave your
brown body
before us
all--
we wait
patiently,
for your
song.

Palimpsest

Midtown Manhattan in mid December,
is the ugliest palimpsest ever. Ever.
Be-jewelled, be-furred and be-Barboured barbarians,
wreak hell for their spoils and leave little but carrion.
Amidst the herds of lingering tourists
grazing at the windows of Bergdorf's,
they seem to say,
"a bargain to be had, may be worth the trampled spine,
so long as it is yours-- dear friend, not mine!"

The Onion Plant

On dusty Summer
_____sunlit sill,
the onion plant
_____died
beautifully:
in vibrant greens,
browns, purples, and whites,
with an
_____Art-Nouveau
arrangement
to its
d r o o p i n g
ten-
___drilous
leaves, who'd
s__ p__ r__ a__ w__ l__ e__d
across
a row
of books
as if by their presence,
to claim them.

Inconvenience

Poetry always strikes
it seems, when
I don’t have a pen,
or when my pen is
out of ink, or
if I’ve run out of paper, or
my Blackberry’s on the fritz, or
when I have to run for the bus, or
when I’m driving a
two__ hundred__ mile__ trip.

It's an inconvenience, I think, this
passion, this pursuit. Then it
occurs to me: the Muse cares not
about mortal minutiae, or such
trivialities as
__________timing
or tools.
she comes,
when she comes,
light of foot
soft of voice,
and
woe to him,
who cares more
for the number of some
bouncy young thing,
or he who must run
for the bus with
soggy hot coffee cup
in the middle
of a downpour
when the Muse drops by for
she’ll probably
just
___ pass
_______by
unbothered
and shrugging her shoulders
_______as she goes.

Pulse

The pen feels my pulse
It's mine it's mine
The ink is my blood
It's mine it's mine
The page is my skin
It's mine it's mine
The poem is my mouth
It's mine it's mine
The words are my tongue
They're mine they're mine
My pulse is the pen
It’s mine it’s mine
My blood is the ink
It’s mine it’s mine
My skin is the page
It’s mine it’s mine
My mouth is the poem
It’s mine it’s mine
My toungue is the words
All mine all mine

No Mail

Three days now without mail and I’m peeved.
Not that there’s usually much of import,
but still, three days on, and I jealously watch
as my neighbors wrench bundles of paper from their boxes
and begin to feel cut-off from the world;
where are my catalogues, circulars, bills even?
In their absence, I can’t seem to help but wonder--
maybe I’ve finally ceased to be real?

A favorite few poems read and again,
Dvorak’s 9th to keep out the din,
ancient pajamas, threadworn and soft,
Capacious cup of coffee, sweatshirt, wool socks.
A chair by the window, deep, familiar and warm
in the Autum Sun’s rays, an inherited throw.
And finally when all good things are right
a nap to bring me home again.

9/23/10, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Rm. 317B

Through darkened window,
I fix my lens
try to capture the moon;
round, fat and im-
possibly yellow, her
day-glo bridal train streaks
the East River.

Soup

This, is a day for soup!
Thick, steaming, with
large chunks of kobucha, and
chickpeas! Some with their skins
still half-on
maybe in a miso base.

Curled into my ancient corner chair,
beside the dusty radiator
now thucking it’s way back to life
from Summer sleep,
beneath the cool glass of the

dirty window that sets the floorboards of my living room
alight like a stage,
and in the shower of sunlit dust that
sparkles like streetlight snow
in the early Autumn
morning light.

3D Talking on T.V.

3D talking on T.V.,
one's mind treens planets wide.
Not far from the travelling thrindy
we crossed that great divide.
The sea was full of segrence
that could not be displaced
for there, amongst the grundies, was
a different sort of place.

Our jewell coats shone like flowers
amidst the fields of Crote,
we laughed and talked for hours
'til we were sore of throat!
The prafties sent us skyying
to heights where we could see
we'd come now far beyond
that broken land of Inneskreen.

There was no turning back now
so heftily we turned north
into the light of Parkress
the brightest of the shores.
We'd given all we'd had, we felt
to those who'd least deserved it,
and now it was our time to reap
the treasures we had earned,

but when we got to Parkress,
we found the lights had dimmed
no longer was the city there
beloved of the Thrimme.
The shoreline had eroded, and
the shops had all been shut.
The Kreepers had taken over,
The city was all but dust.

And so our chattle we did heave
again and left this place of gray
forever wandering we will be
to find our way home-- this must be the way.

9/22/10

O, what a gift! Huzzah! Hurrah!
A free weekday concert at Avery Fisher Hall!
Wednesday morning, two seats to myself,
smuggled iced coffee,

Marsalis, Hindemith and Strauss.
O, blessed renewal, Hallelu Ja!
How long I’d been absent:
(beauty? Joy? Lost-)
but lo, The City, she succors me

again, and--
like an appeasing mother,

who'd been gone, too long

she pushes the hair back from my eyes,
and whispers, to me

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

The Grand Canyon is No Great Shakes

The Grand Canyon is no great shakes.
It's nothing but a wound,
a testament in fact, to
helplessness.

For five and a half million years,
Gaia lay there, stretched out--
defenseless
against that trickle that wormed its way
into her back,
carving out this millenial
"monument"
like a cancer.

Such is the nature
of helplessness;
again, I sit on this bedside chair, and I
watch you getting worse,
and the only thing I can do it seems
is complain about my
aching back.

7/06/10, E 8th St. @ Greene St.

101 degrees Fahrenheit
above, a dripping a.c. irrigates this concrete farm,
and in the heat, I swear
I can see it expand.

Revision

Again,
between these
institutional beige walls,
we wait on
molded plastic chairs.
Again,
that antiseptic smell,
x-rays, scans and labs
Again
the doctor's smile
we're never quite sure we can take
at face value.

9/15/10

Today, "The City"
is an ugly beast, with bad breath
and broken teeth.

Hospital

on steel railed bed
you lie,
like a benched engine
unresponsive, with
that complicated
tangle of tubes to
give you air
saline
and drugs
take away your
urine
excess lymph
and blood
and the thing I miss
so much right now
is the feeling that
inside this mess
of unfamilliar form
is something real
that's mine.