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.

Hometown

There's intersections I've mindlessly crossed,
and the corners of grocery store produce sections over which my eye has passed,
a root broken square in the sidewalk travelled daily on the way home from the bus stop, and
that certain shade of 3 p.m. mid-November light that
you can't exactly name, but innately know all the same.
These details are the minutiae of a life, too trivial to romanticize in any poem,
(for honestly, who'd care?)
but the fact that you're smiling right now,
quietly to yourself as you read these lines
proves, that that is not the case.

Instructions: In Case of a Cold and Rainy Day

On some cold rainy day, don't be afraid to stay in bed.

Forego the distractions of

radio, TV and the like,

and listen--

how a dog’s bark rings across the

hard concrete yard, how

rain soaked tires

slish on puddled streets, and

how the steel construction plates

on Third Avenue

kurunk under their rolling weight.

If by some chance, you happen to find

yourself not alone in your bed, reach out.

Touch her back. Notice how her skin feels on

different parts of your fingertips.

Alternate between the pads,

and the part just before

the edge of your nail.

If her back is cool,

press yourself against her.

Pray the phone doesn’t ring.

Sleep

Woodstock

From Kerhonkson:

"You take 209 through Kingston, and go left after the roundabout onto 28 West. From there, you go about 7 or 8 miles toward the junction of 375 which will be on your right, and you follow that right on into Woodstock."

...

It's February the 13th, cold, (27 F, but it feels like 17), and slightly cloudy here in Woodstock. And it's quiet, bereft as it is of the usual throngs of tie-dye nirvana seeking tourists and New Yorkers up for the weekend. In fact, I'm alone enough on the sidewalk that the only other walker on my side of the street, a middle age woman who looks like she may be one of the aforementioned, visibly tightens up her posture when she hears my foot fall 12 or so feet behind.

I've parked in the municipal lot which- surprising for any touristy place, especially in New York State, is free. The first place I come to is a Tibetan/Nepali shop, which is more or less directly across the street. Though I've only left the temperate zone of my car moments before, I'm freezing, and the shop is blessedly warm, though not much different, stock wise, from similar shops in the city or anywhere else. They have the requisite "Free Tibet" stickers, the shelves of delicate looking brass Buddhas in repose, turquoise and silver jewelry and knitted fingerless gloves that become mittens when you flip the end over your fingertips. I'm tempted by the latter, until I see that they're seventeen dollars. Outlandish, I think.

"Thukchiechie" I say to the woman behind the counter (thank you, in Tibetan), and she answers me with a heavily New Jersey accented "have a nice day".

In subsequent shops (two more of which are also Tibetan/Nepali), I ask if there's a restroom I can use, but to no avail. Apparently, the only "public restroom" in town that's open in the winter, is the one inside the Town Hall, which, I'm told, is open 24 hours to boot. I'm expecting to walk through the front door and encounter a guard or at least a receptionist, but when I enter, no one is around, and the only open public restroom in Woodstock, New York, is not only unguarded, but unisex and clean.

Outside again, I cross the street, and head toward "The White Gryphon", a shop as "Woodstocky touristy" looking as most any other in the area, bedecked as it is in Art Nouveau, retro-psychedelica and tie-dye. Inside, I glance down to my right, and there on the counter is something I'm astounded by.

"Holy shit!" I say, louder than I'd intended, as I pick up the necklace: a simple leather thong with a pendant of feathers. In the corner, a very relaxed looking woman (later, she tells me her name is Fiona, and that she's a "pet psychic",) cradling a large dark gray rat (his name is "Bubo", after the bubonic plague) laughs.

"Sorry", I say, and I ask her how much for the necklace.

"I don't know... I was going to say twelve dollars maybe, but something tells me you're supposed to have it, so how about six?"

At this point, I tell her why I'm so blown away:

"See, we have this place out in Kerhonkson, it's a former bungalow colony, and the couple who lives in one of the cottages, well, she's half American Indian, and I was telling her how I'd lost the feather that was on this bag (*it's a leather, fringed bag I made, and the part that keeps it closed had a feather on it until it was snagged and lost somewhere on the streets of New York last summer), and she'd said 'well, I got some wild turkey feathers I can let you have', and they're beautiful, but they were too big for that.. Anyhow, to make a short story longer, I had this dream last night about the feathers... I was carrying them, and I met this older guy who was American Indian, and he goes, 'would you like a reading?' so I'm like 'sure', and he takes the feathers and looks at them and does a reading, and I'm like, 'how the hell do you do that? I mean, I just got those feathers, what do they have to do with me?' and he just smiles, and laughs, and says,'you may have just gotten them, but they've always been there for you.' So then, I tell him how I'd intended to use them for my bag, and maybe put one in my hat, but they're just too big for that, (*they're close to 14 inches long) and he takes one and cuts it into smaller feathers, even trimming the edges so that each section looks like a smaller but complete feather, and then he takes one and wraps a piece of twine around the base and makes a necklace of it and puts it around my neck, and says 'here, wear this'. I don't personally ascribe anything magical to the feathers or anything, but maybe my finding this necklace is the universe's way of telling me I need to listen more to my intuition. "

"See", says Fiona,"you were meant to have it". She goes on to explain that it was made by a friend of theirs who is in fact American Indian, and who, for various other reasons, sounds oddly similar to the man in my dream, and that it's the only one; he hasn't made anything else for them in a long time.

"Will you take a charge for so little?" I ask. She explains, that normally, she wouldn't, but that, because it's so apparent the universe means for me to have it, she "... wouldn't dare say no". I give her my debit card and pay her six of the remaining fourteen dollars in my account.

Somewhere around five o'clock, my gut reminds me I haven't really eaten today, so I head to the Garden Cafe on The Green; luckily, I have my wife's debit card in my wallet, and enjoy the best black bean burger over mescalin salad I've ever had.

It's dark now in Woodstock, and I'm slightly worried I might have a hard time finding my way back to Kerhonkson. I walk across to the municipal lot, which is so dark now, I can barely see where I'm going. There are no streetlights, nor is there any Moonshine. This is the kind of darkness that goes out of its way to swallow light.

I'm able to find my Saturn SL2 by remotely unlocking the doors thus triggering the cabin's overhead light.

Two wrong turns, and, "excuse me, sir? I'm trying to find 209."

His directions are a little sketchy and hard to follow, but I listen anyway, and tell myself not to worry; I'll figure out the rest; after all, I must learn, I tell myself, to follow my intuition.

2.25.10, 1st Ave., @76th St.

Today, at roughly 5:14 A.M.,
our sidewalks were invaded
by umbrellas! Jostling
past one another,
none even paused
to mourn at gutter graves, their
broken brethren's
skeletal remains,
or stopped to give comfort
to dying comrades, who
lay against corner trash cans,
wounded and forgotten, their
black satin battle skins,
flapping like desiccated
bats’ wings.