Bunker Boy

History

is overflowing

like a closet

bursting at it seams.

Creaking loudly

like a wind tossed

ship floundering

against

the waves.

Where are you

bunker boy?

In which bunker

do you play?

Did your Tonka tank

just roll away?

Is your cap gun

out of pops?

Madam Defarge is

knocking at the door.

Focused on her knitting,

fueled with her rage.

The tumbril wheels

are moving

from the bunker

to the blade.

March 3, 2003

It was in the

sunny chill of late winter

along the washed out

shores of Virginia Beach where,

after our brother's funeral,

we took a walk in silence

from the math negating

the sibling equation

with a fixed finality resembling

the half-surreal reality of

the streets that were lined

by palm trees wrapped

in plastic sleeves.

We watched the ships

leaving port for Iraq

while fighter jets roared low

as they continuously looped,

as one endless war

flowed senselessly into

another endless war

like the shrapnel our brother

still had from 'Nam.

A tangled ball of yarn

is the crazy strand

of a history

filled with a sorrow

and an emptiness,

a graceless epiphany.

So much like any death

in every family.

That evening in the parking lot

of a convenience store, I saw

a weathered hooker

abandoned in the darkness,

blankly staring at

the night's vacancy

like a renegade from

a Hopper painting.

Another spirit of our times.

The Straight Wind

Black clouds

erased the sky

as the straight wind

blew like

a rumble

from the west

and the poles

fell and power

snapped

with lines

jumbled

like snakes

in a pit

and days went

dark

like an end-time

scene

and silence

reigned

for many nights

till power returned

and the trees

were lit

like small candles

burning bright,

crackles through

the night.

Pensée

Writing is like weaving,

woven words like strings.

A dense tapestry of meaning,

immensely rich and strange.

Disquiet Fills the Void

We need a new metaphor.

We desire a new dream.

Something more

than the dark primeval forest

Something more

than the vast deep sea.

We have become the Other

and the Other has left the room.

Like Moby quick descending,

never to be seen again.

A barren land burnt golden

beneath the Dialectic's gaze.

We’re running looser than

a free wheeling tire on a

long stretch of Texas road,

rolling wild and lazy like

a meandering tumbleweed

across flat plains.

We need a new dream.

Something to wake us

from our sleep.

The slumbering giant

tosses and turns.

Disquiet fills the void.

Blood Moon 2019

Blood moon

on a moonless night

like noon at twilight,

hot as ice.

The contradictions abound

with riotous sounds

for up is down.

Quiet screams

of frosty passion

rings deafly

to my ears.

October Light

Translucent light,

crimson leaves

transparent against

the clear October sky.

Last shades of summer,

first breath of cold.

A temporal suspension

in an adagio.

Covfefe

The vastness of the vast,

the vast conspiracy.

As vast as the ocean,

vastness deep.

So vast as to be unseen

Covfefe, covfefe, anon.

From my mouth of madness

I have sprung.

Like Hemingway in Spain,

I am tweeting in vain

while the vast dark sea rolls on.

Collusion, collision

there is no cohesion.

I make up the words

and roll them together

like marbles in the wind.

covfefe, covfefe anon.

Vast is Russia

like the vast conspiracy

and the vastness of all I see.

For I live in a land

of smoke and mirrors

and clouds of witless.

covfefe, covfefe, anon.

Lessons

Remember

the color of midnight,

its icy stillness

like frozen glass.

Forget

the void of night

where shadows prowl.

Remember

the misty glim

of dawn's first

rising.

Then forgive

your yesterdays,

for we all

have sinned.

They are lessons

for each day.

Beauty is Gone

Beauty is gone

like a wilted rose.

Truth is lacking

like tattered clothes

and the old equation

is poetic license,

not renewed.

Knowledge is gone,

buried deep in muck

by theory's Babel.

History lies like driftwood

scattered in the sand and

memory barely holds

as the glue dissolves.

Safety Notice

Christmas trees

can bite

like a thorny rose,

full of spite.

Hollies are most lovely

and deadly just the same.

Poinsettias will kill

the cat, they say.

The lights can spark

and blow

and tinsel can fly

up your nose.

For the holidays

are deadly, dear,

as you well know.

Tweet Mania

The twit has tweeted

his twittered tweets,

twisty tweets indeed.

Tweets that tittered toward

crazy realms

where twits must tweet

all day.

Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time

still opens every dream

like a fairy tale

of things unseen.

If only we could

freely glide

like a butterfly against

the sun lit sky

with colors bright

and bold,

graceful swirls of

golden rays

resisting the daily

pall.

They say the impossible

takes a little longer.

So the implausible

should be soon.

A Trip to the Moon

Like flickers of light

in an old Méliès film,

memories spin between

goofiness and wonder.

Like years ago when your plane was late

and I and our son waited by the phone

for numerous updates as a simple

hop from New York became a

logistical feat

and our son was busy watching

a mindless home video show and

discovered the joy of hysterical laughter

from a clip of someone stuck in a toilet

until you called from a

departure gate at LaGuardia

and we left late in the night

on a zig-zag course through

post-industrial waste and debris

framed by a low rising moon

that was large and white

with a crystal shine in a clear dark sky

and we drove straight toward it

like deep space explorers

sailing across the currents of

a celestial sea.

One minor moment

that clings like a precious dream.

Inauguration 2017

The glass is half-empty.

The glass is half-full.

So damn the glass.

It's shattered

like bits of confetti

scattered in a alley

where even weeds

barely grow.

We need a new metaphor.

The American dream

has run aground

yet the white whale

never was found.

Just a crazy pile

of fractured fantasies

that beguiled so many

generations like

opiate fiends who tried

to believe a mystic thing.

Sweet promises

made with tears.

Puritans thought that demons

roamed the forests.

Nightmares sneaking from

Primordial darkness

to their dreams.

So they lived with fear

and a need for shadows,

like children hiding

beneath a blanket while

creatures banged around

their beds.

They say all men are equal.

They say all men are free.

So why have we made

so many chains?

Even in the noontime,

we still live within

Plato's Cave.

Principles were the bonds

forged in blood.

Guilt and amnesia became the glue.

Theft and ignorance were threads

to hold the tattered

conflicts in check

with some vague ideal.

But the demons remained,

hiding in the mirror,

lurking by our side,

waiting for that moment

when, like a worn out bulb

the soul goes dim

and fear rushes in.

The Grasshopper Lies Heavy

The grasshopper lies heavy

Upon a leaf slender green,

In forest unseen.

Bigly

He was a bigly man

with a pigly grin

and jiggly hands

with a giggly charm

and a rigly plan

for all.

The pigly man

with his bigly stand

got his wiggly gut

all squiggly stuck

about where his

jiggly hands have been.

Lumbering through Bethlehem

Lumbering through Bethlehem

on a Saturday night

where the chilly shadows

of abandoned mills

toll silent like a busted bell

and anything left

was boarded or gone

or turned to pay day scams

and quick title loans and

anything else that scraps

for nickles in pockets

dirty and worn

(for poverty is a business,

like death and disease).

Memory of Music

To remember music

in bits of time.

Rifts and refrains,

a fog of feelings

like a madeleine cake

dipped in tea

swirling with a mix

of distant sorrow,

of fleeting joy,

set to the sonorous

strain of a single cello

in a shadowy room.

Oh Fortune

Oh fortune, ever changing

like the moon's ceaseless cycles

mindlessly repeating an

eternal loop to life.

For God plays dice

and shamelessly cheats

with a loaded pair

and He generously bets

on every number of

the roulette wheel,

repeating every time.

Like the moon's endless cycles,

so is fortune ever rising

and in decline.