Roughage.
Like Tom Waits’ voice.
The grit and gristle of life.
The rumble tumble.
The rush and the roar.
Like Xmas. New year.
The whirligig and whoopsie cushion.
You’re on it, babe.
There’s no getting off,
You wouldn’t want to.
It’s the roughage that stirs things up.
That lets you know you’re alive.
Like them Brooklyn Girls on the downtown train
and you’re shining like a new dime.
*pic courtesy of pinterest
*lyrics tom waits
I hope they pay the ferryman.
I hope they pay him good.
For all his journeyings. all his toing and froings,
miles notched, hours accrued.
over the last four days.
He is resting now.
ferry in dry dock.
It is a busy time of the year. but what do you do?
You do anything for yr kids.
I hope they pay the ferryman.
And they will. Ten fold.
With love and affection.
Where’s My Bear?
I’m not myself today.
I wasn’t myself yesterday either.
Where are you? she says. Where’s my Bear?
I’m still here, I say.
No, you look like him but you’re not Bear. Go away.
So I do.
Back to my little cubby house in the ‘burbs.
I think of her. I miss her. The good times we had.
Perhaps I have been a little sloppy, solipsistic.
I send her a card. Anyone can send a text.
She texts back. I call.
Come over, Bear. I miss you.
I buy her a bouquet of long stemmed oriental lilies.
We cuddle. We kiss. Like bears.
We have found each other.
*pic courtesy of pinterest
Ramshackle ….
I’ve made the place neat and tidy just ramshackle enough
so it looks lived in
*pic courtesy of pinterest
on Xmas radio, divine eloquence: ‘Nessun Dorma’, Pavarotti singing in tongues
Curdle
I like nothing better at night or on languid afternoons
than to curl up on the couch with Tessa Hadley
reading me one of her tales,
familiar yet fresh, cozy yet curdling at the core
like a Victorian murder mystery
I’m glad I got to go to the outhouse by the sea.
I got to see the whales go by, far below me,
those sleek black submarines in the golden light
dozens of them dozens, an armada of might
dark, silent mysterious, they forged through the waves,
out through the headlands, to a distant sea.
I’m glad my bladder was full, got to take a pee.
And when I got back, and fell back to sleep,
I could see them still, moving through my dream.
*pic courtesy of pinterest
I love how songs grow from talk
in Hollywood musicals
like ‘Carousel’, for instance,
and think, maybe, that’s how we should be
in our writing, loose and organic,
let the words, when they pulse with life,
grow feathers and spread their wings
as poems up and down the page
Can’t keep Bono in the car for too much longer.
It’s a warm day, getting warmer.
I can’t let Bono get overheated, not on my watch.
He was good enough to come with me,
make himself available.
It’s my fault.
I should have gone to the library AFTER
I had done my grocery shopping
but I was excited. The book had just come in.
What if someone nicked it?
After all, the book is in high demand.
53 requests for it when I put my name down
and only 5 copies.
Bono would have been proud.
And I want to get home quickly and start getting into it,
before the heat starts curling the pages,
and Bono starts sweating.
I’ve seen him live, the sweat oozing out of him.
It’s a bloat of a book at 563 pages.
I hope he’s good at prose writing as he is
in writing songs.
But first there’s these veggies to get.
Hang on, Bono. Won’t keep you waiting long
*pic courtesy of pinterest
Someone’s been out in the garden
between the evening and the dawn.
I wonder what it was.
A rabbit or a fawn?
Yes, someone’s been in the garden
in the depths of the dark.
Someone fleet and nimble
who have left their mark.
Someone’s been in the garden
before the day was born —
the Xmas elf of Davis Court? —
& from their roots all weeds have torn,
John Malone 