Poems from an Occasional Poet

EVEN DOZEN – For Terry


Count on the winds of November to blow
The sky clear
Make it easy to see what can’t be seen
In the space between summer and Fall
The mountains emerge in stark relief
Bluish purple in the changed light
Leaves cut loose and soar
Collect in the gutter, crackle underfoot
This is our time, our day, our hour.

An even dozen and counting
Remember when we climbed through the ruins
Of that castle in Portugal
High on the hill
Past the stations of the cross
The whole hillside to ourselves

Together in the steamy heat of the Yucatan
And a dark London afternoon
On the train to Paris
The subway in New York

And back again to where we began
Back to feeling every emotion life offers
The freedom and claustrophobia of union
And children
The pressures of every day grind
That make us forget the very reason
For it all©


FRIDAY

Friday and the fog rolling in
Tom said, “stay out of the barn”
Sabbath found no answers to the riddle of his life
The Dodgers are back to the wall
The Cards are flying high
Beer and baseball wait
A little of one, a lot of the other
Tomorrow we travel the highway through the sprawl
Wife and kids
Papa at the wheel

Now the two-faced hag in the corner wants to make friends
With those she envies
Bush & Kerry again tonight, meeting in the electronic Town Hall
Vegas bookies post the odds, Karl Rove works his spin
More of the same the same the same, my lies poll better than your lies
Democracy at its worst, its ugliest

I’m tired of the whining, how nothing is ever good enough
Don’t upset my leaky rowboat, my comfortable sinking
I’d rather die than change, wilt than grow, ebb than flow

There is more than all this, right?
This means little in the grand scheme of
Birth and death
War and famine
Wealth and poverty
Good and evil
What matters is rising about the pettiness, rising out of the gutter
The slime, the sewer, the shit
Walking tall when others crawl, speaking true while others lie
Soon enough we will all be dead©

MOCKING US ALL

Sun on concrete
white sheets on gray steel

Raise the final curtain
on a morning preordained

Sanctioned by law

Kill the killer
for his crime

Sitting stoic
and remorseless
over the last meal

Mocking the priest
the rabbi
and the minister
with a chilling look

Once a child
normal
as any other
clean
as any other
light
as any other©

BREAKING MORNING©

Seagull on a lamppost
A real bird’s eye view
Of the old gangsta off his porch for the first
Time in memory, tatted arms bare against the chill
tasting paroled freedom

Of a couple of kids locked in a mating dance
Near the high school
A ritual as old as the law of attraction

Of the comings and goings and secret couplings
The silent longings of lunch hour lovers
The desperate competition for attention
The first electric touch of skin on skin
The unrequited heartache

Of the unused Armory, the rusted canon
And the grounded helicopter, helpless as an insect
Without wings

Of the silent stadium draped in silvery dew
Solitary footprints marking the passage of man and dog

Of a weedy lot near the commandante’s street,
Fenced and chained against the day when bold money
Transforms it

Of abandoned shopping carts and broken cars
Cracked glass sparkling in the sun