My attention, like skis, slaloms down the pages of a novel,
but he is a wet tongue and the television is a metal pole.
It's his first crush, his first realization of beauty beyond
the cookies and fire trucks that usually spark his interest.
This is different. I can hear the dogs of wonder start to bark.
The flame in his throat growls. Butterflies begin to flutter
toward the light in his heart. He's now singing what he can,
Not ready to make nice, and I look up from my book,
watch a bouncing 4-year-old boy strum air guitar.
His bare chest is a fret board, his crotch, a humbucker
that he strums with the speed of hummingbird wings.
At least I hope he's playing air guitar.
The Perks Of Being An Editor
—For Ed Galing
I can really
only think of one.
His name is Ed.
He's 90 and he writes
long letters to me
with lines sloping
heavenward,
and the pyramid walls
of each "A" are jagged
as saw blades.
His wife of 60 years
recently died.
He tells me this
in every letter,
but I haven't forgotten
either.
It’s what I think of most
when my own wife
of only 6 years
shuffles
into the living room,
wondering
if I'd like some
black tea.
Ed's in an old folks' home now,
playing harmonica
and tickling the keyboard
until it laughs
or cries.
But I get the feeling
in every letter
that Ed's always writing
to a dear friend.
And that's the way
it should be
with poetry,
too.
The Changing Station
In a world of opposites, I tell my wife,
she'd be stuffing our baby's ass with poop
instead of wiping it from his scrotum.
We'd have to gag him every two hours
and funnel milk back into his mother's breasts.
We would strip him naked before venturing to Safeway,
his uncircumcised penis swelling in the frozen food section.
And in the cool breeze of Modesto's summer,
we would cloak him in blankets and wool coats.
Soon he would shrink back to his newborn size,
then smaller still until the doctor could usher him
without rubber gloves back into his mother's belly.
Think of the benefits, I tell my wife as we would begin
to videotape her deflating tummy, month after month,
until she's a hundred and fifteen pounds again
and we're having dinner at the Macaroni Grill,
toasting the blue plus sign as I pray for a little boy
with almond eyes just like his mother's.
Coming Home
Hear the father’s old truck rumble and stop,
its steel doors thud shut, his clumsy set of keys
jangling like too much silverware in a drawer.
And now his heavy steps—hear them plod
along the cracked and smeared driveway,
oil splattered like broken eggs.
Watch the overgrown jasmine scrape his head
as he kneels to pull a dandelion, remembering
wishes he made as a child, the rocket-fast bicycle
that never came, an impossible trip to the moon.
And now, dandelion beneath his sole, sun
pounding the burgundy door, his key slips
inside the deadbolt, a quick turn, and then
the rush of little feet against tile like spilled marbles.
She's halfway to two, still rustling topless
in a diaper. But she knows who's home, and she
has just learned to hug and say Hi, Da-da.
C. Allen Rearick
Death Comes For Us All
I am alone
the wind has died
the trees fallen silent
death comes for us all
I see it in the headlights
of a burning car
on a rainy day
in the city
I hear it
in the cricket's voice
behind the red barn
I feel it
as the wind whispers
past garbage cans
littered by the dying
they do not mourn
I wish them
to teach me
what it is like
to not
feel.
The Terror
My grandfather
used to be
an alcoholic
his nick-name was
the terror
he would
come home
from the bar
drunk every night
and beat
his four children
and wife
now he is
a sad old man
with nothing
to show for it
but colon cancer
and when
the devil comes
to escort
him home
I’m almost certain
he will put up
one hell
of a fight
handing out
a good beating
for once
in his
life.
Poem For The Dying
These words
are fake
I’ve martyred
my
heart
on paper
this pen
bleeds
concrete
clichés
the world doesn’t need
more poetry
it craves
violence
hatred
self-destruction
a
broken
window
carved
with misunderstanding
poet stand
down
your words
are lifeless
in the arms
of ignorance
go home
you’re
no longer
welcome.
These Tired Hands Can Hold No More
There are sacred days it seems
when you find yourself alone,
standing lost in a Pennsylvania cemetery,
on a late June day, while looking
for qualities and concrete reflections
in large stone tablets, carved heavily
with the names of your ancestors
by time’s immortal touch, as to who
or what you really are in this life.
And so you begin to feel something,
the wind maybe, pressing into your chest
an innate rapture, like a hot tarred roof
arresting you where you stand.
Or a rush of birds, scattering without cause –
wings beating fiercely, cutting through stillness
like the dust of dried bones,
waiting within the earth’s memory
cradled beneath your feet,
to be carried home by the hands of God.
And so you reach down
to feel the grass’s trimmed warmth
your thoughts, grazing a distant past,
try to find something to hold on to –
a face, a hand’s grasp, a soul’s timid words,
But there is nothing, and instead
you find your eyes drawing blank,
struggling to see beyond
the horizon’s gray border. The distance,
recoiling like nightmares
murdered by the sun’s hot pulse, awakens
within you an image of who
and what you really are.
And you think, what a strange comfort
to find oneself alone, completely
engulfed in darkness, silence –
the dead’s voiceless words holding thickly
to the backs of teeth
as you feel, finally, what it is to be
human.
Charles P. Ries
Birch Street
Sitting on the porch outside my walk up with Elaine
watching the Friday night action on Birch Street.
Southside's so humid the air weeps.
Me and Elaine are weeping too.
Silent tears of solidarity.
She's so full of Prozac she can't sleep and
I'm so drunk I can't think straight.
Her depression and my beer free our tears
from the jail we carry in our hearts.
Neighbors and strangers pass by in the water vapor.
Walking in twos and fours. Driving by in souped-up
cars and wrecks. Skinny, greased-up gangbangers
with pants so big they sweep the street and girlfriends
in dresses so tight they burn my eyes.
I can smell Miguel's Taco Stand. Hear the cool
Mexican music he plays. Sometimes I wish Elaine
were Mexican. Hot, sweet and the ruler of my passion,
but she's from North Dakota, a silent state where
you drink to feel and dance and cry.
Sailing, drifting down Birch Street. Misty boats,
street shufflers and señoritas. Off to their somewhere.
I contemplate how empty my can of beer is and
how long can I live with a woman who cries all day.
Mondays are better. I sober up and lay lines for the
Gas Company. Good clean work. Work that gives me
time to think about moving to that little town in central
Mexico I visited twenty years ago before Birch Street,
Elaine and three kids nailed my ass to this porch.
I Love
Your grilled cheese sandwiches under
the full March moon, as Jupiter draws
near and we witness its unblinking eye
hovering above the horizon at early dusk.
The way your lip is slightly twisted upward
at one corner making your mouth look like
an irregular right triangle.
Your explanation for washing your bed
sheets three times a week, "dust mites."
Your mantric complaint about how hard it is
to dress well at 20 below zero in the midst of
a blizzard. Yet refusing to compromise for
the sake of warmth instead sludging, steadfast,
like an Armani foot soldier through road salt,
snow drifts and sleet. Saying, "some things
will not be compromised!"
Your method of slowly moving, methodically
passing through the house...dusting, resetting
souvenirs, just so. You, the feng shui master
of knickknacks and fashion magazines, creating
a perfect order in the universe of our life.
Big Woo
Academic hack turned carpenter,
blistering nails instead of prose.
Loved the barber shop and menthols,
Ape man - angel hearted.
Bell rang, third grade poured onto hot asphalt.
Master of the play ground,
recess never ending.
Woo’s wonderland - king of kick ball.
Junkie monkey man
Heroin, methadone, ho hum.
River rat playing at the sugar shack.
Dead eyes turned toward heaven.
Go quietly into the night Big Bad Woo.
Communion
The tavern has closed
Two lovers pause
Outside the Catholic Church
Half moon smiles down.
Ignited like youth
They find each other.
Pressing her against the cool stone wall
He wants communion,
But waits in begrudged respect for her,
For this place.
“Why here?” he moans
“Why not a bed or a field!?”
Here is where God choose to light their fire,
So here it is they will burn.
Ross Runfola
Suburban Killing Fields
I grew up on the tough side of town.
I thought it was violent there with all the
fights, drugs and hustlers.
but then my parents moved to the suburbs and I met:
lawyers who pad their bills
real estate agents who
don't tell young couples about leaking roofs.
arrogant professors who
use the King's English with immigrant parents.
doctors who perform unnecessary surgery
so they can put an addition on their house.
executives from the gas company who turn off
poor people's heat in the winter.
this suburban shit is so frightening,
I move back to the city as soon as I can.
at least the city's danger is more visible
than the killing fields of the suburbs
filled as they are with:
heart attacks
shopping malls
soccer moms
subdivisions
ulcers
boredom
and
creeping crab grass.
Nothing To Lose
for no reason other than the closeness of my barstool
the stranger with a vacant look and deep facial scars
stares at me as if we were competing gladiators.
he asks a question that only men who read
too much Hemingway or do not read at all ask,
"Do you want to take it outside?"
the stranger with the vacant look and deep facial scars
has someone's fresh blood
splashed like small rivers
on his shirt.
red paint on the dismal canvas that is his life.
the fates have not been kind to the stranger
with a vacant look and deep facial scars.
the snake eyes that keep coming up
each morning when he wakes up to no future
are passed on at night to unsuspecting strangers.
I want to tell him that my life, like his, is filled
with stale truths, bad fortune and
hoped-for sunlight come the morning
but why waste words?
"when you've got nothing," Bob Dylan sings,
"you've got nothing to lose."
there have been bigger men who challenged me in bars
but their eyes were not cold and empty
like the stranger with a vacant look
and deep facial scars.
they had pretty-boy faces, expensive suits,
or families or jobs waiting for them.
something to lose--which made them vulnerable.
the stranger’s face with a vacant look
and deep facial scars
tells me that all that makes him a loser in life
will make him a winner if we step outside.
the stranger's daily fight for survival
and don't give a shit attitude
makes him invincible tonight.
Irish Featherweight Champion Barry McGuigan
explained why he was a ferocious fighter
who always answered the bell,
"I can't be a poet. I can't tell stories, " said McGuigan,
"so I carve up others."
I don't want to be the protagonist
in a story without words the stranger wants to tell tonight,
or give satisfaction to the crowd at the bar
whose keen anticipation of a fight
turns their faces primitive, grotesque, brutish
like the painting "Fight Club" by George Bellows.
after the holocaust, the world appears a vacant place
with deep scars that can never be removed.
"In your personal struggles with the world,"
says Kafka, "bet on the world."
"Ladies and Gentlemen, on this barstool
with a bloody shirt and a don't give a shit attitude,
representing the world, is the stranger
with a vacant look and deep facial scars.
and on this barstool wearing a confused look
representing poets with a don't give a shit attitude ,
is a man struggling to find the meaning of life.
I nurse my drink until the stranger is distracted
by the barmaid with jeans so tight her fleshy stomach
oozes out like meat pouring out of a sausage casing.
with what some would call incredible ring savvy
I beat a hasty retreat from a world
I no longer understand.
Orange Juice And Death
their love turns bitter like a cigarette-stained tongue.
both husband and wife want freedom
but are afraid to break the chains of marriage.
like corpses, they become secure only in daily rituals
like having orange juice and toast every morning.
it may be untrue that the wife died of a heart attack
since she stopped living years ago.
the night after the wife's funeral,
the husband takes the money she hid
in her underwear in the top dresser drawer
buys drinks for everyone at a topless bar
and almost has the courage to ask the blonde
at the juke box if she wants to dance to Sinatra.