-Today is Friday the 13th. "Lucky number 7" erases "bad luck 13."
-I haven't posted for a while... I need to catch up.
1. The Galleys
The galleys are shut down
For President’s Day
A marker for a dollar waits
Where a deck of cards will sit the day
After next
What a mess
The sky makes when it’s blue
One ship’s gray and withered
Another, spit-shined, waits for its crew
They call her Patricia
She doesn’t want sympathy
For beauty bleeds
What it fails to blur completely
Anyway, she’s a ship, not a person
At 4:00 PM, these places become each other
As big sister turns into little brother
And the buses roll on home
Ahead of schedule
The galleys are boarded up
For February
Tomorrow’s promise broken
Too soon, it’s not time yet
Patience is a pretty thing
A promised kiss, an open field
The ingredients are kept
Cool in the ocean realm
Until leap year’s extra pocket hides the keys
To the battered locker where they store the open seas
And the old men’s childhoods
Merge with the younger men’s thirsts
And the women hold the stature
In the minds of every man
Mothers, wives, and figments
Of scrolls of names misremembered
The galleys may never open
Again
February 2004 - Santa Monica, CA
2. However Far
The fear will skip generations
If it moves at all
Otherwise it will die a death
Typical of its ilk
Crying out for sour milk
And doubling the beauty
There’s a trembling before you
A treble full of bass
The lower notes hanging
From balconies
2004
3. Creature Names
Loud enough, you conjure a scene
Where the landings are hard
But the sinew is tough
The prehistoric places
Are sick with forgetting
And full from the passing of years
We met at the mall
The one with the roller coaster
She explained it was halfway between us
Dinner was brisk
The movie, a risk
The walk to the parking structure a scene out of place
But we weren’t going anywhere
From the pit of my brain
I’ll find that the knives
Cut on both sides
And the ministers are ladies too
That’s the brilliant truth
4. The Beautiful End of the World
This man to be your witness
To candles blown as rush to judgment
To sheets pulled tight like victimhood?
As you tour the streets of your town
Its meddlesome reminders
That time is sinking?
The dirt of love
You look, you see
Curdled milk, a stray apostrophe
Seven hours to the rush of light
Shrouded by fog, the light becomes the color of your hair
Is he in September as he will be in June?
Does he forgive the passing of the gentlest moon
Uncorrupted and sad as eyes
But still the color of morning light, your hair
Fevers in and up
Like fireworks in church
A million lesser evils
Than the circumstance of love
Did you/did you see the moss
As it cradled every rock
You came across in your latest pretty shoes?
If you did, you’re loved and if not, then
Love is a delicate curmudgeon
To a circus of cooing children
Or a carnival of kittens
Or three men at a table
Holding court on the end of the world
The beautiful end of the world
You’re tired, we can see it
You shake as you press the keys
You’re calling with news you can’t remember the name of
You’re calling someone you once loved
He’ll tell you to cover your flowers
But your flowers are dead, let them lie cold
You miss them but then
Death is your witness
That time is no trickster with sticky cards
Or lopsided dice or hollow head hats
Or bent pens
You remember when they offered you cheese
And a free check-up
But your back was free and flexible
And cheese and you disagreed
So you smiled and thought
“Ill remember this later”
Now it’s later and do you?
Don’t nod, speak with words
Do you/will you?
I think you just did
And so all truths are evident
5. There Are Amusement Parks, Patrick
Where the lines are as long
As the street that winds around
The reservoir near your house
In deepest, fiercest New Jersey
But the rides, they are fun
And the nationalist sun
Shines through cotton nicely
Where the traffic lights seem
Like they’re hanging from heaven
God’s up there controlling the flow
Of cars on the streets with the names
From the middle 1960s
But the left turns can get risky
God gives no arrow, you’re on your own
I’ve learned from my travels
I’ve gleaned from my readings
I’ll send you a list of indexed experience
You’re a trusted friend
It’s the least and the most I can do
The Ninieties, Minneapolis
6. The Mortal
He could have been affixed to boards, a Christian death
He could have been punch drunk dead, a victory
He could have choked on almonds and Christmas cookies
But he had none of that
He walked off slowly
He fell in circles
His eyes were ancient
Before they were shut
7. Seasonal Affective Disorder
She’s got Seasonal Affective Disorder
She keeps the shades drawn, pretends it’s summer
She keeps busy but mostly counts the days
Until the last snow melts away
Dead presidents and aging teen idols
In February she watches late night TV
She forgets the best jokes by morning
She’s got Seasonal Affective Disorder
She takes pills but they don’t do a thing
She shouldn’t be living in Minnesota
But the challenge is half the fun
Abraham Lincoln never wrote a will
David Cassidy wrote three
Did you hear the one about the President
Playing golf with the Partridge Family?
In darkness it’s colder, and coldness is death
She’s got Seasonal Affective Disorder
That's fascinating to me
1998, Minneapolis
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