I never thought we'd say goodbye in the fall
Leaves turning behind the backdrop of
An orange ball or that we'd say goodbye in
Spring a strange imagining
I never thought we'd come back together in
Winter although a body needs another's warmth and care in the winter's tingling air
I always took for granted you'd be there in every season
I never thought we'd say goodbye at all in the
Winter or the fall or in spring funny thing
Goodbye and all the Winter spring and fall
Dreams
Freud was a coke
addict and a nicotine
fiend I had a dream last
night of Heather
forty years ago she
lied about having cancer. Lots
of crazy dreams
these days
dead relatives my father makes
appearances
Was there ever a normal dream?
But what would Sigmund say?
(May 2021)
\
Fugacious
You know a Muse can be fugacious
run into them every so often
nothing more or less
even to the point of forgetting them
And I have written about them before
You never remember some
others nonpareil
and there's never knowing which will be which
(March 2021)
The wind is blowing autumnal, a tree in the distance green and gold
the color of my favorite football team who just won last night.
I'm sitting in one of those famous bookstores that begin with the letter B.
No, not that one the other one.
I wish I were in New England where the leaves turn early
and it seems we'll have an early autumn here, but you never know.
Solitude and lonely swallow beautiful in the fall.
c. 2000?
For Ashley
The best four hours, thirty three minutes and
thirty three seconds
No hyperbole involved
although the chandelier morphed into
dancing skeletons
0 to 85 ain't bad just don't
hit a table but it looked like a chair
It is the smile that will get you hooked like a wino
outside the liquor store at 9AM
Looking for the only late night eatery
after midnight
How can bare knuckled truth be this fun?
The nineteen eighties came gushing forth like an oil
well
but wistful for another two hundred and seventy three minutes
I need a new muse just like an alcoholic needs booze
and Hitler needed the Jews
I need a new muse just like B.B. King needed the blues
and a garbage man needs refuse
I need a new muse just like a detective
needs new clues and a church needs pews
and a club needs members who will pay their dues
and if I get the muse I will drink some booze
with some Jews and sing the blues
knock over a garbage can and spill refuse as the detective
will gather up all the clues
walk into a church and sit in the pews
throw a dollar in the offering plate and pay my dues
It was supposed to be about John Cage but right off the bat it was a mispronounced
waitress call me Angie and mongoloidal sperm incontinence
appetizer sure
various and sundry photographs no dessert
coffee for me
the pleasure of pain
--------------------------------------
You should never get married she said--just have a girlfriend
just fishing cause she took a course in Psychology.
Or don't get divorced. Telling me of other dates and men
still texting her. Connecting dots. I wanted to leave the second
we met because people never look like their pictures especially
when it's only their torsos, but I stayed knowing we never would see
each other but she thinks it's only her I'm sure who wants no more
of it
Waiting On The Deluge
The wind is tropical how odd for the 1st day of October
And I'm waiting for the deluge just wishing it was over and
I may be leaving soon never coming back again and It'll be
when the leaves have fallen scattered in the wind
I'm waiting in the darkness and doubt is staying over oh I'm
waiting for the deluge in the wee hours of October and I
wish I were a young man but I know those days are over
and I'm sitting in the dark just waiting for the thunder and
I'm hoping that the deluge won't drag or pull me under and
I'm waiting for the deluge just knowing that it's over
c.2010
------------------------
Leaving November
and the darkness like an endless tunnel
wishing for the light entering
approaching ennui
trying to stay awake
losing that battle
the trees have given up
defenses gone as I need a reason to
make sense of it all
c.2010
I never got to leave you/I hung on to the bitter end
as the house I grew up in slowly broke down
eerily knowing we were both leaving town
I knew you thought you'd die there but
that was not to be
and when you up and left, all you left was me
Now you live alone in the midst of
many others
as I write this poem
in my bedroom safely under the covers
Waiting For The Hurricane
I'm just sitting waiting for the hurricane as my friend baby sat 2 greyhounds on the Greyhound bus mixed with desperate lives in 1976 manic garrulous everyone from California to defunct Bombay their own stories I have tomorrow off waiting for the hurricane oh I heard there won't be much rain but someone said we'll get it bad I did not believe her something about Long Island getting it and so we usually do last time I heard it was heading for Massachusetts where they found the Olds 98 right around the time they demoted St. Christopher I was never the same after I stepped off that bus marked for life and here I sit late night/early morning waiting for the hurricane
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Coming down from the mania wondering why you said and did what you did it wasn't long enough not embarrassing enough only dark hearted stuff the stuff you hope other people don't dare think or do secretly they will say you're moody if this is a poem it absolutely sucks it was only hypomania/no running down the street naked , no Jonathan Winters Patty Duke I only had my bathrobe and PJs purloined and worn right in front of my eyes after I got stabbed with a plastic knife that was 35 years ago emaciated almost invisible now I stare at the future
Soon I'll be meandering as green turns into yellow, red and brown
the wind will strafe the trees as it whistles like a hound
I'll be leaving you forever so far behind as I watch the leafless
trees and the road ahead unwind
And I'll stand upon the shore like a scarecrow in the rain
never caring what I'd lost
never knowing what I'd gained
An Early Morning in Late September
It's an early morning in late September
and autumn just arrived.
The morning seems so soft and tender
and the moon is trying to hide.
It's an early morning in late September,
the beginning of another day.
A day I just might not remember and there's
just a few more things I want to say.
I can hear the wind through the trees
and soon I'll watch the turning of the leaves.
Summer is just a memory in this early morning
in late September.
1982
Don't Remember Me
Some folks like to be remembered. Don't remember me.
I am not a model for little children to be.
Watch out for loners and guys with two first names.
They tend to lose their identities. They have nothing
to lose. They have nothing to gain, although many have
movies made about them.
They'll never write a movie about me. My life is lame.
1977
-------
Stephanie blue eyes and wavy hair
looked straight ahead
stiff from medication
Stephanie roused the deadened air
with a beautiful song she sang in French
Stephanie fat and swollen in her calves
a young girl with dreams
unspoken
Stephanie stared and stared
and stared in silence unbroken
Stephanie sat in group unfurled
spoke of her father and a secret
desire
Stephanie brilliant, warped
poor girl with a brain on fire
1982
I live alone now I guess maybe that's my fault
Heading into fall too damp for good color they said on TV
This morning except maybe in the Adirondacks
I'm glad I got fair warning
So much depends on chlorophyll really but it only lasts so long
So I don't get touchy feely
I get contemplative in autumn when solitude barges in
You can see it in the trees and hear it in the wind
Kansas
Dry and dusty as I remember.
Flat as a pancake you could look it up!
The car must have been a deuce and a quarter or an Olds
with nine or was it seven girls on high school lunch.
The driver was corpulent and they said that I "talked funny."
The pretty girl in the front turned around to give me pointers
on hitchhiking, although I had already gone 1500 miles.
The only car with all females that picked me up the whole trip.
Can't blame them.
Later I was hitching as the dark sky loomed behind me.
A tornado warning
But I already had that warning the day I left home.
