POEMS

In a sullen, dim lit garage, slashing at defenseless cardboard

I'm wrecklessly careful

On the other side of the globe

My thoughts are present

Looping an imagined recording of events

A woman, my spirtual center, is precarious

She loves words, I hope it pleases

I love her

Not becuase of her better sense of me

but the image held, to which, I must measure

I need more counsel for my journey

which, unknowingly, she started

Together we've known an age of struggles, deep loss, deeper hurt, boisterous laughter and love, lots of love

A teaching of faith through devotion, patience, and steadfastness

Her family, built on foundations of belief, decency, forgiveness, and acceptance

Acceptance, a word much maligned

Acceptance of her linage

Acceptance of her true love

Acceptance of her faith

Acceptance of us all

In conversation she cuts to meaning

wrapped in local happenings of 

people and places, deeds good and fowl

Take heed, no idle chatter lingers

Her simpleness, a lesson in real living

Her intellect, obvious, if only seen

Her sparkle, to be cherished

I courted her in ways unseen

For she is rare and precious

And I, richer for her

A date that meant nothing to a generation, feels ancient

The difference between the twelfth and minus twenty one 

Is the melting of our murals, bigotry and hatred into a unification

Some claim already existed.

The blood of generations stir an angered confusion of identity

A love that feels rootless brings tears that long for home

Beneath our best intentions the deceit continues

Proud of our progress and our hatred.

A Nation in legend born of blood red hand

Scattered her sons and daughters to every corner

Her atlantic cliffs, call as sirens for their return

Echoing the unspoken desire of immigrants everywhere 

On a mid-summer bridge in a nameless English village 

Your poker straight pose, arms outstretched, is an uncharacteristically large gesture

Your cardigan secured only by the neck button, waves in applause to the forgotten joke

Your presence and my desire for it, comforts me, protects me from the dark

Finally, after years, I see what was hiding in plain sight

You loved me

In a late night conversation, holding hands

A boy’s best efforts, to comfort the nervous disposition of an anxious mother

Was grown into a man, by the constant adding of one ingredient

During a storm, a tree branch at my home gently touches my cheek

You have reached across death and miles to hold me once again

The legacy of your love present every day in the lives of your linage

The joy you never experienced, my regret

The picture on by bedside captures your mystery and essence

A beautiful young woman, so in love and despite family advice, changed her name

So blissfully unaware of her impact on the future 

In a hotel suite, drinks flowing

I get the call

In the corridor, there is only numbness and disbelief

I’m 5000 miles away

In my room scrambling to get home, a friend’s comfort knows it can’t penetrate

A while later they all return

The Jameson pressed to my hand, is swallowed unthinkingly

The wisest, asks me, to tell them your story

Unprepared it flowed like the life you lived, unconstrained, free

Filled with tragedy, betrayal and adventure, but at its core, love, just love

They listened and marveled, we laughed, tear choked

What a blessed opportunity in a moment so fleeting

To relive through their eyes, your legacy

On reflection, I understood the difference between well-travelled and well lived 

And the beauty and rarity of my father who did both.

It feels like a death, but you're very much alive

It feels like the end, but you're only just beginning

It taste's of sorrow, but maybe it's longing

The memories so rich, I can still feel their presence

I want to cry, but I know that I shouldn't

I want to rejoice, but I know that I couldn't

I want to feel hurt, but there's no one to blame

I want to remember, but that would mean pain

I want you to know, that I love you so much

I want you to know, distance can't seperate us

The late evening sun casts tree shadows on the grass canvas

Blood red roses wave in time to the singing of dulcet chimes

The yellow ray children play light and shade on boundary fences

After the nectar harvest, a humming bird rests on the burbling fountain

The warmth is luxurious as if fusions purpose is to fuel this cocoon

Where senses languish in Gatsbyesque indulgence

Blessed with its being, imbibed with love, the creators mark, It reeks of our presence

But like before, and after, it will be different

Touched by another’s hand, viewed through their eyes

I love this place, drenched by your hand

Enthralled by my kaleidoscope of visual memories 

In the trunk of my car it waited patiently, cunningly, for precisely this moment

In a season, unseasonal for it

Bearing an angels feathered wing from a slit in the shoulder

Paired with a Chevy hat from New Orleans

I transferred a memory, to someone I’d never met.

Half a mile away the social landscape changes

No glass collectors, or dirtied wife beaters

Just the uneasy confidence, of a future based on the markets or the promise of funding

How easily this world and those of it, could join your expectance of nothing

A world of un-reconcilable desires coexists, in which the haves, play cause and cure

We pray for something better

We aspire to something more

We contribute so little

As I look back 

It’s the story of another 

As I search for its’ meaning

It’s gone, like something misunderstood

It was so long ago at your flat in Seabank

The pornography, camel’s and black coffee

A boy, a man, a guitar

A desire lost in a wandering

As I surrendered my ambition, so your legacy grew

My working class comfort, the fur on an unseen spike

A future glimpsed that never existed

Reading your poetry I hear your voice

Deep, booming, it’s inflection and cadence

On the phone we speak in an exchange of secrets 

My inadequacy shines, exposed in the light of your wisdom

To humanize a legend, who wants that?

Yet who can deny us, if not ourselves?

The smell of freshly poured blacktop

Stirs memories from the past of 

tar and feather punishments

Driven underground or out of vogue 

By so called political progress 

and the devolution of power

All the while 

Murals scream our bigotry and division

Sectarian topes indelibly woven in our culture

Invisible lines on our streets

Anxious stares at strangers in bars

There's nothing new here, nothing unique

A pin in any map reveals their struggle, their bias, their victims, their misfortune

it's all of us, it's our race

The bitterness of our short lives manifest in our crass disregard for human life

Centuries of education, learning and enlightenment 

Pitiful foes in the face of our primal instincts. 

 Symbolic, of our country’s history 

A river spanned by wood and steel

We stood there once in chill of winter

Bells of the city’s churches peeled

In our walking I discovered

A boy’s harsh childhood, tells so much 

Your cane, a lifelong time was hardened

A denied death bed wish, to love and trust

So you triumphed, saved by marriage

A lodger’s love affair that bloomed

Plant closures hurt, blue and white collars

Mature students, outperforming youth

It’s odd the things that hold our memories

Christmas plates, a steaming pot

As our hands touch them, we remember

A simple life can mean so much

Your battle fought three times over

Ends in sadness, love all around

A hushed rosary said by family voices

A quiet vigil holding hands

On a Christmas list we scratch your name out

Openly weeping, wounds agape  

Remembrance of your life, we honor 

In prayer, and Derry’s wood and steel

A wet spring afternoon in Brooklyn

A hop fueled relaxation settles in

The window funneled commotion, tells us of troubled lives

Inside the hot wet smell of drying, conjures comfort from our youth

The malaise we know is coming, cannot be consoled 

Later strolling Vanderbilt to Prospect

The boathouse flowers not yet in bloom

Just one more visit to Emily’s, how complete our afternoon

A final pause at Classon corner, to cling and cry goodbyes

It’s never any easier releasing tears, held, so deep inside

Spring then turns to summer, the hunt was so extreme

When you declared your love for him, a Governors Island dream 

So all of you are settled, you’ve learned to love and compromise

We are happy, blessed, diminished, our lives shadows of our past

Understudy’s, bit part players in a production we once wrote

Taken over as it should by others, still catches in our throats.

We speculate, we plan, we strive, for times and things to come

The present almost perfect, regret, a tear away

The future, we are living, creating every day