A Notebook – Since 2007
The war moved on
as all wars must
and love came home
lame with no name.
He could not see
the bugs in his brows
nor hear what, what
the dogs picked up.
Pinned to his chest
a badge of courage
symbol of his time
spent as a bug.
In uniform he was
one of the bugs
squashed
covered with bites.
The soul rises from the south
searching for the sea
falls into the ice
burning, too late to turn
back, the days stay
long, the soul no
more may sleep
in its own heat
and stands still
at this very moment
9:14 am
on a Tuesday overcast
morning, the soul
invisible behind
its clouds
this year
the soul loiters
in no hurry
hesitates
hot and heavy
as if it just
ran a marathon
or swam in a surf session
there on the beach
under a prismatic
eye-catching umbrella
people from miles around
gather in its shade.
Mornings, like me, enjoyed
up with a cup of coffee,
the first sip a prayer,
an offering, for Patty
and the kids before work,
primed the pump,
but I don’t think he ever
worked on his bio,
and I’m sure he did not
know a pronoun
from a down dulcet.
All day long he stayed
disappeared in the galvanized
wooden shells,
from ground breaking
to the pipes out the roof,
returned with the turning
of the tide and said,
“Get Dad a beer,
will ya Joe,” each
from which I took a sip
until one day I took
too much out of us
and things were never
the same again
but in the mornings
before work,
quiet over a cup of coffee,
maybe I was up early
to go surfing or ride
my bike to school times
my car was broke down
usually a Bug in the shop
at Jim & Jack’s,
two Iranian brothers
down on the corner of Grand
and Sepulveda,
but that’s another story.
Dad was no good with cars,
couldn’t hear the engines,
always “feels like it ain’t
gettin’ no gas,” he’d say.
That’s one way it was just
outside LA city in the industrial
beach town on the edge between
the cool water and the heat
some mornings sunup
with a cup of coffee
and few words, maybe
enough for a haiku:
damp carob odor
as three trees drop chocolate
pods crushed on the walk.
Another has the floor
occupies the stage
Your times have passed
interesting no longer.
And the podium premiums higher
used to be two bits at the door
almost everyone wanted in got in
but the medium has also changed.
In this the calculus moves
with the aging audience
Before poetry was invented
all language was static.
We do not know
what comes next
peace of snow
or a three day blow
of more man made smoke.
Today’s maybe the day
the sun don’t set
we’ll grow cold
in a gold casket
the widow in debt must pay.
But perhaps a parade
truce hugs and kisses
prams and hand carved canes
heads bandaged with
white cotton underwear.
“Day after day that August, the weather stayed hot and dry. These days we call it real holiday weather but, then, only the well-to-do in those parts went far afield and even a week at Scarborough was remarkable. Folk stayed at home and took their pleasure from an agricultural show, a traveling fair, a Sunday-school outing or, if they had social pretentions, a tennis party with cucumber sandwiches. Most country people had a deep-rooted disinclination to sleep away from home and a belief that, like as not, to sojourn amongst strangers was to fall among thieves. It was the way they always had lived and, like their forefathers, they traveled no further than a horse or their own legs could carry them there and back in a day.”
“A Month in the Country,” J. L. Carr [Bob Carr 1980], nyrb 2000, p 82.
And these days the weather
rather like some older person
no longer relevant
fluous, superfluous
your personal covenant
(within a place of your own
family and knickknack
weekends yard games
reprieve from work
a bit of a book
a work of art
music hot dogs
pizza and beer)
the seal broken
by those expensive wingtips
these days full of closet dust
expansive neckties the colors
of ecclesiastical vestments
no one in the office guessed
how much trouble caused
from the either or fallacious
suits
and no longer personally
responsible for the ugliness
of the world
find beauty reflected
in all the broken pieces.
No quotes suffice nor even
allowed the etiquette of now
of an equality unshared in the
shadows of human conditions
the tics of post traumatic
stress disorder
not to mention
the tics of now
living in the moment
cursed with mindfulness.
Anyway, we were on the radio
a dinner party was playing
and we lined up to go through
the food line
like at an automatic car wash
noises on soaps flooding
and after walking down the line
feet locked into the tracks
nude through the car wash
slapped to and fro back and forth
by the wet washing cloths and huge
spinning wheels and sprays
we dried and redressed
and vowed next time
we’d be better rehearsed.
The only thing left
for us is the weather
to go
out in it
to get wet
and dry
wet and
dry
again
and again
day
after day.
Pinned to Ted’s chest a list of opinions
changed daily like a tie or underwear
and on his forearms his feelings tattooed
in secret for most days he felt nothing
unless he rolled up his sleeves
which he often did when Jocko came in
stinking of the couch where he put all
his cards into watching sports on TV
exercising his extensive vocabulary
culled from an encyclopedia of games
while story after story after story came
from the very vocal pen of one high
falutin bird dogging Mitch whose body
still twitched from his days in the ditch
of public service (“The buck stoppeth
here,” he liked to say, “safely in my
pocket. I did my time, it’s your round
to buy.”)
Mr. Moneybone knew all about finance
and happily pulled out a wad and spat
into a gold spittoon declaring one
on him for the whole house
though only Agnes in her corner chair
sipping rye correcting papers and
doubting Tom at the end of the bar
where the petrified wood curved
all the way into Montana and now
all their words gone to seed
mixed on the sawdust floor
with that tracked in from the road
in the Breeze a one draft pub
they considered their last deed.
Where to step a comma ,
to tiptoe haltingly ,
without readers tripping over it ,
losing their way.
A comma pirate drops his
offshore ,
as if it had a special purpose ,
a bouncing buoy ringing a bell ,
a porpoise out all alone.
The comma critic , well-versed
in elementary particularity ,
vacuums up all the fallen commas ,
the mote dust off a linoleum floor.
The exclamation point shouts ,
a telephone pole poised atop
a bowling ball !
While the ear shaped question
mark asks the obvious ,
ad nauseam ,
comatose.
At work in the kitchen
on a new concoction
elbows sharp and beans red
green apron and blue jeans
and barefoot of course
happy is as close as does.
Out of sugar but still
things for better or for
worse she intones and plays
old radio oldies
oh to be home where work
and play equal parlay.
A bit of this for spice
a bit of that for crunch
just a pinch of garlic
an inch of perhaps the
recipe calls for some
extra special bitter.
The teapot emptied
stonecrops poured
tea leaves read
with no ardour
climbing blaze
tied to arbor
the blue flower
hard seed
in juicy flesh
while underneath
distant in a wild bush
something lacks a certain sense
the blue flower spreads and blooms
shoots a scent no lazy drone can deny
waiting for the garden to deadhead
the gardener does no work but watch
the yard gone to seed
but once
multiple times
the blue flower bloomed
impossible to say with surety
will it ever come again
in this drought
just this and nothing more
caught between predicaments
and interruptions.
The Coming of the Toads 