Monday, June 16, 2025

 




From your memoirist

the museum of magic

holds many treasures

among them the loss 

and loves in great measure

hours with you in

your crowded rooms

recording your life

in a cigarette brume

the evasions

confessions

the repetitive wanders

your weary return to

the love you remember

how did I not guess

the bread crumbs you saw

on the trail that she left you

her constant recall

of the life that was you

after days spent in

your hot crowded rooms

the kitchen walls

laden with antique spoons

avoiding the cat

who knew who knew

your history as plain as the devil

memory as sharp as

the gavel that sounds in your heart

you were always meant

to return to her ring

the woman who loved you

the boxer who came slowly

to the ultimate win

you were always meant to

unfurl silken bondage

she’s yours

you are hers

in the forever hereafter

you are ours

in that magical theater

a drink at the bar

a line in the sand

a strait jacket moment

you are ours when

we can

find a way out of the ropes

the box and the past to

reconnect with great love

at last

at last

to release a white dove

 

For Magic Man SK

8.19.16

Photo: nyc 1.17.13
Click for full image

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

 




ROTH

 

tonight I cried

prepared as I was with 

a pinot noir

and a pipe truth be told

so that I could drift afar

from a smoke-filled brain

to a wine-dressed heart

remembering what grew me

what words overthrew me

a writer had died

was he all that, I thought

or more like a builder

a plumber, a doctor,

a runner, a cyclist, a teacher,

a mobster

who raps the truth

with poetic restraint

tonight I cried like I did for Lennon

and Janis not Ian but Joplin the saint

I cried like a child who can’t

find its toy

poured a glass had a toke

with such risible joy

tonight I cried

for all I was worth

hereafter indulging in heroes

now gone

still gnawing at nerves

still proving their worth.

 

5.23.18 nyc
Photo: Author, NYC. UES 6.11.25

Friday, June 6, 2025







Jeanne Moreau likely quit drinking around the age of 57. 

 

 WINDOW

she had a window

once of beauty

elusive carousel ring

they stopped to

watch her as she passed

men who kept her

wondering

why they never

prized her thoughts

why her opinions

never asked

they sought to own her

own her laugh

she sometimes lost

sometimes gave in




stayed on the horse

‘til night’s upswing

she looked around her

growing older

leaving beauty to the past

what grew in beauty

grew inside her

the window opened

learned to fly

a mirror is

a useless map

 

8.24.12 nyc
PHOTO: nyc 5.13.2023

Tuesday, June 3, 2025





I don’t feel like being
not remembered
she said and sighed
the past lies dead
and expertly dismembered
the lies are the realm
of the effortlessly bleeding
my eyes see the new
and are no longer pleading
I don’t feel like being
not remembered
music comes dressed
in my new mirror
where I choose
what I wear
and what notes are the bearer
of me in the now
a surprising ascender
I don’t feel like being
not remembered
nyc 12.7.2020

 



MY FATHER’S BIRTHDAY

 

my father’s birthday

I didn’t know for the longest time

I didn’t care or I preferred not to care

who was he

unloved as I was

unfound as I was

my father’s birthday

I sleepwalked for the longest time

when he died the world was dismantling

who he was

how he softened

amongst the most frightening

I didn’t know it for the longest time

caring and sharing had no sweet reprieve

who he was

who I loved

was mine for the undertaking

I sleepwalked for the longest time

my father’s birthday

like butter now melted

still had the source

from which it is was drawn

I am clarified now in the house 

I have crawled from

a rarified mouse in a kindly rat kingdom

I sleepwalk from birth

hate the markers of age

the memory of worth the scent of the rage

my father’s birthday

has a name has a date

the second of February

am I too late?

 

6.26.15


Woodcut "Tormented Man" Author

Monday, June 2, 2025

 



THE QUALITY OF MERCY

a cat on its haunches
sits quiet and sweet

what are the chances
a tail curls in defeat
leaves a bird’s nest un-looted

when the hungry line up
on a street paved with patience
in the slow build up 
to ignorant resistance
great whites have been gathering
on everyman’s shore

what food there is

has a possible score
and the music plays on
while sharks 
keep on hammering

and I in my wet suit
and you in your poem
shall we leave the room empty

or dive for the song

who will break bread
on a natural farm
who will learn to defend

nature’s loss with alarm
I am old and disgusted
I am young and in place
I am ready and willing
I am drunk with disgrace
I have fallen not broken
into endless repast

this season ain’t over

this cat learns real fast.

 

7.18.14 nyc

Photo: Author NYC 5.25.25

Thursday, May 29, 2025

 



HOW TO BE A WOMAN

 

it’s harder than you think

so many inconsistencies

trip the female on her way

where to go

what to be

in the cold light of day

how to handle expertise

how to sound like a woman

it’s simpler than it ought to be

many sins notwithstanding

it causes females to duck and sway

a winner’s grandstanding

when the no-fly zone

is tempting

where to check hairdos

in orchestrated debates

before lying onstage

before coming of age

you have been groped

you have been raped

that’s understood

you have twisted that hanging rope

of every male who has

fucked your sweet hope 

you have gritted your teeth

under a duvet of lies

being a woman is easy

with compromise

wear your heart on a sleeve

that leaves an arm fully bared

ready a punch or caress

the grin or the stare

how to be a woman

it’s easier than you think

trust your strength

send the clowns to the corner

make them stare into the brink

mine your worth

write your lyrics

be a woman

be the earth

 

10.12.16 nyc
Photo: 6.25.22 nyc

Monday, May 26, 2025






WE WERE CREATED

 

assigned to the future

tentative like furniture 

you haven’t yet bought

for rooms that are

silent as the drones 

you have

yet to drop 

slowly for a better view

when there is a story

we hive like bees among chapters

parsing a tale to suit

we straggle at sentences

like the time I dressed naked in your poet’s shirt

drunk-filled with poems

running from doctrine

misunderstood among the hoi polloi

we grasp what matters

parsing commas for relief

reasons for all this shit

suspended in disbelief

every mistake belongs to everyone

my love for him

is all I know

I mask yet I won’t begin to follow

we were created by our own kind

children are born free

a lesson unlearned for eternity

my love for him

is drunken sometimes

I grasp what matters

I struggle for the rhyme

we are created in evolution

greet the bastards with crime

signal the masthead

bolt from the line

my love for him

I roll like the credits

over a serial killer film

And then like the lottery

it’s ours in the end

like ours in the friendship

like ours to re-friend

I grasp what matters

my love for him has been in tatters

struggling for the rhyme

created in evolution

greeting the bastards for every solution

memory loss the time-honored escape

Being here is what matters

Being here is the rake

 

10.10.20 nyc

PHOTO: Take me to the River : Monks Ferry : Birkenhead : Wirral : 20:May:2025.

 














Take me to the River : Monks Ferry : Birkenhead : Wirral : 20:May:2025.

Friday, May 23, 2025

 




when she happened upon joe frank on the uptown local late one night

 

fractured route to undeserved blame

anti-personal bombs

like she’s seen all her life

in a sly way intended

like the wedding cake greets the knife

those bits of her that have been bloodied

what parts have been rendered

do they reek unhurried

salt among the scented 

on a late-night uptown train

she tested the field phone inside her

it held off guerillas

it fined the decriers

she asked for and got the nothing 

programmed like all the others

now seated across from her

apart from the others’ fur she was

wrapped in chancy sentimental

a list of liars in his back pocket

smelled of caution and secretive black light 

she saw him before the brain kicked in

his playbill rolled into undone

she, the spymaster was rigid with won

across the aisle of not fun

she on her own across the aisle 

recognizable mentor

his wife his savior his partner who knew

when she was sudden and leaden and undiscovered

basement-level of her own invention

imagine how hard it was to reign in

crazy to tell him he grew her

 

when the fresh eggs you are given

drop into your open palm

wash your hands it could kill you

or make you sing psalms

for the birth of anything animal or mineral

the thing humans crave are subliminal

 

she saw him on the uptown train

coming back from nothing remotely insane

what we have is embedded discovery

she shouts headless and crazed

no voice no sound

she recovers her ignorant gaze

he lowered his head undiscovered by her

playbill in hand

crazy to tell her he knew

 

3.15.22 NYC
Photo: author