Autobiography of Kisses

 

Autobiography of Kisses

With guitar and proper hair
how innocent we were
(lips of warm bread) a lifetime ago
(tongue of butter)
just kissing.

Groomed to be a scientist
(though scribbling, always scribbling)
in chem lab oops—sprinklers, a flood.
My bad. And I should not have laughed.
Exiled to the library,
I found you (scent of moss).

In your furrowed brow
I found books of wonder,
your flesh oiled calfskin,
your teardrops the ink of knowledge
while I the scientific fuck-up
had no idea who I was or what I wanted
except kissing (pure as rainfall).

With dark wisdom you whispered
“You are a writer. You should
do what you love—besides kissing”
(taste of pollen, of nectar).

From your touch
(of soft mushroom)
rock solid belief
(and a nibble of teeth).

If a poem could kiss
(sprouts, fertile earth)
may it love you like this.

…..

First published in Red Wolf Journal. Thank you editor Irene Toh
photos 1964, 1978

Junkyard Wedding

 

Junkyard Wedding

My father sings, tone deaf.
A chemist, he equates the musical scale
to the periodic table of elements. (Don’t ask.)
He loves the science of soap bubbles,
invents shaving creams, new alloys
for razor blades. Keeps the family half-broke.
Loves art, half-blind.

He buys paintings, crams the walls
like a strip-mall gallery.
Mom says: Beatnik art.
One nude, Japanese style, muff like a mink pelt
Mom stashes in the basement. One of wrecked
automobiles beneath high voltage power lines,
blue sky, scudding clouds bears the label
AUTO SALVAGE. Mom seeths:
Car carcasses in the living room.

My girlfriend gazes at the wrecks,
makes a polite remark: That’s unusual.
Mom says, I’ll give you that painting
as a wedding present. Then blushes
at her faux pas. We’re boyfriend-girlfriend,
our flower just budding but already
Mom smells the full bouquet.

Now sixty years—
beatnik junkyard and Japanese nude
grace our living room wall.
Fine art. You like? No?

…..

First published in Slipstream
Painting by Max Ganteaume

Summer of Love, 1967

 

Summer of Love, 1967

Here, this photo,
my cabin of teens in deep Missouri
after fathers beat, mothers abandoned.
No flowers in our hair.

Me in the center a college kid, clueless
with a summer job guiding hoodlums.
We canoed the Cuivre River.
I played guitar, sang folky stuff,
ate 23 prunes on a dare. They thought
I was a constipated Beatle.

Jayell caught frogs, built a fire,
fried the legs, shared them.
Oscar had an enormous penis, laughed at mine.
Little Roy caught moths, pinned them to an outhouse
wall where they fluttered and starved.
All had troubles. I loved all.

Where’d they go?
Three to Vietnam, this I know.
Jayell, Oscar, Little Roy,
names in a bathroom stall,
moths at a monument,
pinned on a wall.

…..

First printed in Rat’s Ass Review. Thank you editor Roderick Bates
Photo is of me and some of my campers, 1967

Vietnam Memorial, Washington D.C.

 

Vietnam Memorial, Washington D.C.

Simple folk
(and here we are all simple folk)
set tokens at a wall lined with names.
Flowers, framed photos, a note:
     Happy Birthday
    Angel GrandDaddy
    from Teresa.
Everyone combs the names. It’s what one does here.

I find Denny.
Oh man. That was fifty years ago.
This life, he hasn’t had.
Can’t find Jimmy. Guess he made it, after all.
Wet eyes. I have to sit down.

You, little one, without a word
climb onto my lap, lean your cheek
against my chest, breathing. My love.
Just right.
After so much went wrong.

…..

From my book Random Saints
First printed in Rise Up Review. Thank you Sonia Greenfield, editor.

Shirtless Dusty

 

Shirtless Dusty

I first meet Dusty on a beach
beside the Chesapeake Bay
in this photo where
he’s dating my cousin Liz
who suddenly grew a body.
Dusty’s the one with chest hair.
I’m the kid with glasses.

In this photo Vietnam shirtless again
he’s on a river boat patrolling
writes Stay in college.
Stay the hell out of here.

Next here’s him shirtless and Liz shirted
in the house he restored on steelworker’s pay
building war machines that float.
Bankers stole his pension
when they looted Bethlehem Steel.
Combat memories haunt
while Dusty raises goats
until the city shuts him down.

Here’s Dusty an old man on Facebook
with his face peeling off, flesh
flaking under cammo fatigues
posting paranoid gun-rights crap
so I unfriend him.

Here at the Chesapeake Bay again
Liz is dumping Dusty’s ashes
from a borrowed sailboat.
Agent Orange kills him
though the doctors won’t admit it.
His life like firing a rifle at the sky:
a disturbance the air closes over.
We open our shirts,
we feel the bullet strike.
Here. Right here.

……

First published in Rat’s Ass Review

When Eisenhower who won WW Two was President

 

When Eisenhower who won WW Two was President

Fat boy grabs my arm.
Thin boy punches my stomach which hurts, yes,
but not as much as I’d expect.
“What are you doing?” I say
in my beginning-to-crack voice.
“We’re gonna beat you up,” fat boy says.
“Wait a minute,” I say and strangely, obediently,
fat boy drops my arm.
“Before you beat me up,” I say, “just tell my why.”
“Because it’s your turn,” thin boy says.
“Why?” I say.
Each boy looks at the other.
They don’t know why.

In fifth grade, 1957, they teach Walk Don’t Run.
They teach Duck and Cover, Kiss Your Ass Goodbye.

No kiss. I run. They chase, heavy footsteps
past the tail-fin Chryslers  
    tied to blackface lawn butlers
past the muddy football field
    where one day a kick will crack my testicle
past the mothers in pink bathrobes
    whose sons died in Korea
past the angry old major
    who will die in his bed
past Julie Johnson’s house
    who will test that testicle.
I run all the way to the grim faces of the draft board
    men fat and thin who grab my arms
    and punch my stomach many times
and it hurts, yes, but this time I run away
far and fast and forever while friend Denny
joins the brawl and loses, pink mist,
    an RPG to the belly at Khe Sanh
because I can’t stop him,
because sometimes it’s your turn.
Just tell me why.

……

First published in Picaroon

Horseshoes

 

Horseshoes

After pulled pork on paper plates
I play horseshoes, that satisfying clang
with this old guy, stubby like a badger.
He said grace at this Kentucky barbecue
so I ask, “Are you a preacher?”
Clang.

“I was a firefighter for forty years,” he says,
“then I found  Christ after wasting my life.”
“Fighting fires isn’t a wasted life,” I say.
“I was a drunk,” he says, “and homosexuality
is an abomination in the eyes of God.”
Clank.

Okay, delicate territory. “God created us all,” I say.
“God,” he says, “created an abomination.”
Clink.

The hostess whose lesbian wedding we are here
to celebrate pulls my sleeve, leads me away,
takes the horseshoe from my hand and says
“Today is hard on Uncle Buck. Really hard.
And now you’re beating him at horseshoes.”
Clank.

We see Buck with his white mustache taking
practice throws, sweating, throwing hard.
“He thinks you’re the liberal snot from
California come to visit the hicks.”
Clang.

She hands me the curve of rusty steel,
a weight on my fingers.
Clink.
“Please lose.”

……

First published in Stoneboat

Just sayin’

 

Just sayin’

You sure you want a prince?
Actually, dragons are hardworking,
faithful and honest, long term.
Maybe not so good-looking but
it takes skill to breathe all that fire.
He keeps the house warm.
The kids can bounce on his tail.
Prince Charming is an idiot.
Look at all the great women he ignores
while out chasing dragons.

……

From my book Random Saints
First published in Dove Tales

Zoology: A Case Study

 

Zoology: A Case Study

See the soft soul
of one chiseled girl
in a vast city, Baltimore,
surreptitiously tipping books
to learn of ovary, sperm, egg,
singing in the Episcopal choir.

Her beauty is her enemy.
She escapes the choirmaster
to a public school staying late to peer
through the one and only microscope,
pursued by boys, men,
watching cells replicate, grow
feeling twin passion
a brain for science, a womb for womanhood.

A chance for university, scholarship
encouraged by a father of no education.
In the Great Depression she boards the train
for biology as a discovery, not a trap.

Sixteen years in St. Louis at a microscope
over Drosophila chromosomes,
a woman in a man’s lab.
All the good men go to war.
A professor steals credit.

Half starved, doctorate achieved,
Japan radioactive,
love unleashed,
last egg saved.
I’m born.

……

First published in Amsterdam Quarterly —thank you Bryan R. Monte, editor.
The photo is of my mom labeled “Embryology Lab 1934.”

This poem is currently published with a lovely presentation in Silver Birch Press—many thanks to editor Melanie.

Redhead

 

Redhead

Of grandmas great-great
each child has eight,  
that’s how the tree spreads,
but this one of yours, dear girl,
in sepia photo with posture like steel
steamed to America at age fourteen,
married the coal-haired sailor who asked
Who set your head on fire?
Who froze the flame?

Her inky-haired daughter, your great grandma
with steely drive in the Great Depression
worked her way through university
studying ornithology
while raising crow-haired children.

Her youngest son wandered to California,
your grandpa bearded in sable
paired up with a steamy woman of Afro top
back to the land raising illegal crop,
then to legal vines, stable life.

Their daughter, your brunette mother
of dusky skin and choir voice,
a singing crusader for choice
wed to an organic farmer
who looks like a smiling porcupine.

But you, dear girl, dear niece,
dear sweet amazing pumpkin
with eyes of steel,
Who set your head on fire?
Who froze the flame?

……

First published in Amsterdam Quarterly —thank you Bryan R. Monte, editor
Photo by Oleg Osadchuk

My Song Americana

 

My Song Americana

I come to you barefoot
I chew bluegrass, drink corn
My rain is muddy water

My hands are raw from picking cotton
My lungs are black with coal
My farm is dust

I follow rivers by raft,
herd longhorns by horseback,
ride boxcars over endless plain

I killed the native and the buffalo
I regret
I sing of what remains

I am outlaw—I seek justice
I celebrate love—I betray it
I despise the rich—I want riches

I raise children in rags
They outgrow my front porch,
my tumbledown shack
I shame them with my twang,
my holler of blues

My children trade tractors for Teslas
They bring the south north
They take the west east

My children return with fresh children
who throw off shoes, who paddle kayaks,
who dive into muddy water
and come up clean

……

First published in Anti-Heroin Chic—thank you James Diaz, editor.
Photos are of Son House and Woody Guthrie

Juanita of Kansas

 

Juanita of Kansas

Road-tripping from goofy California
we are a mom, pop, 3 kids  
come calling on Aunt Juanita
in calm Kansas this Sunday
surrounded by rustling rows of corn.
At a picnic table we eat barbecued
buffalo steak from Juanita’s small herd,
Juanita’s bloody butchering.
Tastes like spicy beef.

Joining us is one marvelous insect.
Gently it hovers, sets down on the table
like a puff of dandelion, size of a baseball
made of air and beams of light
with delicate spindly legs and
lichen-like scales of no apparent use
except beauty. Kids and I bend close
over the tabletop examining, exclaiming
“Oh wow,” wondering what in the world
as if God’s jewelry had dropped
from heaven until Juanita says
“I don’t know what it is but—”
WHAP goes her big hand
and crushes the bug with her napkin.
“It’s my farm,” Juanita says,
and that’s that.

……

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig. Thank you editor Hayley Haugen.
Photo by me.
Note: I still don’t know what that insect was. Can’t find an image on the internet.

Sika hires me

 

Sika hires me

to “shape up” her time capsule house
now that she’s widowed from, she says,
“67 years of functional marriage.”

Crusty pipes, knob-and-tube wires
eke out driblets of water and voltage.
I mustn’t change the vibe, she says,
the blond wood soul of 1950s ranch house
because, Sika says, “Fifties was functional.”

Sometimes, says Sika, she and Gino would argue
until they realized they weren’t angry,
merely hungry, so together
they’d cook an omelette.

Sometimes in bed Sika would awaken
because Gino was thinking. She’d say
“Gino, stop thinking so I can sleep.”

When Gino got snappy like a lobster
they’d drive an hour to the ocean
so he could wet his gills body-surfing
while Sika studied tide pools, and did I know
barnacles have a penis 8 times their body length
so they can reach their unknown neighbors?
If only people, she says, maybe sex
wouldn’t be so damn awkward.

Sika’s like a playful long-haired cat
unashamed to pause for licking private parts.

I tell Sika I need to open up walls.
Breaking eggs will be messy but when I’m done
the omelette will taste as great as you remember,
function in ways you will not see.
Sika says, “Precisely.”
……

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig. Thank you editor Hayley Haugen.
Photo by Mark Martins.

I would rather put a chainsaw to my legs

 

I would rather put a chainsaw to my legs

Tips of branches turn yellow;
needles float down as from heaven.
My heaven, a redwood forest.

I sweep duff with broom, leaf blower,
snow shovel, mounds rumpling earth
like rough blankets.

Mornings from the wood pile
accompanied by a toddling daughter
I’d cradle logs in my arms shaking off duff
and carry to the wood stove, warm fire.

I install a furnace, forced air.
Thirty years pass — to the redwoods, the blink
of an eye — and I dig, duff mining  
to remove a prickly hill of decay
interlaced with roots of relentless ivy.
Long overdue, I’m restoring my little half acre
so giants can outlast me, outlast a millennium.

Here — two feet down, a plastic tarp
over stacked bundles of fungus, once firewood.
Beneath it all a long lost baby spoon
shaped like a rusty kangaroo.
My daughter would stash gifts
for little critters, mice. Now men.
Received. My heart in heaven.

……

First published in Visitant — thank you editor Andrea Janda

Compost

 

Compost

Always an embarrassment, my father,
a bow-tie guy and president for Pete’s sake
of the Daffodil Society
so when he fenced a corner of the yard
and filled it with yellow bouquets wilted,
with grass clippings and moldy leaves of elm
wafting an odor like an old sponge,
it was another sad fact to hide about my family
until the dry winter day I saw steam rising.

With friend Jimmy I jumped in,
made burrows, caves,
prairie dogs in a warm hill of decay
spreading chaos which my father
must have cleaned later.

Some gone days like wilted bouquets
grow warm.

……

First published in Silver Birch Press— thank you editor Melanie.

Note: An ancient oak tree fell at my children’s school. Workers ran it through a chipper, left a giant pile. After the next rainfall, the mound of wood chips wafted steam. The scent was the trigger. As a child I thought of an old sponge but now the scent so sharp yet rich and deep I recognized as of an old whiskey barrel. I placed my hand inside the mound and yes, so warm. After decades dormant, this memory poured into my cup, and I drank.

The sleeping bag is wet with dew

 

The sleeping bag is wet with dew

I’m warm enough
awake in fading starlight,
hint of dawn lifting roads,
strings of lamps among woven fields
sharpening as sky relentlessly brightens.
Hello, sunrise
from Mount Sugar, a modest mountain
but the best I’ve got.

This trail home I know by heart.
Here are your roses tangled pink as
your exuberance climbing a fence.

The dog remained all night on watch.
In the kitchen you wait with cold coffee
accepting that once a year
I climb a mountain by moonlight
testing a murmur, an atrial flutter
to view a dawn that will come
regardless of witness.

I say you could do better than me but
you say There are no hierarchies of love.
Ask any dog. The dog isn’t talking
but I saw sunrise from Mount Sugar.
Our hearts so strong, I swear.

……

First published in Halfway Down the Stairs—thank you editor Jeannie E. Roberts
Photo (from Sugarloaf Mountain, Maryland, my beloved boyhood climb) by Bishal Regmi

so many words

 

so many words
I have wasted
but the best
shall endure

peace
    birth
        I love you

……

photo by Wildschuetz

Hardware is magic

 

Hardware is Magic

Hardware is magic
only wizards can work.

Molly bolts that fold and … sproing.
Chain goes clank. Pulleys go squeak.
Eye bolts, what vision do they seek?

Faucet handles like fingers of porcelain.
Tiny springs from ballpoint pens—they fly!
Big springs from some old bed—they bounce!

Ornate doorknobs to open a mystery.
Spark plugs. Radiator caps. Just add car.
Wing nuts—perhaps they’ll flap and soar.
Hinges—just add door.

Curtain cleats like horns from a shrunken ox.
Accumulated over years to this box
in coffee cans, in jelly jars
for the purpose I knew would come.

Now, my grandson.
I can see in your eyes you are ready.
For you, cheerful wizard.
Make magic.

……

First published in Your Daily Poem— thank you editor Jayne Jaudon Ferrer

Walter Johnson fires a fastball, Elvis Presley crowds the plate

 

Walter Johnson fires a fastball,
Elvis Presley crowds the plate

At a tender age you learn to glaze windows
when you pitch tennis balls to the brick wall
of your house. You learn curveball and fast,
you try the knuckle, sweep glass.

You learn to hate the mulberries
that squish over the pitching mound.

You play next door with Mary Anne Morningstar
and you love the Elvis songs blaring
from her tinny transistor radio
as much as you hate the menacing hillbilly accent
of her full bourbon father who yodels
“Love me tay-ender, Love me troo-a-oo-a-oo.”

You find you can improve your arm
only as far as your body will allow,
one fat pitch can erase ten good ones,
there’s always some batter with a better eye,
some coach with a mean streak.

You learn your back yard was formerly
farmland owned by Walter Johnson,
one of the greatest pitchers of all time.
Your mulberries fed his chickens.
May his spirit feed your arm.

You develop hair down there
and see Mary Anne burst into tears
when you ask to see hers.
You jump back as she launches
a stone like a fastball into the radio
smashing it to jewels of plastic.

You learn she hates Elvis
and she hates her dad for his pelvis
and she loves God instead,
and you think maybe you love Mary Anne
like Elvis loves his momma
in a tender non-icky way.

You learn to cut glass, to curl putty with a knife.
You learn Walter Johnson after baseball
became an incompetent small time politician
and Elvis in Vegas turned squishy as mulberry.

You learn the easy passage from genius to fool.
Constellations fade with the dawn.
Remember Mary Anne.
Remember the stars.

……

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig— thank you editor Hayley Haugen
photo is my Walter Johnson baseball card

Note: When Walter Johnson pitched for the Washington Senators he had a farm in Montgomery County, Maryland. The house where I grew up was built on that farmland.

Popcorn, Oil & Salt

 

Popcorn, Oil & Salt

In movie romance
you know the scene where one strips
(outer) clothes (this a television movie)
and jumps into water
(maybe off a cliff into an old quarry)
and then the other
(finding courage)
follows?

First some playful splashes,
then they tread water face to face
(droplets beading on brows)
and search eyes with caution, with wonder
(because in personality they seem opposites).

They kiss.
(Once, quickly.)
Now they check for reaction and
(if actors are good) we see emotions
play across faces from uncertainty to delight.
And they kiss again (slow lingering)
while the camera circles.

So I set down my bowl of olive-oiled popcorn
(Leccino makes it sweet, fruity, oddly grassy)
and say to you We’ve never done that.

You set down your of  bowl of garlic-salty popcorn
(because you like it sharp, crisp) and say
Next summer at the lake.

After a moment of thought
(because you are you) you say
How do they kiss and tread water at the same time? Are they kicking super hard? Don’t their feet collide? Quarry water is insanely cold. How does the camera circle around them? On a boat? From a crane? Oh sorry—were you about to kiss me?

And I say (with popcorn in my teeth)
Next summer at the lake.

……

First published in Silver Birch Press (Spices and Seasonings Series)—thank you editor Melanie