REFLECTIONS ON A DOT

Whenever I see we are
one
of millions of galaxies,
I feel like a dot of a dot of a dot.

No feelings or memories in galaxies.

No galaxy married the most beautiful other dot in the world,
birthed three other dots with that dot,
stood looking out at its own raging, blue ocean,
sad that one dot spoke terrible things about another dot,
voted for one dot over another,
wondered why one dot only ate vegetables, another meat.

Or was horrified when a dot crashed his car into another dot,
gazed at the big white dots in the black sky,
amazed as dots created music, paintings,
poems, novels, sculptures,
scorned a dot of a different color,
warmed to a dot rescuing a dog,
felt the distant dot of a red, pulsing sun.

Or marveled as a dot explored an unknown sunset-soaked vista,
spied one dot stealing from another,
shot a basketball through a dot on a pole,
cheered when a dot carried a picket sign,
exclaimed when a dot danced with lotto winnings from dots on a ticket,
cried as one dot adulterized a dot’s dot.

Or scaled the dot of a mountain,
lauded a dot for the sonnet she wrote,
screamed as a drunken dot jumped off a bridge,
contemplated dots supplicating, genuflecting, meditating,
surveyed a placid, green lake with an egret dot,
loved a dot petting a swan, another petting a bull.

Or dropped bombs on other dots.

Or looked up, realized
had one of those dots
left her other dots far too early
we would look up at those other galaxies
and know that dot
was somewhere out there.

Originally published in The Corvus Review

GRANDMA CRIED

Grandma lost her second husband,
the saint from a sudden heart attack,
not the scalawag, who walked out the door
when Mom was two.
The first one broke Grandma's heart leaving,
the second one broke her heart dying.

Grandma did not shed a tear,
but when the funeral was over,
when TAPS and the gun salute faded,
she jumped in the grave,
hugged and hugged the casket
until they dragged her away,
her face as hard
as the Brass around her.

Home they went,
no tears, Grandma a Sphinx
who sat in the house,
zombied through her days,
mechanically cleaned.
Frail as a bird,
Mom couldn’t flap a wing,
wheedled and pleaded
for Grandma to cry.

One day, the statue stood stark still.
Mom said she did not know
what moved her to strike.
But she slugged Grandma,
smacked her right in the jaw.
Her mother looked at her stunned,
scrunched up her face
and wailed for days.

Mom and Grandma,
the best shoulders
for each other
the rest of their lives.

Originally published in Spindrift Magazine

POLLUTION MANIA

Will we run out of things to pollute?
Still have that rampant, burning, gulping
desire to consume and destroy?
Not think about the sight of smoke rising,
filling the sky, killing once clean air.
Snatch a convenient plastic bag from Target.
Straws suck down that delicious milkshake.
Burn gas on a country drive for time to think.

Just eat all the blue from the sky.
Use the Big Dipper to scoop
it down our wide-open maw.
Scorch a sun pie and scarf it up.
Turn the moon into green cheese,
none for the mice.
Snort up the oceans.
Process voles for food.
Create tsunamis in purple majesty.
Seems that’s what we're after.

We do know how.

Originally published in Spindrift Magazine

AM I INTELLIGENT?

An article appeared on Yahoo,
unusual attributes of high intelligence.
Ah, I can test myself against the world.
How will I fare?

To start, I am the oldest child,
a leg up, but no choice of mine
and I did take piano lessons,
but failed miserably.

I have owned cats, don’t now,
but had a lot of cats
so I must be super curious,
even though it has not killed me.

Alas, I am not left-handed.
There must be far less
intelligent people than I thought.
And I am not tall.
Wasn’t Napoleon short?
Do I begin to question this list?
Roll on.

I read at a young age,
was read to and memorized books
to delight the adults.
And I have always been
very anxious, taking pills for years.

Yes, a sense of humor,
even laugh at my own jokes.
And I am quite disorganized.
Can’t even find my lists!

Eschew luck, one of my
cats was witch black and
I fear no ladders or mirrors.
Don’t know if my Mother
breast-fed me. Too old
to remember, but must have
since this list is going my way.

Definitely a night owl,
reading lamp on till late.
Viewed as lazy as a child.
Only read comic books for years
and watched the Cubs,
avoided every odious chore.
But very focused,
perhaps OCD for a middle name.

Admit when I am wrong,
though not frequently.
Am not at all the strong silent type,
more a gadfly with a mouth.
Does that disqualify me?

But I seem to be lining up quite well?
What do you think?
I love challenges
and of course I multitask,
see life as a big stove
where I manage many burners,
but I am not a good cook—
not on the list though.

Surround myself with smart people
who have me around for the same reason
and married a smart woman
though she goes to bed early
and hates cats.

Egads! Intelligent people
shun electronics.
Can you fail at one category
and be eliminated?
Are there levels of intelligence?
Perhaps I am just smart, not highly?

But I am empathetic,
love facts, am a perfectionist,
keep a top the news,
carefully examine my ideas
over and over with my
Rubik’s cube mind
and, in truth,
don’t think I am smart
even though this wonderful test
says otherwise.
What do you think?

Originally published in Odd Ball Magazine

TO THE FATHERS OF ALL AND EVERY

To the fathers of books and papers and pens, to the fathers of hammers and nails and boards,

to the fathers of either, to the fathers of both, we celebrate this day.

To the fathers of song and voice and lilt, to the fathers of trade and coin and hire,

to the fathers of brush and easel and paint, to the fathers of seed and soil and wind,

to the fathers of words and teach and gesture, to the fathers of stove and boil and sear,

to the fathers of music and string and chord, to the fathers of gear and cog and whirr,

to the fathers of hugs and smiles and laps, to the fathers of silence and strength and arms,

to the fathers of ship and storm and curse, to the fathers of prayer and Spirit and sacred,

to the fathers of daughters and the fathers of sons, to the fathers of mothers and fathers of fathers and the fathers of Grand.

To the fathers of either, to the fathers of both, to the fathers of all and every, we celebrate this day.

We celebrate this day.

Originally published in Spillwords Magazine

THE RIGHT TO COMPLAIN

I won’t compare and contrast
the pain in my life to others
like a dutiful rhetoric student
composing an obligatory essay
assigned by an older teacher
nursing his retirement years.

I want the pain to be mine.
I want to own the hurt.
I want to feel my daughter's divorce,
my son's vandalized car,
my dog's surgery.
I won’t compare my life events
to the ravages of a hurricane
blowing an island paradise into the sea
or the latest mass shooting
composing a cemetery from a concert
or the death of my best friend's daughter
cancer slicing her life in half.

But why can't I complain
when people ask me how I am?
Why can't I bray my petty pipings
in the grieving face of real tragedy?

My maiden aunt often said:
"You are only in your own skin."

Does that comfort me?

Originally published in Blue Pepper Magazine

GETTING AND GIVING

I didn't notice my young wife
baked banana bread
sometimes I don't notice things 
and I didn’t see at first
the tears in the corners
of her eyes thought
maybe I made her sad
not noticing the bread
which made no sense
why tears on a stunning Fall afternoon
she nodded towards
the empty space in our living room
Our late cat's climbing perch gone
cherished until the right moment
to give our dear pet’s things away
neighbor Tim in the doorway sunlight
finally found a girlfriend
who has a sweet cat
out the door went Alou’s memories
perch and collar and ceramic kitty bowl
cried together.

Originally published in Pangolin Review

OF MARGARET WISE BROWN: GOODNIGHT MARGARET

Little one, as I rock you to sleep,
you do not yet know your world.
Your room is blue, not green—
no telephone, red balloon,
or picture of a cow jumping over the moon,
no kittens or mittens, no bears, young mouse.
You have a comb and a brush, a clock, a doll house
and your Grandmother rocking you, hush.

You do not know of Margaret.
I will tell you now and I will tell you later.
You will not understand me now.
Will you understand me later?

Goodnight Brownie:
Beautiful, green-eyed, blonde-haired vixen,
extravagant, eccentric lover of King Juan Carlos,
a John D. Rockefeller nephew,
Ms. Michael Strange, ex-wife of John Barrymore,
others.

Little one, do not kick your leg up in the air
if your doctors tell you no,
clotting your leg and stopping your heart.
Do not give your inheritance to a wastrel.

Instead write 100 picture books
with melodies you can whistle.

Goodnight stars
Goodnight air
Goodnight noises
Goodnight foolish choices
Everywhere.

Originally published in Rat's Ass Review

DEAD BRONTES

Oh, you think I write
of Emily, Charlotte, and Anne,
tragic young deaths,
lives snuffed out
caring for neglectful father Patrick,
wastrel brother Branwell.

No, I tell of older sisters
with forgotten names,
Maria and Elizabeth, who died
at Cowan Bridge School
from hunger and cold.

Patrick spirited the surviving sisters home
to create Jane Eyre, Heathcliff, Agnes Gray,
and assorted poems by fake male authors.

History has a way of raveling.
Ah, but that unraveling leaves life
full of mystery and grief.

This is for you, Maria and Elizabeth.
What might you have penned
had Patrick repented sooner?

Originally published in Rat's Ass Review

BROTHERS

Our father relented about BB guns,
gave me a shiny new one for my birthday,
excited to try it in the Forest Preserve.
It was sunny and bright
when my brother and I took turns,
like in Christmas Story, shot down imaginary foes.

We didn’t see them, we brothers
who laughed and traded our toy between us,
didn’t see the neighborhood boys emerge
from the thicket, a smirk of conquest
planted on their faces, a snarl:
What have we here!
Did Daddy give you a gun?
Too dangerous. Might hurt you.

Lifted me upside down,
shoved dirt in my mouth,
grabbed the gun from my brother,
threw him to the ground.
He rose like an angry snake, attacked them.
A quick, hard punch, his nose spewed blood.

I knelt beside him as they strode away,
their cackles never forgotten, nor the ping pings
as the gun became their birthday present instead.

My brother became a master carpenter,
fashioned custom furniture,
now creates only for friends.

I taught special ed children, whose families
sometimes punched them in the nose,
forgot about their birthdays.  

Never knew what became of those brothers.
Some don’t redeem themselves. Some do.

Originally published in Bindweed Magazine

ONE WHO LISTENED

Albert Camus died in a car crash at 47

Camus,
push the rock
up, up, down,
up, up, down,
Sisyphus no myth,
born from a Plague,
absurd Stranger,
you should not have listened,
died because you listened.

What of the sayer,
the one who spoke,
the one you listened to?

Your Editor persuaded:
“Drive to Paris, Albert;
It is so much faster than the plane.
Believe me!”

We say because we say.
We cannot put our hands
over our minds.

The grief of the Editor:
“O, Albert, what the world lost
because you listened,
Existentially.”

Originally published in Bindweed Magazine

THE STRETCH

Thoroughbreds blister to the top
of the stretch, heading for home.
So are we.

We hit the bend of the turn,
aged decrepitude looms.

Rounding off a full life,
headed for home.

Not sure what is home.
Not sure how long
the stretch extends.

Finish strong.

Originally published in Mad Swirl Magazine

HOW WOULD MARTIANS SEE US?

What if Martians visited us?
Crashed down like the Orwell broadcast?
What would they see?

We think we look normal
though sometimes we say we look odd.
But no humans really look odd--
we all look alike enough--
and none of us really look inhuman
even if we act that way.

Martians probably
don’t look
odd to each other
with their myriad
eyes, colors, proboscises,
heads, skins, limbs,
tongues, teeth/fangs.

Would Martians look
beautiful to themselves?
Or would they find themselves unattractive,
compare themselves to each other,
grieve over looks like we do?
Look scary only because
we imagined, drew,
pixelated them that way?

How would they react
if they saw our eyes, ears, teeth, hair?
Symmetrical unlike Martians.
Watched us run, jump,
make love, defecate,
kill each other
cry tears,
cut our toe nails,
sunbathe, sunburn,
eat, eat, eat—with or without manners--
have to sleep,
want to wake up.
Birth from our Mothers,
bloody mucous,
pray, die
conduct funerals.

What would they do?
Would they kill us like we fear?
Adopt us and take us home as pets?
Suspect what we would do to them?

Is the third hand of some Martian
writing a poem right now:
HOW WOULD HUMANS SEE US?

Originally published in Page and Spine

I’M SORRY

We say to the animate world.
We have inflicted so much hurt
on other humans—even the ones we most love.
We neglect a dog, a cat, a horse,
leave a bird cage ajar, stomp bugs.
We have not been St. Francis.
Sorry, a healing balm.

But what of the inanimate world?
Some say plants feel pain
when we yank them from the ground,
routinely murder the lawn.
We can kneel down
in our own garden
or by our mower and say it.
And, lumberjack—apologize to that tree
you just axed.

What about convenience items?
When they break, we bitch
even when we break them.
Like it was their fault.
Hey, if you buy 47 things
with moving parts, the law of averages
says at least two a week will break.
When you cuss out your furnace
or TV—humble yourself.

Do you stomp the floor
when you stub your toe?
Do you kick a chair
when you bang into it?
You put it there.
Or the table you bump,
the sidewalk that scrapes your knee.
Teach your children early on,
extend the chain of life to the lifeless.

Could be life changing,
apologizing not just to the living,
breathing world,
but to every
thing.

Like to your bed for not making it every day,
letting her live a rumpled life.
Like your toilet some still call a commode.
Sorry for all the shit you have to put up with.

Mea Culpa—to all the rocks I threw.

Originally published in Bombfire Magazine

DESPITE: OF HANSEL AND GRETEL’S WITCH

A bone bent rag pile
before the Pearly Gates
waits for the Saint
to pass judgment,
broods on forgiveness.

One says she knows not what she did,
but she did build the candy house
—lemon cookie walls, chocolate windows,
red and green Christmas candy roof, apple pie porch—
like a predator on a playground,
peeps out for any sign
of fattling children.

Her natural witch clairvoyance
knew they were coming,
Hansel’s bread crumb scheme,
snatched away by the birds
as she would tempt them
then slam the purple candy door
and pop him in her cage.

Smart children, honed
by the step-mothers’s wiles,
Gretel devises
the twig finger
to out-trick the tricker.

Day by day, the crone’s eyes
see wood instead of flesh,
impossible to wait
for succulence,
orders Gretel:
Light the oven,
carrots and gravy,
bake the boy.
Stupidly bends over
to test the heat,
whoosh the witch
into the fire.

The children flee home,
find their kind woodcutter father.
Bring baskets of goodies,
celebrate love and family.

The stepmother banished,
the children see her once more—
buy her bread and soup—
despite.

Originally published in Bombfire Magazine

FODDER

Years ago, when my wife and I drove deep into red clay
for a Georgia wedding, we explored outside Atlanta.
We both loved antiques and quaint
shops with doodads and local candies,
but noticed Army recruiting signs,
by most of the cash registers,
an expected rite of passage
for recent high school graduates—a way to glory,
a badge of honor to escape dirt roads,
closed store fronts, weedy playgrounds—
the bright cardboard signs spelling fodder
for the great Mad Cow in the sky
who chews and chews and cuds them up.

On the news this morning, a father and his son
from Georgia, argue for Freedom
not to wear masks or distance
as they mass-return to school despite every Covid warning.
The curly-blond boy,
a linebacker on the football team,
mouths Freedom as if it were something stuck in his teeth.
His Dad, sporting a Bass cap,
mouths the same words like a fish gasping for air,
asserts his right to get sick and die
just as the young men and women did so long ago
when I was younger and thought it would change.

Originally published on Rat's Ass Review

CARBON MAN

Roped into a summer job
as a railroad yard clerk
before college when novels, poetry
took my time.

Real fear to work with real men,
underscored my first day
when an engineer screamed at me—
a carload of Lincoln-Continentals
decapitated, routed on the wrong track,
the previous clerk’s mistake.

Relieved until the Boss said,
“Watch out kid!
At night when you’re walking
between the cars recording numbers.
Old Ralph decapitated,
a piece of board sticking out.”

Covered vacations by the regulars,
switched jobs every two weeks
until early August,
spent a month as a carbon man.

After forty years, Joe got sick.
extra time off.
The Boss said, “It’s your job now, kid.
Easy. Insert one of three carbon sheets
into piggyback lading bills—
three, five, seven.
That’s all you do all day, what Joe did all day.
For forty years.”

What is Joe like?
“Doesn’t talk much, just does his job.
Loves his wife, beer, the Cubs in that order.
No kids,” said the Boss.

I developed a system for variety,
an hour of threes,
hour of fives,
hour of sevens.
Repeat. Repeat.
Sometimes in reverse order.

Time crawled through August.
Joe came back. Thanked me.
“How’d you like my job?”
I couldn’t ask,
How can you stuff carbons for forty years—
not run screaming toward the tracks?

Soon in college, I read Hamlet.
To be or not to be?
A carbon man.
I made my choice.
Realized my luck.
I am sorry men still stuff.

Originally published in Gray Sparrow Journal

JEZEBEL

On vacation at a Florida animal park,
our unfaithful father jumped
by a Spider monkey, instant love,
aptly named Jezebel, ripped
the pocket of his shirt, snatched
an expensive Cuban cigar,
smitten, he bought her, flew home
to his current wife and kids.

But a gift can be a burden,
cage cleaning, monkeys
rival pigs for stink,
watch her wild destruction,
shreds the kitchen curtains,
rips the blouse off my girlfriend,
who ran screaming from the house.
On accident, I slam
Jezebel’s fingers in a door,
blame comes home in a rage.

Then New Year’s Eve,
escape to a frozen roof,
a midnight fireman climbs
a precarious ladder, alone,
our mother melts, cries for mercy.
Dad spirits Jezebel to Florida,
where she is warm and safe,
and the hoarder of non-wives,
can stay a while.

Originally Published in Monterey Poetry Review

GENEALOGY

I

We could so easily not exist,
the one in a million sperm
penetrating one
of the countless eggs
defining our DNA.
We know little of our history.
What happened
in Neanderthal days,
the Middle Ages, myriad wars,
plagues, fires, crashes?
Sometimes we know of
close encounters of a nearer time,
family stories, tales of
what might have been.

My grandmother,
engaged to a German boy
she met at an Arkansas college.
One night on the new-fangled phone,
being wooed, a gun blast,
shattered the night air,
causing an unforgettable
silence on the other end
of that messenger of death.
The backwoods insanity
of unrequited love caused
a would-be grandfather,
a spurned beau to gun down
that foreign lover,
caused my grandmother
to droop like a plucked flower,
cause me to never be born,
never to tell anyone
of that dark night
in that Arkansas Hell.

II

Years later, at a California beach,
the sea grabbed that same grandmother,
almost ended me again.
Near the fierce undertow, deathly afraid of water
(our Mother told us later),
she slipped off her shoes,
stood a few feet from the shore.
Crowded beach, hundreds of bathers,
shading their eyes from the blinding sun.
The riptide pulled, grinned evilly
under the water, dragged
her down and out,
her wraith-like body sank.
An Olympic swimmer saw the disappearance,
plunged, grabbed a foot. A moment
longer she would have slipped away.
Again, a tale I would never tell.

Originally Published in Monterey Poetry Review

PORK CHOP HILL

This Korean War battle has always haunted me.
Originally named Hill 255, a stupid, demeaning title
replaced because that hill
was shaped like a pork chop,
almost comic relief to the brutality,
so much horror and sacrifice.

I’ve never wanted to be a soldier.
Thank God (Who does not take sides).
I missed all the many wars in my long life,
realized how easily it could have been otherwise.
Glad my two sons dodged it,
not by intention but happenstance.
Just born lucky. History can be that way.

I have no business writing this poem
unless it is all right to hate war
and not think that any words about
how horrible it is stinks of the unpatriotic
like fetid bodies inside the bags.

Trudge up Pork Chop Hill.
I was never there,
but I read about it over and over,
an obsession for no reason I know,
maybe some kind of historical survivor’s guilt?

Now I can see it, smell it,
the muck, the monsoon rains,
washing away the blood again and again
as the trapped men battled back and forth,
the longest battle of the war,
to take it and lose it and re-take it,
for “no strategic or tactical reason”
said the report.

This Korean War battle has always haunted me.
A 980 foot high pork chop,
a butcher’s cut,
helpless men,
defining life, defining death
for so many
tragic men
we will never know.
No glory here.
No glory at all.

Originally published in Fevers Of The Mind