Hiding in the Boiler Room at St. Pat’s
it was an accident
yes i rang the old school bell
yes i threw it
but not at the base of statue Mary
that toppled slower than slow
hit
snapping off her head
it rolled toward the exit
i ran like a frightened thief
down to the boiler room
i stayed hidden
so long
i’ve forgotten
why and where i was hiding
my mind
formed jaws of
don’t crawl and burrow
beneath this holy gravel
of guilt and fear anymore
life gathered much to be sorry for
that’s for sure
i still examine the guilt rocks
one at a time
to let light and warmth
fill the dark boiler room of me
shaking
pure shiny flawed raw
Contrition
Why does that holy man count beads
Is it guilt spilling out like altar wine
Or a man in need of contrition
The truth is in the vines
It’s too much like living
When the vines intertwine
My feet are stretched behind me
Looking for a sin
My head is in the oven
Searching for my friend
I’m not fighting evil
I’m not fighting wrong
I’m not here to sing my only song
But there’s smoke in the attic
There is fire on the snow
The goblins are eating children
Because there’s nowhere for them to go
It’s morning somewhere
And the sun is shining low
Coffee is brewing
Like the blackness of a soul
The rain is falling like nails from the sky
I’m not here to whimper
I’m not here to die
I’m just in from the forest
It's time to join the fight
School Prayer
I lost my first poem.
It was written to my mother
after Sister John Nun
spanked my knuckles
with a blessed yardstick.
Something I said about her flying
like a winged newspaper
if the wind was right.
Jesus, my hands hurt.
I lost it somewhere in the playground.
Backpack Soul
It sags like a heavily-soaked dishrag
My backpack soul
Tattered
Ripped
Bleeding
Danced on
Held warm under my chin
Laughed
Cried and slept on
Tossed aside
Gunky in spots
Shiny in others
A dirty gray
(Careful not to say black)
Don’t show me yours
Perched on your back like a saint
Fingers pinching the corners
Dangling pale pure
(Careful not to say white)
Do you wash yours regularly
I tried dry cleaning mine
Decontamination seems my only option
How do I rinse the muddy water
And dense fog out
The contents are stacked
With counterfeit truths
That bought counterfeit fears
I hope stuffing it with love will save me
From the hot guilt Sister Holy Sister
Tattooed bead by bead on my brain
Dante’s flame
Haunting my ups and downs
I carry the pack like a friend
Who bends my spine to and fro
Standing in the Corner
It was Second Grade
Sister Patricia pinched my ear like a dirty towel
and put me and my nose in the corner
My resistance was humming back into my face
I felt guilt’s implant dancing
Dancing on the bar at Harold's Place
Sister said
Too many rhymes make bad boy books
Behind her black beads hid
Everything they took
Standing on the corner
Me and the devil chewing gum
The wildness inside me
Is a piece of the man I’ve become
Too many wrinkles now
A little less pizazz
Not just blues
Not just rock
Not just jazz
In the corner is where
I started humming the sound of the sun
And what set my shoes pointing south
On highway fifty-one
Hard to Tell
7 angry children in the middle of the road
Shabby little prophets
Hungry and bold
They’ve got one foot in heaven
One in hell
It looks like they’re praying
But it's hard to tell
Looks like they’re praying
But it's hard to tell
2 fallen angels singing in the wings
Second-hand statues trying to get in
They've got one foot in heaven
Two in hell
It looks like they're crying
But it's hard to tell
Looks like they're crying
But it's hard to tell
There’s a thin place calling at half past 12
Should I buy or should I sell
I’m 10 steps from heaven
One from hell
Seems like the long way
But it's hard to tell
Seems like the long way
But it's hard to tell
Lord almighty it’s so hard to tell
Garbage the Poem
My brain needs a good scrubbing
pressure washing perhaps
Boxes and crud are collecting like a hoarder moved in
It isn’t toxic waste
Just life’s grease being squeezed
into my eyes
i have been trying to write this idea
this poem
this ode to love
the thoughts dart around like a school of lost fish
so wads of good intentions
surround my waste can
I go back through the crumples
like a raccoon rummaging
through a garbage can
Love
Must
be
in here
some-damn
` where…
My pen and I sit
peering
out the streaked window
waiting for my prodigal muse to come home.
Horns and Thorns
Evil has sharp-tipped horns
Not Lucifer or Beelzebub horns
Invisible horns
Erupting like tiny spears out of
(or is that into) humanity’s head
Sharply corrupting
Blaming and crushing
For power money and the affliction of
More more more
Swords and guns drawn
Selling the addiction of inflicting pain
Dancing on the ceiling of bottomless delight
The rose watches without watching
Beauty will take no part in evil’s ugly dance
Her pedals are soft skin goodness
The thorn
Her bodyguard
Never beholds her beauty
Even when her beauty wilts and blackens
He guards
With beauty of his own
Until he too withers down
Evil sharpens its dark grin
Goodness waits patiently
Knowing the thorn’s chivalry will sprout again
The Puzzle
Mirror shards scatter in my thoughts
glimpses of a child
in pieces forgotten.
Cutting my memory
each step bloodies my feet,
like dull cold into soft flesh.
Images break,
and light bounces everywhere,
like God.
Flashes of pleasure and pain,
specs of good and evil,
strobes of joy and sorrow.
When lonely,
I hold the small mirrors close
and look.
I can’t see the nature of this boy.
He stowed away
like a pauper in jagged glass
on the floor of my life.
Sand Pebble
I am sitting near the sea
just another sand pebble
but with eyes, a face, and thought
The vastness swallows me
like a blue whale inhales krill
My mind rows out to deep water
to the no-one-knows depths
where books can’t swim
Is God hanging out everywhere or
just where I can’t see her
Did kiss of love and fist of hate splash into the sea
inside the same star-seed… or separately
Are the stars blameless for this homo sapiens snafu
100 years after my tide goes out
no one will know my glint of being
and the moon will still look on yawning
I hear my mother’s voice softly over the waves
“It’s ok, it’s ok. Mommy’s here”
The sky billows a smile
and turns away
A Crab
crabby-walks
by
like he owns the place
which he does
he and I
Me
There can only ever be one me
After my first innocent breath of light
I latched myself onto life
Weaned and gleaned into me
No one knows my me story
I don’t remember its whole truth myself
Freezing for attention
The real me is still hiding under my childhood sofa
I do know my essence is unique
Everyone’s me is
Mine is a rickety totem built with each breath and thought
A million-act play of rights and wrongs story
An angry boy-man’s slow melt to kindness
The coward who ran and hero who stood
The worries that chewed my brain to the nub
The middle of the night hard rain tears
The laugh because I can’t stop from laughing
Intimate eyes that dove naked into my soul-pond
The passionate bite of desire
The love that poured over me like clear warm water
Those loves who walked to the far side of the moon
And brought me home to flower colors blazing under a blue sky
Looking up with old eyes to the birds’ easy flight I wonder
Where is the “me” for those who never grew old
Swatted dead after one breath One year Five years Ten years
Inside my eyes are tiny lantern lit universes
Trying to see the unseeable star we came from
Within old and new joy
Beyond the opaque veil of youth too soon taken
Love stands with sunshine arms open
Bicycle
My youth
on an old bicycle
rode up and by
no fenders or kick-up stand
missing a chain guard
its one-speed teeth
set to snare
another pant leg
Old rust spotted chrome handlebars
Tires worn down to balloon skin
The hand-me-down of all hand-me-downs
It was perfect!
The rider
A boy almost eight was deep within himself
his dog Flipper chased a rabbit across a busy
road and never returned
Unaware in eighty-seven days
his father would be dead
of some sudden septic something or other
There was no one on the handlebars
no bell or light or reflector or mirror
It moved by quick slow
As the boy rolled off
he got gradually older
somehow the bicycle got newer
Bicycle cont.
He kept moving away
but I could still see him as clear as clear
like
I was running
backwards
in front of him
witnessing the ride
He fell many times
looked back
and grimaced
and smiled and cried
and laughed and peddled on
I ran
to catch and help
this uncatchable one-way traveler
and hop on
his shiny chrome
and polished red bike
before what the old man
remembered
was
forgotten
Too Much Between
May polished its flowers
Paraded its green
Especially for you
I thought you were ambrosia
Not meant for consumption
By mortals such as me
All summer we walked and talked
Together—you a year older
Made me prince of Hegeler Park
The theater flickered
Black and white
The smell of popcorn
In the balcony
I numbed my lips on yours
My head swelled and caught fire
But my trousers didn’t stir
Puberty, you dark hairy stranger!
Streetlights watched us home
Our silhouettes stretching
Corner to corner
Shadows
Walking toward September
Your girlfriend said you were sorry
I fell
Like an anvil into a deep well
My eyes glazed over
Clawing for the surface
I didn’t believe
You could be wheedled
Into back seats
Or lean stiff jeans
I went to your school
My fawn heart camouflaged
In the huge locker hall
Thrashing silently in the notion
That next year I’d be with you
Gliding by like beauty itself
You didn’t notice me
My lips as brittle as thin ice
My eyelids wilted petal
Ripples
I see the ripples on my childhood creek
I close my eyes to the massage of its soft rhythm
Skinny dipping filled with the noise of youth
The fast water waiting like it knew I was coming
Those intimate life friends always come back
Like music that knows the star I came from
Singing to the moment I am feeling
Hundreds of times a day I think of love received along the way
It seems like a lot
But love doesn’t keep count
Are my words a circular dead-end or
Me grasping at why I am so blessed
I look up and see these clown-faced clouds making fun of me
Can’t they see I’m paranoid
The sand in my hourglass is racing thin to the bottom
I try yet again to turn it over
Only to find it welded to my life
White Noise
I am on the outside looking long
Through a window curved like a time-spoon
I see me inside my childhood house
Adjusting the antenna of a black and white tv
Its rotor from forgotten times
Cluckity clucking away toward rare clarity
In our young eyes
The images appear like high-def magic
Robin Hood with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland
Their true hearts and arrows giving to the poor
And without a spec of fuzz to look past
My brother Fred yells, “Stop! Keep it right there.”
The antenna was pointed at Chicago
That scary place to the east of us
Screen snow starts to slowly cover
Our too soon irretrievable heroes
My younger brother Don sighs, “Oh, man…”
Me outside the curved window
With white noise eyes
Whatchamacallits
Don’t know when
I stopped using concrete nouns
It’s not as though they stopped being
what
they are
Those things on the counter…
that stuff in the jar
My RAM brain is full of sick news
I point at what
my memory misplaced
Thingamabobs
all
over
the place
Dylan sang don’t think twice
But just thinking once would light the light
that thought drifted off
late last night
Damn Damnit damn
Where are my whatchamacallums
HELPHELP
I can’t go far
I can’t find those doohickies
that start my car
