Author: poetryfest

Whatever we were,
whatever particular brand of bent,
We are few and far between.

Max thought he was evil—
He prepared myself in a child’s idea of evil arts:
Violence, magic, and song.

Strange, the naïve evils we choose.

He thought we were sociopaths.

We were violent, true,
but in a sporting way.
For us, violence was a game—

Serious, but worthy fun.
Amongst worthwhile foes.

I think we didn’t understand violence.
True hateful violence.

We were numb to our deeper selves,
we could hear,
but could not translate.
Not until later.

External reference was little aid—
a limited frame of petty shuffles
and fiction.
We had no sense of the scale of it.

Like so many mad men before him,
he went to war,
to understand what it felt like
to kill a person.

It killed him.

It is dark where I am and I cannot hope to see you
but sometimes I can hear your words
echoing off the tall walls and stone steps

I grasp at shadows trying to reach you
but you are long gone
disappeared somewhere into the gentle dark

Imagine my surprise when I wrap my hand around the murk
a silken strand of your memory
that slips from my fingers like seaweed

Will you ever come back? I don’t expect an answer,
mostly because I can’t remember what you would say

I’m trying to focus but I’ve forgotten the shape of you
the scars on your calves
the freckles on your nose
the peal of your laughter

Those old ripples of sound are evaporating
leaving a cool, dry space in my brain
I feel them as they slide into the air
and soon I’ll have no memory
of the way you would say my name

You know I can’t speak for myself, in all this dark
weren’t there monsters in my closet
or did you scare them all away?

I’m no good at chasing them out
without your help
and I don’t know how
I will ever get through the dark
without your hand
in mine.

For Heath, now four years gone from my world.

I.

one boy tossing language into a crevice

another introducing rapture to his fist
another wracked by sick convulsions
another swallowing the vineyard’s gift
another abandoned in the blackthorns
another paler than the all-seeing moon
another thieving his mother’s rings
another slim as an angel’s fingernail
another who speaks only exonyms
another—

wildest profanities
amid the sagebrush

noise carries. Where doors would be
there are gaps in the wall, impossible
to close. At night, conversations
drift to other rooms. The tongue
mutates if left with the same voices
too long. Catches their ticks and rhythms
like a common cold. Howls leak
and accompany the nighttime gossips
snitching in the dark. Others, still,
perturb the boundaries of dreamscape.
A scream is a communication, an utterance
past the scope of language. All communication
amounts to shuffling knowledge, here
a redundant enterprise, like startled birds
fleeing boys that limp and wince each step.
We all share the knowledge. Wailing
or silent, we all mouth the same word.

II.

unravel the eyesight / desist / until the foul hunger of this multiverse
sates itself on the black / and between the arcs of being, we collide

being as time / instantaneous sagebrush / spark-splattered kindling
ripe and ready for the meat / I gorge myself on the unhinged

there is no object without a making / nor a making without cost
I was not hungry / but here I came with the sole intent to eat

III.

you asked him to pray and he wrote you a gospel
you told him that the rain isn’t free and he invented thirst
you shepherded him and he taught the wolves to howl
you crowned him and he curled up to sleep on cobblestones
you gave him eyes and he had to choose:

would they watch
would they close
or would they weep?

For Bob

What I hate about this language
is how hard it is to color
our voices in the art of affection
and still it fails us.

*

My friend who bought himself
a bottle of Jameson
and a cheap motel room
folds his hands over
his loaded revolver,
as if in prayer, then reaches
his scarred, index finger
for the trigger
like a light switch
in the dark.

Tonight, I speak to him
in the same tongue as the old gods–
in their long, volleying silences.

If I could sleep this night
I would dream a memory of him:
his bent body mixing another pail
of leaden grey, drylock paint
that we’d slather
to molded, basement walls
and speak not a word
of how such a thankless task
allowed us both to breathe
a little easier than in our own
desolate homes of longing.

I would go on covering up
the domestic wounds of that house,
abandoned by its previous newlyweds
beside him, as if the paint’s pulpy,
intoxicating fluid were as pure
as autumn rain
and make each stroke a blessing
only those inflicted
by such wounds could cast.

I would believe the lie
long enough for us both.

And when we are finished,
I would not tell him he is beautiful,
even though he was, near the end
of his middle age, the same way
a worn, plastic play doll
is beautiful in the hands of a child
the moment he begins to believe
to have outgrown such joys.

Instead, I would gather up our brushes
as I always have, into that crusted,
mop bucket sink, and wash away
the absolutions that cling to their bristles
so gravely, that even the spirits,
who call us forth from such dreams,
could not judge these hands
that deny them

standing in the doorway
peeking around the door
half ajar on its creaking hinges

did the kitchen change
its color overnight
did the paint in the bathroom
crumble and peel all
while i was
asleep last night

the bedroom started smelling
like mold just this
morning

but somehow something
tells me that this doesn’t
all happen overnight

like it was a
storm building
with the mice behind
the door slowly
chewing away the wood

and the air just
grew too moist

maybe it was
the sink full of dishes
that somehow hadn’t been
touched in two months

but it’s been this
way for some years
because i haven’t been able come
and pay a visit to grandpa

but i think
it just must have
happened all overnight

because how does
all this crumble
one day over ten years
he just died last night

i thought

We were floating in the stagnant muck.
She was singing songs back to the birds.
I sat in the canoe in amazement.
Everything beauty and budding.
Drunk on spring, herons, lake, her shoulders.
Is that when it happened?
Were you released in the call of a blackbird?
Did you wait for your son to arrive?
How could you have planned to go when I was in my bliss spot?
The day before I was researching the day you were born.
Stories from the area of the world where you were born.
I read obituaries of people who died the day you were born.
I have some questions.
I don’t expect any straight answers.
Now you’ve slipped out of your body.
I have a lot of questions.
How did you manage a marriage that stretched beyond 60 years?
What do you remember from when my father was born?
What do you think of the size of your progeny?
What did you last think?
Is that how it happened?
One moment one is one
then you are birds over a lake?
You are turtles?
You are all the things for those that love you?
Before heading back to dock
we encountered a bald eagle perched on a low branch.
In the next tree two blue herons.
Eagle flies away.
Were those large blues grandma and you?

Fist-size dough packet that
Ashkenazim packed with them
into steerage from Kiev or Karkov:
it begins with a hard “K”

Hard like the kicks New York City
gave me after moving there with
a Graduate School hangover
to become a great writer

Still hadda eat and whether
Times Square or Alphabet City always
a street cart with that steamy
potato-filled packet that only cost a buck

food that Moses probably
fed his people while bringing
them across the desert

Food that Mary and Jospeh
packed when they had to flee
with their little Jesus into Egypt
(hey they were Jewish too)

and now staple for poets artists
musicians & other criminals couch-
surfing or squatting like me in the
1980s’ Lower East Side: Yup
we were all eating Knishes

we: this unnamed tribe
could always scrape up a dollar

just like we could a bug-infested
futon for a night
and in the morning if lucky
a shower

i read a poem:
Ocean Vuong’s
first lines of a
love letter to himself–
and the waters break

i think of how i’ll
never see her smile
as her eyes scan the
unfinished paintings
in the drawing room

to ask if she will
teach me how to shape
a face the way she does
with mere black lines
almost scribbled

i always wanted to sit
beside her as she painted
on a wooden park bench
watching her thin fingers
move as a brush

i squandered all my
chances and dementia set
in before i acquired sentience
she no longer
knew me

and i had never known her

when my mother told me
she was gone i imagined
the paintings sitting against
the walls in her drawing room

following her into the
cramped space in awe
of her colors
her brushstroke
her imagination
her eyes

i wonder of the stories
she never got to tell me
i wonder how i might’ve
asked her for them

i wonder what she would
have said to me
if i’d ever made the effort

if i’d become self aware
early enough
to love her as she was
instead of as i saw her

i thought of my mother
how she never cries
wondering if her waters
had broken down
afraid to face her if
they had

when i did see her
she told me she was fine
and she was fine
away from her,
i had forgotten
her emotionlessness

she was fine
and i was remembering
all the times i hadn’t
spent with this woman
i barely knew

who
mere days ago
i sang to
in the hospital bed
set in her apartment
the one i’ve always adored
on University and 10th

beside NYU’s campus
where people i know
will be attending next fall
where she cheerfully attended
my music memory competition
in fifth grade

where we walked through
washington square park
celebrating how my peers
had won for us

she was not yet demented
and she was proud of me
unaware i had been useless
we had gone back to her apartment
with her bowl of heart rocks
atop the kitchen table
collected from around the world

brought back by her and kids and grandkids
(one of whom i’d always wished to be)

months ago i unearthed
the card she’d drawn for my
parents in honor of my birth
a chubby pink baby
smiling in its newborn cap

her rendition of me
without yet having seen
i wonder what she thought
of me afterwards

From his place in the corner of the breakfast nook,
he told Susan how to fry fish–when he could no longer cook

because of shortness of breath, and an even shorter oxygen cord.
When the food was fixed, he’d thank the Lord

in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost—
which took him back, three times a day, to when life had been most

fulfilling—to when he’d worn the collar and seen souls
pass him by in procession, and all his goals

had been the wellness of their hearts. He’d answered their questions, addressed their maybe’s
blessed holy communion, baptized their babies,

married them, counseled them, wrote homilies into the night,
visited the sick, given last rites.

He catechized their children too, patient indeed—
even toward those slow and of unique need.

Once he brought as catechumen, a child
whose needs it seemed could not be reconciled

to the knowledge that she must state
to take the baptismal pledge, but Rich said grace would compensate

for what she could not comprehend.
And that’s where we are left now, at this ending,

Now Richard’s gone to God, and we are looking for grace
To understand that he is better off, though we can’t see his face

Or hear his voice boom from the pew,
Or echo up the stairs at home, “Susan! I need you!”

From his place in the corner of the breakfast nook,
Let us take down in memory’s book

The moments where he sat with his daughter–
The room filled with reminiscent laughter

Over “Bride of Frankenstein” scenes–
And the black-and-white in betweens

Of childhood times in another place.
Now, something of that child, and something of him, still lives in her heart and on her face.

From his place in the corner of the breakfast nook
Where he watched CNN and browsed Tic-Tok,

Where he’d pet his dogs, read the paper, and grump
Over conservatives, hypocrisy, and God-help-us-all: Trump.

Just one of the myriad ways the world was out of his grip
Those last years—why it all seemed to slip

Away. The day-to-day doings that gave him pleasure—
The Christmas tree, and the gatherings together,

The Easter Vigils, and the alleluia’s clamor born from Lenten hush.
Now next year, we’ll pray: Richard, pray for us.

Shall we light a candle and gently look
To his place in the corner of the breakfast nook?

It was not but a room or two away
That this friend and father slipped through the fingers of day

And when Susan came to hold his hand,
His breath was still. Yet she felt him stand

Nearby, because he would not leave
Her there alone to grieve.

From his place in the corner of the breakfast nook–
Empty now–sweet Jesus, look

Upon us who are left behind, with thoughts of Richard on the mind.
We thank you for his life.

Remind us to so spend our days,
That when we leave an empty space,

The world may wonder at the place

Of one who’s gone from grace to grace.
Amen.

A hymn of going home

O when I climb, o when I climb, this mountain of the Lord!
Oh when I leap from yonder height, and break this mortal cord!
It’s not to die I cast myself into the mortal air,
But it’s to live, for in that void, God’s arms will catch me there!

Then I’ll be caught, in moments brought into His loving arms;
Then I’ll be safe and sheltered deep from the devil and his harms—
Beneath the wings of God above, I’ll find my sweet retreat,
And evermore, I’ll find my rest there at the Savior’s feet.

The beauty oh! The beauty of my Jesus’ blessed face,
For how I’ve longed to look upon Him, while dwelling in this place.
While I laid sick, I feared to leave my body’s fleshly home,
But now I could not leave the grace to which I’ve safely come.

Goodbye, farewell! O gentle loves, I’ve left for paradise;
Though you may grieve, still please believe, I see with fairer eyes!
And though I’m hid beyond the veil and caught up to the clouds,
Please know that I am witness to your life, and I am proud.

So do not call me to return, but join me as you may,
When you have lived your fullest life and known your longest day.
Do not fear that I’ll be lonely while I wait for you to rise,
For a thousand years is like a day up here in these bright skies!

“Now live your life—it is a gift!” I can say now life is past;
Never take for granted love or friendship—those will last!
Know I’m happy and I’m well, that I’m peaceful, that I’ve come
To the river, to my rest, to my Lord, and I am home.

sometimes i think of you, sierra, kid gone rogue, cross at the intersection. sometimes i think of you, where you are, where you were going, what you had to offer. this could be a poem about death, about pieces of wood covered in fake flowers. this could be a poem about your name painted on the grain, each brushstroke a half-chosen agony. or this could be a poem about the sign juxtaposed against your own final mark, garage sale and how endlessly predictable we are about our secondness. what did you think of garage sales? of extra chances, of moving on? sierra, you, biting your cheek, trying on the dress, adjusting your hair, sierra, i am trying to picture you before the intersection. you were so very young. i can feel it in your name, your memory, my crossed legs, glossed lips, cropped shirt. i think you imagined death as something better. i don’t blame you. what glory is there in your commemoration; a reverse crucifixion? what do you mean now? sometimes i think of you, sierra, girl of the road, girl of the fake flowers. your clothes sold at a garage sale years later, mother sobbing over the fabric, father putting up a sign at the same place that stole you away. the change is inevitable. sierra, this is me remembering you. remembering everything you could be and never were, remembering the obituary i haven’t read and the face i haven’t seen. sierra. your flowers are everlong, stark against an acute opposite. i have so many questions for this cross. i wonder about the storebought blooms and if you had a plan for them, sierra, something grandiose, something queenly, crowned, perfect. could you feel it, as your fingers grazed the fabric, did you know you were brushing up against destiny? against loss? against a fractal rip, a lifetime of plot holes, a dead butterfly? imagine it better. picture the grass, the blossoming green, the patches of dirt. imagine it better. replay the moment until it’s alright, sierra, you’re shaking in your bones and screaming for tomorrow, but i promise it stops after a while. imagine it better, you, girl of the windshield, the wheels, girl of the frame that wasn’t strong enough. sierra, lovely shadow, perfect ghost. cross at the intersection. sometimes i think of you.