In the Dwindling Shadows of June

June 2014 – Fast June says goodbye again-

-Quattro -Vox 2013

*

Dwindling Shadows of June

In the dwindling shadows of June
dancing in her
twilight skirt
gushing vermilion liquid
time is like a broken
Capillarity in the calendars
main line artery.
You can’t hope to contain
any of the torrent
Just drown maybe baby
Because the
big drain is on
You can feel the pull
you can feel the life
leave you
diminished
ever closer to
the finish
Not some abstract
intellectual property
but a cold hard tangible reality.
Your ebbing confidence
in a narrow shallow vision
in the past semi-protected
you from the harsh truth
from too much disappointment
There are no prospects
for replenishment here
This dissipation bathed
in spectacular warm light
is waning
the dissipation grows in the encroaching shadows
and takes
what was given
in the finite
while what is being
taken away
is
infinite.

– Sometimes Grief  2012

*

June sent packing again

She sat in a sorry heap
On that Sunday morning
after the last night
allotted to her time with you.

Her bags packed all ready
Sadly stacked near doorway
There wouldn’t be any reprieve
There was never any eleventh hour
Call from the Governor of Time
To grant a stay of the calendars’
Execution Flip into July’s lap.

With tears in her eyes
June sobbed
I don’t want to leave you.
I never wanted to leave.
Don’t tell me I’ll be back.
There’s just no guarantee of that.

No one ever knows about the next dawn
Much less the next year.

He could smell the wetness on her cheeks.

June pleaded heartrendingly

Please hold on to me to the last second
You can
And remember.

Got Abstract ? 2014

*

Roses & Pearls

Jupiter’s wife
Juno visited me
again last Saturday
night after I had
watched my youngest
flower maiden daughter
dance on her season’s stage
parting curtains of light
and music shattering me
with the graceful beauty
of her youth and
emerging womanhood.

And I was saddened beyond words.

Every evening in June
burns like a single stick
match struck against
the balance left in the hours
box
calendar
clock.

So when Juno showed
up around Midnight and
asked me if I wanted to
follow her and dance
in a voice composed
of pearls and roses

Of course I followed her
out of the darkened bedroom
toward the descending
stair
only she bid me to
step up off
into the air
and for Juno blinding my eyes with moonlight
and for Juno singing pearls and roses into my ears

I can never refuse.

I dream walked
on an invisible plank
into the June night
and fell as hard and sure
as any man can and still
get back up
and write about it.

And it’s been this way
between her and I
my entire life
and this last time ?
for the record ?
I took such an ass kicking
that it took me a full month
to recover.

She calls my name
every year in June
and I have to follow.

Even if I fall to
brake my heart
break my neck.
cushioning everything
but my fall.
I don’t care.

The only thing I would ask Juno
is don’t ever leave me.
Please keep visiting me
blinding my eyes with moonlight
singing pearls and roses into my ears
and on that next June night
in this our month
When you call my name
could you catch me in your arms
the next time I leap
towards you
and gather my body in your embrace
and take me away with you.

-From the Terrible Now 2008

*

*

1st Day of Summer

Solstice scimitar shaft
Slicing search torch
Gleaming longest burn
briefest pinnacle of light
declining seconds after
a descent commences….

The shadows start their
Encroaching erosion
Immediately….

Beware
Learn that lesson
From those who would
Build their world
On your ashes.

-from Got Abstract ?

*

The Old Man’s Fault

Hallmark defines
yet another contrive
consumer day of obligation
but fails to see the
species, phylum, the role
the basic biological
reality as it exists beyond
some 5 dollars of gaily configured cardboard
with sentimentality nobody really believes
or nasty sarcasm that all most
everyone smugly snickers at and buys.

No.
Closer to the truth
on this Sunday morning in June
is that the once thought of as
Protector
Provider
Patriarch
of the nuclear family
has been reduced
to an atom smashed
pulverized fragment
waddling away down
the aisles in Krap-Mart
in a sad post-modern procession
of the daddy parade.

The fat sad daddies
The trim yuppie daddies
Hung over haunted looking
out estranged vacant eyes
ghosts of father figures
Booze fighter Fathers of
medication
neutered
trivialized
reduced to
being walking ATMs
for their families
support and subsistence.

Big dumb stupid looking
bumbling cartoon cats
lisping along as their
little kitten sons
trail a half a dozen steps
behind them with a
brown paper bag
over their heads
whining…..

“O Father….I’m so ashamed…”

All hail
that worthless drunk
drinking by himself
out in the garage
that fragile shaky
blue veined pasty
pile of protoplasm
who holds his family
together with a iron
willed grip of silly putty
and threat of the liability
of alimony
His manhood
maculated
Balls ?
What Balls ?
He’s been bent over
in a question mark
into a bowling ally
beer gut male pattern
baldness worn down
burnt out shell
surfing porn sites
of the internet looking
for pictures of women
who remind him of
old girl friends.

In nature
Especially the insect world
The male role is
defined only
the biological imperative
Basically ?
He’s fertilizer
after that
it’s off to be eaten.

If he’s lucky.

So here’s to your Dad
The father
once son himself
reduced to a lonely holy ghost

And if he’s not here
remember
your first teacher
the artist who help
create the piece of work
that is you.

Daddy on a lease
Daddy on the skids
Pale wobbly old man
shaking his fist a death
Raging how he still can
even if he never did in the first place.

You want to believe that
you’re here on earth because that worthless
bastard thought about getting laid
one night after too many beers
and conceived your existence ?

Go for it.

But closer to the truth
just maybe you never knew
that once there was a man
who when he looked at you
in the eyes for the first time
in that moment
did see
a world of love
shinning private light
like a gate in heaven
had been left ajar.
Go right ahead.
Curse his name as you try to forget him.

But….. if he’s still around ?
some night
and no not on this day…
crack him a cold one
and put your hand on his shoulder and say.

“ No…..to be fair it’s not all your fault
I would have been so goddamn miserable even without you.”

And then duck pretty quick
as he takes a swing at you….

And he connects square
and plants back on your smart mouthed little ass?

You had it coming

Sometime Grief – 6/2010/12

*

In Sonic Embrace

-from Quattro Vox 2013

June splits open
cleanly down the middle
of herself in the bedroom
just after the grayest
faint whisper that
Dawn could muster
into the folds of
curtains setting sail.

Windows wide open
to allow the night out
and perhaps the morning in.

I stirred from my dream
just enough to perceive
the bedroom awash
in a sonic embrace.

Pinpoints of color
Cartwheel in motion
to swaying trees tops
rocking in the yard below.

The respirator of late Spring
laboring in a rush
of the moisture
laden air awash
hissing in soft exhale.

Then there’s the sound
of a passing freight train.
There’s always that sound
somewhere around this
middle time of June.

In the sonic embrace
bleeding all over your face
pouring into your ears.
fans twirl in slow
languid circle overhead
Fans much more busy
buzzing at the foot of the bed.

June escapes me
as you do here.

My half-dream wakes
me in this first light.
The sonic embrace of false
Dawn.

Between the two of you
Between the two of you
I just don’t know
what I will ever do.

June splits open
cleanly down the middle
of herself in the bedroom
just after the grayest
faint whisper that
Dawn could muster
into the folds of
curtains setting sail.

-Greeting from Gridville 2005

*

Six Short Subjects in June

*

O Most Holy AirTrain

The last Sunday morning
I was leaving town
and boarding the AirTrain
to JFK I found myself
alone with only one fellow
passenger. A latter day Saint
from the Coptic Church
dressed in full vestments,
royal robes, headpiece, cape
and a god dam five foot pole
w/ a crucifix atop.

Only thing missing was a burning
incense stauncher.
Not sure if this trip was for
a blessing or a curse.
He looked a little pissed.

They just won’t let anybody smoke anywhere
these days.

No exceptions.

*

New Secret Weapon.

It was reported
last night on the news
that the military has
developed a new weapon
called “an Active Denial System”

Basically it’s for benign crowd control/dispersal.
It works on the same principle of
an over sized microwave oven you can focus
like a heat ray fire hose.

Now
It we can catch the enemy in tinfoil hats ?

I think we’re in business.

*

The Moron Parade

Now about the big difference between humans and spiders

Well right off the bat
There aren’t any spiders marching
in the Moron Parade

Are they ?

Spiders just aren’t that stupid
They are always working on something
O sure a few of them might
build their webs in some pretty
out of the way places.

But they definitely won’t be participating in the Moron Parade.

Hey Human ?

Got your marching orders for the day yet ?

*

Along for the Ride

And I am so going to ride you
all the way down into the ground
and so we will detonate together
on impact in a fiery mushroom cloud
just like Slim Pickens jockeyed that
A-Bomb yelling, “Yeeeee-Haaaaaa”
waving his Cowboy Hat during
the final scene of Dr. Stranglove.

*

What Dreams may Come ?

So I’m watching this commercial for Rozerem where
there is this lumpy, pasty middle aged white guy
in his bathrobe sitting in the kitchen in the middle
of the night eating cold Pizza with Abraham Lincoln,
a talking Ground Hog and a astronaut in a space suit
(who doesn’t have any speaking lines) standing in the
corner near the refrigerator. They are having a discussion
why this dude can’t sleep at nights. Now I’m confused
here-will this medication make his new friends in the
kitchen go away or help him have more dreams like this one ?

*

This Moment

This moment is nodding at you, turning towards you, turning away from you, teasing you, while waving you the high-signal offering the secret handshake in a wink of  snake eyes.  You are being reminded of the fleeting nature of the perpetual past insuring that the nature of the ever elusive terrible now is barreling head long into the wishful thinking future that won’t wait for you either.

-From Cybstein 2007

*

Medical Records

Says here that I was born 6/7/55
for $125.00 with that you get three consulting physicians @ 25 bucks a pop & a C-section.
And all I’ve heard my entire life was that I was no bargain.

Bullshit.

-Attitude House 2001

*

His B-Day

I was born into the season
of the longest light
left in the sky.
Consider the soft order
you were brought home into
taken upstairs to a corner flat
over a hardware store.
There was a radio on top of the refrigerator.
All his records, paintings and matinees
Nana’s kitchen just down the other end of town.
There was the smell of the docks and bays
All that salt and tides twice a day.
First memory:
A fire in the shipyard at night.
In his strong arms
Her eyes full of concern
Laughter and beer and smoke
as you were gently passed around
all about
the green and red patio
as the twilight lingered
reluctant to fade.

-Attitude House 2001

*

  The Yellow Sting Ray

When I turned 12
I pestered the living crap
Out of my folks for this
Really, expensive Schwinn
Yellow Sting Ray Bicycle
With high set handle sissy bars,
Gear shift and sparkly plastic banana seat
That I saw in the widow of Terry’s Bike shop
In town.

The old man said how ugly it was
and was just way too much GD money
at 89 dollars for such stupid dangerous thing
But it was my birthday
And I think my Nana kicked
In some dough.

So that evening my mom pulls
Into the driveway with it sticking out
Of the rear of the gray station wagon
And I took off on it like a bat out of hell
Not getting more than twenty feet away
And attempted to POP a wheelie like I had
Seen them do on TV.

Of course I immediately dumped the thing
Going air borne and ending up
In a crashing concussion
To the hard into the road surface
Raking myself up one bloody mess
Of road rash from head to foot in
Shredded clothes and with blue stones
And tar stuck into my abrasions.

Not only that I bend the frame,
handle bars
the yellow banana seat
came off as well.

And some 45 years later
I’m still doing pretty much
The same kind bullshit
to anything
I can get my hands on.

Just still trying to ride the GD thing
Without going down in flames
And tearing my ass to shreds
Down into the gutter

Got Abstract 2014