November forgot to Remember
November 2016– Audio (in Dreamthink 2006) & text (Attitude House 2002) Tense Shift w/ Intermission
Tense Shift with intermission
Thin veil with
a thick envelope
set of eyes
lost upon an interior landscape
somewhere
in the sure thing of never.
So man your post
and keep your eye on
where the horizon tips
over to forget the sky.
Where drain-cocks are left open
proving the subsequent rewards
where time takes and takes.
Where your curtain falls
rather quickly.
Let me count the ways
she wouldn’t look at you
on a Saturday night.
All across the smallest private shoulders
arched just that way
set towards the door
clearly away from you
reluctant to turn in
acknowledgement yet
issuing a secret wish
for you to dig out an old letter
to establish contact.
Intermission.
Watching the motion of the slowly turning ceiling fan
casting shadows in the 2nd floor apartment
across the street.
Your left wondering what every day jewel goes on
glistening up there.
Now back to live action….
Your entourage was positioned
all around you protecting and insulating
by the time you looked over
and smiled a brilliant menacing puzzle
an invitation to rebuke relief
I had already walked out
squared shouldered
like a rift of music passing
just a lyric that had escaped.
– Attitude House 4/99
*
All Souls Day
*
November shrugged at the time the masks slipped
Stripped away in the face of high wind warnings as if in this season begged advisements cautions
Still mild that morning fooling few to believe
That this day would pass swaddled in gray soft gauze
While the light diffused diminishing increments
Was that encroaching mist unraveling like a ball of yarn
To cascade down a slope of cotton
Falling needle pinpoints liquefied
There was this puncturing of scattered shallow puddles
Reverberating in sound wave concrete circles
Auditory auditions sharpening a deaf set of eyes
In these stains of ink
Lurk faceless memories I think
Past Persona gone non-grata
November shrugged at the time the masks slipped away
To reveal the naked face of high wind awnings
As if this season begged advisement cautions
Stripped away now in alibis and warnings
Uncollected 11/13
*
*
October Older
*
*
Pull in the soften light
as October nears past
a new moon across the sky
in the next street over
here where your absence
passes aspiration in a blur
of newer older days where
Fall emerges fresh
in still born green leaves
patches of watercolor encroach
like your temples gray
Turning away from the truth
the days are sneaking years by you
diminishing the sight
stiffening the limb
Time winding you down
your energy ebbing
singing alone in the empty driveway
the vehicle of your flesh
is late
and growing later all the while
so I still strain to hear the sounds
I need to
while resisting the same I’m forced
to endure
the terrible ticking of the now
in my ears
A sound I find
I cannot refuse or resist.
Sometimes Grief- barks up the wrong tree –2012
*
*
October is fronting again
*
October thought itself into existence
promising color and resistance
sporadic warmth
but most of all they knew the drill
the general consensus was it was everyone’s
favorite season
Sentimental prattle
few would speak against it
but the truth was it really was all about
so much dying
a lingering some color lied to your face
and pending harvest rotted in the fields
but whatever came next
was always just a chilly gray November rain.
At the edge you will always remember me, at the edge you will last be remembered, where sanity and insanity come together, for the time, then separates. Like leaves on October trees, that color the world, but for a moment, then leave. At the edge, where life losses its edginess, and thoughts we will become one, someday. At the edge the sun drops, the ring falls, and senses of raindrops climb upwards to the gray sky.”
Train of thought– Time- Singing Mister Cedric
Time Train
Late September gray mist
shrouds us rolling along
the banks of the Friday afternoon Hudson.
Three coaches back
my son is riding on this train.
Right now
he’s just an innocent little boy
with light brown feather hair
playing in his seat
content with wooden blocks and little metal cars.
I’m sitting in an empty lounge car
not in service on this line.
Passengers come in here looking for something
and leave with disappointed faces.
In the background the Conductors speak of lost things.
While grading student’s papers
I pause to stare out the window
at the passage of motion and time
and wonder how late this train
will make Penn Station.
Getting up
I collect myself
to walk three coaches to the front
and discover my son there asleep
now a full grown man.
The Terrible Now 10/08
*
Fall From the Clouds
(recorded as October-Bi-polar on Quattro-Vox 2013)
The light now
At this cusp of
The season
Can change
As many as
Three or four
Times a day
At dawn
Shafts cut
Cone funnels
As light mist
Snakes S shapes
Upon the asphalt.
By noon
The sky is a bruise
And softly cries
For something better
Than what was lost
And not knowing
Just what
Comes next.
Mid-Afternoon
Perhaps Summer
May briefly return
To warm and
Take the briefest
Of bows on
The way out.
By Dusk
The chilly black eyed
Shadows like dark circles
Under the eyes
And the subsequent tears
Falling now are for real
As is the chill dark of the night.
Sometimes Grief 2012
*
Rubbereden 
Leave a Reply