Dismembered for the Holidays Reprise
December 2018-“There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.”― What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
NEXT !
(For R.B)
The wonderful life Christmas is over
One tries not to be depressed.
Maybe re-read Brautigan’s piece
From 1963
Where he and his friend were
so depressed over Kennedy’s public execution
that they took pictures
of discarded Christmas trees
abandoned in the gutter
and then proceeded to get drunk
while watching a slide show of them later.
I get that.
All those rolls of left over wrapping paper
all about the place.
The lights that need to be taken down
before the neighbors start with
the “white trash” wisecracks
One thing you can say about Christmas
in this post modern area,
Once it’s over.
It’s dead.
A lot of build up.
A product orgy climax
And the day after ?
Forget about you
The day after Christmas
is like nailing a wood screw
into the back of an old friend
Who shows up once a year for a visit.
And as he walks out the door.
You slam and lock it on his heels
Hissing, “and don’t come back till next year,
You pain-in the-ass bastard.”
Thankful ?
Sure.
This year I was thankful I didn’t end up
in the paraplegic chair
in a nursing home in Baldwin
after that nasty fall
down the Cold War stairs
back in your hometown
that ended up with you
kissing some concrete.
Instead I made it back here on Christmas Eve.
Just in time to have a good cry
With Alastair Sims.
-Greetings from Gridville 2004
Serial Visits
The whistle is the period
in this motion sentence.
Punctuating movement
calling cooling coffee steam
escaping gray minuet figure 8s
in a rocking cardboard tray.
Go ahead.
Spill it.
After all
how many years
have you been ending
your life sentence
in this paragraph.
Awareness unraveling
to some temporary core
where you define
your next visit as the
last lap of time and distance
measured increments
like rungs of a ladder.
That track bed ratio
of rhythm and ties.
How do they sing in their beds so ?
What is it with that whistle
that you still insist upon
that you hear so clearly
much less
ride off
into a sentence of movement.
Present future
Past period.
Take a deep breath
of the dark roads awash
in wire to wire rain.
Do you stop to heave a sigh here ?
In relief awash or gasp for air
15 hours after ignition.
Do we have your
arrested attention
yet ?
How can you hope to convey
this flight
this passage
A shadow’s dance
In lock step perpetuation.
What kind of ticket shall we call this then ?
Miracle, weary ritual
or merely picking
from the fabric of your reflections
a thread you wove
that called you by name incessantly.
Into a dream
from out of a dream.
Where you step
and step again
all over it.
On it.
Just past it
Inside you.
12/03 Greetings from Gridville
*
Christmas Visit Snapshot
Nearly noon along the Hudson
Brilliant light about
descending rust wine
iron crane wench hook
set in blue and white midday relief.
McNamara’s daughter isn’t coming
Johnny in Singapore
You sit in here alone
listening to the bartender
tell that the pickpockets are
using box cutters this year
up on 86th and Lexington.
Back in the Big Red Mountain booth
way downtown beaten worn linoleum
I’ll call you from the payphone
in the back near the pool table
while listening to the killer jukebox
resurrect Spike Jones singing,
“you always hurt the one you love.”
12/99 Attitude House
*
Homecoming
Can you find any words left
for the long runway and this familiar foot rest.
All day miles melted past
and you were able to sit still silently propelled
just reading and taking notes.
Your big idea of time off.
Now before the last leg of the trip
you heel toe the legs put the sidewalk square
with an older eye.
Attesting to this as I walk in the door
overheard from the boys over the pool table,
“here comes the professor…..
wonder where his footnotes are tonight?”
So you take your place at the bar and
put out.
Always remembering, remembering
where you came from.
Greenport Christmas 98 Attitude House
Rubbereden 
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