Burning June Out

June 2019 – Swinging for the fences in Q- Bop City  (selected pieces from Seeing Eye Ear/Q Bop City/new work

Of the Summer Solstice -every fleeting evening light, wish & sigh as brief as in the wink of an eye

1st Day of Summer

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

The shadows start their
Encroaching erosion
Immediately… sans deferment or delight

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

-Got Abstract ? 2014

*

Dwindling Shadows of June

(Audio version from the CD Quatro-Vox 2013)

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

Burning June

Each June sunset

burns like a stick match

struck against balance

left in the calendar box.

Right now I’ve got a few left.

But who’s counting ?

I am.

New Year Shorts 2019

What Kind of Guy was He ?  7.0

What kind of guy was he?

He was prone to taking victory laps

Before he really had been anywhere

Or even sniffed a finish line in his life.

*

The Georgia Peach

One sports writer of the era

Once wrote that Ty Cobb

would climb a mountain

To punch an echo

*

Merkle’s Boner

After all these years

I’ve earned a place

In the record books

As the Fred Merkle of poetry

*

The Truth about Lassie

*

First off Lassie was a dude in reality

Not a she but a he named Hal

Not especially obedient cooperative or well trained

And in general really disliked children

They had to smother Roddy McDowell’s face

With ice cream so that Hal would lick it

And as for that scene where Hal

Gave Liz Taylor that long loving look?

One of the stagehands

Was holding a steak over Liz’s head

Just out of the cameras frame.

*

Yet more lost Dogs

Nobody refers to them

As Frankfurters anymore.

*

Recalling a NFL Hall of Famer  

I still remembering watching him in the bar

Over near the cigarette machine

On August  training camp evening

Glowering in disgust at everything & everyone

And I thought:

This guy has the world by the ass

But that look on his puss

Suggested he could only smell shit.

*

Drum Roll Please

It truly could be said of him

That walked to the beat of the length

Of his own plank.

*

Why all the Tinsel ?    

         –for Boni Iris

When she was a little girl

As we were decorating the Christmas Tree

She asked, Dad why do we have to hang this Tinsel stuff ?

It’s messy and gets everywhere-

And I told her- well that’s the point

You’ll find it all the coming year

Around the house to remind

You of this Christmas past

And hopefully the next one to come.