For That December Ghost in You

Her Merry Christmas

Maybe someones Mom Sister, perhaps Aunt or lost lover

that is sitting out there tonight

wishing you would walk in the door

of the kitchen

the barroom

the bedroom

and give her just one good reason

to believe/forget the world’s cold shoulders

and hard edges and all that shit she has had to eat over

all the years might have meant something

more than the FWB de-jour or an

ex- husband that barely speaks to her

the old friends that seldom call

not to mention the children that

ignore/take her for granted.

She’s listening to the Christmas music

sitting in the colored lights with a glass of wine

the tears are barely an after-thought

as she wonders why you never showed up

in her life and perhaps if you did once

why she ever

ever let you go.

Attitude House           12/99

*

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 Budapest
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

Nor’easter for Christmas

(for Monk)

And he started

talking in

back alley doorways

with a mug full

of parking lot teeth

as the gale wound

up her fist from

the east and positively

dared him to jump

across four feet of lapping blackness

from the aft deck

to the floating dock

gleaming slick in salt water ice

to square of that drag line.

Of course he did it.

Now the red and green

of the old Claudio’s

liquor sign flickers,

buzzes and glows

around his head like

sucker punch halo

as the flags up on top

of the poles

sport boners.

Of course

he did it.

                                                                                                   Terrible Now  12/07

Additional ornaments pending