A House of My Own

Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man’s house. Not a daddy’s . A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed.

Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody’s garbage to pick up after.

  Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem.

What I Would Tell You

To you, love was about multitudes.

To me, love was inordinate.

       I love you, I would say.

       How much? You would ask.

I couldn’t find the words to answer you then.

But they have found their way to me since. And this is what I would tell you.

I would blanket the world in utter darkness; I would pull back

the veil of light and reveal to you, a blinding crescendo of stars.

I would drain all the seas and ask you to count-  one by one- every

grain of sand that clings to the ocean floor.

I would tally the beat of every human heart that has echoed since

the dawn of our becoming.

And as you look in awe at the sheer magnitude of my admission,

I would take your hand in mine and tell you; if only you had let

me, this is how much I could have loved you.

Smile

Smiling is infectious

You catch it like the flu

When someone smiled at me today

I started smiling too

I walked around the corner

And someone saw me grin

When he smiled I realized

I had passed it on to him

I thought about the smile

And then realized its worth

A single smile like mine

Could travel round the earth

So if you feel a smile begin

Don’t leave it undetected

Start an epidemic

And get the world infected

Let it Enfold You

Either peace or happiness,

let it enfold you

When I was a young girl

I felt these things were

dumb, unsophisticated.

I had bad blood, a twisted

mind, a precarious

upbringing

I was hard as granite, I 

leered at the

sun.

I trusted no woman and

especially no

man.

I was living a hell in

amm rooms, I broke

things, smashed things,

walked through glass,

cursed.

I challenged evrything,

was continually being

evicted , jailed , in and 

out of fights, in and out

of my mind.

men were something

to screw and rail

at , I had no female

friends.

I changed jobs and

cities, I hated holidays,

babies, history,

newspapers, museums,

grandmothers,

marriage, movies,

spiders, garbagemen,

english accents, spain,

france, italy, walnuts and

the colos

orange.

algebra angred me,

opera sickened me,

charlie chaplin was a

fake

and flowers were for

pansies.

peace and happiness to me

were signs of 

inferiority,

tenants of the weak

and

addled

mind.

but as I went on with

my alley fights,

my suicidal years,

my passage through

any number of

women-it gradually

began to occur to 

me

that I wasn’t different

from the

others, I was the same,

they were all fulsome

with hatred,

glossed over with petty

grievances,

the men I fought in

alleys had hearts of stone.

everybody was nudging,

inching, cheating for

some insignificant

advantage,

the lie was the

weapon and the

plot was 

empty,

darkness was the

dictator.

cautiously, I allowed

myself to feel good

at times.

I found moments of

peace in cheap

rooms

just staring at the

knobs of some

dresser

or listening to the

rain in the

dark.

the less I needed

the better I

felt.

maybe the other life had worn me

down.

I no longer found

glamour

in topping somebody

in conversation.

or in mounting the

body of some poor

drunken female

whose life had

slipped away into

sorrow.

I could never accept

life as it was,

i could never gobble

down all its

poisons

but there were parts,

tenuous magic parts

open for the

asking.

I re formulated

I don’t know when,

date, time, all

that 

but the change

occured.

something in me

relaxed, smoothed

out.

i no longer had to

prove that I was a

man,

I didn’t have to prove

anything.

I began to see things:

coffee cups lined up

behind a counter in a

cafe.

or a dog walking along

a sidewalk.

or the way the mouse

on my dresser top

stopped there

with its body,

its ears,

its nose,

it was fixed,

a bit of life

caught within itself

and ts eyes looked 

at me

and they were

beautiful.

then-it was

gone.

I began to feel good,

I began to feel good

in the worst situations

and there were plenty 

of those.

like say, the boss

behind his desk,

he is going to have

to fire me.

I’ve missed too many

days.

he is dressed in a

suit, necktie, glasses,

he says,’ I am going

to have to let you go’

‘it’s all right’ I tell

him.

He must do what he

must do, he has a 

wife, a house, children,

expenses , most probably

a girlfriend.

I am sorry for him

he is caught.

I walk  onto the blazing

sunshine.

the whole day is

mine

temporarily,

anyhow.

(the whole world is at the

throat of the world,

everybody feels angry,

short-changed, cheated,

everybody is despondent,

disillusioned)

I welcomed shots of

peace, tattered shards of

happiness.

I embraced that stuff

like the hottest number,

like high heels, breasts,

singing, the

works.

(don’t get me wrong,

there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism

that overlooks all

basic problems just for 

the sake of

itself-

this is a shield and a

sickness.)

The knife got near my

throat again

I almost turned on the 

gas

again

but when the good 

moments arrievd 

again

I didn’t fight them off

like an lley 

adversary.

I let them take me,

I luxuriated in them,

I made them welcome

home.

I even looked into

the mirror

once having thought

myself to be

ugly,

I now liked what

I saw,almost

handsome, yes,

a bit ripped and 

ragged,

scares, lumps,

odd turns,

but all in all,

not all in all

not too bad,

almost handsome,

better at least than

some of those movies

star faces

like the cheeks of

a baby’s

butt.

and finally I discovered

real feelings of

others,

unheralded,

like lately,

like this morning,

as I was leaving,

for the track,

I saw my wife in bed,

just the 

shape of 

her head there

(not forgetting

centuries of the living

and the dead and 

the dying,

the pyramids,

Mozart dead

but his music still

there in the

room, weeds growing,

the earth turning,

the tote board waiting for 

me)

I saw the shape of my 

wife’s head,

she so still,

I ached for her life,

just being there

under the

covers.

I kissed her in the

forehead,

got down the stairway,

got outside,

got into my marvelous

car,

fixed the seatbelt,

backed out the

drive.

feeling warm to 

the fingertips,

down to my

foot on the gas

pedal,

I entered the world

once

more,

drove down the 

hill

past the houses

full and empty

of people,

I saw the mailman,

honked,

he waved

back 

at me.

Pain

The pain will hold on gently

As you move throughout your day

You’ll try to shake it softly

But quickly learn it wants to stay

It lingers in the corner 

It follows you around

Juts when you think you’ve lost it

You learn no solace can be found

So here’s a trick, I’ve learned a few

For me and pain, we’re good old friends

And pain’s afraid of love, you see

Because love, it always mends

So openup your eyes a bit

Inhale deep and strong

Look for the twinkle of loves presence

That surrounds you all day long

It could be here, it could be there

A thought, a mile, a gift

Look for the love in every moment

And your pain will start to shift

Just start small, and whynot now

Find something good to think of

Pain will shy away, you’ll see

When what you focus on is love

And bit by bit , you’ll chip away

At that old block you now call pain

And when you’re finished chipping

You’ll find that pain has a new name

I Wish

I wish I wrote the way I

thought;

Obsessively,

Incessantly,

With maddening hunger.

I’d write to the point of

suffocation.

I’d write myself into

nervous breakdowns.

Manuscripts spiraling out

like tentacles into abysmal

nothing.

And I’d write about you

a lot more

than I should.

Shadow

You try hard to catch your shadow

but it moves much too fast.

it jumps on the walls and ceilings,

begging you to revisit your past.

nostalgia is a powerful state

and your memories give you fight.

you remember the instruction—

” second star to the right…”

here nothing is lost,

you still have every single friend

and on the morning horizon,

you see your innocence suspend.

but oh, remember now

you have far different dreams

and it’s okay for life to not be the same

because we’re growing up, it seems.

i hope your life is still an adventure—

one that’s wild and grand.

but i think it’s time to live it here,

i think it’s time to leave neverland.

Forgotten

I guess you could call me broken,

says one. I’m still lonely, says another,

but now I can name it with a song.

In my poem, says another,

I can forget I am forgotten. Now

I understand being misunderstood,

says another. And another says,

in a bold, undeniable voice of power,

I won’t step down from myself again.

And they are beautiful, beautiful,

standing one by one at the mic

where they have come forth at last

from behind the curtain.

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plum the hazel shells

with a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has O’er-brimm’d their dammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft -lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sond asleep,

Drow’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden  head across a brook;

Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too–

While barred douds bloom the soft- dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a willful choir the small fnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Poem of life

Life is but a stopping place

 A pause in what’s to be,

A resting place along the road,

    To sweet eternity.

We all have different journeys,

Different paths along the way,

We all were meant to learn some things,

   But never meant to stay…

Our destination is a place,

Far greater than we know.

For some the journey’s quicker,

For some the journey’s slow.

And when the journey finally ends,

We’ll claim a great reward,

And find an everlasting peace,

Together with the lord.