Oh High and Mighty! How you must enjoy your perches so.

poetry

The lights come up and
these transient souls start filing
out every door, the walls
of this dark place veritably
hemorrhaging human life,
pumping it in to icy streets
and flooding our Fair City
with cancer.

Their bloods will be poison
and they will cut it from one-another
and every being will drip into nothing.

But the King of the Mountain
will stand unmoved, watching
and waiting until he is still
the King of the Mountain and
the only one on the Earth

ZvH

poetry

the walking dead look alive
but move at a glacial pace
with no structure to keep their attention
from wavering, from fading

their nervous tissue is dying
so they can only feel a selfish pain
and the pent up anger
from years of holding a bored stare
is the only thing burning in their dead hearts

with human money they buy serum
to keep their decaying flesh fresh
and then, like lemmings with an
entitled sense of dignity
they walk in line to the graveyard

and reserve a place
for their dead body to rest
empty like the void of space
and just as useless

a foray into the underworld: there are no freaks anymore just friendly neighbors wearing white smiling pure form smiles and jovial acquaintances with nebulous eyes and slurpy revolutions. And also, distant relatives with their dogmatic dogs and inebriated cats scowling over yesterday’s newspaper. Why can’t they just stay home? That’s what walls are for, to keep the crazy crazy ! Don’t worry me, I am busy with despair …

poetry

I am done wishing
for the wind to come
for a voice to whisper
for buoys

for I have unloved another and another
claiming the moon as my excuse
for the open window in my heart
and the vagabond somersaulting over and over
my brain’s wheel and chains in a
dull shrill infatuation for a body and the next
until my poor toes, dipping deep in dreams of water cool, and gray carpets of 10yrs dirt,
yelled “nothing comes when you wait”
not a bridge, a ladder or even a rope

So I am done wishing
for there will be no higher ground
just the godless amphibian within
clutching on invisible lines
tying worlds together in an unholy carcass of love
watching it flicker, turn bigger and disappearwith sorrows of winter past

Friday Morning in the Universe

poetry

I wake up late,

again.

I think there’s birds chiming from nests in rain gutters sloping off the roof.
But it might be telephone pole construction at the end of the block.

This window, blinds included, a sorry excuse for shade.
Winter sun blazes my unopened eyes like interrogation lights.

Sweaty. Smells like…. sweat. And stale spit.
Fissured lips, sandpaper tongue, copper to taste.

Paper due in four hours and twenty five minutes.
Won’t start before the stars and sun’s rump come out to play.

My DNA, stacked, circles the world a 100,000 times could care less
about removing hairy legs and atrophied cheese toes
to swing, stretching, jerking and groaning
like some prehistoric poultry: Eeeeyegeahhha!

With thoughts like, “How did the Catskills get their name?”
did a cat really kill someone and if so why didn’t they just
name it after the cat’s name or maybe it didn’t have a name
or maybe it’s the skills of a cat. Stupid.

Stupid. Stupid – what’s going on today? Just fifteen more minutes.
I’ll skip breakfast. Shower? No. I’m going to be hungry.
But tomorrow’s Saturday? Here’s to hoping.

School

poetry

I have spoken with your elders and
the ‘ayes’ clearly have it and
I am not quite qualified
to practice in your hallowed halls
nor play the psalms you hold so dear;
the sounds I am you will not hear.

But I can rest so foully deemed
and easily too, it’s true.
I’ll spend my time making music
and you can do whatever it is you do.

The Dishwasher’s Son

poetry

His family, a gang of dishwashers
come to make their fortunes from the harshest
fields of Hungary so many years ago. His kin
kept clean hands and a tight ship and
not so many amenities, save for liquors
to burn out the bits that made one
Socially acceptable on Friday Nights.

He hardly knew a day of rest and slept,
for the most part, atop a stack of rags
collected from his travels through the city.
His teeth were yellow and his hair near black
and the scars across his cheek and arms
made obvious his penchant for knife-fighting.

But he was a Gentle Man overall, with a
quick wit about him and a too-soft smile
that could send a gal to fainting. And though
his hair was only cut so often, he kept
the toes of his boots clean, and the hems
of his cloths were never in much disrepair.

His repute was not so bad and not ill-founded
and not so existant, save for the weekly
game of cards he’d been known to take to
with his brother-in-law. He never won too much,
but he never bet too much either, and so
was not to be scolded when he found his way
to buying another bottle.

When last I saw him he was still a Dishwasher’s
Son, but his head was held high, and though
he never said it, he was proud a man as
any I’d ever knew.

He Does Not Even Know, I think.

poetry

It is a trifling discomfort to know
that somewhere, out there,
in the great wide world,
you are still alive and able,
at will,
to speak.

Would that I could silence you
till thy kingdom come, you’d
be as silent as death, or
the warning letter that fell
from the post box yesterday morning.

Your shoes would be buried
in a square you’d hated
with a shrine for all you stood against
erected atop their grave.

I would dance there, most nights,
and conjure curses against your
Family Name,
with a book of strong words in one hand
and a bottle of strong spirits in the other.

But you walk still,
and breathe and speak
and though it is a discomfort,
’tis a trifle and nothing more.

Our Old School Dance

poetry

The music played all night
it was late December if I recall
and the spread on the dining table
was glamorous and all-inclusive
the moodlighting was spot-on
The frost on the windows made
picturesque
by dancing candleflames and
sparking camera flashes
and the dances were slow
rather tedious in point of fact
with hands on hips and feet
hardly stepping but it looked right
and the music played extensively
yeah, it never really stopped at all

fatigue

poetry

every time you gotta fight
to keep the cold from sinking in

the shiver lies dormant in your spine
you don’t wanna let it out

this time, you were doing so well
save one gust in a blustery storm

and now that it’s snowing
the shiver wont wait to get you

you let it out, you damn fool
and now it shakes you wherever you go

try and sleep it off, make it go away
spend time under artifical suns

how many times has it been now?
and with each time it takes longer

longer to sleep off
longer to get warm

So-called traitor

poetry

Each if their daggers is kept so sharp
and they are despots all
and they will cut the others to keep
their secrets safe and
while he brings his blade to bear
and cuts from time to time
he just can’t be okay with that
but he will continue, to keep
his secrets safe.

Fallen Snow at Evening on a Plastic Playground

poetry

Vantage from the park bench surveys fallen snow like manna from heaven, raining frozen stars in promenade.
Sparks of spirits springing into step; orbiting fires spell majesty in constellations.
Grated clouds in the cold bring warmth, and a silence that I eschew and do not quite yet understand.
It adorns, gowns every vista in panoramic pageant, the bride made without stain or blemish presented to her groom.
But this bride of cold feet, indecision and logic soon tatters herself.
Countless footsteps in snow unknowing, tracking innumerable roads to sanguine eternities bending backwards to vaults and beds, stages and beakers finding steps to stairways, up mountains, ziggurats, podiums, passageways, pyramids; zenith ascensions and tombs.
Bare trees pronging branches like upside down octopuses, arching tines; a million fingers stretching heavenward;
One-hundred thousand forks spoking to the skies, waiting to taste paradise.
Every atom yearning upward, gravity shackles in opposition and the snow descends to cover us.
The Bible I read says you made all this, but how?
The scope to see is inconceivable, if only I could understand why? But who would you be then?
The demand for attention is indomitable; I’m jumping off the edge of me and falling into you.
The plastic playground, a Lincoln log cabin made life size:
with green plastic tiled roof, with red plastic cross beams, with yellow plastic fencing, with swirling blue plastic slide, with brown plastic walls; a menagerie of color.
And a bridge, bowing to the most tentative of pressure, connecting plastic palace to another plastic palace.
Swing sets: here, gripping tangible yes! almost, slipping BACK! there, gone, distant, lost! nothing.
Rings, rings, links of promises looped together, groaning to stay fast, afloat, and hold on to their terms of words and actions.
Built wrapped around one another, the weight of integrity, the dismay of compromise.
Whine chinking, frictioned, shrieking like witches cackling over cauldrons foretelling prophecies of fallacy; moving, but always stuck.
Higher! So much, not enough! Enough! When? Too high! Too high! The chain slags, snags, jumps, rattles, can anyone withstand?
He curses him, the air curses him, slaps cracked lips.
Snow soggied foundations, rubber and woodchips loosed on disillusioned endeavor unmatched by fallen snow covering hills in white stitches.
Every blade of grass illuminated in whited pencil pricks, competes with hungry moon.
Frozen in white, Lethe has forgotten itself: petrified waves, streak rippled statues, apocalyptic landscapes. Oblivion pauses.
The snowflakes smile, slide beyond, absorb sound, render me unto solitude and silence where all is holy.
The brave beauty of heaven stands naked; shades of ash transmute to linen white; transient, poised and everlasting.

A Shrug and A Cold Sholder

poetry

It was cold in that basement
colder than anything,
I could tell from my
frosted fingers,
Could see the smoke of
freezing breath
(I was told as a kid
it was my soul escaping)
and I
felt just like
I was going to die.

You were with me then,
and you assured me
there was nothing we
could do about it.

Then the ice grabbed me
and locked me and
my heart for an eon
it seems, and as I gauged
the passing seconds
I tried to cough the ice away
that was slowly stopping
my throat.

I think I heard you tell me
that you’d wait for the Spring Thaw.

It Only Takes So Much Catasrophe

poetry

It trickles and leaks down the steps in to cracks
in the stairway to fill up the basement
and eat the foundation
and drown all the life out of
everything, everything
we’ve kept around for so long
and as long as
the bilge pumps are broken,
and the kinder words spoken,
the stuff will keep dripping
and grips will start slipping and
soon enough everyone’s
dead

Heels to crack and hands to burn

poetry

Words are true and honest.
Meaning what they mean
and maybe a few other things
and no more
until they bend beneath
the heal of a heavy-footed bastard
and arsonist.

He will burn us both and crack
the boards in the hallway
that separates us. He is
a fool and a bastard and
I’ll pay any man a fine sum
if they find him dead.

He sows his seeds incurably
and perfectly and smiles and
stands so far back as to
watch his work but
only once or twice has he
been caught in it, and
it burned us all. His scars
will hopefully
never heal.