Archive for February 2012

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Where’s the Pie? (Thinking of George on an Empty Stomach)

February 21, 2012

You Know Who and You Know What

When I was little, you could not get past George Washington’s birthday without at least a sliver of cherry pie.  The crust might not be the flakiest, but the cherries were red, sweet and glutinous enough to get you through the greyest mid-week February.  (We did not herd holidays to the nearest Monday back then.)

The sales ads all had little hatchets on them, not only in honor of chopped prices, but of HONESTLY chopped trees.   (“I cannot tell a lie,” Crazy Eddy burbled maniacally.  Yes, we knew he could probably be undersold, but it was still a good schtick.)

Fast forward to 2012.  We have plenty of sales, plenty of chopped trees, lots of talk about honesty (and lots of flakiness too.) But what about the pie?

That’s what I want to know, and (since I haven’t had dinner yet), the sooner the better:  what happened to all that pie?!???  

Categories: Vicissitudes of Life
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: 3 Comments

End of Era? (Oh no! says a New Yorker.)

February 20, 2012

We are approaching what may be the end of an era.

I am not talking about anybody’s presidential campaign.

Or the Euro as a unified currency.

Or even the U.S. Postal Service.

To some, the era at issue may be more important than any of these others.

I am speaking, of course, of Mariano Rivera’s tenure as a Yankee.

Mariano says he really means this to be the last season. Honestly. This time. For sure.

As a New Yorker, I unequivocably say–Agh!

As a human being, also subject to the depredations of Time, I say, oh dear.

Categories: Yankees
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Comments: 4 Comments

Lavender–“When All Else Fails” (Mag 105)

February 19, 2012

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Here’s my offering for Tess Kincaid’s Mag 105.

(Tess posts a wonderful weekly photographic prompt.  The original photo this week, and basis of my picture above, was by Epic Mahoney.)

I hate to double (or triple) up but, due to onslaught of demands (beside poeticizing), am also linking this to Imaginary Garden With Real Toads and dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night.

When All Else Fails

And then there are those times
when one resorts
to lavender–
the scent in a drawer (tempered by cedar),
and folded inside, a kerchief with initials
cross-stitched in bottle blue–
when all has gone wrong, when
there is no
last minute saving grace.

Even honey
can block a throat, lines cut, engine not
turning over, the days of horseback
gallop like the wind
no more.

Still, one pedals/pushes/pulls
through the pale of night as
across a sea or desert, holding,
in the chest of the mind, that drawer, that
handkerchief, the ghost
of lavender worn at wrists
that worked their way
through all of this before
(or something similar), the
lettered threads, cornered by
sieve edge of persistent lace,
signing the possible.

(As always, all rights reserved.  And as always, check out my comic novel, NOSE DIVE,  book of poetry, GOING ON SOMEWHERE, or children’s counting book 1 MISSISSIPPI.)

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 30 Comments

Making the Best of It – Natural Life In Unnatural World (“They Perch”)

February 18, 2012

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They Perch

They perch
on posts in the Hudson above/
below Canal, by the West Side Highway,
downtown.
Walking, we duck
our heads, bob knees, swish shoulders–as if
our moves will motivate their stretch
or intake of wing.
On a sunny day, their still basking
seems so reasonable that it takes some time
to realize that
they are sculpted–Herons?
Seagulls?
On those same sunny days,
New Yorkers stretch
on the jetties, Adam’s apples towards the
sky–there, by the brick/braille ventilation
tower of the Holland Tunnel, all that
putput
below the tide.

We want to think that our life
is natural, here in this city, country, mindset.
We want to believe
that a place where many building windows
do not even open
can support wild birds.

Apparently, there’s even a raptor
or two, aeries wedged
by cornice.

We want
to believe that they like it
here.  That even untempered
by doses of the more rarified Metroplitan (opera or gallery) (which
we too do not experience enough)
life
can thrive.

We strain–eyes, head, shoulder–
just in case a living one
has gotten confused, just in case
a living one
has landed, perhaps even
settled down.

On the opposite side, cars
rush every green light.

Hi all!  Happy Saturday Night!  The above poem is a draft posted for the wonderful dVerse Poets Pub poetics prompt, hosted by Brian Miller, based on beautiful photographs by Reena Walkling.  I don’t like to post other people’s are work so have done my own drawn version of Reena’s photo above.

(As always, all rights reserved.)

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 18 Comments

Friday Flash 55 Back To the Days Before GPS

February 17, 2012

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The map was a book. I drove; she navigated, piecing together freeway from one page to the next.

“Should take ya about 35 minutes,” the gas station guy had said.

After two hours, 70 mph, still within LA city limits–“that guy sure has a weird idea of 35 minutes,” I groaned.

“Oops,” she said.

(The above is my offering to the G-Man, Mr. Know-it-all! Have a wonderful weekend, and please please please check out my comic novel NOSE DIVE in paper and on Kindle–for only 99 cents! A great read if you like escape and aren’t completely thrilled with the way you look!)

Categories: Uncategorized, writing
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: 9 Comments

Vulnerability as Heroic – “My Father (Baby birds)”

February 16, 2012

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dVerse Poets Pub has a “meeting the bar” challenge today, hosted by Victoria C. Slotto, to write about a personal hero.  I thought of an older poem (reposted below) about my father, who, as many of readers know, died recently after a protracted battle with Parkinson’s Disease.

I’m not sure that I thought of my father as much of a hero when I was young.  This may in part be because he was very generous with his time–the generosity of the archetypical hero tends to involve one swift grand swoop,  not a day-to-day slog.  For another, my dad could exhibit both deep tenderness and touching vulnerability–qualities that tends to be  “heeled” in the archetypical hero.  Finally, he was self-effacing, good at bringing out the best in others.  He tended to make us see ourselves as heroes (or at least as competent–which, for the young, is almost as good).

Here’s the poem:

My Father (baby birds)

My father’s voice
when he sang
was deep and cragged and
reminded me of a froggie
gone a’courting.
But this was baby birds.

It was not even a person
who had died.
It was not even a particularly noble dog,
though like all of its species, it was capable
of a self-debasing attachment that could
seem Arthurian.

But after the accident, the rush,
the sad blur home,
my father’s back faced me in my room
with a sound
of birds.
It silenced all gone wrong,
turned me back into a person
who could do things in the world.

(As always all rights reserved.  The drawing in this case was done by my father on an iPad  a few months before his death.)

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 17 Comments

Late Night Drive

February 16, 2012

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Late night drive. No blogging! Luckily, I wasn’t the one driving. (Poetic license in drawing.)

Categories: elephants, iPad art, Uncategorized
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Comments: 2 Comments

Lone Poet’s Love Poem -“Castaway (Retrieved)”

February 14, 2012

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Castaway (Retrieved)

When he’s away,
she sleeps sideways, lolling
in a sunken corner of
the bed where
gravity weighs
heavy, computer serving
as splintered
guard rail. Sometimes, in the
sway of blue-light
wavelengths, she’ll send out
messages as if in bottles
that can swim, the words
protruding fins, defined and
sleek, above glassy surfaces.
Other times, the words tie themselves
into knuckled knots, as if
love, stranded by
the fraying self, could weave a net that,
when thrown upon chopped
waters, captured a
salvageable catch. (Not
typically.)
But if, in the end, she can collect
the strands, solitude
takes flight, net acting
as its own safety, the knots points
of engagement, syllables frolicking, the
bed’s entire coverlet
afloat.  She will call him then,
reading aloud, and he will say,
that’s beautiful, and the words–his/hers–
cannot be said to hold her, but will
lap against her brain, a susurrating
companion to the ebbed night’s sleep.

(As always, all rights reserved.)

The above a sort of lone poet’s Valentine’s Day poem–posted here for all of you who have been kind enough to follow and support me throughout the last couple of years, and the wonderful dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night.

Categories: elephants, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 17 Comments

Why Pearl Is Not At Westminster This Year

February 13, 2012

Pearl

Why Pearl is Not in Westminster This Year

Because when she was a puppy and was groomed
professionally, she would
sit on the couch for several days afterwards
the only part of her not trembling
a bright pink bow the groomer had
stuck on; and

because after that, when I began cutting
her hair myself–I can’t
call it grooming–she would end up–
with splotches of fur and
baldness, since, I confess,
I’ve been known
to wear mismatched
socks and to fix my own ‘do
by rubbing palms through it
like a balloon that you want
to stick to a wall or sweater; and also
perhaps,

because her breath
smells an awful
lot like dead fish these
days, though
after sixteen years
you tend to
be sort of glad for things like that–
breath–
especially in the warmth
of speckled, oddly-
furred, tummy.

(Check out a “Truest Love Poem” for Pearl, from Going on Somewhere, my collection of poetry.  Check it out too!  And NOSE DIVE!)

Categories: dog, poetry
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Comments: 3 Comments

Chocolate/ Blonde Hair – (Lady Godiva replaced by H. Kisses)

February 12, 2012

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I wrote the draft poem below for Tess Kincaid’s Magpie Tales, where Tess posts a weekly photo prompt.  This week, I’ve really just used Tess’s photo as a springboard;  my drawing and poem are not meant as direct interpretations.

Chocolate/Blonde Hair

I.

Some people have a real hankering
for long blonde hair.
Do you really think
there would be a certain overrated
chocolate chain,
if Lady Godiva
had paraded atop her nag
with a short shag?

II.

“You can’t get that out of a bottle,” strangers would
say about my hair as a kid, when it was
long and straight and naturally
blonde.  Dyed hair, my mother
declared was blocky, all one
shoddy shade, nothing that could even compare
with what I grew, and so, for a while,
I felt a certain halo, until growing
tired of halos, I
insisted on hair cut short, though because
it was my hair,
collected the swathes in
a small and dark brown
box, which both amazed and
hurt me, for what had felt so long
(for so long) and golden, had spun down
to a handful of softish straw.

When I looked in the mirror,
what I saw there too was
diminished, not the sly pixie,
but a confused Delilah,
shorn by mistake,
whose face was round and
who didn’t even have the name
right.

III.

You can’t get that out of
a chocolate– 

a memory:
tobogganing, the sky turning lavender above
tracked speed, as if
we were a flexibly flying flame
amidst the drifts, and below the
blur of snow-flaked lashes, everyone’s
skin shone, till legs trudged (toes urging faster),
to get to the burnish of gas-fired
stove, pot of milk, melt–

a taste:
it was Colombian chocolate, cut in squares
sprinkled with brown sugar, leaving a trace
of smoke in the throat, the kind of smoke that, bluish, always
carries dawn or dusk as it slinks down
steep altitudes;

a friend:
she was my best, and on different visit, when the wind
chilled and I’d had to wear some older sister’s old beau’s sweater
and thick shoes, she’d laughed at my discomfiture, till I learned not to care
about such things for a short
while–truly not at all–the look of them–not
once she re-filled my cup.

(As always, all rights reserved.  Sorry this so long–a draft!)

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 23 Comments

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