To Micki On Her Birthday

To Micki born in Martinsville
Who played atop our backyard hill
And built sandcastles out of clay
And dreamed that they’d be real one day.

To Micki, late of Wilmington
It seems that you have just begun
Now mother, mover, friend and wife

Still bringing all your dreams to life.

Poet's Corner

The Bard of Canard,
and a Muse on the booze,
and a poet from Hexham-on-Tyne
were locked in a room, and threatened with doom
if they didn’t come up with a rhyme.

Heroic hexameter, iambic pentameter
the rhymesters just couldn’t decide,
then things got real rough, ‘bout technical stuff
like irony, metaphor, time.

The Bard pulled a gun
shot the Muse in the bum
The Poet he took out his pen,
as he stabbed the Canard
the Muse said, "En garde!"
ran the Poet direct through the heart.

As this poem portends
it comes to its end
with a word of advice to impart
whether lyric or ode, it’s not à la mode
to ever die for your art!

I Am The Puppet And The Puppeteer

I am the puppet and the puppeteer,
blessed and accursed,
the hammer and the anvil,
the water and the thirst.

I sing my praises,
then undermine my confidence
I wake in fear, or in times,
insouciance.

I am night, I am day
black and white —
almost never, ever shades of grey.

I am the puppet and the puppeteer,
blessed and accursed,
the hammer and the anvil,
the water and the thirst.

Hidden In Plain Sight

In an age when computer programmers
and rappers dominated the conversation
I’m about as good a poet as I need to be

In this menstruum of low-intensity words
these times of emoticons on the internet
where language is subordinate to pictographs
I, in my eld
—my geezerhood— sit
and write poetry that is
all but hidden in plain sight.

The Prairie Crocus

Prophets of the early spring,
the prairie crocus begin to stir underground,
they have but one imperative:
To be the first to be.


Five billion years ago,
our only star, the Sun,
gathered asteroids, and cosmic dust
from around the universe.

Then from a frozen crucible,
the fiery hand of providence,
turned dross into gold, then back again.

Mankind called this The Creation:
But for crocuses, who are atheists,
it was just the first day of their desire.

In early spring, the crocuses abound across the plains,
and idle long the days,
teasing honeybees with promises of nectar — a chalice gold for intercourse.

In the full bouquet of summer,
the crocuses are wanning,
and across the grasslands, a primal choir is heard —
of crocuses and bees in requiem.

To Maxine On Our 21st Wedding Anniversary

When we were first married
I dreamed there were mountains we would climb,
bound together by fixed-ropes
ascending higher, ever higher
until we reached the summit, as one.

How could I have known we were descending,
out of the clouds and down and down
along a rocky path, through spindrift and cold—
and all the nights on lonely outcrops— and still we persevered.

At dawn we’d rise to begin anew,
to cross one morass, and then another
until at last we saw a vale below.

How could I have known
that this was our destiny all along,
to be together in a sylvan valley, green.

In a quiet forest, by a quiet brook
as I lay there beside you,
I saw in your eyes
the canyon above,
and knew that we
had finally reached the crown.

Poète Maudit

Exiled from our local cafe
and drunk on eau de vie, with beer chasers,
we float just above the cobblestones—
soon the ancient parapets of the Vieux Ville
are echoing to a bawdy chorus of Four-and-Twenty Virgins.


Calvin looks down with contempt,
as muffled curses follow us
through medieval passage ways—
damning us to repent!

In tea rooms, in the afternoons
I drink my coffee, renversé
and write poetry in the margins of
The International Herald Tribune.

I fill my journals with ideas
for novels I will some day write—
if only I can find my voice;
and learned to spell, and feel like
Tolstoy and Hemingway.

You’d hardly recognize me now,
I’m far more pessimistic:
How easily opposing thoughts
co-exist inside my brain—
“It’s a paradox,” I say
then tip my hat and walk away:

To simpler times and nobler wars,
when protest songs were all rage,
and all my idols wore cloth caps,
when verse by Frost could get you laid.

So to those days, we raise a glass
to absent friends who slipped away
they saw how it would all turn out,
and died of injured innocence.

Up Here In The Gods

Down there,
through the inky black
behind the bright, white footlights
they stride the boards—
uninhibited, angry and free.

Jimmy Porter on the prowl
raging 'gainst the common place;
Martha and George locked in undying combat;
noble Willy Loman, indignant to the end.

The air is scented with sexual desire
Blanche, Nora, Juliet—
they are all there,
attention must be paid!

Up here in the gods
we sit in awe
of their thirsting, their pain and their honesty.

When the final curtain falls
we leave the theatre
timid, silent, alone:
It is we who are the fiction
we the invention,
unexamined and afraid.

My Family’s Necropolis

Nearby where the highway lies
a road where once the trolleys plied
there idled for a little while
my family’s necropolis.

By simple graves, now overgrown
we counted years in little stones
and heard the rabbi’s last lament
at my family’s necropolis.

I knew them each and every day,
I knew their doubts, their DNA
and when they laughed and when they cried
and how they lived, and why they died.

In the marrow of it all
Grandmom wears a woolen shawl
she traveled here, through fire and war
to my family’s necropolis.

A stitch in time, now nevermore
my father’s father, Isadore
I feel his whiskers on my cheek
at my family’s necropolis.

Stoic beauty, laid to rest
once I slept against her breast
my mother’s here in valor's grace
in my family’s necropolis.

Etched upon my mother’s stone
my father’s name, his birth is shown
the date he’d died, he leaves to God
at my family’s necropolis.

December shines on barren trees
there is nothing more to grieve
all that's left are metaphors
of my family’s necropolis.

In Repute

I never, I never knew why
I was so fierce in the defense of my repute;
how at the mere shadow of an innuendo
I became a summer storm
and raged like King Canute.


I never, I never knew why
I would not repent—
never let sleeping dogs lie
or ever, ever compromised.

This was the story of my life
I can sum it up in a line or two
I never, I never had finesse
savoir-faire or politesse

I never, I never knew why
I felt such contempt
and despite it all
was so content.

Monhegan Island

On the early ferry from Port Clyde,
schools of watercolorists arrive on the island:
Raring to catch the morning light,
they scamper from the wharf
—passing between skyscraping stacks of lobster traps—
then up the abrupt, stony path to the lighthouse.

Like gulls alighting on a rocky outcrop,
they warily vie for a spot on the crowded lookout.
Finding places beside the uneasy glances of their fellow artists,
the flock settles, to bask in the glory of this most perfect summer’s day.

On the beach, near some fish shanties
a drawing class is in progress:
Seated cross legged, in a semi-circle,
students consign a weathered dory to their sketchbooks.
Their instructor moves among them,
talking of vanishing points, and negative spaces.

Over at the eastern end of the island
a lone artist is painting out by Squeaker Cove:
Her subject is the headlands at Black Head,
dressed in a flowing skirt of crashing waves.

The painter’s tiny brush, flickers between palette and canvas,
positing titanium white, sunlight, onto a sea of cobalt blues and greens.

The picture is a moment, frozen on the ebb tide:
Of the morning, of the cliffs, and the sea, and
the impression of the Port Clyde ferry, returning to the mainland
to gather up another gaggle of artists,
dying to paint irises in the moonlight.

Poetess Laureate

On an international flight from Timbuktu
arrived the bard, Maya Angelou.

The officer from D.H.S.
perused her passport with some distress:
In the space reserved for what you do
Maya’d written Poetess?




So he placed a call in a whispered voice
and told his boss of Maya’s choice—
instead of maid or deaconess
Maya’s job was poetess.

At a later hearing that was called
to determine how it all snowballed,
why Maya came to be so bruised
they said the boss had been confused.

They said that this was not a crime
they blamed it on a static line.
The boss had said, and did insist
he’d clearly heard “terrorist!”

So much to everyone’s chagrin
he went and sent the S.W.A.T. team in
but they were well within the law
for demonstrating shock and awe.

Bad Dog!

Old Mr. Smiley, standing at the edge of his garden,
dispensing tips on lawn care and azaleas in the spring—
whose gentle ways and life of virtue made him the treasurer of our Neighborhood
Association.

As you leaped into the air

to bite him on his derrière,
did you give some consideration, to my reputation,
before, without a provocation,
you nipped him on his too, too solid flesh?

Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.

My Dear Friend and Congenital Liar

No matter that I know you only by the lies you tell
your resume of daring-dos
the exquisite women you have wooed
the great and humble who've sung your praises.

No matter that it is all just a figment of your imagination —
for after all, what is there in truth to tell?

Better to know your myth,
the ones you so carefully construe:
For only in your fiction can I truly know who's truly you,
my dear friend and congenital liar.

The Binding Of Isaac

The palm trees shivered in the cool breath of an evening song;
Choo-wee-cha-cha-wee, trilled a desert lark,
as darkness descended over Beersheba.

It was in the time when Hashem still spoke to man,
and man still feared Hashem above all others.

By a wellspring —
the Well of Oath,
sat Isaac, son of Abraham,
wrapped in a mantle of sadness and moonlight.

In his sixty and seven years
Isaac’s flocks had multiplied ten fold
but so too had his sorrow.

A servant brought Isaac wine,
tended the dying campfire,
and departing.

Soon the fire rekindled
and an earthly comet of scarlet embers
ascended to dance among the stars.

When suddenly the cattle began to low
Isaac staggering to his feet,
'Something is among the beasts,' thought he.

Then Isaac saw that it was Hashem
and fell upon the ground, a trembling hand raised
in supplication.

Hashem called Isaac's name, saying,

"I have favored you with many things;
delivered you from your enemies;
given you sons to carry on your name;
and brought you here, to the sweetest waters
anywhere from Beersheba to Dan.
So why is it that you lament?"

Commanded to speak, Isaac would reveal his true heart:
Of the day when his father took him up onto Mount Moriah,
the long silence as Isaac carried a bundle of sticks,
wondering where was the sacrificial lamb.
Of being bound, hand and foot and placed upon the altar,
and most terrible, the sure, unmerciful hand that held
the knife against his throat—
the hand of his own father.

When Isaac had thus spoken, a vast quietude came over the camp.
Then slowing he rose to his knees
and with palms outstretched, entreated,
"Why O Lord? Why?"

When all the tribes of Israel were winnowed to
the four corners of the earth
they carried with them this very question.
Throughout the ages, men would ponder this story and ask why?
Yet it remains a paradox even to this day
because Hashem no longer speaks to man
and man no longer fears Hashem above all others.

The Ascent of Man

I strike the earth but the earth strikes back,
sending vibrations up the wooden handle of my brand new garden hoe
and into my tingling hands—
my target, a hard patch of earth, is unmoved.

I raise the hoe and strike again and again
but always with the same results.

By accident I discover I can pierce the clay
by angling the blade just a few degrees—
it is less a matter of force than finesse.

Soon I am cultivating my flower beds with abandon—
the earth crumbles and weeds fly:
I have mastered the secret of this antediluvian implement.

Later, relaxing on a lawn chair
with a glass of lemonaide
I admire my progress,
having evolved from Mesolithic to Neolithic man
in the space of an afternoon.

With Everything That Pretty Is

How to paint your picture in a poem,
arrest your fleeting silhouette,
the innuendo in your smile?

To draw as only Shakespeare could,
an action painting on the page. Or,
with palette used by Claude Monet,
in dreamy colors to assuage.

With everything that pretty is,
and everything I’m not,
to paint the perfect portrait, sweet,
with things I had forgot.

HALF A SOU

A wealthy Chinese merchant was in his garden one afternoon when he decided to tell his youngest son the story of his own boyhood.

“It was in the time of a great famine,” he began, “And my peasant father was too poor to feed his many children. So one day, he took me to the nearby town, and at the outdoor market told me I must fend for myself.

I tried to find work as a porter, but I was too small to carry the heavy burdens.

After a week, I awoke one morning under a bridge, so starved I could hardly lift my head. Lying there I saw the glint of a coin in the dust — it was a single sou. With half that sou, I was able to buy a bag of rice, and with the other half, a small bunch of flowers.

The next day I found work as a runner in the market and in less than two years I would own my own vegetable stand. Eventually with hard work and much good fortune, I became the richest merchant in the province.

After listening to his father’s tale, the young son asked, “Father, I understand why you bought the bag of rice. What I don’t understand is why you bought the bunch of flowers?”

The merchant smiled and answered so, “I bought the rice in order to live. I bought the flowers in order to have a reason to live.”

A Paradox Explodes The Funny Bone

Is there anything more wondrous in this world
then to find oneself in that pleasant spasm we call laughter?


When with all the powers we possess
we suppress
exquisite mirth, until it seems we’ll burst.

Or when irony becomes too much
absurdities of life collide
and in that instant
a paradox explodes the funny bone.