april fool’s day should be my birthday for I may wish to restrict being only a fool for one day not the whole year.
notes… I started this little project a few years ago on April Fools Day.. that was not an accident, for I have been a fool, and still am, no matter how far ahead I get I know I am handled by my own limitations, trying to breach them is my mission, I fail, I stumble, but I move on anyway, head held high with foolish pride, because… well, I’m human you know. And the poem… this is meant as an exercise in diction/pace, sometimes they just come to me that way.. so here it is in simple terms… enjoy… and thanks to all who have ever taken a pause here to view my work.
‘cubicle’ an interrogation of flies- I sit at my desk cigarette, half cocked, not lit ashtrays, ashtrays are long gone my friend papers, semi-arranged, by year, by slot, desktop or what the cat lady dragged in- priorities rise and fall like a tide always coming in, always high tide I would like to think I made something of a life wife, kids, but no, here I am, here I am in this- this prison to pension, this desk.
notes… in my mind this is double edged, I pictured an old tortured soul sitting behind a desk somewhere in the 70s with stacks of things on all corners, almost a hoarder situation, kind of a noir comic vibe, I don’t smoke, never did, but that vibe, the angry, gritty, smoker stuck in a corner with no smokes, ashtray an anachronism laughing, ending a life where you fought so hard for truth and found naught… just what was in my head when I wrote this. oh, and yeah, in a way reflective of me, in my newish shiny office, I have a window, and that makes me the happiest performing animal in the zoo I call my office home…
up that same stretch the same pavement different constructions signs perhaps the same general perception some time has passed enough to grow a beard, maybe slightly longer than that there is a different feel yet the birds still sway back and forth over the meadowlands over the roadway like giant hollow swings billboards, toll booths wet with new year rain the same the same as last year’s rain as far as I can tell – I await for a thread of sunshine
notes: this is a feel thing, this was my first day back at the office in a month, since I had covid and since my father passed, you almost expect the world to be different, you feel different, you look at things differently, but everything else, feels the same or acts that way, so I wanted this work to be… mundane…
for of a pauper or from a prince from a line of kings or of a reign of khans; that comes that which speaks all languages and none.
a last supper, perhaps the thought had crossed my mind, after father, for all your faults all the times I thought I knew better, still my father; meatloaf and corn paper plate fruit cup struggling with the plastic fork, as I must watch the constant beep of various machines trying to understand the strange menagerie of this common foreign land, meatloaf and corn I ignore the bits upon your shirt the dots of gravy the unshaved look, focus on just being here visiting hours, for this is surely not home there are different rules here absolute rules here for no matter who’s father least not mine in a bed stranded, helpless, reduced tubes, bruised skin arms asking about the rutgers score the masquerade of familiar what of the outside can be brought in drapes are the thinnest walls the clock, sits, only the third hand seems to move time is giving me more now as forced conversations run out then there is time just the time to be together, silently for now, father.
and there, on the ground I was not expecting you to appear a ghost of oak and passed a flash, lightning grasps the synapses a bolt, a soul past a page again revealed, open tome and harken back, for she was alive then there is nothing in this domain no tree does remain near no, this can not be here, not now, how? nowhere in this cradle of maples exists there was one but gone the years, in creases the sun, decreases, the sin but to live longer than those loved a traveler stained tattered remains somehow stronger in the ruin steel hardened under the constant cause of wounds circumstance, fate the great ghost oak awakens the gateway, a marker to this time of dying so oak moon; I know- so oak moon; I beseech you, I seek you among the long of nights for the respite of demise may you grant wishes upon, whisper just whisper out, existence.
notes… sometimes the smallest things trigger a memory, this one in particular, I remember the day, much like today, not very remarkable, not very suitable, an early december rain, as I walked outside, I remember the crack, the flash, lightning arcing into that oak tree, the one that had always been, for at least my short life, FLASH! and the lightning arced out into the old basketball pole into the ground, the hair on my arms standing, the shock, well, the literal shock of being right there, seeing the death strike that killed that majestic old oak, and I remember her under that tree, and now all there is, is a patch of grass, not even a nice one, or uniform, many years have come and gone and the earth seems to hold the scar like my own, stump to root gone for so long now, but that little stretch of lawn, a scar, strange, maybe we are returned to dirt and something of us remains in that part, eventually it will all be plowed or something else, a street, a house, but for now, a reminder formed by the earth herself, and today, a subtle reminder brought in by a breeze, I literally do not see any oaks around but there was a singular leaf, a note, left there for me, and then these words came to be….
(for those new to my blog, welcome (and where ya’ been?), I write and post almost all in a whirl, off the cuff, the vast majority of what you will read here is done in one sitting, like I am doing now, flowing, that is how I do things, if you like? great, I appreciate your time, thanks.)
under the harvest moon upon my common harbor for I embark unto that vessel of sleep the voyage to the portal of dawn for I awake unaware of the miles spent that certainly lay behind me now onward to a new world on the morn with time, a hunt, in the yarn let the first light confirm again the miracle of first breathes and tell the joy of open eyes the sound of life of my beating heart like the ever waves the sounds of life awake
