DISTANCE 

The Distance here from where I stand,

Is sixty-two miles to Lyndhurst 

That's the same length you'd need to go,

To reach sub-orbital outer space. 

I'll probably never get to space, 

Chalk that with dashed dreams that come and go,

But I'm not going to Lyndhurst 

So, things are alright from where I stand. 

Still 62 miles is not that much, 

For all there is to hold us in,

 It's really just a shallow skin, 

For something that sustains all life. 

But if I wish to live my life, 

Without goosebumps and crawling skin, 

It's best to keep such thoughts tucked in. 

And not dwell on the facts too much. 

This atmosphere holds all we are, 

A salad bowl's tight plastic wrap, 

An endless cosmos just beyond,

Our three-bears paradise inside, 

Yet, best to keep these thoughts inside,

And not give too much thought beyond, 

Such things round which my mind can wrap,

Like Lyndhurst and where we are.

Self Portrait

There was a little name,

Tied to a little soul,

Which sang out joy and shame from deep within a round stone bowl.

It had two eyes for vision,

When not obscured with tears,

And open ears to listen though they seldom tried to hear.

One day the name felt lonely,

So, it tried to draw itself,

But it stopped once it could see it looked like everybody else.

The little name sits laughing,

And will still when it’s dead,

Each time one reads this passage and should smile at what was said.

Salon

No plaques shall bear the memory of our days,
Nor bronzen monikers proud sheen portrayal,
Nor stone hewn etching's fading trace retain,
the lost enthrallment of forgotten tales.

No cited starts and precious ends embossed,
These dates shall never be recounted hence,
No quotes intoned, their present poignance lost,
As hours decompose past reverence.

Parades of ghosts pass in memoriam,
But neither march nor stand attent in place,
All fanfare ballads airless, songs unsung,
Dumb trumpet, sepulchered within it's case.

Yet, we shall be remembered just the same,
For as we leave, our story follows us,
And these indifferent walls cannot contain,
A spirit sown, now grown to sacred trust.

No plaques shall bear the memory of our days,
And yet forever they shall be enshrined,
By those who carry them. They shall remain,
Within the spaces twixt a poet's lines,

Wherein the meaning of our words was made,
And cherished, loathed, or lost, shall never die.

The Party

Everyone in the party….  got drunk,
With slurred, misaligned, words and terms in their speeches,
Trust crumbled in breeches among lifelong friends.
With rising intensity rude, rowdy rabble,
And base racist babble embedded in lies,
Quick  winks of the eye to imply quips were clever,
That clumsily, never seemed sly in the least.
So drunk they would cheat at the party games played,
Yet claim, unafraid, they were righteous and true,
As they threw up their hands to demand retribution,
For eggshell  abuses with dubious claims,
So drunk,  without shame, for their grabbing and groping,
And garrulous joking in locker room style,
Assaulting with smiles, while  excusing rude gestures,
With wounds left to fester in revelers song.
So drunk, they prolonged each confused confrontation,
With inebriation anew the next round.
They drew in more crowds with the sounds of their rallies,
With math tortured tallies of who owned the tab.
So drunk, that when asked of them, “Where are the children?”,
They found they had lost them, and no one could tell;
Grown children themselves;  where the tots had got off to,
With finger point purview, shrugged shoulders. Alas!
So drunk, they’d stab glass shanks from broken up homes,
Long after they’d thrown the last stone left to hurl.
They danced, spun and twirled around voices of reason,
Attempting to  plea them to slow down their pace,
The  intoxication replacing their senses,
To lower defenses they should have held proud.
So drunken with power and promise of glory,
They misread the story, all know ends the same:
When you rise the next day, in a fog,  your head pounding,
In unclear surroundings, depleted and tired,
Unclear what transpired, bile bubbling up quickly,
As sadly and sickly, all sight spins amok.

Untitled

This poem holds no color,
These words contain no creed,
No sense of same or other and No forced philosophies.

These inks draw none to worship,
These lines mark no divide,
No sacredness in language nor sly letters symbolized,

This page is blank and faceless,
No meaning and no tone,
So any hate your heart contains belongs to you alone. 

Thread

If you pull a thread out from the seam of your blouse,

You'll discover it fibers are tied,

To a strand, quite pronounced, hanging out of your house,

And across the vast landscape outside,

Through the yards and the trees and the driveways and streets,

Passing forests and rivers and lakes,

Crossing malls, it runs free twixt the fashion boutiques,

Beading townships and counties and states.

Winding, twining, it leads across mountains and seas,

Ocean waves grace its drape, light and lithe,

On a stretched stringing spree 'till at last finally,

It arrives in the hands of a child.

She is stitching this cord, once again and once more,

Seeming almost to be lost in play,

Though she's never before known a life free of chore,

In her work, which earns pennies per day.

Pay which relatively helps her family to feed,

Every member, and keep themselves clothed.

And this trade seems quite fair, till you stop and compare,

How you live with the life this girl knows.

The horizon she sees from her small factory, 

Fades in hemlines and collars and sleeves,

And the tag's care instructions and fiber construction,

Are all that this girl ever reads.

Now, although you might say that she's earning a wage,

And she's expertly trained in her tools,

She's enslaved, educated to keep her this way.

No one graduates from such a school.

She perhaps feels some pride as she works by the side,

Of her sister, her mother and aunt,

But for what they achieve, she will never believe,

She can do any more, for she can't.

Yet, her questioning mind is kept well occupied,

As the frantic production line rolls,

And I doubt she's enlightened at all to her strife,

Cause she's just barely 7 years old.

Every stitch she pulls through is still sutured to you,

Reaching miles to the style you adorn,

And those slight tugs of truth, you might feel just a few,

But how nicely it flatters your form!

As the mirror reflects, that sheer garment's effects,

Distract so, and perhaps you forgot,

That young girl, and the thread that implies and connects,

And the world webbed in tangles and knots.

Long Live the King

I still recall the day, like it was now,

His laurel'd brow basked bright in moment's glow

The shine of those who worshiped and adored,

The crowd’s great roar, still I can hear them sing.

Long live the king, their adulation swelled,

A frenzied spell of hope so magical,

It could repel all curses and disease,

A balm appeasing scarred and leprous,

Rash of mistrust like laying on of hands.

I heard the bands play on and dance in time,

Some claimed divine angelic providence,

They read in this the calloused hand of God,

Whose clumsy sweep would undo past mistakes,

And make us greater than we once had been.

Forefathers sin washed clean by cooling rains,

Diluting stains remained from storms less pure.

So calm and sure we were. Now walks our faith,

A ghostly wraith adrift in hindsight’s fog,

Through fetid bogs where language lies to rot,

From half-forgotten promises as they decay.

I still recall the day, the time is now,

When he avowed would come a splendid day,

In celebration of how far we'd come.

Yet, clocks have run, and finally then is this,

Withdrawing bliss like drunkard’s sober dawn.

We carry on, but far less hopefully.

All memory of deeds and triumphs dies.

‘Neath graying skies, diminished summer blooms,

Lie strewn through autumn’s puzzle of debris.

And it must be the king is surely dead,

For they've beheaded him so many times,

Removed his eyes and claimed they could see more.

They've hacked and torn away his legs and hands,

While still demanding he hold up his weight.

He lies in state, a limbless trunk to see,

As we, bereaved, pass by and mourn what was.

"Not quite enough", the grieving sadly say.

Each walks away, so fully unfulfilled,

Their king now killed, they shuffle slowly off,

Some weep some scoff, but neither factions once,

Acknowledge chunks they stole, of vital flesh.

None shall confess, the one essential piece,

They greedily cut free to keep themselves.

"It's someone else’s fault, indeed, the kings!"

Yet lingering the question still remains,

Are we so vain to think we do not lie,

There at his side upon a pyre of flame?

Who bears the shame, who owns the consequence?

No innocence protects us from the ones who rule, 
For fools are royals in their minds, if not by name.

Water from a Dog

The cycles shift and temperatures reverse,

Like some perverse exchange of currency,

Where finally we repay our standing debts,

Despite regrets of reckless spendthrift ways,

From younger days where wanton wickedness,

Accrued the chit, indenturing this day.

Receding glaciers, where once progress crawled,

And scraped, now fall in shaven, slipping sheets,

As if conceding our neglect with loosened tears.

The recent years of paltry salves to heal,

Cannot conceal the sunken, scars engraved,

By misbehavior, made by callous men,

And generations hence who sing their praise,

With breaths betraying in asthmatic gasps,

The poisoned past, that lingers airborne still.

Soft rains which kill like venom tainted knifes,

From sallow skies, of clouds grown tumorous,

Their deathly dust, and putrid payloads poised,

As earth's envoys of truths too long ignored,

Declaring war we thought we long had won,

The damage done, our mastery complete,

The king of beasts we proudly self-proclaimed,

Yet took by name a queen to be our wife,

Who, scorned and spited, would avenge herself,

Withdraw her wealth, revoke her tenderness,

Our arrogance become too much to bear,

She will not share her palace with its thieves,

And spreads disease to smite our viral ways,

Sends deadly waves to cleanse her spoiled depths,

Blows Curse filled breath to level marred terrain,

Screams flame filled hate to cauterize each wound,

And sickly swoons in seizures fatal quake,

As if to shake us free like water from a dog.

The Ocean, the Sky, and the Sand

Near the white wave-crest breaks, with his shovels and rakes, 
He strides forth with a purpose and plan,
A construction in mind that his heart has designed,
By the ocean, the sky, and the sand.

By the early mid morn, he assembles a form, 
With the elements at his command,
Yet his soul genuflects to the great architect,
Of the ocean, the sky and the sand.

For he mourns a dear friend, all beginnings and ends,
Shoreline sculptures built by unseen hands,
Like those shapes they once molded as kinship unfolded,
By ocean, the sky and the sand.

He works on with resolve as the soft grains evolve,
To memorial mounds which withstand,
The salt tears in his eyes, like the deep welling tide,
Of the ocean, the sky and the sand.

For although soon erased from the shore's changing face,
Are all things manufactured by man,
Be our loves, though forlorn, neither lost nor transformed,
By the ocean the sky and the sand.

Neither tempests nor swells, nor time's chiming of bells,
Nor great changing of fates shall disband,
Friendship's bonds, ever shared, vast  beyond all compare,
To the ocean the sky and the sand.

Guns and Buckets

I saw guns, I saw buckets,
So that the rich men could catch every penny spilled,
I saw guns, I saw buckets,
so they could profit off of every innocence they killed,
I saw a whole lot of people doing nothin',
While every wound ran dry and  every bucket filled,
'Till blood overflowed like reign,
Let me tell you once again:

I saw guns, I saw buckets,
And the weeping children mopping up the rich man's mess
I saw fortunes draining the luckless,
I saw rolls of coin cut through Kevlar vests,
And a whole lot of folks we put our trust in,
Who dipped their hands in the buckets to anoint the blessed,
Filled with gold and blood the same,
And prosperity and pain,
And loud protests screamed in vain,
Silver silencing the sane,
With Necrotic Ruthless Aim,
In this abattoirish game,
While the rest slept tight in the line of sight as they sung Ain't That a Shame.

Eliza Street

The craning necks of yellow metal beasts,
Which loll and swing, then raise, prepared to strike,
Upon the concrete meat, and wood framed feast,
Of prey condemned to suffer sacrifice.

Like Low-fi,  Sci-fi creature carnivores,
They masticate, through man-made edifice.
Facades collapse revealing vacant floors,
Exposed as they erode, and crack and twist,

And crumble. Joints undone, cement unfixed,
Glass shattered in a waterfall of shards,
Beams split and splintered into jagged sticks,
As slaughter sounds the switching of the guard.

Pedestrians approve the violent change,
The maul of progress, praised, the past betrayed,
Enticed by sights of currency exchanged,
And scalpel strikes rewriting yesterday.

They cheer this tear-down triumph over time,
Evolving in divine trajectory,
While clouds of rubble dust obscure their eyes,
From wider sights of death and destiny 

For all perceived advancement we enjoy,
This whitewash rapture yields persistent stains.
we act as nature's agents. We destroy,
At her own pleasure, within her domain,

To represent our own impermanence,
Removing our own trace from history,
With bricks forged frail and indeterminate,
We master worlds devoid of memory. 

The Gypsy Moth Caterpillar

I can't recall what age I was,

Just that which I aspired to be,

While looking up to older children-

Wiser, self-reliant, free.

I wished to play among them, from beneath the shade of plague filled trees.

The gypsy moth, they said it was ,

Who flew at night, their clutches laid,

In such abundance, none could thwart them,

flavor craved by none as prey.

I played among their wing-flap shadows amplified by porch-light rays.

And so, in early spring, it was,

Like boils, brown pouches broke and bled,

Releasing multitudes of vermin-

Mouths of millions to be fed.

And I, bemused, mistook their chews for rainfall patter overhead.

A storm of crawling flesh it was,

Beneath spiked fur, pink meat concealed,

With neither stingers, bites, nor venom,

Clog of bodies formed their shield.

As we both grew we viewed, through silk gauze canopies, the truth revealed.

So plain, laid-bare, the landscape was,

So desolate, the boughs of trees,

All greenery diseased and eaten,

Bright, stark sky where once grew leaves.

And in this light, I recognized cruel sacrifice born out of need.

So broken to the world, I was,

Like gossamer, suspended strands,

Which strain beneath the weight of gluttons,

'Till they fail from fat's demand,

Now stirred awake by selfishness and want I had become a man.

In the presence of the public,

Unabashed, in open air,

Two young lovers, lost and lock-lipped,

Enrapt, tangled without care.

Unconcerned by voyeur’s vantage,

Or pedestrian offence,

Their impassioned, panting, marriage,

Petting heavily, commenced.

Pantomiming copulation,

And unbridled bridal bliss,

They indulged infatuation,

Through obtuse, indifferent, tryst.

Some months after we would see them,

In a gross show of romance,

Yet their tenderness would leave them-

Lust let dry through circumstance.

A portrayal made public none less,

By the hatreds which they bore,

As the scathing, language, loveless,

Spilled past lips, once stitched before.

Each embittered blister, broken,

Spilled betrayal, neglect and lies,

As their limbs, once interwoven,

Proved too tousled to untie.

But what always went unnoticed,

What they never figured out,

Whether damning curse or deep kiss,

Was from whence infused their doubt.

The embrace that had not touched them,

Was the world set just outside,

Whos unreckoned pressures crushed them,

Underneath the weight of eyes.

The Sloop Woody Guthrie

(This poem was commissioned by Steven Feyl as part of an auction benefiting Common Ground Farm.)

The boat's bow breaks against each white-capped crest,

Like striking of an open chord on strings.

It stays its course, sustained, sails filled with breath,

As wind-swept splashing fragments bite and sting.

Each creak and groan, a lyric called out loud,

That sings of nature and humanity,

Of sunlight's shine upon the brave and proud,

Which sparks the surface of an endless sea.

The many hands on deck which work the wind,

Into a forward passage, to explore,

The inland islands where we live as kin,

And leave behind thin lines of distant shores.

To gaze on rivers fed by endless wells,

And depths, through clear reflection of ourselves.

Parrots in Brooklyn

With feather's flash, full-spectrum pageantry,

Their flutter, shuddering against chill winds,

Will juxtapose grey stone of industry-

Bright flapping chatter masked by urban din,

Forgotten infrastructure's cavities,

Become their concrete cliffs, their steel beam perch,

Escapees, careless and unfettered, free

Yet tethered by instinctive kinship's search.

To land upon an enclave of their own,

A flock formed of the misplaced and released,

Composite color congregations roam-

Companionship in living tapestry.

While whistling soft familiar melodies,

Of all who sojourn lone, dark city streets.