Custody Hearing

void
mold filled with polymer
forces known only to math majors
break the consistency
bubbles form
air stronger than polyethylene
directs the filling of the mold

pocket
break in an avalanche
forces beyond the reach of math
make a ice wall
oxygen
air stronger than thunder
directs the treacherous white mass

voids
unseen objects in my breath
forces counting one Erez two Rebecca
Break the flow of breath of qi
Your Honor
Decree stronger than life itself
Direct my soul to flow ungapped by loss.

Grey

water
struggles to freeze
clings to the carapaces
of black nylon cockroaches on two legs
furtive scurrying skulking
seeking cement bunkers

leaf
still green on the bough
clings to gnarled skin
of bony twig on quaking branch
shivering confounded chlorophyll
forgetting how to die

water
trembles in the creek
forced to march too quickly
on the rocks of the Wissahickon
breathy rasping croaking
longing to freeze solid

ferals
conceived in summer
huddled under scrap wood
remains of lost collapsed shelter
unaware their kindred
curl in warm clothes baskets

water
filthy gurgling queue
pools at the corner gutter
splashes daggers from thoughtless tires
drenching penetrating
bones longing for sun

Fast Feast

My right holds bird, my left, cranberry sauce,
The turkey, relish each move hand to hand,
One bite, three "Pass the stuffing"'s, voices cross,
The plates in flight seem not to stop and land.

Plates burgeon, rimming full of hours spent
In dicing, ricing, basting, care and toil,
Then, FLASH! Potatoes downed, drinks chugged, flesh rent
The burglars to their lairs digest their spoil.

How does this orgy value labor giv'n
From open heart, with hands so much to bear?
How many hours from your breast are riv'n
By furied gnashing teeth, no thought, no care?

My brain is stuffed with dismal thoughts like these-
The hell with it! I'll go and learn Chinese!

Renewal

With wondering eyes I love you as a child,
Yet passion bursts the bounds of bodies twined.
No words the purity of thoughts defiled,
We laugh, we wink, we form a common mind.
Though God's great gift makes lovers' heartbeats wild,
With wondering eyes I love you as a child.

The dew from lotus flowers in the sun
Infused in every breath you gasp with me
Sweet liquid on your brow resembles spun
Condensed sweet nectar, ready to flow free.
Each clench, each kiss has Natures grace inclined
While passion bursts the bounds of bodies twined.

With fifty words the other understands,
A wink, a giggle, push, touch, point, and look
Make sense anew; our glossary expands.
Each minute writes a brand new children's book.
With beauty, joy, and impishness thus piled,
My wondering eyes must love you as a child.

Can grammar schoolmates flashing word-cards who
With every gain in language laugh out loud,
Be ageless lovers, naked forms askew?
A love across the sea with youth endowed!
There wondering eyes will love you as a child,
When dimming passion yet warms bodies twined.

Shiny Marble Waves

rippling gold black white
place and time at once at war
a rose blossoms forth
marble buffed to shimmering frozen
tides time plexing - Magic! you appear

Ciommuning With the Day

caressed by sheets
she senses satin yet unaware
that her skin, her fingers, the patina of the sculpture
she was born in
are the sensors
eyelashes like barometers
sense the lightness of the morning

a quick rub into the pillow
crosses the lamina of mighttime
opens her face to light sound air
muscles flex shoulders spread thighs extend

who am the I that receives this day
what do I long for before life blocks the way

Eyelash whiskers feelthe crisp air
Summer languor long squeezed out
Toes check for November chill
All senses say "This is a different day."
this is a late fall play day

her body calls impatiently to her soul
playmate is ready
choose my shoes shorts tops
celebrate the late fall sun with cutoffs
and too big too short sweat shirt
"Let me drink in the garden
Let me massage myself with the woodland sun"
every cell anxious to play
hooky today

Dreams of Blood and Maggots

hello Serena
feeding remembered
only you care
purring echoes off close-in walls
round table morphs to irregular
polygon of papers homeless items.
Meds among themaybe

dreams of blood and maggots
cat food isn't kosher
Nor the mouse you laid on my pillow
but Thank You, Hero Cat
ramen noodles cereal safe once more

scraps scream ignored from indoor-outdoor carpet
milk spills on kitchen floor
this poem is written bills unpaid
mop stands like advice ignored

La Cigua de Nuestras Palmeras

(How do you make Blogger.com do Spanish characters? Also, I could use some help with my Spanish, both idiomatic Dominican and general).

The subject is a young artist who lives in a shack on the beach in the D. R., who gets a full scholarship to an unnamed US art conservatory. This song is the merengue dance number at the end of the first act. Notes: the "cigua palmera" is a cute, unassuming little dovelike bird, whose main distinction is being the national bird of D. R. When Dominicans party, they "van de parranda", and they might wind up at a "bachata" unless they leave the island - then it's a fiesta. "Come what may" in Dominican is "salga pato o gallareta" (whether aduck or a chicken comes out)!!!!!!!!!!!

Verse 1:

La arena en tu pincel sentimos en los dedos,
Coloques la luz y las sombras in los flores de rosales.
En Nueva York cantaron las mujeres con nuestras voces,
Incluso si todavia hueles - a pan~ales!!

Chorus:

Pinta, pinta las estrellas en el cielo,
Colore a las nubes un rayo dorado,
Vuele, nuestra cigua y nuestras esperanzas -
Y planten para ti palmeras en los calles.

Verse 2:

Oye! Celebre, vamonos de parranda!
Pintad una pauta con pies bailandos.
Armed la suerte y esperanze con cada pata,
Bebed, bailad, celebremos a bachata!

Verse 3:

Hasta que segun encontremos de nuevo,
En barrio de Nueva York o en tu "jet" privado,
Famoso o pobre, salga pato o gallareta,
Beberemos, bailaremos, pasaremos a bachata!

Designer at Work

They're $till ba$tard$ but that doesn't stop a lotus flower from beginning its bloom...

let them see her as I do
make the clear shadowy filigree
soften but not hide
****
that if she chooses
only kana for the things she holds dearest

the Gobi at night
mountains coupling through a **** wall
bouganvilla squeezing through cracks

woven in her own soft script
black satin buttons let her adjust
what of her breasts can reach out to touch us.

black weaver's yarn
knitted into the shape of a Sin
kana for heart, hebrew for wilderness
filled with little string dumplings glistening contents
all to decorate, not conceal
what, underneath, so perfect, begs to shine
with each breath the whole ***** ****es
to bring beauty to the world.

(F)our decades have left few marks on your belly
suffering loss for filling its longing
peeking out from underneath the dark silken scrim
it calls out to the ones it mourns
saying, "You live on in me."

(S)ilky abdomen cascades gracefully into
smooth thigh blessed with the perfect tan
seamless glory bringing summer's hot tan passions
into winter.
no thread dare challenge this beauty
the only one needed thin soft black on golden brown
enters and exits the breast weave unnoticed

let the woven density vary only with the risk
tightening into the phrase we utter at the height of our passion
gasped screamed stammered
not a cover for the parts it shades
Not a cover
Just a blessing

Death by a Thou$and Cut$

(if you are the first to follow this blog, you'll notice that this is only my second poem, other than the rap, that uses punctuation. Baseball predates e e cummings, to whom I owe the realization that the words must stand on their own merit, so I abandon the unconventional convention here. Also, whenever the Yankee$ are referenced, all "s"es, including in the word "suck", are $la$hed.)

A child, ball in hand,
Waits for a hero to emerge,
The smell of sawdust and tobacco
Fresh on hands larger than a
Little League catcher's mitt.
Betrayed, he mourns
As his own child consoles him,
"Daddy, they're just in it for the money."

Scourge of youth!
Grievous void of childhood dreams,
$ucked and ever $ucking,
Long after the last breath of pure hope
Di$appear$ in your maw.
$tealing $andlot $ummer$
San Antonio, Pittsburgh, Kansas City,
Detroit, Cleveland, now Philly -

Henry Hud$on, you can't have it!
The mounting mi$ery your billion$ bring
To a world acro$$ your $tinking, fetid water
Fails to quench the unquenchable
Inferno blazing white hot in the hearts
Of fans, who pawn the dreams of youth
To pay for your parade!

A Typical Day

This rapid-fire narrative comes from a friend of mine who teaches in the School District of Philadelphia, and with whom I'm working on a musical. It took him five minutes to write, and has stuck with me for weeks:

I go out to my car for lunch and as i leave the stairs into the main lobby i hear teen boys screaming, kicking, punching. I hear a teacher try to break it up and then I hear a thud. On my last step I see four thrity something athletic adults rip past me climbing the stairs in full pursuit. but it's when i open the main lobby entrance doors to Edicson High school that I see
and feel things that will be forever etched in me: Screaming up the student grass walkways I move aside as two phila police SUVS baelry halt in time from not hitting the lobby'e exterior garden wall. Three cops in each SUV, lights, sirens, bullet proof vests, holstered guns run up the stairs that I had just left. And then I watch amazed as i count iwith pride, adulation 13 more flashing police cars, at least 2 men in each, fit and trim, most with vests, pour into the school. One officer drops his gun, stops to pick it up, places it in his holster and proceeds. and then, unbelievably, three philly police vans, used for riot duties I guess, add another 15 cops into the fray. my first reaction is that there are no more cops left to protect
the city. I notice the older cops looked really piossed off and have their billy clubs out and raised as they climb the stairs. The cops with the vests seem to be special operations p[olice, they are the quickest, strongest and most well protected. They seem to give the orders. I watch from the parking lot and count 18 police cars, suv's and riot vans. after ten minutes I leave the parking lot and knock on the main doors. A school police lady sees who I am and let's me in. she tellls me there are over 50 policemen in full battle gear all over the school.there are gang fights errupting in hallways, classrooms, stairways. she tells me that
a roving detachment from one gang is picking pout and beating unprotected teens from a rival gang. I hear the principal over the intercomm. He talks to the teachers. He tells us that the school is in a lockdown. studentsa outside of a class during a lockdown may be arrested. ..certainly suspended at the least. I walk into my class to find the students excited but calm. ( I share a class with another teacher). The girls tell me that i missed all the fun. I am surprised at what they say. the bravest of the girls confess that the policemen ( I'm guessing the special op guys, are soooo sexxy. the bravest girl tells me, and the rest of the class for that matter too, that she wouldn't mind spending a nighrt in jai;l with one those policeman.
I ask what happenned and the smarter of the girls tells me it is a fight between a black gang and a latino gang, I go to the library and write this e-mail. People talk about the phillies, the weather. The cops are gone. Things are quiet. Only the principal cares anymore. he hopes the local reporters don't come.

Vision of Forgiveness

A Yom Kippur omaggio to Dylan Thomas
Who
Are you
So close in
My heart my soul
That the beat is yours
The voice chewing the back
Of my skull your animus and I
Shake myself chant and mantra, every
Cell and neuron gasping for some air?
Body to body soul to soul
Flip a blessing find a curse
All things thrown leave a mark
Splintered end table
Broken oak bones
Testify
To my
Loss.


Cry
Bathe in
Tears of hate
So close to love
The radiation
Alters the dna
Of me of you of little him
Strike my name from her papers to
Cleanse the soil of all signs that I lived!
Wound to wound, damage to damage
I will not listen when the
Scorn shrieks silently from
Your side of the street
Let the whole pain
Flow open
We must
Live.

Kesher

These threads
Wrapped about my index finger
Bind my spirit
To my people I am betrothed
To the crafter of this silken garment
I owe more than fealty

I looked to my bureau
My loyal seatmate in woven
Jerusalem stone
Yielding sacred garment cloaking
Mother, son and God.
A stack of bills in your stead!

Every Sabbath I searched
Frantically furtively forlornly
Fruitlessly
Stripped of my derech eretz
When in shul do as the Romans do.
When I lead
A threadbare Ziontalis testifies to
Criminal neglect


Making space
I pull open one more box
A pink golden glow speaks
In a whisper heard across
Four thousand miles
Four thousand years
“Ir shalom,
Jerusalem”
The breathless shout of the needlepoint
Crescendos as the lid recedes
Revealing accidental, holy contents

Bless the soul that crafted your bounty
Bless the soul that preserved you safe
Bless the soul that revealed you
Returned as if newly binding
Mother son God and people!

The Value of a Marriage

We hovered over the change dish
Cash-4-Gold pouch in my right hand
His jet black hair thrusts upward in my left
Resting the envelope ready
I lift the shiny band
My sigh weighs twelve years

He asked me what is that Daddy
My wedding ring
What does it say
"Dimitikh ra'ayati," My love, I dreamed of you
What are you gonna do with it
I think I'm gonna sell it

His doe eyes moistened
His plea heard not said
You won't lose it I could use the money for the rent
No Daddy never
The rent was late
He keeps the ring under his pillow

HUNGER/RESULTS (not a poem)

STAND UP AGAINST HUNGER
October 17, 1:30 pm

Free Library of Philadelphia, East Falls Branch

Dr. Paul Farmer Teleconference

A recent nominee for Director of the US AID, Farmer is the founder of Partners in Health. Farmer is famous for a omplishing feats in providing healthcare for the poor that nobody ever thought were possible. The Partners in Health clinic in Haiti, the Clinique Bon Sauveur, treats all patients that arrive on its doorstep. Subject of the book Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, he is internationally known for his pioneering work in community-based treatment strategies for AIDS and tuberculosis (including multi–drug resistant TB) and his focus on diseases that disproportionately afflict the poor. Dr. Farmer is also Chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He is a close friend and ally of RESULTS.

Invitation to ACTION!!!

Ron Fischman, Microcredit
Ruth Birchett, Activism

Affect Congress! Demonstrate! Become an ACTIVIST!


For more info or to RSVP:
Ron Fischman cantorron@aol.com (215) 626-1644

cantorron@aol.com (215) 626-1644

Stand Up Against Hunger/RESULTS
cantorron@aol.com (215) 626-1644

Stand Up Against Hunger/RESULTS
cantorron@aol.com (215) 626-1644

Stand Up Against Hunger/RESULTS
cantorron@aol.com (215) 626-1644

Stand Up Against Hunger/RESULTS
cantorron@aol.com (215) 626-1644

Stand Up Against Hunger/RESULTS
cantorron@aol.com (215) 626-1644

Stand Up Against Hunger/RESULTS
cantorron@aol.com (215) 626-1644

Stand Up Against Hunger/RESULTS
cantorron@aol.com (215) 626-1644

Stand Up Against Hunger/RESULTS
cantorron@aol.com (215) 626-1644

Stand Up Against Hunger/RESULTS
cantorron@aol.com (215) 626-1644

Stand Up Against Hunger/RESULTS

The Birthday Gift

Light reflected off the crisp
Sleek orange yellow plastic
Splits my retina like an M-16
Click click lock and load
Faux chrome clip fits poymer dart bullet warhead
Neatly into chamber

Mop- top graces shining eyes
Laughter bursting through the scope
Orange Bakugan shirt no longer flaps loosely
One more weekend for blue shorts, summer soles
"Here comes my RPG! Gotcha, Daddy!"

Mom in Birkenstocks toddles three-year-old twins
Her eyes seek safety.
Her shoes show scorn.
The straw buyer grins and frets at once.
His tie-dye shrugs, mumbles.

The Birthday Gift

Light reflected off the crisp

The Birthday Gift

Light reflected off the crisp

The Birthday Gift

Light reflected off the crisp

Sandy Sweep

From campsite A to campsite B
Hip high holding daddy's hand
She strolls uninterrupted
No time for tired even at two
The barbeque pit beckons.

Site 161!
Quincentennial families couples buddies
A hundred cars cycles SUV's
Added to the day lot

Sated but not with solitude
We choose the black Saab stroller
For camouflage on the tar
Poured on wildflowers for access
To that sandy sweep

Cowans Gap Campsite 161

You fed us, 161.
As the August sun
Collapsed revealing fireflies and the North Star
And a partially composed tent
Two barefoot campers plunged into your margins
For firewood

Now the sky fades to black
Now the leaves erupt with color
Cast from your twigs your bark your limbs
Tent set dinner hot
Stomachs warmed
Marshmallows roasted in your yield
Our eyes shut to your
Quiet
Fading embers

A Rabbit Runs Through It

A mystery green mound
Expands intensifies
Thinks it's the universe
Hides the inflorescent butterfly bush
Raspberry chocolate heuchera
Extend earth sky podlings
To the sky

You could collect moss
In the perpetual mist of the cracked
Standpipe
And I do
Just under the shadow of the giant astilbe
In and out Dusty Millers hostas
Offer islands of normal amid the exotic

Isee. You just perceive
That green shadow of the hydrangea
That gains a new fuchsia mint grey-pink
For each day of senescence
Below, a gap-toothes row of Lilies of the Valley
More begs than promises
"Wait 'til next year"

South By Southeast

Barefoot traveller in this
World of shoes sandals and rubber soles
Look left Thailand
A bit further India
Right, Vietnam
Turn the corner Italy
Italy??
We choose Thailand

Buddhist wine from Japan
Washes down mango satay
Lemongrass cashew salad
Noodles already drunken
Laugh their way boa-like
About vegetables that
Can't hold up

Our time of tourism flashes by
With the flash of heat
From 2-pepper appetizer
"We'll have to travel here again"
"We'll have to travel here again"
His hand linked to her chain-tight back
Hers, caressing his Philadelphia
Blossoms

Schuylkill Summer, 2009

Elephant ears nibbled from the Waterworks
To the picnic site at Kelly Drive and Wherever
Carrying basket wine and shoes
Ripples exit sculls on the Schuylkill
We taste the currents
The sound of the city
Overdubs even the coxswain's calls
We nod, giggle, and toss the blanket on the misty grass
You wave your hands
Coated with oil and powdered sugar
Like fingerpaint
The wine warms as I lick each finger clean

Leaving/Staying

Leap to the table
I cannot hear you
In breathing I am
Filled by you
I carry your favorite sofa
Down your old
Apartment steps
In Mt. Airy.

Your mom collects your
Brother in her arms
Says farewell to the
Only home you knew
Before you danced
Soundless
Into my arms
Into my lungs
Still in the city
A whisper shouted down
By fireflies

Crystalline Wisdom

Wisdom falling like icicles from a Japanese maple
You could freeze a sequoia with your will
Reaching through the past
You pick
A frozen twig
The morning light glistens
Diffracting into rainbows

Once, you celebrated your move to this complex
You saw thousands of crystals
Received wisdom
You saw a garden of crystals, reflecting
Wisdom of the world

How two years have changed you,
Ice Sculptor
Who sought to create a garden of refraction
All light and happiness of myriad images
Focused to the future
The pallid, lukewarm hopelessness
Of aging humanity
Thwarted you captured you
Transformed you in its own image
"Come let us make adam in our own image"
Image of the imageless
Focus lost
Crystals worn into facelessness

Wineberries and River Hoppers

Wineberries and River Hoppers

Packets of tart red orange
Explode crisply on our tongues
Instantly, pricks and scratches from thorns and brush
Encountered by the Wineberry Patrol
Melt in our mouths
A body away

Uniforms and badges sloughed
The Wineberry Patrol claims its booty
Clear our palate with rainwater.
The younger officer seven years wise
Perceives the thicket as a prize
Long before it yields its reward.
The older, seven times seven
Scars of hiking the single seven
When five when three when one
Wades through mud and brambles,
The Patrol Auxiliary cradled in the rearmost arm.

Long past the point of satiation
We pick our harvest clean
Three sets of footprints clasping
The footholds in the rock
Two sets hard, three sets easy
The waterfall awaits.

There one dives, one quakes, one comforts
The craggy pond extends its cold invitation
A ledge guards an ankle deep habitat.
There a sudden flash of silver
Casts forward from a tiny cave.
Freed from mossy boughs they
Leap to the surface with supple tail fins
The young patrolman flinches giggling.

Gathering our clothes our shoes I
Walk on snow barefoot in my mind
Berry scratches never penetrated the
Piercing tang of the sweet
Month
Of custody
I relive the memories in the snow wind
My toes still in mud
The bronze of my children still radiant
Radiant

July 2009

David Garcia or Garica

If this poet is David Garica, I'll find him. If he's David Garcia, hopefully he'll recognize his poem and find me. I gave it a ten on poetry.com:

A gray cover,
eternally,
grows in the sky.
Swallowing,
growing.
Bringing cold times.

A dark void,
keeps spreading inside.
Consuming, freezing, me.
Making me feel alone,
inside.

And you just stand there,
watching,
my hope,
fall,
frozen,
as snow.

Copyright ©2009 David Garica

David, you can write, dude!

Bookmark

Have you ever stepped
Over a moment, through a footprint
In and out of thought

Imagining a lens shuttering
The feeling frozen in the skin of
Your foot pads, locked in shale or
Sand, sea or sidewalk?
Touching time with your toes
Knees flexing into memory
Bouncing onward in fluid stop-time?

I wink at this sensation
Capturing it as a bookmark in a novel
A screen shot in the hologram of life

Random ruminations on a road trip

Sorry all zero people who follow me, but this isn't a poem...

Having returned from my brother and sister-in-law's 20th anniversary, on a trip that as my sister-in-law put it, ate up 80% of my bank account (not to mention triggering a huge fibromyalgia attack, which led to an Ambien OD, sleepwalking, a broken antique table, and multiple minor injuries to Yours Truly)...

Traveling with my children refreshes my spirit much more than it taxes me. I'm not sure if this is because of my age (49) or despite it. I know being in good shape helps, but I am here to tell myself that I am in bad spiritual shape. It's REALLY been a bad year to be me, but the experiences of not having the money left to eat properly after doing what I need to do (plus a fraction of what I want to do) for my kids. I am defensive, jumpy and anxious all the time. There will be a poem going on about the serpent of my chakras getting lost and trying to digest my sternum instead of energizing my crown.

My son (see "Tall Tales for Small People") reflects on things that happen as just happening, and uses surprisingly little of it, so far, as emotional buckshot to fire when ready. One of those rare occurrences hit more like an RPG. We were all tired and increasingly cranky as the train sat in New London, as we call it, "buffering". A video that you try to "stream," that is play on your computer in real time, has an annoying habit of pausing in the worst places for the signal to get ahead of the play track and enter your RAM (not the truck or the sheep). This pausing , a video liminality between prehension and experience (sorry, dudes, I do have a master's degree) is called "buffering." So whenever we get in an experience where something by all rights should be happening, we call it buffering. So we were buffering in New London, and my son talks about wanting me to buy him dinner. Frustrated, I replied, "We've eaten everything I packed, and besides, do you see a restaurant or a fast food outlet anywhere around here?" He shot back, "Hello, ever heard of a cafe car?" with more than a bit of irritation in his not quite eight year old voice.

That missile scored a direct hit. But nothing like it occurred the rest of the trip, and I do not believe that he will tell my ex about the sleepwalking. Why? Part of it is his emotional excellence, part of it is knowing that he is not to insert himself between the feuding parties. He is a fan of Ben10 games, and unterstands being caught in a crossfire between a cryptid and a DNAlien. Mostly it's a blessing from God Herself.

Little girl story: she kept going up to everyone at the anniversary party, saying, "My Daddy!" The pride in me and the adoration in her eyes and voice impressed everyone, and will probably create a follow up to "To Be".

Department of Senseless Beauty: one of my son's best friends boarded with us, along with his brother, two sisters, and both parents. The two 8-year-olds actually read The Star Trek Chronology for about 40 minutes! That family was off to a hiking and camping trip in Oregon. See (Dang! I forgot the title, and I posted it only six days ago).

So there is joy wound up with fear, and parent-child bliss sharing a foxhole with panic. I know that if I just invited Mara to tea, some of this would dissipate. Thank God for Lyrica...

The Baton

Two parents, three races, four children
Cared for each other across the train
Like ants spreading pheromones

A baton, real as if red, prodded
The red haired boy to pee
Flashing an eyelash he
Passed it to his Nubian sister, 14

Did I see her stuff that red stick in her pocket
With the Nathan's Hot Dog
She had bought in the cafe car

Mom, from West Mt. Airy by way of Ukraine
Returns the signal, along with ticket stubs
Dad, Irish and young, fist-bumps
His twelve-year-old mulatto son
Across rows and aisles and rows

A stop passes, five, the airport nears
Backpacks, trail bikes, meal bars and jugs
Sorted, passed from brown to tan to pink to brown again
The trailhead is 3500 miles away
The travel is begun

Crayola

For Rebecca, 6/24/09

Burnt Siena fingers
Turned Sepia by the sun
Pressed into cracks in
Outer Space Manatee schist.
Your flesh, where you squeeze-
Macaroni and Cheese.

Magenta White canvas
Rendered Fuzzy Wuzzy Brown
Through play, your only job.
Your foot flexes, blocks the sun,
Shoes creased Eggplant.

Your Apricot onesie,
Painted Atomic Tangerine with clay dust,
Suspended on Asparagus thorns from
Tropical Rain Forest branches,
Breaks free, silhouetted
Against the Yellow Green understory.

Standing on the Shadow schist,
In the glow of triumph,
Your radiant Copper face turns upwarde to follow
Dandelion sunrays off tiny hands
Raised in victory.
How many fingers would fill
A one hundred twenty color
Crayola box?

Thought for the Morning

May 26, 2009

Gently naked form
rises on stairs; anklets call
Your lover follows.
Breath from lungs and skin answers
Invitation to be one.

Six Haiku for Hiking

June 5, 2009

1) Cool gust of spring breeze
Doffs the last blanket cover.
My thighs call your name.

2) Not quite yet asleep,
Babbling, chicks, moonbeams invite
Beachhead, built for two.

3) One tent closed for now.
Hands, Feet, Hair, who's you? That's Me!
Balled against the storm.

4) Blueberries for wake-up.
Breakfast in bed, sleepyhead,
Why don't you join up picking?

5) Just like Avalon,
The trail where you learned excellence;
Bigger rocks this time.

6) Children carry kids.
The blessing of their making,
The grass recalls.

Synecdoche

This word was new to me; the NY Times had an LTE with it as the title. It means utilizing a description of a part to capture the essence of the whole.

1/23/2009

After "The Hands of a Ball Bearing Worker" -

The huge hands of a stevedore
are not your hands.
No thick boundary.
Fingertips touch like silken filigee
I see them folding, brushing.
Ineffable, fragile softness.

Worn jeans cling to the great
muscle of your thigh.
No blue boundary.
Rather, they caress what they retain.
Fabric, warmed by skin, suffused by soul.
Is the matrix fragile to the touch?

The dirty boots of winter
are not your shoes.
No leather boundary.
Black floral slippers caress nylon feet.
My ankles feel the embrace of your flesh.

Shoulder-length golden cowl
is not your hair.
No silken boundary.
Not content to cover,
It plays and dances across unseen nape.
I feel the animating energy.

In the crepuscule of the dawn,
When all is still as the

silence

of the spaces

between words,

I wake to the synecdoche.
Images touch and tremble my soul.
The whole is unknowably greater.

Tall Tales for Small People

Created for, and partially by, Erez (7), who is writing a book by this title.

Chapter 1.

"I wrote a play the other day,"
I though I heard my young son say,
"We're going out of Egypt,
And I'm God, the Director."

"I have some lines, I speak sometimes
But mostly all the kids are mimes."
My mother never was the wiser;
Nothing he could do surprised her.

Chapter 2.

We lost a handball down the grate -
I didn't want the game to end -
We broke a pillar off the gate
and tossed the manhole cover.

While underground I met a snake
And told what I was seeking.
He tongued my hand and quickly landed
Scooped the toy, not thinking.

Chapter 3.

A blown out tire in our yard
My daddy sent it soaring
Atop the dumpster, 'cross the street -
Bounced back - his blood was pouring.

Before he's done with 911
The front door I had busted,
The sewing kit and alcohol
And hands that could be trusted.

I dripped the bottle on the blood
And knit his scalp together.
The EMT's said "Kid, you're good!"
Dad said, "love you forever."

Chapter 4.

It's hard to have to ride the bus
Because we don't have money,
So once to get to Toys R Us,
I started my toy Bentley.

I breathed its fumes and felt a change.
I'd shrank 'til I was tiny,
I took the wheel and started down
Chew Ave down to Mt. Airy.

At the light I had a thought.
I hadn't any money.
And even if I did, you'd think
A dino, towed, looks funny.

So I switched gases with the hot rod,
Blowing it up bigger.
I gave the Bentley to my dad.
First SEPTA, now, go figger!

Chapter 5.

"I wrote a play the other day,"
I thought I heard my young son say.
"We're crossing through the straits of Life
With honeysuckle nectar.

"Cause I'm the one who's got the pen.
I'll make my daddy smile again.
We're getting to the Promised Land
and I'm God, the Director!"

The Rose

3/14/09

The rose will die,
The play forgotten,
We will breath the spiced aromatics
Surfing over the gentle
Swells of the blossom
Like sand and foam at seashore,
Themselves in transition.

The evening will end
Arm in arm,
Body in body or alone.
The yellow fluted crystal
Directs its perfume upward
To be a permanent memory
Or dissipating
Into never

...Or Not to Be

4/5/09
With apologies to Dylan Thomas and William Shakespeare, and gratitude to the hip-hop universitude

Refrain: Do not go gentle into that good night,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Pitiful humans, loved and lost,
You come into the world in a puddle of goo.
Your eyes are shut, your cecum seald,
You can't even breathe 'til they start paddlin' you.
Pitiful humans, loved and lost,
You enter screaming from that good night.

Pitiful humans, loved and lost,
You Can't Get out of your own mess.
It's years to walk, ages to talk,
And the meaning of your babble I can't even guess.
Pitiful humans, loved and lost,
Rage against the dying of the bedroom light.

Refrain: Do not go gentle into that good night,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Pitiful humans, loved and lost,
You earn your keep by the sweet of your brow,
Your incubator crafted of your mama's sweat,
It's a con you get away with but you don't know how.
Pitiful humans, loved and lost,
You don't know the difference between day and night.

Pitiful humans, loved and lost,
The focus of attention of a marketer's lust.
A child in need, a commercial deed,
Your need for them to give a f^&* betrays your trust.
Pitiful humans, loved and lost,
You cry yourself to sleep against the dying of the light.

Refrain: Do not go gentle...

Pitiful humans, loved and lost,
The chem lab in your head creates an accident.
Touchy-touch and kissy-kisy in mind or flesh,
What other mammals do is your predicament.
Pitiful humans, loved and lost,
The fires that consume your heart can roil the night.

Pitiful humans, loved and lost,
Your bodies wracked with the desire to mate.
Needing you, needing me, always needing more,
Natural selection leads to love - and hate.
Pitiful humans, loved and lost,
Your need for lovin' generates more heat than light.

Refrain: Do not go gentle...

Pitiful humans, loved and lost,
Marriage quickly turns into the death of sex,
The needs of kids jobs chores and TV,
The passions of your skin and heart a smouldering wreck.
Pitiful humans, loved and lost,
Together in your bed but you're alone at night.

Pitiful humans, loved and lost,
Your thoughts are for another long before the split,
It's teenhood once again inside an aging bod,
Desire and attractiveness no longer fit.
Pitiful humans, loved and lost,
Impending darkness revels in the dying light.

Refrain: Do not go gentle...

Pitiful humans, loved and lost,
Aging, lonely, when your hopes are few,
Too cold for friends, to frail for love,
Life and death have all become the same for you.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Pray, pray for the remaking of the light.

Refrain: Do not go gentle..

To Be...

Be
We be
You explain it
Hebrew ignores it
Spanish divides it
(?) Ser o Estar?
Spirit wind or ghosts?
I feel - estar
I change - ser
I love - ser en equivocado.
The moon is full - estar
The moon is new - estar
Round, doe-brown, full moon eyes - ser
Pixie dust twinkles - Puede ser?
"(!)Papi, te amo!"
The words are new - estar
My heart is full - ser

Metaphor

Crystalline sparkle from twin blue sapphires
Skates glistening figures on my icy soul.
An unweighted plumb line in a wind storm of self doubt
I dreamed of an hourglass taking its sand from Sea Isle City.

One date in March, one date, the music critic from Rolling Stone
Told her friend how to play his guitar.
She loved him anyway.
A sandcastle half as big as the beach
Queues up to fill the hourglass.

A serpent coils dreamily, deep in his abdomen.
Bright, orange flame shadows the deep ruby scales.
Her breath whistles through his soul, making the snake
Alive and happy.
His, hers, whispering, knowing.

To all things (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
Orderly and with patience, the grains of sand begin
Their inexorable crawl downward;

One, two, three grains of life;
One, two, three grains of love.
Happiness felt in the soul cannot be held in the hand.

First maintaining two separate forms
The fields under our feet furrow as we pass, and pass, and pass again.
Some stroll by oblique to the congruent rows we plough.
The day is done.

The equipment sleeps, the drivers vanish.
We climb from our furrows.
His words, her words, his breath, her breath,
Dazzling orange heat, endless ruby scales,
One cannot be distinguished from the other.
One grain of sand squeezes through the hourglass, then another…

The autumn winds reach to Sea Isle City
A sandcastle dances in the Indian summer breeze,
Spread between the toes of children enjoying one last weekend.
Sun beats on the hourglass, now dripping naked.
The sunshine teaches the sand,
Once stoically guarding the hourglass behind castle walls,
To dance, flexible and free.

Two rivers become one.
Why is this metaphor a lie?
Why does the Ohio swirl so much harder?
Why does the sand flow faster as each crystal
Becomes a more practiced dancer?

Cruel words train the dancers.
We destroy.
They pirouette, always downward.
The finely honed edges of lovers’
Words draw blood on impact.
I can almost see through the hourglass.

It all depends on you, final grain of sand.
Flow through as every skillful dancer before you.
The hourglass is empty.
Contort, spread, resist.
Claim the stage. Do not yield.
The performance has not ended
Until the final dancer struts and frets across the stage,
Signifying nothing - nothing remaining.
Two lives, begun in grace, are all but over.

February 2008, revised June 28, 2009

What's in a name?

The name of this blog is personal, really, being the Fisch with a C, not the fish in a sea, I didn't have to make it water-related. It feels right. Poetry is by nature fluid. It is buoyant (Archimedes' Principle), the faster it moves, the more you are uplifted (Bernoulli's Principle), and when something strikes you by triggering one image, your whole soul is affected (Pascal's Principle). Also, when you are riding a wave of poetry, the particle (you) doesn't move, but the energy is transmitter through you - especially when you share it.

I will be posting my poems here, starting from when I became active in writing them after the failure of my marriage to the things I am doing now. If you are looking for meta-analyses of the human condition, you'll probably have to look to Goethe. I'll just document my little place in it.

Ron