Mommy’s Mummy

So here we are, the children of the
Oh so, not so fruitful womb
When along comes that tall
Texan, dad, the hero of every
Heart and tales told often at
Campfires and around the good
Old fireplace and in the pungent
Secrecy of the kitchen table where
He passes like a former Greek hero
Although now we’re talking bald with
Glasses and a pot belly belying all that
Rugged youth and horses and
Basketball hero football idol bronco
Busting intellectual with articles in the
New Yorker written while still a child
Himself. When do we stop to be that
Which we have always been, the who that
Somebody knew, probably your best enemy’s
Friend who really knew us but didn’t feel
Compelled to pretend with us because there
Weren’t any shared smoke the
Backy in the home made corn cob
Pipe don’t tell anybody ‘cause
It’s our secret boy/girl bond
Bull crap. How could he do that when,
All that you wanted was to adore this
Fiction that everybody told like a
Piece of literature admired by some,
Loved and quoted by others, on
Everybody’s lips? How could you be
On everybody’s lips when it was I
Who loved you? How could your love not
Be so sacrosanct and rare that its
Grace had to be so common? A
Questioning old age, a troubled
Youth, denied the answers to questions my
Children have asked now since I
Have turned out to be me.

When do we buy that retirement home in
Sedona, among the candy colored cliffs
And elevated plateaus of our imagination
Where we live forever in that adult fantasy that
We have grown up and are completely
Miraculous and good. You were always a
Danger, so much everybody’s else,
Such a question if you were even ours and
I have turned mother's fear into
Me in my quest to talk to you.
You, you poor man, and I
Were pickled, wrapped and dried,
Things of hollow legend and without love
From the moment we started this search.

Breakfast is not ready

We give the illusion that it comes to plate
Venus-like full blown and assembled
From the sundry stuff that
Is only a step or two away
From the garbage bin. When
Monster mercenary minstrels gyrate
Their ancient Greek hips Elvis-like at
Sounding boards of internal and
External music – the larder to
Barter for some oddly personal hymn
In the hopes they can
Recall the loss

And the gain for shekels
Or worse, pride. How to
Give up that daunted dare
We stare in to solid emptiness
Hoping that we’re not
There like ghosts in a
Mirror, especially a concave one
(convex is better
For purposes of company)
Keeping what we like
Discarding the rest
As one would an interloper
In the bedroom of our love

We cannot say the self
For fear other will hear
But we can talk of nothing else.
To the muse: bad girl,
Where have you been?
Would you like some
Breakfast? She says

You are all in the same boat
A reed basket floating down de Nile
That we entered right after birth
Leaving our family for a better
Life, doomed to wander forever
After the anger of hot youth
Ends the privilege of childhood
With the sad truth we will never rest
Never see home again
We will go through death’s door before our own
But after all the peace of home is
An illusion. One which we hold so
Dear because we fail to truly see
That the park is a battleground
On which we can rest while the
Plants and trees fight it out for the
Sun killing anything around them
With deadly shadow. Which when
The darkness of doubt falls over the
Plate with its ordinary and
Strangely questionable goddess
The substance of tangible illusion
Utters that dangerous word the
Self which is now so plain to see
And naked on the plate and
Painfully absent of vines and leaves
And all the figs, or perhaps an
Apple in the mouth making it
Tough to breathe because we didn’t
Want to talk about it anyway. So
I asked my father, seeing the ripe
And rotten fruit: is this
What you wanted me to eat?

Tutoring

Two new students
Into the hours of desperation
Of swimming, but not much longer,
In the unacknowledged
And unacceptable sea
Of unfathomable ignorance.
Here for the painful cure
Of superficial knowledge
Of ordinary matters of
The heart and mind and
The miracle of my
Shallow shoal soul shut
In the narrow confines
Of my broad body.
Despairing the lack of difference
They, like the ship above,
I, the sleeping leviathan below,
Storing up all that fat they need
And want me

To dispense, in a suicide pact
For those humble delusions of grandeur,
The luminous calories of thought.
Could I have dreamed
In the sublimest moment of the
Slender threads of responsive sleep
Sewing themselves in glorious
Gilt throughout the play filled
Foolishness of my childhood,
Even I would have laughed at
Me as the object of
Such practical folly.

Breakfast is ready! 

Old Melody

The young at night
Drink and fight
And leave a lot of litter.

The old at dawn
Come along
To recycle empty bottles.

Pickers and leavers
Daylight grievers
Rest now your worn out waters

Tomorrow’s a song
We’ll sing along
No matter what happens
To our dreams and desires.