April 2014

	April 2014 Summer Rain All the Way Down Strangers After All We would Walk Like Giants Rise A Little PTSD The Full of this March Night's Moon Leap Day Breeze Winter Holds its Words Homecomings	Summer Rain Clouds pops like corn surging into being, crumpled cotton, balls of tissue, first draft wads thrown away, re-expanding, darkening, bluing - rising like Marge Simpson’s hair.
All the Way Down All the way down to the skin I listen to, to the the joints that talk to me as I make them cry. All the way down you have laid back the layers to its blue white bone, to my empty drive home… all the way down. In the mist as you’re rising sleep sweet and muzzy I’ll be taking you pinked, grinning - raw all the way down. All the way down to the creases, the greases, the caverns explored. All the way down to the blue white bone of you gone.	Strangers After All He was cleaved from my life, as if pruned, pinched off. I’m left with his dark tangled hole, a callous abyss of mangled apathy, of my questions never asked of John Doe. He lay there, re-attached to my life by a coroner’s report, ‘Death by exposure.’ None of us heard him calling out. We were strangers after all.	We would Walk as Giants We walked the canopies as if mice over broccoli, masters of all we surveyed. In the last dark breath of morning Sagittarius rose. We stared into the nurseries as star after star blinded us with screams. On the lilac cliffs we fell shorn short of our dreams, sun rising in a blood orange rage, curdling the moon’s last light, scolding, mirages quivering in red marmalade. We would walk the other’s skin, dances in the shadows, tickling the gourd of The Mighty Quinn. That slow rise to joy, chaos to rest. You would know the tick of me, I, your consumption. We would walk as giants in this earth between our hands.
Rise Rise, crawl out, free of Eden’s yoke. no preconditions, no restrictive labels, no scarlet letter F, no toxic frosting from Kansas, no libido slurs from the GOP. Crawl out from beneath their mantle, no trappings, no drippings, no guilt. You are woman. You are sovereign. You are citizen. You are equal and entitled under the law.	A Little PTSD I have my mother’s maudlin eye. I wear a Wednesday’s child on my sleeve. Come Friday I’m disrobing of a war. I served my country best I could. Two fingers in Kandahar, a little PTSD. Come Saturday night I’m tossing back shots of insanity. I have a buddy - Package Pete. 5 months in a hummer sniffin IEDs, He’s feeding his kids from the Skyway Bridge - a little PTSD. I have my daddy’s fists, ‘hams with fingers’, one burka girl joked. ‘the Jew hate him, unclean!’ - giggle I looked up Julie. but the smiles were forced, the chatter stiff, polite. I hammered something where I shouldn’t - a little PTSD Seems I’ve lost my mother’s maudlin eye.	The Full of this March Night's Moon Sirens of wind swirl through this night, great portents of bluster, bad dancers, nuisance alarms. THIS WAS A DRILL. THIS WAS ONLY A DRILL. HAD THIS BEEN AN ACTUAL… I loved these gusts… bursting around my face, my hair tight behinds me, my terriers carrying on, each looking at me in their turn, as if asking whether Superman really pissed into the wind. And it’s moist tonight, after a long soaking rain. I enjoy the Queen Palm chatter, a contrast to the stiff clatter and scissoring hiss of the bismarck palms. The moon is crawling back into the sea, my terriers are tugging for home. If I’d had you here we’d be naked, the four of us howling to the full of this March night moon.
Leap Day Breeze Leap day slipped down off the page, a neglected monday, frail, bland, unremarkable - until ten. The first winds were like snakes, fast, probing every cornice, leering any crevice, sneaking marauders, bawdy vipers ‘neath skirts. A pule rose around the hedges, lifting, creaking the porch boards, whining through the palms, the pine, and cypress, mussing, bobby-soxing the beards hanging just over their knobby glade knees. We lost the neighbor dog that morning. A yipping hot mess receding into the distance. Just a teacup puddle and a little extra fur. And we lost Ajax, the demon squirrel, last sited with a walnut blown up his rodent bastard ass. Nature spoke in tongues, trees dancing that morning, frenetic, their storefront demons cast out. When the rains came we relaxed, gathering our rosebuds where where we may.	Winter Holds its Words Winter holds its words, its secrets bound, gnarled in mindless roots and tangles of sky. Winter holds its words like spring never could… racing up dresses, dancing paper in an urban ballet, the soil writhing, lilies rising, gossips of tulips cackling over the storm. Winter holds its words. No one will listen now.	Homecomings She came home a bit tipsy with silver in her pockets. Mercury dimes and liberty halves, most too worn, but they captivated me. We searched in vain for the mother load, a 1909s VDB wheat penny - worth neatly $90 dollars back then. $2500 on E-bay today. A Penny! She came home hiding tears wads of remorse crumpled in her uniform pockets. A shafting from a customer? A bash from her barroom beau? Worries over her mom or dad. I’d never know, I was nine. There was never any bruises… on the outside. She came home with shhhs, “don’t wake him.”, with “here’s a blanket and a pillow.” “NO, she whispered. Not when he’s here!” She came home some nights and just cried. The rent was due, no extra shifts at Cavoli’s, our vacation to the shore on the line. Down the years she came home in a daze. She came home with shivers, She came home with her dreams and doubts. She came home with ulcers, I heard the retching and the sobs behind the bathroom door. In the end we made it. We made it because she came home.