In Passing
I looked up from the book
to see her enter the store.
I didn’t know her
from Eve’s lapdog,
a middle-aged woman largely non-descript,
but we had much in common;
I felt sure of that.
We breathed the same
upcountry Carolina air
and had been, more than likely,
raised in the same strictures
of what is right and what is wrong,
such as the practice of kindness,
even to strangers,
learned as far back as Sunday School
and in the words and gestures
of our mothers and fathers.
But when I smiled at her,
she scowled, as though I had leered
at her or said something unseemly.
Perhaps she thought I wanted to scam her
or had designs on her pocketbook
or her personal self in general.
I didn’t.
I merely wanted a smile in return,
an affirmation
that we were still people, still human,
this woman, me, you,
still capable of some connection
some recognition, one of the other.
Mouth
A peony may be too extravagant for such comparison,
Even with its lavish vividness, its suggestive pinks and reds,
Its deep, dark throat.
Best, I guess, to lean as usual on the calming cliché
Of roses or nothing at all.
After all, your mouth is flesh, not flower
With a mystery and power of its own
That escape the preservation of contrived simile.
The mind, the memory will hold forever its red fullness,
Its absurd potential for kissing and sucking.
In fact, words could end up hampering its sensuality,
Straining after the most apt similarity
And resulting in embarrassing Shakespearean pastiche.
Sometimes it’s best to leave perfect things be.
Intellectus
How can I possibly explain
The intensity of my love for you
When I don’t even understand it myself?
When I fear to peer into that abyss,
With the danger of falling into it,
Losing myself, coming back, if ever,
An entirely different man, completely
Out of control, shocked at seeing that part
Of himself he has always kept safely hidden?
Not one with a philosophic turn of mind,
I have always turned to poets and songwriters,
Both facile and profound, popular and obscure,
In times of romantic grief and confusion.
So maybe now I should offer their pages to you,
Their lachrymose songs, but you wouldn’t read them,
You wouldn’t listen, too much always in the headwind,
Too much on the go, too hungry for a life unexamined,
Thus sparing yourself this kind of grief.
How can I possibly explain
The intensity of my love for you
When you have never asked,
When I’m not even sure you care?
Last poem
I had to fill in the blanks
to provide any substance.
You left me no choice.
You brought only surface –
a brilliant patina, for sure –
with full mouth and eyes that seemed haunted.
But nothing else.
What I mistook for profundity was mere silence.
What I mistook for mystery was sloth.
What I mistook for humor was cliché.
What I mistook for intelligence was the predictable gadget-craze
of your generation and the intellectual depth of a Tweet.
Your people gave you blood and flesh, breath and hunger.
I gave you sweetness and sensitivity, compassion and nobility.
I created you as surely as Buonarroti realized David out of the marble.
David, however, will endure forever, even in the brains of the unborn.
Your blank surfaces will in time fade and shrink.
You will be remembered only by the dead.
The Dark Heart Of Southern Boys
I.
They took themselves out of the game on the same day –
Two from a town of thirty-thousand.
Both with handguns – hand to head extinction.
One younger, seventeen, the other way past fifty.
One committed in Veterans Park,
As dawn pushed night-clouds away.
The other done not in the dark
But the blue-brightness of clear day.
II.
He told her that he loved her more than life itself;
The other girl? Nothing to him. Just a lay.
But she knew, a liar is a liar
And would not give him time of day
And did not believe him
When he mounted her front porch and threatened death.
She went on with her game show.
Even when he pulled the trigger and struck the air with heat,
She thought it a hoax, a pantomime of death.
Only when she found him limp, traced
The bullet’s journey from the temple
Through the top of the head to a dress
Hung out to dry on such a beautiful day
Did she realize that death was real.
III.
He hated so much the idea of aging
That he took the Botox, had the surgery.
It left his face leathery as a Halloween mask,
Smooth, yes but dead as well.
It embarrassed his family. They did not speak.
Not even the beloved older brother.
Isolation led to illness,
Illness to the certainty that God had left him for good.
“They won’t pray for me,” he wrote on social media,
Meaning his family, of course.
Thus to the park and to God’s sad face.
Imagine going for a walk or jog,
Defying morning mist and chill,
And finding the solitary car in public place,
The calamity inside, the neck missing its head.
You’d never walk or jog or sleep again.
IV.
A disease burns in Dixie brains
And membranes of its boys, young and old:
The need to live by the cavalier’s code,
To live large, with love, or just go away.
