I Dreamt of a Bus Terminal

I Dreamt of a Bus Terminal

                           Maybe all one can do is hope to end up

                           with the right regrets.

                                                                      Arthur Miller

I dreamt of a bus terminal

linoleum tenderized by soles, air staled

by souls

Aswarm with vacant visage that spoke

all language but mine - every sign alien

every word unimagined

Here and there a poster of a beach

or a mountain or the LA Airport Theme

Building here and there a diesel burble

The scrambled chatter - atteindre lograr erreichen

television amour amor liebe movie studios

famille familia familie

One long queue passed the time

stock-still intent on the departure gate

as if they had pre-determined goals

Preset direction

I waited among them and their intent

for somewhere to somewhere unknown

We rode for hours as black crabbed into the windows

and then the stops began

one by one each one ripe as blue pre-dawn

I chose a place amid the mercury shadows of palms

and stayed there a lifetime

to meet natives in pleats and ties- to find a purpose

with celluloid plow and celluloid scythe

Never quite sure where I was

where I had come from

what else I might have missed or why

                                #

Beverly Hills Lunch

Beverly Hills Lunch

Jacaranda petals on black pitch
Jags and Beemers flare sun
from thick clear coat
valets namelessly jog from car to car
hold your door

The cloth napkin is rough
at your lip
Lemon water and olive
oil bread load the wait

Specials consist of rock
shrimp and baby arugula
the waiter is too handsome
the menu is too heavy

Sharon Stone is too pale
paler than humanly possible
don’t look
at her table again
be cool – it is the role
you wear
temporary owner
of a studio title

#

Griffith Park Pony Ride

Griffith Park Pony Ride

When he said he wanted to ride
the pony I am not certain he understood
what a pony was.

Still, putting on a brave face, he let
the worker strap him in the saddle
on the horse-hair beast.

He didn’t really panic
until he discovered the pony was tied
to the other ponies

and as they all ran away
I saw his hand reach back
for me, just a bit too late.

This will be my life, even when he is grown,
putting him on ponies
watching him reach back for me

when he realizes what is next,
always too late
always too far.

Buy the book

Two places to buy When The Sun Sets in the East (CreateSpace is better for me, of course, if you are willing to open an account with them.)

CreateSpace for When the Sun Sets in the East

Amazon for When the Sun Sets in the East

April 2012 Poetry Reading in Santa Monica

Poetry reading back in April - I wish I'd raised the music stand... my fault.

Glasses

Glasses

Two panes, fattened
to correct
my focus:

a plastic truss
across my eyes,
bridged at my nose

to make me see
the world
the way it really is;

one day I may find
a pair
that work.

#

The Breath of New Jersey

The Breath of New Jersey

I still know the breath of New Jersey,
the tin-pan howl of Conrail
freights that slash the air
with warning strobes
like machetes at the stalks
of dark, then burst
onto the Madison Street grade,
each locomotive
larger than the Foodtown
and blacker than a spade
in ink-lets of dust.

Night sinks quickly in New Jersey,
atop the wailing tractor-trailers
swimming Turnpike, spastic,
chilled to the frame, fighting up-stream
like salmon to spawn their loads
in Newark, Hoboken, and Hackensack,
stone cities gone ash in fields of weed
that crust their factories
like barnacles on a blue whale's snout.
Look to the rivers of pitch
for the detritus we spit out!

In New Jersey the leaves all wear
a tired film of smoke,
while new homes are jammed
on back lawns and front lawns
and side lawns of lots
which were drawn for one original house.
The acorns flock like marbles
to curb stone gutters where dog turds
cure, and cigarette butts turn to rust,
while grayish rains sizzle clouds
and storm whistles the rooftops,

"This is New Jersey, leave it alone,
leave us! You must!"
On my ears I still sense
the flush of the brook
snake wash around the pines, where geese
chase field mice that climb
periwinkle to the banks.
And the wind, the wind, the hollow wind,
that crone, that harbor breath
of voice that billows the panes
and knocks storm windows to rattle

New Jersey's children's dreams
of when the snow grows thick and Bakelite
kitchen radios screech, "1010 WINS News,
the following schools will be closed..."
and old men tremble,
scrape powder from their windshields,
drop salt to their drives.
By afternoon the white sheet of the lawn's
gone grey, and the children don't see,
and their mothers won't see,
and their fathers can't see
that there is death in New Jersey,
where the Raritan, the Overpeck, and the
Passiac
are her veins opened up,
left scabbed, mired and stained,

where the sanitation trucks gnaw
their trash each Thursday before dawn,
then heave into Meadowlands' ponds.
I hear the crack
snap as a neighbor touches match
to his piled leaves, and somehow
with the rush of that smoke,
the ache of that train,
and the hymn of that wind,
it's hard to forget a place like that.