Every December I reread Kenneth Patchen
His poems are like Christmas lights
On impoverished streets
I remember buying a signed edition
In a Las Vegas bookshop
I think it should have cost more
But so should roses and sunsets
My heart goes out to Kenneth Patchen
His broken back and silent anguish
His poems mused me into meditation
Fused me into the flowering of forever
How many of his poems
Were like gifts we opened at Christmas
When as children we could receive
Why is it every time I read Patchen
I’m awash in grief and gratitude
It’s like the resurrection of something
Comfort has lost in us an avowal
About our duality and ambivalence
How we love and hate
How we end our wars with tears of joy
Uncategorized
A Man Who Was Dead
How strange to see a bottle of Crown Royal
Reflected in a barbershop mirror.
A customer asked my father to save it
Until after a business meeting.
He died/ in a car wreck, minutes later.
I know dad went/ to the funeral
And told the widow about the bottle.
She said “why don’t you keep it, Frank,
My husband would have liked that.”
Once, when we suggested opening it,
Dad refused saying it didn’t belong to us,
It belonged to a man who was dead.
Ownership existing beyond the grave.
My father’s honesty was beyond reason,
What comes from experiencing war
When everyone’s everything is betrayed.
That’s why it’s not strange for me
To see a bottle of Crown Royal
Reflected in a barbershop mirror.
I know who placed it there and why it stays.
How to Approach November
To ward off seasonal depression
Consider an autumnal decompression
Think of November
As a yearly comember
To address the chill
Start with layers of yourself
Then begin to insulate
Against sempiternal cold
Accept the darkness as a friend
You’ll find it opens
Like a book in your hands
You’ll find the hours
To have their own horizons
And in your mind
Create what time consumes
After a Live Performance of Ofrenda de Cempasuchil
Ofrenda de Cempasuchil by Rodrigo Loman
(Marygold Offering for Día de los Muertos)
On the road to the cemetery
Marching steps grow heavier and sadder
Processions of musical notes
All ring with the glow of their candles
Flower music turns into fruit music
Baskets of shadow murmur with sound
Crosses of salt are spread over graves
To feed the dead with the earth’s bread
This offering of music flowers
From the crypt like the birth of birth
It lines the pathways with its golden glow
And flows past our reality into another
Suddenly sensation leaves the body
The dance is possessed by ghosts
It’s like bones are joyously dancing
And spirit feels itself in flesh again
We’ve all been made flesh by the music
Remembered by it and reanimated
Mixed into the melody of mortality
Stillness and the silence that sings
Venice, 2023
The Saturation of Eternity
Red like the sun bleeding
Green like leaves born of nothingness
Blue like the inside of light
Spilling over the sky
And yellow
Doomed by black to shine with rot
And black
Like a massacre of accountants
And white
Like its own crucifix on a vast wall
Nicolino Locche
(September 2, 1939 – September 7, 2005)
Punch a ghost
And you fall through an abyss.
Jab repeatedly at a shadow
And you beat your own brains
Against nothingness.
Throw your hardest left and miss
Stumbling through your momentum
Like a puppet come unstrung
To miss again with your right
Until it seems
You’re in a self-defeating fight.
That was the genius of Nicolino Locche,
“The untouchable one.”
He fought by not fighting
And even losing, he won.
Then the People Rejoiced
Dec 11, 2023
Pavoletti’s overhead goal
To win against Sassuolo
Was a miracle of the spherical
Identical to the chimerical.
Not just for Luvumbo’s chip
In desperation of dying time,
Not even for the finish,
But for the ball headed back
To Pavoletti by Shomurodov.
Rarely is such a perfect question
Asked of life
As that parabola of a pass
Mesmerizing everyone
Like a moon above statues,
Except for Pavoletti
Who had the answer.
Then the people rejoiced
And some wept openly
As though witness to a minor miracle.
Save by Stefano Turati vs Sassuolo
September 17, 2023
It wasn’t a save as much as phenomenon.
At the goal line of credulity
The keeper clawed the ball out of reality.
A save saving at the point of being being,
Astonishment bounced out of the ball
And struck all who saw it– with astonishment.
On the Magic of Lionel Messi
Watching Lionel play football
Was to see a master magician
Sharing his amazement
At escaping from all the locks
And seeing himself emerge
From impossible mazes,
Switching the ball at his feet
For the ball in the goal
Without mirrors or strings,
Creating the illusion
Of levitating a stadium,
Leaving defenders dazed
As though by Hermes,
Goalkeepers naked as Adam,
The net rippling with startled doves.
