THE GOD POEMS
1.
Isn’t that God
I see in you? The sycamores
on my street? The sweetness
in the angel food cake I eat
every single day in my com-
pulsive God-like way? The
explanations in books that try
to teach us something we might
not know? The slowness I some-
times mistake for profundity?
The sea that is the mother of
us all? The dying I recall from
childhood that stood my world
on scarred terrain I couldn’t
wait to vacate?
2.
Isn’t that God in you?
When you are true to
the darkness that
excites you—entices
you to abandon
all caution—all
fear—for what is nearest
your heart’s delight
is gratitude for the
night you despise
when she is in it
without you—
But isn’t God there too?
In her desperation
and passion for thrills
of unmeasurable joy
that never last because
God is the sun that dispels
the shadows of guiltlessness
—is the sleep that overtakes
her—the sleep she
subsides in when
all else fails—
Isn’t God the
failure too?
The broken line?
The useless thought?
The way upstairs that
causes hesitation in
the air she breathes
with you no longer?
3.
She’s gone—
He’s not—
Their little boy bounces between
Is seen by God as God’s own
Heart—a little boy—hurt
and trying not to be—See!
says God—my
Heart!
4.
You are my heart, God.
You are my blood.
You are the nerve endings
in my tongue,
my scalp, the soles
of my feet, my
penis, my thighs—
You are my eyes.
You corrupt me
with your love
as I have my
sons and daughter.
You are the water
in which I choose
to drown—you
pull me down—
I can’t resist.
SWING THEORY: 1
He could be pushed he could go faster
he could stay still. After he could pump
himself up I’d get scared when he’d go
so high the chains would go slack and
I’d expect the seat to plummet straight
down to the ground and I’d yell but
he’d be laughing too loud to hear me
as the seat would jolt back into place
coming back the other way and then
when he reached the apogee of swing-
ing he’d let go and jump and land fur-
ther away than the bigger kids could,
who were the only ones who’d even try
that maneuver, and I’d be proud of him.
THE GEESE DON’T FLY SOUTH
The geese don’t fly South
in Winter any more.
Only Latvia is worse than the U. S.
in rates of infant mortality
among the so-called industrial nations.
Where have all the
protestors gone?
I’ve tried to be a
birder but
they never conform
to the photos and
drawings in the guides
I’ve bought, including
Sibley’s. That
hasn’t stopped me
from loving them.
I have often fallen
hardest in love
with those whose
names I never knew.
My Jersey Irish relatives
all live in the South now,
where homes are cheaper
and taxes almost nonexistent.
The red state is where all
our tax money goes,
to prop up cheaper lifestyles.
It’s where all the divorces
seem to be too, liberal
Massachusetts having
the lowest rate of divorce.
Or did I mean blue?
I always get confused about
who’s who. I don’t
mean the book, I’ve
been in that for years.
But so has Bush.
All the Bushes I suppose.
Let’s face it, you can
get away with murder
if you’re family always
has. Has yours?
No, I didn’t think so.
Or maybe I mean if
your family always
has because of its
position, power and
money, and maybe
couldn’t anymore if
those things were removed.
There’s cranes and egrets,
swans and mallards, as well
as the various blackbirds
sprinkled all through the
Jersey meadowlands that
once stunk so strongly
my father swore breathing
the air there was a known cure
for asthma, of which
there is so much more now
than when I was a boy and
he was still around. The ground
on which we stand is shifting,
as perhaps it always was, but
now we can’t deny it.
The South did rise again.
Trees are more common
in the Northeast now than
they were when I was a boy,
despite the blights and infectious
insects invading from the South.
The tundra is melting so drastically,
houses in Alaska have begun to tilt
like mini-towers of Pisa.
Pizza was an American invention
I heard. Although when I was a boy
there was a kind of loaf of bread
you could buy from the local
Italian immigrants, round and
flatter than most loaves of bread,
that the Italians called Pisa bread.
Two guys who grew up across
the street from me were nicknamed
Loaf and Half-a-Loaf.
When I returned to live in Jersey
after forty years away,
before the last of my siblings still here,
Robert, an ex-cop, moved to Georgia,
he asked me after we left the local A&P
if I’d noticed the rotund old Italian man
who nodded to him at the checkout line,
and when I said I had, he said,
“Know who that was?”
I didn’t, so he told me: “Half-a-Loaf.”
Bluebirds have come back to New England.
I wonder about the white cliffs of Dover.
Thank God for Turner Classic Movies.
Where have all the heroes gone?
I know the servicemen and women
and firemen and women and other
public servants have done heroic deeds,
I meant in the movies. And politics.
The Bogies and the Robert Kennedys,
the Jimmy Cagneys and the Roosevelts,
the Waynes and the Washingtons,
despite their politics,
and Coopers, Jeffersons Stewarts and
Doctor Kings—Rosa Parks,
Barbara Stanwyks and Joans of Arc,
and Mother Joneses.
The Bush family tree, the Walker and
Bush ancestry, have always been
expert at exploiting the systems
of American politics and business
to their advantage and especially
the disadvantage of others,
coming out ahead even when
the rest of us are begging
for a scrap of bread from
the tables they control.
How whole can you be
when you can’t see anything
other than your own perspective?
How wrong were we as kids
to think our romantic nostalgia
for revolutions past could
pass the test of our time.
Will it matter when the climate
changes so severely, everyone
we know might end up
destitute like those Katrina
victims who missed the boat,
literally. And what has
literature wrought? Remember
the heroes of Sir Walter Scott?
But that was boyhood heroics.
As a young man it was the
heroes and heroines of
Joyce or Toomer or Rhys.
Certainly no heroes
or heroines in the conventional
sense. Like my
current taste for
the war journalism of
Martha Gellhorn. What
could be more courageous
than her writing? Her life,
I’d say. With all her war
reporting from the front
or near enough to bear
the brunt of bombs and
manmade disaster. And
all her exes,
yet alone in the end.
Or Lee Miller’s
commitment to her life as
her true masterpiece. Or
should that be mistresspiece?
The language fails us now. Orwell
was right, about some things.
“Oh well” is what they wrote
under my high school yearbook
photo as my favorite expression.
Oh well infuckingdeed.
GIVE ME FIVE MINUTES MORE
To sell this thing
To tell my story
To straighten it out
To see her again
To calm him down
To explain to them
To fix that thing
To turn it off
To answer the question
To find the solution
To look it up
To explain myself
To win or lose
To get it right
To let it go
To say goodbye
To say hello
To tell him why
To ask for permission
To show them the way
To pick it up
To put it down
To make them laugh
To calm them down
To shift to neutral
To put it in park
To stand on my head
To remain in the dark
To split the infinitive
To reunite the movement
To fight for the right
To make the improvement
To settle for less
To look for proof
To expose the lies
To check the roof
To fill the cracks
To seal our fate
To kiss the girl
To close the gate
To master the technique
To plug the leak
To acknowledge the geek
To protect the weak
To discover their worth
To inherit the earth
To explode in mirth
To quench this thirst
To quiet that moan
To dig up the bone
To get off the phone
To find a home
To rewrite this poem
DEAR BIRDS
Thank you for your example.
And for eating pesky insects,
and making incessant music
everywhere, like the crow
that woke me my first morning
in Tokyo, with a caw that
sounded strange, as though
in another language than
the ones I knew back home.
I mean the ducks of you, how
do you float on wet feathers?!
The genius of your oily ducts
and webbed feet! And geese,
despite the mess you make
especially now that flying South
is no longer necessary,
you still appear majestic
in your realm, and cranes
and egrets and swans in
dirty polluted pools of
Jersey wasteland. The miracle
of you, and pigeons, so
despised, I still admire
for your tenacity and survival
skills and unique beauty,
the ways you snap your heads
from side to side as if by
some other rhythm than the
ones I know, but most of all you
little ones, sparrows and
finches and wrens and the rest,
and those big among the
small, you Robin Red Breasts,
so proud and independent,
and astonishing Cardinals
and admonishing Blue Jays.
(I just learned from my fourth-
grade son’s science project
hummingbirds are actually
aggressive too, like you!) You
constantly amaze and surprise
me with new facts, oh birds,
which never contradict the in-
spiration of your ability to float
on breezes and make the wind
your world. Ah birds, don’t
let us diminish your variety
with our greed and lack of
a united will. Keep using the
sky for your canvas, making
art that never ceases to
engage the child in us.
from THE 2008 SONNETS
MARCH
John Adams is still missed by some—
others miss Thomas Jefferson. Jon-
athan Williams, endless campaigns,
how debased the word has become.
The loss of my brother Robert,
the quirks of our clan, the culture we
come from, or what I haven’t
figured out yet and maybe never will.
I’m grateful my adolescent dis-
appointment and anger over their
foibles and mistakes, even wrongs,
has given way to an acceptance
that transcends expectations of a
perfection we’re all incapable of.
APRIL
I don’t know about you but beauty
still thrills me—as I pass a small tree
with low hanging branches filled
with extraordinarily bright, white,
blossoms, I have the urge to kiss
one, or all of them, in gratitude.
My day feels more satisfying, my life
more vital, my heart more light and
light filled than before I spied them.
Jason Shinder suffered his illness for
so long, yet, in his presence, you got
the impression his only concern was
your well being despite, given the
odds, his presence being—miraculous.
MAY—THE INFINITE POSSIBILITIES OF ART
Robert Rauschenberg—who is Rachel
Schutz? Can these frightened people who
think their religion’s being suppressed in
this country name one atheist in g
overnment
in any prominent position? What is it with
the women in Asian martial arts movies
that makes them so lovely? The lighting?
The make up? Their natural good looks? Like
the young Elizabeth Taylor or Ava Gardner
or Halle Berry. There’s all kinds of beauty,
and beauty in all kinds, but the kind that
lights up movie screens through the star
of a face—Johnny Depp’s, Keri Russell’s,
Takechi Kaneshiro’s—its own delight.
JULY
The food was delicious and ridiculously
cheap. I thanked her for it, and she thanked
me, genuinely, almost teary-eyed grateful
for my patronage. I asked if the new police
station was helping her business. She shrugged
and said, “little bit” and then “no good now,
everything” then threw up her hands and
ended with “this country broken”—the air
we breathe, generation kill, the terrorist bump,
The New Yorker diversion, Thomas M. Disch,
the gist he killed himself, the book about the
toaster, new wave sci-fi, but I knew him as
a poet, a mischievous glint in his eye, more
deaths of troops in Afghanistan forgotten.
AUGUST
The oil companies that control the Republican
hierarchy, or are it. She’s big into drilling
everywhere and anywhere and making our
economy, like Alaska’s, completely dependent
on oil and oil companies, the governor of
a population one quarter that of Brooklyn.
They care more about Smith Barney than
Barney Smith. Obama’s family members
crowded the stage, this wonderful array of
supposed categories of us, from what’s called
“white” to “black” to Asian to Latino, but
is just the face of this country not as it
should be but as it is sweet moment.
Biden a single father of two—like I once was.
SEPTEMBER
Paul Newman carried his beauty lightly, with
grace and generosity the older he got and the
softer yet more striking his looks became. His
life exemplary to me. Not just the charity but
the clarity of knowing how lucky he was. I can’t
think of another poet outside of Emily Dickinson
as cryptic and yet totally revealing of her inner
life as Joanne Kyger. Obama calmer, taller,
younger, made his points clearly and connected
them more logically, McCain, whiter, more smart
ass, simpler, more repetitive, and meaner, which,
obviously, some like. Think Obama would
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