Attic

Up in the attic old toys scatter
Dust floats around in streams of light
Blocks and dolls and trains that mattered
Up in the attic old toys scatter
Cast a spell of small feet's patter
Their morning joy a buoyant delight
Up in the attic old toys scatter
Dust floats around in streams of light

Form: Triolet ABaAabAB in iambic tetrameter

Mall Hell

Underneath the loud
bad music and bad
food smells of
a shopping mall
is something worse.

Were they to turn down
the sound you would
hear I kid you not
loud thought broadcast
from the entire mob's
heads shouting
I want I want I want.

The loud bad music
and bad food smells
are simply a barrier
like earplugs to block
the thoughts of yearning
that scream from people's
heads in malls
buy buy buy.

This was discovered
in a New Jersey mall
Paramus I believe
during the famous
mall power outage
of August 1993.

As everyone stood
in stunned silence
unable to shop
there could be heard
an ear-shattering
chant of
it's never enough
more.

The Ones in the White Coats

There's nothing a doctor can't cure
said the doctor
except for certain diseases
but a broken heart?
we don't call it that
but here are some pills
that will help
blue white green
missing your buddies
who died in the war
you could just break in half?
Here is a cocktail of pills
to cure you
pink purple yellow orange red
Fear for no reason?
Need to flee germs?
Inability to focus?
Jobless foreclosures
tornadoes floods
global warming
phobia?
Pills, pills, pills, pills
pills, pills, pills
we know what we're doing
we all went to school
we're the ones in the white coats
not you, you and you.

Fate

She always thought of suicide
since she was a little girl
she felt she was born so old
that old people die
and so should she.

She grew up thinking of suicide
escaping to another world
acting like she wanted to live
running marathons in a rage
but hardly eating at all
always on the brink.

She married thinking of suicide
when family members refused to come
she would punish them with suicide
they all deserved it more than she.

She had babies and thought of suicide
they would be better off without her
she was a terrible mother
who could barely tolerate her fears
that she might lose them to harm
with her they would grow up fearful
they would have terrible lives.

She thought of accidents she could have:
cars swerving on a highway
drowning in the ocean
pills were too obvious
so was jumping from a bridge.
Suicide was always by her side
her ghost, her shadow, her friend
eating and dreaming suicide.

The children grew up and left her
she thought of suicide every day
aching for its solace escape from pain
the pain of what? there was nothing wrong
she must have been born with a suicide gene
she kept waiting for the time to be right
but it never was no matter
what age her children were
they would never forget the suicide
reverberate down the family generations.

She thought of suicide every day
until she was eight-five
and lying there at the end with her children
and grandchildren, her weeping husband
she told them all "I've had a beautiful life,
don't weep for me."
And indeed she thought back
she was telling the truth
It was a beautiful life.

But she still wished she could
have chosen the end
that she could have chosen
where and when and how
and not have it chosen for her
the worst fate of all.

Where?

"Where hath thou been sister?
Killing swine."*
Where hath thou been brother?
Doing time.
Where hath thou been feline?
Chasing my tail.
Were hath thou been hunter?
Shooting quail.
Where hath thou been God?
Watching TV.
Where hath thou been Evil?
Got out of jail free.
Where are we all on this planet that spins?
Spinning new stories to pay for our sins.


*Macbeth: one witch to the other

Memories

"Shall I compare thee to a summers day?"
He recited as he proposed.

"Thou art more lovely and more temperate"
as he held her hand with the ring.

"Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May"
as she birthed their four one after the other.

"And summer's lease hath all too short a date"
when cancer ravaged, the children grown.

"Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines"
as they all stood sweating at her grave.

"And often is his gold complexion dim'd"
he thought when they said he was wasting away.

"And every fair from fair sometimes declines"
always, he thought, it always does.

"By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed"
as he sat in his dark room day after day.

"But the eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long live this and this gives life to thee."

He took the whole bottle with a blue glass
And lay down to sleep and breath and see.

Cat Scratch Fever

The average child
wants seven cats
that will scratch
seven couches
and be a pain
in the neck
for doting mothers
who daily scrub
boxes of stench
while the cats prance
we didn't do it

Fairy Tale

once upon a time there
was a little girl who liked
to play dress-up and
pretend she had
a blog

now normally little
girls would prefer
to have a prince
transformed from
a frog

but this little girl
was odd

she wore her big
straw hat with
the red peony
she draped the purple
cape over her shoulders
and commenced
to order
her blog around

the blog didn't mind and
did everything she asked
until it took on a life of
its own and suddenly there
were voices of strangers
coming out of it and telling
her their life stories and
jokes and the news of the
world and other things
that puzzled her and made
her feel like the voices were
thoughts in her head and the
people were talking to each other
sometimes screaming
sometimes feeling sad
or pretending like she was
to be somebody else
and this all made her
feel very, very sleepy
and she fell asleep
and dreamed that she
had a frog
instead.

Security

The man could not find his keys while
the woman shielded her eyes from
the explosion and the boy pretended to
eat the worm the girl had dug up
from the garden that pulsed by
the river that reflected
the red dress worn by the movie star
in designer sunglasses posing for
the paparazzi while soldiers
secured the perimeter with
seven tanks that ensured
the safety of their citizens
as non-citizens strolled over
landmines.

The Secret Key to Poetry

Poetry is a brick wall with a door that must be drawn in poetry chalk
The key to the door must be carved from the spine of a Stegosaurus
Secret handshakes and passwords are passed along in dreams
Dance steps required to enter: tango, hip-hop, waltz, ballet, belly dance, and the Sufi spin
In that order
Musical meters are a must: syncopation, adagio, saxophone improvisations, and country western
Mandatory forays into Virulent Villanelles, Shyster Sestinas, and Non-Returnable Nonnets. Eco-Haiku and High-Strung Haibun will not do.
Should you fulfill these requirements you may stand on line at the door. Yes that line. The one drawn in chalk.