Day Poems

Fallboard Down

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Hit by a stun gun
or tranquilizer dart,
she can’t tell.

Two hipster dudes
in skinny jeans, rolled-up
sleeves, creative facial hair,

bang on a beat-up
piano rolled onto the sidewalk.
Yesterday it stood

abandoned on the tree
lawn, fallboard down.

Summer passes the baton
to Fall. It doesn’t go smoothly.
Summer resists letting go.
Drops it on purpose.

Fall swoops in, takes hold,
appears to have a firm grip,
begins shaking leaves,
dries out the air.

But then Summer’s last breath,
hot and pungent,
burns off morning frost,
suppresses red and orange brilliance.

Fools, everyone, for a single
strange day in October.

Dance transforming quietude,
song breaking silence.

She refuses to commit
to a mood
till the keys declare
up or down.

Who Wrote This, Again?

/ Arambler / 2 Comments

I.

he decides
not to decide
how to end
a sentence
till she decides
what she wants

an entire torso
disappears into
the ambivalence

being a torso
it has no legs
or feet
to walk away with
no brain to use
for simple navigation

without a wrist
it can’t wear
a GPS watch

look closely
at that photo taken
on a Thursday
long ago
when it still had
everything to lose

quick before it evaporates
a Polaroid
magically undevelops

all the secret posing
and floating off
now gone

2.

he changes careers again
goes into women’s coats

makes her insides crawl
to hear a stranger in the cafe
click his pen incessantly
while surfing the ‘net

buds in his ears to protect him
from the fingernail
on chalkboard
phenomenon he causes

when it stops
relief floods
into the flume
of an open mind

teetering on the edge
of nonsense
she wonders why she has to
put her hands in the air

to become someone
else’s sweet surrender

Not from the Common Cup

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No one else called you Lester. No one knows
I broke your typewriter
save you. No one will call me

Esther now. I see the jumbled mass
of timber holding up the Grain Belt
billboard sign. It doesn’t change

even when the river below breaks
open mid-sigh after months
of rigid silence.

Cross out drunk—
write down sick.
This city turns a green

we tried to dye that windbreaker.
Remember the stranger who left it
on your veranda above the cobbler’s shop.

Nothing is wasted
in this world—is a lie.

He’s got to work. The banging has stopped
for you. For me, I’m left holding
jokes no one else gets—inside out.

Poet = Maker

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come meet your poet
who rewrites you
each night
after the local news

let’s the new version cure
for 24 hours
or millennia
no slow death before noon

no archangels
that trumpet rhymes
they serve coffee in stained
glass ruby goblets

no handles
the world goes Manx
for a day
or three hundred

ways to skin
your knee
in a gravel pit

the poem
not the poet
controls the moon

the tides
and women
that’s another story

Bridge

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For MJN crossing beneath,
for NYC connecting across,
for The Brooklyn Bridge rescue working destiny

Advance your vantage
point, collapse
your facade of steel,
your gutted concrete floor.

Collide your bridge maker
with mine, collage your hand over mouth
with my eyes shut,
vocal chords in strangulation—

a scream
a void

to coalesce to convalesce
on one promenade
of material unidentifiable yet.
Coordinate the crossing—

bare feet
dust
ash caked faces

no veil could protect,
suits meaningless, ties undone
till they become arms swaying.
A human chain

of events. A human
behavior changing—
never
no way
when
now.

They designed bridges
to be passageways.
Make them good
to get no further

than this. It is still where it has been,
the destination stands
between these pedestrian elevating towers
still here.

Sidewalks of New York Speak

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You wander through
your grandmother’s New England garden
in red sneakers with an old red
wooden toy organ
strapped around your neck.
Turning the crank, humming along:

East Side, West Side,
all around the town.

Before you can read
you’ll see the writing
in blue chalk at your feet.

Come find me.
Memorize that map
of my guts.
Know me better
than your own hands
that dig into pockets

in search of
an old subway token
with a tiny Y cut out.

Never learn
to drive. Love my one-way streets
and two-way sidewalks forever instead.

The Leaving

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Walk just a few more blocks
before it’s time
to catch the shuttle
off the island
into Queens
to discover new reasons
to gripe about LaGuardia.

Just one more block
with Greta Garbo
where I can sing of solitude
deep inside the crowd—

compressed /
language /
poetry /
New /
York /
City

Proteus (Old Man of the Sea)

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“I love my free spirit.
I trust my creative power.
I generate the wind beneath my wings
and enjoy the journey.”
—Michael Nash Mantra

Since you died three years ago,
whenever I fly
I find you
in the clouds.

On this date, you have come to me
as a wave breaking
against a jetty
in Oak Bluffs,

as a young fox
darting along a beach road
on the farthest tip
of Cape Cod at dawn.

As I board another plane
bound for New York,
I wonder what form
you’ll assume this year.

Gulls don’t
get so high.

You might wait till I land.
The wrong season
for a Sandy Hook harbor seal
haul out.

No, something will soar
overhead if I can be
patient, still
as the Palisades.

Anything with wings, Dad.
Show me anything with wings.

Why

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because
Minnesota boys

the first cool night in late August
and a blanket
pulled off the shelf

because
the Mississippi
any time of day or season

because
First Avenue
with its ceiling replaced

because
winter windchill
bragging rights

the first warm day
in April
maybe it’s May maybe June

because
Loring Park
Armajani’s Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge

John Ashbery
in both directions

because
sculptures by
Noguchi Shea Serra

Lake of the Isles
Cedar Lake Trail
Minnehaha Creek

because
the C.C.

because
Minnesota boys

Nobody’s Sitting in Your Chair

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I want you
to read me
all the time

even in the bath
even in your sleep

I’m so vain
I want you to want to believe
each poem is about you

they are about everyone
and no one

till the reader
enters the room
surveys the tile floor

wooden tables
plaster walls
painted cautionary yellow

chooses a chair
sits down
becomes part of the scene

an empty folding one
blocks an open window

its half-drawn shade
flaps in the breeze