Cat Poem

My cat is gray with yellow eyes and walks
on a once broken in three places leg.
My cat sleeps sixteen hours a day
and eats every meal like he will not see another.

My cat is slow and quiet like age
but active behind the yellow eyes.
My cat is confident in safety
sleeping on visitors laps without fear.

My cat headbutts calves and cupboard doors
stumbles head first into pillows and walls.
My cat is weak and eats only special
expensive food I'm not convinced he needs.

My cat is mischief biting the hands that
feed him grooming the other cat, my beard.
My cat is not graceful and he is loud
he is altogether a perfect cat.

Watching the Giants Play the Marlins

All the Giants fans are jealous when Hanley
hits that home run and the new Marlins
Home Run Machine whirls to life.
Descended from Bill Veeck's exploding thing
at the Old Comiskey Park in Chicago
this new model has fish that glow arcing
yellow and orange on invisible hooks. 

Maybe the Giants need their own machine.
An inflatable Garcia that plays
Scarlet Begonias or St. Stephen?
Willie Mays drop kicking a voodoo doll
of Barry Bonds into McCovey Cove?
That's slightly less awesome than flying fish.
Is there a game on somewhere?

Some Person

I just spent twenty minutes talking to
a man who cried about his stepfather.
He cried about his daughter moving away
and I told him he could change himself,
that he could move from crying in bars,
crying in front of strangers who don't care.
The second time a drunk has told me I
speak from the heart, it's in my eyes he says.
The second time I replied thank you, sir.
Which is all I can say.

That man's soul is damaged by the past
That man's soul is damaged by the dollar
That man's soul is damaged by a story.
He's more a story around a person
than a person who has a story.
He doesn't hold his story he soaks
himself in it daily.
Eddie says no pleases no thank yous he
just comes in every day to get smashed.
Eddie says a piece of shit whose hand I shook.

Differences

It does not rain here like it
does in Washington.
Here it comes in torrents one
month of every year.
The Evergreen State needs grey
clouds to stay that way.

You can see it in people
the way the sun shines
the pain with which they approach
clouds rolling over
the mountains, ghostly fingers
clutching winter rains.

After a Party

The yelling starts again, this time around
Some guy who put his arm around you.
Did he or didn't he? Did he or didn't he?

Did he rub your back and talk in low tones
Unheard above the glasses on tabletops
Of eyes that see and understand too well?

The words start, the ones meaning
The argument is already halfway to silence.
Bombs and syllables crushing walls.

The volume isn't what hurts us the most
It is the tone that corkscrews into your ears
And pulls out peace, quiet, calm.

The bombs don't mean that much
The tone gives them violence and yield. 
I clutch my pillow and look at my bear.

It has brown glass eyes that never
Hold that tone in them. I try to sleep
After this small fight in this uninvited war.

Patterns

Pattern of the day ahead:
General grogginess of rising at six
The fog moves from the head to the road
When the drive starts at seven.

Classes, one after another, each a vibrant
Daily chaos in a term length container.
Meeting after, tapping pens
Waiting for others to stop talking.

Home, same, quiet and lovely
Gradual winding down with wine
Wife and cats.
Pattern of the day passed.

Purple Math Book

Purple math book on a desk in front of giggles incarnate.
We cannot stop, not with those aliens trying to explain
Things we already know, commenting on that kid
Picking his nose every day wiping it on his pants.

I never laughed like that before. Knees banging
The underside of the desk, sides ready to burst
Breathing increasingly difficult as the yelling started
From the front of the classroom.

Purple math book on a desk in the hallway can't
Be partners with Dave's anymore after today.
I couldn't stop and Dave couldn't stop
And the hallway couldn't save the teacher.

I kept writing those speech bubbles and kept
Right on laughing. So did Dave, even after his desk
Moved to face away from the window in the door.
I could see him shaking, hiding his face from the teacher.

Thank You, Mary

It's in the eyes of the people that glow

Some backwater memory of 80s radio
Of KRNA of Mark Voss and Glenn Gardner
Of KKRQ of Captain Steve and Mary of the Heartland
Who ran the metal show on Sunday nights.

I pictured her as the Dead Milkmen's Punk Rock Girl
A faceless voice soaked in anarchy
Guiding you during her day shift until
That song sets you off
                                   Can you cook? Can you sew?
                                   Well I don't want to know!
Wait! Is that a
                                    That's not what you need on the inside
                                   To make the time go!
Mandolin? This band only plays Aqualung!

Instant confusion on the drive down College Street
Must get home and
What? What?
                                   Roll us both down a mountain
                                   And I'm sure the fat man would win!
Call that number for the secret knowledge
What album is this on?
Benefit.
Walk back downtown, take the steps
To BJ records two at a time and buy that record.
A friend in the business called this
The Wet Dream of DJs.  


 

Hope

The next day will be better. I can't be in
The moment as too many moments of
Mine are regrets. The next moments will be
Better, joyful, filled with easy.

Backyard Frontyard

Clothesline overgrown
Tall grass and rhubarb
Peony bushes
And the grave of my first dog.

Panasonic box he had a stroke someday
I hope someone finds him and wonders why
Bones are buried with toys buried with love.

A manhole cover makes a good homeplate
For whiffle ball games. The Roe brothers had
One too. But not as good as mine they had
No trees to hit through
No leaves to inhibit fly balls that would land
On Mr. Stimmels bank.

Not knowing property lines we would
Gleefully use his drive as an end zone
Bleacher combo target to hit to to run
To always yelled at always scoffing always
Mrs. Stimmel yelling always but not him.

I found a picture of him once a coach
Of a womans softball team it was him
In face but not in body God it was
Thin but that chin. That chin would break granite
Watching us made the chin wag, smile, glow, beauty.

Alcatraz

The island is hard
How can concrete sprout Western Gulls
In the ruins of the Warden's House?
The city is there, immediate, taunting.
Women bars and bookstores on every corner.
What did they think, looking at Coit Tower
Or the bridge?

What would be different for them? The Tower is the same
I climbed up this morning, complaining
About hips and knees. Feeling the pain
In my calves on the way down.
God how boring this must have been and how
Expensive, 400 or so cons on an island.

Animals in a cage. This was the city zoo.
Look and you might see
Kreepy!
Whitey!
Scarface!
Birdman!

Here we see the con in its natural habitat, playing
Contract bridge.
What?
Hardened killers playing contract bridge?
That's what old couples did in the 1950s in bad TV shows
Until Dad had too much to drink and embarrassed himself
And Mom by telling the guests they were horseshit.
That sort of honesty was always around the crooks and cheats
Playing contract bridge, looking at the city.
They were old couples married to the nights
When the doors closed
And the city glowed through bars
Taunting, dressing down in quiet thoughts
This is what you gave up when you
Stole
Muscled
Shot
Killed
A picture colored from memory
Never experienced first hand.

I didn't know

Why?
What happened?
How did it come down that you could not tell us?
We never talked much after I left. Your last email
Around Rachel's birthday mentioned
We
     Need to
     Connect.
You knew and never told us.

That night I got there with Terry
The smell of Winstons everywhere
Open Tums on the table next to the chair
Covered with the Bears blanket you
Wrapped yourself in while Mom
Begged you to go to the hospital.
We sat down at the kitchen table.
I thought of the day grandma died
And you called Garry at work.
The supervisor said he isn't here and you
Told him that he was. Garry's voice faint on the line:
What?
Garry, Grandma's dead.
                                               Mom: What a terrible thing
                                                          to say over the phone.
When my sister in law called, I knew some one died.
No one calls unless someone died.
                                              Karen: Are you sitting down?
I knew it was not Mom.

II.

Why?
Chicken and not ribs in the fridge
Plus quitting smoking plus exercise
Adds up to you knew something was wrong.
You had no insurance
Did you know what was happening?
Were you scared?
Mom told me you could hardly walk downstairs
Said you were freezing.
Did you know what was happening?
I slept in your chair that night finding
I could not sleep at all and looked at those Tums.
The man asked me the next day if I needed
To
See
You.

To
Say
Goodbye.

I didn't ask to see you
I didn't need closure.
Sleeping in your chair
Under your blankets
In your house
Was all the closure I needed.

Bridge

Third time across
No toll northbound

Anticipation
Past the last Presidio exit
And Fort Point
The edges fall away
Joggers, school kids mix with
Art Deco mist on that impossible color
And Alcatraz and Marin and the Pacific
And you want to stop the car and run sometimes
To the edge
And jump right off.