. Spinning .

A single day each year
smells of the heat
of young summer
of rain
and the pungent scent
of pavement steams
through the city
then fades with its presence
while May and July travel on
and forgotten in the next
fall and winter
to surprise with its
urgent intensity and
the next year’s
first rain

Without its double-u
will becomes ill;
funny how places of things
and all things in place
turn soil into sand
maples to cacti
and adding salt to a stream
makes an ocean

It’s a group nailed tightly together
in rows of wood and paper boxes
each with a single door
that opens in, opens out
like estuaries onto the main stream
of political hallways that run
downriver, carrying their barge
that drags the waters
of concepts and theory.

There is no pause at mossy banks
no inlets unvalidated
by the iceberg that flows
according to whim of the sun
and its generated heat;
no ingress without a ticket
sorted out by color or by style
or by the ticketmaster’s knowledge
of his kin.

I’ve been stuck on the Alzheimer’s series of poems that came in a rush for two days and then dwindled. I’m glad that the feelings came out, the memories of memory lost. Just sort of fell into it before I realized what was happening and now that I’d like to continue, the moments are there and yet I cannot find the words to let them ride out to freedom.

It’s like crawling back into one’s cave.

I wake up to
the ghost of her,
all that is left
stands there
in the dark above my couch–
her couch–on which,
half a dozen years ago
her independence
would never have allowed
for me to sleep there
stay there
a safeguard for my father’s
sleep; rest he needs
as temporary illness
interrupts
his normal watch.

Does she know me
does she know why I
am here?
How does she remember
how to find me?
She wants him,
and doesn’t understand
I am a wall that
talks her back to her bed.
Something leads her
to my side, again
and again,
this night, until
I bring her downstairs
to the kitchen and a cup
of hot brewed tea
with raspberry cognac
for sleep.

I didn’t see it but I’d heard
the sky had fallen
somewhere in the southern part of Spain.
And someone (again, I don’t know for a fact)
had tried to patch the cracks with duct tape
rolled out like ribbons
and someone else stuffed cotton
in the holes
that looked like clouds
and then a lady from Wisconsin
sent a box of silver thumbtacks
which someone used to pin the edges
to the earth
and looking up at night
they shone like stars so
for a while,
everyone relaxed, ignored
the rumble that they said was thunder
and smiling at their handiwork,
sighed.

Magnolia waits
drinks the wine of April
clings to her wraps
of petal softness
purple, pink

Magnolia wants
that special someone
her mother, friends
and books had said
would come

Magnolia feels
before she sees him
dew glistening as she
opens wide to take in
the morning sun

I count the years again
on fingers she can cling to
and tell her, though
the answer is the same
it was an empty space
of time ago.

She asks about
the children
“Whose?” I ask
“I don’t know,” she says
So like an echo I repeat
her children’s names.

My name, my sisters’
my dad’s;
children, husband that
she’s forgotten and I cry
for too soon she’ll forget
to breathe.

aka “Who put a quarter in the machine?”

Hush! Wait,
did a poet just die?
slipping into my soul
ink bleeding on paper
as a last chance attempt
to sing?

Does the Muse
who handles
mishandling of words
shake in despair
and cry to the Gods
at this thief?

What then
the reason
the
sorting
of sounds
the
the
inspiration.

Okay, away from the serious to a lighter streak of concept:

Stumbling around in a dream, I
picked up a key with no door
and walked on no path
marked with a red-dotted line
with cloud wisps wrapped
around my ankles

“Well goodbye,” she says
standing there in front of her house
in a gay red wool coat, her handbag in hand,
an open smile on her face

I glance at my dad, caught by the pain
in his eyes that is louder than my reply
“Mom, you’re coming too,”
we all laugh, we all hurt, except her

“Okay,” she says, oblivious to
the machination of the dynamics
of the interaction and cogs changing gear
in a family lost in her mind.

Geese sing as they fly or maybe
it’s just conversation
in lyrical beat to the rhythm of
wings slipping through sky

Trees grow tall overnight or is it
the time between branches
that fork and sprout out in prickly fir
needles like the ones in her mind

She stepped onto her porch or perhaps
her mother’s–it could be–and bent down
to pick up the present–or maybe the past–
in the pieces of a shattered white rose

What better time to warn the unwary wannabe poet than during National Poetry Month and from Writer Beware we get the following semi-good news:

Until very recently, www.Poetry.com was the Internet home of the infamous International Library of Poetry (ILP), the nation’s premier (and I use that adjective with irony) vanity poetry anthologizer. But in early March, the Poetry.com domain was purchased by self-publishing service Lulu.

The good news is that Poetry.com has gone under and so will not be available to take advantage of any more writers; the semi-good news is that no one is quite sure yet that Lulu will keep higher standards.

Rebuilding walls that have fallen
with the onerous weight of hope
and trust that came like chisels;
flakes of suspicion flying,
each false smile laying
another layer low

Now each slight a stone, each
pebble a pain, each
lie lost and forgotten;
mortared by grit and tears
skin of granite, smooth as slate
the tower grows

Here the light’s a different shade;
veiled, a whore’s red scarf
grown dusty on a lampshade
paints the walls with sex
to dim the glare.

An aqua boa slinks coiled
around the bedpost,
feathers frayed at edges
once sharp and clear,
now soft as milk.

A golden chime rings out;
hands have hit the spot
where time stands still
and still wraps silken
around the sleeper.