Day 12: The Physiology of Trains

Monday morning train
soothing chug-a-chug
rolling over the tracks
like a distant thunder
right before the rain falls
echoes this morning
and takes on the rhythm
of my heartbeat

which is still
working its way
towards a destination
that is always outbound
invisible
just over the horizon.
When they warned me

there would always be
days like this
they never said
it could take entire lifetimes
to figure it all out:
the surety in other people’s eyes
absent in mine
the acceptance in their faces
erased from mine.

And all I can do
is sit in the still morning
close my eyes and meditate
over my second cup of coffee
imagining
that someday the train
will someday find a destination
and stop.

Day 11: The Return of Mr. FixIt

The know how is intuitive, stored in the fingers far far away
from the language centers
of the brain. There’s something
about the smell of gasoline
and two cycle engine oil
that tells my bones it is Spring
more so than the grass that needs cutting
or the weeds that need beating back
or the blooming magnolia tree
outside the living room window.
Because I could not,
if my life depended on it,
explain to another living soul
how a lawn mower engine works
I know better than to call myself
a mechanic in mixed company; and
though it has been twenty years
since I last tinkered and labored
with a pull cord that will not give,
I know that if I am patient
and if I don’t set the damn thing
on fire, I will once again feel
that satisfaction that can only come
from the sound of a motor
brought back from the brink
by a pair of hands,
a box-end wrench,
and a flathead screwdriver.

Day 10: The Tao of Wile E. Coyote

i[dedicated to people with a sense of humor]

Most real wisdom comes upon us
when we are very young, before
we develop the temerity to believe
all the small minds who tell us
we do not know enough
we do not think enough
we do not buckle down
and suffer enough, and certainly
not as much as our forefathers
whose names are lost
under all the great headings
in all the erroneous history books
with their study guides
and short answer and multiple guess tests
that somehow manages not to cover
all the evil done
by those people we are raised to believe
are heroes. Carlyle said as much;
but we ignore him. (He was a fascist.)

And so
we run out our days
like Wile E. Coyote
chasing
what we will never have
and even if we did,
we’d come on it too late
to really enjoy it
the way we do
in our starved
and gutted imaginations.
But somehow,
that means more to me
than all the promises I heard
growing up at the end
of the American Century. And if
my heroes are cartoon characters
they are at least
a more honest representation
than the people my daughter learns about
in school.

Day 9: The Community Model

We will like you so long as you
tacitly agree with us by staying silent
and we will welcome you
as long as we know all your secrets first.
Your presence is not required
but we will notice your absence
and take it personally. At some point
in each and every day you must
commit one act, regardless of how futile,
to remind us
we weren’t wrong in our decision to welcome you;
and when we ask for more
you must give without reservation
or any thoughts of yourself, your family,
your sanity, or your soul – because in fact,
they all belong to us
and we are kind enough
to let you borrow them.

People will know you are ours
by the way you dress and the words you use –
which reminds me:
don’t use words we don’t understand
or insult our intelligence
by challenging our beliefs
no matter how unreasonable they are. You will
eat in our restaurants, drink in our bars, and
shop only where we will be able to see
that you have truly embraced us
as (you should hope) we have embraced you. And
after you die,
we will reconstruct the memory of you
so that you will be one of us forever
whether you really were or not;
and your family will not remember you
but instead will embrace our image of you
and your children will aspire to nothing more
than to follow in the footprints
we left for them to find.

Day 7: And the man said -- / Day 8: So It Goes

Day 7: And the man said –


when you are hungry eat,
and
when you are thirsty drink,
and
when you are poor go to work,
and
when you are bored go out and play.
And
when you are horny fall in love,
and
when you are not jack off.
And
when you are upset drink whiskey,
and
when you are upset never cry,
and
when you are not drink beer.
And
when you are dissatisfied buy something,
and
when you are happy sell it all back.
And
when you are about to die
tell people you made peace with God –
because
that will make them feel better and
because
that is the only way
they will leave you alone.

 Day 8: So It Goes


My grandfather was the hardest
working man I have ever known. Even
after he retired from the mill
he had to keep working
like greyhounds have to run
whether there is a track or not. Every morning
except Sunday, he woke up before the sun
drank his coffee and read his paper
while sitting on the toilet and

put on his clean and ironed gray shop clothes
and went out to the workshop
he designed and built himself
and he stayed there
except for a half hour at lunch,
when he went back in the house
so my grandmother could make
his sandwich – unless
someone hired him to build something,
like cute little Nancy Houserman’s parents did.

And when he died
they all attended the visitation,
along with Nancy and her parents
and they all cried a little,
remembering this man
who did not know how to stop
until the cancer gave him
no other option.

And after he was gone
the world moved on
and Nancy and I grew up
and by now
her parents probably sold the house
to people who don’t even know
the name of the man
who built the staircase.

Day 6: When I Lost My Faith

She told me I took things too seriously
and that nobody likes to be around somebody
who can’t talk about the weather
or about the latest episode of Friends
or about the lives of the rich and famous. Your stare
is too intense, she went on, and it makes people
uncomfortable, and when you drink (she went on)
all you do is sit in the corner and watch everybody
like you’re studying them for a science project.
People, she informed me, were not lab rats, and
it wasn’t any wonder that women didn’t like me
because I didn’t act the way women like
and I took flirting too seriously
and would never look them right in eye
at the right moment. And I thought too much, too,
and read the wrong books,
and was entirely too deliberate;
and if I wasn’t going to lose weight,
I should at least learn how to be jolly
so that people wouldn’t worry
that I’d sit on them
just for spite.

Day 5: Monday Through My Window

The morning after the storm
light pours through the dirty glass;
I hang my coat over and block it out
because I have sat up watching
the night stretch into sunrise
and I am not yet ready
for the thunder to stop.

Two New Poems: Days 3 and 4

4/3: Fallen Cedar


My landlord’s sons made short work
of the fallen cedar in the side yard and
hauled it away in the beds
of several full-sized pick up trucks;
I didn’t approach them and offer
to help or to ask them what
they intended to do with the wood
because it was a silly question
and because they might have noticed
from my tone and general demeanor
that I will miss that ugly tree;
it was here long before me
and maybe
before this little old house;
and I also don’t want
my landlord’s sons to see
the guilt in my face because
it was probably my arrival
that made them remove it
sooner than they would have
otherwise.

4/4: In a Moment of Silence 20 Minutes After Waking


We slept late but it’s still
too early and the coffee
takes too long to kick in.
These Sunday mornings
remind me of others

when I was appropriately shod
in uncomfortable new shoes,
fit into unyielding new clothes
and herded off
so’s not to be late
for the absurd Sunday School
Fashion Show and yet another
telling of how the dead
can rise again and how
crucial it is to believe
in the impossible even though
upstairs, the preacher is,
at that very moment,
reading a long list
of the sick and the dying
who will not return
in spite of
what they professed
to believe.

Looking back now
I still find it impossible
to believe or to understand
how that all worked, or why
on those mornings,
it was more of a sin
to sleep in
than on a morning like this one
in which
there is no resurrection
save for the one offered
by a fresh cup of coffee,
a book of poetry,
and a comfortable chair.

The Inner Workings of Nostalgia

The best part of my day
is walking out to the mail box
because the neighbor lady
watches me and wonders
what a man my age
is doing at home
at that time of day. Then

I walk to the bar
and catch up on the local news
not covered in the paper
between Rotary Club check presentations
and JV and Varsity Sports
and the ever growing obituaries
that corresponds creepily

to the growing number
of houses for sale
and the emptying store fronts.
Once in a while
the old men include me
in their conversations
but that’s only because

there’s no one else there
to talk to. Mostly I nod
and laugh and when
I get home I wonder
how long these small towns
have left
before all the old timers die

and all the grandkids move
to where the jobs are
and the farm fields are sold
and spliced into house lots
and the bricks that cover Market Street
are recycled and built into a monument
for a town whose name
no one knows how to spell.

Fiddlesticks

Brightly colored plastic eggs and fresh squirrel traps
are hanging from the trees,
blowing carefree in the breeze
while the school kids,
on Spring Break, get in
all the play time they can
until its time for dinner
and talk about the new clothes
they must wear
when they go to Easter Service.
The gardeners are out mulching
and turning over tired dirt
and the obsessive lawn mower
is manicuring his grass

while the missus
is in the kitchen casually
dunking hard boiled eggs
in brightly colored dye
while talking on the phone
to her best girlfriend
who is going on and on about
that poor young woman who
hung herself last week
in the County Jail. Tsk tsk, they say.
Poor, poor girl, they say.
What would make anyone
missus begins… and a mother, too
the her friend says, only to interrupt
herself  So they
change the subject
to talk about spring hams

because one of them
nearly drops an egg
from the distraction of wondering
what such a fast suicide
must feel like
instead of the long slow one
necessary to get into Heaven.