What's In The Wind

I think about the crash of the markets in 1929
and the Great Depression.
I think about people jumping out of windows.
Men so desperate they cannot even bear to
wake up and see the sun
one more morning.
Families wiped out in a single day.
Men and women standing in bread lines
with no hope.
Children working in factories.
Long hours
toiling in filth
trying to keep heads above water
and eyes on God.
I think about all of this
and I am scared.
I am scared about what is happening to my country.
There is so much talk now,
but no one seems to have the answer.
$700 billion dollars thrown at a problem
like Pollock throwing paint,
waiting to see where it will land,
waiting to see if it will be a masterpiece
or shit.
I want to run and hide,
run and sit deep in the woods
and listen to the birds chirp
and never come out.
Outside my window,
the new wind chime
my lover gave me clangs
oblivious
to what’s in the wind.

Sell Sell Sell

Just when I think she is sane,
she surprises me and says something like,
“Mark is the devil.”
or, “Read the Bible.”
or “Only a very few Jews will get in to Heaven.”
This is the woman I took stock advice from last week.
This is the woman who told me to “sell.”
This is the woman I based my entire portfolio on.
I must have been crazy.
All my life
she has been in my head
like a dying bird,
flapping and screaming,
leaving me so exhausted I can’t see straight.
Now
I turn to her for advice?
What was I thinking?
Didn’t I know she was still
out of her mind?
Didn’t I know she has always been
out of her mind?
Why can’t I just accept that I am
on my own now?
That I have always been
on my own.
Outside my window
some truck keeps revving
its engine
over and over again
but never leaving.
Why doesn’t it just stop,
call for help,
and get towed?
Can’t it see it’s not getting anywhere?
I should wash my feet and nails.
Final as a plum tree.

Lipstick and Pit Bulls

The world is crumbling
before our very eyes
and we are too blind to see it.
Markets are crashing.
Liberties are being stripped away.
The global economy as we know it is collapsing
and we are being fed
lipstick and pit bulls.
I have had it with beehive hairdos and flag pins and
senile war heroes.
I am tied of babies and moral majorities
and patriotic crap.
I don’t want to hear another foul cry of sexism
from the party who hasn’t ever given a damn about women.
Keep your hands off my uterus.
Don’t come crying that you are the party of change
when you’ve voted with Moron for the last eight years.
Don’t come knocking on my door with your blow-up Barbie doll
telling me she’s a substitute for a Senator with a brain.
You teach abstinence.
That worked out real well for you,
didn’t it?
You say, “drill, baby drill.”
I say, you’re stupid and irresponsible
and you better think twice
because the amount of destruction you will cause to the environment
will far outweigh any benefit your drilling could do.
You say
fight.
I say enough.
Now is not the time for heavy-handed rhetoric
and muscle flexing.
We need someone with a brain.
We need a thinker.
We need someone who will take the time to listen to both sides.
Haven’t we had enough thoughtless, moronic leadership?
Haven’t we had enough lies and deception?
Aren’t we tired of being known to the rest of the world as
the gun-totting, murderous U.S.A?
When are we going to learn we don’t own the planet
and we aren’t the center of it?
I hope soon.

Fast Asleep

Another one bites the dust.
It’s like that now.
Couple after couple
falling down,
falling in to the abyss.
The depressed.
The Jew.
The Catholic.
The tailor and the Italian.
The drunk.
The squadron of bachelors
raped by wedded bliss.
They creep up
and reach their pitiful hands into the jeweled box.
They lick the fringe of pink,
taste the flower inside,
and succumb
to, “what’s for breakfast?”
Years
of mailboxes
and kids
and 4th of July’s later,
they are scratching their heads
and balls
and wandering up and down hallways
like lost pigs.
The dream.
The gate.
The colors,
all grey now.
Their sexless jails
leave them no where to go.
The bachelor’s dust
that once made them glisten so
is no more.
Where did it go?
Where did we all go?
Love affairs
sleep
hardly at all.

Steady On

Everything is collapsing.
The housing market.
The stock market.
Everything.
I keep telling myself not to worry,
that it all could be worse.
That I could be living in a hut
eating fried mud,
and running for my life.
Or be homeless from one of the past hurricanes.
I have food
and a roof over my head
and a car.
This morning I ate a peanut butter
and jelly sandwich
and mopped my floors
and scrubbed my tub.
I sat down in my chair and stared at the tiny maple tree
outside my door.
Nature doesn’t know
that the American economy
(and most of the rest of the world’s)
is in the toilet.
Nature doesn’t care.
The trees are still the same.
The squirrels are still busy preparing for winter.
There is a peace and constancy
to what is outside
that is very comforting to remember.
Winter, Spring, Fall, and Summer
all will come and go again.
And the trees and flowers will respond in kind.
I will try to remember this
and be like my little maple,
steady and calm
unafraid to face
what will come
trusting that even when things look their most bare,
all is not lost.

Distant Beauty

Last night
we were part of the problem.
We drove to a gas station to fill up
before the gas hikes from Ike got any worse.
On the way out of my drive
I saw a baby bunny, the size of my palm,
hop into the flower bed.
Then as I drove down the drive,
I saw the mother and baby deer
that have been coming to my yard for the past few weeks,
bedded down in the tall grass.
I don’t know why,
but for some reason
they seem to return here.
It feels as if they think they live here.
They graze on grass and leaves in the afternoon
in the back yard
and then sleep in the front yard at night.
It always just the two of them,
no other deer ever come.
It is such an amazing gift to have them here and watch them.
They are so beautiful,
and graceful,
and peaceful creatures.
I’d like to name them
and get to know them.
I’d like to touch them
and keep them in my backyard as pets.
But that would be wrong.
So I have to enjoy them when they come,
never knowing when or if
I will ever
see them again.

Money

What is all this talk about money?
Money corrupts the soul.
Money is the source of too much fighting.
Money is the diamond lost,
the red-haired toddler in the family portrait,
the one you want to avoid.
Money is a disease,
a possessed woman
thin and triangular
pulling you from room to room
by your balls.
Money is the blemished son,
the cracked daughter,
the veiled bride
ugly on her wedding night.
Money walks in cities
like a whore
taking all that it can get
and promising more.
I know of what I speak.
I once desired the tender green too.
I listened with glee to the sound of silver
in my pockets,
found delight in picking up the stray nickel.
Marveled at my luck when my stocks went up.
Now I know the truth.
Money is the divider.
It separates the haves from have nots.
The winners from losers.
The prisoner from the free man.
Money is the chain that keeps us bound
to mediocrity
forever.

The Body

I can not be the body now.
The question at the mouth.
The gravy well.
Eating soil
and chewing my heart
like a country without sleep.
I tried
eighteen
and the muzzle of oxygen and vomit.
I tried to control
the comings and goings
of rivers
(as if I could)
and have been left empty and older.
There are no more questions to answer
just the mud
on the carpet to clean.
There is always more mud to clean.
I wanted a birthday.
I wanted a cake.
I wanted a day without tears
and starts to wish upon.
I wanted to believe the kisses
and the pink hand upon my leg.
I wanted to believe it all would come true -
letters and words
and ornaments made out of silver and gold.
I wanted my garden.
Yet all along
the shoebox lay open
and the moon refused to shine.
The blackness a constant companion
for me to lick
like a scarf.
I wanted joy,
a hymn to take hold of,
a cloud to sail upon.
I wanted the eyes of a blue fish
swimming in the ocean,
sailing off into madness.
I wanted something that was only mine
and no one else’s.