Five Photographs of Five Notebooks 2014-2016.

 

Photograph One: The aforementioned Notebooks, contents varied.

 

Photograph Two: Unbullshitable. Alex references, "poop everywhere." No context provided. A quote by Jack from the novel Office Girl that reads, "I just can't be around people all the time because it makes me sad to be around them sometimes."

 

Photograph Three: Boston excerpts. The Verb Hotel as olfactory experience. A record of seeing Warhol's Red Disaster at the Museum of Fine Art. A melancholy morning on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

 

Photograph Four: an unfinished poem, The Velocity of Loneliness. "I heard the wood floor/creak at your step/and smiled thinking/you were walking/my way. Then I heard the door/and realized/I was alone.

 

Photograph Five: The page on which the teacher wonders about the security protocol for tear soaked standardized tests, and later has a panic attack brought on, in part, by Willie [sic] Loman.

Like Christmas

 

We suspected he had guns,

which made things all the more

unsettling 

when he shouted at his wife

until the cruisers arrived.

Red and white lights 

flashed in our window

onto a living room wall

like Christmas

as he talked to the cops

in his driveway, arms crossed,

calm, measured as a diplomat.

A Moment When Everything Seems Alright.

 

My neighbors and I

have collectively strung 

thousands of lights 

to porches, posts,

and windowsills

in order to beat 

back the darkness 

in our hearts.

If I stare down

my street as dusk 

passes,

breathing deep 

unseasonably warm

November,

allow my mind

to become 

uncharacteristically

uncluttered,

everything seems alright,

which is a cool

feeling 

now and then,

all any of us wants,

really,

even when my

waking mind,

cluttered as it is,

knows better.

4th Street Bridge

4th Street traveling west curves through 

oak trees and houses, up and over Black River.

I have crossed this bridge

hundreds of times since childhood.

It's my empty pre-dawn 

route to work these days,

A few days ago, in still dark morning,

I thought I'd come back around

to see the full moon, corner of my eye, but 

it was bullshit, an illuminated window, 

top floor, in the riverside high rise.

The moon further west,

like being fooled by an old friend.

I reached for my coffee, and

approached the stoplight

certain only of uncertainty,

a wisdom born of bridges.

My Memory the Liar.

The evening sun shines through

backyard oaks at angles

difficult to understand.

A breeze creates strange shadows

on our lawn as blades blow

every direction at once.

I thought of geometry.

I think I got a "B" in that class

30 years ago, but

my memory is often a liar.

A fly circles my ankle.

I remember my teacher, Mr. Farmer,

and something about Pythagoras.

My white cat watches me

with lidded eyes from a shady spot

near the Buddha statue.

Pythagoras, Mr. Farmer, and I

create a kind of historic triangle

here on my lawn.

That grade must've been a "C".

A Truth About Loneliness

                                    for my brother.

When I moved to Colorado

the sky was the brightest 

blue I'd ever seen; 

crisp, cool, and lonely.

The mountains provided a 

semi-permeable edge

one went "into" or "through"

like madness.

My brother visited once, and we walked

miles over the foothills looking for

the film version of Tortilla Flat.

We found it near the University, 

and rewarded ourselves

with cheap beer and exhaustion.

Spencer Tracy was

brilliant. So was the lovely

Hedy Lamarr. Stepping outside 

after the film, I realized 

movies are liars, John Steinbeck 

is the truth, and my brother 

would leave soon. The sky, 

as always, was threatening

with its loneliness.

Juno

Even the night smelled like honeysuckle

with the wind out of the south just right. 

School had ended. Summer was limitless.

It would be a month before I had to undertake

the wholesale murder of Japanese beetles

for the sake of the daisies and 4 o'clocks.

After a long wait, news broke that 

NASA's space probe Juno was approaching Jupiter,

preparing to orbit the giant dozens of times.

I pictured a tiny craft circling, searching like 

beetles drowning in a bucket of water.

One night we crowded around the telescope 

just outside the streetlight pool at the driveway's end.

My son and a few of the neighborhood kids

were taking turns looking at the moon, then Jupiter.

One little boy, having spent a few moments looking,

lifted his head. "I think I saw an astronaut," he said

eyes wide, big smile, enjoying his exaggeration.

I bent to the eyepiece for another long look,

then nodded knowingly as if to verify his observation,

to verify a season of limitless possibilities.

We laughed as he ran off into the street

to catch up with his friends and the ridiculous freedom

that lives in the summertime darkness.

Fish Fry

The place became terribly crowded about 10 minutes after we arrived. We ordered fish dinners and settled into noise. My wife and son watched the Keno numbers on a TV across from them. They were looking for patterns from draw to draw, like card counting.

"There's your 7 again," she said.

"Ahh, the 22."

I watched the door as more and more people arrived. Most of them were older couples, but some were young. They were all hungry and a bit unsettled as they paced the room having small conversations with friends and acquaintances, looking for a table that wasn't there.

The oldest couple slipped quietly into seats unnoticed before a table was even clean. They both smelled like pipe smoke, warm vanilla soot. They both ordered decaf and fish, then waited in silence having said everything necessary 20 years prior to their arrival.

A middle aged woman smiled at me as I ate perch. She and her husband had split up in their patrol of the room, keeping a seasoned eye on the progress of patrons. I smiled back at her in awkward mid-chew, thinking, she'd slit my goddam throat to take this table. 

Let's just say I kept my eyes open, looking for patterns in the noise, unsettled in my own way, as my son ate shrimp like popcorn and devoted himself to Keno numbers as if he'd discovered a new religion.

On Superior Avenue with a Fistful of Daisies on the Eve of the RNC.

It's summer in Cleveland.

Thunderstorms rumble

violent along the lakeshore,

crank up the humidity,

and seem to foreshadow

the ghastly roadshow of politicians

lining up skulls to be busted.

I woke up after last night's storm

wondering, "How close is the sound of thunder

to the echo of tanks on Superior?"

I've heard they built a stage on Public Square

for the voicing of opinions, strategically placed 

to be nowhere near any politicians ear.

Children, idealists, and rabble-rousers 

will bloom there like daisies,

until the tear gas comes.

I read somewhere

you can use a daisy as a gas mask

by placing the flower in your mouth, then

breathing through the stem.

Two Summertime Haiku

Independence Day.

Fireworks to the south

through a forest window, just

above the treetops.

Hide and Seek.

Kids count to thirty

in harmony before they

run into darkness.

Other Side.

A fly bounces twice off the living room window

desperately seeking out the warmth of a new morning,

wings buzz against glass in his confusion.

From the other side of the pane, our black and white cat

grabs hold of the screen, his way of letting us know

he'd like to come inside for a bite to eat and some water.

He works nights protecting the place from skunks,

possums, raccoons, neighborhood strays, and

anyone else who might question his territory.

I'm here on our couch with a cup of coffee trying 

to understand an article about European economics,

but nothing seems black and white.

I can feel sleep at the corners of my eyes.

My desperate attempts at cognition

are interrupted by the cat taking futile swings

at the fly.  All three of us undeterred 

in our desire to get to the other side.

Lacking the Appropriate Motivation for This Particular Discovery.

In attempting to determine

the age of this notebook, I

found my directions to D.C., but 

I already have plans to swap records

at Hanson's in Oberlin today.

Like Flight

On most days when I was a kid

walking home from school,

I'd stop in the middle

of the 4th Street Bridge

to peer over the round railing

into the brown roll of Black River

coming at me like vertigo.

The perpetual motion

of the water, combined

with the peculiar slant of bridge 

created something off balance, 

unsettled, exacerbated 

by traffic behind, and wind 

through the valley.

On some days

in small moments anyway,

when conditions were just right,

like Friday afternoon or

the last day of school before summer

it felt like everything was possible,

like no one else was was around.

It felt like flight.

When I Was A Young Teacher.

Up a few flights of stairs in the old high school,

on the way to my classroom, I listen to rain drum the sky light.

Years ago, when I was a young teacher, 

Barnes took us through the bell tower onto the roof.

I looked out over treetops and Black River,

in the city where I teach History, and

felt like I was accomplishing something,

beyond overcoming a mild sense of vertigo. 

Trees held onto their early green

while neighborhood kids ran through vacant lots 

playing tag. I watched from the edge 

knowing they'd be my students.

Today as the rain drums the sky light, 

my memory is drawn to that time 

when I was a young public school teacher,

and it was still something to be.

Fight or Flight.

I watched the sun burn down

afternoon into the Cuyahoga valley

and thought about Jack's

forlorn rags of growing old.

If we're fortunate we'll see those days

that tear through years with

increasing speed, like route 80

through a forest in spring,

and feel brand new, ready

for a fistfight, a fit of laughter,

the next great work of art, or maybe

just a chance to mow the lawn.

Haiku Freight Train #11: Construction

Building humidity
from nothing, then a cold rush,
my back to the wind.

Haiku Freight Train #10: Nothing

I remember blue,

then not much of anything.

It doesn't matter.

Haiku Freight Train #9: Spring

Trees begin to bloom

blue bags which compliment

your daffodils.

Haiku Freight Train #8: Apology

Mallory loaned me

poems in a spring parking lot

near ten years ago.

Haiku Freight Train #7: Factory

My friend Michael lives

on a street whose history

is a pile of bricks.

Haiku Freight Train #6: Religion

Not an atheist,

I'll sit quiet now and then,

call it religion.

Haiku Freight Train #5: Coffee

Afternoon coffee

on an overcast Sunday,

cat sleeps on my lap.

Haiku Freight Train #4: Skull

Only once did I

hear the sound of a shovel

hit a living skull.

Haiku Freight Train #3: Waking

Overnight clouds closed

us in, rivers broke their banks,

claustrophobic.

Haiku Freight Train #2: Recipe

"Antidepressants

and a stick of gum", she said.

"Everything's alright."

Haiku Freight Train #1: Foreshadowing

I just got another

burial insurance email.

It seems sinister.

Third Annual Haiku Freight Train.

And so again this March and April I will couple a dozen or so American Haiku with photos of a freight train because, well, I don't know anymore. For some reason I get stopped at crossings with a camera in February, and with a bit of a thaw begin writing haiku in March. Unfortunately, this time the camera was my phone, so the images blur. Fortunately, railroad graffiti has become more popular. As for the quality of the poetry, who knows, but there will be a new one every few days beginning tomorrow. Cheers.

Some Things Like the Seasons.

I went to your house the other day.
It was unseasonably warm for February.
You and I would've discussed this,
sat outside perhaps, considered
the effect on springtime planting.

A train roared west into downtown,
briefly drowning out the neighbor's dogs
who snarled as if they'd tear my throat.
I showed them one finger, then went
about picking winter trash from your lawn.

After the old place sells, I imagine
I'll still come back to close my eyes
and hear the trains from this angle,
to pretend that some things never change 

except the seasons.

Coming Soon: Small Print Run "Broad Street" Three Stories

Haiku Written at a Railroad Crossing.

Twenty-three tankers

and a boxcar. I haven't

seen you since July.

Lots

All these vacant lots,

hardly anyone around

who will remember.

Good News, Bad News, he said.

Dave came in this morning

to tell me he heard my name

on the news, so he turned.

I was dead or 

had killed somebody.

He couldn't remember, but

I should look into it to see

what I've been up to.

As it stands, I'm not

answering my phone today.

I'm not sure

what's going on

except

I seem to have some

explaining to do.