DIANA

The princess regrets,
she's told the Queen
Can't make it at Christmas
Something to do with last minute
invitations
to Aspen
where the lifestyle's
not so stilton stilted

She much prefers her brie
a little runny
on a warmer plate
But supports the monarchy
oh my, yes
and Charles paints
another landscape
stiffly upperlipping

Castles too cold and dark for her
all that chippendale
cracked with age
Conversation dry as toast
and the shooting
of all those driven birds
The princess will be elsewhere
a driven bird herself

Her smile and charm is entry fee
among new royals
and who can blame her
But she supports the monarchy
oh my, yes
admiring from afar
Expecting to be a different queen
in a different century

And I bet she pulls it off
too lively for a still life
among those painted landscapes

CATHEDRALS

There will be no more cathedrals built
as St. Vitus was in Prague
over six hundred years
The toil begun, cornerstones laid
by those who knew
a roof would not be achieved
in their lifetime
or those of grandsons

These were men looking beyond mortality
these planners
these craftsmen
of dreams
Mankind no longer spends a lifetime
on his knees
either to pray or to build
and there's sense in that

But I stand in the shadow of this cathedral
and watch the sunlight sifted
through a seive of stained glass
in stunned wonder
at the sheer beauty of that labor
No, they'll not be built again
as this one was
and that's all that can be said

OF COURSE I WROTE

Of course I wrote
I thought that we were going somewhere
this world of mine and me
But she threw me off
like a bad bronc
into the age of older men
when I was still a child
in my mind
and proved herself unchanged

The same wars as my father's wars
and his father's
The blinder side of greed
when I thought I'd begun
to see something better
Grinding out instead
the same old product
better advertised
And I bought it all too willingly

And if that sounds trite
or too abused a use of words
it's because I found myself
an abuser like all others
When I should have been more
invested more
and owed more too
Came up bankrupt, dusting off
the grit of better things

It's enough, just to have been here
has to be enough
because it's all there is
My ride's been a good ride
right to the bell, but like I said
I thought we would go somewhere
and not just spin in place
It's left me dazed and staggering
tossed off among the scribblers

HOPE OF SNOW

Prague is quiet, this Chrismas Eve day
the recent snow dissolved
into a mild light rain
while Chicago opens its stores
for the final mad rush
Every escalator at Water Tower Place
jammed with last-minute shoppers

But it's hushed in this river city
the last Christmas carp
from the lakes of Trebon
taken home for a traditional dinner
In a moment, the rain outside my window
has turned to gentle snow
collecting in the gutters

Scattered trams on holiday schedule
track their way in winding ribbons
and there's a rustle across the city
of wrapping paper and secrecy
Tonight I'll walk these cobbled streets
as Chicago closes down
Seven time zones of troubled peace away

Europe or America, we share a hope
for softly falling snow at Christmas
and offer up our smiles
and brightly wrapped packages
to the same excited children
Here in Prague and there in Chicago
we are all children in the snow

MAGIC CLICK

Life is so like my golf game
I'm pretty much a high handicapper
don't spend enough time
on the practice tee
very likely to rim
those crucial putts

And yet, from time to time
I hit a shot so crisply clean
so stiffly to the pin
Every aspect of that swing is perfect
effortless
that magic click

The memory of those shots
keeps me coming back
and I play at life like golf
Accepting my limits
perhaps too easily
but content in all that grass

COMBINATION

I did lots of things last night
my body wasn't happy with
Spinach pasta with bleu cheese,
a glass of wine, a large brownie
and four cigarettes
All shuffling to settle, unsettlingly

Last night my body said enough
to combination that seemed
a good idea at the time
and wasn't
But sleep made it finally okay
as sleep so often does

I get repaired somehow with sleep
and maybe you do too
Learn that combination doesn't work
until the next time
when a bad idea sounds good
Wheedling me into something dumb

Lots of talk these days about ozone holes
and water that's not fit to drink
Spinach pasta with bleu cheese,
a glass of wine, a large brownie
and four cigarettes
I can only hope the earth sleeps well

MY MIRRORED SELF

It has to do with mirrors
and we are a mirrored tribe
In other times we saw ourselves
reflected in the eyes
of wives and children
Those were the days
our fortunes rose and fell
like breath
Their smaller hands within our own

I saw myself just yesterday, shaving
looking pretty good
Knew damned well that I was keeping up
Compared myself in corporate style
and my quarterly report
I knew would show a profit
felt compelled to discontinue
research and development
in search of further dividends

Forsaking something small and frail
to reach for grander stuff
My mirror you know, it sets these goals
and I can but go along
My neighborhood's a corporate zone
the competition fierce
I have to spend my child's share in this
or fall behind
and so I take it running

He'll forgive me, he's a modern kid
aware of each contrived defense
In it too for short term growth
or so I think, when I stop
in my reflected glance
So if the markets I've contrived
should crash and burn
He'll take it like a man
and pay off all my loans

There's really not a lot of choice
not easy ones at least
One must keep up appearances
and they're tougher every year
It's not easy, but I try
to slash and burn my way
It takes resources you know and guts
to keep these paper profits
and the meek inherit nothing

His legacy will be my credit cards
I really plan to pay them off
before I'm done
But my mirrored self has many needs
beyond the limits of my cash
My air's still fit to breathe
and my credit limit's soaring
My mirrored self wishes him well
and takes the short-term profit

THESE THINGS ARE SALTED

In the middle of the next century
a young man walking
with his love
or picking mushrooms
or perhaps
with his own young son
on his shoulders
will lose his legs and lie
a bleeding, helpless wreckage
of all his young dreams
Victim of a mine

These things are salted
strewn about
with reckless abandon
in the truest meaning
of the word
by the Johhny Appleseed
of land mines
A million here, a million there
lying forever in wait
for the step of a wild young deer
or this young man

What do we tell him, what words
are there
for the stripping of his land
and a life without his legs
That we thought it vital
to the murderous revenge
of some long-past argument
and walked away
Littering the generations not yet born
and making their single mis-step
a bloody vindication of our own

TO INDIA

Stuart, let's go to India
together
It would probably kill us
or at least the relationship
All that fathering
all that brothering
when your father's missing
and my brother is as well

But there's dusty roads there
and dusty souls
looking from behind dark eyes
on trains with chickens
and I am chicken too
but not too much to go
Running ahead of the dust
ahead of the monsoon

My camera needs the lines in faces
a thousand years
of lines in faces
A treeless sub-continent
except for the forests
And men who know the crack in the earth
will never close
Let's go to India, my friend

DECADE OF THE REFUGEE

It's the decade of the refugee
a third-world rising in America
Downsized and confused, casualties
out on the street, wondering
where they went wrong
Blown from the moorings
of traditional jobs
without even a forecast
of bad weather

A job is a job is a job, too often
a struggle without meaning
bound in chains of command
Displaced replaced persons
looking over shoulders
Coming home to the question
how was your day
without the foggiest
and reaching for a drink

Bombed out without a war
yet no one's serving doughnuts
Like all refugees across the world
these too are powerless
picking among the ruins
for what still has use
Balanced only for the moment, silent
as victims are always silent
hollow-eyed with fear

Holding on and holding back
in times that make a joke
of the way things were
A house, a car, dinner at six
and college for the kids
not a guarantee these days
For-sale signs pop up here and there
on a way of life
and someone has to hit the road

Lost in a country full of maps
impossible to find their way
flying blind
Metaphorically burning the furniture
to keep warm
Their fathers built an open country
and now it's closing down
Leaving a legacy of confusion
as the borders all are closing

And yet we've come this way before
survived the dust-bowl days
of a great depression
to climb back again and thrive
The nation nearly sank back then
but these are different times
jobless in a soaring market
Maybe it's time to look back again
to try and find a road ahead

MAYBE GOT IT WRONG

I maybe got it wrong
putting myself up here on top
to claim an everlasting soul
denying my dog the same

He's got my number
philosophically unencumbered
and knowing life, or so it seems

I question my immortality
and he's so confident of his
I need the comfort of an afterlife
and he's far too cool for that

My metaphysical self tells me
I'll elbow in somehow
My complete dog doesn't even ask
doesn't need a rung to call his own

If the meek and charitable are winners
over greed and avarice
The men I measure against my dog
mostly come up short, including me

A PROPER CRITIC

Jack and Jill ran up the hill
to fetch a pail of water
Here, dear student we have the metaphor
of hill as passage of life
and you may well look
to the true meaning of pail
There will be a short oral exam
at the end of this critique

We note that Jack runs up that hill
leading to the obvious
conclusion
among those who perceive
the many facets of that word
that Jack was unfulfilled
Merely grasping for footholds
in life's upward struggle

Will he outrun his mother's dominance?
surpass his father's success?
Indeed, the turning of a word
is clearly proof
of the author's ambivalence
toward early toilet training
Yet, one must unmask the nuance
the very essence of meaning

And what of Jill?
Oh yes, it's clear this is no
childlike poem
She must deal with the guilt
of his broken crown
must recognize her fall
is closely, perhaps irretrievably
linked to his

Consider the inevitability of that
Papers will be due on Wednesday
drawing parallels
between the author's fixation
on women's shoes
particularly those with open toes
and Jack's dalliance with Jill
A proper critic demands to know

PEARL DIVER

In sleep
you stop breathing
in my arms
a sounding whale
a pearl diver
edging ever deeper
Until you break again
to this closer world
with a long breath
shattering the surface
of your dream

SARAJEVO

The winter of Olympics in 84
and other winters follow
The chill winter killing of neighbors
by the thousands
and perhaps
by tens of thousands
The winter of intervention
and the winter of snipers
here on these streets
chalked with children's games
and chalked where bodies lay
And a winter occupied

Sarajevo's children-soldiers held apart
by foreign children-soldiers
French and Italian
Czech and Russian
Brit and German too
Until they leave, not looking back
having evened all the odds
of evening the scores
by arming everyone
evenly
and suddenly all the children
have grown old

BROKEN PIECES

Sleeping in broken pieces
the rusted wreckage
of an unmade night
where chunks of verse
break loose
and slide to surface
like bubbles
from the bottom of a spoon

Something meant to be said
and I've no idea
by whom
An insistence of words
treading my dreamy water
surfacing, rolling over
to clear my mind
only for a troubled moment

Pulling on a robe, I turn on lights
give up and give in
to scraps made meaningless
by my awakening
A search among headstones
of tilted metaphor
knowing there is something
here that is not mine

What brought me wide awake
pestering a dozen times
lingers, hidden
and forces me to write in circles
waiting it out
unable to sleep until
what is not me
finally shows its face

BUSINESS IS WAR

Wars are fought with front-line troops
and business is war
Downsizing, a necessary flanking move
and then a bitter frontal assault
on corporate costs at any human cost
The machinery of business kills
easily as the weaponry of war
Supported, waged and justified on casualties
How could it, should it be another way
in an epic battle of commerce

The war of business is planned, maps pinned
by old men, slogged and fought by young
Fresh troops from Harvard Business School
the West Pointe of lieutenants
skilled at slaughtering their troops
Medals won and generals from hell to here
have always used their infantry
unwisely at the best
without scruples at the worst
and this war is fought for market-share

It's hard to follow a flag of pension trusts
and harder yet to take a bullet
on their behalf, pink slipped, eyes glazed
Withering fire, managers fall left and right
shipped home in coffins of despair
So stop your whining, straighten ranks
expect the losses, take it like a man
cannon fodder thins the ranks and vacancies
make for promotion up the grades
The few survive and damn the cost of many

Wars should be won or lost, yet some just stagger
undecided in a bloody hopeless standoff
But the troops come home as they always will
unsung, ungloried and mostly brutalized
Another generation shellshocked, whimpering at night
remembering friends
knowing their time's run out
So if some feel their country's turned its back
it's just the way of wars
and no monuments are ever built to battles lost

WHO WILL SAVE ME NOW?

The money's gone
so who will save me now
and why am I
unable to save myself
It's a matter of chagrin
this dependence
this needing
somehow to pay the rent
and meaningless as hell
that other writers
more skilled than I
down through decades
begged their way
ahead of me

I've got to get another plan
because the money's gone
and who will save me now
Plans get in the way of words
but the rent comes due
inevitably
and food and cigarettes
are both habitual
Demeaned, I know I live too well
Should be washing dishes
like Orwell
and I'm not
Is it too big a price
the one they paid

CHILDREN LOCKED AWAY

They grew up in my neighborhood
but I can't say I knew them well
Beautiful young girls, young women now
Libya with dark wide eyes
Algeria always smiling
Angola the shy one, suddenly gone
Remembering Namibia, slender and quiet
Somalia, who always knew my name
Namibia, the one who so loved flowers
Ghana, a child full of games
And Kenya, Zambia, Nigeria, a blur
of flashing eyes and giggled grins

Young women from different families
a little Brit, a little French
some Portuguese, perhaps a smudge
of German and Italian
All dark skinned girls, the mix
gave them a haunted exotic beauty
I walked that way to share their childhood
the whole street brightened in a swirl
of new dresses and girlish laughter
Yet they were serious as well, trusting
as young girls will, on their way
to becoming the lovliest of women

Now suddenly they're gone from us, locked away
into a dark house, it's windows shuttered
unlit and decaying, a house called Africa
I walked that street for a while, looking
hoping they'd be out in sunshine
to greet me, smile and dart away
I hear them scream from upstairs rooms
tear stained bloodied faces looking out
then curtains all snatched shut and darkness
I'd kick down the doors, excepting for the fear
of the raped children I might find there
So I've forgot their names and walk another street

SUMMER DREAMS

Hearing myself in the interview
modest as Sandburg
provocative as Hemingway
smooth as a summer breeze
across the lips of Scott Fitzgerald

Lost in these summer dreams
as snow flies
in the arms of harmless pretention
and I touch the milky skin of fantasy
lingering

SONGWRITER

Don't know why we did it
home late and tired
on a weeknight
smelling of the smoke
of that crummy saloon

I had a headache from one beer
Every once and again
having to convince myself
that a beer would be a change
from the wine that's kind to me

And she doesn't drink
but the office is a long day
Needs some quiet nights
and this wasn't one
and we grinned, wondering why

Why we'd crawled out of the warmth
into icy streets, bundled
walking quickly to hear him
because he's a friend
and writes wonderful songs

So it goes with these friends who write
and sing in noisy saloons
giving what they have to give
to a half-interested crowd
and it was very cool indeed

FRIDAY BROUGHT THE D'S

An aimless emptiness over time
from day to day down six flights
in this land
where six floors are called five
to my sullen mailbox
mocking and empty
reminding me of the forgetfulness
that comes in death
or leaving a homeland

Gone is gone, dead or on a plane
the mourning stops
sooner than we would know
or would care to know
The newness has worn off
of this departure
and the gush of lettered interest
fades to a trickle
and now at last a drip

On Friday the waters all rose at once
spring's melting snowpack
that sent me
scrambling for high ground
six flights up to five
to worry open all the D's
Dennehy, Derleth, Detman and Dawn
these clustered lines
from my address book

It must be, a continent away
a springtime recollection
of aunts and uncles dead
a laying of flowers on parents graves
and letters to that guy who left
An alphabet is left, the A's and M's
of other friends
I wonder if they'll come in O's and R's
or come at all

MICROWAVE AND FREEZER
(why I don't write rhyming poetry)

A micro-wave and deepest freeze
would be two things to surely please
this fretted life of day to dayness
full of pans and in the wayness
Stuff that's cooked, refrigerated
and eaten 'till I'm over sated
Hauled out again on Tuesday, Wednesday
grimly choked down 'till the endsday

What a boring thing this food is
stew no matter what my mood is
Somehow it would all be better
to search the freezer, find a letter
A would bring anchovy dressing
with nary mixing, not much messing
M for mushroom soup, a cream of
S for steak, a flank to dream of

Plucked out to micro-wave and savor
without a four-day same old flavor
I'd set huge pots on stove to boil
simmer, saute, roast and broil
Secure the remnants in tinfoil
dump them on the freezer coil
Come back again in weeks and weeks
to pull out chicken with cream and leeks

Expand my menu, experiment
make the sauces, quite content
if only I were not so tied to eating
all my stuff in just one seating

INSTEAD OF WINGS

All of life's a trade-off
and we're given hands
instead of wings
So here I sit in mornings
picking the coffee cup
up from the floor
next to my chair
and watching pigeons fly

Putting off for the time being
the flipping of switches
that see these fingered words
light the screen
in lines across a page
word by struggled word
and sometimes fly
but most times flutter

They flap and glide, drop like stones
across my cluttered sky
these feathered instruments
flocked in sentences
And should they see me here
as I gaze upon them there
A tilted wing is all I ask
until the day I ask for more

GOOD ENOUGH

Pleasure is the measure, a configuration
of rhyming words, so adroit that
it jumped from the page, in someone else's
writing
And the cleverness put my mind at work, turning
the words over and laying them back
against one another, like mirror images
that trap my seriousness of me

I would like to think my ordered life
has other measures
and carries a worth too illusive
for catchy phrases
But it caught me by the throat, dead center
this pleasure that is so much the measure
of the days I lay aside, unmirrored
Good enough I sigh and look out the window

IMMORTALITY OF SORTS

I'm in a thousand photos, maybe more
never mind that it's only a corner
looking slouchy and blowing my nose
or half turned, mid-stride, caught out
in the haziness of tourist films
They don't know me, unrecognizable
as a spear-carrier in Ben Hur

But extras make the pictures too
and what's Prague without people
so there I am, in a cupboard drawer
tucked safely under the place-mats
or glorified in a treasured album
Some tribes believe the picture is their soul
and there I am, forgotten in an attic

HIDDEN BLUE DRESS

What I think myself to be has met and talked
with what you think yourself to be
and it makes me laugh to think how
little we know of each other
in the times when it doesn't make me cry

Let's start over and not think of us at all
not in the reality of my white shirt
and your blue dress
but more as we are when we are naked
and recognizable for a single clear moment

You laugh at me
trying to peel you down to skin with such a line
and I watch you laugh
seeing the outside of you in blue
from the outside of me in white

But think a moment of the first times of nakedness
with someone that you wanted to know
remember the tang of seeing right through their eyes
that instant recognition before the slow rebuilding
of imagery, hidden blue dress, concealed white shirt

ISLANDS

There are islands out there
The island no man is said to be
as well as places ducks swirl in
and spread sails idle by
each on their way to somewhere

And mine is buttered yellow
in waves of light and flowers
A place familiar to my worried feet
as if I'd been there
in something more than dreams

If I could carve a life
instead of endless whittling
it would begin among those fields
Explore and search for hidden caves
to learn my whereabouts

The land I'm put upon's too broad
a thousand choices before dinner
a hundred obligations yet this week
Crossed and recrossed, too many sets of prints
to find a path worth following

So goodbye, I'm gone and outta here
before my legs get used to chairs
Expectations given up, but hope alive
that there's a hunk just small enough
for me to understand

AND THEN WHAT?

He wanted more from me and I agreed
asking nothing but the question
and then what?
To which he replied
then I'll do as I am told
and I asked and then what?
He looked confused, spread his hands
across the desk, lit a cigar
and peered at me as though
I'd layed some trap