For nearly 15 years I’ve walked this way,
through blocks of modest housing interspersed
with areas that host a shop array,
but never have encountered such a burst
of frantic traffic busy like today:
eruptions in a frenzy to be first.
The citizens won’t longer stay inside,
for this week marks the acme of yuletide.
(Ottava Rima)
My grandson had a “Yes Day” not too long
ago, when he did what he wanted to.
No matter his request, there was a strong
and lovely likelihood it would come true.
There wasn’t too much candy, and the slew
of cartoons didn’t hurt his growing brain.
Adapting the idea, today my view
is focused on enjoying home and rain.
(Huitain)
I’ve seen the posters on the power poles,
with pleas for missing pets to be returned,
with photographs and words that move our souls,
suggesting mourning people who have yearned
for absent love. But seldom have I learned
what happened next. Was Rex or Frodo found?
What means this soggy paper on the ground?
Or sometimes I note stapled ads that tell
of cleaning house or moving goods or hoards,
with tear-off fringe of phone or URL,
affixed to tarry poles and message boards,
that show an enterprise this town affords.
But do the offers bring in work, or no?
I only get the trailer to the show.
And often there’s an urban mendicant
who frequents or establishes their place
as if it were the only spot they spent
their time, and as I pass their wonted space
I recognize their posture and their face.
But after weeks or more, they disappear,
and where or how they are is never clear.
(Rhyme Royal)
I never intended to walk Market St
at 7 pm in December.
They closed down two stations I needed, to meet
the train to cross the bay.
I paced on to Franklin on confident feet,
but then I began to remember
the instinct evasive to beat a retreat
from clots of black and gray.
I clattered down the stairs beneath Van Ness,
my sidewalk no an underground oh yes.
I think it would inform us to exchange
announcements about diet, fitness goals,
and other resolutions with a range
of news reporting relapse in controls.
Do you agree? Or would it be too strange,
to share the fail or fracture in the roles,
and mention not the subtle slide to grace,
when we succeed at soft and steady pace?
(Ottava Rima)
I call them assholes when I’m in my place
and talking to myself, without controls,
of those who snipe and won’t confront my face.
I call them assholes.
They suffer vacancies within their souls,
and feel correction as profound disgrace
(like blame and shame in lieu of growing goals).
I seek to limit error. I replace
what failed and try informing other roles.
Accused of yell and rush for talk and pace,
I call them assholes.
(Roundel)
I know a forceful personality,
who might have made a most impressive man,
but culture deemed her shrill, and family
was sore the more she nonconformed to plan.
They said she was a strident know-it-all,
(who loved to learn and talked to get response).
Her mother shushed her, trying to forestall
the fits, who never mastered nonchalance.
Two weeks ago amid the pain, she said
“They think I’m tough. They only see my shell,
but inside I’m as soft as mush instead.
Don’t you agree? I think you know me well.”
And so we stopped to sense what she forgot.
We laughed together then. For who is not?
I don’t recall exact atrocities,
but I remember hating English class
most years of secondary school. The keys
to wit and eloquence were not dispensed.
The teachers made us write down summaries
and our reactions – called them book reports.
Diverting me from plots and mysteries
to lit I loathed was teaching from the ass,
but they did not deflect me from degrees.
(Magic 9)
I planned to do complete home exercise
today, but too much mucus changed the plot.
I got through half but had to leave the prize –
I feared the problem’s aging, but it’s snot.
He registers embarrassment because
I grinned at him, although my smile had
no relevance to any of his flaws –
of course I never meant to make him sad.
Her feelings have been bruised. With hurt she’s full,
and so she flails internally at those
she says she loves but holds responsible.
Her pain’s the only clarity she knows.
Apparently it isn’t rare to find
such instances of misdirected blame.
I’ve friends and relatives, acute and kind,
who seek to give their sadness someone’s name
beside their own, their vision steadfastly
away from self and dagger-shot at me.
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