Haiku Birthday

Haiku Birthday

The girl with eyes akimbo

keeps her face aimed at the floor

Pigeon toed on knocking knees

she crabwalks towards the door

2/19/95

The Party’s Over

Pumpkins smashed upside down in a ditch

X-mas trees brown at the end of driveways

Dried turkey skeletons for everyone.

Eggshells dyed in the garbage can

Crumpled valintines skitter in the wet wind

past the charred firecracker corpses and sparklers black and barren.

Everyone has gone home

there’s the trash to take out.

3/8/95

Ethereal Espresso

I live vicariously as you, in sweat and heterosex.

Beat ghosts lie upon the pages snapping phantom fingers

chanting “Cool, cool”.

They sip ethereal espresso and groove jazz

while you and Kerouak trade lies in a duel

like sex.

12/23/94

Reptile Season

It’s the night, x-mas time.

The city sheds it drab grey skin 

and breaks out in livid spots.

12/25/94

Warm wind caressing

Brings the scent of coming rain

Robins herald Spring. 

201203.07

HAIKU BIRTHDAY

You wake, stretch and yawn

So today is your birthday

Different but the same. 

201203.07

I write without ink on no paper 

I read a book with no pages

I call on a phone with no dial, no buttons. 

What is reality?

3/20/12

Blossom scented breeze

New green of young grass growing

My backyard in Spring. 

4/18/12

Words. Nothing but words

Convey all meaning, mine, yours,

A haiku birthday. 

4/18/12

Marie, Patricia, Seth and Marci

This spring has come with no green. 

It is barren dust and somber ash watered by a harsh bitter rain. 

Wilted blossoms and rank weeds greet my steps, 
crows utter curses rough and jagged to my ears. 

5/15/2012. 

Disney Life

I don't lead a Disney life

Filled with twittering birds

And animate inanimate objects. 

I don't have it like Peter Pan

Sitting out adulthood on a whim

Waiting for the tick-tock of adventure to start. 

But I've wished upon a star. 

1/11/13

What We Wanted For You

(For Ryan)

A time ago, when we were young 

We smiled and planned. 

We were going to feed you on laughter

We were going to pour you glasses of knowledge, all that we knew. 

We were children then, 

Knowing only what we knew of life, 

Wanting to give it all to you,

Wanting you to join in the fun that was our world. 

That is what we wanted for you, the madness & the love,

The mayhem & the laughes. 

Only you know if we succeeded. 

1/11/13

Table Exiting the Long Room

You called me one day 

To say you were dying. 

Don't cry, you said

I won't I said. 

I didn't. Not then, not yet. 

I wanted to, but I'm waiting. 

Ray scattered your ashes in

Rockwood. 

I know the place, it's where I plan to cry

It's where I will remember 

your laugh

Your love

Your heart

That crooked smile you had when you were up to something

The look on your face when you would knock on my door

Asking to stay because whatever woman you were with 
had kicked you out again. 

Wish you were still here

so I could say hi just one more time. 

201209.23

Day After

It's the day after Sandy 

New York is powerless

New Jersey is scandalous 

Upstate we're watching the winds feeling the rain 

but the lights are still on. 

Hawaiillusion

Snow piles behind the panes

Kept at bay by walls and propane. 

Rocking sleepy in my chair,

Cat lapped cozy in my sweater. 

On tv scenes of beach sand 

awashed in seawater & weeds

Beside me tropical plants doze in their pots. 

Aloha. 

201212.22

There are moments in life when we are capable of anything...

The body at the bottom of the stairs. 

201112.22

Death Came Visiting in May. 

Saw some of my friends, 

called on some of my relatives. 

He turned no one down, 

snubbed neither the poor nor middle class,

Grinned as he passed us by to give my brother in law his last ride. 

I hope he goes elsewhere for his summer vacation.

201206.11

Music in my Clothes Seems like Saturday Night.  

I was so possible that it had to be built on incomprehensibility. 

I do not panic...I smile. 

201302.14

Butterfly Storms

My soul is taut, it needs to bend and flow, to expand and contract, to fly free and to rest gently. 

It yearns to skip lightly through the aether, gathering the whims and hopes, the ghosts of dreams unfulfilled 

billowing out, blessing all with peace and love. 

201310.09

Cat hair & Dust bunnies. 

Lying on the valley floor with wheeling stars above

Rain touching feather soft the grass

Tell him I asked I asked you why

The only answer: the rain. 

201407.03

By The Light Of A Robot's Eyes

I hold a virtual image of you in my mind but it fades, pixel by pixel. my heart yearns to hang on yearns to hold on to wisps, to fog.   

In the silent dusk my mind slowly draws to a close.

201306.30

Always Kiss Me Goodnight

There are times you drive me virtually mad

With all the craziness you do. 

There are times you are so furious you lose control and rant from the insanity of my life. 

But when you're gone. 

When the dust settles. 

When the silence falls. 

And all I've ever wanted was for you to shut up for five minutes!

I miss you more than anyone,

more than anything

and though I know how to live alone

I can't bear it without you.

201311.29

Hotel Kitchen @ One am. 

Ralph Kramden Was a Bus Driver

Thusly we come to know

That some doors remain forever closed 

and we are held bound to our fate 

By chains we forged with pieces of our souls. 

201311.29

Flotsam

I'm just passing through

You're just passing through 

It's how we live

How we are

Passing through time, space the lives of those we meet

The things we think are real are transient 

The things we think are solid are dust.

Liquid flows

Time flows

And we are fascinated by the firelight shadows on the cavern's wall. 

201404.13

MAYA

A clear voice that sprung from silence sorrow shame

A voice which gave hope love and peace to many

A voice which encouraged never scorned

A voice of freedom and compassion

A voice as clear as hope

A voice as strong as love

Has drifted softly into silence once more. 

201405.28

First Day

Summer wind paper napkin plastic bag dance swirling pirouettes about each other about the sidewalk about my feet. 

Walking down the hill I join the dance. 

201406.23

Dance of the Lightening Bugs

It's no secret

How the universe turns

It's no marvel to me why life must spin

and spin and spin

Rumplestilskin super novas blossom as they whirl and I, 

I long to cry. 

201407.03

Where Did The Words Go

Out of mouths through the ears and away

We wasted time wasted breath wasted life with words

Let them twist us turn us scorch us burn us

Let them touch us bathe us help us save us

Life and time molded distance carved caverns

Perhaps they fled there. 

201407.04

Staying Strangers

Alone together

How we travel through our lives cocooned in iPads iPods 

Idon'twanttoknow,selfmusic 

selfmovies selfphones selfish 

Insulated from the now

From each other 

from life. 

Thrown together by happenstance 

By circumstance by chance

We retreat hibernate

Back away from all of us

And into ourselves. 

It will come to no good. 

201407.19

Watching Shakespere on TV

The commons chatter aimlessly 

While culture and wisdom play before them content in its own self showing no ego in its teaching, ever teaching by its own example

And still the hairless monkeys jabber. 

201407.20 

Soft Dog

When I die 

all the things that I have gathered

Will be scattered to the winds

All the kisses I have known 

Will blow away Never to return

And all that I have said or done 

Shall pass into memories

Held in a drawer

Or a book. 

When you die

All the things that you have gathered 

Will scatter

And no one will ever know

How you felt today. 

201408.04

Tender is the time

  We spend just lying side by side

No where to go, no place to be     

  But where we are. 

Softly our two hearts

  Beating in time to the song of our souls

Open to each other, and we smile

  Because we are one. 

Soon our time is spent

  We slip apart, away and back to normal

A small ache for the parting hour

And our tender times. 

201408.07

Summer thunder crashes taking the ears by storm hissing cats and dogs fall pouncing on the ground making puddles lightening squalls across the sky black cloudy growls slowly fade and soon the mice come out to play. 

201408.17