Moments

The Fool is Hurt

Drum roll, Applause!

“Ladies and Gentlemen!”

Drum Drum Drum

Hurray!

“Young and Old!”

Hurray! Hurray!

“We have a very special performance for you tonight!”

Drum Drum Hurray

“Here is the very tallen—“

Ooooooooh.

“But what the –“

Drum D-rum

Drum D-rum

“The fool –

is hurt.”

The fool is hurt

The clown is dull

The show is out

The crowd is –

“The fool is hurt!”

“So Ladies and Gentlemen.

Next I would like to direct your attention to –“

Drum rum rum

Drum

Laughter

Hurray

Eulogy

“He was in love with life.” 

I heard someone say 

Long ago when I was very young and naïve

And invisible. 

In my childish mind 

And my childish fantasies 

I thought: 

“Oh how noble. 

 Oh how brave.” 

And I wanted to be 

In love with life. 

And I was. 

And no body knew.

The Animal Lover

He likes animals, he says.

But that’s once they cease to breathe.

Thousands of dollars for them he pays

To buy their fur, their heads, their teeth.

 

The lion on his bed

Bear on the floor wide spread

A stuffed wolf very well fed

With the stuffed dear in his mouth.

 

In the corner a buffalo head

For whom no tear has ever shed

Which to amazement had lead

His relatives from the South.

 

Lover of all, living or dead

Why then doesn’t he possess the head

Of a beast of his own kind

With his abilities and his mind?

 

The head of another man

A stuffed woman from Japan

Figures cut out of human teeth

With stuffed hands to put underneath.

 

What makes man greater than those

That he hangs on his walls for pose

Or those he eats for supper

And those he wears to look proper?

 

What gives him the ambitious right

To claim this and that with might?

To, through centuries and time,

Grow strong and become prime?

 

And yet, we’re still creatures

With identical ironic features

So that with ignorance and pride

We destroy our only teachers!

Waiting

He sits on a bench

Waiting

For a life that has passed by

And isn’t coming.

His pink belly,  frozen in time.

His face that of a tired Santa Clause

With his smog-stained beard

And swollen cheeks.

His clothes that of an old clown

Who was eaten by lions for lunch

And spat out.

His bags of presents

Scattered about him

In his urine. In his blood.

And he stares through the depth

Of the ocean in his eyes.

Not seeing.

But we see him

For a moment or so

before our light turns green

And we drive off. 

Faceless

Do you look

When I take off my face

Every night before bed?

Do you look

When I loosen its strings

Undo its buttons

Then gently slide it off?

Do you look

As I place it carefully on the shelf

Next to the others

Then climb into bed

Faceless and torn apart?

You don’t look

But you watch

And you see

And you hold me.

And I can drift into sleep.

For in your arms

I won’t have to get up

To put on another face. 

Last Thought

There it was

One last thought.

As if flown down from the stars

Riding on the back of the wind.

As if by the blue chill

That runs down my back or yours

It came gliding

Then climbing up my sleeve

Up my shirt

Into my bosom

Inside my chest.

Stolen from the corners of thought and memory

Stolen from time

Stolen from all that once was and isn’t.

 

One final thought.

And then it wasn’t.

For it was followed – chased!

By all those that weren’t before

And now are. 

A Brief Love Affair

 

I turned and there he stood looking

We smiled and he sat across the way

On his own bench.

I sat on mine.

Exchanging glances.

And for a moment

He was perfect

For me and I for him.

For a moment

We were in love.

Then he left.

Then I left. 

My Father's Face

* This is an older poem... written almost a decade ago... 

Strapped to your back

I lie in your grave

In your coffin

Under your earth.

And I breathe your dusty bones

As you walk the streets

In your death.

Strapped to your past

I paint your face on mine

As I have your eyes

Your nose

Your temper.

I feel your hand

Bruising my childhood shell.

I see you walk away

In anger

Still kind and gentle

In my nostalgia.

I see you looking at me

Through my eyes

Through the glass barrier

That separated us.

When you were gone for a year

And I came to visit you

In that city that was four hours away

In that building

That was big, dark and strange.

I hear you still

Talking and pushing us away

Then trying to hold on

When we finally left.

But we left

And you stayed behind

In the past

In my past

But not yet forgotten.

I taste the tears you must have shed

I taste the tears I shed

And I taste your sweat

Your fear

Your regret. 

Embrace

The sky opens up and I fall from it.

Fly I can not.

Fall I can not. I get stuck.

 

The air thick like condensed cream.

I sink into it.

 

I am weightless and I sink

into the soft flesh

of the white air

that embraces me tight

like a mother her soldier child

who has returned from the battle front

with no limbs missing.

And I sink like the soldier

sinks into the embrace. 

Peacock on my head

So as I sat at the table, completely oblivious and minding the little business I had of my own, I noticed, accidentally and quite unintentionally, that the woman with that enormous hideous bird on her head, and the drench of whiskey and day-old cigarettes on her breath (who had come late and taken the last seat in the whole place which unfortunately had been the adjacent seat to my right) was dripping warm blood all over my brand new thrift-store shoes.

By the time I looked up and leaned away, her head had already toppled down onto my plate which I hadn't filled anyways considering the buffet food had looked disgusting and I was nauseous with, what I could only guess, was an accidental pregnancy. I pretended to be shocked when deep within my soul I had almost expected someone to drop dead directly next to me as part of the hundreds of unexplainably unfortunate events that had taken place within the past few months. A streak of bad luck, I had thought at first. But this was beyond a streak of anything.  This was a curse. 

I did not get out of my seat.  Quietly I wondered if anyone else had heard the loud thump, the breaking of the glass that had followed it and the fact that there was now a dead woman on my table and a growing dark pool underneath it.  I looked around at the faces of those who shared the table with me and the corpse, but no one seemed to have noticed anything. They were all sitting calmly, and eating the greasy food in front of them.  Just my luck, I thought.  Perhaps it was all a joke, some kind of twisted game that some bored coworkers had decided to play on me.  Perhaps all the events of the past few months had been part of the same game. 

I checked my purse for clues and found a rather large kitchen knife that seemed to be covered with blood.  Was this the murder weapon?  I examined the corpse.  There were tears on the back of her thick lavender wool coat.  I counted seven all together.  Seven large gashes the length of the thickest part of the knife I was holding.  Had I done this?  I wondered. Had I hated her hat so much that I had actually killed her?  Why did I have no recollection of this?

I dropped the knife.  “Excuse me, maam, you dropped your purse.”  A waitress pointed out even before the knife hit the ground.  Since when do homeless shelters have waitresses, I wondered.  “You dropped your purse.”  Came the echo from the throat of a man that I knew but didn’t quite recognize.  “I thought we agreed you would throw away that ugly hat.”  He continued.  “Hat?”  I heard myself say.  My voice was confused.   Who was this man?  Why was there a waitress?  Where was the dead woman? 

“Here.”  He extended to me a small black clutch.  The intricate beading that adorned it shimmered and played with the light.  ”Here!  Take it.  You said you were getting rid of that thing.  It is appalling.”  “This way to your table.”  We followed the girl.  “And you’re late again.”  

Across the room, through a glass—perhaps a mirror—and through a flood of undecipherable sentences, I caught a glimpse of a woman.   A size one black dress covered her loosely from shoulders to her toes and that dreadful hat rested heavily on her head.  As though there is a dead peacock on her head, I thought to myself.   It’s a wonder her neck hasn’t snapped under the weight of the thing.  She looked familiar.  She looked confused.