A TRIBUTE TO MOSS HART'S AUNT KATE

Moss Hart of Camelot and My Fair Lady fame.

 

Moss, families have one or two eccentrics

and yours had Kate.

She took you to the land of thespian magic

several times a week,

silly giggler at the worst times

when it wasn’t even a comedy.

You didn't care, young Moss.

When she set fires,

they locked her up.

You tried to find her a fire escape,

remembered how she

spirited you to the shows

ignited your heart and mind

to make people laugh and sing.

Let's toast the Kates of our families,

the odd among our kin,

take a moment to applaud them,

mine the gold instead of the dross,

turn them loose on the youth,

see what magic appears.

Originally published in Broadkill Review

CALUMET CITY


How does a tiny town triple every weekend
as if people were stuffed into it?
It ballooned into riotous noise, laughter
pumped full of sin—Little Las Vegas.
We teen boys stopped our red truck
before the open door of a strip joint,
pretending it stalled to get a glimpse
of the naked flesh until the doorman chased us
around the block to try again later.

We had Uncle Art, big rings on his fingers,
the rich relative, owner of three taverns:
The Circus Tap: Where spinning a wheel of fortune got you a free drink if you were on the right stool, a painting of a scantily clad lady riding a tiger staring at you.
The Little Club: Where my Father cajoled my Step-Mother from country music to his bed.
Art's Dog House: Where oodles of Kewpie dogs were stuck in every crevice, begging for a drink.

Art bought a handgun, twirling it on his fat finger
in our living room, not removing the yellow tag.
“I’m not paying those fucking Dagos
another dime for their damn protection.”
My Father: “You’re crazy Art; they’ll kill you.
You can’t protect yourself.”

The gun, with the yellow tag still on it,
was found by his body, riddled by bullets.
The newspapers called it a robbery.
We teen boys took our friends past his house
where his widow lived to look at the plastered-over bullet holes in the garage,
making us big shots in the neighborhood.

Returned years later to that razed section of town,
taverns resplendent with neon
replaced by ill-painted, sagging warehouses,
bent spears of grass growing between cracks in the sidewalks,
that once had danced,
the only town that gladly lowered the number
on its green population sign.

Originally published in Gold Dust Magazine

GAG REFLEX

We all have this protection,
a way of sloughing the ugly,
vile things of this world.

As a child,
the older boys knew.
It was easy to make me gag.
The mere mention of snot,
runny eggs, poop, boogers,
blood and guts, vomit,
became an instant horror movie
which I hate and will never watch,
while others seem to revel in being scared,
love to talk of the disgusting.

The bigger boys, the jocks
would hold my small self upside down,
string hockers from their lips,
make me gag and gag,
stalk my lunch table,
spit out gross things
until I gave them my lunch.

Once on a pier in New York City,
my grandsons found a poopy diaper
and threw it my way,
making me gag,
cruel fun they thought was funny.
Sometimes we laugh about it now.
Told never to bring it up at table,
they sometimes do.

It has never gone away for me
as the evil of the world.
war, injustice, the greed of the rich,
will make me hack forever.


Originally published in Former People Journal

TO GABRIEL

Why didn’t Mary slap you
when you told her
she was conceiving a child by God?
Or scream at you or faint or curse…
when she heard archangel words?

That much faith.
Knew no body that bright could lie.
Knew of Messiah.
Someone had to birth Him,
no Suffering Woman Servant in Isaiah.

Instead obedience, acceptance,
even joy, fearless blessing, clapped her hands,
threw her arms around you, Gabriel,
danced with glee
before she pondered.

Originally published in Former People Journal

UNSUNG HERO

Why would anyone dig up the graves of those atrocities when they have fasted from that horror
since Uris meticulously detailed Mengele’s sexual experiments on children in QB VII?
I threw that book against the wall and read no more about those monsters,
saw no more films, not even Schindler’s List,
though a commercial later revealed the red coat that will always haunt me.

One man, just one man, unsung hero,
removed my fingers from the eyes of my mind to look again at Buchenwald.

Buchenwald: where 56,000 people died.
more than American soldiers killed in Viet Nam.
Buchenwald: all those attempts to architect the cells of Hell.
Those were real—tiny, bare, infested—not Dante’s circles.
Death spaces for Jews, Poles, Slavs, mentally ill, physically disabled, gypsies, Free Masons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists, political prisoners, gays, sexual slaves,
children.
Outdoors: Vernichtung durch Arbeit—“worked to death,”
and screams of pain in the “singing forest” when those men—strappado
Oh, I cannot write what they did to them,
and Gernick Schuss, 1,000 Russians shot in the back of the neck, and the
children.

One man, just one man. What can one man do?
He can tell a lie. He can tell a lie of mercy.

Like Shiphrah and Puah who lied to save baby Moses.

The headquarters at Buchenwald was dark on that rainy day.
The Nazi command had fled. They knew the Allies were closing in.
The phone rang.
How many times?
How many times did that phone ring?
What if no one were there?
But, he was.
A hand reached out.
The hand of one German man
who had the presence to tell the guttural lie of mercy.

Command told him: “We will blow up the entire camp,
raze the rooms,
destroy the 1,300 prisoners left,”
including Elie Wiesel,
Elie Wiesel, whose luminous Jewish humanity gave lie to deranged Nazi fantasies.

The unsung (I sing of him now!) spoke:
“We’ve already destroyed it! It’s done!”

(Oh, Sweet Lie!)

“The prisoners are blown up.
The evidence is destroyed.
We covered up what we did.”
(as if the blanket of history could ever be pulled over that bed of horror).

The solution was simple, more brief than my imagination.
No reason to complicate mercy.
The Commander answered: “Okay, ‘In ordnung.’ Okay.”

In a few hours, the camp was liberated,
Weisel saved with the others,
the Nazi command tricked.

The name of the one man unknown forever.
The result of one act can change everything.

Originally published in Rat’s Ass Review

DON’T DRINK THE WATER!

Walking out of the monstrous
gilded cathedral, glinting
in the Mexico City
afternoon sun,
I pass a crippled man
one leg, one crutch,
a dirty hat,
before his toothless grin.
I drop in 20 pesos.
I want to stuff every peso,
every bill Americano
into the hat.
I don’t.
Instead, I go to McDonald’s
for a plastic bottle of agua.
20 pesos.

Originally published in the Communicator's League

FEAST

The snake spake its lies
in soothing pigeon-cooed voice.

Eve heard the fang-words
dripping with evil

did not pluck the apple
in her naked hand

snatched the snake
by its shiny throat

throttled it until
it writhed its last

lay limp on the branch
eyes glazed in amazement

apple-branch, spit-roasted it,
sated drooling Adam.

Originally published in the Communicator's League

STEENY

We called him by his last name,
never Reggie.
Just Steeny
or “Steeny Weenie.”
Back in the 50’s before geek
became a word for uncool or nerd,
before Dylan glorified GEEK
in Ballad of A Thin Man,
Steeny was the object of our taunts,
the bullying we all did
before that was a word anyone cared about.
I jumped in too,
feeling icky inside
when I helped pile on the abuse,
always in a group, never alone
when we pummeled him.

He just took it,
no expression reflected from his coke-bottle glasses,
no hand to his hair when we mocked his cowlick,
just moved on down the hall,
used his locker door as a shield sometimes.

O, that Halloween night.
Boy, did we have a lot of candy!
A surfeit of sugar in all forms.
Still soaped windows,
left lit bags of shit
on porches when we rang the bell,
watched the furious owner
stomping his shoes dirty.
Devil boys.

That night, bulging bags.
I had to carry mine with two hands.
Around the corner, Steeny.
Alone, bag full.
Like piranha we attacked,
ripped the bag from his hands and ran.
“Steeny Weenie.
Steeny Weenie.”
Only then did we hear
the night-shattering sob.

Now, as my daughter weeps,
shakes before me, her own bully demons
pulsing in her heart,
do I remember Steeny.

Originally published in the Communicator's League

GOD'S TOYS

What if all the stores
collapsed into rubble
hauled away?
Or disappeared into the sky
like some concrete Rapture,
all the children left behind
no way to buy new toys
no need to wheedle parents?

Children look at playthings
in their homes,
broken, rusted, boring.

What for
the children of Eden
had Adam and Eve stayed,
eschewed the apple?

Skip rocks in a stream,
swing on a tree branch,
fruit wars,
count the stars,
love their pets,
outrace the four rivers.

Originally published in Mad Swirl Magazine

COSMETICS

Unexpected rain,
a misty, penetrating day,
constant damp, cloudy gray.
As our old truck pulls up with food items,
a long line of people,
many waiting since dawn for our mid-morning arrival,
cheer as we drive up.

At the last minute, we’d thrown a few boxes of cosmetics
onto the truck.

They line up in the drizzle for the food—
mac ’n’ cheese, salad dressing, canned veggies,
frozen chickens until they run out—
children do a food dance in the rain.

Rich people sometimes ask:
Do they really need the food?
We say: When was the last time you stood hours
for a box of mac 'n’ cheese?

The truck crammed with staples,
we set out the cosmetics by the tires,
a splash of beauty products—
lipstick, shampoo, mascara, body lotion, nail polish—
the boxes soaking in the rain.

The women and girls break rank,
no stress about their place in line,
as they scrabble through the bottles, tubes,
beautifying treasures
to paint the gray off their faces.

When was the last time
you knelt before lipstick?

Originally published in Spindrift Literary Magazine

PET RAT

died this morning,
barely breathing
when my wife picked him up
from his cage.

Our grandson
named him after his favorite
Cubs baseball player,
asked us to keep Rizzo
when his dad took
an out-of-town job.

She held, petted him until the end.
"He is cold," she said
through her tears.
" I want to keep him warm,"
as she swaddled him.

He passed in her arms,
a last whisker twitch.
She petted him a long time after.
"To see if he is gone."
He was.

I wondered which one of us
will keep the other
warm
when our time comes?

Originally published in Spindrift Literary Magazine

MS. LACEY

My beautiful third grade art teacher.
You flunked me for refusing to create
a Thanksgiving place mat,
but extolled me for mastering the color wheel.

Stunning, black hair, framing your white skin,
blazing red lipstick,
igniting a crush,smitten as early as eight.

You probably wed some nice guy because you told us
about some jerk you were seeing then who tried to scare the girls
by bringing a snake to the picnic blanket
and how you grabbed it, like Eve should have,
wrapped it around his neck.

You just didn’t wait for me to grow up and marry you.


Originally published in Spindrift Literary Magazine

SHAVING


I shave every day
even when I don't want to. 

My father went to a barber for his shave,
towed me along.
Many of his friends clustered
at this social club. 
Haircut and a shave,
the hot towel brazed his face,
steam mingled with acrid cigar smoke. 
Bantered with the barber, other men—
politics, the unions, the Cubs.
The strop, strop, strop of the sharp razor.
Watched closely,
I was scared of a cut. 
Eyes averted the pin-up calendars
decorating the wall space
no woman ever entered. 
 
Afterwards outside, 
the pop, pop, pop
of the shoeshine’s 
white rag.

Originally published in the Pangolin Review

EXHILARATION

That summer, a newly licensed teen
eager to drive anytime,
my Step-Mother remembered
what she forgot at the store,
a green pepper, sour cream.

Sometimes, on purpose,
I forgot some of her items,
anxious to drive back
when she beckoned,
handed over the shiny keys.

Years later, my wife and I retired,
after we drive together
on our little shopping trips,
she forgets more and more,
sends me back,
a green pepper, sour cream.
I am delighted to drive.

Originally published in Rue Scribe/Underwood

RISING

Early in the morning
your mind a carousel
riding thoughts, memories
up, down,
round and round
on, off, 
giraffes, unicorns, lambs
or
gargoyles, serpents, dragons
you must choose
hang on tight
face the day. 

Originally published in Rue Scribe/Underwood

LEAVE-TAKING

Does the mother bird rue
when her fledgling leaves the nest,
drop the worm while the
father squawks and squawks,
soothes her ruffled feathers?

We humans though scratch and claw 
when one of ours moves far away
sad over 
the very reason
we raised them.

“But I am not a bird,”
my wife cries, 
as she nests in my arms. 

Originally published in Rue Scribe/Underwood

BIRTH



an egg of pain
fingers flutter atop
   sway and fro
what can break the pain?
   song snaps glass
   a song can…
   shell crack
   struggle out
                      love
flex wings
                      sing

Originally published in Mad Swirl

FOOL ON THE HILL


Whooping, laughter-screaming, silly young boys
sprint from the lunchroom toward a hill
launch their bodies aloft
roll, roll, roll into hysterics at the bottom,
jump up and do it again
despite the threats to take away their pilots’ licenses. 

I thought this.

Fling off my suit coat, rip off my tie,
kick off my shoes (not my argyle socks),
roll down the hill, mirth abounding,
tattoo dark green grass stains on my dress trousers,
as the sun smiles
and the clouds scoff
at my wanton foolishness.

But I didn’t.

Originally published in Ariel Chart