Blues For Vivian

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The neighbor was screaming,

“Vivian, Vivian, I love you darling!”

The fire escape dripped dirty sex

into a sweltering Manhattan August

“Vivian, Vivian, I love you darling!” 

Sounding like lines in an off-Broadway 

avant-garde musical

tripping down the fire escape

and into the cracked and crummy

window of my SRO

My head rests on sheets stained yellow –

not my yellow; some cheap hotel yellow –

that smells of desperate industrial detergent

Nine p.m. darkness in the shadows of sodium lights

that reflect like drunks and hoodlums

sprawling along 42^nd Street

“Vivian, I love you!” the neighbor screams,

trying to bring hope to the urban sickness –

an infirmary of tenements,

dirty peepshow theaters

and a sad broken down bar

hustling on the corner.

Outside the bar stands a loud,

out-of-tune trumpeter

howling out blue-sounding notes

that torture his instrument

as they squawk into the night.

If those blue notes could sing the blues,

They’d be perfect.

They’d squawk, “Vivian, Vivian I love you.”

Maypole Madness

(reprinted from Opening Line online 'zine)

Maypole Madness
A Fairy Tale – The Final Chapter

They burned their own flag. Crazy and sick, the children screamed like witnesses at the Salem Witchcraft Trials.

”We’re done with you,” they shouted on a gray morning in Appleton. “We’re done with your money and your complacent ignorance.”

They had guns and knives. Twelve-year-old Tommy Talbot was their leader. “A sociopath,” was what the doctors said; “A sicko,” was what all his classmates said, …until… everything came to the brink.

Tommy led the children into their own homes while their parents were off at work. One by one, they broke into their daddies’ arsenals, grabbing weapons that the families proudly owned in the name of “Freedom”.

Tommy had already raided his father’s gun trunk in the basement. He hacked the padlock off with a metal cutter that hung above the tool table. How stupid, he thought, to padlock a trunk and then leave a tool to open it twenty feet away.

He also thought father was stupid to molest his own son and then leave him alive to even the score. But father always assumed he was mentally crippled; too damaged to ever harm anyone.

Father didn’t know that Tommy was a different person when he was away from home. Tommy’s teachers would constantly warn the old man that the boy was a “ticking time bomb,” but that only made father laugh. Sometimes when he was touching Tommy, he’d say, “Are you a ticking time bomb, boy? No, I didn’t think so.”

On this epic morning the timer was set to go off.

The school Principal and his staff were frantically on the phone trying to contact parents.

“Where are your children?” they asked. “How come no one’s at school today?”

It was the great Day of Reckoning. Jesus said it would come – children rising up against their parents – a new order was set to begin. Far and wide, across the nation, angry kids would remember what happened in the town of Appleton. They too would rise up in insane defiance; nothing of the old regime would be left standing.

Before a shot was fired, they tossed Molotov cocktails through the windows of their parents’ homes. Tommy taught the children how to make them as, one by one, the suburban homes burned in Satanic richness.

“The insurance companies will pay out and the banks will refinance,” he yelled over the roar of the first burning house. “But then we’ll torch ‘em again and we’ll keep on doing it ‘til the banks and insurance companies go broke!” The children roared their approval as they danced from burning home to burning home in maypole madness.

“They want a toxic environment?” Tommy screamed. “We’ll give ‘em a toxic environment. Suburbs ablaze across the nation! They’ll have to kill us all, kill their own children – Johnny and Jimmy and Suzy and Kay.” He raised his fist in angry defiance. “If they want their sick little world back, it‘ll be over our dead young bodies.”

At high noon, the children arrived in the Appleton town square like little minutemen militia. From first grade to eighth they carried holstered guns on their sides and rifles up to their shoulders.

Tommy had a handheld rocket launcher from Daddy’s arsenal. “Let the first shot be echoed around the world,” he said and then fired a rocket through the window of the local bank.

The children shouted hurrahs in prepubescent mania as the rocket exploded and fire and shrapnel burst out through the doors and windows of the bank.

People poured out onto the street screaming “terrorists” until they saw their sons and daughters across the street with rifles and bayonets pointed toward them.

The roar of sirens could be heard in the distance and then five police cars screeched in front of the town square and officers piled out with their bodies squatted low, protected by their car doors. And then, around the corner came an armored SWAT wagon with a machine gun turret on top.

The Mayor appeared on the sidewalk with a megaphone.

“What is it that you want?”

“We want nothing!” Tommy screamed. “You have nothing to give us but this fucked up world filled with war and exploitation and lies. Children lay in poverty across the globe, while your filthy-rich, swine leaders speak treatises on how everything must be this way on the road to prosperity.

“They say, ‘we’ll share our wealth with you as soon as you give us just a little bit more and work just a little bit harder.’ Like greedy, dope-pushing junkies, they promise us the world just as soon as we give ‘em the shirts off our backs.

“And we’re done with economic collapse and global debt and shithole schools and A-rab scapegoats. The war on terror is a war on us! And the Mexicans; let’s blame it all on the Mexican – poor migrants who just want a plate of food for their children.”

The town’s Presbyterian minister grabbed the megaphone and appealed to Tommy. “Tommy, it’s me, Reverend Arnold. You can talk to me.”

But Tommy had tried to talk to him to no avail. Tommy had visited him several times.

“Daddy touches me,” he would say.

The minister had told Tommy to buck up.

“You’ll never get anywhere with talk like that.”

Parents lined the sidewalks behind the principal calling out to their children across the street, “Please, please, stop this madness. Come home. You’re too young to understand.”

The children picked rocks up off the ground and started throwing them at their moms and dads. A police captain grabbed the principal’s megaphone and yelled, “You kids need to disperse now or we will begin firing.”

The parents screamed, “No! No! It’s our children! Johnny and Jimmy and Suzy and Kay.”

At Tommy’s mark, the children pulled the rifles off their shoulders and aimed them at the police cars. The police captain with the megaphone shouted, “This is your last warning.” An officer in an armored vest appeared from the roof of the SWAT wagon, placing himself behind the shield of the machine gun turret.

Tommy yelled, “Fire!” and the young militia let go their first shots at the police.

The megaphone man, yelled, “Fire!” and the policeman in the turret and the other officers hidden behind their open car doors began shooting.

The policemen shot and then they shot some more and then they shot some more while the parents on the sidewalk screamed. After a minute and a half of firing, a hundred children lay dead in a pile in the town square.

Never before in the nation had their been a slaughter like this. At the memorial, blood tears were cried. Tommy Talbot was held the culprit.

“Nobody, and I mean nobody – none of the children – would ever – could ever – think up such horrific thing on their own”, said the Reverend Arnold who presided at the event in the still bloodstained town square. Tommy’s father stepped up to the pulpit and apologized to the town for having a sick and rotten child.

As the proceeding was going on, militias of children were arming themselves across the nation. Soon they would be out on the streets ready to die for Tommy Talbot’s cause. If moms and dads throughout the country wanted a sick, unjust world, that sick world would die with their children. There would be no new generation to carry it on.

One Day in July

(Previously appeared as May Day in The Opening Line, May 2015)

He stood in the doorway, his face pale and dirty,
stubbly beard, sweat glued to his forehead and brow.
He remembered the Godfather
standing before the five families after the wars;

“How did we let things get so bad?”

His studio was the war zone,
clothes piled high on the floor
unwashed for many, many weeks;
he was wearing the cleanest of the dirties
he picked off the floor that morning. 

A shirt was covered in cigarette burns; the couch too;
the sheets of his bed were piled up in a wrinkled mess with
months of sweat and grime pasted into the cotton.

Paint was peeling on the baseboard,
plaster hanging from the ceiling
the radiator was clicking mindlessly
like the demons racing through his head.

In the kitchen on the mud stained floor
there was a plastic garbage bag
filled with empty Vodka bottles;
Royal Gate Vodka – the gate he had entered
to feel this sick and lonely.
The Venetian blinds were warped and melted from
that time the stove caught on fire when he
was trying to… trying to…
he couldn’t remember what he was trying to do;
he had been in a blackout.

He walked over to the bed and laid down
curled up in a quivering ball, broke and sick
he reached over for the phone on his night table
frantically dialing numbers, his hands shaking madly
he heard the phone ringing and ringing
and finally he heard someone pick up

A voice on the other end said, “hello?”

There was silence for what seemed like a frozen day
and then he heard himself say, “Don, will you come get me?

“I can’t go on like this anymore – I’m finished…”

The Plaid Golf Pants

Reprinted from eFiction Magazine (Vol 6 No 10)


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The Plaid Golf Pants

Apparently, when the police first arrived, the standoff was already intense. Mr. Duffy, the drycleaner, was out in the backyard yelling up at the second story window.

A half hour earlier, he was dropping off shirts and pants to Mrs. Rosewood’s preferred delivery spot just inside the garage when little Margaret snuck out to his truck. She grabbed a pile of clothing and ran inside the house locking the door behind her. Duffy figured it was simply a juvenile prank and ran to the back door and started pressing on the doorbell incessantly. He continued until he heard pounding on the second-story window and discovered Mrs. Rosewood holding the clothes and waving down at him. Assuming that she would now run downstairs and deliver the clothing back to him, he sighed.

“Oh, thank God,” he said.

To his surprise, Mrs. Rosewood held up a can of lighter fluid and a torch, threatening to burn all the items (including a plush mink stole) unless Mr. Duffy returned a pair of her husband’s golf pants that he claimed he never received. She mimed the words, “I WANT THE GOLF PANTS” in a clear and exaggerated manner so he would know exactly what she was talking about.

Duffy reported all this to Inspector Roland McDermott who was dispatched to the scene because he was the town’s lone hostage negotiator and this was the closest they had ever come to a hostage situation.

McDermott’s captain thought McDermott would be delighted to finally get some work in his trained field, but Roland was less than thrilled.

“I didn’t sign up for shit like this,” he told the captain as he grabbed his jacket and walked out the door of the police station.

When Roland arrived, two uniformed officers were standing on the back gravel driveway with Styrofoam coffee cups in their hands. Steam was rising from the cups as one of them took a sip after nodding at McDermott. Mr. Duffy was still standing looking up to the second floor window where Mrs. Rosewood had her arms folded around the clothes as she smiled down on him in smug confidence. Duffy looked back at the two cops and pleaded.

“Do something! This is my business she’s messing with!”

“Are you insured, Mr. Duffy,” one of the cops asked.

“Well, yeah, but this kind of thing’s still bad for business.”

The officer pointed at Roland who was approaching them and said, “Well, McDermott here is a hostage negotiator. If he can’t bring her down, then we’re gonna have to storm the place and take her by force. Quite frankly, I doubt she’s gonna set the clothes on fire because it would probably burn her house down.”

McDermott stepped up to one of the cops, the taller of the two.

“So who reported this thing?” he asked. He then pointed at Duffy like he was answering his own question.

The cop shook his head. “The next-door neighbors did, but we’ve ordered them to stay inside. They heard the screaming and apparently thought Duffy here was a rapist trying to get at the occupant.”

“That’s a damn lie!” Duffy said. “Her little girl stole my clothes. You’ve got to do something about this.”

“Calm down, sir,” Roland said. “What’s the woman upset about, anyway?”

“She bought some stupid golf pants,” Duffy said. “They were apparently for her husband’s birthday. She claims she needed to get them fitted properly; he’s one of those weird sizes between full and obese. I never saw the goddamn things, I swear, but she says she dropped them off at my shop. The lady’s bonkers, officer.”

“Detective,” said McDermott.

“Ok, detective. Now get those clothes back before she ruins them.”

“Tell me exactly what happened here.”

Duffy proceeded to explain the business about the girl sneaking into his vehicle and grabbing the stack of clothes.

“Where’s the daughter in all of this?” Roland asked.

“Fuck if I know. She’s probably tied up downstairs until the crazy bat needs her for her next psychotic mission.”

“Mr. Duffy, an attitude like this doesn’t help the situation at all.”

“I’m not the one holding a stack of clothes hostage, Detective.”

“Does she have a phone number I can call?”

Duffy pulled out his cell phone from his pocket and began scrolling through his customer contact list until he found her name and handed the phone to McDermott. Roland held Duffy’s phone up in front of his face with his left hand while he began punching out the numbers on his own phone with the thumb of his right. He then handed Duffy’s phone back to him.

The number rang a couple of times as he looked up at Mrs. Rosewood. He could see her lay the clothing down in front of her against the windowsill, reach into her pants pocket sheepishly and pull out her phone.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello, Mrs. Rosewood?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Hi, I’m detective McDermott.”

“Oh hi! How are you?”

“I’m fine thanks, Mrs. Rosewood. How are you?”

“I’m fine.”

“It seems we have a bit of disagreement here.”

“Yes.”

“Would you be willing to come down here and talk with us?”

“No.”

“You’ll be perfectly safe, I promise. We are, after all, the police department.”

“I know what’s going on, Detective. Mr. Duffy has you all in his back pocket.”

“Actually, ma’am I’ve never met Mr. Duffy before. I don’t think anybody here has.”

“It doesn’t matter. People like him have connections to City Hall. If I turn over these clothes he’ll just deny his guilt and skate by and I’ll lose Ronnie’s new golf pants. I paid good money for them at Macy’s.”

While Roland was talking, Duffy seemed to awaken and called out to the cops.

“She dropped the clothes! You’ve got a clear shot. Shoot her!”

Roland turned to Duffy and shouted, “Shut the fuck up!”

As he was yelling, Mrs. Rosewood grabbed the clothes with her right hand and pulled them in front of her while she cradled the cell phone between her ear and shoulder. She picked up the lighter fluid and began to lift the spout with her left thumb in a slow, deliberate manner.

“No. Please Mrs. Rosewood, you don’t want to do that. Let’s see if we can find a way out of this.”

“I’m not gonna be target practice for those kill-happy cops!”

“Nobody’s shooting at anybody, ma’am. Mr. Duffy lost his head. We’re mature and trained policemen. We don’t take orders from an agitated bystander.”

“Bystander?” Duffy said. “My livelihood’s at stake. She might as well be squirting that lighter fluid on me. This is a form of assassination. Hell, it’s character assassination.”

McDermott looked over at the two uniformed officers. “Could one of you get this man out of here.”

“I’m being held hostage! You can’t do this!”

One of the cops stepped over to him and put his left hand on Duffy’s upper arm and started tugging. Duffy tried to shake him off.

“You don’t want to get into it with us, sir,” the cop said.  “Believe me. It‘ll go badly for you.”

Duffy grumbled but acquiesced to the policeman’s grasp and was escorted down the driveway to a squad car, which was parked on the curb of the street. Meanwhile the sound of fire truck sirens could be heard ringing through the neighborhood. In the distance, Roland could see neighbors approaching Mrs. Rosewood’s property. He turned to the other officer.

“Rusty, I need you to do crowd control; I’ll take it from here.”

The cop sighed. “Anything you say, Detective.”

McDermott looked back up at Mrs. Rosewood.

“It’s all settled, ma’am. It’s just you and me. Let’s talk about this like friends, okay?”

“I don’t know you.”

“Well this is a good time to get acquainted. But first, I need to know your daughter’s safe.”

“She’s safe unless Duffy gets his grubby hands on her.”

“Well, can I see her?”

“She’s not here.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s on an errand.”

“You swear she’s not in the house with you?”

“Yes, I swear. Why would I lie?”

“No reason. So tell me, do you like golf, Mrs. Rosewood?”

“My husband likes golf. Anything that’s good for Ronnie is good for me.”

“I bet he’s a nice man.”

“He’s a wonderful man; a good husband; a good father.”

“How would he feel if he was here right now witnessing this, Mrs. Rosewood?”

“He wouldn’t understand, but that’s besides the point.”

“Is it Mrs. Rosewood?”

“Yes. He’s a modest man who could never admit his own worth. But I know it; and Margaret knows it too. That’s why we have to do this.”

“Is Margaret your daughter?”

“Yes. Look, there’s no way to prove Duffy took the pants, but I remember placing them in the pile with a note and little markings on the waist and cuffs. I’ve never trusted the man anyway, but he’s the only tailor in town.”

“They must be mighty fine pants then, huh?”

Mrs. Rosewood put the lighter fluid down and grabbed the phone from out of the crook in her neck.

“Oh you’ve never seen anything like them – Scottish plaid on a soft cotton fabric. They’re the only ones I’ve ever seen like that. And the only ones on the rack.”

“You like plaid, do you?”

“Yes. Ronnie and I went to Scotland on our honeymoon. It was the only cruise we could afford that September.”

“Sounds like a memorable trip.”

“We spent our first night in a real-life castle near Edinburgh. Oh, and you know, in Scotland they don’t pronounce the ‘burgh’; they say ‘burrow.’ Anyway, the next morning we were awakened to the sound of bagpipes. It was the most exotic experience.”

“Wow, that sounds very nice, Mrs. Rosewood. And I didn’t know that thing about the ‘burrow’.”

Roland could hear the roar of a fire truck as it rolled up out front. He looked down the driveway as one of the cops, the taller one, Henry, waved the truck to a stop and a couple of fireman jumped off the side. He watched the fire chief screech up in a red Crown Victoria.

“What’s all the fuss?” Mrs. Rosewood said.

“Oh it’s the fire department. We have to call them just in case. We wouldn’t want you to catch fire or burn down your nice home.”

“Oh no, it’s okay. I’ve got this all figured out. I have a pale of water here by my foot to throw on the clothes as soon as they’re ruined.”

“You know water can spread lighter fluid and make the fire expand out of control.” Roland didn’t know why he said that. He guessed maybe it would make her realize she’d gone a little overboard and surrender.

“You’re making that up,” she said.

“I wish.”

“Well, I’ve committed myself to this. If I back out now I’ll look like a fool.”

“Mrs. Rosewood, in all sincerity, if you set your house on fire, you stand a much better chance of looking like a fool. Believe me, I’m a hostage negotiator and I’m not supposed to be talking like this, but we’re friends now, aren’t we? I can tell you the truth.”

“If we were friends then you’d believe me about the golf pants.”

“Mrs. Rosewood, the cost of a burnt-down house has got to be more than a stolen pair of trousers don’t you think.”

“The house won’t burn down, Detective. I’ve got control of the situation.”

“Maybe, maybe not. And what about all those clothes? Should you put other people’s property at risk because of the behavior of one man?”

“He’s got insurance. He can reimburse them.”

“Mrs. Rosewood, I beg of you to please come down here and let’s talk this thing out face to face.”

“Not on your life! Your marksmen will have to shoot me out of here. Then we’ll see how Duffy feels. That son of a bitch will probably relish in my death. There’ll be nobody around to make him feel guilty about his new pants. He can wear them freely out on the golf course whenever he pleases.”

As she was finishing her sentence the shorter cop, Rusty walked up the driveway and got McDermott’s attention. He pointed to his watch and mouthed “times up!”

“Oh for God sakes,” McDermott said.

“What?” Mrs. Rosewood said.

“Not you ma’am, I was talking to one of the officers.”

Roland looked over Rusty’s shoulders and saw three additional police officers wearing flap jackets; one had a crowbar.

He shook his head forcefully, but Rusty ignored him and turned back to the three SWAT team members and pointed to the front door.

McDermott turned and looked up at Mrs. Rosewood. “They say I can’t negotiate with you anymore. You’ve got to come down.”

“They’ll have to drag me out through the fire, Detective. I’m sorry. In this story, the underdog wins.” She shut off her phone and put it in her pocket.

McDermott waved to get her back, but she ignored him and picked up the clothing and the lighter fluid.

Roland turned to Rusty, “Get in there fast!”

Rusty gave the order and McDermott could hear the front door being cracked open. He ran down the driveway and around to the front door. He followed the men as they raced up the stairs just across from the entryway. Mrs. Rosewood was standing at the top of the staircase on a landing in front of the window. She had just set the torch to the clothing and a little flame burst up from the pile on the floor. One of the officers pulled her away as the other one looked into the bucket. He picked it up to pour onto the fire, but Mrs. Rosewood screamed. “No, no! It’ll spread the lighter fluid.”

The officer stopped just before the first drops of water sprinkled out. “What the hell is in this?”

“Water,” she yelled.

He shook his head and proceeded to pour it on the clothes and the flame quickly sizzled out as McDermott reached the top of the stairs. Three firemen in full gear, one with an axe and two with extinguishers, came charging up the stairs behind him and began foaming the burnt pile of clothes. The hallway smelt of steamy smoke and there was a black carbon stain on the ceiling above Mrs. Rosewood who stood with a police officer holding her.

“We need to check the house out just to make sure everything’s okay,” a fireman said.

“Do what you have to,” said Roland. He turned to Mrs. Rosewood. “Ma’am, we need to take you downtown, I hope you understand.”

“Yes, I understand. And it was worth it.”

The officer who had been holding her back started to reach for his handcuffs, but McDermott stopped him.

“That won’t be necessary, will it Mrs. Rosewood?”

“Oh my, no.”

She and the group of policemen proceeded down the stairs and out the front door. As they were stepping outside, Roland heard a cry from the front sidewalk by the street.  “Mommy, Mommy, I found them!”

Little Margaret was running to the door with a pair of plaid golf pants. Suddenly, Duffy broke away from the policeman who was holding him by the squad car.

“Why you little brat! Give those back to me.”

He started chasing after her as she ran up to the door and pulled herself behind Detective McDermott. Duffy tried to reach for her, but Roland grabbed him and then one of the uniform officers pulled Duffy back while reaching for his baton.

“Mommy, they were in his office,” Margaret said pointing at Duffy. “One of the workers there took me right in and pulled them out from under a stack of newspapers. He had them hidden away.”

“Who took you into my office?” Duffy said.

“I don’t know, but she said she was from Asia.”

“Leta – that whore. I’ll deport her so fast!”

“What about the pants,” Mrs. Rosewater said. “What were you doing with my pants?”

“Those are my pants, goddamn it. I paid for ‘em!”

“Then how come they were hidden under a bunch of newspapers?” Margaret asked.

“It’s none of your bratty little business where I keep my clothing.”

Mrs. Rosewood lunged toward Duffy and had to be restrained by one of the officers.

“Look,” Roland said. “We can work this stuff out at the station. Rusty, handcuff Mr. Duffy here.”

“Handcuff me? I was the goddamn hostage. On what charge are you dragging me down to the station?”

“Sir, you’re disrupting a police investigation.”

Mrs. Rosewood smiled. “I knew it would all work out! Oh Detective, you are a friend after all. Let me introduce you to my daughter Margaret.”

 “Hello, Margaret.”

“Hello, sir,” Margaret said. “You’re my hero! Will you come over for a barbecue when my dad gets back?”

“That sounds very nice, dear. Let’s talk about it down at the station. We’ve got some business to take care of.”

“That sounds fun!”

“It’s a lot of fun. It’s what I live for.”

Holiday Inn--Next Exit

≈

Out on the tracks by O’Malley’s cow pasture

Tuesday night, seventeen years of age,
sneaking a cigarette; dreaming of adulthood.

Off in the distance, as I stand by a red signal light

I stare across a hundred acres of soybeans
and even further out upon Midwestern prairie, 

a road sign at an off-ramp by the I-94 Tollway,

its glistening green lights flashing on and off,
speaking of a world that waits ahead. 
In my heart I know those lights –
I know what they are:

A truck-stop and tavern; open all night,
catering to my deep pubescent dreams;
smoke-filled bar, jazzy music,
scantily dressed women – navels and nipples
ready and waiting for hungry truckers at midnight.

And how I wish I were older! 
I will camp out in that parking lot
until my twenty-first birthday
or until some lusty blonde takes pity,
invites me in for a scotch,
and escorts me up to the secret loft.
There in the dim light as
liquid spirits ascend to my brain,
my hand slips inside her blouse
and sneaks its first feel of womanhood;
her lips, pressed against mine
I experience the pillowy, seductive
invitation of her ruby red lipstick.


My life begins and ends at those
flashing lights off in the distance,
the heavenly truck stop of my dreams
as I look out to the west from a pair of
Milwaukee Road railroad tracks.

       --------------------

My dad died when I was twenty-five
and I came back home for the funeral.
Sadly, I attempted to imagine a
world without my father
who tried to lead me into manhood,
into an adult world of
responsibility and sane skepticism,
telling me to work for what I had and
take pride in how I worked.
An adult now, I was alone without a guide
without a roadmap for my path forward.

Somber and lonely, I remembered those
majestic and lusty lights
somewhere out on Interstate 94. 

One cold night, I snuck away from family,
took a trip to those tracks and
scoped out the lustrous green flashes.

 
At last, my dreams would come true.
I hopped into my car and drove off,
miles and miles out Rockland Road.
Out by a ramp on I-94, to find my
oasis on the prairie.

And then… there it stood,
the colored lights of my youth –

a lonely neon sign facing
down upon the empty darkness
of the late-night tollway as
tired cars cruised by at night:

Holiday Inn – Next Exit.ht, seventeen years of age,
sneaking a cigarette; dreaming of adulthood.

Off in the distance, as I stand by a red signal light

I stare across a hundred acres of soybeans
and even further out upon Midwestern prairie, 

a road sign at an off-ramp by the I-94 Tollway,

its glistening green lights flashing on and off,
speaking of a world that waits ahead. 
In my heart I know those lights –
I know what they are:

A truck-stop and tavern; open all night,
catering to my deep pubescent dreams;
smoke-filled bar, jazzy music,
scantily dressed women – navels and nipples
ready and waiting for hungry truckers at midnight.

And how I wish I were older! 
I will camp out in that parking lot
until my twenty-first birthday
or until some lusty blonde takes pity,
invites me in for a scotch,
and escorts me up to the secret loft.
There in the dim light as
liquid spirits ascend to my brain,
my hand slips inside her blouse
and sneaks its first feel of womanhood;
her lips, pressed against mine
I experience the pillowy, seductive
invitation of her ruby red lipstick.


My life begins and ends at those
flashing lights off in the distance,
the heavenly truck stop of my dreams
as I look out to the west from a pair of
Milwaukee Road railroad tracks.

       --------------------

My dad died when I was twenty-five
and I came back home for the funeral.
Sadly, I attempted to imagine a
world without my father
who tried to lead me into manhood,
into an adult world of
responsibility and sane skepticism,
telling me to work for what I had and
take pride in how I worked.
An adult now, I was alone without a guide
without a roadmap for my path forward.

Somber and lonely, I remembered those
majestic and lusty lights
somewhere out on Interstate 94. 

One cold night, I snuck away from family,
took a trip to those tracks and
scoped out the lustrous green flashes.

 
At last, my dreams would come true.
I hopped into my car and drove off,
miles and miles out Rockland Road.
Out by a ramp on I-94, to find my
oasis on the prairie.

And then… there it stood,
the colored lights of my youth –

a lonely neon sign facing
down upon the empty darkness
of the late-night tollway as
tired cars cruised by at night:

Holiday Inn – Next Exit.

Autumn Fences

Dusk is the flag of autumn.
Golden darkness comes early
attached to a cold nip of wind
blowing just beyond the
last warm embers of summer.

An old man struggles along a
village sidewalk with his cane.
The first leaves skip across
a yellowing lawn.

Suddenly,
the piercing sounds of laughter
peal from a schoolyard across the street.
Kids running back and forth willy-nilly
and it’s so funny –
the fences they build to hold childhood in,
keep an old man out.

The flag of autumn rises early;
darkness touches dusk
the mundane worries of supper
enter the old man’s mind,
he is missing the filter
of summer’s optimism.

Poetry

Hey friends, I realize I've let this blog run dry for the past two years while I've been completing my third novel "The Wild Revisited" and putting together a collection of short stories. To keep current, I've decided to randomly post some poems that were originally published in an online periodical which recently went out of business. I hope you enjoy them!