Poem for my Mother
My mother’s eyes stare at me
Like a wounded doe
Looking into a rifle barrel
The months grow antlers
The years fangs
Time a barbed wire fence
Tears at the soul
Her smile fading
Like watercolors off
A worn canvas
The shadow of my ancestors
Stalk my dreams
Like an aging warrior
Tracking game
My mother’s eyes smoldering
Like hot ashes
In a Hiroshima graveyard
Family Poem
I’m addicted to looking at pictures
My mother left behind
From assorted photo albums
Bringing back memories of our family
Flat on Page Street
Teddy the family dog chasing his tail
Like dad chased his dreams
Mother sitting on the sofa knitting
A heating pad on her swollen feet
Or working a crossroad puzzle
One eye on sister the other on me
Dad lighting up a cigarette
Blowing smoke rings across the room
It’s like reliving vaudeville days
My father a conductor
On the old Municipal Railway
Taking me with him for a ride
Letting me ring the bell
A look of pride in his eyes when
He said to the passengers,
“That’s my son.”
May be the only memory I had
Of childhood fun
Father and son as one
Riding to the end of the line
That one time when everything
In life was fairytale fine
Now at seventy
I feel like a dinosaur walking
The ends of earth
With nothing but scraps
To feast on
Pigeon Feathers
Holy men on every street corner
Selling fake myths
Nuns in white with virgin toes
And mushroom dreams inside their loins
I am being followed by
Dick Tracy look-a-likes
With flat feet and bug eyes
The wolf’s eerie howl haunts my dreams
Evangelists pickpocket my empty wallet
My one good eye
Photographs the crime scene
The police lineup consists
Of six pygmies and a ham sandwich
Ladybugs ride on
The wings of butterflies
On A one way trip to Never Land
God wanders the universe
Carrying Jesus piggyback
On his way to a Lady Ga Ga concert
The Madonna confiscates my dreams
Holds me for a ransom I can’t pay
The insatiable night eats my thoughts
I’ve become a one-legged tightrope walker
Without a safety net
My poems turn into pigeon feathers
Fly off on the wind
