The Ol' Neighborhood (Plum Crazy)

Summer, 1970.

Violent trees of violet plums

stand guard over our homes,

carpet bombing bitter fruit

'tween the sidewalk and street of my childhood hallucinations.

I climb the limbs of our abode's digestive sentry

and survey the neighborhood's blossoming decay:

Look, there's a pickled Arlene Warfield three doors down

making quiet sick into her flower bed with grace.

Look, here's Father clumsy fumbling toward the curb

'neath my purple camouflaged catbird seat

before mounting his trusty Mercury Comet,

the sonic blast of mufferless combustion

signifying another cattle drive underway

'cross suburban prairies to liquor store ecstasy.

Dad, the shakiest gun in the (North) West.

Dad, slow drawing double barreled bourbon.

Dad, outmatched by six shooter cirrhosis.

---

I pick off a plum and suck out the pulp,

amusing myself with malignant metaphors

drifting nowhere and serving scant purpose

until nature absconds me to the ground,

rushing my ass toward the family confessional

that is our only and blessed toilet.

I learned, that day, two stark truisms

which have never wavered through time and tribulation:

human beings can be quite dead while busy living

and plums are simply prunes in hydrating disguise.

Radio Hour

My parents were

performance artists,

acting out a menagerie

of dysfunction

some called their lives.

Mom was Norma Desmond

without the showbiz pedigree.

Or a kind of Martha

Virginia Woolf fraidy cat

fortified juicing bookworm.

Dad was Don Birnam

without the suit

and writer repartee.

Or maybe he was Willy Loman

but with only the shaking

and his sick left to sell.

I had a front row seat

to shows played always,

the Sanislavski method

taken to extreme.

When my eyes tired

of this gray grotesque,

I'd listen to their broadcast

through my room heating duct.


I then languished in repose

from my poster plastered cell,

a coffee-stained typewriter

pecking dreams out of my nightmares.

My childhood pet beside me

growing old, confused, and heavy;

bestowing unconditional love

beset by uncompromising fleas.

My eight track

stereo punk soundtrack

cracking snide on the death dance below me,

harmonizing with the rain on the roof.


Finally I collapsed on my bed, out of life

and chanced to glance over at Joe Strummer

screaming from the wall and through the speaker wire,

never growing up

yet both old before we aged.

Easy Joy

As a child,

there was such effortless joy:

riding an imaginary horse

with a banana seat saddle

and streamers for ears,

a hot water heater box

transformed into a fort,

the arrival of a traveling 

carnival come to town.

...

Now the daylight fades 

into diamond dust

and I take a breath

then turn away, unmoved.

----

I've learned so much,

grown so old.

--

Too wise now, it seems, for easy joy.

Twilight Twixt Time

My mother fights the British and swims the English Channel

drunk on jug wine, tipping off the love seat,

nose lost in the pages of the wonder of others.

I am not impressed.

----

My father grins on sour mash piss laughing gas

slick with sweat, writhing on the sofa,

staring dull eyed darkly up at our snot green shutters.

I am not amused.

----

I'm Schwinn spokes kicking down the neighborhood alleys,

banana seat running from cadavers still breathing,

buzzed on ten-cent candy bars and two-bit paper kites,

haunted by parental ghosts gone sour.

----

The half life of these remembrances

stretch to the end of me, fraying without decay;

blurry to begin with, those polyester yesteryears

nonetheless grip

a raw nerve end at the root of my mind,

tugging some ugly bygones

kicking and screaming into the now.

-----

An ice cream truck down the block is lost in song;

another Sunday in the twilight twixt time.