Just Wondering

Cold wet grass soaks my socks and cuffs
as another day creeps above the opposite rooflines.
And I wonder, “What would it be like?”
What would it be like to not have to wake
before the birds and a flaming westbound ball
assail my eastbound senses?
What would it be like to lie beneath the covers
and feel all warm and Us instead of cold and Me?
I wonder again what it would be like
spending the day mapping my wanderings
into a notebook when my shadows are shorter than I
and the grass is a spongy carpet
of succulence and youthful bounce.
Even for me.
Then I stop this reverie, blinded as I am
by the Sun and my own flashes of woe,
to recall those times once existed and can again,
returning with the certainty of
birdsong accompaniment to Dawn’s
cracking a smile on the face of night.
They will if I whistle through
my new curtain-up lips
and closed-eye memory of those days
in that place where I did remember
what it would be like.

It’s On Me

I saw that familiar mug today,
sadder than its usual mope.
I pushed a beer in front of him, and
he nodded “Thanks” as I nodded “Go Ahead.”
But he didn’t speak, didn’t need to.
I’d voiced it for him so many times before.

My heart has misplaced its center,
given up what small soft part it had left.
That one piece that felt boundless joy
at her touch, that signaled
a smile be raised on my half-staff face
whenever she kissed me.

As I polished off the beer, I cast a last glance
at my face hanging in the mirror behind the bar.

Written in the Clouds

Clouds from above. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Half-dozed, I unfastened my seatbelt
and strolled around the mind
of the young man with me.
Out our scratched and mile-misted window,
roiling white clouds lie wrinkled
beneath his feet like love-tussled
bedsheets, and once again we knew
his world’s turned upside down.
Dawn remains behind him and,
above, the softest azure ever
cannot compare to the softness
of bare morning’s kiss,
the wake up touch promising
more than just one new day.
Upon other snowy wrinkles–
where rough-hewn wood beams
held up their sky, where he basked
in birdsong daylight, but departed
in neon-limned boisterous dark–
right-side-up life rests.
Or so all Destiny’s augurs translate
from the entrails of the cumuli below
and whisper to us above the deep sea
and the engines’ din at 36,000 feet.

Linking up for dVerse Poets Open Link Night

Confessions of a Poet Guy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to most of your rules manuals,
I’m a poor excuse for a writer.
I’ve read six books in the past year
and two of them were The Sun Also Rises.
I can’t write every day and
I don’t want to hear how you do.
Some say I’m a poet, though I believe I’m
a reborn storyteller who spins tales on paper
in busted up lines. Papa Hemingway,
Robert Parker and Ron Carlson taught me
how to fib like this. See, it’s a guy thing…
and the only way I can get away with lying
in this world full of women
who read between my broken parts.

The poetry I learned from no one, except
maybe a big lesson from old Bill Stafford
who said I didn’t have to be perfect, just lower
my phony idea of your standards and write.
It’s kind of like drinking beer, I guess.
So as a poet, I’ve become a minor league beer snob
who dislikes major league beer snobs.
Oh, and while I’m at it,
I believe canned cheese product
is both fine dining and a swell serving device.
I sing fairly well, but never in front of people,
so maybe I don’t. My dog Mollie ain’t saying.
She doesn’t care if she lies perfectly, either.

© 2012 Joseph Hesch

Champagne Tommy

Statue of former-Mayor Thomas Whalen III and his dog Finn McCool in Tricentennial Park, Albany, NY, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Here in Albany’s Tricentennial Park,
he’s sitting on the bench to my right,
old Mayor Champagne Tommy, bronzer than
any old toper could ever get in a gin mill.
The bronze Dutchman and the Mohawk
stand between us–the former overdressed,
and the latter, barely dressed at all.
But Tommy’s rigged for action,
collar buttoned and tie snugged up nicely.
The former judge’s jacket’s open,
exposing the slightly straining belt and buckle
tucking back years spent
sitting at the Bar and in a few.
Tommy’s got a big head,
too big for his hairline, as I like to say.
But Tommy’s comb-over withstands winds
and rains. Hell, even blizzards won’t budge it.

“Assiduity,” blares the Dutchman, beckoning
with two fingers and his jaunty Van Dyke,
like some stuffy maître d’ in Utrecht or
maybe a ruffly pimp in Amsterdam.
The Indian remains silent, probably
not wishing to draw attention to himself,
as if standing near-naked next to
that Dutch dandy wasn’t baring witness already.
But Champagne Tommy, grinning that perpetual
grin, pays his neighbors no mind. He’s squinting
unblinking amity out onto Broadway, watching
each day’s passing parade and sharing his
park with the lunchtime crowd and their
cell phones, sandwiches and lattes.

Tommy rests on his bench, his left arm
draped across it’s back, as if waiting
for some downtown companion
to curl into his metal-firm embrace.
If she doesn’t show, Tommy will be okay.
He still has his burly blond pal, Finn McCool,
by his side. Finn sits on the ground
beneath his master’s right hand,
silent, strong, smiling his dog smile,
giving new meaning to the command, “Stay.”
The tulips are in bloom here today, their big
annual celebration kicking off tomorrow.
Tommy won’t be attending this year,
though his spirit presides over every party
this town throws. I mean, c’mon, why do you
he’s called Champagne Tommy?

“Slainth Mhath,” Tommy. Even now,
you’re the life of the party.

 

Seal of the City of Albany, NY monument in Tricentennial Park (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

I used to sit with old Tommy at lunchtime when I worked in downtown Albany. I was the only non-tourist and long-term sitter to hang with His Honor on that broiling or freezing bronze bench.

Cloudy Future

Clouds at sunset in Lynnwood, Washington. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If my stars are aligning,
which you all tell me they are,
but clouds curtain off the skies,
is my future somehow lost behind them?
Like that tree with no one there
to hear it drop? I’m not sure
I should worry about such things
when the stars always know
their courses. But I’m never
sure of mine, even with a map
full of straight life before me.
See, I’ve a history of staring
at clouds — I mean,
would you just look at ‘em? –
and usually end up finding myself
unfound when I bring my gaze
back to your level level.
Like I said, I’m not worried;
it’s just that I wonder what secrets
you, the stars and all these clouds
are keeping from me.

© 2012 Joseph Hesch

Linked for dVerse Poets Pub’s Open Link Night, hosted this week by my dear friend, my original North Star, Natasha Head… you may know her as @Tashtoo.

Written in Stone

Stones know the score;
nobody bothers them and fewer still
are bothered by them.
Well, except occasionally
touchy sandal wearers or maybe
old-timey New England farmers.
But you hardly ever hear
about stones getting in trouble.
What? That Cain and Abel affair?
Stone fell in with a bad crowd.
Other than that, only flashy stones
get noticed and then cause trouble.
I think the lesson here –
one I didn’t learn soon enough –
is stones should eschew fussy farmers and
prickly poetasters. And maybe you can
hang with such sandaled shepherds
who are not yet Kings.
It’s probably good to be a stone.
Just be hard, lay low,
keep your dirty face shut
and hopefully they’ll never
crack you. Like you did me.

© 2012 Joseph Hesch