Lunch

My office is in what’s known as the Old Port section of Portland, just a block away from the Federal and County courthouses. It’s also right across the street from Anthony’s Italian Kitchen, the best little eatery for many miles. They do cabaret on the weekends that is sold out weeks in advance.

I use to make my lunch but I have fallen into what I think of as my little luxury: I buy my lunch everyday from Tony. I have an account with him and he gives me a discount for being a regular. He’ll do that for anyone who asks. I call ahead and they make it just the way I like it, always some slight modification cause I’m a picky SOB. I never let him give me a bag or a box (in the case of his famous pizza) and I collect all the rubber bands from the sandwiches and return them for reuse.

Today I ordered a sausage sandwich because now that Girlface has moved back into the house, albeit reluctantly, as it is too far from her friends and work, I get a great meal cooked every night for me. (I clean up.) Since she is vegan, I get my minor meat fix at lunchtime.
So when I ordered my lunch today I asked for the sandwich and some sunshine, as it is a drizzly dark cold day. When I got back to my desk I noticed there was a big sun with a smiley face inside it drawn on the wrapper of the sandwich. I guess I don’t have much to complain about; I get sunshine on request.

Where were you

Where were you

On the 5th of September 1973?
It was my third day of high school.
With the melding of three middle schools
more faces to ignore me
a crowd to get lost in
and maybe find someone
who also loves words and photography.

Where were you?
I rode a bus home
past long driveways,
of a thousand houses, with curtains drawn,
empty cars parked out front,
squirrels running on the wires above.

I came home
to brothers and sisters, dogs and cats
admonitions to clean up
and dinner at six.

Where were you
on the fifth of September, 1973
when Alexandra K was born in Wichita,
the editor of the Chronicle-Telegram in Elyria, Ohio
returned from vacation
and the Georgia Supreme Court decided Clark v. State?

Where were you
when fourteen days before her sixteenth birthday
she was taken by force
deprived of her freedom her dignity her soul
her self;
deadened with fear, knowing her life would soon end
and that would be the good part.

Where were you
when covered in her own vomit from fear
she was forced to strip,
clean herself up,
so he could rape her.

Where were you
as she lay trapped under his massive bulk
knowing only fear as the day died
as she negotiated for her release of her body
and was raped again.

Where were you
when finally her body was released
still breathing
and thrown to the street
by the garbage cans
at the end of a long driveway
where ultimately she was told
to just get over it.

Where were you September 3, 1973?
Where were you last night?

SP

Womb

This is the first poem I ever sold: Midwest Poetry Review, April 1984

Womb

Hong Kong is constantly being torn down
and rebuilt. The sound reaches me
as I lie in darkness.
She is an uncertain city, a twitch
between China and the sea.
I walk her streets watching her side-
long glances. Ripples bounce off
every building, rustle people along.
Holes appear in the streets,
people avoid them; unanswered questions.
The streets tie down the city's anxiety.
The ground pulses with the strain. Buildings
push across no man's land, wade into the bay.
Hong Kong beats on the edge of excitement
and unpenned history. I fall asleep
to the sound of cabs traveling in a half dozen
directions. The city is closing her eyes.
We dream together.




It is not my favorite nor my best but I put it out here to encourage everyone (including me) to write and everyone to publish. There are many, many people who write better than I; some should be publishing.

Tolerance

Tolerance seems to be in short supply these days dispite the fact that society allegedly promotes the concept. In Woodburn, IN, a student wrote a short piece on tolerating homosexuals in her student newspaper. The administration is pushing for the teacher/advisor's termination for failing to "alert" the principal to a "sensitive" issue. They claim it is not a cse of First Amendment free speech.
Is it any wonder that people are killing those who are different when in the country that claims to be be the bastion of freedoms statrs censoring it's citizens at such an early age?

Refusal Not to Fly
for Nathan Bright Keegan, 1983-2007

As I make my way to your funeral,
I drive too fast.
I accelerate the motorcycle
along the outside curve of the exit ramp,
around a car already over the speed limit,
cut him off
and speed ahead.

I am not late.
Like you, I want to fly.
With a reckless, careless, endless intensity.
I speed past the traffic light
without noticing the color.

I have a thousand questions.
Each blurring streetlight that flashes by
whispers an answer
that falls on a fleeting shadow.
My head down without a helmet,
I miss the light held by your sister driving ahead.

A police cruiser passes
going in the opposite direction.
In my rearview mirror
I see his brake lights illuminate.
I make a left and accelerate into an immediate right
and cruise up a parallel street.

It is 192 miles from Biddeford
to Little Cranberry Island.
A distance measured from seven pounds
to beyond six feet;
from your first step to all the answers
that did not fit your questions.
A path that constantly turned
the horizon on its side.

I find the street to St. Bart’s.
I slow down and pull in.
Faces turn at the noise the tires make as I stop.
I make my way through the memories of your life,
littered with tears and smiles;
Scars and hands extended.

There is a tangle of family and friends.
There are answers here
that have caught up to your questions,
questions that may fit some of your answers.
There is a brother whose world has turned darker.

You always wanted to fly
and sought those paths;
carefully, carelessly, intensely.
And with passion and friends.

I will listen to the images
and comfort the memories
and I will leave with the fire of your passion.


SP


Nate's obit, it should be noted is of Pulitzer quality. Check it out;

http://www.legacy.com/mainetoday%2Dpressherald/Obituaries.asp?Page=Lifestory&PersonId=87403789

Something from the past.



Specters Along The Highway

Illusions

Figures fade. People become trees, become
mist, and a notion past. Disappearances
are common. I accelerate, not sure
my headlights will ever break out of the fog,
or that the road behind is tied to the city
of departure.

Allusions

Figures smirk, point back, draw tenuous
connections: to a house in Western Australia,
an apartment overlooking the New Territories,
to Seattle, Washington. The road past Bear Mountain
is a loop from the Pacific Northwest. The future
is chained to the past with every specter
as it fades into bush, tree, signpost, bicycle,
headed in the opposite direction.

Elusions

Figures slip away, leave holes in the fog.
I’m on the road again, I search new cities
one step behind. Every town, city, poem,
has a thousand intersections. I catch a flash
in the corner of my eye, the tip of my pen;
I look too late. The road goes on,
cold, forever. My eyes
see more than I can digest.

Nathan

I am on a mission today. I have a poem I wrote several years ago on the death of my cousin in a car accident called the Language of Flowers. In light of several events I’ve been looking for it. I’ll find it and I’ll post it.

I’ve lived, it seems, a very cautious life; jumping out of airplanes, climbing rock faces, driving motorcycles at 100 mph, wandering the world. When I was at University of Colorado and a silly lad of 17 I climbed up the side of an dormitory called Willy Villy, a new high rise with window wells that were like rock “chimneys” I just crept up using my hands and feet as friction devices until I got to the fourth floor and knocked on a window. At that point I decided to walk down the stairs. My favorite form of bicycling is riding in city traffic. I’m just so much more efficient than the cars. I’ll take my space out of the middle of the road thank you very much.

My caution takes a slightly different form; I have never had a drink of alcohol. I grew up in the 70s and there was plenty of everything available. Plenty. Everything. Sewell Hall seventh floor, a guy called spaceman, and not because he was studying astrogeophysics.

I watched people consume small quantities and huge quantities of alcohol. The result was always the same; it changed their behavior. Always. Sometime that was the goal and sometime just the effect. I had a hard enough time dealing with people on a regular basis without becoming impaired. I prefer to be an idiot on my own terms without the chemical inducement.

It was also a bit of a scary thing too. Sometime people changed permanently. Sometime it wasn’t enough of a change and they kept upping the dose, upping potency changing to more exotic chemicals. It was very cool. And so damn enticing. “Parker, you don’t know what you’re missing, Dude.” .... Exhale. And I didn’t. But I never really wanted to see how far my own self-control went, where could I stop. Frankly, I was afraid that it was exactly as I was told, euphoric, and I would go there and never come back. I didn’t want to not come back.

Last night, two very good friend of mine’s son died of an overdose. Nate was a very fine young man who will be sorely, deeply missed. I cannot imagine what it is to lose a child. I do not want to know.

These days people complain about the alcohol problem of youngsters. The drinking age has been put back to 21 but drinking continues to grow ever more prevalent. The schools pass rules, cops clamp down, colleges have programs, advertising tells us what to do, but everyone says, “Well, it’s inevitable” and “a right of passage” and “They have to learn about it somehow.” I don’t agree. As a parent the only thing I can do is explain why I never took a drink, explain that they have a choice and should think about what they do and why.

The most interesting thing for me is that my friends “back in the day” as Weaselboy would say, accepted my choice as one of the options, accepted that is who I was. As an adult I find much more ridicule and pressure to conform to the drinking “norm”. I made the right choice for me. We all make our own choices. That is what makes us individuals. That is what makes us free.

You will be missed Nate.

peace.