OTHER POEMS & SUCH

O.J. (written during the OJ Simpson trial)

Touchdowns into heaven
forever scoring points.
Saving oneself from introspection.
Knowing guilt, pleading innocence.

Two bloodied bodies discovered.
Stabbed in the early morning.
The wife of our hero, the one we made;
persistent still in keeping.

Preliminary trials. Prejudged contrition.
Attorneys playing at screen tests
while a nation watches, mesmerized.
Stars defending stars.

Books, interviews, film offers lay await.
Celebrity status lying quite beyone anyone's rules.
Requisite scripts by the living
Money to be made by murder.

The system sustains any idea of remorse.
The knife of deduction is yet to be found.
He, unknowingly, unobserved, sheds a tear.
Is it for what was, or for what is yet to be?

Help on 911, anticipated eight times
nontheless, a necessity never acknowledged.
Assistance not received, tho requested
A young mother's life extinguished.

The commentary continues. Changed lives
captured in a snapshot never to be relived
but to be continually dug up by
a nation numbed by thriving excess.

America, where is your future
 if this is your present?
What have you to offer
our children of tomorrow?

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  THE REP

Reflections in a strange mirror
  a likeness as that of any other
The eye scrutinizes
  flesh of which you are custodian
Mix-mash strokes
  enameled for use
  rather than for vanity
Capped taste in a routine morning
  shafts of stuble
  appear for daily acknowledgement
Alpha and Omega
  in one clean sweep
Shower spray
  that despite its similarity
  seems boringly different
Lather and dropped soap
  cleanliness without response
  dormant in recognition
  of ungratified desires
Hair laden with heavy water
  branches burdened down by fruit
  kissed and stroked in that yesterday
  far distant past
Patting to dry
  self caresses for much better purposes
Memories of lithe torsos
  wrapped loosely after pleasure
Upward strokes
  an effort of placement and control
  too few appearances
  for the outside world
Clothing routinely arranged
  already worn and mentally discarded
  a morning reviewed
Glancing at guessed time
  a turn of the knob
  leading to an unwanted abyss
Prehistoric memories with centuries of supposed knowledge

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  LEAVING

The ferry appears,
a small dot on the horizon
seen through the dawn of an eastern sky
focusing towards its destination
as a roaring Cyclops
approaching, singly,
to carry you away.

A swift dinghy ride
you mustn't be late to enter
that world of my unreality.
Spent, it immediately encompasses
bearing you into its smoke and fumes
conveying you into that arena in which I
can no longer compete.

Settled back now, in the cockpit
morning coffee in hand
listening to the vibrations of the sea
our dinghy, peaceful, rustling
attached to its mother ship
as I am to your world, in which I
find myself a foreigner.

Used nightly as your sounding board
criticized for my failure
to see reality as you view it
waiting, hopeful,
eternally in anticipation
for that piece which is
breaking away from the whole.

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Mother's Day

and so we will celebrate
Mother's Day soon
when you, my sons, are asked
to remember me

but I know that
you remember me well as you
  shout good-by
  kiss me hello
  smile
  all three

you should honor me?
without you
there would be no life.

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