No pretenders left
Nothing left to pretend
Rebellious spirits dancing
Past their time
Well past the point of return
Wishes for a shooting star lost
Nothing left but cold embers
Waiting for one last golden sunset

No need for thanksgiving
when there is plenty
or when there’s no decision to make
about which direction to take

No need to tell your story
with the happy ending–
the one where things worked out
Tell that story another day

No need for Friday night poetry
when music and dance fills the air
Give thanks tonight for your loneliness
Helping you remember just what happiness is

Written in Tucson, Arizona, Winter 1970

Only with joy in our heart
Should we hold this moment
For it’s all we have
And when we think about it
It’s all we ever really need

Good poetry isn’t easy
Unless it rips your guts out
Stripping you naked of the clothes
You wore to first communion–
That inconvenient place of passive confession
Where all the other strangers stood watch
As you took your first drink–
Tasted the salty blood of life

And where are they now–the strangers
When you need a witness
As the last thread of pride slips off your shoulder
Into the tall empty glass you call your life–
The glass giving you the courage
To mouth your pathetic confessions

Before he died
He whispered with stinking breath to his only sister–
Something about an idea for a new poem–
One about an bitter old man who died
Because he drank his own blood
Hoping he might live through one more night
And at the break of dawn
Confess one last time to a stranger

It comes in the earliest morning hours
At times, starting in a dream
Lingering in our eyes
And other untouchable places
Not destinations, but places tugging at our hearts

The candle’s flame lasts only so long
Soon it turns itself over to the darkness
Leaving us to wonder about the mysteries
Born into us from the beginning
Dying at each year’s end

You will see his fondness for ever so subtle shades of gray
How one by one he bends, sheaths the tall ornamental grass
In rounded silvery whiteness
And how he paints ripply footprints at the water’s edge

If you look closely, you will see
The fluttering gulls in the distance
Seemingly small, yet not insignificant
Every detail a pixel of life

There’s more, if you look closer
If you’re willing to brazen the biting wind
Like the pile of jagged sticks, and mossy green rocks from summer
Now a single creamy white ice sculpture

And if you hold your eyes and heart wide open
You can read the painter’s signature
Written in the battleship gray sky—
December

Sometimes I’d rather be a stranger
To you, everyone, even myself
Then I could stop being the chameleon–
The pretender that pretends to be
Whatever you or I think I should be

I hated my parents for the longest time
Because they wouldn’t let me be who I wanted to be
Then I stopped hating them
When I realized my ideas for myself
Were even worse than those they had for me

My vision grows more blurred each day by all the notions–
Lame ideas about who I am, what I should be
That’s a good thing–
Sometimes we spend too much time looking for ourselves
When all we need is to just be

We forget it’s all an illusion–
every last blink of experience
flowing into and out of us
like some forgotten river–
maybe the Ohio, and
then again maybe not

Martins Ferry clings to me–
some terribly worn, out of style suit of clothes–
in synch with my special shoes, but painfully dull and empty
like the now abandoned house on Indiana Street
where my winter dreams began in the warm family room
where a short-needled Christmas tree stood every year–
the same corner where I cried in quiet desperation
hoping a dream would some day carry me far away

Now I want to go back–
this time by choice to wear those shoes and that suit
Something tugs at my heart on Thanksgiving and Christmas
Making even the sadness and loneliness look good
Just one more time to sit on the family room floor
and play with my toys
while Mom and Dad argue in the kitchen about money, relatives
and so many other empty things filling life–
things that are also part of love

yet we know
deep down inside, we know
that we’re alive–
feeling beings–
sensing our way through life

we never know when
it might come back to us

an old high school photograph
could whirl us back in time
helping us remember what we forgot
at times, things we never knew
had become a part of us

it’s always in the silence
when the mind is still
and the heart is free to roam about
mending itself
knitting back together lost parts of us
forgotten things that long to be remembered
giving back to us
that sense of who we really are