Words
Organizing hundreds of poems
I’ve written annoyed
for having written so many.
Of course I keep a writer’s notebook one of those
old-fashioned black and white covered
college ruled notebooks.
I do my “creative writing” in there:
poems and bits of prose and prose poems
and hybrids of poems and prose.
I write in there at night before sleeping and while sitting
in the car waiting at the airport or the school
or while sitting in the doctor’s waiting room or in hotel lobbies
or at the grandson’s basketball practice or
the granddaughter’s lacrosse practice . . .
you’d be surprised how much writing you can get done
in between everything else. I don’t draw
pictures or symbols, hieroglyphics or images of any kind
I don’t doodle, it’s all just words
simple old words.
Celia
Even in my dreams
I’m overly sensitive
and get lost easily.
“Hi Celia” I said
but her back was towards me
so she couldn’t see who I was.
She turned then to look back at me
smiled but didn’t say anything as I continued
to my desk isolated in a corner
along the hallway.
I began looking through
the drawers and files
for anything of mine I could take home
expecting to be fired any time
then Robert Celia’s husband walked by
heading to his office. I followed behind
stuck my head in his door
“She’s in the next office, Robert
say hello to her go to her.”
He shook his head, no, she can come to me.
“No, Robert, you should go to her
you’re the man and she’s sad
I can tell she’s sad and I hardly know her.”
He frowned and shook his head
and that was that.
You’ll feel good about yourself
if you try your best unless
you still lose the girl.
Susie at work tells me that after hours one day
nobody else around
she pulled-off her slacks and panties
sat on the Xerox machine printed off a few
to send to her ex so he’d miss what he didn’t have anymore.
But I’m not sure I believe her
think perhaps
she was trying to pull my leg
or chain or something.
Cracking
Need to lift the heaviest weights
you can to force your muscles
to grow bigger, stronger.
Still have a cracking sound
in my right shoulder and it’s been
over a year since my
“massive rotator cuff tear involving
supraspinatus and infraspinatus tendons . . .”
was surgically repaired:
I hear it when I lift my arm over my head to paint
or wave or take a bowl down from the top shelf
I hear it when I do bench presses or incline presses or swing
my arms around doing my shoulder flexibility exercises
I hear it when I push myself up in bed before sleeping
so I can read or write a poem
which is what I’m doing right now.
Ghosts
Just like that – time flew
dragging us from high school
to retirement in a flash!
I wonder about the people
who have passed
through my life who
I haven’t seen in years, in decades
wonder how they
are doing now
all of us being older
old high school friends
college friends and favorite professors
church people I knew
coworkers, teammates, and neighbors
my first girlfriend, I hear her life was rough.
So many people I wonder
how many if I added
them all up.
They are all here with me
part of my life whether I like it or not
helping make me who I am
but no longer accessible
there but not there
like ghosts.
