To the Jumper

You ask if I'd follow
As if I now stand
Where you call to me,
Yet down you stare
And there waiting you see
Me, arms outstretched,
And assume I'm not reaching
Up for your hand.
How is it
I have to remind
You, at the summit,
That you've made the climb?

A (Poor) Boy and his Doggerel

Rowhouses rent
With violence brewed
On sugar-tongued promises
Sweetened on cue;
Poverty melted with
Solemn fall vows
Only to shiver
In winter's cold boughs;

Reality harvested
Doesn't yield much
When dream-seeds are planted
By farmers whose touch
Just the well-heeled will grease:
No elbows work rooms
Where hunger and ache
Hold perpetual lease.

Belle Weather

If your sister
Acted like this weather,
You'd have her committed
Faster than we both could say
"Bipolar."

If her doctor
Told you her behavior
Was a natural cycle
Would that make for
Better living with her?

If you'd admit
The hardest part would be
To change the things you do
To make her crazy,
It'd be a start.

Weather and the Girl

You might blush
If it were only whispered
At large family gatherings,
And no drinks
Or other secrets spilled-
We might get by with thinking
It's nobody's problem
But our own.

I remember the wedding,
When she smashed the ice sculpture
We didn't stand around pretending
She and it weren't melting down
In front of us.

Having seen it happen here,
If your sister bounced
This sharply up and down
By days or weeks
A little more each year,
You'd have her off to rehab,
Back on meds, or stuck in therapy,
Or something-anything-
But letting anyone else see.

So why, if everyone with skin
Can feel the bipolarity-
That's blowing in the wind,
Melting with the icecaps-
And rising with the tide,
Do we so snidely eschew insularity,

Pretending- now of all nows-

That we don't all live on a tiny island
Where everybody's business is co-owned?
While I hate to crash a party
I think it's started crashing down on us.

Ego, ergo Eco

Frogs float in a saucepan
Giggling at the bubbles
Ignorant in increments

Gum-flappers on CSPAN
Twaddling ideologues
Impotent in dependence

Polar bears strand themselves
On frozen funeral shelves
As the arctic circle melts

Facebook narcissism
Deepening the schism
Between the faceless billions

Unwired, unwitting, hired
(For cheap but not for keeps)
So artificial revenue
Growth unfettered can continue
Leaping greatly forward,

Nevermind us waking from
This Somnium Americana,

Uneasy with extremes
We dream of tropic paradigms
And hot springs hoping
Not to stir this slumber
While the numbers bear the tidings
To our coast-along habit.

Assume blind justice serves us later,
Last, or not at all (the end's always
Depending on your means)
Please just assimilate us faster
In this melting (boiling) pot
Of man's self-made disaster.

Dish Soap Opera

Each time you ask,
"Why can't you just put it
(The coffee cup, the spoon...)
In the dishwasher now?"
I realize I've failed-not me, but you.

I know my reasons-and
I need not list them here-
(And anyway, I'll do it soon)
The point is that I'm being asked
To justify myself again
And I thought we'd made clear
That "understanding" isn't tasked
With covering for your demands.

Perhaps the ritual
Of testing my defense
Is more important than
A confluence of need.

If what you're really asking is,
"Why can't you just want things
The same as me?"
Then I suppose that we're agreed.

Idling Thoughts

While my car heats
On freezing mornings
I develop theories
To explain to the doubters
How "global warming" is
A misnomer but
Not a mistake.

Pressure

 

These uniforms may be the last public reminder of their essential sameness -
A quaint official token that their norms have just begun to change.

Shorts and jerseys, soon they'll shed these as metamorphosis accelerates;
They'll paint new garish hues on outer forms to match the inner range

Of rage and vigor, perk and venom just beneath the roiling surface of the skin.
Their shifted, swelling landscapes shudder over storms, and they exude the strange

Magnetic condensation free of toxic sediments built up by fear and sin,
Regret and suffering and loss, of failures borne as their lives rearrange.

Well, so we elders tell them when we practice our clever barometry,
Forgetting that the pressures that transform them into us ever subside with time,

But stretch them almost to their tightest point-
Like shrunken, faded gym outfits that we once wore.
We have no sure idea what it's like to have no sure idea anymore.

Mutual Will

"Let there be Light,"
He said to Himself.
With no prior evidence,
Without a single sign or wonder,
But this unprecedented confidence,
Light believed Him.
And Light was.

Building Blocks

Your sister says "a stack." Your teacher says "fine motor skills."
The editors at Parents say "a strong portfolio."

"Awareness" comes to mind, and "diligence" seems apropos
Perspective on the strength successive sessions will instill.

Although your lips have formed the bases of a verbal life,
The letters carved thereon are merely undistinguished shapes.

So many things occur across the blurry lush landscapes
Of moment, and we rush to save each one as precious, rife

With meaning more than these obsessed parental reveries.
No single image held over the chasm cut by time

Will serve as keystone for an overarching theme, but I'm
Convinced no clearer blueprint's drawn for building memories.