My Poetry Page
NIGHT
Crickets chirping in the fields
Birds silent
This is night.
Airplanes blinking their way through the black sky
Passengers departing
This is night.
Trucks rumbling on the distant highway
Taking cargoes to their destinations
This is night.
Factories stilled
Signs with no one to see them
This is night.
OR WAR
SHADOWY VOICES
Shadowy voices call out
To spirits long since dead
Dead of a plague
Of which there is no warning
Voices of silence
Unheard, ignored
Until death replaces the consciousness
Once known.
THE WINDOW
I stand transfigured by what I see
How might I describe it?
A sight of beauty
Unlike any other I’ve seen
Enraptured by thought
And paralyzed by joy I stand
But a window separates beauty and I
So that we may never touch
Save for our common beginning.
FOUR WALLS
In this world are many things
On which to stand and gaze
Some for only moments
Some for days and days
The sights for moments fade away
Into the distant past
The sights for days and days
Forever seem to last
Alas! I have seen neither
Surrounded by four walls
I stand unseeing, unfeeling
Nothing to me calls.
HIGHWAY TO OBLIVION
There exists a road in each of us
We cannot see or touch
It guides us through the field of life
Past perils, pitfalls , and such
It guides us through the thick and thin
Past shades of green and black
The road is but a one way path
We never can go back.
There also winds a parallel road
The one mankind is on
Its there for all to see and touch
The highway to oblivion.
REFLECTIONS
Gray and overcast are the days
As I watch from the world
Of my private room.
Subdued are the shades of sunlight
Filtering through the gloomy
Curtains of my mind
I sit each day in the same chair
Though the room is furnished
In the best of taste and abundance
The window is unbarred and the door is open
Yet I do not venture
Into the dark hallway, or bright sunlight
For sunlight is poison, and despair
Awaits me in the shadowy corners
Of the hall. I touch nothing for sustenance
Though my mouth waters
At the thought of food and drink
My eyes are closing, that I may not see;
My ears that I may not hear;
Everything and everyone deserted me long ago.
When will it end?
I do not know
I do not care
It does not matter.
WINDOW SHOPPING
The stores are gaily decked
As I walk along the street
In bright colors by the clerks
Done up nice and neat.
There is one for miniskirts,
Dresses,shoes, and ties
One for everything they sell
On which to feast the eyes.
I wish that I could have them
I want them very much
But a sign says in the window
"Look but do not touch"
ADVICE
As you step into the world my son, my son
As you walk long and tall
Let me give you sound advice
Lest you trip and fall.
Don’t do what I did my son, my son
Pass Dame Fortune with a whirl
If the opportunity ever comes
To meet a pretty girl
I’ll not weep if you do my son, my son
I’ll have no reason to cry
I’ll think "There but for
A jackass mind go I."
DISCORDIA
Dark and colorless are the shades of light
Reaching his clouded eyes
Hollow and flat are the sounds
His deafened ears perceive.
Sunlight shall never be bright for him
A symphony never melodious
And his speech is the babbling
Of a long forgotten idiot
Packed away when the sun was brighter
And they understood what he said
Never to see the light of his own success
But ever the darkness of failure
He sits wondering if a light
Will pierce the darkness
And show itself to his troubled mind
Before it is too late
And he is unreachable.
TRANSLATION
(of a nearly indecipherable
hieroglyphic found on the wall of a deeply buried tomb)
Once our land was lush and green
A haven for the poor
We had no crime rate or disease
Each an open door
We shared the best of what we had
With neighbors on all sides
Our roads were wide and very long
For business and pleasure rides
But then a cloud rose over us
A shadowy fifth column
The power that destroyed us all
The power of the atom.
PLAYTIME
Oh see the little children
Playing in the street
Games with one another
In their dirty feet
Oh hear the air raid siren
Shrilling in the air
The children are all going home
But home’s no longer there
Oh see the little children
Dying in the street
Crying out for moms and dads
That they’ll never see.
MEMORIAL
Off in some far distant time
People like us will say
"To honor this once proud institution
"We gather here today
’Its accomplishments were many
"Its failures but a few
"We have much to thank it for
"Our lives, both me and you
"What good are lives to all us now
"We shades gathered in this place
"The event we’ve come to eulogize
"The death of the human race."
WARNING
Shades march in lonely procession
Across the shrouded field of time
Carrying torches unseen by the observer
Singing songs inaudible to the listener
Warning him before it is too late
And he joins the procession
But their ability
To reach the mortal world
Is curbed by unseeing eyes
And unhearing ears.
WISHES AND REALITY
To each his own the saying goes
And I must admit its true
All I want is a sea of green
A sky of azure blue.
A home to call my very own
My castle in the sun
A place to which I may return
Each day when work is done.
Alas! All these I’ll never see
I’m better off in Hell
Than by the small barred window
Of my lonely deathhouse cell.
BLIGHT
A farmer sowed his crops one day
Expecting them to grow
When little shoots did not appear
It made him wonder so.
"Did I forget to water them?
"Or fertilize them right?
"I do not know the answer
"I worked both day and night.
You and I both know the answer
It is old, not very new
A farmer’s crops can’t grow at all
With soldiers marching through.
DAILY TOIL
Pity Sol,he shines no more
Clouds replace the sun
I have nothing waiting for me
When my day is done
Just a room, a place to stay
When I make the long walk home
Nothing there to see or do
Nary A’Where to go
Why should I have things like this?
Where did I go wrong?
If there ever was an answer
Its long since been gone.
NOTIFICATION
He left home one bright spring day
So young and free of sin
But needn’t worry where he’s gone
The Army took him in.
He was trained to shoot a gun
To throw grenades and such
Then "Twas sent to Viet Nam
His life not worth so much.
His parents got the telegram
The letter trimmed in black
With wording plain and simple
"Your son’s not coming back."
I peer over the edge,seeing nothing
Eyes and ears wont to describe
What is before me
The ground gives way beneath my feet
Dropping into the abyss of no return
Time has been a blur since I’ve been here
Everything has blurred, save the reality
That I am alone.
REFLECTION#2
My darkness grows deeper every day
Each day the edges close in
Until a pinhole
Will be all that remains
Even this pinhole will fade
Into blackness, as at night
Nothing will be seen or heard
And I’ll be alone, deprived of everything.
Even the blackness will dissolve
Until there is nothing left.
Out to the barren fields I go
Out to the rocky crags
Where not a human being is seen
Not even dressed in rags
Where not a living thing is seen
But the grass beneath my feet
Where not a living thing is heard
Save the echoes of my heartbeats
To this solitude I cling anon
Forever and a day
Nothing shall ever come along
To take my loneliness away.
WARDELL HOTEL
She’d been there since the Civil War
A relic in the town
For bums and tramps, the lowest lives
To congregate around
A sip of brew, a room to sleep
Much more was gotten there
In that decrepit rooming house
On the north of Union Square
But morn the fifth day of the year
There came an awful crash
And when they cleared the wreck away
They found a mortal gash.
And then the fire burned her down
Sounded her death knell
Consigned her to oblivion
The old Wardell Hotel
STREETCORNERS
The street corner approached
As I walked down the road
Oblivious to the blinking lights
And warning signals, I crossed
Before the safety of the other side
Could be felt, it happened.
The blackness fell as a veil
Over my eyes,
And dissolved into light------
The street corner approached.
They saw it coming,
And did nothing, save to aid
Its passage through the land;
Nothing to save themselves
From the pestilence in their midst
Paths were laid out
So that it might not lose its way
Signposts showed it where to turn
Not a voice cried out in protest.
Gaze on the crumbling city
Crumbling not of decay
But the wrecker’s ball
Whole blocks built over many years
Gone in weeks
Demolished by the crane and bucket loader
An entire city converted
Into so much useless fill.
The city fathers have not respected
The wishes of the people
They haven’t been consulted
On what should happen in their town.
"Long may it stand" echoes nowhere
Nothing is left standing to reflect the sound.
ICE AT MIDNIGHT
Ice coats every branch and wire
With a thick layer of beauty
The wires hang low to the road
And the branches are broken
By the weight of the glass-like miracle.
RAILS
The rails used to go somewhere
Endless steel ribbons from here to there
They saw the country
From a different angle
Before post roads and superhighways
Consigned the rails to rust
The ties to rot
And the rolling stock to decay
In a forgotten corner of the world
The rails helped to build.
The rails are forgotten now
Serving as a point of contact
With our past
And a reminder of our future.
THE OUTLET
(by Joe Cascioli in the year 1968)
Oh dear God, hear my prayer
Rather far or rather near
What God I ask is becoming of this world
The day is so light, darkens into night
The birds and the bees
The leaves and the trees
The men ashore
The men overseas
Is this beautiful world really all that bad?
No I say
But I ask for your answer anyway
I say its what you make it
Who am I to say
I just live to make a better world for tomorrow.
My love and I lie on the sand
Watching the waves crash and roll
Along the lonely strip of beach
Off in the distance
The foamy sea and the sodden beach
Meet the leaden sky
The waves bathe the shore and recede
Only to once again hear
The Lorelei song of the sand.
Telephone poles stretch
Like an endless picket fence
Down the road
Perfectly spaced
With wasted perfection
Their repetition never ends
As the road never ends
All good things have an end
But the telephone poles
And the road
Go on forever
My love and I pass the time
Throwing sand and getting wet
In the dull green ocean
Our life at the beach
Is as carefree as the flight of the gull
We know we must leave
Our sandy paradise
For the sea grows cold and choppy
And the sky dark
We shall ever return to the beach
So long as no two grains of sand
Are alike.
Rivers flow slowly to the sea
Carrying with them memories
Of everything they’ve seen
Along the banks
Flowing to the sea
They absorb minutely
The sights and sounds they pass
But all this is futile
For at the rivers’ mouths
Everything mingles
Contrasts erase
And no uniqueness remains.
THE CREEPING
Silently it crept
Never ruffling the foliage
Through which it passed
The birds didn’t hear it
For it was everywhere
The babbling brook didn’t see it
Because they touched
Suddenly, awareness was everywhere
And nothing could be done.
A corner is where the worlds converge
Each one dimensional by itself
The corner gives life
To the flatness
Of a one-dimensional world
A world without corners
Couldn’t exist.
Opportunity is like a phantom ship
Passing on a foggy night
Its presence is felt
But the direction it is taking Is not known
Opportunity cannot be seen
Until the dawn breaks
And the fog lifts
And we cannot change
The course
That takes us apart.
One by one the lights are going out
The twinkling in the sky grows faint
And twinkles no more
Eternities have passed
Since the skies were bright
And laughing children
Dared to run in the streets
They no longer play
Where the twinkling has ceased
They look for the light
And find only blackness.
Destruction will come
Not from bombs or missiles
Not from a fifth column
Not from anything
We can reach or touch
But from a loss of spirit
A sense of "What’s the use!"
From the unemployed
The hungry
The homeless
The friendless
It will come like a steamroller
On newly-laid asphalt
The rich
The fat
The ’beautiful people’
The landed
Will all be crushed
Into dust.
LAST
When the last factory is silent
When the last bird
Has fallen from the sky
When the last deer
Has been killed in the woods
When the last tree has fallen
In the barren land
If we are the last human
To breathe the polluted air
We will feel the angels’ tears
And the voice of God
Will echo as our eyes
Close one last time
"It might have been."
Walking down the street
Four little legs struggle
To keep up with Daddy’s
"Wait for me, Daddy"
Their voices a duet
That is music to my ears
They observe all they pass
Often seeing more
Than I can ever know about.
A thousand questions
With 500 answers
But the sounds of their feet
And their voices
Are contentment
On a sunny Sunday afternoon.
RAGPICKER
He stands in the dump
Only home he has ever known
Collar raised to the wind
Head bare to the heavens
Wearing his occupation
And his life
Hanging in tatters
From his consumptive body
He takes nothing from us
Save what we don’t want
And we can’t give him
The dignity and freedom
To be happy.
THE BARSTOOL KING
He died with no mourners
No one at his side
Loved ones were no more
No one saw him breathe his last breath
No one cared
In a flophouse
Where the dregs of the human race
Await the call
This is where he spent
His last breath
With dirty clothes
On a buggy bed
With garbage his domain
He didn’t die alone, though
He was never alone
His companion faithfully awaited
The king’s deliverance from the evil
That had befallen him
And guided him gently through the door.
Softly at midnight it glistens
Diamonds cover the yards
And streets of our town
The unbroken tiny crystals
Of water blanket the town
With a beauty unmatched
By any Picasso or Rembrandt
But by morning
The cars come
Breaking the crystals
The cinders tarnish their beauty
But not their memory.
WRINKLE ROSE
She lived in the house
Twixt the road and the tracks
Shaken by the rumbling freights
Showered by the dust
The passing autos kick up
She lived her final years
Unnoticed, uncared for, unloved.
But alive.
Face the texture of a leathery prune
She awaited the knock
Of death at her door
She was unwashed, poorly clothed
Not knowing or caring much
But alive.
Now, like the train and the tracks
She is gone
The house is gone
The dirty road is gone
The tracks go nowhere
The trains don’t pass
And she lies in a nameless grave
But alive.
GRANDMA
We all called her grandma
The faceless old lady
In the formless rags
That passed for her clothes
Cruising the gutters
For the butts she found
Reduced by time and circumstance
To the state of existence
Below begging
She walked the streets
In the only search
That gave meaning to her life.
Beggars aspire to a better life
For the moment
Seeking comfort in the wine bottle
Coffee cup, or flophouse hallway
Hookers give all they have left
For the comforts of life
Grandma gave nothing, sought little
Save the cigarette butts
And junk she found.
But she was happy
Her life had purpose
And turned to misery and aimlessness
When held in the light
Of affluent purpose
And well-off direction.
She is gone now
Grandma is no more
Whatever secrets she held in her heart
Are never to be learned
By we who gave her
No glance
No help
No love
COAL
Black diamonds glistening in the sun
The coal remembers
All that went before
All the plants that had to die
So we could burn their remains
It also remembers
The cries of the children
Sent to die before their times
In the black pits.
It heard the languages
Of the immigrant miners
Too poor to leave the mines
It heard the coughing
Of those whose lungs
Were filled with dust.
The anguish of widows
Fell on coal’s deaf ears
It heard the harsh step
Of the coal police
As they evicted another family
It heard the exodus of our youth
When there were no jobs
Coal heard all this
And yet it also heard
The angel of the coal fields
And the founders of the school
Coal heard the good and the bad
And coal remains.
See the little fishes
Swimming in a brook
See the old grandfather
Reading from a book
See the spacious meadow
Green with new-mown hay
See the farmers heading home
At the end of every day
One thing I seem to have forgot
A glimpse of things in store
See a billowing mushroom cloud
And see these things no more.
SOLDIER MAN
Out on yonder battle field
There rests a weary man
Been fighting since October
Gets rest whene’er he can
They said "You’ll fight the Viet Cong
The North Vietnamese
He shook his head and wondered
"What sort of enemies are these?"
They strike by night, they strike by day
They strike by hit and run
They strike in every possible way
The battle’s never won
Try to tell him that now though
He won’t even nod his head
He won’t even wink his eye at you
Yon soldier man is dead.
He stood silently by the roadside
Pack on his back
Pack in his mind
Rain streaming down
Or was it?
All he asked was a ride
To the next roadside
Thumb up and full of hope
He stood silently
The speeding cars
Never dimmed his hope
That a friend would stop
And invite him in.
Why does he stand
By the side of a road
That doesn’t see him
With hope never fulfilled?
We all have our own roads
We don’t see him
Because he is us.
CHRISTMAS 1992 AT COOPER INDUSTRIES
I search for a sign
I look for a reason
I’m working at Cooper
This holiday season.
The work load is such
That I have the time
To compose this poem
To set down this rhyme
The wires are cut
The wires are sleeved
When I smelled the varnish
I damn near heaved
Work is so boring
I wish I was where
More could be done
Busier there.
NAZARETH
The strip mall cannot replace
The smell of exhaust and rubber
Not the asphalt parking lot
The hard packed dirt
That had seen countless years
Of countless tires
Circling the track.
Yet that same hard packed dirt
Absorbed our memories
OF the races we saw
And the smells and sounds
And yielded them back to us
Week after week
And year after year
Listen closely!
Beneath the asphalt
On a cool clear summer’s night
You can hear the roar
Of the memories of races
That cannot be silenced
Close your eyes
And sit in the stands once again.
HARMONY SPEEDWAY
I drove by memories today
Where once the thundering engines
And deafening cheers
Echoed off the hill
And sounded in the valley.
Only quiet remains.
Mother nature has triumphed
Over the circling dirt track race cars
And screaming drag race cars
Van Horn and Bonney
Replaced by aspen and poplar
The crumbling fences and seats
Cannot confine the memories
To that time
I can close my minds eye
And feel the track come alive again
As it once was
So many years ago
I drove by memories today.
Mounds of black diamonds
Reach for the sky
Only to get hauled away
And built again
What once was refuse
Now has value
To make the lights in our homes
Lights made from darkness and misery
One day there will be no mound
No trucks to haul it away
The river of black will cease
To flow from the ground
Coal will be a memory
Until we take its place.
The day I became old
I ceased to dream
I ceased to reach beyond me
There was no beauty in nature
That could save me
I couldn’t hear the children
I couldn’t smell the flowers
I couldn’t’ taste the cool water
But I am not really old, not yet.
I dream, I strive beyond my grasp
A flower’s beauty overwhelms me
I can still hear the music
In a child’s cry
I can still taste the coolness
Of a mountain spring.
Cool and warm at the same time
Cool breeze in the window
Warmed by the sight of the sun
Lying blood red on the horizon.
Torpedoes in the distance
Sound as one train
Signals the next
My body stays put
But the sun and torpedoes
Set my mind to wandering.
Following the sun
And the whistle of the train
Don’t know where it is taking me
But I will stay the course
As long as the sun and the torpedoes call.
FENCES
Fences separate people
Manmade barriers to progress
In the development
Of the oneness of all men
Fences isolate us
From the rest of the world
They say we are different
That our world is more special
Than yours
Fewer fences will mean
Greater enrichment
For all of us.
Twin rails gleaming in the sun
Shiny lines to everywhere
And to nowhere
Neverending, their journey
Began decades ago
And will end in the rust
And decay of the future
Like civilization they are
Like the rails it can be.
BERWICK THEATER
The Berwick Theater
Belongs to the past now
Its roof giving way
To the weight
Of years of neglect
Its peeling paint
And crumbling brickwork
At the landfill
With others reminders of the past
Once it was a happy place
New, freshly painted
Smelling of waxed floors
And new upholstery
Now my mind’s eye is all
That can bring it to life again
For it exists only
Where it is eternally out of reach.
