RIDING THE TRAIN

from County Armagh to Belfast
in July can be quite tedious.

Be sure not to wear orange,
or green for that matter

while commuting, taking a walk
with the dog, or going to the weekly shopping.

Strange to think that we
don’t hear about it anymore.

The news has a way of making
you think, Northern Ireland is alright.

Bomb scares, beating people up
hardly as newsworthy, I suppose.

Just glad to hear from you and
know that you’re not dead after all.

A LESSON IN WAITING POLITELY

Never interrupt, sit quietly,
manners are important,
even on hot summer nights,
you’d swear the heat was running,
a dry roasted feeling, without air.

Uncle Bill and Aunt Mildred’s
Holly Court Motel in Wildwood.
He was hard of hearing,
TV always on, but the volume always off,
because he wouldn’t be able to follow
the conversation, if it was turned up.

As a boy, I concentrated hard to read the lips of
Monte Hall, Merv Griffin, and Dinah Shore.
Without the sound, I could never figure out
if it was number 1, number 2, number 3
in “What’s my Line?” or “To Tell the Truth”.

And while I watched, I can’t recall a word
spoken in the overheated dimly lit room
between my grandmother and her brother,
but at the end of the visit,
because I was good, because I sat quiet,
we’d walk to the boardwalk at the end of the street.

A ride on the Merry Go Round
that still plays its music in my head.
A grip on the saddle horn
of the bucking Bronco for a quarter,
and if you saw the pictures
in the old family albums,
there’s me and my grandmother’s arm,
holding on to my overall straps
or the hood of a navy blue windbreaker,
always worried for me, warning me
that I would fall and crack my head open
on the pavement.

PHOTO-http://www.kiddieridesusa.com/product_images/Champion.jpg

SAND PITS

all over the county, raw material
for the glass factories to make
jars, milk bottles, fine glassware.
It was the time before plastic,
back when you dropped a bottle
of 7-Up or RC Cola and it meant chunks
of glass, a huge sticky mess to mop up.

Digging in those sand pits, building forts, tunnels
a cheap way to play for South Jersey kids
who lived in the half-a-double neighborhoods or
projects with stately, Old English sounding names,
Burlington Manor, Amity Heights, Bridgeton Villas.
They had very little, just spare time,
maybe an old rebuilt bike to get around on,
and plenty of pockets of nature near abandoned
warehouses, fallowed fields, boarded up stores.

Always quiet, serious, alone.
Found his calling to music, drums, a fine percussionist.
You can find him in the ’85 yearbook
with his white old style military band uniform
maroon stripes, gold epaulets, a double row of brass buttons.
Arms crossed with two mallets or drum sticks.
A weak smile is all he could muster
after years of teasing, cruelty by his peers.
While so many sat by and watched, or never noticed him.

And when they thought of how he died,
suffocation by sand, when his tunnel
the one he was building with his little cousin,
suddenly caved in and crushed him.
No one could understand why
or how such a thing could happen.
Just that the band was missing his music and
an “In Memoriam” page was needed in the yearbook.

CHICO AND THE MAN

was the song I came to hear tonight
because of a television centered
childhood with too many cartoons,
reruns of old movies and comedies.
A small theater on the campus
of the community college fills
with fully white headed seniors
who came for Christmas carols
and the biggest of his hits, Feliz Navidad.

None of us is disappointed by the
little pudgy, blind Puerto Rican man
with his long flowing gray hair,
rectangular dark sunglasses,
baggy purple shirt, black leather pants,
truly the most unlikely of rock stars.

He showed up on a sloppy winter night
apologizing for his coughs between
the lyrics, “c’mon baby light my fire”,
anecdotes of the music business, jokes,
childhood memories, the sharing of
thoughts about tough times, politics
and being proud in both languages.

Everyone understands his guitar,
the movement of his blessed fingers
up and down the neck, plucking strings,
lightning quick, bringing wondrous sounds
raising hairs on forearms with goose bumps,
pulling tears from the eyes of admirers
of his virtuoso skills, while others cheer
as he speaks their language, without apology.

Still, others relive the times they first heard -
“Because there's good in everyone

And a new day has begun

You can see the morning sun if you try.”

photo- Flicker from Google image search

See Jose Feliciano-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHPbHC709I4

HIS HOLIDAY EXORCISM

Today he will place the ceramic,
kissing Mr. and Mrs. Claus figurines
on his living room coffee table and
he’ll hang up ornaments on the tree
while sipping hot chocolate loaded
with marshmallows, not the mini ones.
Big fat ones like you have at campfires.
He’ll laugh with his family and
recall the history of each decoration
like the way the characters do in
a Hallmark Hall of Fame holiday movie.

He’ll drive to K-Mart and buy some
of those hanging icicle lights
to hang from the gutters and
maybe he’ll get an inflatable
Rudolph Snow Globe for the front lawn
like the old people up the street.
He’ll stop at the Garden Center on Route 9
to buy a real wreath, with a real red velvet bow.

He’ll go to Best Buy and get a
Dean Martin Sings Christmas CD.
He’ll get some of those wacky
reindeer antlers with jingle bells.
He’ll buy a light blue snowflake sweater
for his miniature dachshund.
He’ll put on his green and blue plaid
bathrobe with matching slippers.
He’ll sit on the floor under the tree,
Native American style with
that little dog and his black cat.
His wife will take a picture
and go to Wal-Mart to make cards
that say “Warmest Regards This Holiday Season”.

He’ll mail one to his mother in Dutch Wonderland.
He’ll send one to his father in Dollywood.
He’ll send one to his sister in the Magic Kingdom.

And next year, when he gets the
Rubbermaid bins from the attic
to find the lights,
the silver bells,
the stockings,
He will notice that miraculously,
his funk, the disdain for the holidays
will fail to exist. It will not overtake him
and cause him to act like them.
He will forget the hateful words,
the anguish, the frustration of living
with the uncertainty of mood, the blame,
the turmoil that surrounded Christmas.

He will not cry for the ones
who are gone or who are far away.
He won’t think about walking
down the streets of his hometown.
He won’t mumble and complain
about the evil capitalist pigs,
the greedy compulsive shoppers,
addicted to consumerism,
mandatory gifting practices,
the elusive true meaning of Christmas.
His stomach won’t turn as
children rip packages to shreds
and proclaim “What? That’s it?”
as they count the number of presents.

Finally, next year he’ll plug in the lights
with a smile and whistle “Good King Wenceslaus”,
knowing that the pain from the stake of holly
that was driven through his heart so long ago
has gone away. He will no longer cry when
hearing the Carpenters sing, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”
because he knows, once and for all-
that he is home!

Photo- Google Images

HISTORY LESSON

He brought the ways of the Corps to the classroom,
dimly lit room, windows open in the dead of winter,
overhead projector casting an eerie glow on his face.
Don’t ask any questions. Speak when spoken to.
Listen to his calm, serious measured words and
watch his dead pan emotions as others screwed up.

Be prepared or take a zero for the day.
No paper, zero. No pencil, zero.
Lend someone a paper, zero.
Lend someone a pencil, zero.
The rules were simple. Follow them and you succeed.
The way he did on his combat tours of Vietnam.

And when he was waiting he rolled his pen
in between the palms of his hands and the sound
of its clicking and clacking echoed as it hit his two rings.
A college ring on the left with a huge shiny garnet
and a ring with Semper Fi and Chester on the left.

Each day, with the projector on, he read his notes
shown on the board in outline form for you to copy
word for word- Explorers, Gold, God and Glory.
Bullets and ballots, wars and presidential terms.
Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark.

The most important lesson was the one
he performed for us just before a fire drill.
The story began when he mentioned his first
assignment teaching just outside of Chicago
and how the students laughed, joked and shoved
one another during a fire drill, “ignoring the task at hand.”

They fooled around and knocked each other down
in the stairwells and just so happens that on that day
it was not a drill after all, it was a three alarm fire.
The students stampeded like cattle and trampled
each other to death as the old school building burned.

The next day he said that he returned to see a police line,
a heap of bricks, books, and furniture still smoldering.
The he dramatically paused before he swallowed ,
welled up a tear in his icy blue eyes and whispered
“I reached down and picked up a table leg,
when all of a sudden I realized …it was no table leg,
but the leg of a child”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Collectibles.com from Google Images

CHANGE FOR TWO DOLLARS

Sipping the southern pecan coffee
named for a Green Mountain and
pumped from a thermos canister
makes me announce that it is cold
already. I take a second sip and
wonder if its all the cream I put in
that cooled it down or if it’s just old.

And when I step up to pay the
young woman at the cash register
I imagine how beautiful she would
look without the strange piercings
on her lip, eyebrow, and ears.

Somehow she can’t manage to
drop the ninety five cents into
the palm of my outstretched hand
and one shiny dime drops at my feet.

I wonder why it is that she did all
she could, not to touch me and then
I think of the guy at the tollbooth
who does the same thing without
dropping a single cent, he must practice
how not to touch a germy hand.

photo-

http://www.sciam.com/media/inline/BAB610FE-93CC-C292-60D8D9538C876B83_1.jpg

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

No one predicted this happening,
the hollow tube was inserted,
a vaccum tube, they all waited
to hear the infamous silent scream.
Instead there came a thunderous roar,
filling the sterile white room
as clenched fist met unfeeling steel ,
pulverizing the instrument to bits
not like Superman with a 38 special,
more like the Hulk with a Howitzer.

But this little creature with an alien head
came into the jacked up world anyway.
Slapping wildly, kicking away the shiny pail,
crouching on the floor for a moment,
trembling in fear for the first and last time.

It shook its entire body like a wet dog
and a furry, down like substance fell off
its face, stretched out doughy pink arms and legs,
flailing at the mega watt bulbs it pried open
the puffy eyelids, revealing pale blue slits.

It pointed its little mitts to all in the room
declaring that it had no intentions of
getting in the biohazard truck for the long ride
to the wastelands waiting in western Pennsylvania.

Out the door it went, running on and on
down Manheim Avenue, onto Commerce Street,
through Laurel Street, up steep Atlantic Street
finally finding refuge and solace on Summit Avenue.

The old man and old lady fed him
books for breakfast, unconditional love for lunch,
values and virtues for supper and
for desert, bowls of comfort and undying devotion.

They cultivated his brain with conversation,
he studied the road atlas, planned his route.
He listened to the mentors, copied their lifestyle.
A quart in the morning, a quart at night.
He ran through woods, jumped streams,
climbed rocks, rode waves, consumed mass quantities
of fish that the old man brought,
tomatoes that they grew together,
soups that they made together,
breads baked in their own oven, together.

All the wholesome goodness made the boy
immune to the slings and arrows and
no amount of torture could break him,
the King’s poison bubbled in his veins
and the Queen’s betrayal slid from his
broad back and wide shoulders.
Suicide was not an option, when lightning
struck and the ground quaked with hatred.
Righting the wrongs by doing the right thing
was the mission, success was his only option.

And when the man finally made it to the top
he looked down and couldn’t see the ones
who tried to destroy him or pin him down.
He only saw a good woman by his side and
a strong boy who grows stronger every day.

If he is lucky, some nights when he is sleeping ,
the ones who molded him and prepared him
to survive and succeed in this wonderful world,
come to visit him in his dreams and when he
wakes up, wiping a lone tear from the corner of his eye
he wonders how it is, that they can still stay with him.

artwork- Keith Haring...

http://images.easyart.com/i/prints/rw/en_easyart/lg/3/3/Untitled--1988-Keith-Haring-33677.jpg