BACK WITH THE SIXERS

Black jersey and a Phillies cap, we drove down

early in the morning with him belted in the backseat.

He read the directions printed out from the internet,

we found the Philadelphia zoo, I called him My Navigator.

I remember being amazed at how the Monkey House hadn't

changed since my kindergarten class field trip back in ’72.

Been a while, a long time since we've been back.

We rode on to Independence Mall and took photos

with the Liberty Bell, people in Colonial costumes and

stopped to hear songs played with a hammered dulcimer.

Dinner was Tony Luke’s, a small steel structure surrounded

by chain link fence, wedged under the Walt Whitman Bridge

Cheesesteaks with onions and wiz never tasted so good.

We kicked a soccer ball in the empty parking lot at the new

basketball stadium named after a bank, not the old Spectrum.

Been a while, a long time since we've been back.

In the game, the Sixers and Wizards dueled it out on the court.

It was April, both teams had no chance of seeing the playoffs.

We sat in the cheaper seats, marveling at the three pointers of

Arenas, gasping at Iverson’s crossover dribble magic, high fiving

strangers and the old black guy next to us who shouted loudly-

C’mon now AI don’t let Gilbert show you up, not in your house.

Been a while, a long time since we've been back.

BIG ORANGE

Wish I had one more chance

for one more game with him.

The only time we ever went.

Should’ve asked a guy to take a

photograph of me with my father,

way up high in Neyland Stadium.

Wish I had one more chance

to snap a photo of the 106,000 fans

in orange, singing Rocky Top as the

Pride of the Southland Band forms

a big T for the team to run through,

led by everyone’s hero,Johnny Majors.

Wish I had one more chance

to get a picture of Carl Pickens,

star wide receiver, stretching out in

the famous checkerboard end zone.

I still hear the call of “Give him 6!”

and the howl of the blue tick hound.

WE REMEMBER

you in the living room singing songs of praise

Go Tell It on the Mountain in pajamas,

then dancing to your mother’s techno music.

You’d ask me, what hat should I wear to play catch?

You’d talk about snakes and herpetology,

Athlon Sports rankings, pretend game announcing.

You told us your thoughts and shared your ideas.

Now, it’s quiet with ear buds, iPhone, Twitter.

Driving down the road, not much said by anyone.

MESSENGERS

Sister wears a dragonfly necklace and

sometimes speaks with the butterflies.

Cherokees called them messengers of

the dead, she explains with calmness

and describes her visit with a medium,

who told her things no one could guess.

She hesitates to continue with her story.

I tell her how lately dragonflies land

nearby when eating a meal outside,

as I stop to rest with a bottle of beer

in my backyard after mowing the lawn,

at a ball game on a seat in front of us.

Too many to count hovered above the

dunes as I walked down to the beach.

Others say butterflies come to them in

places you wouldn’t expect, city streets,

the middle of the night, in a rainstorm,

on the tip of a finger as you begin a hike.

Suddenly images of these insects appear

on coffee mugs, labels of wine bottles,

neckties, on front of some baby’s shirt.

Must’ve been there all along or maybe

I’m seeing them after hearing the medium’s

words to me from our father- “Don’t feel bad,

let it go, stop feeling remorse”. How could she

know of my regrets since his death or the last

time we spoke? I told no one of my feelings.

I think of dragonflies now as my pen runs dry.

MATCHES

Too early for pretzels, chips, or peanuts.

Too early for Brown Ale or a pint of Bass.

This morning begins like every other day,

with a pot of coffee, demanding pets fed.

Remotes find the obscure cable channels.

A five hour difference makes us get up to

watch games broadcasted from England.

I yell to him, he’d planned to get up too.

It’s football now instead of our old sport.

Its stats and standings replace baseball.

Its star players have replaced basketball.

Boxing Day replaces Christmas morning.

Magpies, Reds, Blues, Black Cats and Spurs

promise to outshine the lights of the tree.

Holidays have become too much work and

enjoying the season starts on this morning.

One day we’ll go there, is what we say.

Doesn't matter who we see, we’ll sit at the

edge of the pitch, we’ll have pies and tea

at half with shivering pink faced supporters.

We’ll wrap team scarves around our necks,

lose our voices from singing and when we go-

Rooney, Bale, and Gerrard will be long gone.

The money keeps us from reaching our goals.

CHINANSKI, MISUNDERSTOOD

“What matters most is how well

you walk through the fire.”- Charles Bukowski

Mention your name and they smirk, grunt, or groan.

They say that all your poetry is about getting drunk,

getting naked, getting arrested or all of the above.

Dirty old man addicted to whores, whiskey, horse races.

But I know you better than that. I've read your books,

took the time to find out about you and when I heard you

explain how hateful your father was as you took the film crew

to your boyhood home, into the hallway by the bathroom,

I cried as you, in your sixties held back your tears describing

how he whipped  you with a strap, all his anger put on you.

What he left on your heart, what you felt your entire life.

To be degraded, belittled, insulted. It stays with you forever.

And when I picked up your book from the shelf one night,

I felt your pain, your suffering. I consumed your poems,

your books, the films. I wanted to find out everything

about you. Your work turned me to the poetry of others.

I wrote too, I never stopped and I walked through the fire.

JUST BENEATH THE MOUNTAINS

     -for Larry,my father

There’s a farm carved from wilderness

by a man who called himself a pioneer.

It only exists now the way I remember-

Angus cattle dotted the grassy hillsides

and walked to the salt lick at sundown.

Purple martins swooped to catch supper

doing us a favor, eating those mosquitoes.

Laughing children darted through rows of

bushy tomato plants in a forty acre field

on noisy four wheelers and mini bikes.

Horses smiled like people and hung their

well groomed manes and heads over the

rails painted in distinct John Deere green.

And when I drove up, he’d be seated on

the front porch admiring the mountains.

Sometimes he’d be watering his flowers

on the driveway beyond the metal gates.

Once, I found him with arms folded and  

leaning back in a beat up chair waiting by

the tack room with a grin of contentment.

THE SIGNS

Another hot August is about to an end.

It’s been 3 years since I hung up the phone.

I cried beside my car in Target’s parking lot

after speaking with her that Friday afternoon.

Each day there’s reminders, as if we’d forget.

But I don’t see rainbows above the meadows.

A monarch butterfly didn’t land on a yellow rose.

No red tailed hawks sat on the electric lines.

A white Escalade passed me on the highway.

In a diner, a cell phone played his old ringtone.

Bright red tomatoes on my sub tasted extra sweet.

A boy walked in wearing a burnt orange Texas cap.

I heard Shameless on a country music station.

I noticed my wallet gave off a strong scent of leather.

It all made me ask the cashier- “What date is it today?” 

THE TROUBLE WITH TIME

Time often makes me skip 1 of the day's 3 meals

and reminds me to take only 10 minute showers.

It put 19 spots on my hands, makes me squint a lot,

and filled my head with a 100,000 wiry white hairs.

It compels me to hurry out the door by at least 8,

insists I pay the mortgage by the first of the month.

It sends me off to bed by 11 in order to be sure and

get at least 6 hours of sleep for the next work day.

It forces me to teach 43 minute lessons in school.

It tells me to stop reading on page 156 for dinner.

It demands I quit writing to answer the telephone.

It makes me turn off a game in the seventh inning.

It gets me thinking about my 2 week vacation and

once I get there, it sends me back home. It has me

contemplate next year’s trip and what it will be like

in 15 years when I retire and I’ll travel so much more.

It nudges me along every five minutes in museums and

has me checking my watch while hiking on nature trails.

It tells me, have one for the road and turn out the lights.

It keeps me from staring too long out my back window

at blue jays, cardinals and crows. It won’t permit me to

grow an herb garden, a lilac hedge, 6 to 8 tomato plants,

or a row of 5 or 6 dogwood, cherry and magnolia trees.

It forces me to run around 4 weeks before the holiday,

then suddenly it’s over. Only 364 shopping days left!

It quickly aged our cat and dog, now all they do is sleep.

It takes me back to a specific candy store or pizza place

from my youth and has me craving cherry snow cones.

It stole my Gunsmoke lunchbox, baseball cards and

Fantastic Four comic books. It sold my Stingray bike

at a yard sale and it makes me cry while driving when

certain old songs from the 60’s or 70’s come on the radio.

Time made me say goodbye to friends and coworkers.

It took my grandparents too soon and my Dad at age 60.

In 3 years, it’ll send my only son away and off to college.

Then I’ll wait the 16 weeks until his first semester ends.

One day, time will run out for me and in 2 days I’ll have

a birthday, I’ll be 16,437 days old! But who’s counting? 

HORSE SHOW, 1989

Crowds of people who all seemed to know him,

mingled and exchanged strong handshakes with

each other as they entered the fairground gates.

Riders strutted in fancy hats, ties and dress suits,

a mixture of old England and early plantation times.

They weaved through a lot filled with horse trailers,

Big Chevy Crew Cabs, and waxed and shiny Dualies.

Farmers, merchants, horse lovers, and their families

rushed to the bleachers at the edge of the grass field.

We headed to the concession sheds to find dinner.

Great northern and navy beans in their own sauce,

a thick white gravy from slow cooking all day long,

heaped in deep round styrofoam bowls, a huge slab

of Vidalia onion on top, a block of cornbread for a lid.

“Dry and gritty, it’ll scratch the throat as it goes down”.

He pointed out Master and we cheered as Mike rode

the shiny black stallion with its chain ankle bracelets.

Head up, throwing legs high, showing off, “the big lick”.

In those stands that night I discovered Southern culture,

Tennessee Walking Horses and my father, the horseman.

IN THE TOBACCO BARN

It had been a dry fall, without morning fog or dew

leaves are likely to shatter if you pull them off dry.

Already November, with an auction on the horizon.

It was his Christmas check or the last of the money.

Not a word said between them, men climbed high

in the rafters, straddled poles and beams and formed

a chain to pass stakes with sticky stalks, cured tobacco.

Others pulled it, put it into piles- tips, brights and lugs.

They worked in silence, each knew exactly what to do.

It was Saturday, someone plugged in a boom box and

as they worked, they heard the play by play, straining

to hear their team battling with the perennial favorites.

Finally the announcer’s famous call of “Give… him… six!”

and “Touchdown Tennessee!” went over the airwaves.

The men yelled and hollered, but never stopped working.

They kept pulling, grading, and baling the burley tobacco.

WHAT THEIR FATHERS SAID ABOUT LOVE

Don’t rush into anything.

Don’t worry about being alone.

Don’t get locked in for the long haul.

Don’t talk yourself into being in love.

Don’t give her too many gifts, at first.

Don’t look back if you already walked out.

Don’t worry about breaking up or her leaving.

Don’t make her lie to her parents to be with you.

Don’t forget- if you can’t be good, then be careful.

Don’t stay with her if she always talks about money.

Don’t worry about her being a good cook, that’s very overrated.

Don’t forgive her if she cheats on you. Once a cheater, always a cheater.

Don’t waste your time with her if she is not into school, books, or education.

Don’t say you’ll never date girls with a certain hair color, race, religion, or size.

Don’t watch porn, it’s just like all movies. What you see rarely happens in real life.

Don’t yell at her, belittle her, or lay a hand on her no matter how angry she makes you.

Don’t worry about girls in high school. Get to college and then you can worry about women.

Don’t ask her out if you always hear her badmouthing her parents and other family members.

Don’t stay with her if she is overly critical about your friends, family, and all that is important to you.

Don’t think that you may be marrying her one day. More than likely, (99% sure)- she won’t be your wife.

Don’t tell your friends or buddies what you did with her, what you talked about with her or how you feel about her.

Don’t stay with her if she always tells you what to wear, how to cut your hair, or makes comments about your weight.

Don’t expect to find one that looks like a supermodel. Sometimes the sweetest fruit doesn’t come from a perfect tree.

Don’t stay with her if she asks you to quit something you like and don’t start doing up something you don’t like in order to make her happy.

Don’t get to friendly with a girl, call her your best friend, and share too many secrets with her. She’ll never see you as a possible lover, partner, or mate.

Don’t let her know all your insecurities, hang-ups or issues. She’ll use them against you later. Besides, if she’s around you long enough she’ll figure them out anyway.

Don’t ask her out if she posts cell phone and mirror photos on Facebook of herself puckering her lips, sticking her butt and chest out and pretending to make a “gang sign” with two fingers.

Don’t ask me what you should do, ask your mother about that. I’m not really sure.

Don’t talk yourself into being in love. Wait, I think I said that.

FIND YOUR WAY BACK

They head out onto the highway at 3am,

an early start on the miles, to beat the traffic

of Baltimore, the heat of the hot summer sun.

He thinks of days before MapQuest or Internet.

How he’d sit up the night before with a huge

Rand McNally Road Atlas and a yellow legal pad

finding the turns, short cuts, and scenic route.

“A bundle of nerves, jumpy as a cat”, 700 miles

alone for the first time, so his father explained it

in his signature, matter of fact, practical way.

Not many people know it, but truck drivers do-

Take odd roads north and south, like 81, 77, and 95.

Take even roads east and west, like 70, 76, and 40.

Read the Interstate signs, you’ll find your way back.

DAY OF THE DEAD

“What have I become, my sweetest friend?

Everyone I know goes away in the end.”

- Hurt, Johnny Cash (written by Trent Reznor)

Lately, every day feels like it’s the Day of the Dead.

I always wonder what it’d be like to drink one more

cup of black coffee with him from a chipped mug on the

porch as the sun goes down. I find myself thinking about

nights before supper, listening to her stories as she makes

biscuits or I imagine riding with him in his white pickup truck

around the fence line of his cattle fields, looking for calves.

Some days it feels like I’m watching a movie called, My Life

and each time it’s shot with different camera angles or lighting.

My favorite scene is when I’m seated with her on the boardwalk,

eating a sugar cone. Then there’s the one where I’m covered with

an itchy stadium blanket and he’s making a fire as we get ready

to watch the Saturday night hockey games in the “back room”.

Another great episode is set on the highways of New Jersey

and New York, we’re laughing about the 100 degree heat,

the hard work, our basketball games and getting easily lost.

Some days the regrets start up, I think you know what I mean?

It’s usually the unanswered invitations, the wasted moments

or the simply because the list is getting longer and the dead

are accumulating as I get older and I don’t like feeling this way.

Lately I’ve been thinking of others too, and this worries me.

Some days I stop to recall the old lady on the beach who

used to give us all candy, or a girl from elementary school

who was found dead, floating naked in our town’s river.

My Sunday School teacher’s granddaughter, she had a hole

in her heart or a high school classmate who feel asleep at

the wheel and never made it home from the third shift.

I wonder if others are haunted by the memories too.

I wonder if they’d confess too or if there are days when

nothing triggers thoughts of the ones who have left us.

Will there be a day when I won’t think of them or will I

keep shaking it off with a sigh, a laugh,or will I always cry?

STILL FALLING

We laugh about it now, remembering the time-

hiking in the Smoky Mountains to the little falls

tucked away on a ridge behind rhododendrons,

laurels, moss covered rocks, and crooked pines.

It’s the trail where we saw the salamanders, snails,

and where a nervous black bear saw the two of us.

You needed to get back to the parking lot, to use

the restroom on a hill at the edge of the parking lot.

You insisted on running, you were warned to stop.

I called out to you, but you kept going, feeling it

worth the risk, you looked fleet of foot on the path,

a mini Davy Crockett, a modern day Daniel Boone.

It was all good until your toe stubbed one of the roots

or jagged rocks and it sent you flying for a moment

before you landed on all fours and began to cry pitifully.

Scraped palms and knees, not the last time, for sure.

“It could have been worse”, is what my father said.

And it was enough to make you listen, to slow you down.

A STRAY

When I found you in the woods

it was obvious you’d be taught

to beg for food, to chase rabbits,

to fear the rolled up newspaper,

to cower and shrink from a broom.

You did not think of going inside,

that was the deal made in order

for you to stay with us for 10 years.

I didn’t know I’d be burying you

here, behind the tan shed on the

day before I was to leave for college.

WHAT IF HE WERE STILL HERE

If my father was alive, he’d know what to do.

He always knew what to say, how to phrase it.

Maybe I’d send my son there for the summer

to spend time with him on his southern farm.

He would’ve taught the boy how to work hard,

to take pride in your work. He would’ve shown

him the importance of rising early in the morning

and not worrying about when it’s quitting time.

Of course tractor driving lessons would take place,

along with how to be strong willed, respectful,

while not to caring what others think about you.

All lessons would be given with a certain firmness,

yet he would’ve caved in now and then, a sparkle

in his eyes, a mild grin, an exhale before speaking.

All signs to let you know it was for your own good.

Only if he were here, he’d make it all look so easy.

THE STROLLER

Those first few summers meant not so many

days at the beach for us, we just started out.

Sundays meant long walks with a baby stroller

on the streets of a small city, always in the 90’s,

always high humidity, always a chance of rain.

Up the street we’d go with a bottle and a diaper.

On the corner was the Eighth Day Lounge with

a pinstriped Yankees car parked by the back door.

Further down, Daisy’s Carniceria with it’s strange

smell of dead animal, we’d buy cans of Inca Kola,

loaves of Manteca bread, or bags of plantain chips.

Down the hill, into the tunnel with the train tracks

above us, the walls dripped and the sidewalk was

painted with pigeon poop, littered with broken glass.

I pushed you up long streets lined with multi-family

homes ,once owned by the richest of folks in Jersey.

Shut down stores, closed restaurants, and factories

now gave way to the Prima Vera bakery where rolls

called conchas piled high on glass display counters.

Sometimes I’d stop and get a Cuban sandwich or a

cup of espresso, but mostly we headed to the place

called Five Corners with a bagel and apple juice boxes.

We’d park on a bench by a sign that said how it was the

capital where colonists and settlers came to market with

their goods here, before it was called the United States.

We’d stop to listen to seagulls screech by the Armory and

look out at sailboats moored in the gray waters of the bay.

I’d speak to the baby, he’d listen, not knowing how to talk,

but he knew how to laugh and he knew how to smile when

I told him how someday; maybe we’d have a boat like those.

3:14 PM, DISMISSAL BELL

It is it any wonder the baby boy

born to two teachers waited all day

to decide and come into the world?

Around the time when the book bags

are packed, anxious walkers get let out,

buses get called over the loudspeakers.

Today his parents both had substitutes,

maybe the best reason to be absent.

Finally the doctor pulled him out, after

much pushing by a dehydrated mother

and after much cheering like a football fan

by his father, a man in a green jersey.

Looking at the clock on the hospital wall,

the couple smiled about the time of his birth.

GROWN UP

Never again will you fall asleep across my chest on a Sunday afternoon.

Never again will I break off pieces of a bagel and feed you in the park.

Never again will I run bath water for you or wrap you in a towel.

Never again will you hide at the end of the sofa and shout, “Here I are!”

Never again will I carry you inside the house from the backseat of the car,

Never again will we stand in the store deciding which Hot Wheels to buy.

Never again will you want a kiss on your forehead as you fall off to sleep.

Never again will you call out in the night because you’re afraid of Orcs.

Never again will you choose the left hand or right hand for a piece of candy.

Never again will we walk to our table in the diner with my arm around you.

Never again will we drive to the farm to look at baby pigs and little lambs.

Never again will you ask me the name of flowers, birds, and other animals.

Never again will we listen to the same songs or share the same music.

Never again will you dress up as a pirate, a cowboy, or a warrior.

Never again will you sing Go Tell It on the Mountain at the top of your lungs.

Never again will I buy you plastic ninja swords from the Dollar Store.

Never again will we play army men on the floor or Lego Racers.

Never again will we share Cracker Jack and cotton candy at the circus.

Never again will you ask for a glass of water before going to bed.

Never again will you choose a new Pez dispenser at the grocery store.

Never again will we lie alongside each other and take turns reading.

Never again will I draw a happy face or a soccer ball on your lunch bag.

Never again will I put your clothes out for you on the edge of your bed.

Never again will you say to me, “Hey Dad, hold me like a baby”.