A Perfect Day For Love And Squalor

Heading west on US 150 through my hometown/Thursday night/after a trip to the movies by myself/Up In The Air /which was how I had left her 7300 weeknights ago/and realizing that going west on US 150 is absolutely the wrong thing to do

and that's when you have to reverse everything/into a new painful extraordinary heartbreaking course with no co-pilot/or anything like perfectly reasonable thoughts about nights like Thursday nights

and turning around to drive back home
the radio shot me in the heart
he was dead at the age of 91
and I realized a night at the movies without her
even 20 years later hurts like hell
and the only cure is more pain

like hearing that the hero who quit publishing

had finally stopped writing.

[God rest you, Jerome David Salinger - you gave me the older brother I never had (Seymour) and even the goddam Catholic schools will be teaching you 100 years from now]

Iced Lemon Archways

iced lemon archways
could be the first three words

in a poem about aquariums or
the grand avenues of europe
but this is not that poem

instead these words lead
to childhood and the memory of
mom at the very edge

when dad would need a neighbor
or an uncle or a paramedic
to calm her down and prove
there was no plot

to
take away
her kids or
steal imaginary fortunes or
follow orders from the CIA

but just calm her down and
go see a doctor at the hospital
on the eighth floor where
the voices go to die

iced lemon archways
never graced aquariums or
led to europe or
any other escape route

they were a type of cookie and
grandma brought them to
my little brother and me

to settle things down
and say i'm sorry
but 40 years from now

you'll be in line at
the grocery store and see
someone buying cookies
and you'll think of this

and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.