Instead in rage
      he  comes to say
  on a mountain side
    where he will hide
   he'll play
       that day
       and say
         that where she would go
    he'd know
       and show her
            love
         and not convey 
         his fears that
           she doesn't want 
       to stay.
     But hey  . . .

       

  Muted pastel wall paper faded
                           in the sun
      wild flowers dried in a vase on the
                   railing

   Morning mist fading as the day progresses
      A train whistle far
          accross the brook
      a flock of swans.

  Some symbols are symbols that people'd
                                    say
   some heart felt memory that
               she'd convey,
      and a sense of righteousness
                that she'd linger on
       and a box of bisquists
       to chomp upon.

  She took the stick and drew
           in the sand
    for me to see is what she'd planned
    some secret scrall to let me know
   that it was with me not him that she'd
                      like to go

  Years went by
    cameras get old
     old paper boxes
 start to mold
     old film found
    developed why?
  just to make me regret
     and make me cry?

     Year gone by
    I looked her up
   she said she couldn't
     put down her cup.
  Three kids, a dog
     alamony
    I suddenly felt
       very lonely.

     Lost and gone and
       overwhelmed
       I had best be
      steady helmed.

  oh this is such crap.

  Even though the last poem sucked, it
       really sucked
  I will go on with these automatic
    ranticles of poetry
     in honor of
      my
            oh think of something
      vanity
           can't you come up with something better?

    Judy said
     Mike wasn't invited
   like the other boys were
         because he'd cried too many times
    in school.
 
       Mike didn't remember crying.

        But that is what happens when
           you get upset.
      You  get over it
    the crying helps.
    Mike couldn't say this to Judy
          in second grade
       but he sure thought about it a lot
       and long after she'd maybe forgotten
      how mean she was
     he throbed her heart in High School.

   And she never could understand
        why she left him cold.
  She cried a lot.
   He thought 'get over it.' and didn't say anything to her.

  Most mornings when the bus would come
     and there was fog
  the trees looked like giant
       cut out cardboard props.

     We would walk to school within that mist
                     and fog and I wonder
       if maybe lots of things are like that
             to, just cut from cardboard and phoney.

   Oh, no.  Invest.  Invest it all in the stocks.
  give Bernie all of your money.
    You can trust him.  He is one of us.

   When the car crash happened and
          Steven's three friends were killed, 
   the first time that I met anyone who
         died, they all died.

   I remember them walking up the stairs
       her long hair (I don't know her name)  
     waving as she waved her hand and smiled.  They were all so glad
       to be there with friends.

     I don't know if I was sleeping
    when the screetch and crash happened.
      that night the sirens and
    the flashing lights from down the hill
   kept me awake. 
         5th grade. 1971  I think it was the Spring.

  I asked someone about it
       and they didn't remember.

  It was someone who I thought should have
         remembered.

    What should I remember?
   tradgic death, three dead too young?
 Their lives are more real then the ones who
    went on living sometimes are,
   lost within their drug commercial shuffle
   as the time releases release.

  What is my problem?
    why can't I get a job?

   Instead I write lame poems that no one reads.

  In rage, with age, and
the sound of the railroad train
     and the rain
   by the sea there are so many things
    you can say you know.
   she says she knows it all, know it all.

  She cries that she is right, "Me ME ME"
   she cries with a capiTal T, witch
    is code, the
           bitch knows
      to use to get the drugs she craves . . .


      hey.
     did you want to option this character?
  I've got more that are less or more.

   You can buy my property, five draft 
         novels that I wrote while broke
     and lonely.  Did I mention that I 
       used to get lonely.

   Mostly it was during the Holidays
     when you'd realize the lipservice
       old friends, friends gone on, will
      pay through guilt 

    and the longing
     of wanting
   real union with them
  and them always
     walking away.

    And I captured it all in my morbid
      child poem series
    that you can license for your
     movie show plot Lowell river stories
 on tape
   some Saturday
    in June in
   some future year
   with sunshine.

   And Rob will be out of bankruptcy.
  He'll give all the wedding photos to the brides.
   and Bob and Johnny will license these play poems
  and pay me so I can keep on living here.

  I know it will be so.
    That or something equally as awesome.

  don't inspect the day and say
  this day ain't
  no good and I want a better day

  You can be ingrateful if you should
      so it is that you take the wind
 and knock it up against a mountain
    bringing the mountain low
 and down to the river to make a delta
    far out in the sea.

     This day is the day that it is for me and you.
  I am not asking for a K on the package.
  Our lives already have a big K, can't you
 see that it is on everything that you do?

    So don't fret that your life is somehow lacking.
   You couldn't be anybody else even if you
      spent your life time trying.

    I prayed that
    you come my way and want
       me to be always current
   in your life.

    And pined for the day that
      you'd call and you'd listen to
   my sad sap and say that I was wrong about
       this and that but I
     adored you so I let it go and never
    really saw you as a judgemental
       hardass.

   Sorry.
     I can't take that abuse anymore.

   My prayers when faced with your
     prayers didn't work because
  my selfish prayers were counter to
    what you freely willed, and thus
    now 
   I am 
       no longer in your life
      as it should be.

  It is because of
      The Lord
    that this world is here.
  He made you and me
      together, don't you see it like that?
    Yes, we are here before God, 
    and we adore 
       do we not adore?

   But before the mass
      was over you'd 
    left, before the cross was carried
        around, before the blessing.

   When I was blessed
    did I then go out and
        sin
     and remove the effect of the blessing
   and then
   no longer being blessed
 rage against you and life
     and not return calls to long time
 friends and
  throw away my Christmas Card list?

   When you wake from you nap
       will you look to see if I am 
    in this life with you,
      If the Lord put us here together,
  another life to love each other?

   Or will you just feel the hole in your 
              stomach 
  and wonder off to pasture
      to fill the void with the poppies of
                      this life?
  
  Bliss chase.
       Ya, if you got to.
    go do your lonely dance alone
     on the far away ridgelines,
    dancing like Kokopelli
   off along Nasturum skylines of the 
    town and the river and the mountains,
   a red brick factory,
     a ribbon of highway. . .
    the rising moon

  

    I found where
  they were giving away 
          free bread and
    ran to get you but
     you said to
   leave you to dance along the
        river walk 
     alone watching the moon rise.

   That moon, OK.
    go ahead and chase that moon.
      But there is a better moon.
   And it is lit up by a better son.

     And you are blind to that.
   Should I shake you awake?
      teach you to read the Braille
       that the stars spell out?

        Know that He has
       established it upon the waters,
    made low the lofty peaks and 
        caste them down into the sea

      And that which is unknown and
    down below the sea, not privy,
  upon which rests
        the deep water,
    that lays low and someday
      springs up
  new mountains which
     slice the oceans into pieces.
   new oceans
    new mountains,
    rivers ebbing and flow and bringing low
      all of the loft and pomp of demagouges
     suddenly all things are healed and well
     there are no puppets just lovers of the Lord.

      Tossing and turning he
  worries about the various tribes
     and how they conive.
   Oh, why?  Oh, why?

   He swets in his sheets
           which stick to his back as he 
                turns in the night and
     catch him up so
   he rolls off the bed
       and thuds onto the floor
    banging his elbow really hard.
  
  And now he hurts too much
     to worry about the problems of the world
 and gets a better rest
      even in all his pain.

  The darker sky
     against the darkest hill
    where there is a quarry
  held swirls of cloud funnel far away
      shapes of turbulent fury,
     and all filled up with rain
       that shoots out like
   potatoes from a cannon.

        the torrents flow into the parched
   gullys of the farm.
      finally the cistarns
       will fill with water

        Thunder.
      More thunder
     and then a light show
     that didn't quite for an hour
     and rocked that old farm house
     and took down a tree near the farther barn.

       Stone walls through
    the fallow of fields of thought
        and memory compell me
      to write a story of 
       young love, two
        highschool kids in love.

       Ah, sweet love.

        There is a stream that runs down the hill
  in this memory
    with little water falls, I can
  show you where this really is but
     it's a neighborhood now.

   I saw them kissing there
    on that stone ledge place by the stream.

    Brian and Judy got married.
   they live in a house in that new neighborhood I think
    

   Most days
   in spite of rage
      I'd walk home through the woods
    and the old oak trees
      and honey bees
     and wild flowers too.