Poetry

Poems from Huntington Ave

My children fall on concrete
They have no chance
Leafless acorns crushed on grey sidewalks
By impatient feet that see little and care less
The trams roar
The earth shudders
And I paralyzed by awe
Stand and watch this awful beauty
For that is my curse

Horns hoot in the night, I dream of owls
And buildings soar and steal the sky that eagles owned
From this my roadside river bank I watch the water flow
And it is metal and it is man and it is turbulent
Life’s gentle trickle is but a memory here
Peace and calm lie dead and rotting
The stench of their decay ever-present
Torturing the very air that suckles

I bear this, the curse of man
For as long as he bears me
Till my use to him has passed
Then I will be with my children

By Jamaica pond on a sunny Sunday strolling
With the dogs and the ducks and the phantom alligator
I overheard a woman with the aftermath of a storm in her voice
Say to her lover, ‘I don’t mind the little things’
And I thought ‘oh!’
And got to wondering just what the little things are

The lid off the toothpaste
Toilet seat decorum
His manhood
Farting in bed
Screwing her sister or her brother or both
I don’t know do you

This I do know however
The annoying little things that we pretend not to mind
Get under the skin and fester
The pinprick proves fatal for lack of attention
The neglected stitch unravels the symmetry

The big things blow in like hurricanes
Wreak havoc and blow away
Leaving you to pick up the pieces
Kiss and make up if you want
Rant and rave if you must
At least you know why you’re hurting

It’s the mountain under the carpet
That you pretend not to mind
That’s so hard to get over

I love the necklace best in the fall
When the wind blows cold and cuts
And you know the seasons live

The trees know what autumn asks
They carpet the hardening ground
And paint the gray with vividness

The summer crowds are gone now
The muffled year round hardy
Walk their dogs and their souls

And I a stranger alone as any ghost
Sit and watch a cormorant dive
Into the holiness of this hallowed place

On ancient avenues I peer into vacant eyes
Craving endlessly for the soul of me
The boy with the heart for the dream
Down boulevards of racing thoughts
I follow the scent of my errant soul
Into the blind alleyways of the heartland

Late at night when darkness reigns
When silence consorts with stillness
Echo’s haunt and shadow taunt
Chasing me further into nowhere ness
To dry riverbanks that promised oceans
And peaks that once soared and held the sky

I remember when I was a mountain
When eyes smiled and mouths knew my name
So long ago now hazy in the distance
I wonder was it ever at all
Is it just some nomad memory
Drifting aimlessly on the barren desert wind

This November morning I lie moored
In anxious harbours of doubt
The ocean calls I fear its threat
The boy was brave he loved the sea
Wind in the canvass salt-sprayed horizons beckoning
Life was fresh then he filled me with myself

On my island bed I lie, shipwrecked
Mourning old seafarers and lost voyages
A haunting cry pierces the dawn chorus
Of trams and rushing voices

A snow goose calls a goodbye
A tramp steamer on the morning tide
Bound for fresh grass
The distant lands of the hearts call

What of me I wonder enviously
Marooned in aimlessness
Lost on the turbulent tides
Of endless thought

Everyday I wake and look into my night
For a star to point me home
And everyday I am frozen into oblivion
By the all consuming breathe of the fear

Oh to bound from this earthly tomb
To fly on high with the snow goose
Free now heart ward bound
A soul soaring higher than any sky could dare

Subway stations know my name
Park Street gloom red gloomier green
The hustling heart of Boston
Pumping the city’s lifeblood from here to there
The soul sucked servile classes
Indentured to car loans revolving in revolving credit

Sterile waiting faces, existing, only
Deader than the stations dead walls
Vacant expressions betraying emptiness
I’m sure these people are alive
It just doesn’t show in their eyes
Always somewhere else and rushing to get there

On Irelands country roads
Cows bellow at by passers across ancient stonewalls
While buskin birds perform their masterwork
From oak and ash, may and bramble
Dirty mornings and soft days are blessings
There’s no hiding here behind eyes that look away

On the centre platform lost in the throng
A lone musician crack through the silent hum
Blues guitar to a cheap backing track
Nobody cares, just some has-been pitching for a buck
Disturbing the awkward silence
Till the Braintree train thunders in

The house cat peeked
Through the window of the world
And saw the outside

A world playing out
Indifferent oblivious
Immune to his inside one

People scurrying here and there
To nowhere
Trees birds’ commotion

Reality happening
Living breathing dying
Without him

A parallel universe
On the other side of here
Glimpse able untouchable

There’s a closet in all of us
Where we hang our discarded dreams
The ones we let linger to a slow death
Wallflowers in life’s ballroom of romance

Mountains you could have been
Memories of dreams
Of youth and distant shores
Sacrificed for molehills that were easy

There’s a giant oak
By a bridge in Brookline
Where I sat to watch
Geese gather one October time

It became itself
The beauty that it is
By following the dream
Etched in an acorns heart

Fools like me chase smoke
Down blind alleys
And then wonder
Where our lives went

Too busy taking to realise
That life is about giving
What you have to give
That’s how acorns become oaks

In all the time I’ve watched the river
It never once flowed upstream
It dreams of being an ocean
And follows its course

Times sorrow walks
Down childhood roads
With fathers
It waits beast like
Stalking
To steal the child away
Heavy hearts remember
The boy the girl
The dreams the joy
Growing up is so akin to death

Waiting for a tram on Huntington Ave
I watched the life being torn from a house
A set of drums, an amplifier
a bicycle, weights, a toy gun
Saved treasures from a boyhood lost
Dumped now the boy was gone and the house sold

I felt the sadness in my own soul
Of childhood days lost to time
For children and times I’d never see again
Except in that elusive album of my mind
Isn’t it funny how in getting what we want
We lose so much, but then that’s life I guess
In the chrysalis that time weaves so well
Sadness transforms to emerge as pride
In the people our kids become

Will I be remembered
By the willow and the oak
Will the waters tell of me
And the pathways I trod
Will they ever carry the tune of my footstep

And will the wind lament my passing
To the hollow searching night
And the stars that once I gazed upon
Will they still blaze
Filling the stillness that I loved so dear

And my ghost will it wander
By the river to the rock
Where I paused from life’s commotion
By the breathless  brook babbling
Home to Jamaica Pond

You know when you’re living in an apartment building
Like on Hunting Ave
And you’re lying in bed searching for sleep
And your neighbour across the courtyard
In number eight is playing his music
And it’s really bad awful even
And you can’t stop hearing it
It’s in you and you’re agitated
And you know that the only good thing is
That it will end

Pick your number name your day
It’s all the same
Sooner or later it’s over