PICKING ON THE BANJO
When I pick on a banjo
it’s like a bully pickin’ on you
for your lunch money
In high school I tortured a trumpet
hitting the high notes and the low
with many a glancing blow
While Johnny’s boy, damn his hide,
could pick up any instrument
Didn’t have to think or practice
or anything
the music just told him where to put his fingers
THROUGH THE NEEDLE’S EYE
Sarah N. Cleghorn 1916
The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play
Update 2011
Sarah, you’ll be pleased to know
There are no such scenes today
The children laboring in the mills
Are half a world away
THE COURAGE OF MINERS
For Tiger and Benny
To go down
each day
into your
grave
And rise
at end of shift
with Lazarus-like joy
– except when
you don’t
DRAGGING IT OUT
The organ donor dies
over a very long time
and in a great many places
Not immortality exactly
but at least a lingering mortality
And for those of us
who find it so hard to let go
some comfort to know
that kidney that went to a child
might keep us going for another fifty
AMELIA IN FLIGHT
Amelia in this life
you have had wings on your feet
Wings that have taken you skyward in dance
Wings that have taken you away from these
prairies
and wings that have brought you back
In this life Amelia
you have taught so many of us to fly
If you go on to other wings
we must go on to other teachers
and to other students
Each with the gift you have given us
Each with a sacred feather
MAY 1ST MAYDAY
On my 4th birthday
I am pushed off the front page
by the announcement that Hitler is dead
A mere sixty six years later
they do it again for Bin Laden
Enough already
with all of this mass murdering
and pissing on my candles
BORN TO BE A STAR
Elizabeth Taylor
had eyelashes
that grew in double rows
(a genetic mutation called distichiasis
you could look it up)
Rather rare , and generally harmless
except when serving as they did
to frame wet violet eyes
And everywhere men falling
northward like the Nile
ROYAL WEDDING
War and famine fade
it just takes one great dress
Kate and William wed
DEPARTMENT STORE BLUES
I run the long gauntlet of perfume counter aisles
Reaching men’s wear I dare
my first breath
since leaving the street
Take my time picking up
and fondly fondling
warm winter socks
Should I buy two pair or three
two browns and a black
or two blacks and a brown
In no hurry to begin the return journey
so recently reminded of why
I had been driven here
in the first place
The odor of the old pair
BEER PARLOR 2 THE DARK SIDE
Inside all is sound and fury
old friends catching up
a tough week sliding away
drop by drop
Outside, son or daughter
watches the door
every time it opens it’s him
but it isn’t
With every neighbor going in
sending a mounting plea
“What about me”