My Poem/The New York Times

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/arctic-blast-in-manhattan/?ref=metropolitandiary&_r=0

Reprinted here:

Arctic Blast In Manhattan

The wind skims the metallic Hudson.
Riverine, it crests the West Side.
Ashore it rushes through concrete channels,
Freezing breath into angel hair.
Morning sunlight becomes shredded tinsel.
It hangs in the bone-chill air.

New York City/Cold Morning

Wind and sun drive Ninth Avenue
The morning rush hour a sound
Pedestrians bent to their schedules
Are blobs of color walking

I am awake today because of you
My artist of the morning

Moment in Santa Fe

The fire in the kiva fireplace

Is cracking, mesquite exploding.

You come down the stairs at Las Brisas

Like laughter in the evening.

I in a chair by the front door sitting

Like a steward musing

About paper-bag existence,

About bitter-cold outside.

You smile.  In a firelight sanctuario

We are primitives, the night's farolito.

The World Series: From Worst-To-First in Boston

Today’s Boston papers proclaim to millions

“We Are The World – We Are The Champions”

While outside sources observe distantly

“Beards Beat Birds In World Series Finale”.

What impressed me, despite Big Papi’s MVP,

Was Boston’s locked-in baseball mentality.  The

Beer and chicken wings, and Valentine, were over,

Replaced now by focused Red Sox team fervor.

Pundits say it is money which holds the day

(After all, many teams are built by green sway).

I wonder: Yes, many teams don’t lack for salary, but

Their locker rooms aren't built by currency.

Pumpkin Burning at Sunset

Watercolor on Japanese paper

At The Checkout

At the checkout an old, thin woman argued.
She was being overcharged.  It was, maybe, fifty cents.
“Com’on” muttered another - impatient,
Carrying self-importance as much as groceries.
 

“Maybe she’s poor,” said a voice in defense.
“I’ll give her the money.  It’s just fifty cents.”
 

Maybe the old woman argued because once
When she was younger she held the world

With authority, with flesh, but was now reduced
To change, to the memory in her bony hands.

A Sudden Change

A sudden change in the weather.

Yesterday, sunlight silver, fall was

Stirring cool air through park trees

And turning out the seasonal sheets.

First to color them, then to slumber them.

Now, today, summer has reappeared,

Hazing the sky, warming stiff

Bark with a mother’s golden breath.

It tickles the undersides of thick green

Leaves plump as children’s feet.

"Night & Dreams"

Watercolor, Lacquer, Japanese Paper

Struggling For Relevance

I woke from a vivid dream.
It had rattled my sleep and comfort.
I thought: To write, now,
After all of this.  And I cried,
Struggling to do it,
“It’s lost.  I can’t retrieve
It” – it already slipping
My fingers like a kite string –
“And nothing will be the same.”
Then you gave me your hand,
Replacing my emptiness with
A purpose to hold.

Age

Like sunshine, a dancing mark:
A stained heart-manufacture
Which requires structure -
But needs the wings of a lark.

"Sun Dance & Adobe"

Watercolor and applique; Japanese paper

Italy - The Marble Panini

Watercolor & Applique

Walking

When we were younger, a New York morning

Was laced with last night's memories

Like new shoes with remembered twine.

Now our older mornings are stitched anew

With new laces and yesterday's shoes.

Dream of You (for Nikki)

The image of Persia . . .

Like a dark stream of hair it curls

Undoes itself, then curls again

Ribboning over and around

Pillows and polished memories

Dream’s empire unfurls

Colors purple and gold snapping

In the liquid breeze,

A woven stream bridging

The straits of logic in my sleep

And then you descend

Upon my Greece your soft lips

Parted your eyes opening mine

Ryan’s Song . . . Gone So Wrong, Now the Rest to Follow

In this tired story fueled, it seems,

by personal and institutional greed,
will suspension clear the smoke?

HGH and PEDs, the fiery secret
formula lurking hidden in MLB . . . then
one astute comment is its equation:

“Average talent becomes good,
good talent becomes great, and
great talent reaches the Hall of Fame.”

(In the past the tightrope dance between
denial and admission seemed to mirror baseball -
where business often outweighed the game.)

But not this time: the list of the alleged is
too long, the evidence too compelling.  MLB
will clean house, Selig will have his legacy.

To note: Braun may get his money, so may
others to be named.  But Hall of Fame status
is unreachable . . . and no asterisk need apply.

Passing Thought

Hunched, gravitated to a smartphone screen
Like Narcissus staring, text’s the thing.
It’s where liquid moments self-flatter
By message and reply. The airy matter

Is self-absorption and drags a warning:
Walk the walk . . . and chew gum talking,
But don’t get off an escalator and expect
Phone-in-hand the world to genuflect.

Hamlet In The Morning

Walking to work tired, feet sticky
With the aftermath of dreams.
They made sense earlier this morning
And still cling to my shoes.

Is this the way, always?
To wake.  To sip coffee and memory,
And then walk between
The linger and abrupt necessity?

"Totem II" - Watercolor/Applique' on Japanese Paper

Late Afternoon on the Airport Shuttle, Dallas/Ft. Worth - Olypus Stylus

New York City MetroCards - Not Just For Rides, Also For Riding!

Bukowski's Blues Painting (Revised)

Down a flight of sagging iron stairs
it slides
and fills the below-sidewalk dive.

When the black door opens
It - and old sunlight - come in.
And smoke fills the mind. 

The Dugout Tavern on Third Avenue -
Gone now.  Like Hopper's last stop,
It was here.

Its yellow-and-green denizens
Mumbled in booths of darkness
Or at the low-lit bar burning

Cigarette to cigarette, their
Bodies blurred smeared
Blended on a palette -

Like the cheap booze poured
But never spilled -
And they never seemed to notice.

Grand Central Terminal - Hermes (in the middle), Minerva (on the right) & Hercules (on the left)

(Olympus Stylus - landscape setting)

"Paper Heart" - Watercolor on Japanese Paper

"Totem" - Watercolor & Applique on Japanese Paper

"Thunderhead" - Watercolor & Applique on Japanese Paper

Baseball Haiku - Maybe The Is Season Turning Around?

Balloons to explode

No easy way to describe

Yankees seem alive

Heartsong

When each day

How many days was that?

I would leave walking to work

still half-asleep

I never noticed the empty-

eyed windows staring at me

the pupils long faces

with silver-haired coronas

like sunsets watching me

Watching an early-morning ship

outbound for a years-long voyage

And at the time I didn't

realize the breeze rushing

me down the street

was the collective sigh

of house-bound faces

still wishing to go to sea

We're All Dinosaurs

My love

When the dust cleared

The sky no longer opaque

After a global light switch

Had simply shut off

The world changed

Today, the How is still argued

Cosmic? Seismic? Biologic?

All the above?

All at once?

"What's that? A bone? And here

See, a footprint in limestone."

* * * * *

Take a note, Ms. Raptor

The Fern Salad Co.

La Brea Post Office
 

Dear Sirs:
 

It has come to my attention

your recent shipment of leafy greens

was much too sandy [stop]
 

Please rectify as you otherwise
have an excellent product [stop]

 

Looking forward to my annual

visit to La Brea [stop]

[blah blah blah

. . . munch munch munch]

Sincerely yours

J.R. Thunderlizard

* * * * *

My love

The world has changed

And it has not

It changed when you were born

It changed again when I met you

Light switches left & right went 

On & off

Off & on
Yesterday today tomorrow

And see, here

A birthday history is imbedded

The handprint in stone is yours

"Flag" - Watercolor on Japanese Paper