Tag Archives: poem

Uses Book Orders

North Smithfield, Rhode Island.

North Randall, Ohio.

Lynden, Washington.

What do they have in common? Absolutely nothing—except they’re linked by my obsessive curiosity.

When I receive packages in the mail, especially from used book dealers, I like to write down the return addresses and look them up on Google Maps and Google Street View.

I do the same with canned goods, protein bar boxes, and other products.

I seek answers to the following questions: Where did this package originate? What’s the name of the company, and where is it located? And then I play my Out-of-State Game, documented in a previous blog post.

Which state would I relocate to if I had a choice, without considering income and family matters? Where would I go if only given these three options? Could I make a life for myself and my family in this particular locale? If given the opportunity to match my current salary, would I stay in Syracuse or risk moving to one of these other destinations?

Why the compulsion to research these places? It’s the tantalizing possibility of the unknown, of another life in another community, even as I am old enough to know that I would not be changed in the new town, village, or city. I would still be me—and maybe that’s what I’m really trying to escape.

The three books I had received were Devotions and Upstream, both written by Mary Oliver, and Donna Tartt’s novel The Goldfinch (which I should have bought as a hardcover instead of paperback because it’s nearly 800 pages long).

The return addresses stamped were:

1770 Front Street
Lynden, WA 98264

Bay State Books
473 Saint Paul Street
North Smithfield, RI 02896

Amazon Fulfillment Center
21500 Emery Road
North Randall, OH 44127

So my choices are New England, the Midwest, or the Pacific Northwest.

Looking at the three spots, North Smithfield, Rhode Island, appeals to me because it’s near Providence—a city I have always wanted to visit. I used to watch the NBC television drama Providence, and the scenery looked beautiful. Plus, I believe Providence has a large Italian American population.

North Randall, Ohio, would be the safe bet, because even though it’s small, it’s located near Cleveland (where I could work). Also, my sister resides in Toledo about two hours away.

Yet, I read on Wikipedia that the population of North Randall is less than one thousand—so where exactly would I live? Do they have apartments or houses for rent?

But since this is pure fantasy, let’s skip realistic concerns. Let’s focus on where I’d want to flee if only given these three options. It feels good to fantasize about dropping everything, abandoning my job, mortgage, and family (at least until I get resettled and they can join me).

So I will pack up and move to Lynden, Washington, situated in the top-left corner of the Continental U.S., near the Canadian border. I am no outdoorsman. But I’ll embrace a sense of adventure, not to mention flannel shirts, Carhartt jackets, Timberland boots, and a red, plaid-patterned thermos of coffee.

And since this madness began with the delivery of books, I will dive into novels written by the two wild, literary Jacks—Jack London and Jack Kerouac. But I will not venture into the Canadian Cascades. Instead, I’ll stay inside, reading at night in a home with electricity, running water, indoor plumbing, and a warm bed.

Downtown Lynden, Washington. Photo by Joe Mabel.

Here’s a poem I wrote about my “grass-is-greener” obsession. It appears in my collection Sidewalk Stories (Kelsay Books, 2017).

Elsewhere

Elsewhere—a state of mind:
Reno or Raleigh,
Topeka or Tacoma,
an intentional escape
from the ordinary,
an imaginary vacation
from reality.

Elsewhere—another place to be,
an alternate zip code.
Elsewhere, when shall I go?
And where shall I roam?
Elsewhere, I’m ready
to embark on the journey,
but the destination is unknown.
Elsewhere is calling—is beckoning,
and I’ve already left home.

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Ellen Bass Poem

While waiting for my son Colin’s annual flu shot at the drugstore, I saw a copy of the New Yorker, flipped through it, and found a poem by Ellen Bass. I thought it was worth sharing.

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Father’s Day Forgotten

I thought I would post this poem, “Father’s Day Forgotten,” in the spirit of the day to honor dads. One note: the poem is fictional; the only connection with my real father is that he once owned a green couch when he lived in a small house on Mohawk Street in Rome, New York, after my parents divorced in the early 1980s.

A photo of my father and me following my Confirmation in 1984.

The poem appeared in my 2012 poetry collection Vestiges, published by Kelsay Books/Alabaster Leaves Publishing, and later in Dreaming of Lemon Trees: Selected Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2019).

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads and father figures out there.

“Father’s Day Forgotten”

Daddy and Christi parted ways at a bus depot
In the early morning hours.
No big scene, just a kiss on the cheek,
Then she turned around and was gone for good—
Hopping aboard a Trailways bus headed westbound for Chicago.
And she never looked back.

Daddy went home to his beer bottle and sofa seat,
And he drew the living room curtains on the rest of the world,
Letting those four eggshell walls close in and swallow him up,
Wasting away in three empty rooms and a bath.

And the memories can’t replace his lost daughter and wife.
So he tries not to remember his mistakes
Or how he drove them away.
Instead, he recalls Halloween pumpkins
Glowing on the front porch,
Training wheels moving along the uneven sidewalk,
Little hands reaching for bigger ones in the park,
And serving Saltine crackers and milk
To chase away the goblins that haunted
Dreams in the middle of the night.

Now Christi has a life of her own,
And she lets the answering machine catch
Daddy’s Sunday afternoon phone call.
She never picks up and rarely calls back.
So Daddy returns to the green couch
Pockmarked with cigarette burns.
He closes his eyes, opens the door to his memory vault
And watches the pictures play in slow-motion.
He rewinds again and again,
without noticing the film has faded
and the little girl has stepped out of the frame.

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Ice Cream Poem

I saw a melting ice cream cone on the sidewalk while out for my Sunday run today. Luckily, I brought along a pen and a scrap of paper. I jotted down some notes, which became the sweaty, messy first draft of this poem.

Melting Cone

A Drumstick ice cream cone
lying in the middle of the sidewalk
on a blistering July Sunday—
the vanilla ice cream liquified,
while ants scale the surface of
the dented waffle cone.

Did the child cry
when the cone hit the ground?
And did Mom let the girl
run back inside to
grab another from the freezer?
But maybe a kid didn’t drop it—
because in reality,
ice cream misfortune
could befall anyone.

The forecast calls for storms.
Soon heavy rain will scatter the ants
and cleanse the sidewalk,
erasing the evidence of this calamity,
as one more taste of summer fades away.

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A Poem for Autumn

Now that we’re well into October, I’ve broken out the winter coat and put rock salt and shovels in the tool shed. While I love the light and colors of autumn, the change of season ushers in a feeling of trepidation. Fall to me is more than playoff baseball, apple fritters, and pumpkin-spiced coffee (or lattes or whatever other beverages they doctor with pumpkin spice).

Genesee Street Tree. Photo by Francis DiClemente.

Autumn is a time of preparation for yet another Central New York winter, which means heavy coats and boots, shoveling and salting, and trying to avoid slipping and shattering a hip.

With these thoughts heavy on my mind, I discovered an autumn-themed poem written by Emily Brontë. Something about the words made me think I could hear Robert Smith of The Cure singing them as lyrics to a song. And speaking of music: I will listen to the album October by U2 from start to finish to deepen my autumn mood.

Emily Brontë by Patrick Branwell Brontë

Fall, leaves, fall

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.

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Saturday Morning

I was reviewing some old poems and came across this little throwaway. I thought I’d share it as a reflection for today:

Saturday Morning

There’s something special
about Saturday mornings—
waking up with no demands to be met
and owning the hours you clock.
So what are your plans today?

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Cut While Shaving

I recently finished reading The Last Night of the Earth Poems by Charles Bukowski (Ecco, 2002; previously published by Black Sparrow Press in 1992). Bukowski feels like an old friend to me, and I love picturing him sitting in his house, drinking wine and listening to classical music on the radio while he bangs away at the typewriter.

The book is a beefy collection filled with the typical Bukowski charm—a combination of vulgarity, humor and humanity.

As someone of advancing age, often filled with regret over the detours and wrong decisions I’ve made in my life, one particular poem hit home for me.

Cut While Shaving

It’s never quite right, he said, the way people look,
the way the music sounds, the way the words are
written.
It’s never quite right, he said, all the things we are
taught, all the loves we chase, all the deaths we
die, all the lives we live,
they are never quite right,
they are hardly close to right,
these lives we live
one after the other,
piled there as history,
the waste of the species,
the crushing of the light and the way,
it’s not quite right,
it’s hardly right at all
he said.

don’t I know it? I
answered.

I walked away from the mirror.
it was morning, it was afternoon, it was
night

nothing changed
it was locked in place.
something flashed, something broke, something
remained.

I walked down the stairway and
into it.

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Jumpcuts of Thought

I was flipping through one of my older poetry books—Dreaming of Lemon Trees: Selected Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2019)—and I came upon “Jumpcuts of Thought.” I like the stupid absurdity of it, and I thought I would share the poem, since many people have not read it in book form. It’s also one of the only poems I’ve written that employs the use of rhyme.

Jumpcuts of Thought

Clorox shine
and Rust Belt mine.

Ruddy hue
and Spade gumshoe.

Tootsie Pop
and soiled mop.

J.S. Bach
and Shakur, Tupac.

Codeine high
and ham on rye.

Minnie Mouse
and adobe house.

Petrie dish
and sardine fish.

Rockwell print
and strand of lint.

Ruby Dee
and Wounded Knee.

Swollen lip
and radar blip.

Clark Gable
and Aesop fable.

Toilet seat
and sirloin meat.

Shower stall
and Camus’s The Fall.

Mustard green
and college dean.

Lowell, Mass.
and Namath pass.

The odd pairings
go on and on,
in this celebration of incongruity—
a verbal exercise
to stimulate the mind.

 

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Late August

Today marks one month since my brain surgery. My recovery is going well, but I’m still not back to full strength.

I’ve been walking in my neighborhood to build up my stamina. I’m still using the cane I received when I was discharged from the hospital, but I hope to ditch it soon.

When I walk, I don’t listen to music or podcasts. For safety reasons, I need to hear cars approaching, and I also keep my ears open for stimulating sounds—birds, wind chimes, children playing, etc.

A lot of times, I get ideas for poems while out on my walks. Often, one line will pop into my head and start me down the path of writing a poem. Recently, I was walking and thinking about the end of August, and this line came to me: It’s always sad when summer ends. I jotted the line down in the small notebook I carry with me. After some work, this is the poem I produced:

Late August

It’s always sad when summer ends.
But avoidance of the inevitable is impossible.
And in this season of life, a little winter must come.
So I tell myself to stop being disgruntled
by summer’s death and autumn’s arrival,
and instead get to work—starting with
descending the cellar steps and bringing up
the long johns, flannel shirts, and heavy wool socks.

It’s not the greatest poem in the world. But I like that I followed the trajectory the poem wanted to take—starting with one line, then others scribbled in my notebook, followed by revisions on the computer.

So I recognize the importance of awareness and paying attention to both external and internal stimuli to use as raw material for poetry (and stories, etc.).

And this reminds me of a line from the Grateful Dead song “Scarlet Begonias” (thank you, Robert Hunter):

Once in a while, you get shown the light
In the strangest of places if you look at it right …

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Words in the Night

This never happens to me—a poem came to me in a dream. Granted, it’s not much of a poem. But I appreciate the intercession of some muse tapping on my head while I slept.

In the dream, a news report revealed that artist Alanis Morissette had suffered an accident and had lost her singing voice (fortunately not true).

I was standing in the middle of a coffee shop when I heard the news on TV. I then announced two sentences to the baristas and a few customers seated at a long wood counter. I’ve edited the words slightly, but here’s the result:

The One Thing

What is the one thing
that makes you
uniquely you?
And who would
you become
if you lost that thing?

The beauty (and terror) of the question is that the response is different for everyone.

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