Private Communications

Cool, Dark City Morning

2016-05-24T10:29:00.002-07:00

Cool, Dark City Morning

Cool, dark city morning

3 A.M.

Steeped in fog and salt

Stealing from a still waterfront

Distant street sweeper sounds and

Quiet conversations

Softer than the sharp stench of

Urine-soaked blankets

Echo from asphalt

Concrete and

Hard lives and beds made in doorways

Of doors opened to misfortune

Left behind by circumstances

And taxis hailed in

The cool, dark city morning

At 3 A.M.

Look Ahead: Boston Marathon 2016

2016-04-15T07:26:00.001-07:00

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us

Setting aside the weight of that which

Holds us back

Looking ahead toward the finish

Striving to move beyond morbid fixation

What happened then cannot be undone

Nor should it be forgotten

But as each runner who bounds forward knows

You cannot run your best

Looking over your shoulder

How long can we carry a heavy burden

Before we decide to lay it down

To leave it by the side of the road

Along with the memories of faded crosses

Wilted flowers

Sodden trinkets of bitterness

How long is long enough to look back

At what happened?

White Crosses

2016-01-12T03:56:00.000-08:00

White Crosses

Bones of misfortune, sun-bleached white

Stark standing, forgotten memorials

Surrounded by well-meaning corpses

Erected in neglected grief

In ditches

On trunks

Insisting on being noticed

Along the shoulders of a thousand yesterdays

Events tragic

Fitting

Inevitable

Unchangeable

Drawing eyes from what is unseen

Around the corner

Of a single tomorrow

The Ballad of Roger Fuckedbythenavele

2015-09-21T07:45:00.003-07:00

In order to understand the following ballad, you need to read this piece in the Washington Post.

An old high school chum posted the article to his Facebook and lamented a lack of reference to the outlaw Roger Fuckedbythenavele in heraldry. I was up for the challenge:

The Ballad of Roger Fuckedbythenavele

Gather 'round ye lads and lasses
Pull up your chair and fill up your glasses
And I shall sing of a man ye knew well
The brigand they called Fuckedbythenavele

He bargained a deal with the village's whore
"I'll pay ye a pence and not one farthing more"
She agreed to the price and he gave out a yell
"All shall soon know the name Fuckedbythenavele!"

She laid on the mattress and lifted her skirt
He pulled down his breeches, unbuttoned his shirt
And as he prepared to give her all hell
He cried, "Ye'll always remember Fuckedbythenavele"

But the room was as dark as a coal-digger's arse
And young Roger's bluster was nothing but farce
He thrusted and wiggled and fumbled pell mell
And that is the legend of Fuckedbythenavele.

All The Difference

2015-06-24T12:46:00.000-07:00

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death today.

The process begins the infamous Boston Marathon Bomber’s death march. At some point years from now the government will strap Tsarnaev to a gurney, put a needle in his arm, and end his life.

I oppose the death penalty. I believe that the United States should abolish the practice. I believe capital punishment is more about exacting revenge than it is about administering justice. I don’t overlook the pain and suffering endured by those who were killed, maimed and injured by the bombs of the Tsarnaev brothers. I don’t overlook the grief felt by the families of those who died on April 15, 2013. But I believe in the power of grace and mercy to change lives. Tsarnaev must pay for his act. But might grace and mercy in this case prevent similar acts in the future? Might grace and mercy have prevented April 15, 2013 in the first place?

Last week another pathetic, misguided young man entered a church in Charleston, South Carolina and murdered nine innocent lives. His motives were based in bigoted fear. But after the act we learned that Dylann Roof spent nearly an hour inside the Emanuel AME Church and nearly changed his mind because the parishioners had welcomed and been kind to him.

In the courtroom today Tsarnaev spoke publicly for the first time since his trial began. He affirmed his admission of guilt. He told the court that through the process of his trial he “met” his victims. They became people to him; people with names and faces and families. He apologized for his actions. He expressed remorse.

Both Tsarnaev and Roof were “radicalized” online. They withdrew from wide social interaction and steeped themselves in doctrines of hate easily found online. They fed their fears and paranoia until they were ready to lash out in hate. But when that hate met humanity things changed. Too late in Tsarnaev’s case and not enough in Roof’s, but a change occurred just the same.

Both experiences seem to suggest that if people can be radicalized online, they can be reformed offline—in the real world of human relationships and interpersonal interaction. When we get to know others, things change. It changes from Us versus Them and becomes Me and You.

Perhaps we should challenge ourselves to meet someone new this week; someone who doesn’t look like the person we see when we look in the mirror. Or maybe simply perform an act of kindness for that person. Open a door, yield at the crosswalk, smile at them and say “hello” as you pass on the sidewalk. You may think it silly, but to that person it may make a difference.

And if it makes any difference, it might make all the difference.

For Charleston and our Nation: Greater Love Hath No Man

2015-06-21T12:26:00.000-07:00

In the wake of a hateful lunatic’s horrific attack on innocent, loving people practicing and studying their faith during a midweek Bible study in Columbia, South Carolina, a great deal of attention has turned to the symbolism of the Confederate battle flag that still flies over the Palmetto State.

There is something to the question of what message is conveyed by flying a banner that many associate with the South’s long and violent history of slavery, segregation and racial bigotry. It’s easy to sit here from my home in New England and look with condescending judgment below the Mason-Dixon Line and congratulate myself for having been born on the right side of that cultural boundary. But if we are to give credence to the idea that such symbols play a role in sustaining animosity in the hearts and minds of cretins who remain convinced the color of their skin imbues them with any measure of value beyond the content of their character, should we not look for and root out all such symbols not just from above Columbia, but from our national landscape?

America is in its fifteenth year of war and armed conflict in the Middle East. However that period of conflict began, the lust with which we have continued the armed campaign and justified broadening the scope of violent intervention from its start in Afghanistan into Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria and Somalia—and threatening military action against Iran—sends a message to the world that our differences are best resolved at the end of a gun.

The United States currently has 2.2 million people behind bars. Our prison population is the highest of any country in the world and accounts for nearly ¼ of all the world’s prisoners. Our per capita rate of incarceration is second only to tiny Seychelles. The rapid growth of our prison population is not because of an increase in violent crime, but because of an increase of drug offences, the defunding of mental illness treatment programs and the closing of mental hospitals, and our politically-fueled desire to “get tough” on crime by passing mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent offenders. Our criminal code sends the message that our differences are best resolved behind high walls.

The United States and Belarus are the only remaining countries in Europe and the Americas that exercise the death penalty. Thirty five people in 2014 and thus far in 2015 (as of June 18) seventeen have been put to death here. In Asia the death penalty is still law in 38 nations (most of which are either Islamic or autocratic) and actively used in 15. Only China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and North Korea killed more prisoners than the U.S. In Africa the death penalty is legal in 35 countries but last year only four used it. The death penalty sends a message that our differences are best resolved at the end of a needle.

The ubiquity of video on social media has resulted in a steady stream disturbing images that seem to show police resorting to the use of force—sometimes deadly—as their first resort, even under questionable circumstances. Recent high profile cases such as the deaths of Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio and Walter Scott in Charleston, South Carolina, as well as the overreaction of an officer responding to a pool party in McKinney, Texas have added to the growing perception of institutional racism within the ranks of law enforcement. The message seems to be that, when differences arise, violence is the first, best response.

Divisive political brinksmanship, played out each day on our televisions, newspapers and web sites, suggests that there is no more appetite in this country for civil dialog or respectful cooperation among people with differences of opinion. Instead we have mean-spirited, all-or-nothing negotiations stoked with heated rhetoric by politicians who seek to gain political leverage by fomenting an “us-versus-them” mentality among those who identify closely with one partisan ideology over another. The message is clear: when it comes to ideology, winning—at whatever cost—is how we determine right from wrong.

War, prison, execution, institutional brutality and the practice of partisan politics are indelible symbols that pervade our culture today. For those with weak, desperate and malleable minds who feel they are out of options for resolving their differences with others, what have they seen from Washington, D.C. or any of fifty state capitals that would cause them to temper their baser impulses? Why are we surprised to learn of more deaths?

Even if the Stars and Bars come down in South Carolina, what will we have accomplished if we fail to address these larger symbols of the way we do things around here? And if there are symbols that can encourage violence, what about those that do the opposite?

Even as one hurtful symbol yet flies above the city of Charleston, another is emerging from the sorrow of a congregation in mourning. I wept when I heard daughters and mothers and family members of the nine victims repeating the phrase “I forgive you” to the individual responsible for their grief.

"I will never be able to hold her again, but I forgive you.”

“You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people but God forgives you, and I forgive you."

“I forgive you and my family forgives you.”

Reverend Clementa Pinckney, murdered by a man he and his flock had welcomed into their spiritual home, had so clearly taught his congregation the message of the power of love and forgiveness that it would be a national embarrassment if the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, its nine martyrs and their strong, magnificent families did not become the enduring symbol that shows us the way forward. They, against all human instinct and impulse, have chosen a better way. Let us all determine to choose that way as well.

“Greater love hath no man…”

Reverend Clementa Pinckney

Reverend Sharonda Coleman-Singleton

Cynthia Hurd

Susie Jackson

Ethel Lee Lance

Reverend DePayne Middleton-Doctor

Tywanza Sanders

Reverend Daniel Simmons

Myra Thompson

Numbers and Words

2015-04-19T06:22:00.002-07:00

Numbers and Words

The scientist on my television screen

Said in the precision of numbers

Is a key that unlocks mysteries

Reveals worlds unseen

Beyond the lenses of Hubble

Beyond the antennas of Arecibo

Beyond the sensors of CERN

Radio

Neptune

Dark matter

Spoken in a language

That is a mystery

Unlocked by the

Precision of words

Written by poets

Boston Strong? (Boston Marathon, 2015)

2015-04-17T05:48:00.000-07:00

Boston Strong?

What you saw

What you lost

Was seen in

The emptiness of eyes

That had no image

Heard in a voice

That had no words

Adequate to purge

A heart that tried

To contain the agony of a city

Even Our Fucking City

That could not understand

Tee shirts and slogans have their place

But are not adequate to fill

A void once occupied

Flesh

Bone

Blood

Boston Strong?

Not strong enough

For you

Who stood at the line

On a day when

Our tradition became

Your tragedy

How and Why?

2015-04-10T09:45:00.002-07:00

How and Why?

Your questions Why

Incessant

Persistent

Lurking behind every new encounter

Surprising experience

Challenging jaundiced eyes to see

The surrounding marvel

Have become How

To solve

To improve

To change

To go beyond

To challenge yourself to see

And marvel and what might be

Workaday

2015-04-09T11:58:00.005-07:00

Workaday

Buzz
Thump
Click
Whoosh
Shuffle
Vroom
WOOO
Rattle
Zzzz
WOOO
Shuffle
Rattle
Shuffle
Ding
Whir
Ding
Click
Work

How Far?

2015-04-08T05:55:00.000-07:00

How Far?

Perched at hill’s crest

Propelled by youthfulness

The cheers of classmates

And willful ignorance

My legs churned

Outrunning doubt

Feet

Forward

Faster

Finally

Flat

Face

First

How far I flew

Carried by youthfulness

Daring laughter

Gleeful ignorance

And flimsy cardboard wings

I’ll never know

But far enough

Perched at hill’s crest

Restrained by age

The scorn of conformity

And stern awareness

My legs churn

At pace with expectation

How far could I have flown

Carried by carefree wings

I’ll never know

Never far enough

For Jerry: April 4, 2014

2015-04-04T16:49:00.003-07:00

For Jerry: April 4, 2015

Today was your day to mourn

To be with family and friends

And memories

I was there

In the back row

Unseen

Except in the aggregate

Eyes closed

Singing songs that would have made me cry

Under the best of circumstances

I didn’t know your wife

But I knew enough

Three years younger than me

Suddenly

Unexpectedly

But do we ever expect the end

Our choices betray a belief in immortality

Else within the petty we could recognize

Magnitude in each moment

Sense the gravity of our words

If we knew we would embark

Monday

On a journey to end

Wednesday

How would things be different

Tuesday

Should they be different?

Or is it enough at times

To fill life with the

Mundane

There is beauty enough in that

Mountains Have Two Sides

2015-04-03T12:46:00.002-07:00

The rain stopped and the sun shook

A shoulder from a damp, mid-spring torpor

“Pack your bags,” it whispered

Hands complied, stuffing panniers with provisions

Strapped on a tent and a helmet and pointed west

Weather-stiffened legs cranking against gear and gravity

With each turn

City became suburb

Became tree and field

Became river and lake

Became mountain

“Where do you think you’re going?” it whispered

To weather-stiffened legs straining against gear and gravity

Again

Weather-stiffened legs heard and almost listened

But would not turn because

Mountains have two sides

I Woke Up This Morning

2015-04-02T10:27:00.002-07:00

I Woke Up This Morning

I woke up in Oakham

Like I had for seventeen years

Kissed my mother goodbye

Shook my father’s hand

And flew

Over parts of the country

I had read about

Seen on television

And movies

I woke up in San Diego

Like I would for twelve weeks

Tired and disoriented

Of pushups and “yes sir”

In a Navy of concrete and asphalt

That I hadn’t read about

Or seen on television

Or movies

I woke up in Denver

Like I would for seventeen weeks

Staring at photographs

Books and typewriter keys

And learning how to keep

Secrets I would learn

That you can’t read in books

Or see on television

Or movies

I woke up in Virginia Beach

Like I would for four years

Balancing duty and irresponsibility

Heaped in equal measure

On a life that I tried to live

Based on books I’d read

And seen on television

And movies

I woke up this morning

Like I have for fifty years

Still keeping the secrets

Entrusted to me by duty

And irresponsibility

That will never appear in books

On television

Or movies

Good Words on a Page

2015-04-01T05:54:00.002-07:00

Good Words on a Page

When I was a young man John told me

A writer’s greatest asset is

Reliability.

That good words on a page are far better

Than great words in my head

Trapped

In a prison of doubt and fear and reasons

Strong enough to resist

Weakness

John never told me how

April Poem a Day has begun

2015-04-01T05:53:00.000-07:00

I did this last year. Will try to keep up again this year.

Will also try to post my finished poems here.

Waiting in an Empty Tavern

2015-03-02T08:09:00.000-08:00

Recently I was prompted to write a "bar napkin poem."

I happened to be in a bar at the time and asked the bartender for a pen and a napkin. He gave me a pen and a strip of receipt paper.

Good enough, I suppose.

Here's a picture of what I quickly scratched (minus the lame final line, which I've hidden behind the fold). Below is the re-written result.

Waiting in an Empty Tavern

Three of us

Waiting

Glasses half full

In an empty tavern

Wondering

If she will walk through the door

Will we even recognizer her

If she does

In the Morning

2014-05-02T06:45:00.002-07:00

A crow on a drooping hemlock bough scolds me for the trespass

At an hour he expected to have for himself

It is still

Not yet light

As I crease the hovering mist

Pushing my prow quietly forward

Toward a place where there is hope

Confident in my direction

I drift and stow my paddle with a clunk

Amplified by the need for silence

And raising my rod overhead

I thrust back and forward

Casting out upon the water

My offering is a deceit

Floating in the place where

Air meets water

And I wait

For faith’s reward

The apostles were fishermen who wrote that

Christ Himself sought the face of God

In the morning

Forgotten

2014-04-28T07:45:00.001-07:00

Most days

I am unable to remember

Poems given to me

At inconvenient moments

Tell it to the Crowd

2014-04-24T11:31:00.000-07:00

Three steps remain when it hits
The stench of stale urine
Making mood more contrary with each
Breath drawn in through nostrils
Unaccustomed to the city

The turnstile (are they still called that?) opens
To the gathering crowd waiting behind
The yellow line
Milling, pacing, talking
Scanning other eyes that refuse to connect

Wind pushes from the dark
Electric, warm
A whisper that tells of a coming train
Screams an obvious arrival through spark and steel

Exhaling

Inhaling

It begins

Heads down

Pushing
Cutting
Nudging
Bumping
Wedging
Closing
Lurching

Pressed in now feet arms legs backpacks bags satchels duffels contact inevitable too tight

Routine
Aggravation
Doesn’t have to be

Tell it to the crowd

O Sancta Simplicitas!

2014-04-23T05:26:00.002-07:00

Sancta simplicitas! Simplicity

Holy, quiet, resolute. When trials

Rise hot before me, fiery. Or while

Accusations made with duplicity

Seek to question my authenticity

And, lacking truth, substitute vicious guile

Claim devotion as nothing more than vile

Heresy. Love as base felicity

Will I stand as Huss chained to the column

Singing hymns and looking to his Savior

Certain of a comfort that’s eternal?

Or will my heart fail before a solemn

Momentary fate and choose behavior

Trading a divine end for infernal?

Green

2014-04-19T06:12:00.004-07:00

You are hope

And promise

Filled with strength and courage and life and all that can ever be

In a long, hard season you remain ever

Vigilant and a reminder of what was and what will again be

A gentle and persistent encouragement

Humble yet resplendent

Filling the spaces between

Maybe...

2014-04-18T13:28:00.003-07:00

...I should post some stuff that isn't Boston-related?

Just an anomaly, I assure you.

On the 6:44 to Boston

2014-04-18T08:01:00.004-07:00

It is 6:44

The train to Boston jerks forward and shakes me

As I settle into my seat

Facing rearward

The sky is cloudless, blue

Far too cold for April 18

The sun has broken free of the horizon and

Splashes itself against a scratched, dull Plexiglas window

And I squint through the glare at the rubbish

That gathers everywhere there are train tracks

Rusted cars and rimless tires

Appliances and shopping carts

Plastic shopping bags that

Caught in a locomotive’s draft

Are curled upward into the trees

Left to wave like weathered flags

Seen for a moment then

Disappearing

Into the grime and glare of a dull Plexiglas window

Lost to the speed and course of a train

And the lack of concern of a passenger who cannot see

Where he is headed

Only the fading memory of where he has been

A Sonnet for the Boston Marathon (2014)

2014-04-11T10:37:00.002-07:00

Last two years my marathon poems have been humorous, with references to Uta Pippig and Rosie Ruiz. This year humor didn't seem appropriate. Perhaps next year, but until then I offer you:

A Sonnet for the Boston Marathon (2014)

When the time of Paul Revere’s Ride draws near

And the light of patriots of old dawns

We honor them with games and marathons

Memories of days and of ideals held dear

Yet now we strain to think beyond the year

Past a moment scarred by hatred and bombs

That took Martin, Krystle, Lingzi and Sean

Left others wounded, a city in fear

Even as innocents crumple and bleed

That light still glimmers as ever before

Piercing the dark of our “peril and need”

A fire that burns bright with love and deed

The word that shall echo for evermore

And strength that must never fail to lead