What'd I Do?

What'd I Do? 

Editors don't want experiment.
"What'd I do," comes my mother's voice,
What did I do?
Keep it mainstream; rhyme is OK.
Say it clearly.

Ring. Hello.
Mom is in the hospital. 
Pneumonia.
The way you handle time is crucial.
Time passes. Mom heals. Then,
Ring. Mom is in the ICU. She fell.
In the hospital?
An attendant dropped her.
Broke her hip.
She was to leave tomorrow. 
Now they have to operate.

Drive. Drive. The endless empty road to
Savannah.
The way you handle space and spacing... crucial.
From the ICU,
"Another day in paradise."
First words Mom says as they remove the breathing tube.
"What'd I do?"
Each day, every day, the same sentences.
Then, "Sue the fuckers."
Avoid obscenity if you want to publish. 
Good, rich diction.

We return home.
Mom stays in the hospital
A week
Until they haul her to a nursing home,
Hip not healed, yelling obscenities, 
Wanting  home.
Keep it short and sweet.
Ring.
Mom is dead.
What? Dead. Friday.
Cardiac
Arrest.

--Jack, December '08

Tonight, bright and white
As madness, the Moon
Makes bones of the trees,
Opens my wounds
Like a laser.

Tonight, clear and sublime
as ice, the light
Pierces through the night
To expose my heart
And all its broken memories.

Jameson

Pears

Pears

When you appear in my memories,
What I see first is your face,
Your frown, as if you tasted something foul.
Instead, I alter the view,
Recall your breasts, welcoming,
Gentle, round and perfect like pears.

My face goes to your breasts, to embrace
You there. To smile the reverse of yours,
A smile of delicious comfort that for a moment
Dispels your loneliness and your sorrow.
Was your sadness there from your time before us
Or was it from the life we did not beget?

When I conjure your face, that regret
Comes too. You will never admit, I know,
But that loss we shared is set
Against a love our bodies felt,
And that our minds never could.

Jack

Thirty

Becoming Thirty

We were thirty miles from Tulsa
Behind us the West stretched
Back in memory to San Francisco
And Yosemite

As we sped over Oklahoma
The hitcher we gave a ride drove
He joined us at Half Dome crossing 
Utah with us and Colorado and Kansas

Today I reached thirty
You gave me your present your hand
The summer night was warm
Warm as the flow of my pleasure

The intimacy you gave me
Shared with the young stranger beside us
May have been less than in our tent
On the heights of Parry Peak

But it was no less astounding an act of love high
And clear as the stars the night I turned thirty


-Jack