Poetry
Home Song
When I go home I don’t wash my hair,
I think it grows twice as fast as it soaks in the marsh salt like cordgrass.
Days here get stuck in the mud and
are only nodded forward by the breeze.
No one ages
except from small town tragedies and slipping into big city dreams.
The only clocks are box crabs who
click their forefingers once at dusk and twice at dawn and
who scatter at the shuffle of adventurous feet.
I find a lot of things at home.
80’s phosphorescent tennis shirts,
dirt under my toenails,
and an old tune that a bluebird once taught me
ringing between my ears.
For a week it tells me to stay,
it tells me to wake up and
climb old war bunkers before the horizon is smeared purple and
peach.
After that week,
I lose the melody,
I sleep in,
I set out.
Savannah
I didn’t hear your motor cutting
the current tonight, only your breeze stripping
the moss of dusk’s fading pink warmth.
The end of October reminds me
of burnt knees and long sleeves in front of the fireplace.
The end of October reminds me that
one day I’ll bring someone new home.
You’ll be jealous, crimson.
I’ll smell the witch hazel on her hands as
my fingers connect the dots between the kisses
your sand gnats left on her swollen ankle.
You’ll wrap your beaten blanket of fall leaves
around our sun-stained skin.
We’ll drive to the bluff with our hands drifting
out of windows. You arranged your Christmas lights in the shape
of your favorite constellations,
Corona Australis, Cassiopeia, and Lyra.
She’ll tell me you look pretty.
All John
Dad,
This is
What we’ll share.
Fourteen magic
Sticks and Titalist.
Echoed laugh, forehead kiss.
Dad, this is what we will share.
A sweet tooth, a screw loose, PB
S broadcasting and the daily news.
This is what we’ll share, fictional heroes,
Late night novels and vintage clothes. The word “um”
And a box of tums next to the quiet neti pot.
Dad this is what we’ll share, a faith built on our favorite
Authors and tuna salad smeared against crumbling challah,
A pair of ears opened by curiosity’s constant nudge and
Neil’s weathered gospel fed to me and Ben with the big spoons like soup
On heavy-eyed drives through the South’s dense nights. Dad this is what we will share.
A home that sways with the breath of a blonde muse and whispers too loudly for
Its promises to be sweet nothings. Just sweet. Just magnolia blossoms. A home that’s only
A home because we share it with Charlie and Jerry and Jethro. A home that clings
To us like a burnt leaf in November’s last autumn glory. Dad this is what I’ll be.
A conch shell. Sharp. Royal. Humbled in sand but demanding attention. Echoing
The ocean of “it’s impossible to predict the future”’s and “I wouldn’t
Worry about that”’s, someday to explore the world on the back of another.
Dad, this is what I’ll be, spring’s first dawn, acknowledging winter’s blemishes,
Encouraging growth. I’ll be a rabbi and a renegade, a
Perennial papercut on the eyelid of their “normal”.
A writer and a storyteller. You always Frank, me
Young Dweezil, both on Casey’s train, running off diesel.
Dad, this is what I’ll be. Grateful for every breath that
Was given to me instead of him, a baby
Whose expiration date was a dark seed.
Dad, I’ll be a willow, pensive. Or
I’ll be an oak, dancing to your
Singing sun. Dad I’ll be a
Son, I’ll be a good one
Shades of Neil, sprinkled
Dylan, all John.
Dad, this is
What I’ll
be.
This is
What we’ll share.
Fourteen magic
Sticks and Titalist.
Echoed laugh, forehead kiss.
Dad, this is what we will share.
A sweet tooth, a screw loose, PB
S broadcasting and the daily news.
This is what we’ll share, fictional heroes,
Late night novels and vintage clothes. The word “um”
And a box of tums next to the quiet neti pot.
Dad this is what we’ll share, a faith built on our favorite
Authors and tuna salad smeared against crumbling challah,
A pair of ears opened by curiosity’s constant nudge and
Neil’s weathered gospel fed to me and Ben with the big spoons like soup
On heavy-eyed drives through the South’s dense nights. Dad this is what we will share.
A home that sways with the breath of a blonde muse and whispers too loudly for
Its promises to be sweet nothings. Just sweet. Just magnolia blossoms. A home that’s only
A home because we share it with Charlie and Jerry and Jethro. A home that clings
To us like a burnt leaf in November’s last autumn glory. Dad this is what I’ll be.
A conch shell. Sharp. Royal. Humbled in sand but demanding attention. Echoing
The ocean of “it’s impossible to predict the future”’s and “I wouldn’t
Worry about that”’s, someday to explore the world on the back of another.
Dad, this is what I’ll be, spring’s first dawn, acknowledging winter’s blemishes,
Encouraging growth. I’ll be a rabbi and a renegade, a
Perennial papercut on the eyelid of their “normal”.
A writer and a storyteller. You always Frank, me
Young Dweezil, both on Casey’s train, running off diesel.
Dad, this is what I’ll be. Grateful for every breath that
Was given to me instead of him, a baby
Whose expiration date was a dark seed.
Dad, I’ll be a willow, pensive. Or
I’ll be an oak, dancing to your
Singing sun. Dad I’ll be a
Son, I’ll be a good one
Shades of Neil, sprinkled
Dylan, all John.
Dad, this is
What I’ll
be.
Walking
the blocks
between dusk and dark
I steal looks inside of illuminated townhouses
and see what people hold important enough to hang against vanilla stucco:
mahogany framed expressionist paintings, succulents individually shelved and reasonably spaced,
string lights that slouch like afternoon shoulders,
and the neatly threaded tapestry that Terrence sent from Kyoto
that was almost hung in
the room where we sit around each other and take small sips of warm drinks and long gazes out of tall windows as indiscernible faces stroll past
on nights like these
when it only drizzles
and raindrops rest on car roofs like beads glue gunned to linoleum,
and I step outside to smell damp maples and angel’s trumpets
and almost brush shoulders with a quickly-passing figure,
faintly familiar,
scoring the streets for a new still,
a frozen scene,
architectural and intimate inspiration,
a loose thought.
An Essay on Meeting Your Heroes
Trying to interpret the loaded Irishman
in the sticky American Bar
just North of the Hammersmith Bridge
was like being put in one of those game show money booths
that blows an endless stream of dollar bills in a million different directions,
you have to grab on to any words that you can.
Cathal.
Yea I grew up next to Shamey ya know? Same primary school, swear to fookin God.
Top lad, he’s got a little brother with some sort-a mental disability or sometin,
always looked after him. Top fookin lad.
Captain Fantastic. As a football fan, there are certain things you expect from your leader,
high work rate, small ego,
a physical embodiment of the club,
‘The People’s Club’.
Seamus Coleman is not a swaggering centre back or outspoken midfielder like many
of the others who don the captain’s armband.
Seamus Coleman is a soft-spoken, baby-faced right back.
He’s not gifted with the blistering speed or a rocket right boot
(although his net-ripping missile against Southampton in 2013 would suggest otherwise),
but there is a quiet tenacity behind those probing and curious eyes.
Who else plays a full 90 minutes in their first game back
after a near year long hiatus due to a grisly double leg-break
(which Seamus didn’t even flinch at)?
Seamus Coleman.
Easter Sunday.
Two weeks after meeting Cathal,
I stood face to face with pilgrimage.
To me, a pilgrimage has to be made on foot,
so I rose early and fueled-up,
Full-Monty,
and weaved my way from downtown Liverpool
through streets of middle-class red-brick homes and fake Georgian townhouses
lined with wrought iron
until I reached my Wailing Wall,
Goodison Park.
I watched both buses unload,
Richarlison, Bernard, Sigurdsson.
Pogba, Rashford, Martial.
I took swigs on pints of Fosters in old pubs stuffed with
priceless memorabilia and working class men
who looked as if they had been bald their entire lives.
I waddled through the turnstiles mere minutes before kickoff.
I almost fell over when Richarlison flipped
his big left boot over his head and thrashed the ball goalward,
and we held our breath and sang and put our arms around each other’s shoulders
for 90 minutes.
Everton 4 - Manchester United 0.
I was dreaming.
Exit one was barricades and little boys in royal blue jerseys.
Exit one was preferred by the star players, the goal scorers, the starting keeper.
I stood by exit two, the quieter exit,
no barricades,
light security.
They came out one at a time,
humble defenders and
back-ups and
assistant managers and
there he was:
Captain Fantastic.
I was a sunflower in a sea of delphinium hoping that my vintage mustard away jersey
would attract my target. Seamus, Seamus, can I get a picture real quick?
I didn’t care so much about the picture. I barely got my face and blonde ‘fro in the frame.
I just wanted him to put his arm around me (which he did). Today was my first match at Goodison. I appreciate such a great performance.
He computed this as he was already walking away,
about to be swallowed by the dozens of waiting fans,
and he did a full turn and he said nothing
but shook my hand
and held my eyes
and nodded
and for that moment I stood in the shadow of a man my own height
and they say never meet your heroes
because they’re sure to disappoint you,
and I say
just pick the right heroes
and you’ll never be disappointed.
Copenhagen
The cemetery is a stroll north and west from Copenhagen’s Meatpacking District.
It’s an escape
from the dizzying architectural arrangements that line Norrebro’s long streets.
Assistens Cemetery.
There lies precise hedges and Hans Christian Anderson.
Across the street, past the craft wine bar
There is another cemetery,
a smaller cemetery,
a Jewish cemetery.
Things are less precise,
it is crumbling red brick and tilted dirt trails
uprooted and overgrown
and middle-class flats splattered with block-lettered graffiti.
There lies David. B. Adler who I have no relation to.
The crooked headstones are illegible,
but the Jewish banker,
who shares my surname,
has been given a planted, plastic label,
and I wonder who will give me a label
and dig pebbles from the earth
and balance them on the mossy slant of my grave,
in 200 years,
when you can no longer read my headstone.
Manegg Cemetery
There are much better views in Zurich,
everywhere,
especially as you rise through District 2,
so I’m not sure why the five lawn chairs are placed,
side-by-side,
on the edge of the cemetery,
in the middle of the unkempt field with no tombs,
facing directly at the fence and low-hanging sun and proud firs and towering pines.
It’s a still from a horror movie,
blazes of light filtered through branches
reflecting off of the bending grass and dandelions.
These seats are not for me,
not for tourists who stumble into the cemetery after
a long day on their feet.
I can sit anywhere
and watch the sun tuck behind the hills that flank the Southwest edge of the city.
The chairs wait to be filled with cigarette smoke and fragmented conversation
by one of the families whose ancestors lie 300 yards east,
one of the families that lives a couple of blocks away,
in a cream-colored house,
with amethyst wisteria growing over the clothesline in the backyard.