Cellist

In a hall, surrounded by hundreds of people just like myself,
dressed in silk, satin, and tuxedos, shiny shoes and heels with straps
rested on the black and beige floor. Some tapped anxiously, others slowly,
with the rhythm of hot air and friction. But most kept still, bodies erect,
attentive to the sound carried through the round ceiling, plastered in gold.
Strings shook gently against horsehair and rosin as the soloist worshiped
his art in a cathedral filled with penitent prayers. He had played for years,
befriended music at birth. A genius, Mozart for a cello, imbedded in a small
Connecticut town, only discovered by a man walking past his spot on the street.
A gentle shake of the hand reverberated in the mind like the waves that pushed
against our eardrums. Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi, one and all touched the strings,
and sang from their cords.

Feeding Ghost Crabs

The day wore on as I walked over the sand.
The park lay clean, but the beach was dirty.
Together, mother and I sat on dusty ground,
beside a bag of seedless red grapes.
We ate some, fed the gulls some, and watched the sandpipers
scavenge for more. Then we peered at little holes,
tunnels to the center of earth, where night crabs made their home.
Mother told me to sit still as she bit a grape in half and threw
the other to the ground. I mourned the loss of half a fruit as sand
diluted the flavorful juice. Raising my head to dull the disappointment,
I stared at the water, gently treading the shore.
When I peered back the grape was gone.

Sand Dollar

Perhaps the artist carved you with fingers of water,
or maybe the salt slipped into your skin to wear your face away.
The clam inside your body must have been cold,
shivering from the holes in your bones.
You tattooed a flower on your forehead to prove that you were best.
Now the color fades from your eyes and you look at the ocean as a mother,
but it didn't make you. No one made you, except for me.
No one shattered your other half, save my hands alone.
Don't fall to pieces again after I spent so long gluing you back together.
You were made to look like stars.

Ice Cream Hunt

Forked lemon ribbons wave behind blonde curls and a smile.
The vegetable man waves a carrot, left in the wake of yellow ribbons.
Black shoes with scuff streaks on the side skip towards the candy shop,
but can't go inside. All the jewels of sugar vanished along with the cash
register and plastic bags. The cement leads on, winding back to the square
where a fountain pours colored water down the side of a rock face,
turning brown to green and lemon.
A cart rolls in front of the child as she dodges traffic to reach the other side.
Ice cream, mounded on a cone that tastes like styrofoam.
Small hands reach up and pass on a silver coin before grasping at the nearest
skyscraper of sweets. Chocolate, raspberry, vanilla, sweet pea.

The Moving Men

A white head with white wings plastered to the side of a black van.
It was a fifteen passenger, those mammoths that try to pass themselves off
for civilian vehicles. A bible verse made into a pun on the side of the van,
viciously stripped of its holy rights, plastered a slogan of speed and efficiency.
The Better Way Movers came to turn the house upside down.
Anyone else would have thought they were robbing us in the name of divine justice.
In all rights, they probably did, we just don't know over the heaps of boxes
and scrap metal left over from father's computer experiments and my brothers old car,
whose heaping carcass still sprawls at the end of the driveway.
We would never know if they took one thing, or if there was a thing worth taking.
Either way, I thought the tall one was pretty good looking, if he were ten years younger.
He winked at me.

Warrior Reborn

Eyes as blue as thunder and lightning glared up at me,
tears on the verge of pouring out like rain.
The focus and the fear mixed with his fists
and threw their strongest force at my chest.
The hurt would never leave his mind,
the danger of falling into the dirt and failing
once more would cripple his legs that ran so fast.
A knife could plunge as surely as he wanted it to,
but a piece of metal, even a sharp one, can't remove loss.
All attacks failed, all weapons on the ground
or broken in half, he no longer resembled an angry child,
but a warrior ready to kill me with all the power
of his broken will. But the real man turned
and walked away with a fresh understanding
of powerlessness and hope.

A Unique Day

There will never be another.
There will never be another sky like the one I saw today as the sun died,
or  another moon like the one I saw last Wednesday night as mother and I sat in the car outside the house and listened to the crickets chirp.
There will never be another day like the one I had today when I met a little boy in the hospital and his father, the FedEx man who delivers my packages everyday.
There will also never be another cookie like the one I ate next to the boy in the hospital as we played Connect Four and laughed at the nurses Pebble's style bun.
There will never be another mug of root beer as biting as the one I drank next to my brother as we watched the football game on the ice cream parlors 52 inch screen,
or another leather seat like the one in my brother's little Ford, stained with Mountain Dew and grease from the bowling ball lanes.
There will never be another person like me, on a day like today.

His Captain

Stucco walls the color of blood mixed with dirt grow darker and darker. When the window above his head shut, only thin slivers of light broke through the defenses. The checkerboard floor lay beneath him with dirt, dust, and human hair wadded into balls around his entire body. The wooden door met with the pane and the knob turned, releasing the latch from it's spring-hold to rest inside the necessary hole. A patient hand pulled a warm quilt of black and brown cotton over his back, which he pulled even tighter over his head. Outside, the noise of angry, hurt voices drowned all other sounds. "What are we going to do?" they kept asking, but no one replied a sufficient answer. It didn't matter. No one could lead them now. The Captain's red scarf was a burning reminder, tied around the boy's hand. A reminder that glory days were all over.

Gems and Plastic

Tanzanite, chocolate diamonds, pearls.
Stones sitting grandly inside little felt boxes.
Underneath the glass counter, dark colors contrast
with the blinding white of display shelves in showroom lights.
Metal, as fake as silver, lines the boxes.
What a Taj Mahal!
Men and women dressed in suits behind hte counter
exhibit wares on fingers, toes, neck, and hair
like a fish in rainbow scales. Price tags
are never shown, but always discussed
when it comes down to the card. Platinum, gold, obsidian, sapphire.
Gems and plastic never sound so good together
as when one can buy the other along with all of the other things in life,
useless, needed, desired or otherwise.

A Graveyard

Flowers scattered around grey.
The momentos of ordinary days where people walked.
Some are real, with water in their petals
as they fall to the ground in the cold.
Some are fake, course cotton and glue
holding them together, feigning to cheat death.
Only a few last without getting dirty,
but none of them last eternally.
Standing in metal vases next to stones
marked with epitaphs, nothing grows.
Loving mother, honest man, precious son or daughter.
Irreplaceable woman, enchanting man.
So many roles. Now all that commemorates
them are pale flowers and stone.

Beach Music

At night the moon raced past the windowsill

of the second floor bedroom in Beach Music, our house by the sea.

So unremitting and vain.

The lane trod down the shore, but only followed me.

You went another direction, a direction the stars follow,

always farther into themselves, but not you,

never into you.

Yet when we peered out the shattered pane filled with corpses of insects

who should have lived long and free, we didn’t see the end of the ocean,

like many do, where blue melts into green.

We saw only midnight and the shimmer of stars

on the body of the waves. We didn’t noticed the gulls lazily drifting

over our head, or the sandpipers scouring on the ground,

only the tiny world of the window as we peered out of our cage.

We understand so little, the world doesn’t have a chance to tell

our wandering minds how we should really see the clouds and the sun,

how the waves really roll, and what the water should feel

like as the waves beat us sore.

Where did we find such distance?

How do we lose happiness on the trip home?

What is happiness to the honey bee

with the taint of morning glories

still glued to his fur?

That night, the moon raced the world to see if it could make it home

before we did. Before we found a way to cancel it out again.

The world of windowsill bodies stands in Beach Music

on the second floor in the salmon room where together

we understood the world of mosquitoes that drink to nature’s health,

ladybugs who remain two sided and dream,

and spiders weaving stars into their seams.

Knowing

She sits in a chair, wires welded to bone.

Does she know?

Sirens ring in her ears.

Do they know?

Movies shout from the living room.

Why do they care?

What do they know

of her metal limbs, warning sounds outside the door?

What do they know beyond a mirror?

The chair is cold, like mountain air.

Does she know mountain air?

Sirens blare, and no one comes.

Do they know she is there?

A handsome actor shakes his head and smirks.

He knows, doesn’t he?

He knows they can’t find her.

He knows she belongs in a frigid chair.

The chair is a cage that chains her veins.

Does blood still flow?

The red sirens beat circles in her muscles.

How can sirens be strong?

A screen maiden cries that love is to the end,

but how does she know?

How does she know if it goes that far,

or if it is a car short on gas

rolling down a sailing barge?

For a girl in a chair, with steel encased toes,

does strength mean standing alone?

The alarm of death, like the banshee’s wailing call.

Can she hear the spirit once more?

Glass moves on, retelling history,

but never summarizes it all.

Can it summarize her all?

Encase or capture a desperate artery,

then keep it for later falls.

Does she know that iced chair or the last breath of mountain air?

Does anyone mourn, or walk away?

Does the chair sit empty, or gone?

Mama's Peppers

I witnessed brown in a root

that stood in my mother’s garden

burn the water to mud

then dust,

and pollute the flow of veins required for breath,

for living in a world of heat

and cold alike.

Fruit plunged into pits,

into worms and beetles,

too consumed with puddles to bite the sting of sweet,

to savor the green,

the sun-made root sprung in red and yellow,

filled with more seeds than a watermelon.

Wilted, abandoned not by midnight rock,

but by stiff hands too frail to pin them

on fading arms again.

Umbilical cords once cut

can never be resewn.

Babies sleep in dirt,

with no mother,

no mouth for crying.

Only a rough earth shell,

shriveled like cranberries

I am addicted to.

Green and red and yellow stripped

to their hue.