A soft spring sunset
filters through park tree leaves.
Travelers fill the roads, heading home
to late dinners and early bedtimes,
prepping to complain about Monday morning.
Time is seized by pets and children,
and the night’s calm settles like a
flannel blanket,
or a hug,
or a shroud.
And just for a while,
the veneer of normalcy
seems authentic.
“What do you see in me?”
You really care.
“Not just my eyes and my figure and hair?”
All of those things are as fleeting as snow.
“So what do you see in me?”
I think you know.
I see the way that you watch
when you think
I am not looking and having a drink.
I see the way that you smile at my faults,
but not at my failings; my wounds get no salt.
I see the way you receive me at night.
Even in anger, you make it alright.
I see the way that you smile at the sun,
holding my hand as we laugh, walk, and run.
I see the way that you cry in the rain,
holding me tight as you’re sharing your pain.
I see the life in you thriving inside,
happy to have him along for the ride.
I see the way that
your heart beats for me.
What do I see in you?
All there could be.
My father’s love of music got to me at an early age. In his apartment he had a ‘music room’ with a reproduction of Picasso’s Three Musicians (Musicians with Masks) painting.
There was always something on the turntable, a ‘featured artist,’ and stuff I played just out of curiosity. I would get lost in the sheer variety, the crafting of the cover art, the liner notes, which I’d read while the music played. It opened the jazz and classical worlds for me, two genres that your average kid growing up in the South Bronx didn’t really have access to.
He had a particular fondness for the jazz organ of Jimmy Smith, the flute of Herbie Mann, the percussive mastery of Mongo Santamaria, and the radical balladry of Nina Simone.
What impressed me the most about my dad regarding this was his prodigious memory.
During my high school years he’d moved out to Teaneck, NJ, and I spent summers there house sitting while he was at work. There wasn’t much in the way of chores except on the weekends where I’d help with the gardening and woodworking projects, but during the week I was free to dive into the bookshelves and records most of the day.
One day I was playing Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis (Solemn Mass) because I’d never heard it before, and didn’t even know he’d written a Mass. My father walked in, listened to a few seconds of it, and identified it somewhere in the middle of the first movement.
I was impressed. To this day, I wouldn’t be able to identify that if I heard it; it’s not the sort of thing one often plays outside of those who are Beethoven aficionados, or hears played even on classical music stations. It’s a long, serious piece of music, to put it mildly, and I couldn’t say then (1977) how many times he listened to it himself, but it was often enough that he recognized it from a tiny section of audio.
As deep as his love of music was, I don’t know why he never became a musician himself; he was pretty much the kind of man who could do anything he set his mind to. But as far as I know, he never did.
The passion with which he did love it yet remains, and became a permanent part of my life. It provided an escape from the streets, a release for expressing myself, and a legacy my sons continue.
I now have most of my dad’s collection now, Missa Solemnis among them. I haven’t played it yet, but summer’s just starting…
Splash, skip
jump, flip
stick your tongue out
pout your lip
Grow, play
run, pray
getting taller
every day
Chores, toys
birthday joys,
making friends with
girls and boys
School, sports
jeans, shorts
staying focused
out of sorts
College years,
drinking beers,
childish anger,
grown-up fears.
Career, life
children, wife
Partners team to
deal with strife
Kids adults now,
partners old,
summer years
turn into gold.
Partner leaves,
one remains, wipes away
the teary stains
sits, porch
love’s torch,
lonely heart is
feeling scorched.
silence, loud
family crowd,
grandson gently
pulls the shroud
Broke hearts
tears flow
in the ground
they watch you go.
end of days,
end of rhyme.
Long Road,
short time.
All my duties come to naught,
and as for all the things I bought,
I place the high-def screens in
front of things that really matter,
And put the things that really matter
inside the screen.
Pictures of family
Pictures of memories
Pictures of successes
Pictures of loss and regret
Pictures of friends who lost
the battle to live forever…
And today,
here I stand
utterly alone,
wrapped in sullen silence,
chilled by cold thoughts and
ironic imaginings
of what might have been
after all this time.
Sifting shifting sand,
unable to find what I deemed insignificant
and buried,
only to realize all that
ever matters
is the life you’re living
Now.
This is a WIP currently being written in serial form at the link below.
Please check it out, and feel free to comment.
Be honest, but kind.
If you troll me, I will send zombie vampires to hunt you. In a novel, of course….
We all know there’s no such thing as zombie vam– (OW! Get back down there, you stinking–!)
The struggle to breathe
grows harder and laborious,
and soon, not worth the effort.
The heartbeat softens to a
padded thudding
of arrhythmic improvisation
The light, both sun and lamp alike,
grows dim
And the features
of your faces
so familiar
are now only
sketches in sepia
drawn by rheum,
inked in cataract,
and blindness creeps with
a serpent’s crafty slowness
to seize small sight
in its unrelenting
coils of darkness
But the memories
of grand carnivals,
of dire hurricanes,
laughter, tears
prizes, penalties
trials, victories
unity, dysfunction
safety , strife
holiday dinners
and birthday songs
pride and humility
for good or ill
all said and done
except the last
goodbye
and giving the last remnants
of my love
The days were few and happy,
and the honor of growing
beside you
made it all
worthwhile.
