Happy Birthday

The identical red lids placed one on top of another

Behind the containers

In several stacks according to their size

Clean

Neat

Efficient

In the cupboard

In the refrigerator

Even in the dishwasher

And

I can’t help thinking

The perfect place

To put a fruit bread or a coffee cake

After its been received

Sliced

Sampled for show and

Gratitude and

Now must be stowed away

So the evidence can be swept up and under and

Be hermetically sealed

Underneath a red lid

It doesn’t matter which one

Greetings of the Day

Good morning

How did you sleep

Thanks for letting us intrude

Hi

Good to see you

Nice to meet you

Hello there

Look at you

Hey, who is this

I’m back

Hey there

Good afternoon

Where is the Girl Scout

There you are, how was it

Hey, thanks

Another Saturday?

A legitimate and unassisted goal

Tears shed over mud and dirt

Repeatedly

A fight over whether breakfast was early enough

Cat complaints lodged every five minutes starting at six thirty in the morning

A fifty minute movie on Raccoons

Oatmeal cookie pancakes accented with maple syrup

Lots of maple syrup

Someone still awake over an hour after the lights went out and the door was shut

Singing coming through the baby monitor

Loud and clear

An argument over whether the wallet that came with a used black purse purchased at a consignment sale was sold with it whenever and wherever it was first sold to an unsuspecting public

Nap

Whining over whether one game of Scrambled States was enough

Roller shoes at Target

Bacon

For the second week in a row

That was not crisp enough

An hour spent carefully arranging hosta and liriope

Family story read about ten minutes later than it should have been

About a food chain

In the forests of Pennsylvania

Deer

Vampire bats

Red tailed hawks

Cat sitting on my chest crying for dinner

Popcorn and a movie on a futon

A question

Dad did we win

?

Purse

A zipper is broken and

It had half a dozen maxi pads in it

But it also came with a little wallet

A mirror

A working strap and

It clips shut

So

For a dollar

It was the perfect way

To insure forty five minutes

Of worry free shopping

At my favorite consignment sale and

A successful

Father son

Outing

Still

Clothes in the washer

Still

The fish in his little tank

Still

I think

It’s hard to tell through the cloudy brown water

Especially with the tank obscured by the dirty dishes piled in front of it

The clean ones in the dish washer

Still

The kids upstairs screaming at each other

Still

The cat rubbing up against my legs and meowing

Plaintively

Still

Breakfast cereal and lunch dishes on the table

Still

The newspaper out by the sidewalk

In its little yellow plastic bag

Still

Dinner unmade

Still

The stain in the carpet

The result of standing on a dry eraser board eraser and

Grinding it in

There

Still

Me

In t-shirt and jeans

In the middle of the kitchen

Eyes closed

Quiet

Still

Coffee Shop

Within four walls

With the windows closed

The shades drawn

The phones off

The computers off

Everyone off somewhere else and

Cotton in our ears

Anything is possible and

Every idea makes sense and

Deserves equal airtime

Which is why

Folks need to spend more time in coffee shops

Amtrack

Stand behind the Yellow Line

Did you go to the University of Maryland

Yeah

I saw your sweatshirt

My best friend went there

What year

                    

Mind the Gap

So, you went to high school in Princeton

No West Windsor

Stand clear of the doors

What was your major

Art

Yeah, I guessed that

Really … was it my back pack

Yeah

Quiet ride

Excuse me

But I couldn’t help but overhearing your conversation

My girlfriend has a lot of money too and

The same attitude

I have the money

Stop

I run my own business

Started it when I was fifteen

Elizabeth

I was on One Life to Live for two years

I gave it up to come back here

For her and

Then she got engaged to my best friend

Wrong way

I’m trying to bring Miami up here

Mail

Last night I had Italian wine

Kline

A certain percentage of sangiovese grapes

Airport next

Budweiser

It happened when I was nine

Really

Yeah

So what

Brain surgery

Check cashing

I have a business mind

Airport

You’re selling your business

I’m selling myself

Best Western

It’s crazy

You’ve really got to be a whore

I don’t know where that is

It’s just around the corner from the gas station

I see so much potential in you guys

Amtrack

Christopher Columbus Discovers the Hippopotamus

The second time he saw the hippopotamus

I saw it too

The first time I told him it was a rock

There might actually have been rocks on the beach when Columbus landed on San Salvador

Do you know that there still isn’t complete agreement

As to which island is the one

Columbus called San Salvador

On October 12, 1492

The folks on Watlings Island changed their name

To San Sakvador

To help eliminate the controversy

To restore focus where they wanted it

Where it needed to be

Which was why

That second time

I saw the hippopotamus

Stopping to Laugh at the Flowers

I walk with jets

I walk with jest

Friday night

Pushed along the streets of New York City

By the six o’clock crowds and

Muscle memory

It was the former

But it’s helpful for me to remember

That it takes only a simple switch

To accomplish the latter

Bottom of the Ninth

Falling

Always falling

Arms by your side

Arms straight out

Eyes open

Eyes shut

Asleep

Awake

Smiling

Scowling

Yelling

Quiet

Accepting

In denial

Certain

Uncertain

Still awake at 11:56 watching baseball for the first time in at least a year

Falling

Always falling

Tomorrow Morning's Outfit

Capris in khaki
Long sleeve collared shirt in black
Morning in waiting

Chimpanzee

If I was a chimpanzee

Sitting on a branch

Eating mites out of the fur on my friends head

Talking politics in between nibbles

Whatever the topic

I would end up talking about critical thinking and

Logic and

Reason and

Process and

Later

When I was with the dominant female

(If I’m a chimp I’m running things

I only accept my lowly position

because I’m up so high on the evolutionary ladder)

So I would be with the dominant female and

When I was

I would complain about how my mite eating friend always comes back to

The overreaching done by liberals with the Civil Rights Act

And the next day

Again

Would be about

Mites

Civil rights

Critical thinking and

Where we could get some good monkey

If I was a chimpanzee

Fall?

Not quite seventy

Mostly green leaves falling

It is almost right

Parenting Glamour

Center stage

At the middle of the chaos

Is the switching engine

Setting up the homework to be done and

Filing it away in the yellow folder and filing the yellow folder away in her backpack

Bringing in the mail and the thank you notes hand delivered in school cubbies and

Shifting the neighbors mail into the neighbors mailbox

Washing the applesauce out of the lunchbag and

Putting in the tiny tupperware filled with yogurt and securely closed

Removing the guineapigs dish containing one small turd and

Exchanging it for one containing two baby carrots, three grape halves, and a bunch of parsely

Taking a full baldder and

Facilitating its emptying

Trading

Swapping

Replacing

Substituting

Bartering

Switching

Not in the glamourous way from history and adopted memory

No steam

No smoke

Just a diesel switcher in a gray and dirty freightyard

It’s 2013

Glamour is cancerous

Chaos is timeless

Symmetry in Absence

Three plates

White with blue borders

Two small

One big

Three simple stainless steel forks

Two small

One big

One hand glazed black and blue bowl of brussels sprouts

All for me

Leftover macaroni and cheese

All for them

All eaten on

Three white plates with blue borders

Many Roads

Everything diverges

One

Moment

At

A

Time

Un-natural

Words on a screen

After

A six hour plane ride

Across

A three hour difference

Almost

A whole country away

They fall through the sky

From the sky

In place of the leaves

On this

The fifth day of October

In the year two thousand thirteen

In the still over seventy degree night

In the quiet house

Where I alone am awake

But not alone

Jihad

I am struggling

To have you listen to my

Words

And not your own

Fears

Bonobo

If a bonobo could speak

What would it do with its credit cards

Drivers license

Proof of Insurance and

Money

That first fall after buying a new smart phone

Would a Bonobo shove its phone and wallet into one pocket and

It’s keys into another

Hoping that it wasn’t doing permanent damage to nerves in the leg

Or its nut sack

Do bonobo’s have nut sacks that would be problematic in a pair of jeans

If it didn’t have jeans

Would a money clip be the only way to go

For a bonobo that had conquered speech

And where would it put it

No

A bonobo is better off where it is

Dazzling us more advanced creatures

With its mastery of signs and symbols

A One Floor Future

I walk up and down stairs all day

Delivering

Cleaning

Reconfiguring

Scolding

Helping

Finding

Answering

Questioning

Wiping

Dressing

Making

Remaking

Imagining

Inventing

Fixing

Rhyming

Reading

Running

Because

Someday

No one will want me to and

I’ll live in a ranch house anyway