Paul Irving Precedes Me

Paul Irving Precedes Me

Life is one grand procession someone has

no doubt noted, a parade, the Second

Line, brass and mourners weave winding streets, wails

drowned out by grace notes and wild whoops of joy,

an appealing image, though truth be told

I prefer metaphor with a bit less

pizazz, something a little more buttoned

down, the protocol clear.  As I make my

way I wish to be preceded by Paul

Irving, a stern, eagle beaked fellow, the

new House-Sergeant-At-Arms, a man given

to regular habits, a guy who knows

exactly where we’re headed and how we

will get there.  Paul can be relied on to

part the waters ahead, the flood of well-

wishers with which I have to contend each

and every day, dragging me by my

lapels, bald head pivoting, eyes steely,

scanning the room for trouble, alert to

roadblocks, anyone bent on delay, keen

to deliver me to my last address. 

How To Dress A Chicken

How To Dress A Chicken

No, this is no joke, so go on, get it

out of your system so we can get down

to the business at hand, that of dressing

a chicken.  You bet I’ve heard them all and

then some, the one about not making the

mistake of dressing your bird in plaids and

stripes or allowing them to wear white shoes

before Memorial Day.  If I had

a dime for every time some wag has warned

me of the pitfalls of taking inseam

measurements from a red Araucana

I could get out of the business, maybe

open a chic café on some quiet

side street, small plates, espresso, pigs-in-a-

blanket the house specialty, attract the

lunch trade, have my evenings free instead of

fending off smart alecks asking whether

my Barnevelder wears boxers or briefs,

or speculating with winking, wide-eyed

innocence on the mechanics of how

a Cubalaya would manage to tie

a Windsor knot and smoke a cigar at

the same time, knowing good and well chickens

have neither hands for performing such a

complicated maneuver or teeth for

clenching a fat Havana.  No, I’m done

with the whole business, I’m hanging up

my spurs, flying the coop, over chickens,

clucking hecklers, the whole nine yards.  Never

again will I stand by patiently while

some jerk lewdly mimes the delicate dance  

of a Jersey Giant hiking up her

little black dress to lay one perfect egg.

Poem

Things I’ll Miss The Most

There’s nothing quite like lying in bed on

a rainy morning making a

mental list like the one I’m about to

compile.  The sound of rain falling on the

roof is a good place to start since 

they're in no particular order.  I’m no

surgeon, after all, silently reviewing

the steps required to replace a

failing joint or sputtering organ.  

Your pies are on there, too, along with

your smile, the one meant only for

me.  Let’s not forget the sound of your

voice and the undeniable fact

that you smell like flowers in a soft,

warm rain.  The kids at age six, let’s say,

though I could make a compelling case

for two or sixteen or the days on which

they were born.  Maybe I will round it

out with spring, jazz, blank canvas, long bike

rides, the Sunday Times and the singular

sound of a word that leads, somehow,

to another poem.  But suppose heaven

is just a good restaurant, nothing fancy,

a neighborhood café with a decent

wine list and sidewalk tables.  Who knows?

The omnipotent waiter, friendly

though a bit indifferent, reads the specials

from a curled yellow index card not

unlike the mental one on which

I’ve made my list.  I order one of

everything and two glasses of good

Malbec.  You look lovely on this warm

spring evening as you smile and take

my hand across the table.  The air

is fragrant with flowers and, from

somewhere nearby, I can hear After

the Rain played softly.  The waiter

is back with our wine. I make a mental

note to leave Him a good tip at

the end of our eternal night out. 

Political haiku

I Voted For Newt

Ripe dupe, hate and fear- 

fueled, prey to heir of thugs past, 

sneering demigod.  

Drawing 101

Drawing 101

I wonder if I kept that

self-portrait from my

first college art class, contour

in pencil, peering

into a mirror, on sketch

bond.  Dave Barr, he would

have to be, what, in

his seventies by now, my

first acquaintance with

a practicing artist, one

with a studio

and ideas that woke him up

mornings.  The twist, I

recall, was to render ones’

face as it might look

forty years in the future,

warts and all, as they

say.  As if by magic I’ve

arrived, suddenly,

at my destination, the

one I predicted  

using only line to map

sagging jowls, face etched

and a nose grown to epic

proportion.  At least

that’s how I remember it,

a masterpiece of

draftsmanship that captured the

soul of its subject,

a man rendered in short hand,

his gaze bewildered

when I was going for a

bemused detachment.   

Gift Card

Gift Card

The woman ahead of me placed her stuff

on the belt, off-loading in a pattern

I could not seem to discern.  She wasn’t

applying the alphabet, that much was

clear, Dawn Anti-Bacterial Dish Soap

ahead of Burt’s Bee’s Dry Skin Salve plunked down

well after a brace of green peppers side

by side among a skyline of boxes

of breakfast cereal.  I was that close

to cracking her scheme wide open when I

was distracted by a rack of gift cards

placed with deliberation, the perfect

ploy, a pleasing grid of gleaming colored

thin plastic rectangles that appeared to  

suggest a collectable set.  Why not

buy all thirty, seemed to be the message,

display them framed, under glass above the

fireplace, though at that moment I was

wondering what it would feel like to be

in that rack, among those cards, side by side

with Chili’s and VISA and Home Depot

and i Tunes and The Gap.  You, unloading

your cart, lost in thought perhaps, giving us

only a cursory glance while I shout

silently from my slot below Sunglass

Hut, vying for your attention, fearful

you won’t notice me there among the rest,

screaming at the top of my lungs, choose me!

Reading Braille

Reading Braille

It took me longer than the others, my

coworkers, to learn to read the serrated

subtext that formed the real contours of

my job.  It looked simple enough, a wash

cycle of tasks on a dial that, when

performed in the proper order, with

enough heart, would yield a tidy load

rinsed clean of the stains on the knees of

those driven into the dirt by fate, me

smelling like roses, bearing the weight

of my brothers, sins scrubbed, pure.  That, and it

paid steady if not very much.  My boss

was a profane Brit, a little keg

of a man, chain smoking, hair flying,

eternally proud of The One Shot, one

meaningless leaf of innovation on

one tiny branch on one spindly tree

in a forest denuded of trees.  His

only advice to me as I set sail

on my first case was to confide that

the man I was to see was a “fucking

malingering nigger”, driving the nail

home with one fat, stained index finger,

a miracle of concision, his

expectations laid bare while I nodded

in (disbelief, disgust, assent?), my first

lesson, a blind man learning to read braille.