My heart is a rubber ball

I put my heart through the heart wash,
got the oil changed, got it inspected.
They said, This, this and this.
And I brought it back to the shop.

I wrapped my heart in wax paper,
pounded it with a rolling pin,
rolled it out into a crust,
and baked it in the oven.
I served it to company.

I tossed my heart into the air with my left hand,
and whacked it with an aluminum bat.
Not bad, I picked the grass off it,
and threw it up again.

I put my heart into storage boxes,
with all my other hearts.
The shredding company took the lot.
New hearts keep coming in the mail.

You didn't break my heart, I did.
And now I know it doesn't.

Almost Home

He's got a little acne,
which looks like splattered blood,
like he's recently shot someone
at close range.

He asks for my license,
insurance card, and registration,
with a rookie moisture in his voice.

I'm calm,
I'm calm,
my seat belt's on,
but there is still that quiver
as I hand the man
my laminated papers,
which say where I live,
and my real height,
and my real name,
and who pays for what.

My rear brake light is out
on the passenger side.
Where am I coming from?
A poetry reading.
From this silence now.
Is there gin on my breath?
Do I seem deliberate?
But there is nothing
with which to compare
ourselves
anymore
nowadays,
and I wasn't speeding, because I saw him
waiting behind that maple.

My mouth blinks,
I am actually taking her into the shop
tomorrow,
so thank you
for pulling me over
tonight.

Just tell them it's the rear brake light
on the passenger side, he's proud.
And I'm proud of him too.
He's glad it went well.
And I am glad it went well too.

He returns my information
in its little pouch,
and walks back to the drama machine.
I slap the accelerator and peel out
like Steve McQueen, like Jersey,
but actually drift away from the curb
like a retiree in his aluminum canoe would,
shoving off the banks of Spring Lake,
looking for trout,
thinking about my father,
under the hood of his Oldsmobile,
with a flashlight in his mouth,
mumbling, They fuck you in the ass
because they can.

NY Giant

My other fantasy
is to suddenly grow
so large
that I am forced to choose my steps
among the miniature buildings
and matchstick bridges.
So mostly I wade in the ocean,
squatting in the harbor,
mounting Lady Liberty at night.
Uncatalogued sea creatures at my flesh!
A soggy bottom, and cold
in the moonglow,
but in an hour's journey
I can catch up with the daylight.

I am sustained by community effort,
uncooked cows by the dozen,
barrels and barrels of wine,
and government cheese.
The only problem
(besides the obvious)
is that I am alone.
People's voices are too small,
and mine too large,
shattering cathedrals when I speak,
and the sounds from below
are like thoughts,
impossible.

Rinsing off the sand

The me outside my self
tried to enter this flesh,
for a moment in the outdoor shower,
like my mother slipping
cough syrup down
her sick son's throat.
Quick - the metal spoon against the teeth,
the rotten cherry bouquet,
the long burning finish -
There, now it's done.

I didn't see it coming,
soap in my eyes,
but it entered my flesh
in a moment.
The pain of living,
birthing, dying,
my body desperately,
Stop! There is no room at this inn!
Vacancy, yes, but no room
for that kind of miracle.

This island I am on,
if I permit my self
to be some where,
is sacred enough, The Block
in its sound, between the Newport Bridge
and Montauk.
Far enough,
and close enough,
like all the other midway islands
which tend to keep me well.

When something changes here -
a new shop in Old Harbor,
the minister retiring -
the locals say, My God,
What has become of our little town?

The paint flakes into the sea salt air,
the cupolas ricket in winter,
but comes the spring the desk clerks
will divvy out the room keys,
and fill the ledgers with New England names,
and the locals...

I am writing this in order to survive!
These are not abstractions!
MY paint is peeling,
MY structure falters,
not from the wear and tear of use,
but from the perpetual battering of the Atlantic.
MY tent is swept away in the desert storm.
I was the virgin mother turned out
in her dilapidated sandals
(or were they the pumps
with the lipstick corrections?),
and I was the child inside her turned away too.
I was the incompetent father,
and Incompetence itself,
and the child born too soon.

Walking the labyrinth here,
halfway down the hill to Sachem Pond,
past the hens on the side of the road,
and the rooster somewhere crowing,
under the admonishing watch
of the lighthouse on the North tip,
tumescent on its rock,
like a boyhood virtue,
the me outside myself says,
Patience. There are no shortcuts
on this path. And to walk,
to find my feet, I look down.
They are blistered, swollen, stepping still,
but I know that I will cool them
in the surf soon enough.

Jack & Jill

We were climbing to the well again,
and when you faltered, so did I.
Our buckets will remain as empty
as the shoes of the deceased.

Birth and death are both
experienced alone.
We were alone in each other’s arms, skin to skin,
alone inside each other,
as our blue jeans wrangled on the floor.

Though we hurled ourselves from coast to coast,
landing in the other’s room,
and we hurled our different meanings too,
like atom bombs colliding with a fart,
we were alone at the beginning and we will be at the end.

I thought that I might be enough to fill you up,
but I had to climb inside you all the way.
I found myself in the pit of your womb,
cramped and suffocating, but safe, moist, known.

While I in the darkness nursed on your innards,
you in the light went climbing to the well,
thirsty for it, empty still.
The king and queen looked on.
You pulled another joker from the deck,
another hand.

One finger.
Two fingers.
Three fingers.
Four.
No matter how many,
it always takes more.

How many fingers to plug the the hole in the dam,
to keep that nothingness inside from rushing out?

When it broke,
I came too,
a messy rebirth, onto the floor,
with the rumpled clothes,
and hair bands,
and stray coins,
and receipts,
and belts,
and plastic bags,
and socks,
and flakes of oatmeal,
the dust.

Like flood debris, the miscellaneous trappings of this life.
Like a garden,
the fish, the flowers, the deaths and debuts, the blessing of rain, or the curse.

Life is the scraps, the scraps of itself.
It is the empty shoes left in the closet,
the rings, the watches, the tears withheld.

Life is the blessing or curse of rain and nothing else.

Where were the warnings?
When will we be not alone?

The skies open and answer our questions
with nothing more or less
than the familiar, raging, purple hurricane of life and death.
We are always alone, never alone, at the beginning and the end.
And we die a thousand times in one life.
And we live a thousand lives, though we die but once.
And we scramble up the hill and falter –
thousands and thousands of times.

The storm never ceases.
The floods don’t recede.
We are always caught in that downpour.

Yet we climb up the hill, and scramble and break,
bemoaning our empty buckets,
crying for water in the rain.

Meatless

The morning I was born,
my mother smashed the mirrors,
and used my chubby cheeks instead.

The morning I was born,
my father ate my fatter parts:
the buttocks, and the thighs.

He left the brain and heart,
of which he did not know.

Assless, cheekless, I floundered
on the carpet.
Remember that coarse matting
with me please.
I was free to think,
and I was free to bleed.

Could I scratch?
Yes, until they cut your nails.

Could I shimmer and shine?
Yes, until they cut your long, blonde hair.

Could I weep?
Yes, until they locked your eyes.

Thanks god for the Christmas tree,
which distracted them briefly,
at each year's end,
from what was left of me.

More Water

The future came crashing on us like a wave.
I used to say, very early on, our love

was an ocean, spilling and receading.
Mother's breastmilk and turned back.

I had an apartment overlooking
the Brooklyn Bridge, and there,

future, past, and present merged with the traffic.
The caissons, the lives lost in construction,

the wear on its cables, the cars on it now.
Roebling, the man who designed it,

the street I lived near, the limestone blocks,
the gentrification happening, the crumbling to come.

If love is a churning river,
we were two drops falling

on opposite sides of the bridge across.
Neither reaches the ocean first.

Water Sports

Wednesday night I talked
in your sleep,

troubles, tsuris, agita.

Tuesday day had burned us bad,
both. We had iced tea, but it didn't.

I'm sorry I got so free.

It was all that reading, thinking.
I'm sorry I couldn't save you too.

(I still have my whistle and life gaurd shorts.)

Back when Sunday, I was saying,
Girl, paddle your arms!

Wrapping my boy arms around you,
they became rock hard,

the pleasure was mine.
I was saying, Whoa! There is my cock.

Then you wouldn't flap your wings,
and both of us were drowning.

Friday rolled over, and I said,
Well, I'm just a man.

I could not be us both.

I deserved a little something

When I was a very young boy

I did a commercial for toothpaste.

My teeth were clean, not yellow,

and my smile was for real.

My mother took me to Toys 'R' Us,

and bought me a castle in the clouds.

I deserved a little something.

When I was a very young boy,

I saved all my pennies in a Tonka truck.

My mother took me to Dryer’s Sports,

where my father had worked in his teens.

She dumped that dump truck onto the counter.

The kid at the register did not smile.

The aluminum bat was too heavy,

but I deserved a little something.

When I was a very young boy,

my mother got sick and couldn’t move.

Under the blanket but over the sheet,

I stayed with her and was not scared.

We watched Lucy and Desi kiss.

They slept in different beds.

I deserved a little something.

When I was a very young boy,

I slept with a lot of women.

Some of them had some of it

and I deserved my share.

When I was a very young boy,

my mother’s new glasses broke.

I stood on both feet.

My father’s hands.

His yellow teeth.

My mother, with the chianti.

But she did not follow me.

Those two did there thing in the end,

and I slept on the side porch with the wine.

I deserved a little something.

Eddie's Version

When I was born,
I weighed seven pounds.
They passed me around
like a bag of chips.

When I was born, with my penis,
and eyes that cut like new metal,
my mother wanted a brown-eyed girl.
She told me she did.
Her mirror had broke.

Clasping the wooden bars of the crib,
which would later entrap by brother
and sister, I stared into the blackness
of the nursery, the void.

I was the fear out there,
the nothing of that room,
and decided then that, No,
I am not the darkness, just afraid.

I stared into the blackness
between my mother's legs
as she squatted down to pee.
This girl, I knew.
I was not afraid.
My father, where was he?
I said, Yes, that blackness there...
might as well be me.

I drew a penis on a pad
and left it to be found.
My mother showed it to me asking,
"Is this what I think it is?"

No, mother, it is only a finger.

I knew what she thought it was.
I would do the same with less.

When dad came home
he wanted my pennies.
I thought in terms of fairness.
I counted the coins in stacks and said,
No, this money is mine,
(I had already come this far alone)
and you will have to do the same with less.

I went to school and got pissed on.
They tore my football jacket.
They spoke of the itch,
but all I knew was pounding at it
with a balled-up fist.

I was barely a hundred pounds.
They passed me around like a baby.
But I still had those eyes,
and pierced into their puddin' heads.
Those boys, those girls, I knew them.

When I came home,
my father, with his cigarette
and beard, decided to teach me karate.

I knew just where to kick him.