Author: Kronski

Reading a novel like there will be a test,

like your life depends on it, as if

you’ll be rendered a drooling moron

if you don’t finish it; reading a novel

instead of watching chickadees,

nuthatches, woodpeckers, and redpolls

swoop across your yard and perch

on the feeders you so carefully keep

filled with sunflower seeds, peanut butter

suet, and worry for those feathered

blessings; watching the birds instead 

of listening to your wife tell you about

the latest poem she’s written or what

the last doctor told her about her 

unrelenting pain; phoning your friend

Jim in San Francisco, whom you razz

unmercifully for playing too much golf,

instead of your son in LA, an artist 

and the finest person you know; talking 

to your son in LA when you should have taken 

your sweet dog, Mugsi, out for a walk; walking

Mugsi when you should have been writing

a poem or making a submission; writing 

poems in your study instead of crawling 

into bed with your wife for a cuddle and 

an afternoon nap; spending all that time 

thinking about death when its most sanctified 

feature involves the final cessation, 

the absolute nothingness of regret.

All at once:

persistent, faded, undoing

and done.

Around midnight I had finally given up trying to turn the stale words and phrases on the screen of my laptop into a scrap of poetry, and instead had retreated to our old green couch and started fingerpicking my way through a song that, despite my questionable musicianship, you would have recognized if you had still been awake as something popular back when we were young and whole and unable to conceive that days, weeks, months, years might ever resemble rough wooden crosses on a bald hill, a dying angel crying out under gloomy skies

-Howie Good

“Better call someone,” I say to my wife, who is standing beside me at the window, peering up at the sky with a worried expression. By the time the emergency vehicles start arriving, the clouds look even more like what the painter Magritte long claimed clouds look like – insipid thoughts. Is the change in the weather responsible for this or vice versa? All the commotion has drawn half the neighborhood out into the street. An upstairs neighbor I barely know tells me in a gravelly two-packs-a-day voice that he has a titanium plate in his head. I give him a nervous smile. Death, when it finally comes, will have his phlegmy eyes.

-Howie Good

They found him washed up on the beach, flailing in the surf, an ancient wreck of a man, naked except for his socks. He said he was a pirate and a ventriloquist and a father of nine and so much more. “I’m telling you,” he said, “I’m an all round good egg but I’ll be the first to admit I do have a tendency to be economical with the truth.” They offered him a blanket and a tomato sandwich and a swig from their soup flask. He grabbed the flask and downed it in one, then made a face. Oxtail. His fourth favorite soup. “I’m not being funny,” he said, “but a bit more seasoning next time.” He shrugged, a peace offering, and said, “But what do I know, I’ve been lost at sea for sixteen days and the last thing I ate was an albatross.” Before they asked, he said, “Chewy, and it tasted like chicken.” They said “Is that right, is any of that right, or are you just being economical with the truth?” The old man looked down at his wet socks and hairy ankles and smiled. “Believe me,” he said, “it’s all true.”

I love your eyes gone forever

where drafts would make a shutter

giant spiders crawl in to make a home

rains and snows seek a shelter.

So long ago the hearth burnt

passion flared through the corridors

I chased you as you laughed and cried

and lost you when you vanished in the mist.

Like so many you sleep without hope

abandoned to the wishes of steel giants

I hear echoes of your many voices

lost within the creases of unfinished dreams.

A strange paste seeps through the crevasses

pieces of you decaying in the unforgiving sun

you stand a fearful ghost in the icy darkness

as space seems to expand into a void.

Passers-by look on to find you 

beyond the walls of the collapsing soul

they see nothing of the dying memories

but I do love your eyes in the window.

This morning I read secrets for wearing monochrome color with casual flair—vary textures for interest. And a report from southern Madagascar: climate change famine threatens tens of thousands with starvation. Then daily “Five Minute French,” which will make me fluent within a decade, should I live that long. Recent lab reports suggest not likely, but “You Never Can Tell.” Remember Chuck Berry’s 1964 hit? “It was a teenage wedding, and the old folks wished them well. You could tell that Pierre did truly love the mademoiselle.” If you haven’t listened recently, you should have. It’s terrific. Would have made you happy, no small thing mid the dark of the year and the peril of the planet. You might have felt inspired to give to famine relief: your hands outstretched, your feet dancing. “When Pierre found work, the little money coming worked out well.” C’est la vie. Still is. Dress up like you have somewhere fun to go. Just not head-to-toe red orange unless you’re OK being mistaken for a traffic cone.

Traffic nudges my car ahead,

for a half hour, I do nothing but watch 

migratory patterns of metallic beasts

splutter and groan depositing soil and rocks.

For a half hour, dinosaurs roam the earth,

and my car, idle, is as vulnerable  as the vehicle ahead of me, as the one behind.

Then, at last, I’m flagged through.

clanking and spluttering,

no longer at risk of extinction.

Obsolescence is another story.