David


His claim to fame was
playing with Grace Slick
in the Sixties
and writing psychedelic songs.
The Great Society
I believe the band was called.

That was before he went
from Rock to Lit
and married fiery Anna
with her low-cut peasant blouses
and a temper which flared up
like a violent summer storm,
the children huddled in the bedroom
until the thunder passed.

When Anna kicked him out
he showed up at our door
at 2 a.m. guitar in hand
looking like a sheared sheep,
his beautiful locks completely shorn.
We made up a bed in the attic
and he sang himself to sleep.

For several months he donned a wig
and sold insurance.
The children came on weekends
and we grew to love 
the fair and mischievous girl,
the dark and pensive boy,
deciding to have children of our own.

David,  married to his fourth wife now,
teaches Comp Lit in Queens
and occasionally writes a song.
The attic's full of bric-a-brac,
the children grown and gone,
the Sixties and Seventies
only pleasant sounds
coming from the computer.






The Epitome of Cool

 
I peered through granny glasses
at the standard issue
crew cut frat boys
strolling through the commons
with one bottle blonde
appended to each arm.

I was the epitome of cool

I was Sargeant Pepper in my
Russian army greatcoat
which nearly swept the ground.
I was Dylan in a long red scarf,
singing his heart out
in a voice laced with gravel
on MacDougal Street.

I was the epitome of cool.

Go ahead and accuse us
of stealing the last good causes,
of having the lines of battle
so clearly defined
you knew where someone stood
by the length of his hair.
Stoned out of our minds
or recently returned
from bad acid trips,
we laughed hysterically
at jokes we couldn’t explain.
We feasted on frozen pies
and dinners of blue meatballs
and red spaghetti
that Seuss would have loved.

We were the epitome of cool.

I remember the sad-eyed ladies,
their funky frizzy hair
sprouting in all directions
like exuberant undergrowth,
the dark promise of their nipples
clearly visible through
their sheer, flowered tops.
I wished that I were some new cause
they would passionately embrace. 
 
Tell us about the sixties, you ask,
as if we were discussing ancient Rome.
I answer with an aging hipster’s sigh,
to truly understand
you’d have to be
at least as cool as me.

 

-originally published in Every Day Poems