​Leaving the Palmer House Hotel


Up at seven, fresh-eyed, morning-stubbled,
you chug a mocha java in the lobby, pause to admire
gilt peacocks in profile
on Mr. Tiffany’s imperial doors, then glide out
on the doorman’s smile. You’d tip
a hat if you had one—you’re that elated

to be thrust into the skyscraped, sunrise-brushed
December workday, where Carl Sandburg’s citizens
still pound by thousands
across Chicago’s shuddering bridges.
In each face you see a time-clock
stalking its fate—a human becoming
its incandescent, dreamed-of self; God’s celebrity.

You lift and lengthen your stride, shake the need
for a companion to confide in
under freezing canopies, and eavesdrop
on the legions of petitioners
who flirt and quarrel with smooth plastic
circuitry in their ears.
Delayed at the corner, you look up

just as that priestess topping the Board of Trade,
nickeled Ceres, turns a cool pink--
and the sensation travels all the way
down to your karmic feet.





Off Script
            “Donald Trump Kicks Crying Baby Out of Rally” (NY Daily News 8/2/16)


Make America Great Again: like it was in ’53
when proud dads built sedans on assembly lines?
Too bad that year’s a blur; so few remember
how union reps stood up to corporate fat cats,
jacked up paychecks and boosted virility.
Or how our borders opened to new blood:
to Desi, a slicked-back, bongo-slapping expat     
from Cuba’s dictatorship, raising the roof
on Nielsen ratings, simply by aping himself.
Bossy bandleader in a casino of opportunity,
he banked on the real-time pregnancy of Lucy,
his Anglo dingbat—whose water broke all records
the night before Ike’s inauguration. Preempting
democracy with unstoppable power, that birth
thundered through the Tudor-revival rooms
where Master Donald heard the Baby Boom.

No wonder it rattles him—having to look down
into the crowd’s glare, to grin at the squalling runt
with pursed lips—as if one couldn’t wait to kiss
the fine silk hair and glowing skin of posterity
shitting itself in the hot convention hall.
Mother Nature, a most astute comedienne,
bored by the status quo and intending a joke,
has smuggled in this tyke—a recent immigrant
from the future. Crabby because he’s tired
of babbling in a tongue no one was hired
to translate, the kid yawls, “Old man, you fired!”





People of Earth
 

When children ask us why, what can we say?
That happiness is never guaranteed?
Through no one’s fault, the best things slip away?

A love affair that starts as a ballet
will climax in a courtroom’s grim stampede.
When children ask us why, what can we say?

We parcel nature’s infinite buffet
in shrink wrap—prune her kingdom breed by breed.       
Through no one’s fault, the best things slip away.

Insolvent nations squabble in dismay,
shocked at how their dreams have atrophied.
If children asked us why, what would we say?

The lives snuffed out with crass naiveté
by maniacs in their demented need
are no one’s fault. The best souls slip away.

Still it’s tiresome, to wake up every day
and silently rehearse a hollow creed.
When children ask us, can we truly say
it’s no one’s fault? We’ve let things slip away.