If Only

If only it would stop raining all the time 

If only the honey bees weren’t in peril 

If only I could hear better at the movies 

If only Clifton would get a First Watch (Panera) 

If only they raised the minimum wage to $16

If only more of my shirts had pockets

If only the county fair had more rabbits 

If only Facebook would stop spreading hatred 

If only my line dancing class met more often

If only they found a cure for Parkinson’s

If only the years wouldn’t speed by so quickly 

If only postage stamps still cost a dime 

If only our sheepdogs came back to life

If only they’d get rid of the Electoral College 

If only Cincinnati’s air were purer

If only I was better at small talk

If only my wife would like to go camping 

If only the trolley ran to Clifton 

If only a million species didn’t face extinction

If only Elizabeth, Bernie, and Joe were two decades younger 

If only our phone company could get rid of scam calls

If only our family weren’t all far away

If only Netanyahu favored a two-state solution

If only they’d bring back Patti Page 

If only the doctor would renew my Ambien prescription 

If only ice cream was good for you 

If only I walked 10,000 steps every day

If only our arts center could find a new home 

If only the Enquirer actually covered the news 

If only the Bengals would win the Super Bowl 

If only my brothers were still alive 

If only Sherrod Brown had run for president 

If only our sink would stop getting clogged

If only I understood more about Zen Buddhism

If only I could run as fast as when I was 13

If only I could speak to my parents one more time 

If only the Easter Bunny turned out to be real 

If only…

Plaints of the Letter Z

Probably I shouldn’t fret

A true honor, being one of only twenty-six

But hardly an honor to be stuck at the end

We Z’s get short shrift

Webster’s dictionary has 953 pages

The Z’s begin on page 952

Does this strike you as just?  Logical?  

So disheartening for the grade schoolers named Zimmerman

whose daily activities are arranged alphabetically

They are fed up with being Z’s (as they well should be)

Zimmerman is the most common Z-name

but it’s not among the most popular twenty

Not even the top fifty

In fact it is number 379

Zhang comes in second at 472

In ancient times this was not the case

Practically everyone in the Old Testament is named Z

Zacharias, Zebedee, Zephaniah, Zelophehad

Zair, Zareah, Zedekiah, Zeeb, Zion

Zuzims, Zorobabel, Zophar, Ziza,  

and 131 more of our clan

Calligraphers admire Z as the most elegant

Like a bolt of lightning

Or the zig-zag trail of a mountaineer

scaling the face of El Capitan

Z is sharper than S, more fulsome than J

Twice as dynamic as our staid cousin N

And Zzz is among the most melodious of sounds

The gentle breathing of a sleeping newborn

Or the hiss of a snake-mother guarding her snakelets

Just ask yourself this question

Where would we be without zinnias, zebras, zithers,

zephyrs, zoologists, the zodiac, Renee Zellweger

Were it not for zygotes, the human race would be extinct

These are matters crying out for public discussion

Please try not to be zany when you next meet a Z

Whaam! by Roy Lichtenstein: An Ekphrastic Poem

Skipper and I were four when they bombed Pearl Harbor 

Our childhoods unfolded in the midst of the war 

In the back yard we fought in French trenches 

Battled the Nazis, attacked the Japanese 

Stormed the mock beaches as invading Marines

But nothing was more exciting than the Air Force

B-29s delivering their pay loads

Fighters taking off from aircraft carriers

And here, a P-51 Mustang destroying a Nazi fighter

It’s hard to imagine such courage

High in the sky, mortal clashes with enemy pilots

Google supplied these sobering facts

Twenty-three thousand American aircraft

Were lost in combat in World War II

Seventy-five thousand airmen died 

We owe these heroes eternal gratitude 

"The Old Folks" by John Steuart Curry

At home in rural Kansas 

A hot Sunday in mid-July

Mother and Father, back from church

Relaxing in their rockers

Buddy, their dog, watches alertly over the yard

Shortly Mother will cook Swedish pancakes

with lingonberries for lunch

But first some quiet time

Despite her blurry eyes

Mother is nearly done knitting her scarf

Father just finished with the Sunday Gazette

He wonders why he bothers

The world, so torn with chaos

Ugly politics, violence at home and abroad

Each year they appreciate their farm more

Their own private sanctuary

A place of  abundance and serenity 

The children, of course, are grown adults

Off in the big city, far from the farm 

Still friendly, but with lives and families of their own

The couple rarely talk with one another

Everything’s been said so many times

Yet they enjoy a special closeness

A product of their fifty-two years

Life is good, not perfect

She takes medicine for her heart

His back pains keep him awake at night 

But they are always there for one another

Night and day

And will be until the very end 

Swinging

  

I love to swing

When my mother pushes me

I go so high you’d never believe

Like a seagull soaring over the ocean

Searching the blue waters far below

Sometimes I feel I am close to Heaven 

Up here so high in the clouds 

Looking at the people’s tiny houses

Sending angel prayers to the sleeping babes

I have no fear when I’m high in the sky

I know there’s a safety net of love

My mother is always there for me

To catch me if ever I slip 

Swinging high

Swinging low

Swinging high again

Swinging my way to the unknown

Senior Moments: A Rhyming Sestina

That TV remote is so slippery to find

I suspect that its rays might be curdling my brain

I search through the sofa, underneath, behind 

With all this commotion, I pray I’ll stay sane

My spouse says the doctor should X-ray my mind

But at my robust age I’ve no need to complain

My trip to the mall, this does lead me to complain

From home to Northgate, very simple to find 

I turned south, not north, I’m afraid that’s not sane

Just one more faux pas by my fuddled-up mind

CVS might stock herbs to jumpstart one’s brain 

Magic herbs could keep me from falling behind 

Losing stuff in the fridge, in the drawer or behind 

The milk disappears, I fret and complain 

The image of that bottle, so clear in my mind

My wife says it helps if I use my brain 

Lost milk, it takes her one second to find 

She hands it to me, harbors doubts that I’m sane 

PBS dramas, it helps to be sane 

I lose track of the story, I’m hopelessly behind 

Too challenging, it seems, for my ossified brain

The meaning of Poldark I struggle to find 

But despite my confusion I never complain 

Even losing the whole plot, I actually don’t mind

Jeopardy was designed as a boon to one’s mind

A memory refresher that keeps seniors sane 

I often know the answer but the words I can’t find

I shout at the screen, I twitch, I complain 

The contestants too quick so I fall far behind 

Please, Alex Trebek, help revive my dead brain 

“Be sure to bring your name tag,” I instructed my brain

But I wore my wife’s instead, a silly prank by my mind

My classmates giggled, no need to complain 

They’re used to my dithers, my lagging behind 

Labelling myself “Katja”, who would think that is sane

But to wear my own name, not that simple I find

Senior moments I find give me cause to complain

Dead gray cells in my brain mean I’m losing my mind 

Falling more and more behind in my quest to stay sane 

All Hallows Eve

On Halloween we shed our normal selves

We dress as ghosts or pirates, kings or queens

Then frolic with the demons and the elves

And fill our bags with colored jelly beans

But Halloween is more than fun and games

This is the night the dead return to life

The witches’ brew is bubbling on the flames

And Dracula is searching for a wife

The children ring the bell in search of treats

They’re clueless as to what awaits their fate

I fear that werewolves prowl the city streets

Perhaps a ghoul digests the flesh he ate

I think I’d just as soon stay home tonight     

This poem puts me in a state of fright

Black T's

      

     

The Goodwill arranges its T-shirts by color

I skip past the white and the gray

I usually thumb through the red and the blue

But it’s black shirts that carry the day 

Black T-shirts, so forceful, so strong

Most thugs never mug a wearer

Even big guys step out of the way

While their kiddies look on in sheer terror 

Black T-shirts remind me of zombies

Of panthers and black bears and rhinos

Tarantulas and scorpions are blacker than night

Many dreaded creatures that cause human woes

Nosferatu and Dracula always wear black

Darth Vader and Lord Voldemort

Plus scary good guys, John Wick, The Dark Knight

James Dean, other rebels of his sort

Black stands for mystery, power and death 

Why I’m drawn to this color is odd

In truth, I am more of a lime green guy

But for fantasy, black’s my facade  

The Social Scientist As Poet

The day he arrived at his quite advanced age

My dear cousin Alfred proceeded to retire 

A true social scientist for forty plus years 

He began writing poetry, a calling much higher

Alfred’s sonnets were informed by his social science training 

The rules: be clear, be accurate and objective 

Stick to the facts, no fantasies, no feelings

Impersonal description, so lyrically effective

Pitfalls that Alfred avoids at all costs:

Flowery language, allusion, ambiguity

The personal, the subjective, the introspective

Metaphors, similes, any hint of incongruity  

Alfred’s quest, you might say, is a radical venture 

He rids his poems of all things poetic 

Our society is much too confusing as is 

Conflict and chaos, distressing, pathetic 

Alfred says that his poems bring light to the darkness

Restoring needed order in a woebegotten time 

His verses bubble over with certainty and structure  

Not to mention fine meter and lines topped with rhyme 

It’s hard to predict what the future will bring

Some scoff at the drabness of Alfred’s new goal

But order and clarity are very dope things 

It doesn’t bother Alfred if he’s lacking in soul 

Letterology: A Book Of Divination For Our Troubled Times

Numerology gets more applause and acclaim

A source of wisdom for two thousand years

But Letterology, a wellspring, if you are seeking

to unravel the psyche, to calm rampant fears 

Letterology interprets the letters from one’s name

In my case, for example, the initials D-C-L 

One probes their meanings in the sacred texts

One’s life course, one’s destiny, Letterology will tell

                  D-C-L: The Readings

D is the image of an Army helmet

          Of a bullet, a quonset hut, a coffin’s end 

The sound of D is duh-duh-duh-duh

          The din of a jackhammer dismantling concrete

D stands for demon, degenerate, depraved

          Also dilettante, dullard, doofus

 Thus D is the Dark side of D-C-L

         And D is in the first place, the foundation, the core 

C is the image of a cup of hot chocolate

          A happy smile, a bowl for chrysanthemums

C sounds like cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh

          The soft song of cicadas at twilight

 C stands for capable, confident, clever

          And chatty, congenial, cordial, chipper

 C is the Creative side of D-C-L

  But sadly C is stuck between D and L

L is the image of a dead end road

          A broken twig, a clock just past midnight

L sounds like luh-luh-luh-luh

          The gibberish of an infant babbling in his crib

 L stands for lazy, lethargic, lackadaisical

          For loony, light-headed, lopsided, lumpy 

 L is the Lamentable side of D-C-L

         L waits in the last place, the guardian of the end

What should I make of this unsettling reading? 

All hope for the future is with the letter C

D-C-L should change his first name to Cramer

When C’s in the first place, one is happy and free

The Ludlow Avenue Public Parklet

The Public Parklet mysteriously appeared

on September fourteen 2019

in front of the Marrakech Moroccan Restaurant

extending from the sidewalk out into the street 

as if it were a gift from Allah.

A noteworthy structure, hard to ignore

45 feet long, of golden knotty pine

a pleasing fresh cut wood smell.

Our neighborhood’s most colossal bench

if not the city’s or even the Tri-State’s.

Suitable for a gospel choir

a Little League softball team

the audiences for a street preacher or an anarchist

up to seven homeless youth sleeping end to end

or a ski jump platform for the skateboarders.

A new sign explains that the parklet is designed

for “people and pets to linger and connect.”

Also, “No Smoking.” 

As you might guess the community response

has been reserved, even dismissive.  

On NextDoorClifton the nay-sayers and the nit-pickers

complain that the parklet has absconded

with two treasured parking spaces.

And that it is bone-headed because it is 20 yards away from

the Clifton Plaza with its many benches, tables, seats

and its ample opportunities for lingering and connecting.

And what, anyway, is the point of a 45-foot-long bench?

(Most NextDoorClifton contributors are reputed to be crotchety.)

Personally I have been keeping my eye on the parklet.

Mostly it sustains a population of zero.

One day at 4 p.m. there were two male Indian students chuckling.

Another time two thirty-something men with long black beards

lingered though they did not seem to be connecting.

In an effort to grease the wheels

I sit at the parklet every now and then.

A young woman smiled at me the first time.

Later a middle-aged woman with a chihuahua

rested for five minutes at the opposite end.

The parklet, of course, offers more than rest.  

This very poem that you are reading

was not only inspired by but composed at the parklet.

Not the founders’ original intent

but we now have a new poetry writing venue on Ludlow Ave.

Who would have guessed?

Inner Voices/Outer Audiences

I went to hear the visiting poet 

She explained she is most herself 

When alone in a room

Alone and writing a poem

Poetry is the outlet for one’s inner voice

This public appearance, she said, means nothing 

Just a lot of flim and flam 

A put-on self that others should not trust 

To know her true self, this visitor said, read her poetry 

This sounded reasonable

For a moment

Sort of

But I wasn’t convinced

I learned a lot from her public appearance

What she looks like, how she sounds, what she laughs at

Her mannerisms, her quirks

Her enthusiasms, her antipathies

More than I got from the poems she read     

And I’m not certain that one’s inner voice 

Winds up unedited in one’s poetry

Writers, I believe, always write with an audience in mind  

Sometimes specific 

Usually more vague and general

But I doubt we are ever alone in a room

For myself, I tailor what I write to that imagined audience

Perhaps looking for acceptance or appreciation

There are many things I never say

I avoid politics and social controversies

For fear of offending this person or that

Likewise for religion, God, the afterlife 

Sex is too intimate a topic for me 

Secrets about my family

Hurtful things

I shuffle forth with the tried and true  

My inner voice, I fear, winds up rather bland

Constrained by taboos and rules of political correctness

I could, of course, write secret poems 

Just for myself 

That never see the light of day

But my in-house censor would still be busy at work 

There are countless things about myself I never want to know  

Poetics

A snappy rhyme is bound to please

It turns the whole world cheery 

Especially after wine and cheese       

I recommend it, Dearie

But rhymes, alas, are now passé 

and meter merely clogs the path  

Seek liberation, fluidity, free verse

The poet’s maxim, reject constraint

like the hummingbird flitting about the tulips 

and always bear in mind:  Century Twenty-One

we the progeny of ✯Post✯Post✯Modernism✯

plumbing dark recesses of the Unconscious

   fingernails scraping on the blackboard 

blind lambs plunging from limestone cliffs

while Time bends in upon    ) (     itself  

So many splendid options for composing a verse

But first let’s enjoy a glass of Merlot  

Texas Terror T-Tale

Two turbulent Texas towns

Tainted tyrants turn to terror

Teen toughs threaten townsfolk

Tomboys torment toddlers 

Terrible trouble

Tiny tots traumatized 

Totally true 

Till Thursday, the tide then  turns

Tenacious troopers travel to the towns 

Tackling these tyrants 

Trouncing the thugs

Thrilling tactics

Terror turns to tranquility

Tyranny thwarted

Tolerance triumphs

Two tarnished Texas towns that thrive today