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