Category: Poetry Page 8 of 9

Was your yoga too intense?
Are your muscles in suspense?
Those stretches hurt your back?
It’s time for an ice pack

Painful twists overdone?
Back got pain? That’s no fun.
Can’t bend to tie your shoes?
It’s time to have a snooze.

YOU’VE GOT THE SACRO, SACRO-ILLIAC BLUES

Looking for some healthy gains
Maybe it’s time to ease those pains
You’ve had a awfully strong attack
To your sacroiliac

Need a massage and need it quick?
See the yellow pages to take your pick.
On the table, on your tummy
Her strong fingers may feel funny.

YOU’VE GOT THE SACRO-, SACRO,- ILIAC BLUES

Moral of this story: don’t work so hard
Don’t want muscles to turn to lard
Don’t go bending when you shouldn’t
Might end up saying “I just couldn’t.”

Is it time to take a break?
Rest your back for goodness sake
Maybe in that yoga class
You might end up on your ass

YOU’VE GOT THE SACRO SACRO ILIAC BLUES

One by one, scales of the Great Fish fall off
The fish is losing its identity, slime, fins
Although the fish breaths, it gasps
Its bay-gills clogged
Gathering silt and invisible wastes
From the creeks, rivers, canals that lead inward
Oil, plastics, sewage, nitrogen
Float into the gills of the Great Fish
Clams and oysters suck it in
Scallops too
The Great Fish slowly chokes

Its flesh has been bought and bartered
Sold and developed
Yearly growth lines obscured by lawns, lots, malls
All manner of manicure rests upon these scales
Patches have become developments
Sampawams Creek hidden behind houses
Multitudes have stripped the Great Fish of its health

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At the window, a crowd gathers to look at puppies / As onlookers gather, a child taps the glass / white, fluffy, panting dogs, with tail wags so strong their bodies wag / jump up paws on glass, wiggling, falling, rolling over take me take me yapping, play -fighting, biting, resting a dozen little pets waiting for a home wanting your attention, curious, playful, little pink tongues someone says “Aren’t they cute.” / Again “Look at that one over in the corner. Isn’t he cute.” Oh come on, we should get a puppy. NO her husband answers quickly / look at them that one over there it’s so cute / more tapping, puppies paw the window. A couple exits the store holding a very cute puppy. / someone in the crowd asks What’s his name? What kind is that? / So adorable, so cuddly, so precious / the crowd adores the puppy / a moment later a stream of urine exits the puppy / Oh my God it’s peeing on my jacket. / She thrusts the puppy into the arms of her husband /. Take it back / I changed my mind./ laughter from the thinning crowd – muted giggling – not that much compassion / the bystanders have left / the peeing puppy returned / all the puppies continue to play/ life goes on

Let’s play on her sand pile
Walk her sculpted beaches
Her steep north shore bluffs
Book-ended by Sound and outwashed farmland
She’s full of seductive allurement
Her grottos of green, forested parkland
Her places to walk away stress
She’s tall – the way I like a woman
Stood up, over a hundred miles end to end
With hair mussed by nor’easters off Montauk
Stiff breezes at Orient
She has eyes for me – those bedroom eyes
Her Pine Barren textures of scraggy bark, puffy moss clumps
Her creeks and rivers flowing lazy to the bay
Tides ebb and flow on her inner marshes
Let’s walk her barrier island of dunes and swash
Be struck by her glamour – sunrise and sunset
Her farm fields and roadside vegetable stands
Her spring, summer, fall, winter
Her tall grasses bending in northwesterly breezes

She calls me to trespass all over her
Everything from top to toe
Sand spit to kettle pond
She may be flat-chested
But oh how she makes up for that
With her long, shapely legs, sexy ankles
Gorgeous neck, a face to die for
Her towering, north shore tulip forests
Her lady slipper orchids
Her green sod fields that stretch to the horizon
Her quartz and basalt pebbled north shore beaches
Her sandy, soft skin
Her shells and dappled trails

I just want to hug and caress her
Walk forever with her
Into elegant secret places
Drawn more and more and more
By her ravishing, stunning, I can’t take my eyes off
Our beautiful Island of Long.

I see you on hands and knees
Wearing gloves and grunting
Give it up folks
Trying to rid us muggers
Is useless. We are here for good
Mugwort has landed
Go ahead, yank us
I guarantee we’ll be back
Along with cypress spurge,
Black cherry, tall bush clover
We are an army you’ll never defeat
You can’t get all our roots
Pull us out, we survive
Those little bits of roots you miss
We always leave a little bit of us behind
You’ll have to sift every square inch of soil
To evict us.
We’re smarter than you are
Because we have a plan
Grow and spread
And it’s working out real good
You can’t mug us, we’ve mugged you
Our sheer numbers should convince you
Give up it’s, a lost cause

For Don Cimino – farmer at Homecoming Farm

Smack in the center
Of fifty growing beds
I make a slow clockwise turn
Looking and listening.

The remnants of last seasons’ leeks and kale
An open landscape with sky and trees
A water tower where ravens hang
A tall brick building on the west
Small aircraft drone overhead
Granite gravestones just beyond the compost pile
A double line of Norway maples
Beyond that, the Dominican cemetery
The hoop house, tool shed, garlic building
The port a potty, the processing station
The utility shed and distribution tent

What is all this without the people?
Farmer Don, Director Elizabeth
The interns, work/ share holders
In a collaborative symphony
Of grace, friendship, and cooperation
All part of a great turning
Of a world integrated
Alive, relevant, and intelligent
And most of all, one person
A Dominican nun
Who invites us to come home
And we have.

Lots happening in mid July
Perfect timing for insects and herbs
It’s as if they were waiting for this moment
Heat, growth, water, all converge
Who is attracting whom?
Cabbage butterflies congregate in lavender
One thinks food, the other continuity
This frenzy at midday
Essential oil aerosols and manic wasps
On bee balm flower heads
Flies, bees, beetles
It’s a carnival, a feast
A homecoming medicine cabinet

litter
Splotches on sacred ground / a passing vehicle / tossed out a window / accidentally dropped by a walker / it doesn’t belong / put it on your dresser, kitchen table, bathroom cabinet / it dishonors our ultimate Mother, with a capitol M – our planet / It is disrespect / Intrudes on what we ought to see, namely beautiful, uninterrupted landscape / it desecrates / where is there a cigarette butt-free place? / the punishment? / nothing / litter piles up under signs that say $100 fine for littering./ the sign doesn’t care / will the girl scouts will solve this problem? / no, they know better / who picks up our litter? / Minimum security county prisoners out on Sunrise Highway with orange bags and pointed sticks? / It’s a form of low grade terrorism / “Let the goats eat it” He says when I confront him / all litter is my litter / garbage, crap / call it what you will / I call it shit!
Litter is too nice a word / look at that…it’s such a shame…why do people do that?” aha, I’ve got one; they just threw a Wendy’s bag out the window. I’m going after them / I shout YOU LITTERED STOP PICK IT UP STOP YOU IDIOT. / he speeds away and I get me a middle- finger / fast forward
technology comes to the rescue / in each cigarette a hidden microchip to trace butt flippers / the Marlboro box warns: DO NOT BUTT FLIP – A FINE/COMMUNITY SERVICE/ JAIL TIME FOR OFFENDERS. – that’s bull shit he mumbles and flips his butt / a minute later, a litter patrol officer confronts him / he knows the time, the name has a photo/and genetic information that proves beyond the shadow of a doubt / a positive identification / a butt flipper has been apprehended / citation issued / appear before the judge / “You are charged with butt flicking” this crime carries a punishment of 40 hours of community service bending over picking up litter or a $350 fine” / we have uncontestable evidence, how do you plead? Guilty or not guilty? “but but but Judge, It was only an itty, bitty cigarette butt.” / if you plead not guilty, you either hire a lawyer or we appoint a lawyer, fee $1,000. How do you plead?” “Guilty” / since this is you first offence, I sentence you to 25 hours of community service.”
“I suggest you quit smoking.” See the clerk. Next

Medford lives in the shadow
Of its southern neighboring village
Not to mention its’ name
As to further take away from
Its’ already second place status

Let’s change the name to MED-PAT
Give the hamlet its’ due
The blue-collar town
The recycling place
The fix your car place
Nothing wrong with that
Somebody has to do it
We’re the workplace for
Those city folk down there
Sitting in café’s all day

We’re the working class
And that is what we do.
And we proud of it
We got collision shops
Tire places, gas stations, pinstripes,
Engine repair, transmission, stereo
New sales, used sales
You got all that down there?
Your car has problems,
You come to us