The Life You Could Have: a memoir

Category: lined poems

  • End with Past Tense


    Last time I saw Goldman, we eating

    sammin’ sammiches on Venice

    Boulevard, as we do regular

    he was talking about how hot it was

    that I was a dock worker

    when I described what I do, building walls

    out of cardboard boxes in semi-trailers. Said he used to

    work at the dock in his youth in NYC.

    “But not what you do,” he said, “I know what you do.

                               You couldn’t fit an envelope in there,

                                            they would say of those walls,

                                                           when men built them,

    men who knew what they were doing,” he said and I said,

                                                                       “Yes. That’s me.”

    Recently, on top of a ladder jamming a particularly difficult

    squishy into a tight spot over my head, I thought of one night

    on the phone listening to you list again all of the reasons

                               you could not be with me long-haul.

    You cuss like a dock worker.

    Not so much anymore, now that I work ship dock

    and eat sammin’ sammiches on Venice

    or piled high with shrimp ones

    on Abbot Kinney with mango

                                                  relish

    and am so much happier

    since I don’t have to struggle

    with those supposedly more fitting similars   you preferred.


    Originally published by Storm Cellar.

    Photo credit: Ranney Campbell, 2024.

  • Don’t Try That Tusk of Narwhal on Me


    I know that’s just an overgrown

                             whale canine

    not a unicorn horn

    not a hiking buddy

    whose sweat I cannot resist the smell of

    backcountry man who knows what is required

    and how to carry,               bone

    and tall and understands

                    that we is the only status that matters

    to spoon my cooking in, to spoon his in me

                                              finds that just so

    acoustic trio scheduled to play an afternoon

                   neighborhood bar in L.A., wakes me

                                                            with a throaty

    come share Greek pizza on the boardwalk with me

            whom I never cease to stagger,

                                                  simpatico,

    evolving as I wait patiently and patiently

    waiting for me while we climb into higher

                                                            and higher

                                         vibration

                                                                 under pine trees

    whose protection leaves me

                                      in the enchantment

                                      of willing submission

    my best friend, my favorite person

    who thinks.

    the same.

    of me.

    one day, could,

    from behind a boulder

    in the Angeles Forest

    milk-white flecked flamingo

                            diamond and lime

    with an aura you can just feel is silver

        
      – – I been on enough dusty bay horses

    once a slick gunmetal dun with striped legs

    even a green broke red roan Egyptian stallion

    with a no-shit strawberry blonde spiraled mane

         so what         over it

    conjure me up some for-real

    bliss-on-tap, stuff-of-myth magic, but please,

    don’t swing a twisted fang dripping seaweed

    and tell me

                                               it’s a legend

    Originally published by Misfit Magazine.

    Photo credit: Brett Sayles.

  • Still the Butterflies


    tummy half a dozen

    black swallowtail, three

    silvery blue, a mixed flutter

    galvanism fizzle a yellow in my head

    and orange and black kaleidoscope

    painted ladies clap-and-fling

    grey hairstreak

    flittered back to life

     surprised to find a smile

        each time the swarm

    white checkered skipper lift

    eights circle titillated

    wide wings

      seek a place

    to alight

    some treasure, some

    rotting gnat-laden lemons

    discovered under mother’s thin

    Photo credit: Fidel Hajj.

  • Habit

    bad for me, they say

    should give it up

    and I say, but my eyes

            swell

    and hands reach again

    my clear coat

    is coming off

    under this vigorous sun

    and send

                   a photo

    and light a smoke


    Originally published by HOOT Review

    Photo credit: Mark Thomas.

  • Sharp


    winds shifted, sky

    blue again, smoke blown

    out over the ocean

    I can see the hills

    make out the detail

    of sage and the lichen

    spreading. home,

    from my porch,

    can see clearly

    the cut lines

    of the shadows

    of the pergola, fallen


    Originally published by Third Wednesday.

    Photo credit: Victor Moragriega.

  • the desert so



    maybe it is the wet

    in my eyes

    makes me love


    Originally published in the chapbook, “the desert so.”

    Photo credit: Ranney Campbell, 2024.

  • Elijo Creer


    That I will stand, palms atop the four-rail

    now finally fully dried, on long planks

    painted over burnt orange by oarsman

    blue and too the trim of windows

    contrasting saffron copper shingle

    with century stonework and limber pine

    surround and in the rustle of forest litter

    on a cloudless afternoon in cherry

    billows of chiffon caressing

    and in a gap between San Gabriel peaks

    will look out onto our Catalina horizon.


    O qué piensas

    of the deck painted over burnt orange

    a muted fern blue and milk paint marigold

    trim of windows and framing a sangria door

    and leave lovely dusty berry vertical wood.

    But of the four-rail, no sé, fern blue too?


    No. A navy or something

    dark watery.


    The black bears, I hear harmless.

    Chase them off like stray dogs.


    And with spotty cell service

    and cut from the cords of the news

    will reread One Hundred Years of Solitude

    then all the rest of the Marquez I’ve not yet read.


    No, no, no es un sueño.


    Originally published in, “the desert so,” (out of print).

    Photo credit: Ranney Campbell, 2024.