Legs and Hearts

Above me turns a grieving moon,

I can't sleep

So I walk the night with memories:

Of a city of young men dreams,

Cars pass by

Early winter, 

I roll my shoulders 

Pull at my woollen collar,

Turn my hood above my ears,

I stop at a parking lot like a hundred days,

Empty, 

But for memories,

Of a city of young men dreams,

Seems a hundred years when--

We fought against our enemy lives.

With wooden sticks and curved blades

We rushed into a frozen made up game,

To hold onto a ball no one could control

We've all grown old--I assume

But in the end I know we disappear,

Rushing the goal--

before the night steals the evening light,

before the air gets too cold,

before legs and hearts grow too sore,

The ball races wide along the net...

Is it only me who cheers under a grieving moon?

Perhaps I've walked too far, 

Perhaps I think too much,

Recall too much of youth and the cold,

My legs and heart are sore

Time to go home...I'll walk the parking lot...disappear along a make believe

 

 

 

The Blows

I lay alone in bed. It's late, the night's grown old.

I can't settle down

It's the restless time between sleep and fear,

My woman left me

It's cold, the hotel window is open;

it wont close, wont quite touch the sill

The curtains carry with each breeze

A radiator steams, but barely keeps me warm

My women left me and I hear the street noise

Sounds hurry in the cold,

Men fight on the sidewalk below

I can't see, wont get out of bed

But I hear the blows

My woman left me,

I can afford more, but I searched this bad part of town

Found a heart broken inn, with long stairs and lonely blankets 

She said she can't take my moods,

My controlling ways,

She found another man,

I've come home wounded to this bad part of town,

I left for awhile, thought I'd never see the street again

Everyone's gone

But I should have known, women leave me, and the night always grows old,

The morning heals,

but the night always grows old,

And some windows never close, never in the cold

 

 

Stolen Car

I walk through a field around the edge of my town

Just beneath an autumn sun a sky settles down

White clouds shroud a golden soil

Every year I pray alone in the temple of fallen skies

...for stolen lives

People I've known...

like stolen ground

Cut short by the thief of time

Alone I ask to see them once again...

A silent sunset like a Raven's eye watches me

A pair of headlights along a country road passes by

Stolen car like stolen lives...I ask no more

A long walk takes me to my town

It's 1980... 

I see a passing headlight along the dark edge of time,

like a fallen prayer that's settled down

 

 

 

Waits

Every night I listen to the rain,

Sometimes it falls gently on my rooftop

Other times it presses hard against my window

I sleep easily to the sound of rain

like the rumble of a downtown train,

drops roll down in narrow streams

like waving dreams under umbrella trees

African elephants

Crying whales

Who awaits this reverie?

I sleep easily under the sound of rain,

and see drowning men as heart broke sailors on a downtown train,

and their forgotten women like wavy dreams...they take shelter from a crying shame

 

 

 

 

 

Thin Ice

I sit by a creekside and watch autumn leaves skate away,

sliding atop a Canadian stream

barren trees

as golden and yellow ships race aside rock and fallen branches

The sun is at my back-- casts a shadow over the encroaching ice

As a writer I need my solitude, a walk in a forest tires me quickly

I am as old as a memory

Time to move along, a stop along a creekside is short, the air is cold, 

I want more time alone; but a dampness breaks through my wool clothes

When I was I young, I would not take this rest at all--nor walk along this path

Then I was not a writer, I saw no beauty in solitude 

Thick as a Brick

Skating Away

Life is not the same,

I hear the change of aging music in solo winds

A walk down the path will take me to my writer's home 

There I will set a fire in a black stove,

and burn new words--not a verse from an old song

 

 

Where he goes....

Down in the alley, between blood shot eyes and bent fingers, a man rumbles through a blue bin of brown bottles and cans made wet by a short spring rain. 

 

Each night he searches for gold topped beer cans behind the Easy Bend Bar. Not that the they are worth more than any other cans, but he imagines his small street earnings to be otherwise. He packs the nickel a pop empties into a giant construction bag--the great tool of his trade, along with an old shopping cart with half-rusted wheels he uses to haul his night's earnings to be redeemed at the corner store.

Last night he got beat up in the same alley. His eyes bloodied. His hands swollen by the only two punches he landed on the instigator's head. He got beat up by the same man he knew during his days on Wall Street, who now fought him over the same empty treasures.

 

He didn't go down...not that night, but years ago...

 

Once they were young brokers and rivals. Never quite trusting each other, their friendliness masking their common competitiveness to stake out the same territory of finance and success--make the most money, drive the flashiest cars, buy the crystal and glass condos, catch the same expensive women. Eternally lucid in their seductive dreams of more and more.

In the days of oil barons and gold mines they would have lit conspicuous cigars with hundred dollar bills. In days of Wall St. they would snort coke through rolled up Benjamin's, and drink too much Cognac out of a stoner call girl's high price shoes.

 

Maybe all of that is what takes them down. Or maybe it's the compounding, gnawing truth they are expendable. Or maybe it's just a singular something in their heads--within the high dollar universe of stars and meteors that collapse their minds. 

 

They crash through Wall St windows, slip off Manhattan ledges and land on park benches and fall into the scrabbled livelihoods of men and women who redeem bottles and cans, one nickel at a time.

As with the homeless Vietnam Vet--his PTSD haunting him every second of every relived, fearful thought..

As with the math professor, whose days of numbers and decimals drove her to madness...

As with the Japanese computer scientist, who just ceased thinking...

As with the Honduran mother who cleaned houses during the day and collected bottles at night, so her kids could have a better life...so they could escape the hollow madness of poverty

 

They are called 'canners'. They live at night, collecting and fighting for redeemable bottles and cans against the emptiness in their bellies, against the demon voices in their heads. 

In one perfected motion the man uses his alley strength to hoist the construction bag over his shoulders and drops it into the shopping cart. He turns his squeaky cart around and noisily rushes out the alley and moves hurriedly along the street. 

A police car drives up along him. An officer mockingly says: "Hey, when r' going to oil those wheels? You're waking up half of Manhattan. What's with you grabbin' only gold beer cans?"

In a panic he quickly pushes his cart in an s-curve. The cops laugh as they drive away. The man holds his cart to a stop, scared and out of breath.

From where he stands on the Upper West Side he can't see Wall St. It's gleaming towers, it's bustle of men and women...and commerce...and stocks exchanged and sold...and businesses opened and closed...and dollar demon voices...and shuddered lives, collapsed and crushed like haunted, hollow aluminum.

He stops at the corner store and drops his empties into the vending machine that coughs out his night earnings. Just $15. Each night's collection gives out less and less. He thinks maybe his old friend steals from him, arrives early and takes his golden dreams. He worries what's next, but he also knows there are no more windows to crash through, or ledges to slip from. No more benches in homeless parks where they can land. Just that he knows no where to go is where he is...just another life, another short spring rain falling on brown bottles and empty cans.

                                                                 __ __

Story based on HBO Documentary "Redemption" about Canners of New York

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2cejo9