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Just Don’t Have the Heart
Walking down the stairs in the middle of the night
Thinking for no reason about
The Sweethearts Of the Rodeo.
I find I just don’t have the heart for this new life,
This life of competition, confrontation that
Humans are so enamored of.
Born able and stubborn and ornery
But I just don’t have the heart.
I can hold a sweet lady all night long
Whispering sweet nothings and nibbling
Here and there
But I couldn’t get ahead if my life depended on it.
I just don’t have the heart.
Good folks get teary eyed about bravery
And sacrifice.
I stand as stone, impervious to their weepy pride,
I just don’t have the heart.
For abdication of humanity, for willingness
To hand over to the state the lone and
Lonely choice,
To treat life like a puny thing, a commodity.
I just don’t have the heart.
I would beseech the young to dry their eyes,
Peruse the collective dream
Before they give themselves away.
I would debate the talking heads,
In it for the show,
Accuse them of glorifying death to manifest
Their own questionable dreams
Of manipulation,
Scream at them to let go of the strings
But they like it there in their comfort zone
And they just don’t have the heart.
Falling Hard
Twenty minutes to seven
On a warm early evening
In the summer of 1951,
Maybe 1953. The diner, the warmth,
And the Cadillac are all I see.
No matter how many times
I study the scene,
The Cadillac is my eternity
But, close my eyes, it disappears.
Picture on the wall softens the evening
But not my heart,
The turbulence sheds tears
But engenders no memory.
Too young to drive in that
Imagined time
And the Caddy was never, never mine
But ownership is of minor consequence
If I focus and wipe away impediments.
Though I don’t see me in the lovely picture
Surely it’s something real that I pretend.
Not ashamed of the lack of depth
And the ground hugging imagery,
It leaves me nowhere to fall.
Life was simple.
But then you came
And recognized me,
Held me, and held me dear.
Now, with my eyes wide open, sure
The sweet Caddy may well be here.
Close my eyes,
I can hear the engine purr.
But when you close your eyes,
I disappear.
Change of Heart
Back to the wasteland
Where ideas grow against the grain
Sharp around the edges
Back where there simply is
No naturally
How can I turn my back
On the green grass of home
The comfort of abundance?
Am I not rooted in this soil
Deep and rich
With the nutrients of life
Of which evidence abounds
In tangled vines?
Evidence that fills my eyes
With nostalgic, sentimental tears
But leaves me inexplicably
Unfulfilled and blind
That I migrate like a crazed bird
To apparent emptiness
Where the answer may lie
Beneath a misshapen stone
Or in a long deserted
River bed
Where joy is attainment
Not a gift
Where life is a struggle
Gnarly plant of shallow root
Its own and often only fruit
Growth Spurts
A lesson in the switch?
Perhaps, but harsh,
More a bite than a lick.
Did the hard man really care?
Did it matter that the boy was nine and
Smoking in the loft?
Small sinner felt anger in each nip,
A vague but virulent frustration.
But concern for youthful lungs?
He couldn’t feel it.
Someone saw the embarrassing display
And read it, despite the seventy years that
Separated their perspectives,
In the very same way.
It was mean, it was sad, and it needed
To be addressed
But within the parameters of the
Old man’s thoughts
One would not find verbal persuasion.
Some other man or a man from some other time
May have chastised the hard, scrawny, bitter
Perpetrator
Married to the old man’s daughter.
Some more cerebral man may have shamed that
Contemptible father
For beating on his young son,
May have opened eyes about the uselessness,
The emptiness
Of the triangular obscenity they found
Themselves in
But Grandpa chose not to be a teacher,
Cared not a whit about the lesson.
He hated his son-in-law and cherished his
Grandson,
Motive enough
To grab the switch, turn the tables
Till the hard man, who could have killed him,
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