A poem by Frank Diamond A poem of mine called "Anxiety Dreams" was published today (November 2, 2021) in a little literary magazine call "shuf Poetry." Here's the link. It is interactive: you have to press on the blue words (sometimes it's just 1 blue letter) to read it through. You know you've reached the … Continue reading Anxiety Dreams
a poem by Frank Diamond http://www.thecharlescarter.com/writing/2017/02/22/progress/ published in The Charles Carter Literary Magazine in February 2017 (in audio format--click on green Progress link above)
“You stay your age forever.”
Sign now, sit back, watch
These premiums will not change
As indemnification unfolds
October leaves drift like embers
Each snapshot freezes, then evolves
Moral hazard roils and regals
As outliers in mid-orbit pause
Dodging regression to the mean
“Love stays its age forever?”
No, it’s different looking back
That’s no stranger in the corner
Slowly waking from her nap
Outerbridge voices
Reach from rest
Nothing lays still
In nether fog
Spread blankets
Over graves
Burgundy sipped
As midnight rises
Bloated at world’s end
Fold newspaper
Horoscope out
Dead swamp, dark layers
Save for future
Space in the attic
Like one more box
Where dust descends
Wait for deliverance
As purgatorial voices
Gather in layers
Outside rotted doors
Oh Modest Goddess
Let’s spill the tea
Kick up them tunes
Dance close to me
Oh Godless Goddess
Don’t make the bed
Our culture’s caving
Our soul’s unfed
Please salt the deal
When you have time
I salt the still
You salt the vine
I salt the well
You salt the line
I salt the how
You salt the why
I salt the scream
You salt the sigh
I salt the scene
You salt the high
Oh Modest Goddess
You make me smile
Come lie with me
For just a while
Your hair, that hair of yours
No, of course, it doesn’t define you
Curly, bouncing, bold, boyant
Light brown with tints of red
That’s what I said (you set me straight)
People pay to look that way
You didn’t even go to a hairdresser
For ten easy years. Remember?
Perfect prelude to cascading laugh
Sways like a searchlight’s pivot
Lets your eyes shine hope, joy
Toward the children you’ve taught
To old people drawn to warmth
Never like the other girls
Wouldn’t bother carrying a purse
One — that’s right — one pair of shoes
Of the earth, by the sun, to the sea
But what feeds on you eats at me
Right here in Buddy’s Barber Shop
Where photos dim every inch of wall
Tumble down, down like a pyre’s end
“I’m not going to let this beat me. Watch!”
Not if have any say it won’t. (I don’t.)
Love discovers from now back to start
As your beautiful noggin’ steals my heart
Old man next door
Dying from love
45 years married
Wife gone (what?)
About 45 minutes
We say he lost his love
But he looks for her still
Shakes out the laughs
She’s not there
The sunsets, and rain baths
Not there either
Moments of “glad grace”
Jeez, not a friggin’ trace
He stands by the memory chute
But they’re no substitute
I catch him in his car
Staring beyond the driveway
Ask him, “You OK?”
Tells me it’s day-to-day
I know what he means
Man wants to die
Dark hands his only hope
Of seeing love again
There’s nothing that rhymes
Or explains away the unending,
Sharp-stabbing grief —
Which leads me to us
That’s right, you and me
You’ve never asked
What you mean to me
If you did I’d just point
Across the way
You never asked
But for once I tell
You are air and water
And, yes, “shadows deep”
So, now, can we
Get something to eat?
And then later maybe catch
Some serious Zs by the fire?
And murmur, softly murmur,
Our incommunicable joy
Outside the bay window
This gift to my late wife
Given to her by her sister
Years ago plopped in a hole
No bigger than a shovel scoop
Man, has that thing grown
Cardinals sometimes peck the branches
Pulling berries from icy weaves
And my late wife’s wonderment
Gentles me down corridors of dreams
The world has lost its beauty
Once filtered through your eyes.
Sunset, sunrise, falling fall leaves
Shift now into a dimmer space,
But I still seek cohesion
With evidence of things not seen
And the scales that fall will weigh.
Do I really need these videos?
These unnecessary glass totems?
Memories swoon, drift and die
Then rise at the oddest moments.
My tickets on the River Styx,
But everything else needs to go.
How do you weigh stuff against spirit?
We were both such able thrower-outers,
But look here at this refinancing pack,
Long ago digested by other deals.
“I won’t ever let you go!”
I think as I dismantle
Rooms, chimneys and the backyard fence.
“I just … just cannot stand it!”
Echoes against walls that used to be.
“What’s the worst
job you’ve ever had?”
Banter ignites in
a near-empty newsroom
after the paper’s to bed
The hours-long slump
from leaving barbecues,
and family in mid-sizzle
To schlep off to work
recedes to memory like
last week’s mild hangover
The scanner’s crackle
absentmindedly
punctuates trash talk
Waitress, bartender,
lifeguard, cashier;
don’t even bother
Bouncer, boxer
nude model, and —Yes! —
chocolate factory worker
Now we’re cruising
When Grump mentions
driving a Philly cab
One Labor Day
and getting stabbed
twice in one shift
“I would have called
it a night after
the first stabbing.”
To lose a laughing woman
Acquaints you with a silence
That memory cannot fill
Until… Until… Until…
To love a laughing woman
Who’s suddenly taken from you
That’s not the greatest loss (I know)
Although… Although… Although…
Laughter can be manufactured
Unlike happiness, that ghost
Staring across infinity’s field
Conceal… Conceal… Conceal…
To love a laughing woman
Then to lose a laughing woman…
Oh, she’d get tired of this song!
“Move on! Move on! Move on!”
Cain bushed out the Serengeti.
Neanderthal and lonely, after feasting
for days on his latest kill. Blood and
bone and plenty. Is faith, fear? Fear, faith?
Does it ever really matter?
Squinting across a sea of green
and nearly thinking, “Something’s missing.”
Waiting for the question coming
as he rubs his belly and listens
to a hunter claw a tooth still insisting.
The Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life
root stonily in the garden. There’s no kill
like the first kill. No will like free will.
No still like the still of waiting
for judgment surely coming.
When my first wife died I withered and withdrew
And lonely did I scale the couloir of grief
Curling about myself like that indolent snake
Confronting that first wife with cancer’s last claim
Just an overgrown garden snake parked upon our drive
A brown arm’s-spread length of languid reptilian still
A critter I’d never seen before or since that meeting
Curled into a taunt that he hurled at my own girl
Coiling tighter in delight: “The hour’s come for you!”
She died soon after when the siege broke through
And I never really heard the music until its absence
Of delight in all creation—that’s how her voice fulfilled
So what torched despair’s fingers until the grip gave out?
One night in Harpoon Henry’s I kissed a pretty woman
A nice, friendly girl I’d been working with for years
Mouth-to-soul resuscitation seasoning bloodless sleep
That kiss—alone, apart, about. A prelude to nothing
Except the entirety of life. A kiss. That’s it.
Interceding like prayer to caulk my brokenness
Did I ever tell that girl what that kiss delivered?
I now forget (surprise!) how she wriggled off the hook
Can’t even recall the name, just drops of smiling eyes
I am deaf, now. Blind. Can’t bend to tie my shoe
A salty wind-whipped spray gentles this old wheeze
Lets me taste that kiss once more and that is what I’ll ride
You may release your servant, Lord. It is time for me to die.
Beyond the solicitous plains
Rumor rolls like the sea
Revelers behind Gomorra’s walls
Sit at the right hand of progress
Pleasure, comfort busk easily
In fields our spoils harvest
These last six decades now
Mankind summits in our valley
The sun, the rain, the never-ending plains
I should so like to welcome tomorrow
The problem is me not you
But I am so out of place in Gomorra
Where traders, merchants give Ba’al his due
We throw away those old broken hearts
Placing our salt upon the altar
Placing our children upon it, too
I am so out of sync with Gomorra
That I do not know what to do
Do You?
Why is there something instead of nothing?
Search for an answer in this foreign brew
Let’s ignore the fallen angels for now
What’s a heaven for? God, that’s who
Something or nothing? Maybe science knows
Sitting dignified, set up for slapstick
Mumble, mumble, mumble — at the end of the bar
Your uncle wants to hear you say
You won’t give in, you’re going to stay
I will never proclaim, “Embrace affliction!”
That would probably get us flagged
Please, please, please — I won’t get through it
Let life wrap you like unredeemable grace
And let’s toast to tomorrow before leaving this place
It’s on me — you just take care of the tip
Grief plays by its own rules
An awkward grace works through
“If there’s anything at all I can…”
You could point me toward the surface
For life underwater pre-empts my tears
“Thanks for coming. Thanks. Coming. Thanks.”
Navigate the void each mourning
I made her laugh right ’til the end
Now chisel that on my gravestone
Oh, we were not the perfect couple
But heavens! Did we have fun!
Laughter like that gets God’s attention
Lets his awful grace play in the sun
Frank Diamond 