—TALK TO ME IN POEMS AND SONGS, DON’T LET ME BE BITTERSWEET

 

 

Cloud-like

 

In the dream

your fists were

unclenched and

there was a wisp

of a smile budding

in one corner of your lips

and no one was dying anymore

not even the bees or the elderly

and the first thing we did was embrace

and after a long hold you whispered

something in my ear and

when I asked for clarification

you held me even tighter but cloud-like

tender and soft and then

I knew where I was 

and why  

and for how long

 

 

 

—WHO WILL LOVE ME NOW, IF NOT YOU?

 

 

The Other

 

If these be

our final weeks,

why bother

saving ourselves?

Let’s dance naked

under the neighbor’s lights,

strung in a glowing V

from tree to tree,

no one for miles,

not even the

deer or bees.

Who cares about

snowfall or snowdrifts,

let’s shed it all.

I’ll hold your hips

and cheeks while

you grip

whatever feels loose or

most love-sick.

Can you see it--

the moon parting in a

sky that never lies,

blushing mauve and magenta?

This is why I

need you near,

my best thing,

my last good thing,

the one who  

loved me in life

and now loves me still,

in the other,

where color drains and

the stars plop,

one by one,

into the open

mouth of the sea.

 

—MERRY CHRISTMAS, DARLING

 

…Merry Christmas. Like much of everything in 2020, this will be an odd, sober holiday, which will then not resemble a holiday at all.

Still, of course, there’s quite a bit to be grateful for.

While I now know of many people who have caught and died from the virus, none in my immediate family have. So, that’s something.

 

…We’ve all had to endure a bizarre and extremely difficult year. Some of us have fared better than others. I was in a bad funk for nearly seven months and it was only early in December that I crawled out of the bunker, squinting into the light.

I started running again, reading again, and writing in spurts. I started to feel hopeful.

Having a close family helped, along with some truly amazing friends.

 

…I hope you are also seeing the light, that you are safe and happy, surrounded by those who love you.

 

…While I was still writing plenty in 2020, I didn’t submit a single poem or story this year unless I was queried. That happened more than it typically does.

Steven John started a new magazine called The Phare. Please check it out. The writing and graphics are both top notch.

He wrote me asking to submit something, but asked that the story be between 2,000-4,000 words. If you’ve followed my writing these past few years, you’ll know that writing anything longer than even 400 words is something I know longer do.

Regardless, I scoured my archives and found five pretty compelling stories to send. To my surprise, Steven loved and accepted them all.

Two of them are below. One of them, “Last Words,” was my 1,200 piece published and is in my personal Top Ten favorites.

Happily, other people seemed to agree. (This is bragging, I know, but my confidence has ebbed a lot this year, and I could use a few pats on the back, even if they’re just myself patting my own back):

 

https://www.thephare.com/lastwords

 

https://www.thephare.com/oriole

 

 

-Wow

-this is incredible writing!

-this is stunning

-Amazing!

-Wow. Great story.

-Another gut-wrenching story, Len. Your writing is incredible.

-What incredible subject matter captured with a poet's sensibility. Great story, Len.

-I'll start by saying what I've always said and known: You are a fine writer, Len. Whenever I see you've published a story, I stop and read it. Every time. But this one was devastating (in the best way, I mean). So much great writing here.

-this is just stunning. Fabulous work, Len... many congratulations

-Beautifully written poignant story, Len. Well done.

-Riveting,  you’ve done it again Len

-The quantity of your work is amazing, Len, but is only exceeded by the quality

-This is mesmerizing. Amazing end.

-You’re prolific and also terrific

-Love this story

-What an incredible record, Len. so thrilled to know you and to know how very sweet you are to everyone. And you are one hell of a writer.

-This is one of the best stories I’ve read all year, Len.

 

  

—I LOVE THEM SO MUCH, BUT WORDS NEVER SEEM TO DO THE THINGS I NEED THEM TO

 

 

“Would you really like to remember all of the things you lost?”—Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police

 

 

                                                       Pressed

 

The memory police don’t show one morning, so I open each drawer, run my fingers across your secrets and satin bows, over cotton and silk, leather and linen.

Some items, light as gossamer, I press against my face delicately, as if they’re alive or sacred. Inhaling hard, I catch a whiff of fabric softener, but also faint traces of musk, tongue, and perfume.

Each slumped elastic sings an aria / sings Cohen and Dylan / sings Karen Carpenter / sings our contradictions and sad truths, reminders of when you were still near and touchable.

I find an un-used vibrator buried under bundled fists of nylons, hair-ties and running socks, my first poem there, too, pressed flat as a butterfly wing against a wood slat, faded lead looking like dried rice scattered upon the page without care.

Still, I can make out that it’s a poem about missing you, my heart full of hollow, something about walking in a cemetery where every headstone is unmarked, while I go on clutching a bouquet of lilies, holding the bunch out in front of me as if it’s a Geiger counter leading me, one rickety step after the next, toward you.

 

—I’M LIVING PROOF THAT CONTRADICTIONS MAKE SENSE

 

 

     They learned there were times you had to out-sit the sun—lean into the shadow of a beam in order to block the fierce glare.

There were times you had to out-sit life, find a perch high up in an oak, and watch the animals desecrate the land below.

There were the really challenging moments when you had to do nothing, just stare at a blank screen or the canted rain, count to five thousand backward, and hold your precious wishes close.

There were times you had to shove a hand through your chest, yank out the heart and throw it on the ground to be trampled.

There were times you to whistle merrily so that no one would notice how lost and miserable you really were.

 

 

 —THE HEART I’M BREAKING, I KNOW, IS MY OWN

  

listed left and perfectly centered

 

 

the wet slaps

on my shoulders

at 3 am

can’t quell a thing

sometimes it’s hard

to be me

even for me

sometimes a guy simply

wants to wash

away with the

river of rain

that claims to want him

suck down some

foul country foam

grab the nearest slimed-stone

horse-collar an eddy

and be done with it

just float away

from tomorrow

and today

if you were here

this early

you’d slap me silly

come up

with a fix-it

or a spread sheet

problems listed

on the left

excuses perfectly centered

solutions tilting right

all of them just

slightly out of focus and 

barely out of reach

 

 

—DON’T WASTE YOUR WISHES

 

 

Rylan

 

 (after The National)

 

that near-winter

between fact and fiction

you found the envelope

but still pulled open

those crooked shades

of mine

takes a lot of

swallowed but’s

to be a straight-up

saint like that

when it’s so easy

to be blank

confused and cursed

blame it all on me

my excuses my guts

corroded from vats

of imploded cabernet

there’s a little bit

of hell in everyone

but you but god

you’re good too good

for me

it’s hot in here

isn’t it boiling

is that your hand

is that you

picking me up

off the floor

yet again

 

 

  —WE COULD CALL IT EVEN, YOU COULD CALL ME BARELY BREATHING

 

 

 

                                                 Ghost Face

 

 

There’s a ghost face in front of you, a torn patch of sheet, two gouged-out eyes, its smirk a rip in the fabric. You’re just a kid, having turned seven last month, so what do you know?

You do know you’re terrified. When you scream, there’s no sound, just flushed air that comes out, making the ghost face billow and undulate, which is even more frightening.

Then ghost face turns into your uncle Ray, who you found in the garage, on his knees, sucking on your older brother’s zipper.

Then uncle Ray turns into your dad who shape-shifted into a jackknife one Christmas, loopy as a Slinky, before flinging himself into a tree.

It’s one horror scene after another and your bed is quivering and you hope it’s because of your nerves and not that something horrible is causing the commotion.

And then ghost face is back, only it’s your face screwed into a look of revulsion, probably the same expression you’re wearing now, so it’s a set of terrified twins in your room after midnight.

You reach into that deep, hollow pit of you that’s supposed to contain courage, even a thimble of it, and instead what you retrieve are the words your mother said before she left for the last time, her face awash with tears, a tic working overtime on her right eyelid as if a ladybug was stuck underneath it.

You say, “It’s okay, it’ll be all right,” and you try to believe it, even though you don’t really, but it somehow works because the ghost face, which is your face, is clipped free from whatever’s holding it in place, falling like a leaf to the floor where it dissolves and is gone.

Gone for good, you say to yourself. Gone for good, you say and say and say. 

 

—I DON’T SAY WHAT’S ON MY MIND QUITE AS MUCH AS YOU WANT ME TO

 

 

Some Days a Rain Begins

 

Every day he looks for reasons to live. He asks the trees, “Why?” He asks the sunshine. Sometimes a robin will bounce on the lawn as if the grass is electrified and he will ask it, “Why?” but the bird won’t answer and will take flight instead.

 

At night, he counts breaths, often getting to fifty thousand or more. People have pastimes, he thinks, and mine is tallying inhales.

 

When he was even younger than he is now, his mother held him to her bare breast. Feeding time. “I almost did it,” she said. “I almost aborted you,” she hushed, thinking him too young to comprehend.

 

He was precocious, the same way the moon and mountains are. He saw and heard everything the universe availed, often all at once, imploding in his brain like The Big Bang. The collision was impossible to avoid, impossible to explain. It just was, same as the boy was just him because his mother had not aborted.

 

If she had, I would not be here, he thinks, on a regular basis, as habitually as breathing.

 

Some days a rain begins, warm and dewy, as if the mist is perspiring, and he will not think of anything for as long as he can lock down his thoughts, which is never more than a minute.

 

Sitting in the frail rain, the neighbor’s long-eared dog lopes over and noses his elbow until the boy crosses his legs so that the dachshund can nest there. If the boy is quiet enough, he’ll hear the dog say, “This is nice,” or “Do you love me?” If he is tranquil enough, the dog will trust him with its soul and begin to share all of the secrets that no human has ever heard before.

 

 

 

—YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN A TIME IS THE LAST TIME, BECAUSE IF YOU DID, YOU COULD NEVER GO ON WITH LIFE

 

 

      4

 

didn’t sleep

just tossed about

in the formaldehyde

saw a sign  

4 or five

thousand of them

that all said

the same thing

only in Korean

spelled backward

my balance

was complete shit

but I sat up and

blushed in bed

cause I can never

get completely

out of my head

unless I’m numb

vague or near-dead

every dream

was like a

snagged cardigan

loosened yarn

spelling contrition

with too many

extra unreliable o’s

which makes me re-think

what I assume and what

I still need to know

4 oh 4 oh

I’ll see you and raise you

4 more

and if god is god

I’ll meet you

on the other side

 

—COUPLES HAVE TO TALK, THEY SAY

 

 

Nimbus

 

I’ve been thinking

about the exit ramp

that day it rained z’s

and the glass clouded

and how the clouds

outside were the

most gorgeous clouds

I’d ever seen

though I hardly saw them

at the time

and didn’t even remember

them until now

Isn’t it funny how

nothing really matters

when it doesn’t

when the moment’s

close to perfect

and some kind of sacred

It takes turmoil and damage

to see the clouds

the way they actually are—

full of themselves

regrettably out of reach

and ever so slowly

gliding farther

and farther away

 

 

—I GUESS I’M STILL BITTER, BUT I FORGIVE BECAUSE I’VE BEEN FORGIVEN

 

 

Two Syllables and a Vowel

 

Don’t worry,

I’ll find an

appropriate apology

for every time

I wronged you.

If not, the whorls

will coach me,

or if not them,

then the wolves,

werewolves or the

earworms with

their honed pincers

ready to do damage.

You can doomscroll

all day while I

perform a thorough

investigation until it’s

reconfirmed that

one of us must always

be deemed culprit

while the other of us

must always win.

 

 

—DO YOU SEE BOTH SIDES, BECAUSE I DO

 

 

Rebirth

 

Can you see through

both sides of the

lead glass in your

undecided hands? 

There could be thunder

or the sound of a brook

stumbling over stones

and tree limbs,

a beaver or otter,

head only half-submerged,

flat as a skateboard,

coasting by like a missile.  

 

Better you than me

that finds it,

whatever that may be.

I’m pretty sure the clouds

have made you a

map from their shawls,

light shooting off the

kerned waves like rifle fire,

nearby deer puzzled

by so much beauty.

 

Look closer as the

eagle circles, its wings

shattering every awful doubt,

tossing you the second chance

you never knew you had.

 

 

 —LATELY IT SEEMS YOU’VE BEEN MAKING DECISIONS WITHOUT US

 

 

Shadowboxing

 

Midday, but the beach stood nearly deserted. Midday, the sun shooting skeins of light, though the air seemed leaden to Marco, weighing him down the way the sickness had crushed everyone all year. His mother first to go, his father next, his abuela somehow still holding on, in their tin shanty, worlds away from the tourist zone.

 

He trudged through sand, a wooden staff behind his neck, stretched across his shoulders, necklaces of every length and thickness draped down like shiny salamanders, some clattering as Marco approached the grand hotel that faced the ocean.

 

If security was out, Marco would have to keep walking, but there were none now and so Marco moved in closer.

 

Poolside, the waiters looked like hospital workers, dressed in cream pants and shirts, all wearing cream face-coverings. The pool itself was flush with tourists, none wearing masks, all stripped down to bathing suits, seemingly unconcerned about the plague that had ravaged the entire world. Marco tried to kill the feeling rising up in his chest, a sensation far stronger than love, something Marco’s father had branded a disgusting sin… Envy. So often, it shadowboxed him into contempt and dust.

 

A lounging blond girl, with gleaming skin, waved. Marco looked over both his shoulders before realizing she meant him.

 

When he waved back, she curled her finger in a Come-here motion. He didn’t know what to do with that, so he copied her gesture, Come-here, and to his horror and delight, she did.