Best Workings Poems
The Inner Workings of a Clock
My Catholic schoolgirl
Denies my shadowy persona.
Costumed in
A navy blue uniform
A snow-white blouse,
A chest pocket embroidered
By Saint John Fisher,
Her youthful bearing ticks
Smoothly, quietly, piously.
My Catholic schoolgirl leads
The May Day procession
She crosses herself and genuflects.
Wrapped in rosary beads,
She pushes my golden orb,
Tilted and warped as it is,
Into its preordained trajectory
Toward saintliness.
Starships of jealousy and greed
Some dressed as childish lies
Others as adult deceptions
Pitch me into a blackness
Unnoticed by my angelic clock.
Hands circulate 360 degrees.
Springs unwind.
Inner pendulums
Swing madly.
Simultaneously, I am
Remorseful and gleeful.
Twelve o’clock is
My imagined sanctity of
Honeyed knowledge.
Six o’clock is
My known blasphemy.
I wear my hair shirt with pride.
Tortoiselike, I see only
Darkness or light.
My Catholic
Schoolgirl’s soul
Refuses to apologize
For my humanity
Nor does she brag.
I am God’s creation,
A jigsaw of sharp-edged pieces.
Wouldn't it be tremendous, wouldn't it be great,
If we could just let words flow, at a staccato kind of rate.
We'd be like human gatlin guns on automatic fire,
gushing words in torrents, like a demented multiplier.
But no, words do not come like that, they're really quite elusive,
it's check and plod and plod and check, to find one that's conducive.
It's why we take so long to write, a sentence that makes sense,
blending, knitting, fitting in, with meaning and commonsense.
And then the final outcome, is there for all to see,
the work of art is finished, applause a guarantee.
But wait, there's something not quite right, something doesn't gell,
There it is, I'll scrap all this, and this one I will re- tell.
Can it truly be said that a man is mere logic
when I see your emotion as if it hung in the air?
Can it truly be said that a woman's mere feelings
when my brain is like clockwork in logic to bare?
Leaning tos, that is another discussion
for I will admit that I lean toward the tears
and maybe you too would admit just for reference
that you have the mechanics of a man of your years
But don't you think too, that a blending occurs
right at the moment two soul mates connect
and each leans in toward the other's attraction
they otherwise fell, in their days, to neglect?
Perhaps that is why your eyes well up quite rightly
when you see that my heart has been scorched by design
And maybe that's why I hold common sense tightly
and wrap it in gauze to be precious in kind
We are just truly conjoined puzzle pieces
with traits to be honored as sweet compliments
Whether it's logic or sheer, raw emotion
we balance each other in complete confidence.
Taped to the door’s plexiglass pane, a portrait
Of a Savior with ardent heart burning
Sunlight invades with the turning of hinges
Untethering the hospitality of Tony, the lone waiter
His Brazilian arms are swinging doors, open to embrace
He wore fishnet leggings to the Halloween Jamboree
Leather corset paired with his jet black hair,
Moving with grace at the age of seventy
To the right of the register towering above
The marble counter, the burnout teen dreams
Of welding underwater. A master of sparks
Under the pressure of the indomitable sea
Within his perspective the walls contort,
Xanax whispers in voices of an angel’s Hark
“They won’t know if the register’s short”
Behind the oven is the maestro of cheese and painted tomato
Luis whistles and sings ballads in the tongues of banda
Smiling at nothing with teeth all jagged and yellow
Welcoming all who wander with an “Ah mi amigo, ¿como estas?”
A jolly grin and laughing lungs lift a belly made of pizza dough
The oiled gears of a restaurant’s engine, fueled by cervezas
Joe rides into the shop he owns on his jet black Harley
To work with the line cooks in his leather steel toed boots
He was once Philly cop, and he may still be stuck in center city
He never lets his gun leave the secure embrace of his belt loop
Yet under such a Italian-American macho man brovato
Lies the soul of a tender soul that loves to cook for his community
Across the street, sunflowers raise their winter withered heads
The sizzling steak sandwiches sing in a chorus of cholesterol
The leather booths welcome anyone escaping the World’s dread
So come to Carmines, a source of solace for any and all
A spider thin calligraphy, a varicose script
upon the shallow sheen of mortality.
Are these the genetics of a divine act
arriving as green stems,
weeds and blooms all in a tangle?
A scratchy nib of doodled ideas?
Behold the dying and the replenishing,
the glory of the shedding.
All this upon a tumbled forest floor
where imagination plods daily.
More marks upon a blank page
developing slow
in the low light of scribbled thoughts.
More night flowerings and late sweepings.
Although barely, the sun was still casting
Its light as she slowly descended
Beyond the tree-lined horizon.
A view of the grey-free sky revealed
A beautiful contrast of rainless clouds
Highlighted by the setting of the sun.
Nature has taught us that time waits on
No one, not even clouds and light. She
Will set and her light will disappear. The
Clouds will move on, no longer beautified
By the light.
A gaze at a peach tree from my window
Revealed motionless leaves seemingly
In a state of rest unaffected by wind as
They anticipated the coming of the night.
Intrusive thoughts take over my mind
Leave me alone
Words swirling in an out of my consciousness
Leave me alone
Memories pop up, zoom by, scorching themselves on my inner being
Leave me alone
Pushing them down
down
down
Leave me alone
Slowly, space begins to open
Allowing room for the blessings, love, positive light
Don’t
Leave Me
Alone