Long Metastasized Poems

November 13th, 2021 - Happy eighty sixth birthday
to my long deceased mom...
Harriet Harris née Kuritsky

My mother succumbed to a terminal illness
two score minus three orbitz passed away
no matter she fought tooth and nail
to keep ovarian/uterine...

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An Echo Poem

Original: If I Kissed It - Poem by Brian Johnston

If I kissed it, would that make it better? 
Are you needing much more than a friend? 
Would it help if I held you...

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My heart waits for you so that our dreams can come true .
My heart aches for you, so remove the guard so that I can be with you 

Days have passed and I kept working...

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I just made it in time for Mary's funeral, it had been raining
heavily all day but the sun came out through the clouds.
And as I watched her coffin being lowered into the ground,
I was filled...

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toward thee spunky gal, 
     whose impregnation and debut appearance 
     way to brief a tale for Aesop
cuz, (umpteen iterations recounted),
 
     out...

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Suddenly without bedmate and counterpart 
   one month shy of fifty years, no deity could answer
razor sharp emotional pain cut to the quick 
   recollecting ballroom dancer

himself as a handsome youth...

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November 13th 2017 
Happy 83rd birthday to thy cremated mom

Harriet Harris fought tooth and nail
Mother succumbed 
to terminal illness without fail 
Ovarian/ Uterine Cancer to no avail
hosted by death feasted fancy 
at Oyster Bay metastasized...

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Is just Love an oasis in ‘desert of self’
Where my talents seem fossilized bones with no life?
I bless remnants of forebears (expired, long past prime)
That caress life, the breeze that cools brow, whose moist breath,
Does...

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We can never forget 9/11
We will forever remember such a date
A date that will live in infamy
A date that has everything in it:
Sadness, fire, death, destruction and bravery
Heroism, sickness and resilience, except happiness
9/11/2001 is a...

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We can never forget 9/11
We will forever remember such a date
A date that will live in infamy
A date that has everything in it:
Sadness, fire, death, destruction and bravery
Heroism, sickness and resilience, except happiness
9/11/2001 is a...

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I am a book
Given to myself by my mother, given to herself by hers, and so on
I am a name
Given to me by my own pages turning past the last
Wording on my skin, lifted with...

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Mesmerized by phantasmagorical flames 
brandishing cerise, fuchsia
and crimson-colored
tongues of fire;
I marvel at the beauty of the beast. 
I see the chard smoldering underbelly
of the flames, cloaked
in bellowing blankets of thick smoke;
its flames lapping at the...

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Crucible

Peer into an unpredictable universe 
Of ambivalent depths
A calyx cul-de-sac tipped up
Into a crucible of the unexplainable
Where curiosity strides into pure moments of mystique
 Fields of glory in bluebells
  Rusted milestones
   Hail...

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Oh, Babe
Pitched for the price of infamy’s name 
Springtime sold
For the tempest of a bambino’s bane
Oh, Babe
Stadium-made gregarious grin
Pinstripe promises
Playing for shoddy orphaned kids
Oh, Babe
Squeezing pine tar calloused veins
Slugging sunshine
Into brokenhearted pennant panes
Oh, Babe
Champagne on...

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When Phyllis canned her peaches
just two months before she died,
She did it for her family,
she'd done it since a bride.

She canned the summer sun for them
and sealed it in a jar.
Next winter when they shared...

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The last students you've loved slip out of the room
  Their chairs ghostly, enshrouded, urns overturned

Your eyes survey the wreckage, the whisper-less ruins
  Vultures and jackals lips lick, poised for their turns

This sinking...

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CANCER

It began as a swelling
Localized swelling
Painless at first
Then painful

Then came a period of recession
Oh!
What a sweet relief
Wellness reigns again

Then again the swelling
Only bigger now
Persistent
Bigger
And bigger

They say its cancer
And it has come to stay
No cure, they...

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