SELECTED POEMS, 2010 – 2014
Our Blood
The light at eight is
A filtered gold that
Flatters the lacquered
Wrought iron black.
The sun in retreat from
The Zen of its zenith
In a way that
Ennobles decline,
Appears in the west
At the end of each cross-street --
Eden’s archangel
Released.
Evening dissolves in
A rapturous stillness,
All futures discarded,
Unclaimed
While ahead, limping,
An overweight vagrant,
His climb to the
Pavements complete,
Describes in his stride
The cost of his triumph,
His ties to the tunnels
That thrum with our blood.
JAD, 2010
Along the Mianus
He dreams of brackish,
Blackening pools
And of flats of the
Reddest clay.
A series of decks
At the rear of the mansion
Descend to the
River below.
He knows he is dreaming,
Conflating two scenes,
The river upstream
With its delta.
But, still, he must dream,
Forget he is dreaming,
Distill his unease
And regret.
The others have grouped
At a bend in the river,
Intent on a
Gala or wake --
The elders in satins
And salmon pastels,
The young in their
Fiercest attire.
The dreamer confides
That he knew the man well,
Remembers the peal
Of his laughter.
The widow appears
And studies him gravely,
Her face a medallion
Of grief.
JAD, 2010
Reversal
On the backslide ride
To penury –
The state you believed
You’d escaped –
Do you honor the whims
Of contemptible priests,
Their aversion to
Condoms and porn?
Recall that you
Fell for that last time.
Do you turn to your
Exiles' mantras –
Your poets in waiting,
Be damned –
While swapping your saints
For a secular conscience
Though forged in a smithy
Abroad?
Do you sanctify Behan
Then Beckett then Joyce
And rekindle the
Emerald Diaspora?
Or once you’ve rechristened
The hulls of dead ships,
Do you voyage to
Iceland, unfazed?
Observing the cost of
Unbridled contagion,
The feel of your
Future, first-hand?
Or do Celtic Tigers
Still thrill you?
JAD, 2010
Baal
As cloud cover thickens
And dreams tear apart
In the riptide breakers
Of autumn,
I note that the fires
In store for these precincts
Are crackling already,
Unlit.
From the flyaway feel
Of less stable footings –
Once stapled with
Strong summer light –
I flinch as the evening
Intoxicates Broadway
Then gallops towards
South Ferry slip.
JAD, 2010
In Hoc Signo
Primo
As his own diviner
And agent,
He adhered to the
Precepts of his life
While I was but a
Decoy on the rise.
Kurtz first broke
With the world of men –
Only then with the
Man within –
But I broke first
With myself.
Secondo
The air seemed swollen
With something that spring.
What matters are the
Questions that remain:
Have we ever advanced
Past Eliot?
Did Pound not require
Hard truth?
If we’re slouching again
Towards Bethlehem,
Do we wish to deplore it
Or be born?
And what of the days
Of Apocalypse?
Do they plan to present them
In the South?
Pledges make ready,
Assassins depart,
But what of the healers
And the arts?
Terzo
Dylan is seventy.
Was it duly noted?
Were we up in the attic
Stacking coins?
Pound would be stacking
And profiting, too.
He did write the book
On debasement.
Even as the buoyant
Descend into doubt,
Even as the Comex
Bleeds gold,
Some may invoke
In hoc signo vinces,
Even as the West
Falls again.
JAD, 2011
Floodtide
Victors in war, they
Eschewed the city,
Decamped with their
Confident brides;
Rejoiced in the sumptuous
Saturday sunlight
That lacquered their
Chevy’s and lawns.
Though the country had weathered
The greed of its banks
And excelled at
Totalized war,
None could have known that
The incoming floodtide
Would rise till their
Children went gray.
JAD, 2011
London-Berlin-New York
Am I drifting again
Through circadian flux
Or through stretches of
Hazy regret?
Samuel Rogers –
To you, Sam Shepard –
Is opining on
Writers and pain.
Here’s to sad Cassidy,
Flipper of tools,
And to Ti-Jean for
Pitching that fit.
They’ve grown as remote
As the faces I squint at –
These men made of words
On a page.
In old Portobello,
On Broadway in Soho,
On back to back
Twin summer days,
Shoppers converge
With the passion of palmers –
More pilgrimage-ready
Than flush.
Though London seemed prickly
And pressed to the edge,
Berlin stood rekindled
And poised,
Our Prenzlauer flat
Near the gate to the Volkspark,
A jewel for the taking,
We took.
JAD, 2011
Tribunal
We live in an age
Of mimicry
That Yeats would deplore
For its waste.
Our finest designs
And investitures
Are conceived to
Remake things the same.
If he still were intact
And implacable,
Pound would declare it
New Hell;
Joyce would be flummoxed;
Auden, deterred;
And Beckett, at a loss
For a word.
Solzhenitsyn would flee
To the five-story past
While Camus would
Pronounce us unfit.
Sartre and Celine would
Deliver the verdict;
And Picasso, condemn us
With a stroke.
JAD, 2012
He Grants You
New York is merely
New York, he says.
He’s withdrawing his
Fabled investment.
Mornings on Broadway,
The chill harbor wind,
Belong as they once did
To you.
The mist that envelops
Serene Brooklyn Heights
That filters the slant,
Winter sunlight
No longer requires
His shareholder’s stake
But falls to your issue
Through you.
And which of the ferries
And scows does he own,
The tankers at anchor,
Their cargoes?
Did you not draft the
Terms of the loans?
Do you not even now –
As the future expires,
The jobless conspire –
Seek payment?
And what of the
Budget and plans?
There are claims yet to
Audit, correct?
They were handled superbly
By you.
He’s cancelled his liens on
The East River bridges,
The parks and the
Five-story blocks.
The streets near Delancey –
Those junkyards of art –
And the piers on the Hudson
Are yours.
Let Washington Square
Now revert to a graveyard –
The white bones of blacks
Are still there.
He leaves them to you,
Your craft and your mercies.
He grants you these treasures
In full.
JAD, 2012
The Don
He never resorts to
Gambits or stunts,
This tracker of
Dark states of mind.
When characters lose it --
And how can they not? –
He jars them like spiders
Or frogs.
There are none who can tell it
So truly – remotely –
None so DeLillo
As Don.
JAD, 2012
Spit Baller
You enjoyed the reference
To Colonel House --
How I placed him
With Bismarck and
Mao.
There are times you just
Screw it and load up the ball,
Gob it with spit
Till it dances.
But the ball didn’t
Dance much today.
You squared up the reference
And knocked it to Butte.
You still have a
Major League eye.
But how have you fared
In the interim?
Exciting times, are they not?
For us, not as crazy as
Backstopping loans or
Pursuing Korean
Joint ventures.
Except it’s the world
Now at risk.
I’m working in runoff
Archiving files
And exempt from all
Chains of command,
Perplexed as to how
On only one airline,
I ever flew two
Million miles.
I stack my own boxes
Now.
JAD, 2012
Of Spring and Compressions
Someone said that he
Longed for spring,
Longed for it
Even in spring.
My son merely nodded
And grinned,
Mindful of winter,
The weight of his hopes,
His attraction to
Borderline states;
To urban compressions,
Space-time exempt
Where one might
Encounter it all.
We were back in the
Precincts of Gramercy
When a sadness
Stole over the day.
JAD, 2012
By Now
We do not exist
At some infinite point,
In some unified
Moment of being
But instead are dispersed
Throughout time.
The speed of descent –
At first, so compelling –
The raptures of space
Turn us loose;
Till, at last, we detect
It is we who are burning;
Our contrails, by now,
What’s left.
JAD, 2012
Belief
I grew up not only
An apostate –
Having left my faith
As a kid –
But also a
Militant atheist.
Today, I’m merely
Agnostic.
Blindly assuming
There isn’t a God
Is the same as insisting
There is one.
Belief either way –
Assassin of doubt –
Purges the heart
Of uncertainty.
JAD, 2012
From That Window
1.
The window faced south
Towards the airfield.
Tuned to the Yankees’
Spring opener,
He thought he could
See to St. Pete --
As if it stood waiting,
A few towns away,
Somewhere off churning
Route 1.
The sky there would surely
Be bright enough.
2.
He collected, that season,
A surplus of cards –
A couple of fistfuls,
At least –
And followed the Yankees
Wire to wire
As though he’d been lent
To The Times.
3.
Fetching his earphone,
He'd listen in bed
To Elvis, the Platters
The Earls.
At times, he tuned in
To Jean Shepherd.
4.
He imagined the
Raconteur’s intimate voice
Streaming in waves
Through that window –
From tower transmitters
That loomed like triumvirs,
Out past the tank fields,
Now dark.
5.
Some nights, he rose,
Returned to that window,
Stared at the towers,
Their blinking red lights;
Saw them as somehow
Completing the circuit –
Now that he yearned
To connect.
JAD, 2012
Latina
You are wearing the
Shortest shorts there are
And beneath them a
Pair of black fishnets.
Your thighs are persuasive
And urge me to stare
While your eyes, now glaring,
Rebuke me.
You need some attention
But not like this.
It’s time you considered
Maturity.
JAD, 2012
D.O.A.
What kind of man
Were you really?
One who saw women
As less than the game
And more as the field
Where you played it?
And what did you make
Of your talents?
Less, I would venture,
Than what you supposed
From the way you
Adjusted your thinking.
Was the trick just to sense it,
Reline it in verse
Then flavor the facts
With nostalgia?
The moment your Mecca,
You jettisoned goals –
What purpose in
Watching them perish –
With no wish to master,
Assemble, declaim,
No runes at the end
To decipher?
You opted unwisely
To sit this one out,
Reporter-at-large
That you were.
You bored yourself stupid
Then feigned not to care,
Your hopes D. O. A.
At the curb.
JAD, 2012
The Next One
I.
It will start in waves
Of sovereign default
Then spread to a host
Of services.
It’s already the future
In Athens.
It will worsen in countries
Where Euros deflate
Then pivot, at speed,
Towards the Core.
II.
The Eurobond road –
It’s lately too traveled –
Looks potholed
From Belgium to Spain
Where drives to recover,
Through ever more credit,
Will falter then stall,
Over time –
Even as knowhow
In small jurisdictions
Reflexively chosen
Takes root.
III.
Our final redoubt,
Our corpus of law,
May never again
Be applied;
While once it is pierced,
The perimeter –
Capital’s versatile
Mercantile shield –
Will shatter from
Pledges unmet.
JAD, 2012
Solstice
To this place of cranes
And oxidized steel,
Of sunlight cascades
Down curtain wall,
Of shapes that portend
A sheerer New York,
This place where they
Still wish to come –
What is the draw, the
Power that lures them,
Craning, gaping,
Heads tilted back?
What do they cherish,
Deliver, uncover?
What do they stream here
To see?
Are they bound by the code
Of this holy rebuttal,
This ode to unquenchable
Grief?
Is the world so exacting
As few can admit
While still bleeding buckets
Inside?
These towers, delivered
In gleaming defiance,
Grow cool in the low
Amber glow.
The seekers though weary –
Ignoring the hour –
Remain unconvinced
They should leave.
Twilight surprises
The sky with its pallor,
Erasing the flight
Of fly balls.
The year’s longest day,
Its triumph behind it,
Returns to the mists
Of surmise
While summer, recalled
To the height of its power,
Decamps down its darkening
Arc,
Here in this place where the
Dead have no inkling;
There where the living
Look on.
JAD, 2012
Timeless
I remember summers
On the Upper East Side,
Five-story walkups
In the sun;
Side streets that reeked,
Wet August heat,
Tugs chugging out
Towards the Sound.
In ways that for mystics
Time seems to stop,
In ways that
Transcendence persists,
Those summers kept shining
Like sun-minted coins
As bright as a
Miner’s good luck.
JAD, 2012
Into One
I sit in
The Ramble
Alone on
A bench,
A gift from
A couple
Whose name
I’ll omit.
The sun
Through the
Willows,
The breeze
Off the lake
Meld into
One
As I wait.
JAD, 2012
Eruption
I’ve ground through the grays
Of reflection,
The gaunt aboriginal
Fear;
Clambered through skylights
Of weak aspiration,
Recording my losses
At cost.
By the dawn’s weary twinkle
On dampening sands,
I’ve danced to the piper’s
Mad tune,
Recruiting the victims
Of sexist deceptions,
Their plaints and regrets
My design.
I’ve sprinted, buck naked,
Through cities at midnight
Past limits of
Rashness and luck,
Only to crumple in
Black-car Korea
In traffic re-crossing
The Han.
Embedded in sorrow,
The rage I have stifled
Erupts into cadence
And spleen
Or sometimes on buses
Or ships sailing smartly,
Transmutes into things
I can feel.
JAD, 2012
In My Way
I used to detach
Into hideaway moods
And to write in my way
From a bubble.
The world, I insisted,
Had vanished for good,
The fear I detected,
My proof.
I realized in time
I would let the rest go
When the best of my
Options expired.
As close as they came,
They always seemed distant
Then ducked as I
Nearly took aim.
JAD, 2012
I Don’t See a Soul
I look in the mirror,
My father looks back.
I notice the lines
Of his body.
I don’t see a trace
Of a soul.
Form over substance?
Form for itself?
Are Plato’s the
Forms we prefer?
I'm certain I don't
See a soul.
I stare at this torso –
My father’s or mine
Or mine but evolving
Towards his.
Should I circle the bases
Or shag a few flies?
Or is Prufrock’s the line
That comes next?
I look in the mirror,
Don’t see a soul –
Plato and Prufrock
Be damned.
JAD, 2012
Primus Inter Pares
English is richer
After Chaucer.
After Shakespeare,
It reads richer still.
Donne, both in sermons
And rough-metered verse,
Fuses the sacred
And profane.
Language with Lincoln
Is pared to its roots,
And nothing inessential
Remains.
Joyce in his blindness
Exults in his words,
While Beckett
Deracinates his.
McEwan retraces,
Rewords what we fear
As Leonard slings slang
In Detroit.
Each of these masters
In ways is unique.
None writes a sentence
Like Salter.
JAD, 2012
9:38 AM
Snow lies abreast
The rolling land
Like a tightly fitted
Contour sheet
Strangely bright in the
Weak luminescence
Of an otherwise drab
And colorless day.
Fog afoot in the
Dream-like distance,
Beyond the trees and
Sloping fence lines,
Blurs all sense of
The broader vistas,
Future stress and
Consequence.
JAD, 2013
Fissure
When did his soul
First fracture?
And when did he
Notice the crack?
Had it mustered the will
To appear?
And when did it state
Its intentions?
Did it happen the moment
He labeled his lists –
Rubicon then
Barbarossa?
I'd venture he sensed it
Much sooner.
His pain has described him
For years.
JAD, 2013
Wassaic Station
Columns of ovular,
Overhead lamps
Like small UFO’s
In formation –
The lights of this station,
Defiant of night –
Shine brighter, it seems,
In the cold;
The rest of this valley,
A seamless black hole,
The terror awaiting
In space.
JAD, 2013
Saturday
These gray, midwinter
Manhattan skies
Prefigure a fierce
Austerity,
Though few can
Envision it yet –
None where I sit
In this Pret a Manger,
At a window
That fronts on the square.
Out on the pavements,
Shoppers in parkas
Mass like initiatives
Missed.
May they miss the next
Wave of defaults.
I finish my sandwich,
Dispose of my trash,
Set out for the racks
At St. Marks,
Charmed by the scale of
The buildings on Broadway,
Whose contours enfold
Me in time.
I pass for the moment
On Burroughs’s bio,
Select some Bukowski
And Kerouac.
St. Marks is still there,
Its artful assortments.
I’m back in the 80’s.
Don’t tell.
JAD, 2013
My Mentor
Ugly to some, he
Never gave up and
Wrote about things
That hurt him.
Boils had scarred him,
Distorting his face;
I was handsome and
Tended to flaunt it.
He seemed for a while
My only true friend,
And reading his poems
Restored me.
He leant me his guts,
His sense of a line,
Absolved me of
Living so recklessly.
I knew he was there,
A few years ahead,
Stalking the darkness,
Uncannily free;
Living on luck –
Decaying, but mindful –
This man who relined me,
Showed me my scars.
JAD, 2013
Bank Shots
What was the force that
Impelled us?
Was it we – our own
Vital energy?
Were our hearts somehow broken
Then programmed to steal?
Did we reckon the gods
At our beckon?
What dreams were at play –
Have we dared to remember?
Could we even remember
If we dared?
The world was less wired –
Not nearly so frisked.
There were far fewer
Tropes and defenses.
The invective was watered,
We’d all thrown a fight,
And the night streets,
All lighted, looked smart.
We played all the angles,
Took bank shots galore,
Flashed backhands while
Charging the net.
Yet, the sun also rose,
The ads are still running,
And the mountain
Returned, after all.
JAD, 2013
Ask Jack
What are we doing,
Moment to moment,
But trying to
Dominate matter?
Muscle it backwards,
Grasp its lapels,
Wrestle it down,
Disarm it.
Trap it in words or
Digital pulses,
Increasing our speed
And finesse.
Shorten the distance,
Punish resistance,
Discover new lines
Of attack.
JAD, 2013
Ports of Call
The old towns all
Come as they are:
Measured, savvy,
Politely direct –
In medias res –
But restrained.
The people seem
Conscious of time.
As most of the streets
Are for walking,
There is only the
Occasional car.
You hear it behind you
A long way away,
The low hum of
Rubber on stone.
The prettiest girls,
Of every description –
In a spectrum of
Pigments and shades –
Clerk in the shops
And cafes.
They hand you your change
With conviction.
You sip your hot chocolate,
Decipher the street,
Recall the fierce
Passions of youth
While back aboard ship,
Your sleek barquentine,
They’re gulping fine wine
And martinis.
JAD, 2013
Wherever I Flew
In my corporate years,
There was June –
Choice trips to Europe,
Tributes to light,
The solstice in
Paris or Prague.
Wherever I flew,
The sunset was waiting
At the base of a
Sailor’s red sky.
The markets were surging;
The Soviets, gone;
Leverage increased
As my air-miles peaked.
I felt like the new kid
But, this time, with perks;
My counterfeit twin
And accomplice.
I remember walled cities –
The stone.
JAD, 2013
Sea Change
It’s something like this
After every long trip.
After Europe, I feel it
The strongest –
The comfort attending
Each homecoming step –
Down Thompson, cross Bleecker,
Up Park.
To have lived in Manhattan
Through blackouts and floods
Is equivalent for some
To survival.
What matters far more –
A bard’s metered prayer –
Is written in Whitman
And Crane.
JAD, 2013
In Bursts
It happens in flat,
Emotionless states
That nuggets are
Sometimes unearthed
When the mind has rejected,
The heart disregards,
And the evenings slip
Meekly away
As the voice finds its calling,
Musters the words,
Launches them, metered,
In bursts.
JAD, 2013
Court It
A poem like a breeze
Arises itself
And departs for
Wherever it will.
It’s no more your own than
Your time or a task
The moment you’ve spent
Or performed it.
You can’t force a poem;
You must court it –
Sensing, screening
And sorting your words
As though you were
Testing a proof.
JAD, 2013
Last Days
Light sharpens,
Pavements cool,
Passions relinquish
Their hold.
The air, so snugly
Enfolding,
Hastens to toughen
And thin.
Skies drier,
Cleansed by the breeze,
Gleam like
Sanitized plates.
When but in early
September,
Is summer so
Thoroughly loved.
JAD, 2013
Outside Timberland
Against the truest
Cerulean blue,
Scoops of puff-clouds
Float.
Engulfed by shoppers,
Low-Bro gloats,
Sunlight amok
In the street.
JAD, 2013
I Left Out Taxi Driver I. A Chinatown crook With his sullen grit And a spewer of Raging Bull – Is he just the Quintessence of Mean Streets Or an L.A. Aguirre, The Wrath of God? It is said in the Dance halls of Nashville That he hits with The force of a Full Metal Jacket And can smash a Man’s face into Five Easy Pieces For a Few Dollars More If you wish. II. On a Two Lane Blacktop, To Manhattan We motored from Somewhere remote -- Then cased every bookstore For sly Annie Hall Who’d pilfered his Herbal Shampoo. The crux of the issue Was not Love and Death; No need to inveigle The Godfather. He'd brokered The Marriage Of Maria (nee) Braun Then balked on Attending the wedding. And he, The American Friend. III. So, making like Jack, The third Easy Rider, We managed, for once, To distract him, Convinced him to screw it – “You’re just Coming Home. There will be no Apocalypse Now.” Given his obsessions – The French Connection, The French Lieutenant’s Woman in bed, The King of Marvin Gardens Pummeled by Rocky, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Dead – Might he just, "Take the Money and Run? IV. “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” The Deer Hunter squawks, And the wind cries out, “Dirty Harry.” Don’t Look Now, there’s A Fistful of Dollars. Bang the Drum Slowly Till it comes. The Missouri Breaks sharply, Straw Dogs dissemble, Kramer vs. Kramer Drones on. The Conformist and Patton Have found their Deliverance – That inner Nosferatu They share. May you have a good Dog Day Afternoon. JAD, 2013
Low Point
I hover above
My depression
Like a gull surveying
A landfill.
It’s been days since I
Circled and squawked.
Shall I dive into filth
As fetid as this
And for pickings this
Meager and foul?
Should I claw through the
Vermin and slime?
Or peel off adroitly,
Without veering back,
Then trail in the
Ferry’s broad wake?
Do I still dread the
Dead-bottom harbor?
Old Joseph Mitchell
Once wrote about that
In that piece in a
Gamer New Yorker.
He’d mastered the quest;
The rest came in time.
JAD, 2014
I Just Was
My accountant was
Wearing a back brace –
And he’s seeing a
Shrink with his wife –
Confiding that, yes,
He’d had surgery
After falling off a ladder
Then a dock.
Relieved when the
Meeting was over,
I delighted in
Striding up Park.
The sky looked repainted;
The light, a white gold;
The Thirties a
Radiant gift.
Working the moment,
I checked out the crowd;
Detected the tells
In their faces –
Eyes that might harden
Or parry my gaze
In ways that
Amuse me, no end.
I gauged on the fly
My coordinates;
The towers obstructing
The sun;
The heft of the buildings –
Several, too dense –
And where I might cross
Against traffic.
I saw where I was –
The place in itself –
But whiffed on the link
And attachment;
I checked my fine-tuner,
My tracker of streets,
My space-time decoder.
No luck.
I knew what I saw
And named it at once,
Though it lacked all
Associative context.
Immune to the
Time-fix of memory,
I was lost in the Thirties
On Park.
Had I emptied my brain,
Voided all sense?
Had I taken a spin
With dementia?
I was neither in pain
Nor in session
Though attuned to some
Lingering shock.
I stopped for a sandwich,
Sampled a thought,
Returned to an
Ad hoc serenity.
Had I seen with my eyes
Through my panic?
Or unpledged my allegiance
To the past?
JAD, 2014
Miles
With Miles,
My mood
Met its
Match.
JAD, 2014
Up and Down Stiles
The trucks rumbled up
And down Stiles Street
From morning till night
Each day,
Humping their loads
Over bumps in the blacktop,
Shaking the house
To its joints –
A perfect Cape Cod
On a block of Cape Cods,
On a street that
Shrank down to a path.
JAD, 2014
No More
God is no more than
A desperate yearning
For the ultimate
Loving parent.
JAD, 2014
Whitehall
A slash of blinding,
Angled light;
The polished steel
Of the terminal;
Winter’s postcard
Home.
Stinging gusts in
My windward ear;
Tomorrow’s throbbing
Earache.
My left eye tears
In sympathy.
The cavalry charge
For the ferry;
Gangways aweigh,
The rush to the rail –
The foghorn sounds,
And we’re off!
Posses of laughing,
Squealing teens,
Jostling for shots
Of Ms. Liberty;
I speak to Maxine
On my cell.
Freighters at anchor,
Small craft astern;
The water, the harbor,
The light.
Follow the glare
To the Narrows.
JAD, 2014
March III
Gusts off the river
At 2 PM,
A crystalline dusting
Of snow.
March has come in
Like the Ardennes offensive –
A loser’s belated
Finale.
The air now as thin
As the wind’s hissing blade,
Reduces the risk
Of impurities.
But, of course, we suspect
That they’re there.
I’m ranging down pavements
In search of fresh words
To fortify verses
Just penned.
A keening of sirens,
Too piercing to run from,
Tears through the air
Like a spear.
JAD, 2014
It’s Simple
Why the material
World?
Consciousness craved
Experience.
JAD, 2014
Eternity
Eternity plays
Several ways.
You can watch it unfold,
Discreetly ignore it
Or suppress all
Awareness of Time,
Eternity’s twin
And enforcer.
But as evening unseen
In this generous light,
Attaches itself
To these pavements,
Is there even a hint
Of transcendence –
Mortality’s longed-for
Reprieve?
JAD, 2014
In Madison Square
Sunday evening in
Madison Square,
We sit here refreshed
By awareness --
The city as refuge
And glade --
As here in this breezy,
Sheltering green,
Lie ties to the
Primeval forest.
We’ve gathered with children,
Setters unleashed,
But don’t think to mingle
Or crowd.
To yield to the spell
Of this clearing, it seems,
Is more than sufficient
For now.
JAD, 2014
The Turning
After the park,
The tin pan piano,
The Gershwin with
Clinkers and flubs;
After the tin can
Pianist’s departure,
His brief valediction
And pitch;
And after the glances
At faces and benches,
At paths that lead
Back to the street;
I head past the brownstones –
The lure of their stoops –
To the stillness in
Sheridan Square.
The streets are refilling,
The moment rounds out,
The air bears a
Summoning softness.
I remember that mellowing
Afternoon light,
Those widening
West Village skies.
JAD, 2014
Sounds of a Train
They lived on a leafy
Dead-end block
Near the bend in the
Old county road
Where tankers and dump-trucks,
From morning till night,
Rumbled in columns
Both ways.
At night in his bedroom,
The house nearly still,
He’d listen for sounds
Of a train.
But was it a train or
One he imagined
Or a fragment of
Something he’d dreamt?
JAD, 2014
Holiday’s End
A searching Sunday
Stillness;
The hush near the
Holiday’s end.
The heat, bouncing up
From the pavement in currents,
Laps at the base
Of my chin.
Tourists regrouping,
Commingle on Third,
Deploy down the
Aisles of Walgreen’s.
It’s 5:57,
The 6th of July.
In Iraq, they’ve proclaimed
A new caliphate.
JAD, 2014
Time and Money
Time, no doubt, is money
Though too much time
Is to too little money
What too much money
Is to too little time.
Sadly, you lose, either way.
JAD, 2014
Grand Central Torrent
The stench, the pee line,
The wait.
The dreadlocked disruptor –
Swearing, wigged-out –
Kicks open the door
To a stall.
Using the toe of
His filthy right boot,
He gingerly raises
The seat
As out comes the serpent-like
Circumcised joint,
Peeing a Biblical
Torrent –
At times, almost
Reaching the bowl.
Back from the action,
A few steps away,
A porter is wiping
The mirrors –
Wielding his squeegee
With masterful strokes –
Unfazed by the flood
In the stall.
Two kids – I’m guessing –
From upstate New York
Have cautiously
Entered the scene,
Their noses and eyes
Having warned them,
Their faces reflecting
Concern.
JAD, 2014
The Light
The room is bathed
In the briefest light
As the sun finds the angle
At eleven –
As if its traversal
Through simonized skies
Had been arced so as
Not to break faith.
Yet, we fret that the sun
May abandon its course,
Depart from its ancient
Trajectory
Or, mocking our fear,
Not veer at all,
Yet shine brighter still
On our lies.
Here in Manhattan,
Where fear dresses up,
Defers to the dance
Of ambition,
Where passion and heartbreak
Compete for your buck
And where fantasy
Flirts with your nerve,
There are pilgrims in progress
On Sundays in parks
Who, featured on benches
Or strolling in pairs –
Or lashed to the masts
Of reconnaissance –
Feel keenly the reach
Of that light.
JAD, 2014
Manhattan Summer
There were as it went
No getaways,
No havens of
Anxious pursuit.
Summer might ripen
What winter had withered,
Might leaven the
Flatbread fat.
But gone was the tide-ebbing
Afternoon sheen,
Its skim-able
Silvery sliver;
The plunk of the paddles,
The Frisbees aloft,
The circles of
House-sharing friends.
Frail, freighted ferries
Of memory
Kept docking in
Twilight’s last slips
Or sailing on currents
Of liquid dim daybreak
In search of the
Choicest of words.
There were four-park digressions
And Sundays of sun,
Traces of sea-breeze
Downtown
Where a welcoming sky
In the sub-surface stillness
Reprised what I’d known
All along.
JAD, 2014
Gate A3
1.
What is it about
Some jewelry?
Simply the way
That it dangles?
Is that all it takes
To excite?
Breasts and testicles
Dangle as well.
Do dangling definers
Empower?
Endow us
With sexual heft?
2.
Or are symbolist
Structures the charm?
Is dangling jewelry –
Like low-hanging lust –
Ripe for libidos
To clutch?
Or are hoops merely
Circles that shine?
This I consider
While waiting to board,
Scanning the wilted
In wheelchairs.
3.
This bracelet I wear
Is of black rubber-plastic,
A type they first
Sold to the punks.
It – or ones like it –
Have ringed my right wrist
Since the Clash and
Pretenders debuted.
I’ve labeled this bracelet
Mortality’s chit,
My indenture to
Time and Thanatos.
4.
What is it about
Some jewelry?
Can it cede you its
Luster and weight?
Its properties –
Metal or mineral –
Its provenance/
Pedigree pitch?
As for rubber-like bracelets
That signify death,
I’ve a dozen replacements
In drawers.
JAD, 2014
A3 Again
The sky is fiercely
Un-Florida.
This is, after all
La Guardia.
A column of wheelchairs
In wait at the gate,
Extends to the
Concourse’s edge.
Those in the wheelchairs
Look lost.
The traveling public,
American stalwarts,
Descendants of builders
Of interstates,
Board and deplane
With aplomb --
Shielded, for now, from
The plight of that column
And gliding with
Roll-aboard ease.
JAD, 2014
While Jetting a Few Million Miles
I chose in the 80’s
A split-screen life.
Perhaps, it was
Picture-in-picture,
Though whole and intact
It was not.
Weekdays, I worked in
An office to eat;
Nights and on weekends,
Caroused.
Daytime for business;
Nighttime, the hunt –
No one the wiser,
No sweat.
Times I stayed in,
I just read –
History, the Canon,
The Classics, the Beats.
Old Russians, odd theorists,
Good pulp.
Of the writers I chose –
All of them gifted –
Scarred Charles Bukowski
Stood out.
I’d seen him one evening
On public TV then
Forgotten for years
He existed.
By the time he next surfaced,
I’d opted for broke –
Determined to live
That split life.
With the help of his books,
I embraced it.
Soon, I became what
I’d always intended:
A functioning rogue
Cosmopolitan,
Buffing as needed
My corporate persona;
In saltier moments,
Discarding it.
With only one goal –
To conquer New York –
I faced no
Additional stress.
What drew me to Buk
Was his dissolute life,
His talent and
Goading depression.
He lived in cheap rentals,
Spent years at the track,
Got rowdy but wrote
Every night.
Not once did he ever
Believe.
He was scathing, irreverent
And roared with a fury
I’d never encountered
In print.
In some ways, he felt
Like a mentor –
A renegade shaman
With self-healing poems,
At a time when I
Trafficked in myth.
To Henry Chinaski,
L.A. was as vital
As midnight New York
Was to me.
I saw in the way
He expressed his regrets
A preview of how
I'd view mine.
He’d done it all wrong
And would barely cash in;
I’d done it all right
For no reason.
Somehow, he managed
Though just by a nose;
I jetted a few
Million miles.
Buk passed away
In mid-94,
A few months after
My father.
Buk had leukemia,
Saw he was dying
But stuck with his writing
Throughout.
For years, there were tributes
And posthumous works,
But those are now
Finished as well.
What survives is, of course,
What he taught me.
JAD, 2014
From the Rain
Soft-slippered fog
Descends from the hills,
Collects on the floor
Of the valley;
Blankets the station –
Its Subaru’s, too –
Dimly, the tree line
Appears.
Dulling November,
Its palette of grays,
Deploys in the wake
Of bright color.
Waterlogged fence posts –
None painted white –
Darkened and slick
From the rain.
JAD, 2014
The 12:28
Dead winter-still,
Sit the foothills,
Banked rows of
Snow clouds above.
Patches of landscape --
Four shades of gray --
Mimic scenes seen
In Cezanne's.
Strained luminescence's
Moisturized light
Softens all
Notions of time
As men on the platform,
Parkas zipped up,
Pace as the train
Trundles in.
JAD, 2014
Tudor Place 