Recent Poems

How Many?

How many springs,
Ignored resurrections
And scorned destinations 
Have passed?

And how many women
Dispatched?

Have I hollowed the hallways
Of corporate excess
With agendas conceived
On my own? 

Have I looted the
Crudest of lies?

I wander this district,
Regrouping on Sixth
Where gold-plating thins
As I age.

Are there any who trade
In rare metals?

I’ve mastered these measures,
Concocted this past
And now must assemble 
These lines.

Are there any who
Still seek instruction?

How many springs,
Repressed perturbations
And fogged contemplations
Stream past?

And how many heartbreaks,
Rehashed?

JAD, 2021

Your Past

Unless you block it
By blasting your brain,
Or your brain rebrands you
Itself,
Your past tends to dog you
And fuel your distress
When remorse is your
Torture of choice.
Is this how you reckon
You’ll purge yourself clean?
It’s never too late
To let go.

JAD, 2021

REM XXXVIII

Your measured mercies
Masquerade
As missions more than less.
You mock your victims’ pain.

The ease with which
You shed regret
Assures a gnawing dread.
You do it nonetheless.

The sacred sauce
Of secret selves
Seeps slowly through your skin.
You out yourself routinely.

Your bent is breaking
Bronco wills
And carving out your turf
You’ve seen your tides recede.

Though seldom one
To help a friend,
You're quick to strike a blow.
You feel it makes you strong.

Who still evades
The cavalcade
Of all you still may try
Is wiser by the day.

JAD, 2021

East 60’s

There came that instant
Second sense,
Some stronger intimation,
A thrilling surge
Of sentiment
You’d never felt before.
Your first Manhattan
Side-street spring,
The play of heat and light.
You cupped those days
In trembling palms
And pledged to not let go.

JAD, 2021

Sisters II

Novels and theories
And music in waves,
The pang of a
Heartbreaking smile.
Five-story walkups 
With green-painted halls;
The call of the night-
Crawling street.

Who were we really –
We purest of heart,
We marchers and
Agents of change?
Merely consumers
Of camouflaged debt,
We lovers of Keynes
And cocaine?

I picture you walking
Up Broadway that night,
Your sister and you
In your moods.
No money, no family,
No merciful God.
I grinned through my shock,
And you knew.

There for the taking
Were each of you – both.
I’d only to curb
My compulsion.
Did I ever attempt it?
Not in those days.
And yet you had talent
And understood love.

But none of that mattered
As both of you died
While, numbly, I
Stumbled along.
You wouldn’t have changed me.
My soul never formed,
Though I’d learned what I wasn’t
And never would be.

It wasn’t so tragic –
What never occurred
As that kind of wound
Can be treated.
What crippled us finally
Despite our designs,
Is what couldn’t have
Happened at all.

JAD, 2021

Manhattanhenge

I live near the river
Where cul-de-sacs cross,
Where to get back to Second,
You keep turning left,
Where to see past the moment,
Glance back towards the shore
And picture the future,
From there.

Between manicured greens
And the towers that flank them,
East 42nd
Turns cross-street supreme -- 
As sacred to pilgrims
As fertile to thieves --
And sunset’s own canyon,
Come June.

JAD, 2021

Rainout 

The game rained out and
With no urge to write,
I watched two movies
On cable:
Born on the Fourth
Of July -- it hurt --
And The Talented, crazed
Mr. Ripley.
I’d seen them before – 
Both, numerous times – 
And shuttled between them
All night.

Vietnam at last put the
Lie to our lives,
But the Kovic’s refused
To accept it;
Though for others who grasped it
And knew what it meant,
It split them in
Permanent ways.
As for ruthless, deluded
Tom Ripley,
He drowned in the well
Of his greed.

JAD, 2021

Fears

Fears once forgotten, 
And terrors dispersed,
Are forming again 
As I write.
I'm probing for foresight,
The will to reflect,
The skills to decipher
What’s next. 

JAD, 2021