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TONY

  Frank Sinatra sang for the lonely Dean flirted and scored   Sammy was a one-man show But Tony was something else. Tony was a swinging cool cat With a growl   and a purr He was a schooner   gliding at 100 knots on a cloudless day where the sun likes to jump and jive He was a rocket ship blasting towards the milky way daddio He was a street kid   stomping through puddles   on a rainy day He was a late-night   after hours jazz club When the cooking was just getting started A splayed bow tie and a sweaty brow   leaning on a baby grand ready to prowl the alley of sound with Bill Evans   He was a preacher at the pulpit of pop who snapped to the verse and flew a chorus like a kite in flight  He was the boutonniere   The Beau Brummel pinkie ring The diamond pin on a sleeping lapel He was as   Italian as Calabria and as American as the songbook He was the spotlight The stage at Carnegie Hall The crooner who probably would have sung for nothing if the stars hadn't aligned. He was the thump

If Heaven Isn't Here

If Heaven isn’t there And God is nothing more than a well-funded daydream Then where have you gone? I think I know. Because I can feel you You are The choreographer of  The Tides The sculptor  of silence The secret breath  of the wind The infinite kindness  of the sun The late-night custodian  of the moon The inventor   of storms Even though I can no longer see you perform a series of soubresauts along a serpentine stage of sand  the kind that weeps down  the slender neck of an  hourglass  until time runs out, or hear your voice that was made to sing with mine or entwine my fingers with yours to escort you safely home Life goes on with you. Everywhere.

The Imaginary Emporium of Mine

 Ever since my heartbeats matched the tick-tock pulse of  “The Syncopated Clock” theme of the Late Show I have lived in a house bursting  with shimmering strangers whom I have never met And cannot live without. They are the movie spirits who have shrugged off time and death with their throaty, cocktail-party laughs bone slinky gowns and all-night tuxes shadow lit by Hurrell  diffused by plumes of Lucky Strike  smoke armed with trigger-happy flasks happy feet swooning kisses, and jazzy bursts of banter that click and clack like  the fascinating rythym of a reporter’s  hot story keyboard Others are clowns who can tumble in a windstorm cling for dear life to the spindly hands of a clock shyly tip  their derbies to flirty ingenues and twirl their canes like a mini windmill. There’s also coin-flipping gangsters crooning cowboys twirling dancers  golden hearted harlots baby faced soldiers  heavy-lidded private eyes and fated romantics  who always suffer from a collapse of judgment before lov

The Caretakers

Children are the caretakers Of stars who can't remember  how or when they fell. It may have been a Tuesday It all happened so fast. One minute they Were defying gravity Like the Flying Wallendas And then... That's all they can remember  They tumbled  And flailed landing like the twisted  rag doll bodies of Normandy until The Caretakers  arrived to collect them  like sea shells  scooping them up  into their low swaying buckets and carrying them  off to the supple shade of a single striped umbrella planted  like an astronaut’s flag on the sea of tranquility of the soon to be forgotten  moon. Then The Caretakers began their sedulous work on the resurrection of  The Fallen. Points were readjusted Spines were realligned And compasses were rejiggered so that the stars will never wander off by themselves  ever again. The work ended at evenfall with a good night kiss that triggered a thermonuclear reaction in even the coldest of stars which lit the way for The Caretakers to wade into t

The Family Favorite

A January corpse lies face down   In a frozen stream of gutter soup abandoned like a thought forgotten like a dream a Christmas skirt tangled  in its limbs. Just hours ago  that cadaver was our family favorite the center of attention bigger than life  twinkling like the skyline is right now I remember when you first came home  Daddy carried you in like he was balancing a birthday cake  Or a hand grenade with a missing pin Mommy fed you  dressed you  and stared at you all night as she sat in the comfy chair near the fireplace  and serenaded you with happy songs as the snow  outside swirled like parade confetti gone mad. But it turned out that you were not easy to live with. You were too much work. You were in the way. You took up too much space You were a constant mess You were no longer wanted. You were no longer loved. So out you went,  unlike the way you came in. And then  we simply rearranged the furniture and got on with our lives. And now there you lie, breathless, disfigured and

Tomorrow

My heart contains the balance sheet of me which itemizes The tally of my triumphs The ledger of my losses The listicle of my loves The record of my rage  The registry of my regrets The dividends of my defiance The subtotal of my sadness At the end of yet another day where nothing seems to add up Just as I’m about to tumble into The daisy field of sleep A voice arrives  that belongs to my dad who offers a simple,  one-word message  from the faraway that tells me everything that I need to hear. He whispers, “Tomorrow.”

The Perils of the Soft-Knit Night

We arrive at this age carrying a musty carpetbag filled with semnolent dreams more  invisible  more lonely and more afraid of the dark  than when we were Dr. Denton little  and cried out in the middle of the night for someone to come rescue us  like the the Bible’s lost lamb from the perils of the soft-knit night. What pulls us through this blackened unknown  that lies before us where heartbeats betray us  and echoes fall like wind wounded kites is  the levitation pull of mom and dad who wait  like the tender shepherds that they have always been  to welcome us home