THE HOLLYWOOD RAGE PAGE

On these mornings When words That are regular commuters Do not get here on time The only thing to do Other than endlessly peer down the track And hope that I see them coming Is to turn the moment into Drift Because the tenderest of times That I ever had Was when I sailed On inflatable rafts That were stuffed with  the commemoration of breaths When time was the current And the sun promised never To leave me When clouds puffed themselves up With tufts of pride And I never knew want for Kisses That I have to search for now Like a missing child Which is what I feel like The older that I get Almost as old as my dad was When he made the very same declaration as the sun Until one day On almost Valentine’s Day He must have forgotten his promise And boarded his very own raft That no longer required breaths And sailed Far, far, far away Like the words that I am still waiting for.

She arrived barefoot Making her entrance  on the green carpet Pulled by the Magnet of music Her shoes Abandoned Like glass slippers Her toddler orbiting her Like a baby astronaut Around the hemisphere of her skirt Which twirls Like an umbrella In Singing in the Rain As she performs  the spontaneous, wild-child choreography of motherhood Leaving In her car The depleted Happy Meal sack The weaponized heart The inheritance of disappointments The provocation of bills The asterisks  The annotations The affirmations The endless excuses and The resistance of indisputable facts Which is why she is here On leave from the crusades With its sanguinary battlefield  of computers And coworkers And a marriage  That has lost its romance Like the keys that she can never find She has come to let go of the equation  which she insists is the truth To turn to the sun and the sky For all the wisdom that she needs. Which will

On these days When the gravitational pull of sad moon tides Insinuates trouble below My life becomes the  regulated flow  of memory air  Whose chemistry is  equal parts Distant triumphs And the stampede of regrets Which I breathe  in And  Expel out Like a cliff diver’s  exhale  And then All I want to do is float in the shadows Of the ocean floor And stare up at the sky Because I know  that is where My eavesdropping parents Are eternally bound To the crystal radio of heaven Which converts  the electromagnetic impulses  of our grown up unhappiness Into a language that they are fluent in Which I am convinced must sound  Exactly like us When we were  fitful  In our Cribs And wanting a glass of water By mostly Mostly them.

I remember my little boy soak When the cadence of bubble tides Would ricochet off tiles With pop and circumstance Filling the bathroom With the song of the tub. I remember the summer chirp Of crickets That pulsated outside my bedroom window like winged heartbeats Which would take flight  and soar in formation In honor of  The death of the day. And I remember the sound of my dad Laughing at Jackie Gleason  Like someone was tickling his feet Transmitted from  faraway living room island To the shores of my crib Which for a one brief second Erased his blackboard  And made him forget  the chalk of everyone Who he had lost And still ached for  Just like I did Whenever mommy said Good night  And would disappear into foyer light Perhaps forever. Despite the fact that my job then Was the pursuit of happiness I was always acutely aware even at two Of the hidden companionship of sadness Which lived in the secret