THE HOLLYWOOD RAGE PAGE

When the assassin’s bullet of  rejection Hits your heart  All the birds Of your enchanted forest  Are suddenly stilled  And Grounded by grief  Because only those with wings Truly understand The risks of flight. After a moment of silence They assemble Like memorializing Wallendas Along a high-wire branch And sing a healing song from The plume of their chests In honor of you, Their fallen comrade. And then  After applying  the ceremonial beak-full of mercurochrome  And a kiss  straight from the nest  To the scraped knees of your ego They take to the skies In perfect  formation Because They still have worlds to conquer And love to search for And poetry to finish. Just like you.

I am six And I am gone And all I can leave behind. Are my words And the echo trails of songs That I sang In church with grandma, On my favorite swing, That used to guide  the tips my shoes to the sky, Or in my room where  I always danced To grown up songs That I knew were about love. I am six And I am gone. And I take with me the only shadow That I have never known Which will never grow Into the image of a man. I am six And I am gone And I will never ride the Sky Trail Monorail At Gilroy Gardens Again Or Bugly the Goldfish Or the duck shaped paddle boats Which I used to stand up on And yell Look at me, mommy! Look at me! While my mom and dad Would beam back Like a pair of lighthouses Who would never let me become Lost at sea. I am six  And I am gone. And I will never go to Christmas Hill Park again Where I used to ride my bike to the moon And kick goals And have picnics on the damp g

I speak to my mom every day. When we   connect The fragrance of memory arrives  like prairie storm clouds Filled with Impending sauces, Dabs of Chanel, And finger-painted lotions Which were applied To the taut skin canvas Of pale white legs And shy ankles. And there are sounds which are light years away The rapture of records The duet of parakeets The side show of television The unbreakable code of Yiddish With just a word or two  I am back in our tiny apartment castle Where the Queen Wore a thorny crown of rollers And the armor of a girdle While the King pulled his dreams Like a plow horse In the field of the family. We talk My mom and I Covering the vast territory  Of nothing And everything I ask her about dad, How he’s doing Because I know that he’s listening from  behind the citadel of  A snap-opened newspaper Where he spent most of his life hiding Behind the headlines. And in the end,  when i

Despite their official status Ghosts do not retire Or sign up for Medicare They are alive and well  The bigger than life ones  Live with vivacity in the  transmission of streams On the twirling carousel of turntables In the cemeteries of novels And in the silver screen infinity of movies  Where at this very moment Jean Harlow is Slinking like a panther in A dangerous negligee And Jimmy Stewart is stammering his Way into the heart Of a woman who has Pulverized his bashful vocabulary. The city ones still drive trolly cars And horse-drawn lunch wagons And dunk doughnuts in Chock Full of Nuts And sell the Herald Tribune for a nickel on  Street corners And sip in speakeasies  And row barefoot in Central Park  With parasols and straw hats While legendary performances Are still being given beneath the ornate chandeliers of Theater palaces. The ones who are closest to me, The once upon a time animated relatives Who used t