Penguin Poems

This hula hoop is perfect, Daddy, see!
She laughs, and sways her hips in filligree
Describing graceful circles all around
Her dancer’s torso, while the sighing sound
Of flouncing skirts, makes impish parody

Of what a princess might turn out to be
If she could slip past the security
Inside the royal palace, having found
This hula hoop

And slide down to some smoky dive, where she
Could join the revels, dancing wild and free,
Releasing all the duties she has bound
Herself to follow, lying on the ground
And laughing softly: Thanks for giving me
This hula hoop.

If you should ever
Catch your parents in the throes
Of passion – two whales
Locked in combat – you might
Wish you’d never been born.

(a drunken sonnet)

The forty thousand starting to arrive
On Sheffield, Waveland, Clark and Addison
Seem hardly bothered that they have not won
A pennant here since nineteen forty-five
Or that there’s almost nobody alive
Who still remembers losing only one
Game in their last World Series winning run,
A triumph younger players can’t revive.
These faithful souls bedecked in Cubby blue
Have numbed themselves to losing every spring
Through regular consumption of a large
Amount of Old Style, such a friendly brew
It lets them drown the score by bellowing:
Holy Cow! Da-da-da-da-da-daaaaaaa. Charge!

I don’t like old shoes,
The kind that make my feet hurt
Even before I
Put them on – crusty old souls
That have hung on for too long.

New shoes are bad, too.
Ones like the fancy Reeboks
I got last April
You could see them in the dark
It was just embarrassing.

I want a new pair
Of old shoes – anonymous
Yet comfortable.
They would only last a week.
And they would probably be brown.

I could not single out the day I knew
That Jamey wasn’t well. The eighties were
Our time of innocence. A teenager
Who didn’t come to school was simply too
Exhausted from a night with someone new,
Unbuttoned hormones raging, and the cure
Was simple as a long bath. We were sure
He would return as students always do.
But he had caught the new “slimming disease”
A strange affliction that was ravaging
The special boys like Jamey. Secretly
I wondered if this kid who liked to tease
Me had, beneath the subtle bantering,
Been dying to declare his love for me.

Hair twisted up in cinnamon buns,
You are so brave, resourceful
And quite short, really –
For though your secret crush
Is frozen in a block of carbonite
And your twin brother has lost a hand
You still have faith in the future
And you can fire a gun.
I know I said you were just another
Holographic trust-fund woo-woo telepathic airhead
But now I’ve seen you in a garbage compactor
I take it all back.

I am fascinated by icicles
The way they come and go with the weather
Rather like Canada geese, only slower,
Drop by drop, migrating from roof to ground
Sometimes in the pleasing form of wind-chimes,
Others, in one great sword of Damocles,
Begging the life of those who pass beneath.

My fourth grade teacher had a big blue house
With two stories and a fairy-tale roof
And every winter, when the birds had flown,
The biggest icicle in the whole world
Would form under her eaves, a full eight feet
In length, pointing straight down at the back door.
None of us expected her to survive

But she did, year after year – with a smile.
She embraced that threat and named it: beauty.
And as I think on her now, I wonder
If we all don’t live with what others see
As slow-dripped danger hanging overhead.
Maybe they’re right; then again, maybe not.
My teacher died at last – but not from ice.

(The Caernarvon Castle, Camden Town, c.1984)

They were called
The Radical Sheiks,
Five tall men
In blue jeans
Who took the stage each Friday
Wailing smoky blues

While the crowd
Jostled for their pints
At the bar
And shouted
Half-plastered above the din.
It took half an hour

On the bus
But it was worth it
Just to be
Swallowed up
In that great unholy sea
Of Marlboros and booze,

A good boy
For three hours as drunk
As a lord
One small cork
Carried away on the swell
Of hard times and dreams.

At this time, Ladies and Gentlemen,
The good news is that in just another hour

At six a.m. the slanting light
Throws wild shadows on the grass before
Our house. Within these shades I see
The figure of a man, one hand
Quick sifting through the trash bin by
The street, a thin glove hiding weathered skin.

I wonder why his actions get beneath my skin
So easily, as he turns a soda can beneath the streetlight
As if he were a jeweler with a standard he must study by.
Two hours gone, this daily round, and still another four
Of trawling through what residents would hand
Him accidently in their overflow. I want to see

What makes him flout the stringent policy
Of local government, his thievery akin,
They say, to petty theft. And all to hand
A sack of old aluminum to men who slight
His very being, except to tolerate him for
The metal cans they love to buy.

Two hundred years ago, my ancestors traveled by
The call of providence across a troubled sea
To find this land which metaphor
Described as paradise. And by the skin
And sinew of their being, they turned their plight
Of landless refugees into an upper hand

Where they could prosper and then hand
A goodly heritage to their offspring; by
Generation finding their delight
In making this a land where all can see
Prosperity, no matter what the color of their skin
Or what their family was or did before

They came here. But now I worry for
This spectral scavenger, his one hand
Busy at its task, his frame of skin
And bones slow swaying to a lullaby
Of half-remembered hope, telling his misery
The yankee dream might still take flight.

I fear the fragile skin of righteousness – the beacon of “four
Score and twenty” – is a light fast fading in our hand
We former immigrants who now sit by, leaving only refuse for our latest kin who cross the sea.