Bare Feet and Feathers

Bang on the ground and clang in the sky, Ringing ragged rash, pimpled up sizzle. Singing salient, singeing brilliant, baked us dead dry. Southern citrus and succulent sun, Syrupy sweet popped down drizzle Enveloping tongue, puckered pout; your sweet fun. Morning’s cheer applauding, “Awake!” Sheer chiffon pursed, wanted kiss. Gauzy glamour, breezy and bright; my loving ache. Glamorous cool glade shaded, heavy and dark, Gaia’s fauns governing the afternoon bliss. Teeming tendrils teasing the feathers of our nubile lark. High brittle flight across the chilled glass bright. Aloof and aloft, trillions of dead backs turned this way. Squinted up and bowed down; our tearful plight. Sultry dangerous hips swaying suggesting sin Buried under a million nights and one candle’s wax Pouring over shoulders, into veins, through your skin. Royal regal voices pour from a saxophone’s bell Berry juices bleeding from spring’s best snacks Demure shrug shoulder, winked my knowing and

Kickoff. A high arc spiral from father to son Across fallen fluttering leaves. Wishes. Encouragements. Settlements. You zip your jacket against the cold. Second quarter. Bulldogs dig into New Haven mud; A plastic thock of pad-to-pad. Handsome Dan charms the cheerleaders. The underclassmen sell hot chocolate. Halftime. Aunts bake turkeys while grandfathers gloat Brothers pout and sisters strut The Coach bellows “Dedication!” Cranberry prayers in breathy fog. Third quarter. A pimpled pigskin bloated, Too tight for your grip to toss And violate November’s taught linen. Bands in the stands press the party on. Fourth Quarter. Hands are held, cheers sent up. Flags waved, pennants folded. Hearts are wrapped in flannel. Our silly love is suspended in an icy milk sky. In summer; we worshipped near naked bodies. Gods that sprint over the clay. Come autumn, we’ve grown burly, Tossing our Giants into the fray. We wish for shoulders to lean into the wind. We spe

Fall tosses summer’s heavy breath, With a cantaloupe syrup, That blankets your tongue Its sweet chill tightens your throat And tosses your head back, So flare your nostrils into the wind Let your corneas catch those pinpricks of life That escapes the Universal coal. Life begins at the soles of your feet And sings in the swing of your hips Extend… Extend, Extend! And your soul remains in your shoes Under the weight of your terminal calendar. Wear bells and anklets and clack castanets Roll and whirl, grind and swirl Be tawny vellum taunting Be sweaty and sweet wanting Needing validations from fingers dancing Over goose flesh, hair and underwear. Be exhausted and spent Draped across your lover And when you step on to the porch Jupiter will wink Reach… Reach, Reach! And you’ll never poke Saturn And set its rings spinning like dinner plates. We are atoms of God Made to be mulch And made to be sung Dancing our dances In fanciful unison.

Our New England season was warned to us. It was rumored in the smoke of August’s barbecue. And slipped from underneath a mulch pile. Our burly season sits in a weave of rag wool It whispers to us in hot cider steam And rides on hay bales behind a tractor. Our flannel season rests on corn field stubble. It stretches before us in shadows over gnarly bark And hides beneath dry fractured crunch. Our crashing season simpers in crumbling leaves It rushes, crushes and crinkles ahead of each step And blushes like pumpkins on your cheek. Our hand holding season snags the breath of a waterfall It wishes for hot chocolate, pie, and turkey And rides on the tail of a red tailed hawk. Our learning season rings its bell in pale grey linoleum It is a wide open bulletin board populated by thumb tacks And leaks out of your new backpack. Our gravestone rubbing season chaps your lips It knits charcoal in feathers with breezes And glistens like sugar and sap. Our Autumn reminds

Sandy said Orange and I thought Blue Homecoming colors and aluminum bleachers She saw the promise of infinite change And I saw the Danbury High School Hatters Sandy said Orange and I remember Ridiculously hot cocoa and an aluminum chill Cable knit sweaters and army wool blanket She saw the future and an infinite thrill. I wondered what is now and she wanted what will.

Peace reverberates in the rattle of a cat’s purr It slips between the dust dancing in a shaft of sunlight (The one you played with in your Grandmother’s dining room) Peace expands with each beat of your heart to canvas your town with a blanket of your best intentions. It is a whisper from your soul to your best friend’s ear. Peace is ego. It is self-important and satisfied. It is the sum of crumbs on a plate And the notch of a belt loosened. Peace knows where it is going So well that it never needs to leave. It does not doubt. Peace lands on your skin with the impact of a snowflake It is delivered with a lover’s touch And infects you with a long, languid implosion. Peace throws a leg from under the covers And over the side of the bed. It leaves its clothing on the bedroom floor. Peace chooses its orbit and watches from above It is patient and waits for an invitation Peace is passive as it witnesses our wars. It is a pedestrian waiting at the crosswalk It knows

When midnight flips And the stars stare disapprovingly Grip your elbows, bundle your sweater And start toward the porch. Summer slips over your teeth on the lick of a mussel. Cat tails salute that sinful sun. You stare into a fistful of sand… Four hundred fossils… Long Island Sound reclaims its history from your hand in a billow of surrender. and drags you toward Christmas. Twelve years of five and dimes leave you yearning for notebooks and pens, stiff jeans and the plastic smell of sneakers. Your mother worries; it’s a new bus route. August blares in cicadas’ incessant drone. Taste Autumn in the smoke of a charcoal grill Summer is as slippery as sweat And as evasive as shade at a family picnic.

The Queen of Meatloaf Crosses her legs And bounces her Keds. Day-lily smile, a liberated intellect, Spraying her education. Remembering her shoulders, she shifts in her seat and laughs. The King of Corks traces condensation on his glass and ‘huh-huhs’ his laugh. Cratered eyes, a bedroom glance, he is pretending he might be listening but is thinking of the next thing to say. He stares at his socks and wonders. The galaxy implodes in a rain of thoughts that fluoresce on their green altar. It evaporates the bats from the night like ideas that might have been had but can’t be remembered. It makes the raccoons rush home to rescue the lasagna they left in the oven. The King and Queen dance on the back deck in a silver rain, a silent film. Someone poke the piano player. Hot buttered popcorn all around! Let’s see how this one ends; if the child grows up happy and saves the world. Asparagus erupts in its corner while rhubarb whispers its bitter secrets and Re

You’re concentrating on the butter on your corn muffin; undulating and unctuous sin quenching the coffee’s acrid shadow loitering between your teeth and drifting on the nicotine. Marlboro hoarseness hanging on your vocal chords like the corpse of an octogenarian burlesque dancer; adagio in the guilty glimmer, glimpsing last night’s lapses of judgment crushed in your grimace tic furrow your brow behind clenched eyes and try not to watch that train wreck again and again. Dull gong thud head pounding like a beggar stuck in a closet with a million blackmail photos that no one wants to see. You found ten more ride tickets the day after the carnival closed but you showed up anyway and wished you had brought that girl from high school so you could both be naked on the tilt-a-whirl and you could eat cotton candy together and you would be the hero that won the water balloon race but you didn’t because you were in the backyard twenty-five years later looking for yo

You seethe and you breathe And you breathe and you seethe. You are piled upon and buried. Your well of mercy is emptied. There might be peace, peace in fear Peace on a bullet, peace within a tear. Peace in blood, peace that seeps Won by that which hatred could reap. You are a coward and a hero You found the middle path to zero You didn’t pull the trigger. Your infection can only grow bigger. Will you die a bitter man? Poisoned by regret to the end? Wondering that if you killed It just might be a better world? You made room for God And secretly doubt the whole façade Kneeling and praying in good motion Desperately seeking divine devotion. You are confused and sad Little things make you mad Small child, grow up and ignore Earth’s few things that abhor. Keep walking among the ferns Write your poetry, admire God’s patterns Unclench your fist not so slowly Accept your place no matter how lowly. There is peace in love And only in love is there peace Find

The muscle of Connecticut Sleeps beneath my fingernails. The breath of Connecticut Dances between the sun and my neck. The sweat of Connecticut Leaks from a garden tomato And envelops my tongue. The tears of Connecticut Melt from a snowflake streaking my cheek. The blood of Connecticut sings Like a thousand church bells It is the voice of everyone I love. The blood of Connecticut is my mirror. Connecticut sounds like machinery. It is a chunk and a clunk of a deafening history. Its hats can whisper in brassy voices. Connecticut conspires to revolt. It dresses in blue and ivory. It kills scarlet. It liberates. Connecticut is as metallic as an oyster And as modern as corn. It is the vinegar on a fiddlehead fern. Connecticut drapes over your shoulders like a sweater. It is in the pleat of your pants. Connecticut is somewhere between Huck Finn and a page. It is between an actor’s sole and the stage. It hangs with the pollen drifting over Goodspeed. Patrick H. Gan

A love letter to adolescence A mid-life manifesto. Phosphorescent beasts bragging bright Preened and pretty, precocious and precarious. Damnable, dancing on dewdrops of sin. Strutting and teasing. Singing and aching. Sorrow sent sailing into the eye of God. Celebrating shock in raucous bacchanal Banged up and worn down The obvious eroded Ten molecules of a teen Collected in an eddy of glory Ten minute bulwark bides the torrent Count a tick. Count a tock. Watch the… Positing poetry in the eye of progress. Chrysalis sintered by the agony of aging Bitterness hitchhikes on adverbs and politics Amuses and suffuses. Oozes and diffuses Spackling life’s cracks in lieu of suffering Our bored and bright have grown bitter with fright For lack of a life they have never known. Glide into the glades of a Goddess Dance naked on the edge of a field Find your body where you left it Dress yourself in starlight and dew. Celebrate your soul and evaporate youth. Shatter the g

Play with my hair. Pull the world in as close as the last drops of Long Island Sound that slip from your swimsuit down across the back of your thigh. Play with my hair under freckles of laughter, syllables and chirps, that christen us like parades of soap bubbles floating from the abstract crowd. Play with my hair before we play in the surf where we’ll shock parents. We’ll be inappropriate, the way we keep touching. We’ll blast “Youth!” in spite of our age. Play with my hair Our whispers sequester The crowd and claim this blanket As the Nation of Us Our consensus of two Inviolate, immutable and perfect.

Born from a belly full of broken glass Screaming bloody murder and profanity Cities stained by an afterbirth of graffiti Riding the shoulders of a rioting underclass Sirens blaring; the hymns of a violent mass Struggle and scramble, trampling faith and charity. Dumb and ignorant march with hatred, their deputy Flailing child slashing peace, shouting and crass. Silence of glades and wisdom of fawns Baggy pants prophets honk and waddle Trespassing across the folds of a petal Carrying the good news of a million dawns A spider weaves in silence, her gossamer model Pleading to people, "Choose peace and settle."

My March Lenten sky plain as a tablecloth, still milk, cotton shroud. Ten Canada Geese charge over the treetops into April's riot. Siphoning my faith straight into God. Tugging the tendons of my pride. Unveiling me; a sculpture of hope rooted in my lawn and reaching into the pockets of tomorrow. Searching for a butterscotch like a gift from Grandpa home from the factory.

I slipped down an icicle And fell into a sand storm. that can desiccate a soul. Wasted like a slack jawed geriatric.   I’m killing a man everyday and I keep forgetting to pray before I rip out his heart. I've got blood all over my shirt. Our circus act broke up When the wire snapped The whole family is splattered. This is the closest we’ve ever been. I woke up in a casket And heard the bastards laughing Over the last shovelfuls of dirt. I've got the rest of my life to escape. I got bleached And lost all my color. Someone slit my throat; no voice. I really am invisible. A drunk driver raped a girl but he was yelling liberal politics So I figured he must be okay. I couldn't hear myself think. It got crowded in my shower I forgot to shave and I look like shit. This is when I bite my nails and shake.  Everyone keeps looking at me. My feet are greasy. I can’t feel the earth Except when I trip. I’ve got to grow some roots.  Where the hell have I been? Those party balloons

Ours is a song of holiday tables. Clattering chatter of our dining room, Wedding china, and shared fables. This is the history of the baby boom. Clattering chatter of our dining room “Remember?” “No, not him, he’s dead.” “Oh, yeah, too bad. Cancer, I assume.” Auntie Vera remembered a good book she’d read. Remembered? Better remembered than be dead. Uncle Jack’s scotch needs more ice. He has to drive.  His face is looking red. John offers his best Republican advice. Uncle Jack’s scotch needs more ice. Good buddy Bain helps clear the dishes. Pat’s telling a story. We’ve all heard it (at least twice). Jesus! Is it Easter or is it Christmas? Good buddy Bain helps clear the dishes Oh God! Who can eat cake? We’re too full. Around here, it’s like the loaves and the fishes. Cathy knitted that scarf, real New Zealand wool. No way. Can’t do it. Can’t eat, too full. “Yes, Sinatra was great but Elvis was better.” “But      "My real name is Mister Earl”, in the lull.   Mom knows her doo-w

I can pack a poem like a freshman loads laundry. Lights and darks. Cottons and knits. You need a crowbar to find an image. Time for me to embrace space and           let                     words                               float. Milkweed seeds            drifting four feet above a field. More gossamer         images lace curtains loitering           around open                bedroom window.                      June.         Go barefoot              in my own backyard.          Enjoy                 the silliness          and cool damp           floss    between my toes. Embrace space! Lighten                   the           load. Loosen      my    grip. A palm full                              of feathers     to       share. Let them                     FLY!

Life wind, timpani roll, rushes round steadfast soldier serving. Flooding sound bleaching color, trailing taupe, phone ringing… Crisis, crushing ego, dust, stinging eyes, closing throat. Over oceans, flies finest throat. Exhausted ear, forward, rushes finding strawberry love in the dust. On the eager edge, laps color blasting temptation. Soldier serving   tours counted by bells not ringing. Sighs, moans, cries and cheers ringing round mute heart (a mutilated throat) Chain gain shackled, sentences serving, hammers pounding rhythms to dust. Outside, dawn’s purple rushes, shivers, slicing sky with color. Flushed face, rose in color. Syllable chirps of a poem ringing. An autumns’ chill rushes (pizza, in a cemetery, serving). Memories gasp, an old man’s throat, made hoarse under years of dust. “Hey everyone look here!” No dust. (Vivid, immediate, living color) No dark lot, no hoarse throat whisper. Clanging poems ringing across wires, for everyone, serving. In, like kids at recess, rumo

You happen to me like breath on a mirror A vanishing shape in the fog You are a whisper among beating drums. A tribal rhythm of dusty heels. Something primitive clawing on the shore. Something primitive in me. Between ventricle and atrium. You are a ghost in my veins. I let you out to stand on the tip of my tongue where you taste in me the syrup of need. And I hear, through you, the melody of want. No steps to take, no map to here Words blast heat fusing the dreams of our poems. Leaving rhythms for us to dance like the feathers we are on this breeze. Two spirits in the mist Reincarnated, we share atoms. Collided and blinking truth, beads of life skip, suspended in sky, like dust kicked up from primitive heels. This is the most I can be; a splash of light on the altar of an empty church. And I ask you to sing to me again, as I drift off to sleep. Waiting on my dreams. 

Spring’s golden children skip stones In August’s haze, through humid want. Smart sparkle girl, weed boy unwanted Upstream on the River Youth. Far from the life pond of experience. Intersecting paths, circles, from opposite shores Carried downstream, caught behind the dam of regret. The Black Swan born from the depth Busting the surface in a spray of passion Effervescent avian firework ignited By the spark of an affectionate memory Unknown consequence. The delicious taste of regret Like a kiss good night. The Black Swan leaves a trail of charcoal feathers Gathered up in the daydreams of a poet.

A library, in the dimples of a laugh, baby’s-breath-chamois folds, you little giant; put you in my pocket. Salty mineral flint, fossils of life I can’t know, repeat mournful decades to ecstasy. Smile. A library! (in the dimples of a laugh). Cookies-in-the-cupboard temptation; that’s you! My warm world so cozy, too quiet to disturb, you little giant, put you in my pocket. Vaudeville dancing, slapstick chopsticks (pull my finger), I’m a rude crude dude, pants down, falling down until… a library, in the dimples of a laugh. Prehistoric miasmic asthmatic whispers…sadness? Concentric waves, warm inoculation; that’s my kiss! You little giant; put you in my pocket. Midnight kitchen raid for something sweet. A library, in the dimples of a laugh, you little giant, put you in my pocket.