America Blue  (from the Crack House)   

Oh say, we could all so clearly see
the beautiful for spacious
“red sky at morning” (be warned). 
Blackbirds screeching, 
preferable to the fucking chirping  
pissed off hissed off bluejays
so proudly hailing the twilight’s last dulling
through bliss blunt hangovers, bangovers -
what’s supposed to be a working
Tuesday – like anyone except Jesse could
tolerate  headsqueal  of the #7 to work, 
wondering how the I-pod crowd across the car
manages to do this every day. 
No proud hailing as the kaboom
shatters her pre-frontal cortex and limbic
longs for amber waves of Jack Daniels, 
the honeyed coke spoon,
remembers the ping of said spoon banging the syringe
that mainlined Jose lying smack on the floor dying.
Clack house that cracked pipes open
when dawn’s early light brought neon sirens.
Neighbors busted Tyrone over the purple mountain’s
majesty of his girlfriend’s left eye.
Loud bitch finished his dope. 
Jimbo’s dropped cracked crumb on all fours
crawling the carpet,
a fruited plain of ecstasy
Bright starred Klub Kids raving
over Dumbo-earred plates of “K.” 
God shed his blue light on this brotherhood, neighborhood,
garbagehead,
frat house and rehab,   
doin’ good for the man, teaching trade tricks
from the mountains of meth and blow
to the prairies of Oxycontin
to the ocean white with dust.
Liberty crowned with bundles, kilos, condoms,
welcoming the trashed tired,
the hammered poor
yearning to breathe.

Sex

Crabs mate face to face,
claws entwined,
eyes filled with the appearance
of strong feeling.
First, he dances
on pointy little claws
to lure the mature
female
onto her back,
both having shed their skins
at this point.  
Exposed, vulnerable,
they clutch and buck and moan
like lovers everywhere.
the male peering
brainlessly into madam’s eyes
with some crustacean impulse
of “I love her”
or
“God, I want to pin her,”
While, beneath him, 
she muses primordially,
“He’s a terrible dancer
But I want to have his children.”

This poem was published in Grabbing the Apple, 2015, and is part of a memoir in poetry and prose, The Life & Lessons of Miss Alabaster, a memoir of a memoir. It is the basis of my one-woman show, Broadway, Booze, and a Song of Life. The show has previewed in salons with two other  “Poets of Well-Being,” Susan Dingle, and Terri Muuss. The book recalls my life in the sixties and 70’s when I was part of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, 
though my decade was more sex, alcohol and musical comedy. I was performing, and I was out there in a big way. Some of it was fun, until it became tragic. I go back to that time – to people, places, and things I sometimes think I have left behind me.

Evocation or My Father’s Hat

Something in a poem about touching his father’s hat,
and I was transported
back to a home, a house, I left
when I was ten,
trying to recall
where we hung our coats,
remembering the feel of my father’s hats,
unsure if he ever wore one.
I know he ate yogurt,
and drank buttermilk on occasion
and no one else has ever
made me laugh
as much
as he.
 

Women In The Moment

I watch as I wait for my latte.
The lipstick slides
across her mouth,
a Barbie Doll tennis match
I follow,

back …and forth,
back… and forth,

mesmerized
by her concentration;
the balanced compact,
impeccable outlining,
the practiced swivel
of burnished tube,
the protrusion of plum wax.

The shine blinds.

I am entranced.

With focus like hers,
we could effect world peace.

Mountains

move me,
even mere stratigraphic ridges,
flat-chested imitations of Mt. Kilimanjaro’s
perfectly formed peaks and valleys
plunging and rising.

Riding my mother’s lap in early childhood,
or sitting across from her
at the kitchen table,
I stared at the graceful crevice just above the buttons
of her ubiquitous housedress,
where hill met valley.
I longed to know what lay beneath,
what mysteries lurked in that darkness,
tunneling away from sunlight.

I often gazed out my bedroom window
at the Alleghenies looking back at me,
modest, but solid.
Whatever secrets lay in their shadows,
I would always feel safe.