Black Flies

Some good neighborly heavy-hooded ghostly angel has cleared the sidewalk of snow

halfway up my driveway even

cutting perfect white jagged edges

of gleaming unadulterated flakes                         all clustered

                                                                            like exposed cement

when we know they’re goddamn individual miracles

but most times we don’t see things

Truly

like children come running through the front room in and out chasing balloons –

My girls my beautiful girls that won’t always be beautiful girls

some day sassing strutting someday not so much smiling for Saturday freedom joy

instead smiling for some boy at school or out of school worse

And then cold bones                                                 and decay

                                    Nobody likes to think these things.

If you could believe in God the way my mother believes in God

it would never snow
and children would not grow old & dull

                                    either way they waft in and out like breezes

in this big city house draped in heavy white drifts

now touching my big black beard all fuzzy fuzzy daddy

feeling cold little miracle fingers along my face like the smell of cookies baking

now far away noises that may or may not be dream noises

as they drop their brother’s Lego heads into the eternity of scary black cast iron

heating grates giggling despite the sad doom of it all 

Thru enormous ornamented glass of the front room torrential heaven light

and I in my reading chair gray with rips and its ancient claw feet

I dissolve into my coffee somemore and study Big Sur

-       can’t read Kerouac without writing like Kerouac - contagious sonofabitch stupid saint running through terrifying clarity sometimes

            and clarity is terrifying sometimes

            maybe alltimes

            and anyone who tells you otherwise

            sits crosslegged with Psychology degree

            and tells you otherwise

            has never seen clarity never been clarity

maybe with the love of warm whiskey you can escape Old Jack

maybe the city is the answer now

until the mountains and the indifferent smashing sea become the hope once more

maybe the right woman or a handsome boy

Samsara Samsara Samsara

Stupid Samsara

can’t drink or think your way out

can’t roar fast on 1940’s highways anymore

can’t control the shakes

can’t look to Neal to save you anymore than I can look to Maria

or my Gabrielle

we can’t take off like brothers

although you are my brother like you palled around with Jimmy Joyce and Tommy Wolfe and Dante

you found a way out afterall you sonsabitches

you writers you hopeless lunatics misunderstood meandering daydreamers

you broke failures you broken stars you disappearing angels

you recurring devils

patently false in your disbelief

you knew that God was taking care of you

that he had given you the gift of immortality you could feel it in the wind you could taste it in the first beer from the mountains you could hear it in the clickety clack of the typewriter and smell it in forgotten dream alleys all inky

with words in black and white sorrow, energy, cigarette smoke your thoughts are out there somewhere bouncing around still waiting to be written – just think of all the ones that got away

while you were cataloging the sounds of the sea like a delirious barefoot scientist

who was watching the desert stars, who was writing haikus in midtown who was shepherding the Adirondack black flies on to heaven?