APPORTS is a collection of poems which covers the usual suspects of poetry: Life, Love, Work, Death, Raising Children, Politics and Meditations upon the nature of God.
Here is a selection from APPORTS:
TIME CLOCK
in compliance
with ancient cartoon rules where a drowning fool
waves goodbye for three frantic and separate times
before the water closes over leaving only bursting
bubbles that pop forth a final, plaintive call for help,
my soul raises three fingers going down
each day, each year I don't quit
my day job;
in accordance
with social science laws, each shift grinds on me as if
I am a downed tree, which once grew tall, had hosted
nests and webs and hives, danced with hurricance winds,
fed insects and herbivores and stood as rubbing post
for the mastodon, but which, when felled, silently drowned
and laid entombed, gasping for carbon dioxide breath
in primoridial swamp as gradually, day by day, year by year,
eons under pressure and water torture drips,
one molecule by molecule the exchange,
turning each cellulose fiber into stone
and leaving the wood as brittle as bone,
unable to be hewed or planed,
or used for timber or shelving,
knick-knacks or tooth-picks,
for roasting, toasting or even
pulped into paper for poems as lovely as a....;
so that, now, completely petrified,
splintered into chunks, polished to earth tone luster,
it can only aspire to one day serve
as a hundred paper-weights.
My play is a warm-hearted comedy about middle-aged children who go home for the Holidays and tell their elderly parents that it's time for them to go to the Retirement Home. Of course, the parents think they're still too young for such a move. The tug of wills begins!
thanks to Rainbow Dinner Theatre, Paradise, PA for these photos.
Green Holly and Gray Potatoes, which has been produced in two countries, is currently under review by a major publishing house.