cold snap

cold snap —
a bottle breaks
behind the bar

March rain

March rain —
rivlets in the mud
between snow drifts

March rain —
the 3-point shot bounces 4 times
before falling in

last day in Belize

My final minutes in Maya Beach: I brush the sand from my feet and prepare to wear socks for the first time in nine days. The mockingbirds are oddly silent.

last day in Belize —
I’ve only begun to learn
the birdsong

morning haze (and variation)

morning haze —
beads of sweat
on my upper lip


morning haze —
a telephone rings
unanswered

still waters (and variation)

still waters —
a cormorant
comes up for air


still waters —
something floating
toward the shore

Karma Bank Deposit

It seems that our waiter is from a small Mayan village called San Antonio. "I hear there’s a San Antonio in the States", he says eagerly. I want to tell him it’s a lie, but resist the temptation.

life's a beach, and then you mate

At first we were told that they had done the manatee equivalent of running aground—five or six of them of various sizes. Upon closer inspection it seemed that this was entirely by design. The biggest one twirled and rolled in the surf, occasionally wrapping a fin around a companion or vigorously slapping its tail against the water surface. This went on for about an hour. After ten minutes or so, I had to get a beer.

blackbird

it’s been bothering me for over a week now—why are blackbirds active only during the day? couldn’t they use their blackness to blend into the night, slipping unseen into my indigo-purple dreams?

dawn —
blackbird’s
shadow

calm seas

calm seas —
a coconut falls to the ground
with a thud

Palm Sunday

not many tall palms in this part of the peninsula,
which makes you wonder why so many new ones are planted,
as if history is something written on the label of a beer bottle,
under the Surgeon General’s warning,
and that any day now
these waves are going to be silenced.

Palm Sunday —
two rows of empty beer bottles
beside the sink

history is the father of regret
bastard child of a night of debauchery
and isn’t it easy to deny the unintentional;
isn’t it easy to forget you, the flesh of my flesh.

dusk

dusk —
a pelican plunges
into the sea

Happy Hour at the Pickled Parrot

Would I be doing that guy in the tie-dyed t-shirt and aviator glasses a favor if I told him that we weren’t in Margaritaville? I’m not sure he’d believe me.

An athletic young couple reserves a kayak for 5:30 tomorrow morning. Then they tiptoe back to their beach house to mate like mad mink.

Lunch time. A dark man is selling plastic replicas of ancient Mayan temples. He smiles hopefully. We tell him “no thank you” while a stray pregnant dog barks at him. He wraps up his goods in a colorful towel and walks away.

cold front —
a plastic cup
tumbles across the beach

St. Patrick's Day in Belize

Erin no go Bragh here, mon. At least I don’t think she does. Her soft pale skin would resemble corn beef and hash inside of a Maya Beach minute.

Lean out of the window, Goldenhair. But mind the parrot pecking at your freckles.

low tide—
a sandpiper
searches the seaweed

sand devils

There’s many an is-that-all-there-is moment hiding beneath this palm shade.
If Margarita is the Balm of the Soul, then Belikin is the Bane of Remembrance.
Everything I could have had is sediment at the bottom of this bottle.
Everything I found instead is a pearl washed by gentle waves.

happy hour —
the sandcrab scurries back
to its nest

first day on the beach

first day on the beach —
the mockingbird laughs
at my pasty white legs

my nature adores the vacuum

This afternoon Mrs. Bitter and I depart the Land of Perpetual Winter for the balmy beaches of Belize. We will have no access to phone, television or the internet, and this is fine by us.

Far from “roughing it” in the jungle or the Mayan Mountains, we will be living in a seaside bungalow with running water and electricity (to power the ceiling fans, of course). We will not be bringing MP3 players, cell phones or PDAs. We will be bringing all of the books we’ve been meaning to read for the past few years. Among my reading material are the following:

“On the Road” by Jack Kerouac (which I never seem to finish)
“Doctor Sax” by Jack Kerouac
“A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole
“Angel-Headed Hipster” by Steve Turner
“Faithful” by Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King

I hope to get plenty of writing done as well, but all of this takes a back seat to our real purpose—drinking obscene amounts of Belikin beer and speculating about the life stories of all the people we meet along the way.

The chubby fellow in the tie dye t-shirt, khaki shorts and lime green bucket hat embezzled millions from investors in Chicago and is now enjoying a Banana Daquiri.

That sort of thing. How will this chubby fellow see me?

The pasty, white-haired, forty-something in the faux Hawaiian shirt and Old Navy Bermuda shorts is an FBI agent who is about to arrest me for embezzling millions from investors in Chicago. I should feed him to the sharks, but this Banana Daquiri tastes so good I think I’ll offer him half of my take in return for his silence.

How perfect is that?

Tobin Bridge

only edges can be seen of the spaces,
the lengthening shadow of your legendary profile.
a smog sun sparkles in the broken glass median,
while your eyes,
betraying nothing,
seduced me into the warmth of your bed,
deep below the surface
of the Mystic River.

I Refute Descartes

He’s never known anything like it.
Then again, he’s never known anything to write home about,
therefore... there’s nothing to write home about.

March snow

March snow —
I refuse to buy
another ice scraper

exile in Niceville

Before you ask, “is there anything nice about Boston?”, let me explain: Niceville is a mythical, metaphorical place. I’ve never been there. I’m not allowed.

Case in point: Blind date, circa early 1997. As usual, I’m a few minutes early, therefore I conspire to ease my nerves with a beer at the bar. Tonight’s victim is about ten minutes late. By mass transit standards this would be an on-time arrival. By my standards it’s just late enough to permit me to order a second beer. She is attractive but cheerless—evidently determined not to enjoy herself. She never removes her jacket. Before I can settle up my bar tab and request a table, she stops me cold: “I have to tell you something—nothing personal—but you’re really not my type.”

I was taken by surprise, therefore the best I could manage was “Why would I take it personally? I’m in awe of anyone who can discern someone’s type so quickly” I’d like to think that I spat the word type, but I might be romanticizing. In any event, the sarcastic tone was duly noted, and she quickly became annoyed with me for daring to be less than she had expected.

“Look—you seem to be a nice guy. Let me pay for your drink and then I’ll go. No hard feelings.”

A light went on. I knew that I had only a matter of minutes before she would settle up the tab and be gone from my life forever. I had to make them as miserable for her as possible.

I was in heaven. I don’t remember anything I said, but I remember her open-mouthed amazement at several of the remarks I made. It was pure instinct. Just as she had made up her mind to storm out without paying for my beer, the bartender got her attention and the bill was paid. She left without another word.

I stayed for another beer—maybe more than one. I wrote a long, angst-ridden poem that in retrospect was short on literary merit. I also wrote a rare, sarcastic haiku:

our first and last date —
at least she called me
a “nice guy”

be nice

I suppose I was a typical adolescent in that I felt acutely awkward and disenfranchised most of the time. Most of the words that flowed from my pen at that time were full of angst and negativity.

My attitude toward life improved somewhat with age, but never to the point where I could bring myself to view any sort of authority without extreme skepticism. I muted my public attitude as a concession toward my need to make a living, but my writing continued to smoulder unabated. I remember my mother finding some poem I had written while in college, only to lament "why can't you write anything nice?"

My haiku tend to be static observations of the world around me, therefore they can be "nice" in the sense that they are neither optimistic nor pessimistic; they just are. My longer work, however, tends toward take stock of my relationship to that world, and as such takes on a dark, cynical tone. It really doesn't start out that way, but it gets there quickly enough.

I wrote this poem for a woman who once (and only once) called me "sweet". I started by acknowledging that I had fleeting moments of near niceness, but couldn't sustain this beyond the first line:

I can do sweet —
words that make you
clench your teeth
in a practised smile.
I can spin nouns and verbs
into cotton candy
that will rot your teeth.
but my tongue
craves a sugar
beyond your lips
and will swirl
in an orbit
beyond your outstretched arms
into the irresistible honey
of your loneliness.

What ever will I do with me?

morning

morning —
a manhole cover
in the snow

fresh snow

fresh snow has a way of damping my angst—not soothing it, mind you, but providing a layer of soundproofing that renders my screams even less relevant to those around me. light snow continues to fall in a fine metallic mist. tree limbs bow low—not in reverence, but in resignation, almost, but not quite begging to be broken.

ice dam

ice dam —
the acupuncturist’s
shaky hands