Brooklyn Boomer

Introduction Writing poetry helps me to make sense of the world around and inside me and to be more in touch with life’s meaning and connectedness. It piques my interest in the past and prods me to think more about the present and the future. It is joyful and self-reinforcing, even when the content is about sad or traumatic events. The next best thing to writing poetry is reading poetry, an option I have provided with this book, which is divided into eight parts that do not have to be read in order. Part I, Words, contains humorous and satiric poems; Part II, America, offers verse that has to do with, you guessed it, the USA; Part III, Brooklyn and Queens, provides pieces on two New York City boroughs I have lived in; Part IV, Politics and the Human Comedy, is about the personal and political sides of life; Part V, Love, deals with a topic most people can relate to; Part VI, Mind and Body, has poems that encompass the mental and physical aspects of existence; Part VII, The Nature of Things, involves my take on the natural world; and Part VIII, Postscript, features a sestina. The best way to read this book, in my opinion, is a few poems at a time. But if the spirit moves you feel free to gorge or devour them all at one sitting. Either way, bon appétit! The best we can expect is to avoid the worst in Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Ukraine, Pakistan, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and the F-train, Times Square Station, height of the evening’s rush, doors keep opening and closing, opening and closing, opening and closing. Will we ever get home you ask me and I tell you the best we can expect is to avoid the worst delay in the history of the subway system, a tie-up so monumental that people on trains stopped in tunnels will have to live underground, ordering takeout from restaurants, sending out laundry, working from their seats if they are lucky enough to not be standing on the bodies of fallen commuters who as they lay dying cried out to their fellow travelers, the best we can expect is to avoid the worst when we journey on trains, planes, and automobiles that get trapped on the tracks, tarmac, and toll roads of life with the exact change lanes closed for repairs, collection agents on strike, no cash or change in your pockets and no E-Z Pass to get you through the long lines of blaring thoughts and fixed ideas backed up in your head. As the train lurches forward a few feet I think to myself the best we can expect when we come back home tonight is to avoid getting the worst stomach aches in the world from eating the Chinese leftover food in the fridge, watching the worst team in baseball get pounded again on TV, having your mother call at the worst possible time of the evening when we are about to go to bed, and that the cat is still alive. Option Glut I could be watching TV eating a muffin cooking lasagna baking some pie getting a haircut listening to Mozart needling my brother roping a horse filling my car up taking a selfie deleting email praying for rain ambling down Broadway inching up Main Street speeding through stop lights hurtling past cows mowing a meadow juicing an orange kicking a football zapping a bug visiting Cleveland questioning tourists x-raying luggage opening trunks yet instead I am writing this poem that I hope you are reading but in the back of my mind an obsession is breeding you could be doing something else. The Thief He sits silent in my living room daring me to press his buttons so he can burble and babble his sweet talk to transfix my attention. I vow to resist my urge to turn on, tune in, watch. Not this time, pal. There are books that need to be read, calls that need to be made, floors that need to be cleaned, bills that need to be paid, thoughts that need to be thought in quiet solitude, without the blare of the putative news of the day, commercial cackle, and whatever series shows lurk on my DVR. Just give me five minutes he tells me telepathically and sucker that I am I grant the crook his wish and click the remote and five gets you ten and ten gets you twenty and twenty gets you forty and before you know it there goes the evening and it’s such a crime that once again I’ve been duped by this cunning thief of time. Brooklyn Nineteen Fifty-Seven Eleven years young, lost in the Prospect Park woods with my friend Alan Weberman, a beatnik who doesn’t play stickball, stoopball, or shoot water pistols but wears a French beret, black turtleneck sweater, and plays the bongos. We’re trying to find a way out of a 585 acre urban wilderness in the heart of deepest Brooklyn with no maps, canteens, food, or compass, and cell phones not invented. We’re far from Mom ‘n’ Pop’s candy store with its vanilla egg creams, chocolate Clark Bars, Drake’s pound cakes, cherry lime rickeys, and long salted pretzels in plastic see-through bins. We’re far from the Patio Movie Theater, with its double features, cartoons, newsreels and a goldfish pond in a beautiful tiled lobby to throw pennies into. We’re far from Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlor with its Kitchen Sink, a hodgepodge of ice cream, chocolate syrup, whipped cream, maraschino cherries, and a concatenation of other things that can serve up to six. We’re far from the Empire Rollerdrome, Freddie Fitzsimmons Bowling Alley, Ebinger’s Bakery, Erasmus Hall High School, and Ebbets Field, home of the ‘55 world champs and ’57 world chumps who left Flatbush for LA. We’re far from college, marriage, work, retirement, and a quiet home in the country away from the racket, hubbub, and delight of inner-city childhood life. Is Everybody Happy There is no algorithm for happiness but Siri says surveys say Switzerland is the happiest country in the world, not sure why, could be the chocolate, maybe it’s the cheese. Buddhists say to attain contentment one must overcome cravings for iPhones, Apple watches, BMWs, and early bird dinners served until six. Scientists have the ability to measure happiness but not as well as novelists, poets, and my ninety-five-year-old mother. Happiness is the only thing humans desire for its own sake, said Aristotle. Thoreau opined, joy is like a butterfly, the more you chase it the more it will elude you. For Charlie Brown happiness is a warm blanket. For me it’s a toasted bagel with peanut butter and jelly, cup of coffee on the side. A Mammoth Lamentation You trip on my trunk, brush by my tail, crash over my legs, are nicked by my tusks, yet you act as if I am not there. What have I done to deserve such scorn and contempt? Why am I the pariah at the party? I’ve got feelings and they get hurt when you do not acknowledge my existence, to wit Johnny’s a drug addict, Mary’s cheating on her husband, Ralph didn’t die from natural causes, he killed himself. Is it so hard to admit that population growth threatens the planet, that war is good for business, that democracy is not a perfect system, that climate change is real. I don’t want encomiums or compliments, just some candor and a little sincerity that will keep me from becoming the emperor’s new clothes, an 800-pound gorilla, a woebegone elephant trapped in a room.