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The Blog Bog
The Mag Rack
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Cilice*
As I age, my skin becomes a hair-shirt,
A nexus of itches, blemishes, and sores,
And veins bulging like long blue earthworms
On wrists and hands with brittle digits;
Reddened scars reveal where precancerous
Keratoses grew, and skin cancers too,
And my right earlobe is brand shiny new,
Born after squamous cells had ravaged the old,
And the surgeon who'd scalpeled it away
Fashioned a simulacrum from healthy
Remaining skin. Varicose veins mar my calves,
Making me an embarrassment at the beach,
And so I seek shade to spare my ailing envelope
And coat my sad skin with unguent to help me cope.
*Latin: hair shirt
George Held__
Never Mind the Rain
Never mind the rain, she said,
from her side of the bed.
She was a sleepy head,
but I felt heavy dread
about where we would head
after this encounter ended,
and the Tarot girl had said,
I would then be dead.
George Held__
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Rats!
Rats!
Where are the rats in New York poems?
Every New York poet sees a rat weekly
But where are the rats in New York poets' poems?
When I take my garbage into the alley
Next to my building, a rat big as a cat
Waddles into the giant black rat-trap:
"The rats think the traps are for shelter,"
Says my super, "when it's raining or someone
Like you messes with their territory."
Waiting for the "F"train at 14th & 6th,
I watch rats scramble along the tracks,
Dining on garbage tossed there by riders,
The same riders whose hair stands on end
And breath cuts short when a rat scurries
Along the platform where it meets the wall,
Scattering folks waiting for the next train
To Brooklyn, where rats nest in Prospect Park
And pour out of brownstones under renovation,
Big fat juicy rats, prime rats sleek as eels,
With jaws strong as a pit bull's and tails
Wiry as water moccasins.
This is a New York poem and it's filled
With rats in every stanza the way a New
York poem ought to be: Do you smell a rat?
George Held__
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butt...
With a practiced graceful motion
she rose from her squat,
pulling her pants up, _sans_ undies,
to cover her butt,
rising between parked cars
like a modern Aphrodite,
but her waves flowed from within
to moisten this arid San Francisco street.
But what was its meaning?
Another homeless hooker forced to kneel
by another city without charity, without toilets
for those who are without?
Or an act of grace to adorn my mile long thirsty trek
to a nephew's group exhibit
where his somber images compress reality,
express salvation _in extremis_
amidst others' misty images that miss the tragic,
miss the magic
of the nearby streets,
their painted abstractions or unknowingly
abstract realities
missing the point
of a curvaceous naked butt
exposed graciously through necessity
in a hill-girt city
named for a mendicant saint
who provided necessities
unto even the least sparrow, newt, or toad.
sam friedman-
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Wisdom's teeth
What will the dolphins do
with the buildings of Lower Manhattan
when the warming has gifted them
wild Wall Street and beyond?
Will they run the mortgage market
for the benefit of those underwater?
Encage the bulls and bears
in well-aired terraria?
Sponsor super-marathon swims
from the Camden shore to Herald Square,
and give the winners shopping sprees
in Macy's basement?
Or will dolphins too turn to tides of accumulation
and trash the few last years of our degraded Earth?
sam friedman__
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