An E-Zine of Poetic Variety
Muse Cafe Quarterly
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| Bill Graffius |
BABY BOOMER SON
It isn’t so difficult.
I don’t lead a tortured life,
no longing for some sweet release
like a cold wind through a hot kitchen,
dad in his dirty white wife beater
pounding down another pony bottle
of Fort Pitt beer,
cursing the officers
who spent men like pennies
somewhere in a dark German forest
frozen forever in his memory
rising up through nightmares
to become midnight screams of terror.
There is nothing I have to fear,
nothing to drown in cheap alcohol
dulling the razor cuts of each monotonous
identical day of machinery
and mass production
cursing the white-shirted managers
who didn’t have to breathe in the ceramic dust
and metal filings,
who never had to sweat, just decide,
who spent men like pennies
somewhere in a dirty factory hall,
straddling some sickly yellow stream
belching sulfur and disease
winding its way toward the Allegheney,
the Ohio, eventually the Mississippi
and the freedom of the Gulf.
What I have to endure
isn’t so bad
that I can still mourn for my father.
DEMONS
A blanket and old cotton robe
draped from her teenaged sister's top bunk
help keep out the monsters
that haunt my five-year-old daughter
alight with a keen imagination.
They're a blossoming warrior's shield
through which none but family may pass.
There is nothing in the dark
that isn't there in the light, I tell her,
remembering how like her
I would pull the covers over my head
to hide from ominous dark shapes
lurking in the night-light gloom.
I wonder if some day,
will she stand where I now stand
watching the milky way slip silently
across the desert sky?
The film of stars is like a blanket
that somehow shields me,
an aging warrior alight with a keen imagination.
I wonder if my sweet daughter
will also wrap herself in the comforting march of stars
exorcising life's demons?
FACES
Where will you be
in this carnival of faces
when the calliope stoops hooting
with the last golden ring on the merry-go-round
caught?
Will you be in the House of Mirrors?
Or would it be the Tunnel of Love?
The Penny Arcade?
Or will you be but another vendor
selling balloons and pretty things
that break
sooner or later?
AN OLD MESQUITE
Even as the snow frosts
the jagged edges of the mountain,
rain fills the valley sky
dancing a flamenco rhythym
on my roof.
I watch the river each day
waiting for the red muddy waters
to swirling rise above the haunches
of an old mesquite, gnarled and bent
nearly prone from previous torrents.
I watch the crows tuck their wings
tightly agains the driving wind,
almost sleet,
but no white flecks appear
to show the effects of winter
on their wings.
I watch the skies.
I watch the river.
And I listen to the staccato bump
of raindrops on the roof
waiting for them to soften
into snow.
STORM COMING
Alone with the desert night
I hear the city rumble
breaking like waves on a distant shore.
The breeze is stiff, rain scented.
A dust cloud blossoming
at the base of a towering thunderhead
paints the horizon a pulsating
dirty orange.
Alone, I await your return
with dust-stung eyes searching
the lighted street.
No rain comes, just dust.
And you don't come,
only the storm.
NEW AGE
Some say this is a New Age.
They believe something,
the air, the earth,
the fabric of the universe itself
has somehow been changed,
made new.
I wonder at this,
crouched aside a game trail
called a boulevard in this new age
watching canis latrans root
through the overflow
of a restaurant dumpster.
Digging through the rotting carrion
of another predator’s kill
or pawing through plastic and cans –
which of the two ages is New?
The new moon that does not shine
smiles the same for each.
FINAL DREAM
The gleam of sunlight on fresh fallen snow
conceals a lone broken syringe
at my frozen feet.
Ironic imagery, I think, for
seven years lost in alternating
pleasure and pain,
eventually numbness.
Even the bite of winter wind
fails to break through
and the blurring world becomes
A fantastic kaleidoscope of color
And light.
Across the park the old woman
feeds bits of burnt toast to the pigeons.
Death, albeit belated, has finally come
I think, for me, and I hope
I do not startle her in her daily
life giving ritual
as I sink into my final dream.
It isn’t so difficult.
I don’t lead a tortured life,
no longing for some sweet release
like a cold wind through a hot kitchen,
dad in his dirty white wife beater
pounding down another pony bottle
of Fort Pitt beer,
cursing the officers
who spent men like pennies
somewhere in a dark German forest
frozen forever in his memory
rising up through nightmares
to become midnight screams of terror.
There is nothing I have to fear,
nothing to drown in cheap alcohol
dulling the razor cuts of each monotonous
identical day of machinery
and mass production
cursing the white-shirted managers
who didn’t have to breathe in the ceramic dust
and metal filings,
who never had to sweat, just decide,
who spent men like pennies
somewhere in a dirty factory hall,
straddling some sickly yellow stream
belching sulfur and disease
winding its way toward the Allegheney,
the Ohio, eventually the Mississippi
and the freedom of the Gulf.
What I have to endure
isn’t so bad
that I can still mourn for my father.
DEMONS
A blanket and old cotton robe
draped from her teenaged sister's top bunk
help keep out the monsters
that haunt my five-year-old daughter
alight with a keen imagination.
They're a blossoming warrior's shield
through which none but family may pass.
There is nothing in the dark
that isn't there in the light, I tell her,
remembering how like her
I would pull the covers over my head
to hide from ominous dark shapes
lurking in the night-light gloom.
I wonder if some day,
will she stand where I now stand
watching the milky way slip silently
across the desert sky?
The film of stars is like a blanket
that somehow shields me,
an aging warrior alight with a keen imagination.
I wonder if my sweet daughter
will also wrap herself in the comforting march of stars
exorcising life's demons?
FACES
Where will you be
in this carnival of faces
when the calliope stoops hooting
with the last golden ring on the merry-go-round
caught?
Will you be in the House of Mirrors?
Or would it be the Tunnel of Love?
The Penny Arcade?
Or will you be but another vendor
selling balloons and pretty things
that break
sooner or later?
AN OLD MESQUITE
Even as the snow frosts
the jagged edges of the mountain,
rain fills the valley sky
dancing a flamenco rhythym
on my roof.
I watch the river each day
waiting for the red muddy waters
to swirling rise above the haunches
of an old mesquite, gnarled and bent
nearly prone from previous torrents.
I watch the crows tuck their wings
tightly agains the driving wind,
almost sleet,
but no white flecks appear
to show the effects of winter
on their wings.
I watch the skies.
I watch the river.
And I listen to the staccato bump
of raindrops on the roof
waiting for them to soften
into snow.
STORM COMING
Alone with the desert night
I hear the city rumble
breaking like waves on a distant shore.
The breeze is stiff, rain scented.
A dust cloud blossoming
at the base of a towering thunderhead
paints the horizon a pulsating
dirty orange.
Alone, I await your return
with dust-stung eyes searching
the lighted street.
No rain comes, just dust.
And you don't come,
only the storm.
NEW AGE
Some say this is a New Age.
They believe something,
the air, the earth,
the fabric of the universe itself
has somehow been changed,
made new.
I wonder at this,
crouched aside a game trail
called a boulevard in this new age
watching canis latrans root
through the overflow
of a restaurant dumpster.
Digging through the rotting carrion
of another predator’s kill
or pawing through plastic and cans –
which of the two ages is New?
The new moon that does not shine
smiles the same for each.
FINAL DREAM
The gleam of sunlight on fresh fallen snow
conceals a lone broken syringe
at my frozen feet.
Ironic imagery, I think, for
seven years lost in alternating
pleasure and pain,
eventually numbness.
Even the bite of winter wind
fails to break through
and the blurring world becomes
A fantastic kaleidoscope of color
And light.
Across the park the old woman
feeds bits of burnt toast to the pigeons.
Death, albeit belated, has finally come
I think, for me, and I hope
I do not startle her in her daily
life giving ritual
as I sink into my final dream.
Bill Graffius lives on the northern Oregon coast with his beloved, Beverly, and a little white cat
called Luna Petunia. Raised in a small factory town southeast of Pittsburgh, PA. He moved to
Arizona after college and spent 24 years wandering the desert before moving to Oregon. He
has four grown children and his work background includes community newspaper reporter,
photographer and editor, interspersed with stints in sales and marketing.
called Luna Petunia. Raised in a small factory town southeast of Pittsburgh, PA. He moved to
Arizona after college and spent 24 years wandering the desert before moving to Oregon. He
has four grown children and his work background includes community newspaper reporter,
photographer and editor, interspersed with stints in sales and marketing.