hu mbug

hu
mbug
 
we  run
past neighbors
chasing wayfaring cats
relieving displays of light
overturning trash receptacles
deflating Santa and his reindeer
alone at the table
mom rips open envelope
after envelope demanding
immediate payment for health
coveragelatefeesoverdraftscellphones
will there be no presents for loved ones
dad’s RC planes skim
oil prospects with the potential
 to cover bills and pollute ground water
perhaps it would be better to remain unemployed
yet without fuel how will children return home for the holidays
in  the  end
we all wind
up in cages
 
but oh!
 
a friends turns
to join us on the path

— Barbara Steinhauser

At Stepford Jewelers

If it snows on Christmas

I’ll get it all for free

Every glittery gem

Gold bangle

Teardrop earring

I’ve maxed out everything I own

On the line for nature’s miracle

Of snow as white

As the pearls I’m holding

If it snows on Christmas 

I won’t be that 99 percent

I’ll be occupied

Never wanting for another thing

Finally worth my weight in gold

— Frieda Babbley

Ebenezer’s Christmas Card

So what the dickens! Calling me a scrooge
for thrift and working like an honest man?
Do I employ a shameless subterfuge
to outsource Cratchit’s job so that I can
secure myself obscene amounts of wealth?
The money that I have is what I earned
by honest enterprise and not by stealth.
In fact, it’s from your ethics that I learned
that no one gives you anything in life.
Isn’t that what industry’s about?
I ceded pleasure and potential wife
to earn not near the money that you flout
conspicuously with transparent pride,
while most in your constituency bide 
 
privations that would make this miser blush
from shame. You like to fabricate straw dogs
to pummel while you unctuously gush
out festive carols by your yuletide logs!
Yet all the time you’re feathering your nest 
and leave it to the poorer of your peers
to borrow funds from their retirement chest 
in order to partake of Christmas cheer.
And so what if I loathe commercialized
indulgences that lure us into stores 
so credit unions can be subsidized 
with interest rates that annually soar?
It’s true I didn’t have to be a scrooge.
But, being so, prevented a deluge  

 
of bailouts jeopardizing all you banked 
upon to comfort you in future years.
That caring sprit you deem sacrosanct,
and Dickens touts when Marley’s ghost appears?
I didn’t see too much of it when I 
was left alone to scramble for myself,
beset with longings most folk satisfy.
Nor did my stocking on a mantelshelf 
solicit Christmas cheer and merriment
that you could ill afford. For you denied
me love who, even now with smug content,
berate me for my bitterness and snide 
behavior. You ignored a sad youth’s plight 
that would have cost you nothing to set right 
 
beyond that Christian charity you boast 
about when reading my creator’s book. 
What’s more, no grouch can entertain a ghost
unless he has the empathy to look
inside himself. For ghosts just haunt a heart 
receptive to the warmth that lay within.
And after all I played my paltry part 
in emulating Him who’s free from sin.
But I still get a table in the rear
when I set out at night to eat my meal. 
Alone, I add! For it’s just once a year
that relatives emotionally feel 
some kinship with a grump set in his ways.
This notwithstanding, Happy Holidays!

 
— Frank De Canio

- HUFF AN' PUFF (AN' HUM YOUR BUG DOWN) -

Say, ever spy a

dragon-fly off stick-‘em die

paper or lull a

cry’s baby deep to sleep when

thirst begs like a gadget sans

AA’s includ’d

the Yurman’s a Swarovski

knocked-off a shelf @

JC Twenty’s, ornaments

look like pretty credit cards…?

is this the snow what’s

befallen you Nick!? It’s the

Twelve Days afore, yep

Christmas an’ the ‘X’ marks your

bottom line’s musijoy ‘til…

{Oh come let us

 (deplore? abhor? pejor? ignore? adore?)

IT, Wharmart the lord}

next February

whence again, Wenceslaus, the

hamster wheel’s chocolate

pellets hardly heart hearty

for your XX marked betrothed

{Oh come let us

(deplore? abhor? pejor? ignore? adore?)

IT, Wharmart the lord}

                       H.e.m.-H’H.

                       12.12.MMxi.

                        ST

I better not pout

All I want

to wrap before Christmas

are my thoughts around

the present

and how it does not 

have to be adorned

with lights and

mistletoe is not

needed for me

to want to kiss you

in the cold white darkness

of that winter’s night 

when Santa

runs himself ragged

fulfilling his 

FedEx-like magic 

trying to please

the precious little ones

who believe in him

enough to leave

him cookies 

of innocence

before the 

crackling fire

of truth

burns

their letters 

to the North Pole

to embers

— Ivan Jenson 

quicksilver people

      there’s this group from Brooklyn

                   gangster guys

                         with 30’s music

           and spike jones washboard

     squeeze horns   rapid fire notes

                    razzle dazzle

                          and he tips his hat

                                    plays his body

          like the bevy of instruments he juggles

                 no wasted motion

                            and

                              keaton

                                    chaplin

                                          this guy

                            skin and bone and muscle       

       they make their own music

                like water over Niagara

                      they glisten

                            dance

                                and never ever can stop

— Carol Hamilton

Lamentations

His mission was to grieve.
He came into the world with wailing
at the ready, never shed it.
The reasons were a laundry list
in those days, ones every housewife
could claim, but didn’t.
He fingered his beads, slid them
back and forth on the abacus
with a practiced speed.
True loss came at last,
and now the hunched back grows,
the weight multiplies,
and the dolorous leaves of lost color
drift down, clumped in the pond
with its still surface. When I saw him
last, still handsome, the laugh lines
had not deepened, and the intervals
between his fasts grow shorter
each day.

— Carol Hamilton 

Shape Shifting

                   Prism.  Starlight.

                   Bumptious morning.

                   A poem.  A song.

                   Our words together

                   one to one.  We build

                   with this mortar.

                   Earth’s plates rub, grind.

                   We pass, put on garments all new.

— Carol Hamilton 

A Quiet Life

          The simple elegance of it.

          Does Robert Hass live it?

          I think not but could be wrong.

          His black and white eyes

          on the back of the book

          reflect twin Chinese junks

          drifting into golden ripples

          at sunset.  I was to have met

          him once but didn’t.  Instead

          I stayed in the old monastery

          where he would have stayed,

          perhaps in the very room.

          The grotesque Purépechan masks

          glared from the white of patio walls.

          Esperanza had silver moon steps,

          flat despair on her stitched-together

          face, a soft voice to tell

          of the accident, deft hands.

          She could not read the note I left her.

          Her fresh spinach soup was

          of the world’s greenest green.

          Today the brittle interlace

          of the old elm’s branches

          barely stirs against cloudless blue.

          The refrigerator is old, too, and hums.

— Carol Hamilton 

Another History of the Bean

Thoreau hoed his 24,750 bean plants

from 5 A.M. till noon each day.

I cannot say the furry little things

are worth the effort, though they

have their own charms when

Chinese-restaurant green

or flavored with bread crumbs

and garlicky butter.

My mother always warned me

against my passion for the slick beans

at the top of a newly-opened can,

but I’m still here and Thoreau is not.

He only lasted 26 months at Walden,

and I’m still levering open tins,

still savoring those first slick fruits.

There are no rules

when it comes to love.

— Carol Hamilton 

At the edge of the poetry reading

He stood as if he wanted to join

Tall with a patriarchal white beard

Dirty blue sweatshirt embroidered

With flowers, the smell of deep

Earth on him, hands stained dirty

A knit cap close on his head.

Finally he stepped forward, just

Five minutes, he asked, to tell you

The end of the world and proceeded

To lecture with clear eyes and voice

A confusion of biblical verses,

Wall Street, Masonic symbols,

Conspiracies, as poets toyed with

Their pencils and looked down.

Finally the timekeeper tapped

His watch and the leader shook

His head, sorry time is up.

The man stopped in mid-speech

Triumphant, see, he told them,

Five minutes and the whole story

And wandered away looking back

Expectantly as if the saved might 

Follow him under the freeway

Bridge huddled against the rains.

—  Emily Strauss

In the Pink

The Mobile girl connects with me.
Delectable in cupcake dress
transmitting domesticity,
she percolates with politesse.
Her swanlike, elongated arms
are moored demurely at her side,
with standing at attention palms 
whose slides alluringly provide
direction to her product pitch.
They skirt just past her garment’s waist,
as though reluctant to unstitch
its seams with seeming brazenfaced 
routines. But signal vibes that she
transmits are mobile to a T.

— Frank De Canio

Spring Fever

They told me to wait till springtide
before moving beyond the mountain crossing,
with its crevices and steep incline.
I told them Spring was the problem
in the first place. Those smooth, sharkskin
afternoons littering calm, tepid waters
with cast-off carcasses of fresh beginnings.
I’ve done enough fishing for a dozen lives,
without having to plunge in murky depths
again; dragging up seared, auburn leaves
that autumn left behind. I’d rather end
this long journey in the clear glaze 
of winter, while there’s time to trek across
cracked ice. I’ll arrive before the warming thaw
entices me with fragrant clusters
of brightly colored blossoms, and birds and bees
seduce me with their bawdy show. 

— Frank De Canio

The Closing Fugue of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony

Canons unfold like limpid layers of fat
straining the bodice of this straight-laced
goddess as she bears the symphonic fruit
of her miraculous conception. The brood’s dispensed
with fluid counterpoint from her embryonic theme -
first inverted, then eased outward
with deft, compositional forceps. 
Melodic snippets trip on heels of kin.
Interweaving lines knit a warm,
incubating blanket of sound. I swoon from bliss -
as though the proud father of these sextuplets.
And well I know, they’d choke in polyphonic muscle
before completing life’s cycle
were it not for art’s dear sustenance. 

— Frank De Canio

Page Turner

In contrast to the pianist
she’s sitting perfectly erect.
Her eyes are focused on the notes
like she’s a marksman poised to shoot
the music printed on the sheet.
And when the work concludes, she smiles,
as if she not just played each bar
but then and there congealed the whole
from fragments forged inside a brain
that now is tempered with relief.
When the pianist leaves amidst
applause, she rises from her seat,
a tree emerging from the floor.
She exits, straight-laced, from the stage,
an apparition dressed in black.
The puppeteers of Bunraku
could hardly be more circumspect.
When the pianist reappears
to play the concert’s final piece, 
she trails him with a leisured pace,
as if a bashful confidant
or prissy at a high school dance.
Then, latterly, she takes her seat,
resuming focus on the score, 
as if the music on the sheet
flowed from her meditative stare. 
 
I’d think it’s she who pulls the strings
of the pianist who seems poised
to fade into the ivory,
did not the posture of this girl
inform him with its gravity.
For, armored in her two-piece suit,
she leads him in this nimble dance
of fingers on cascading keys.
A pause to thrust subversive strands
of jet-black hair behind her ear
gives substance to insurgent terms
imposed by her protracted stare.
She scans the notes to the last bars
of the piece, hands still on her lap,
as she smiles in approbation,
then disappears amidst applause
for the performer still on stage. 

-- Frank De Canio​

Air Conditioner

Heat-snuffing dragon
of hot-house nights.
How soundly the midnight hum
of your metal machinery
dumbs down the evergreen Eden
of my flowering past
when cubes of ice
conspired against the fire
of the melting sun,
and popsicles made it nice
to smelt in the withering heat
while humid flights of fancy
overdosed on the hormonal rush
of summer’s first coming.


Excuse me if I now sit out
those white-noise surges
of relief with watt-not urges
riding astride the sea breeze
of memories. They squeeze friezes
through my window.
Scenes of stalking grass
harnessed by a blitz
of sassy mosquitoes
bombarded by pesticides
that filled the air
like perfume in the hair
of languid afternoons.
I’ve done 7th inning stretches
with a wooden Breyer’s ice-cream spoon
that school-kids used to beat the heat,
before the advent
of your indiscreet electric storm.

— Frank De Canio

On Keeping the Universe in Balance

Out in the Pacific doldrums, scientists

found a garbage dump the size of Texas 

floating with caustic heaviness, the way

flocks of poisoned birds soar before crashing

down onto houses, roads, the shining fields.

And astronomers will soon discover 

a maelstrom of dense black stars, progeny

of melancholy, fear, and apathy   

all swirling at a terrible tempo

like starving cats in an abandoned house. 

Today I walk down to the cold river

at first light with bags to collect clutter.

Among white snails and ducks I pluck plastics

Styrofoam, a doll’s arm. A cricket chirps

—sacred chant—my heart trembles, the haze lifts.

 — Dennis Trujillo

Afternoon Rain

Afternoon rain weighs down 

The heavy heads of sunflowers

And surprises walkers

In the park—clothes cling

Like wet children

And I think of the autumn day

I last saw your face

Thirty-five years ago on campus

Slender in your green dress

Hands like two quivering birds

On the curve of my spine

That morning we kissed.

Later when you drove away

In your dad’s car

Afternoon rain raked down

The last maple leaves in clusters—

I walked back to my room

Through shallow red streams.

 — Dennis Trujillo

Memories of Wildflecken

It unfurls like an ancient tapestry

- The town of Wildflecken

In the mountains of Bavaria

Where I soldiered in nineteen

Seventy eight. Our camp

Huddled on a hillside

Above the town like a sentry

In the snow. We maneuvered

In armored vehicles that belched

Exhaust, pungent and black

As dragon’s breath. At night

We bivouacked in starless forests

Where frost formed runes on trees 

And dreams were pierced

By high-pitched songs

Of medieval spirits.

After weeks of training

In drifts and ripples of snow

I shed my boots and exposed

Chilblains stippled on my toes

— Crimson trophies

From the god of ice.

On the first glow of spring

I walked amidst the mixed pine

Forests that embrace

Wildflecken, my heart eased

By tufts of green at my feet

And azure sky above.

At a clearing the sun bade me lie

On the spongy earth

My folded jacket a pillow.

As I gazed at the vaulted sky

I could feel the hoary ghosts

Of winter, hidden deep

In the chambers

Of my bones, surrender

To the sun’s strident commands

Their wispy arms held high.

— Dennis Trujillo

Wooden Bicycle

I have a wooden bicycle

Made from strong red oak.

The texture is coarse

With straight grain and a few

Knots like dark oases rising

In a reddish tan desert.

The chain is fabricated

From spruce - the same wood

Used for crafting vintage violins.

As I swerve around corners

It whirrs with a clear tone

Equal to the finest Stradivari.

My handlebar horn of whittled

Ponderosa pine emits shrill

Warning calls of frightened

Woodland birds, and the tires,

Shaped from black willow trunk,

Leave resin tracks like clues

In a mystery novel.

It’s dependable and solid

For transporting goods 

Home from the market,

But when I cycle

Through its sylvan home,

Sap begins to run through its veins

And twigs emerge

From the dogwood pedals.

And when I stop to rest

It instantly shoots sinuous roots

Deep into the forest floor.   

— Dennis Trujillo