Apples

my mother used to warn me about worms in apples
and when I was younger I saw traces of their existence,
little cored out tunnels turned brown,
small globs of green decayed bodies,

funny, I was thinking the other day,
'when was the last time I checked an apple for a worm,'
I had a bag full of organic pink ladies,
'not in something like 25 years, maybe,'
I couldn't even remember the last time,

It's strange to think how lucky I've been,
but, maybe even stranger to think where I've gone
that there are no worms left to find any sweet apples
and burrow to eat inside,

the apples seem as sweet as ever,
'moreso', I think, 'than ever before,'

and I wonder where all these worms went
and why their apples gave up on me.

Mom

These words are for my mother
a continuous ramble
dedicated from the womb
to my eventuality

I would pull the plug to
watch us drown
     I would drop the bomb on
     our ashes, like the match
to wash us out

All my poems are one story
of my failure & my
     mother's success
they are love unconditionally
and blind faith

I am humanity
& life & stupidity--
I have suffered ignorance
& regret

She has held me & lost me
mother, the earth,
the thought of home & the
     heart

read this like the lines
between the lines on my
aged face

I am untrustworthy
a liar out of cause
stack the boxes memory & thoughts
since the dirge we
sang of time

I wish for the innocence
you left in me
a boy already running
out of his ideas,
     words begin to die the
     moment we are born--

I've wasted every thought
every letter of the alphabet,
countless times, on myself
I am selfish
I wander without care

I will fade
I will find a way

I leave everything
I am for you
everything

Mother.

Never to be found

there's a gulf of years
between landing here
and fading here, and I recall
your smile in each child's memory
much more than my own failings
or never beings or never wasings,
which you never cared about
and still don't, tho often I find
in your eyes what I think is
some hidden sadness, some
longing, some dream that might
never come or has passed from being,
and it's hard to look away--I
admit it--and it's
harder to stare into the truth--
so I swallow it and write it here
never to be found.

untitled

She wants nothing of me
but my presence
and I can't even give her that

Merry Christmas Ma

Hey me and mike set the decorations up,
we set them on the tree, weighed the branches
found the empty space, Renee took a picture
from the couch, hey we set the lights,
two series and the gold garland,
my mom watched wishing she could help,
she loves Christmas, loves the magic,
I act like a child for her (even though
I want to be a child for myself) she needs this,
she needs her family and the lights and the cheer
to make make up for all her years growing up
with nothing, that's what's up the chimney, you
see, not the dark, hey that's what I understand after all
these years and I'd give them all, I do, We want to, and
I'll act like this forever because she deserves it, I'll be a child
under the tree, watching it glitter with ornaments nearly
30 years old, the accumulation of a selfless life
is worth anything I can give

Good Bye, for my Grandmother and Mother

Time is near its end
a hard orange brown light
and my mother by her side,
I have barely known her,
always on the periphery,
outside, strong
hard, unyielding
inapproachable,

now the light clings
to empty glasses,
frozen mirrors,
reflections of a life
soon to pass;
clustered on the walls,
clinging to the furniture
of a single room

a heaviness
weighing on us all,
my mother holds her hand,
dried tears, but through the fog
I can hear her crying,
them crying, together crying,
playing years like movies
before their eyes,
changing, interpreting
in the end there is no bad,
there is only good,
time memory hello good bye

I say good bye to her
a woman I never knew
will never know,
wishing I could have known,
standing walking running
the rain beats down on our heads
we don't lift our eyes,
time stops for but a moment
yet we miss it,
saying good night
to my grandmother.