A swirling mist
blows through my eyes
Filling me with strange notions
Bringing me back to my childhood
How the devil demons invaded my head
Chasing mad dinosaurs through dark alleys
Pausing to drink from my thirsty lips
All knowledge passed on down to me
By well meaning parents who insisted
Dinosaurs didn’t exist
Grandfather was eaten alive by one
He knew what I meant
Remembering
My Grandmother
Oh how I hated
that Third Street hotel
My grandmother old and wrinkled
Sitting in the lobby with withered men and women
Reclining on worn couches
Staring off into space with eyes
Like death warrants
The smell of death
The smell of funeral parlors
Filling the lobby
My grandmother pale and sickly
Her voice shaking like an earthquake tremor
Rising slowly to hug me
Wearing her years like rosary beads
Oh how I hated those visits
Watching those old people shuffle
In and out of the hotel
On their way to a Sunday walk
Or a meal at a Tenderloin cafeteria
Looking like wasted corpses
On a 24-hour pass from the morgue
Living behind drawn shades
In a single light-bulb room
Sealed like tombs
Walking in endless circles
Like a mad conductor
At an abandoned railway station
Oh how I hated those visits with death
Seeing my own mortality
In my grandmother’s eyes.
The old hotels are gone now
Torn down in the name of progress
But they will always live on
In the back of my mind
My grandmother walking the
Corridors of my skull
Reaching out to me
With bone cold hands
These transitory images
That will not leave me alone
Replaying themselves over
And over again
Like a bad horror movie
Cursed with insomnia
I struggle in the morning
To get out of bed
Waking two three times a night
Trudging down three flights of stairs
To retrieve the morning newspaper
In and out of doctor offices
Taking pills like candy
Seeing my grandmother
In the dark gloom of that
Third Street hotel
Death crouched low
Like a sprinter waiting the
Starter’s gun
Childhood
Memories
When I was a young
child
I used to sit and watch my mother
Knit from patterns bought at the
Local five-and-dime store
My sister and I in the living room
Our ears glued to the radio
listening to the Green Hornet
And the Lone Ranger
Mother working her quilt
Her fingers moving
In perfect stitched time
Each color a rainbow hue
Of love
Memories Two
It came into our
life unexpected
Like an unwanted child
Rudely shoved into the livingroom
Through the narrow doors
By two white shirt brutes
Heaving and grunting like hogs
Arriving one morning charged
On my father’s meager pay
Once in the house
It took over our lives
And none of us would ever
Again be the same
Many a night
I snuck quietly from bed
making my way silently down
The narrow hallway
To peek into the livingroom
Where mother and the beast
Were engaged in battle
Like knights of old jousting
For honor
Mother slouched over the piano stool
Her eyes dream-like, hair disheveled
Magical music notes coming
From the foot petals
At the bottom of the piano
Perhaps bringing her back to kinder days
Before the weight of marriage
Weighed her down like a landslide
Her fingers pretending to tickle the
Ivory keys with tender caresses of love
Looking like a Chinese sewing lady
In a garment shop
As if each note were a perfect stitch
In time
