Lifestyle * Literary
Eye on Life Magazine is a Lifestyle and Literary Magazine. Enjoy articles on gardening, kitchen cooking, poetry, vintage decor, and more.
If he were perfect, then
he wouldn't be
Dan the Handyman,
laying tile
in crooked rows,
painting windows shut,
installing commodes
that flush up.
If he were perfect, then
he wouldn't take jobs
that he can't do,
because if he did,
he wouldn't be
Dan the Handyman,
whistling
when things go wrong,
cursing when
things go right.
when you wake up mean
you’re in a place you
don’t want to be
voices flare as men
argue in a store
over things they don’t
need
the temperature feels like
hell on earth
men kill each other over
turf they don’t own
a soldier dodges bullets
and fires back from behind a wall
but it’s from south side, chicago
not afghanistan
and i wonder does god show his face?
last week, i lamented turning another
year older
i mourned the loss of my youth
today i read an article about a man
who went to the movies on his birthday
another man made intellectualism
his god, and when his god failed
he fired his tears into that theatre crowd
now, that man will be 27 forever
does god ever show his face?
nations go broke and
people lose their homes
a t.v. camera focuses on a reality star
who finds her god in pills
and does god ever show his face?
but a man got a job
(in this economy)
and children are playing in the stream
of a fire hydrant
a church feeds people
in grant park
i thank god for waking me up
every day
at least i know he still loves me
i see a baby in a stroller
as i’m riding the bus
i pity him for he’ll inherit
this world
but his mom says he’ll be strong enough
to deal with it all
and i know god shows his face all the time
It’s a matter of the heart,
the doctor says,
and he can fix it
with catheter ablation.
“It works miracles,” he says,
“in certain matters of the heart.”
He’s been a cardiologist for years.
“Take my word for it,” he says.
“You’ll be sedated. Won’t feel a thing.”
No excavation in my chest, either.
Instead, he’ll make little holes
in my groin and snake tiny wires
to the surface of my heart
and kill the current that makes
my heart race like a hare
at times and mope
like a turtle other times.
He’s never lost a patient.
“You’ll be fine,” he says.
“Trust me.”
Nine out of 10 ablations work.
I’ll save hundreds a month, he says,
on medications. No more Multaq.
No more Cardizem. And I’ll never
have to wear a heart monitor again.
“Shall we give it a try?” he asks.
“I’ve got an opening
two weeks from Monday.
It’s an outpatient procedure.
You’ll go home the same day,
rest for a week and then resume
your usual activities, even bowling.
Do you like bowling? My nurses do.
I prefer woodcarving.”
“Okay, Doc,” I tell him.
“I’ll give it a try, but tell me,
where were you 40 years ago
when the kids were small
and I was young, like a bull,
and a different matter of the heart
dropped me like a bullet.
Are you sure my heart’s still ticking?
Where’s your stethoscope?
I haven’t felt a thing in years.”
Take a walk on Avenue J, but beware.
The hydrants are frisky.
Tired of dogs.
Tired of never being used for
their intended purpose.
Ready to start a fire if
only it gave them something to do.
A chance to play hero,
to relieve the pressure.
Leave your lighter on the curb.
Walk away.
See what happens.
Combustion ballet in the Arctic ether we
take our pins and poke the balloon,
screaming at the gunshot like two-year-olds.
Would do something but the
chore wheel carries six billion names.
Perhaps we will grow webbed feet,
gills, the rapture, life’s too short and
busy and hard, have to, get into,
children, right schools.
Your children have razor sharp
nails that claw at the sky and
they get them from you.
Shards of balloon fall from the
sky like pancakes. We will
do something about the time that
the Pacific breaks down our doors,
drags us into the streets and
puts us under.
Ask with our last breath who
knew, who knew
Counting the song curds, lefty boozing.
Cuticle takes the groove,
a steady mile of entourage.
Caw! Celery’s tameness.
Caw! Tampered by clocks.
Knitting in a smoky tar.
All frayed up with jazz,
hooting in the park,
she dices diminuendos.
Tramming at spy tools, the
bee bleaches heaven, smelling avarice.
To extinguish yourself is to grieve.
Fun times, the lonely dray.
A killer brew lacking ski ruts.
Meh. Too car. King of rhumbas.
Spoon tilde floors the tunecow,
cousin tutors that book like fizz.
Natalie’s other knee.
Dumb synergy be nil.
Flout the stew cook, dirty tears
stall like trucks in a scullery.
The last breath was hard
to decipher “I love you”
then it was the end.
— Pascale de Comarmond
A pack of two -
choose pink or nude?
Decision made – pink will do.
Called Berrycidious,
in its usual bullet form;
how wonderful to see
it has a mirror too.
It smells delicious
and it has a pearl essence,
shimmering glow
that moisturises
for a full fish pout.
Did you know
that most of them
contain scales hacked
off the backs of herrings?
Simply beautilicious
l-i-p-s-t-i-c-k-s.
— Pascale de Comarmond
I let its divine taste
drown in my mouth
as it releases the rich,
brown cocoa then;
the flavors tend
to blend around
my wet tongue.
Chocolate -
always makes
my senses dance.
Part readily the skin
and readily the pulp
and readily the tongues
wild apples bore,
eviscerate the cores
and watermelon spit
the pits they
cannot swallow.
Do this before
you let the tongues
wild lemons bore
find no cores
and you will
savor truth
unlike so many now
still gnawing.
Please forgive me Kate
I ate the chocolate cake
that you lovingly baked
and had left on the worktop.
I started with just a slice,
then another, it was so nice
you see, very moreish, heavenly,
to be precise.
There are now crumbs
just a dusting of brown,
remains on the white background
of your Limoges porcelain plate.
Back in 1957
kissing Carol Ann
behind the barn
in the middle of
a windswept field
of Goldenrod
with a sudden deer
watching was
something special,
let me tell you.
Back then, bobby sox
and big barrettes
and ponytails
were everywhere.
Like many farmers,
Carol Ann’s father
had a console radio
in the living room,
and every Saturday night
the family would gather ‘round
with bowls of ice cream
and listen to the Grand Ole Opry.
It was beamed “all the way”
from Nashville I was told
more than once since
I was from Chicago
and sometimes wore a tie
so how could I know.
On my first visit,
I asked Carol Ann
if the Grand Ole Opry was
the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
of country music and she said
not to say that to her father.
She suggested I just tap
my foot to the music
and let him watch me.
Otherwise I’d best be
quiet and say “Yup,”
“Nope” or “Maybe”
if asked any questions
which she didn’t think
would happen.
No need to say
much more, she said,
and after a few visits,
I understood why.
Over time, I learned
to tap my foot pretty good
to the music because
when I’d come to visit,
her father would insist
I have a bowl of ice cream
with the family.
I liked the ice cream
but not so much
the Grand Ole Opry.
I’d been weaned
on Sinatra in the city.
Big difference,
let me tell you.
But back in 1957
kissing Carol Ann
behind the barn
was something special
since we couldn’t do
much more until
I found employment.
Only then, her father said,
could we get married.
I found no jobs
in town, however,
for a bespectacled man
with degrees in English.
Still, I always found
the weekend drives
from Chicago worth
the gas my Rambler drank
because kissing Carol Ann
brought a bit of heaven
down behind that barn,
especially on summer nights
when fireflies were
the only stars we saw
when our eyes
popped open.
It was like
the Fourth of July
with tiny sparklers
twinkling everywhere.
Now, 55 years later,
Carol Ann sometimes mentions
fireflies at dusk as we
dance behind the cows
to coax them into the barn
for the night.
I’m still not too good
with cows despite
my John Deere cap,
plaid shirt and overalls
which proves, she says,
that all that kissing
behind the barn in 1957
took the boy out of the city
but not the city out of the boy.
“Hee Haw” is all I ever
say in response because
I know why I’m there.
It’s to keep tapping
the cows on the rump
till we get them
back in the barn
so we can go back
in the house
and start with
a kiss and later on
come back downstairs
for two big bowls
of ice cream.
Oh, it’s late, always too late,
my boundless Beauty, for the moon
longing for you, if life
keeps on moving while staring
at you with grim eager eyes-
such stares are a burden.
Well then, stop it for good,
giving birth to children and grass,
may come the end to relentless white force
of searches at night,
and you, world, be but an eternal
wound where salt is forever cast-
since you’re so weary, God,
so very wild.
My anguish smokes white when afternoons prompt
when fixed eyes ask:
why does he warrant his gospel?
He is not the first to flip over the baked night
nor can his dance inherit the visible –
I hesitate –
for heaven’s sake, stars, stop peering:
do planets hunt mortals? Whatever,
inside the havoc I’ll hazard my shade,
against the undergrowth fudging my prayers
I’m earning disturbances across renewed light
and tasting Heaven, that tried flour –
just trying.
So I never go out
but I’m never at home
so that’s why I never
answer the phone.
You can believe me.
I’ll tell you why.
The caller could be
someone I never
want to see,
someone who never
wants to see me.
Or so we agreed.
The truth can remain
hidden for years
till hung out to dry
in the summer sun
for all to see
like a nuclear plume.
So I never go out
but I’m never at home
so that’s why I never
answer the phone.
You can believe me.
I’ve told you why.
The weekday Mass at 6 a.m.
brings old folks out
from bungalows
around the church.
They move like caterpillars
down sidewalks,
some with canes,
some on walkers.
Young Father Doyle says the Mass
and is renowned for giving
homilies on weekdays
superior to homilies
heard in other churches
even on a Sunday.
After Mass, he goes back
to the rectory to care
for a mother older than
most of his congregants.
A gracious lady, his mother
cannot move or talk
because of a stroke.
But every Sunday at noon,
when the church is overflowing
with people wanting Mass to start,
Father Doyle, in full vestments,
wheels his mother in a lump
down the middle aisle
and lifts her like a chalice
and places her in the front pew
before he ascends to the altar.
Sometimes at night,
when his mother is finally asleep,
he returns to the church
and rehearses in the dark
three hymns she long ago
asked him to sing at her funeral.
He practices the hymns
because the doctor said
she could go at any time
and when that time comes,
he doesn’t want to miss a note.
The last thing she ever said was
“Son, I’ll be listening.”
For those in possession of dignity Its own recompense
not solely of the
p’soupers & the signed-on as
Hausflur Zeichen gaud
like sams’ club industry-plied
general store dry goods the
contest’ers & the
poetaste smooth walk like a fly’s
forelegs’ rub without
intent the singularist
art with maph.d’s
creds-creds creds an’ kreds
cloaca’d b’hind the screed
kinkaidianist
ac’demus remus argot
rebus du jour cakes bakers
pattie-fakes to books’-
cutter’s delights unbaked dear
me how many fawns
files mou? how many pawns?
seen It see It perpetrate
not moi! an ele-
versor not dumb-wader of
the ‘moral simper-
ative from prof. brad
thru poetaster fox & self-
liturgies of duple
first-namers poet claimers
like ike pappas’
pap with one eye on life pote
popology tragic when
one good gets away’d
objet trouve` olds’ an’ new
majors in minor
less minor majors no less
more jr. fames’ capped & gown’ng
& rote as surgeons
mortar’d & boring the good
christian wiman speaks as
d’gioia to coveted
species of pro craft hobby
specious mfabs’ in deed
bavian popcorn saltless
buttering as wont at
door slams shake their joints’ wonder
of what are we not thinking…
H.e.m.-H’H.
2.23.MMxii.
(For TASHARO)
*
Despair has taken on the shape
each cloud leaves afterwards
—you reach across the hole
one hand crazed
a moon rising from the other
as if there were crossroads
and the sky winds down
into evenings that are not yours
—an unbearable headwind
weakened past sorrow, past drift
past sleep and your breath lies down
where nothing holds on
—you don’t save the pieces, it’s useless
—you look up and the air
little by little is led
past emptiness :the no lips
that are not a face, not a voice
and from your arms.
*
The bay backs down once you begin
by counting the dead —your mouth
wider and wider with gnats
half plankton, half step by step
that will live on as beach grass
and undertow, dragging you
the way these gulls make pass after pass
circle the dying afternoon
in endless sorrow
—you walk till you’re no longer hungry
though no sand flea last for long by itself
and every evening, by the millions
stars will drown so the sun
can feed one day more from your lips
left open to weigh down the sky
—you throw the Earth against it
holding it off stone by stone
that seep through your shadow
as if tears would close your eyes
with eyes and no one come near
or remember the numbers just as they are.
*
You sense it knows, the road
narrows, picking up speed
and off in the distance its curve
can’t escape, plays music from the 40s
—you are somewhere in England
listening to rain on a runway
—had it guessed then how its years
would end, here in Nevada, four lanes
not caring where the winds come from
or the radio half airborne
half static, half already too far
though the station is still on the look-out
and clouds are overdue
even in the desert
—it must know, it has to, the hill
constantly turning its head
and you slow, begin to sing along
have one day less to worry.
*
It takes both faucets and each night
you fill the sink the way mourners
set up camp —one alongside the other
swaying and your legs half open
wait till it’s dark, kneel down
as if it was not your own
and it’s safe to drink from the rim
beside the zebras. the leopards
—this lake won’t freeze or dig up
your footprints from the falling snow
calling for help and in the cold
you wipe your lips on the wall.
*
These petals taking command, the flower
pinned down and the work stops
—your breath dragged back
where it’s safe and in your lungs
hides the way each sky is named
after the word for stone
for this small grave each Spring
the dirt adds to till suddenly
you are full height, your lips
defending you against the cold
waiting it out in your mouth
—they too want you to talk
to call them by name
say what they sound like
turning away, alone, alone and alone.