On Good Friday

Fifty years ago, a friend and I
walked 15 miles
to the Shrine of the North American Martyrs
in Auriesville, New York.
We did it just to do it.
The road was dusty and salty;
the day warm enough
so that we stripped down to t-shirts
as we climbed the Hill of Torture
to sit on a bench
overlooking the Mohawk River.
It was a beautiful day.
Five-hundred years ago,
Issac Jogues, Rene Goupil, and John LaLande
came here from Canada
to convert the savages to Christianity.
They were tortured and killed.
A large round church commemorates them.
Inside, an altar is surrounded by 1500 candles
which can be lit at the touch of a button.
I picked up a pamphlet
titled Mangled Hands
describing the barbaric torture -
his fingernails torn out
and fingers gnawed
until the bones were in splinters
before his thumb and fingers
werecut off with a scallop shell -
and death - from the blow of a tomahawk -
of Issac Jogues
whose zeal was so great
that he ignored possibilities
of escape.
The pamphlet was well-wriiten.
In the gift shop, I bought a small plastic bottle
of blessed ravine water
drawn from the ravine
where Issac Jogues buried Rene Goupil
to give to my grandmother
who was good at slipping me a few coins
for ice cream
which I used instead to buy cigarettes.
I bicycle to Auriesville most summers,
to sit at the top of the Hill of Torture
and enjoy the view
of the Mohawk Valley.
A couple years ago they moved the bench
several hundred yards to the right.
I have no idea why.
The view is not as good.

The Hill of Torture at Auriesville

Tweaking the Algorithm

Tell me again about tweaking the algorithm
so that streets turn into symphonies for ukuleles
and roller coasters line up to spin us
though the old neighborhoods
where our past sells lemonade curbside.
There are moments of madness in each of us
that some can't say enough about.
What do we talk about when we talk about us?
Everything? Anything? Nothing?
The tide turns just when we think
we are home free, when virtual hills
challenging our identity flatten as one who knows
about things cardio has told us.
Regardless, let's give it a shot.
Who are we to downplay the Hallmarkian tentacles?
At this stage, it doesn't matter.
Perhaps at an earlier stage we thought it did
and were trumped into thinking out of fashion
and that has obviously made all the difference.

Anja Niemi

People First

He could give two shits about her lack of legs. . . .
          - Jeff Niesel

And then there's this scene in Rust and Bone
where Alain and Stephanie go to the beach
and Stephanie begins swimming away from the shore,
and you think, Here we go.
And, as expected, the camera begins panning
those on the beach, and you wait for the reaction,
but there is none.
Stephanie is out there,
enjoying the water, and the day, and Alain.
And you think, Yes, dammit, this is good, this is good!

Armand Verdure and Marion Cotillard in Rust and Bone (2012)

Tubbing with Ziploc'd Kindle

Maybe it's nothing more than addition and subtraction, the artifacts from kiosks visited in times of dissonance, the incidentals clomping around in UGGs off-season clamoring for spectators and for those dealing from the bottom of the deck with stashes of empty cereal boxes tucked under both arms. You could have picked Door #2 but instead went with your hunch and ended up with a one-way ticket to Palookaville where nights over chessboards get hazy and strangers lean in with offers of whatever your little heart desires: summer days with nothing to do but catch rays on the back deck.

Josef Tornick

Leaving the Airport at 5:30 AM

You keep replaying the opening bars to Chet Baker's All Blues
from The Last Great Concert
recorded two weeks before he fell out of a window in Amsterdam
because you can't stop,
because it's hard to imagine how anyone could have nailed it so perfectly,
but he did,
because it's one of the closest things you've encountered, and,
for a few moments, nothing else matters.

Chet Baker

Step Page 3 of 12

Can I bum a smoke?
          - Anon

He/she has refused to sign for your autobiography,
and will continue to chip away
at your ice sculpture until opening day,
when the winners will be announced,
and he/she will disclose - to the world, I might add -
your innermost workings.
Brush-hogging aside, the light has changed,
so get going. You don't have all day anymore.
You have bummed your quota.
These small facts are not canonical
but, once vetted, should be enough
to secure a small stipend to tide you over.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

The Calculus of Togetherness

It's as if someone turned on the light,
and you awoke,
and the book you were reading before you fell asleep
fell off the bed, and you lost your place,
and now the image is running down the street,
broadcasting your dreams.
The fundamental theorem of incompleteness
out the window, yes?
No need to re-do the math,
to revise the derivative. No need
to walk single file along the path through the trees.
These small victories have staying power.
These small victories are the real deal.
Pick one of those days when the sun
peeks through the clouds
and people are chattering as if it mattered
because it does.
One of those days when the bends are out of earshot
and Little Miss Muffet is at the bus stop,
with curds and whey, waiting.

Robert Frank

In Snow

The crows are saying something,
something about Rothko's rooms,
how the rearrangement made a difference
and he continued, and how they
continued. You need this
or something like this.
So you cancel your appointments
for a still life. It's quiet.
The crows seem to know.
Far off, a snowplow suffers a concussion.
The flakes, indifferent, continue.

Crossing Against the Light

Floating down the condiment aisle
you take an exacto knife
to a jigsaw puzzle
then kick back in your cork-lined study 
and examine the refractory periods
of passersby in your dream.
It's not the first time.
Your hope of rehabbing yourself
was pre-empted, the stalled vehicles
edging into the crosswalk.
You've received accolades for revamps,
revamps that will fail to deliver
as if the last actor on earth
is auditioning for the part of you.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison