Originally posted 1/6/2012; original title, “Dave Penny In Providence.”

I only walk
in Providence
at night when

the city
looks its best,
dressed in love’s crafty haze,

red eyes blinking in pairs
on the stacks of
the Narragansett Electric plant,

signaling that there are
ghost fires still burning
in the pile of brick,

calling out
the extent of damage
there still is in the air.

I walk wherever I can
in Providence, but only at night,
just to pay tribute to it

and honor the dim power
cradled in this crook
of the upper Bay

where what we withhold all day
comes out at night
to define us.

Many here are refined by day, 
striding these cobblestones
in good artist’s clothes, admiring

the East Side brick,
avoiding the South Side, 
slumming in Olneyville,

dipping their well-shod toes
into the Armory district, feeding
their faces on Federal Hill.

They remind themselves
of this at night when they overstate
the light and recall that 

“Providence” is a name given
to the source of good fortune,
and clutch that comfort close. 

I walk this city at night
not to fear but to bathe
in the hangover

of the once-rough port,
the vanishing villainy 
of the dashing Mob,

the elder deities
once conjured here;
to imagine

their red eyes blinking at me
at night in Providence, city
of disguises, city that was once

and always will be
my only comfortable
home.  

Some of us do our best work
in the dark
when we almost touch 

what we refute
by day — when we can at last find
others who know who we are

simply because
we feel more at home
in this rough, honest night.

Originally posted 4/14/2004.

between flirt and affair
between laughter and terror
between the end of the backward rock of the chair
and the start of the backward fall

is the land where you live

before the light wakes up
when your sense is bridging
the space between
nothing and something

is the only time there is

it takes patience
to live this wholly incomplete way
to hang on the day’s pendulum
without falling off

what some call the great unknown

is there such a thing as a marigold’s prayer?
what is an antelope’s last thought
before hitting the wall at full run
unable to turn aside?

the way things are in
this vast continent between the poles
of being and not being
of static and fluid

if you are alive
you cannot win
you are dying in the moment
as fast as you can and

though the wind sleeps

in the blue trance before dawn
something is always moving
at once toward and away
back and forth and up and down

and it only appears to be something other than you

Originally posted 4/23/2012.

Growing up in
Worcester, Springfield,
Lowell, Lawrence,
Fitchburg, or Pittsfield
gives us permanent
leverage
against pretense:
whenever we proudly speak
our hometown names

a seagull in Boston fires from the sky
and ruins an Acura’s windshield,
a raw wool sweater in Northampton
catches on an antique nailhead,
and somewhere on the Cape
an overpriced lobster bites back.  

We wake up some mornings
and realize how handsome we truly are.
It’s enough to make us empty a mill
and start a revolution inside.

Originally posted 9/15/2008.  Inspired by the book by Robert Hogue Harrison of the same title.

The dead man I was born to replace
sits up and watches me from a distance.
Hello, blueprint! It’s comforting to remember
how few of us are innovations,

how almost everyone’s a remake.
Some few are sequels, but each of us
drags behind us the shadow
of some more or less distant Original.  

I’d go talk with that dead man
but why waste time?
I already know
what he’s going to say: he’d remind me

that our monuments and buildings,
overstuffed with our plans, are built
to hide the horizon.
That’s how we keep things going.

Originally posted, 8/31/2009.  Original version was found in old notes; apparently, this was written in 1976, when  I was 16 years old.  I’ve modified it very little, mostly to create end-rhyme breaks and clear up a little weirdly vague imagery that seemed like the result of youthful incompetence versus originality.

“““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““`

We all stomp round and round. 
We rage at sky, at ground. 

We hunt and peck and scream. 
We hate, we fear, we dream. 

We honor corpses’ names,
then rip ourselves with games.

The trees know we don’t care
for sea, or fish, or air. 

We strike at those we loathe.
We sleep we those we love.

We can’t tell them apart. 
We turn that into art.

We drink our salty tears. 
We do this all our years. 

We spend our time on pain.
Our children do the same. 

We hope, but hope’s a lie.  
We live, we wait to die. 

We lie down, glad to sleep. 
When we’re gone, few will weep.

Originally posted 1/27/2011.

I decide it’s time
to open up and release
a secret to you
and tell you

that I often write
inspirational messages to myself
on paper plates,
then eat off of those plates
in the hope that hope
will soak into the food
and keep me sane and alive
till the next meal.

When I tell you this,
all you can think of to say is,
why are you killing all those trees?

This is why
I too often lower my eyes
in your presence
and grit my teeth; it’s my prayer
that you’ll stop asking
soon.  It’s why
I hesitated before telling you;

you can’t help but call attention
to the slaughter all around me,
yet still manage to entirely
miss the point.

Originally posted 3/31/2010.

feather
floating

a little this way
a little that

one current lifting
another driving down

will drop at some point
to the floor

where it will stir a little 
now and then

mostly will lie still
having found its level

like my head my truth 
my real face which

no matter how 
propped up with breath 

will fall full of dust
a discard 

don’t care
drift was movement 

was needed
for a while