New Poem: I CONFESS (52 YEARS LATE)

 wherever you are now

 please accept this belated apology 

 for sending a very 70s greeting card

 with a couple walking along a sunny beach

 containing this inscription:

 someday

 some way

 somehow

 I wasn’t a good listener at 15

 didn’t read unspoken social cues

 until the age of 21

 wherever you are now

 please forgive me

 for being presumptuous 

 and making unintended changes 

 in your later views of me

 

Revised Poem: BEHIND YOUR CURTAIN VERSION 3

Behind your curtain

was a stage flat that looked like a brick wall

I hoped the wall would never change

You used to bless me with teenage smiles

then the smiles stopped justlikethat 

and everything I did got on your nerves

so I closed my curtain 

and never again stepped out for encores

>

Over two decades later,

I visited a restored home 

in West Los Angeles

the owner had a living room curtain 

pulled open to reveal a picture window 

displaying a view of a flower garden,

a swimming pool,

and a charming guest house

>

It’s the kind of sight

you would have loved

in the year

when we were both fifteen 

and wanted to become working actors 

before my parents and yours reprogrammed us

no more live that dream

it became renounce that dream

because it wasn’t….practical 

New Poem: HERE’S TO THE PARENTS

 here’s to the parents

 you know which of them I’m talking about 

 the ones who default to discipline if humiliation doesn’t work 

 who slap and hit well into teenage years

 who throw the approval preserver

 only if the child abandons his/her/their dreams

 taking junior on long summer vacations out of town

 all the better to ward off bad influences 

 but what if the child gets hurt by others saying no

 and the parent or parents choose to end this by saying:

 don’t you know I’d pay her to go out with you

 if I could 

 here’s to the parents

 who create children 

 that become nervous adults 

 and choose not to have children 

 of their own 

New Poem: Thistletown

click off the light switch
click on the 16mm projector
rattle the silent black-and-white film
hold that frame still when I fail
to cross the line with everyone else
walking through Thistletown
>
in need of special treatment
given private tutorials
made to feel as if I have power
to destroy the obedient and confident
if I don't cross the line sooner
verbal knives slash hard in Thistletown
>
student teacher can achieve only so much
until public humiliation takes over:
holler at me, shame me,
send me to study hall,
glue me to a bench
it's character building
it's attitude changing
it's all on you, son,
you keep saying--
instead, my border wall grows taller
>
but I keep quiet, try to move proper
pick up my feet, point my toes
eight steps for every five yards
count the days, months, years
before I can leave Thistletown
and learn how to walk
without looking to my left and right
to cross the line perfectly