New Poem: AN INADEQUATE ANSWER

 two fifteen year-olds on their only date

 were waiting for a theater box office to open 

 and window shopped at the Woolworths next door

 >

 the then-popular family TV series THE WALTONS

 became a topic of conversation 

 she said “Don’t tell me you like THE WALTONS”

 he, not listening to what she was really saying,

 responded with light talk about how the show had

 mountains and clean air, basically escapist stuff

 >

 decades later, he realized she was struggling 

 with unhappiness and other people’s expectations 

 and he wished he had said something different,

 something which could have formed a lasting friendship 

New Poem: THE LAST TIME I SAW YOU

 should I, I ask myself 

 will she think I’m bothering her?

 embracing temptation, I walk towards

 the table she sits at in the university library

 saying hello, she smiles and says hello

 small talk about school and studies

 then I mention how it’s been almost a year

 since we were Saturday acting classmates

 it becomes quiet; neither of us know what to say

 I throw a pebble into the silence

 time for me to resume studying

 take care, have a good rest of your weekend

 she smiles and says you too in a warm voice

 >

 after returning to my table,

 I open my high school English book

 read e.e. cummings poem buffalo bill’s defunct

 as my mind’s eye watches a balloon climb the sky

 before disappearing 

New Poem: THE OTHER PLACE RAMBLE

It was a two story house close to the railroad tracks and just across from the train station mostly closed since passenger trains stopped coming through in 1967 the house had a brief alternate life as the small town’s teen center The Other Place for about eight months between 1973 and 1974 and it was quintessential small town 70s with jukebox playing China Grove, Smokin’ In The Boys’ Room and Basketball Jones downstairs with occasional dancing (one time I danced alone because I was too shy to approach girls)  and Wednesday night Bible study upstairs where one time things were running late so we watched some of the ABC-TV edit of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE to kill time and just down the upstairs hall was a pool table where I would watch the people who knew how to play pool really really well and as I said earlier it returned to being a two-story family dwelling sometime in 1974 and from that point onwards I took young people’s theater classes on Saturdays in the city half-an-hour’s drive away which was good until my parents didn’t want me to play Billy Bibbit in a production of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST scheduled for the summer of 1975 at the theater and I didn’t stand up for myself and rock the boat—instead, all the acting I was allowed to do was One-Act Play competition in the small town (which led to competition in other towns and cities) and the Junior Class Play and that kept me busy for as long as these enterprises lasted

I wish The Other Place could have stayed open at least until my graduation in 1977 so I might have had somewhere to go to practice social skills and, if that had happened, it could have made a certain difference in how the remainder of the 70s and early 80s played out for me

New Poem: HELLO TIMES PAST

walk happy through shopping mall

new vinyl-and-nylon marching band letter jacket

maybe she’ll notice, offer a compliment

oh no, she’s not at department store job

it’s too early to go home

no movies starting soon

walk to Disc Records

flip past albums and 8-track tapes

three male classmates come up and say

they’re tired of me because

my grades are too good

and their parents hold me up

as some kind of role model

one of them slaps me

in the back of the head

(no one else in the store notices)

before telling me I need to fail

at least one test

to take the heat off of them

then he calls me “damn queer”

before they strut away

it’s only junior year

PSATs are coming soon

if scores are good,

maybe I can think of going to college

that’s at least a hundred miles away

from this hell

that rarely stops being fresh