Cast Adrift

Poems of separation.

Cast Adrift 

By: Alexander

 Where I Found Myself

A new moon was broken from my heart

            so I moved into a new apartment

                                    no more marvelous star nights 

stuck in reflections

                                    never dead

permanent half-life

                                    no resurrection.

Complete destruction of idols

gods smashed with an axe

shackles around displaced people

collectively weeping for their loss.

(Now me... fleeing

disregard me.)

The new settlers stand away from what was once home

scared of the new place unknown

                       all creatures

break from environmental factors

(Life gets worth living again writing poetry

or how a song gets stuck in the throat

the way certain people sing)

and the beautiful watchers guiding softly.

7/25/16

Frank O’Hara

Dead 50 years today

            I go through the paltry audio recordings

            your estate has provided.

 grainy, reaching me from some tear in time. 

The 2^nd picture shows a young boy with eyes of Rasputin.

            I can’t even imagine a poem not rolled on by your body

or how when walking down Congress towards the library

I gaze through all the apartments, people watching television and playing famous,

or the dirty air, going through the lungs and out the tongue

of beach deaths, sand and the surf, you served on a boat, died trying to get off the beach. You keep me asking myself if I’m any good, or if that even matters 

when all these people gather around us

hoping that we’re just happy.

Happy thinking of you, happy away from death

breathing in lines tattooed on my back

and repeating place names, Portland, Portsmouth, Poughkeepsie, Pawtucket, 

            or lying there lifeless in Mammoth

naked in a hot spring

                                    soaring towards myself now

           with a smile

Getting here becomes a poem

all the idiosyncrasies of love

or travel

            who is our current companion? Our wings are outstretched. Swimming in cold ponds and rivers under the cover of muck and lizards

lily pads, bugs scatter around the surface, Frank’s face looking out from under the green water, 

small cups of fire,

back to the car to warmed air, trails of rain run across, the ease of movement, the speed of travel,

the empty slowness of departure, I hate soda, go back into the apartment, 

sit on the stool watching the thunder, a friend approaches from beyond.

Goodbye Frank.

Ghosts of Long Beach, CA

Captain Greg is Dead!

                                    leaving his crew stranded in harbor

           He did unto himself what the ocean could not

                       and left his boys without their father

Spencer won’t stop crying on the floor

as his passing ripples through humanity

No more red sails

            No more snorkeling off Catalina Island

Goodbye to The American Pride

He was always so sure of himself he never gave himself a thought

to busy giving orders

                                    or a great talk on history

                                    astronomy

                                    Marine Science

                                    and the occasional tale from the sea

that even men saltier than he would listen 

A red cup of rum punch and the old black lab by his side

staring off at anything that might catch his quick eye

He couldn’t make it through

not even close.

Left everyone on the dock 

Goodbye Greg.