The Sheer Good Luck of It All

We cringe
when watching movies
of unfaithful husbands
telling their girlfriends
“I’ll leave my wife for you”
because everyone watching
knows it is
an empty promise,
an IOU wrapped
in a chocolate box.

I was that husband
who cheated,
but I eventually left.

After I burned through
the guilt,
I married my girlfriend,
and I can honestly say
I have never been happier,
or more fulfilled
in my life.

Now I know why
we rarely see
this scenario
in the movies:

no one would believe
the sheer good luck
of it all.

Hell,
I hardly do.

The Weight of It All

I was ready
to consume this woman
I’d fantasized about,
to visit the extracurricular
erotic netherworld
she was promising.

I was ready to meet her
surreptitiously in Seattle,
and I was ready to cross the line
she’d been writing
in lipstick and perfume
and emails.

I was ready to fake
to lie to
to deceive the one
I lived with
and do whatever I needed
to taste this ambrosia.

I was ready to do what
my morality previously forbade,
and had purchased the condoms
to do it.

I was ready for the
weight of it all.

Then, my live-in called
my office to tell me
that my father died
of a heart attack
that afternoon.

Suddenly,
at 35 years old
I had to grow up.

I still went to Seattle
three months later
and it was everything
she promised,

which only proved
I wasn’t ready
to be a man
yet.

No Secret

No law of physics
can transform the anger
of this moment

the familiar bruising
and stinging pain

into anything even remotely related
to an evening breeze.

I splash cool water
on my face
and pray for help
to an unseen god
who I know exists:

“Change my reaction
to this.
Guide my steps,
and take me
somewhere far, far away
from this moment.”

I await the results of this
impending metamorphosis

realizing there is
no secret,

only waiting
and trusting.

The Grand Irony

In earliest days,
when our love
was new,
I was
a vulnerable sapling,
subject to
wind and whim.

Years later,
our love has roots
and I am a tree
deep and unyielding,
and we live, grow
in our treehouse
safe and secure
from all natural predators.

Ironically,
now that we have
the depth of passion
and commitment
of this life shared,
some nights
this tree
just can't summon
the wood.

It's All Medicine (Mixed Blessing)

First-time
cannabis use
last night.

I'm 52.

Thoughts:

1. This is a revelation, and

2. Uh-oh.

Five Again (For Sarah)

Little one,
like a dewy tulip,
you are too fresh,
too fragile
for this milieu
you selected.

I told you
that there’d be boys
interested in you,
but now
how do I teach you
you can’t save all of them,
or even most of them,
and many of them
will just piss all over
your kindest efforts
anyway.

You deserve better
and I don’t know where
you learned to
act as their saviour-servant,
because backstage
you’re a pouting,
shouting princess,
more lazy than malevolent.

Still,
I wanted you
to return,
but now I know
you can’t come back,

and what I really want
is a time machine
so you could be
five again
and I could memorize
every detail,
every simple joy,
before life
and your depression
stole so much.

I’m always here
little one,
and I’ll always be here,

no matter how
painful it is
to watch you
as you stumble
and trip
into your self.

Testosterone

This predator
courses through my veins
and I cannot stop him,
I cannot ignore him.

When I am held
captive
by the unmistakable scent,
the breathy low moan,
the contoured shadows
of the feminine breast,
I know he is
at the wheel.

I have tried
to work with this fiend,
naively thinking
I could
control him,
but
he demands payment,
he demands food,
he demands flesh.

He rarely waits
and he listens
even less.

The worst part
is knowing
he is the untamed
beast of the man
that she craves
in spite of
her protestations;

(even those women
who purport to be
elevated
over this wretched
biology),

for these ladies
will surrender
their dignity,
without remorse
or shame,
and the bastard will laugh
and consume them,
leaving only
sticky,
unclothed skin.

However,
I can’t entirely blame him
as he’s got me laid
more than a few times,

and besides,
he’s only a chemical,
an amoral, inculpable chemical .

Even as he wanes
and dissipates into
his slow and flaccid death,
he’ll still have the last laugh
as he abandons you,
in all your spongy
failure
with a wife
who is taking your
situational impotence

way too personally.

[Written for Poets United and their Predator prompt,]

Synthesizer

Turn on
the power,
and begin:

play the keys
twiddle the knobs,
change the filters.

Thankfully,
there are few rules,

only imagination
and sounds
never before produced,
only dreamt,

filling all that
empty
silent space,
with aural color,

and ignore the presets,
as they were made
for efficiency,
not experience.

Truly,
this synthesis of
the machine’s heart
and the creator’s soul,

working in concert,
can make
something
out of nothing,

wherein lies
the magic of art.

[This is Moskowitz' present synthesizer of choice. Photo courtesy of usnovation.com]

Days and Years

Whether the days
feel like years

or the years
feel like days,

I'm thankful
all of my
days and years
belong to you.

My Heart Sees

I'm not looking
for new wrinkles;

my eyes
just don't focus
that way anymore.

These days,
my heart sees
more
clearly.

Incomplete America

“They're bringing crime. 
They're rapists. 
And some, I assume, are good people.”
- Donald T(he )Rump on Mexico

Make America Great Again?

Nothing screams
Clueless White Male Privilege
than pining for
“The Good Ol’ Days.”

Anything
pre-1965,
pre-Civil Rights Acts
pre-Voting Rights Act,
is an
Incomplete America.

I piss on your nostalgia.

I shit on your romanticized
Hollywood fantasies
of a sanitized,
White Protestant
America,
where everyone
had their place,
and they knew it
and they kept there
and they were happy.

Their mythology comforts
for there is
no conflict,
no desperate, hungry pleas
to distract
The Exceptional, Chosen Americans
from their enviable dreams.

I’m an American
and my country
needs me,
and the rest of us
who have been left out
on the sidelines,
in the boiling kitchens,
under punishing sunlight
in the fields,
wiping the asses
of the royal offspring
of the rich and pampered,

to register
and vote,
vote,
vote.

Don’t let them
“Make America Great Again”
because we know
where that led us.

Vote and
“Make America Complete, At Last.”

Moskowitz voting in California Primary, June 2016

[For Poets United suffrage prompt.]

I Refuse

I refuse
to believe that darkness
will vanquish the light
permanently.

I refuse
to distrust you
just because
we do not look alike.

I refuse
to believe
that my side
is infallible.

I refuse
to join others
out of fear
instead than love.

I refuse
to dogpile on the
lone,
dissenting voice.

I refuse
your negativity,
your avarice,
your pessimism.

If you offer me
your friendship,
your time,
or your love,

in exchange
for my belief
in the inherent
good of my fellow,

then,
I refuse.

No!

“No!

She cannot be
gone!

She is my light,
my food,
my breath.

Without her,
this life will be
a gray, unrelenting
sentence.

She’s still
just a baby,
my baby.

Perhaps, God,
if I held her
strong enough,
close enough,
You would
trade my life
for hers?

I won’t ask
why.

No answer
will suffice.”


Inspired by Käthe Kollwitz, 
"Frau mit totem Kind" (1903)














[Written for http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/2016/07/words-count-with-mama-zen.html ]

Intimacy

She knew
what he
secretly liked,

and he liked
what she
secretly knew.

An Infinite Palette

In black and white
photography
there is rarely
any pure white,
and rarely is there
any pure black.

Most images are in
subtle shades of gray.

Different skin tones
are gray.
Snapshots of the sky
are a different gray.
Spilled blood
reflected in the sun
is a yet another variation
of gray.

I used to think
using black and white
in a colored world
was an affectation,
a pretense.

Now I see
that truth is like
a black and white photo:

a little black,
a little white,
and an infinite
palette of gray.

[Written for With Real Toads - go and read and praise.]

Lost in The Moment

If you're worrying
about what
I'm thinking about
while we're making love,

then
you can't be lost in
The Moment
like I am.

I Couldn't

“First, she told me
her name was Ashley.
The next time
it was Brandee,
and then,
it was Millicent.

She was young
and firm
and flexible,

with clear blue eyes,
and a nape made
for her
long
blonde
hair.

I kept feeding
her singles
and she ate
like a dirty city pigeon,
out of my hand.

I‘d have her lean in
as I pretended to listen
over the mix of
rap-metal
and classic rock,
but I was actually
breathing in her
heady mixture of
stage perfume and
overpriced alcohol.

I learned
she dropped out
of school when
she got pregnant.

She told me
she had the kid,
and a pimp,
and a coke habit,
as she slid her
lingerie’d torso
up against mine,
straddling me
during one of the
many table dances
she performed
under those predictable
red and purple
pin lights.

And I wanted
to rescue her,
to take her away
from all that decay,
to tell her
I loved her
and that I would
always take care
of her,

but I couldn’t.

So, eventually
I left that
smudge
of a town,

and told everyone
when I arrived home,

the agency was wrong,

and she wasn’t
our long-lost
second-cousin.

Now,
I just wish
I could
forget her.”

[For Fireblossom Friday @ With Real Toads ]

Negotiations

Love,
as an action,
is unilateral;
a velocity moving
outward
in a specific direction.

Loving relationships
are always
bilateral negotiations;
at worse,
unwilling compromises,
at best,
complementary
sanctuaries.

In The Temple Between My Temples

I always start
in the produce section,
and soon I am lost
in the beauty
the splendor
of it all:

inside my head
Elvis Costello is still writing the book
and pumping it up
and the New York Dolls
are dancing like monkeys
in spandex

and Dusty Springfield
tells me it’s a sign of the times
as I compare prices
on frozen pizzas

down the snack aisle
Curtis warns me about
the Pusherman
and I look to see
if he’s watching me
from his funkyfine heaven

and I try to remember
if we need milk
and Prince bumps up next
to the Carpenters
next to Public Enemy
next to Bob Dylan
next to Julie London

and I’m no longer
just grocery shopping:

I’m having a divine
religious experience

in the temple
between my temples.

Caveat Emptor, Prospective Believers

The deal looks simple:

just say you believe,
take a dip in the baptistery
and come up a new person.

So many agents sell it as
After Life insurance,
trying to earn their share
of that great
Great Commission.

Caveat emptor,
prospective believers,
before you sign:

remember
taking on the Christ
means losing yourself
and all your pretty things
for the sake
of Jesus.

If words like
obedience and discipline
scare and intimidate you,

they should.

To follow
is the hardest thing
and the days when
the cool water soothed
my aching, burning soul
are rare indeed.

It’s not as simple
as saying
“I believe, I believe.”

It is in denying yourself
the delicious pleasure
of self-righteous hatred and anger.

It’s in feeding your neighbor
with the last piece
from your pantry.

It’s in the very Un-American idea
that says
“I am not self-reliant,
I am weak,
and I need someone
to show me
right from wrong.”

It’s humbling,
but far easier than being hung
naked on a cross
to show your devotion to God
and nowhere near as
humiliating.

It’s not about being “saved”
from the Hell of the future,
it’s about living through
the hell of the present.

So, before you say yes
think it through,

and if you still can’t
rationalize it
or explain it

but you still want it,
really gotta have it,

then
you’re ready.