Five Poems by Jim Hart

 

MOTHER LOAD

 

She reads the telegram

bearing the weight of its words

in two hands

 

A single sheet of paper

heaver than Atlas could support

 

She need read no further than

“It is with the deepest regret . . .”

 

In fact

she knew

      upon seeing the emboldened eagle

      top of letterhead embossed

that John

       her only son

       was gone

 

“It is with the deepest regret . . .”

 

She read out loud

making the words come true

making them her own

not merely some dictated statement of fact

 

Making them somehow heavier

riding on air

 

Her hands fell to her sides

her sides were somehow seated in the old porch swing

its rusty chains echoing the weeping of her heart

 

“It is with the deepest regret . . .”

                       deepest regret

                       deepest regret

                                             the swing repeated over and over

                                             until darkness robbed the words from the page by her side

                                             the words she never spoke again

 

 

SECRETS

 

She

is what makes him come home every night

Though if you asked him – he’d deny it

                                

He'd tell you it was the dog

or the big screen TV

or the comfortable chair in which he watches his ballgames

 

But that big blue Buick

hits that driveway every night

after a long day's work

because he knows she's there waiting

as happy to see him

as he pretends not to be at the sight of her

 

Some men are just funny that way

Wait half a lifetime to get what they want

then can't admit how good they feel about it

 

Most people laugh at this pretend misery act

they can see the love behind his eyes

 

She hasn't told him yet

About the cancer

and the very short time frame

left before them

 

She can't bear to think what will happen to him

 

What he'll be like without her

or if the dog or the TV or the big old chair will comfort him

or even

if the big blue Buick will remember its way home   

 

 

REMEMBERING

 

In the August hot Brooklyn night

I wake

reminded of death’s universal sadness

 

Eddie and Carmel

fallen to their ends

from the same Sixty-Fifth Street building

one day minus one year apart

 

Each

found by Skinny

taking the back alley shortcut

to our Sixty-Forth Street hangout

 

Sitting up in bed

realizing Skinny too is gone

too much juice in the needle

 

And Head who provided Skinny with the shot

and dumped him – cold – on the movie theater steps

later killed in a deal gone wrong

 

My cold sweet

drying

as I realize how lucky I was

to have found music and poetry

and written myself

a different ending

 

PERFECT TIMING

 

I could

as I suppose everybody could

have lived better

 

But I lived the way I did

and somehow

got to where I am

 

I could

as I suppose everybody could

have chosen one life – and stuck to it

 

But without trying others

how would I have arrived

here

 

I could

as I suppose everybody could

danced with more partners

 

But thankfully

the music stopped

with you – in my arms 

 

 

LUCKY BREAK

 

I could not have made her up

Not in a million years conceived of her acceptance

of a bum like me

 

A drunken musician/bar fighter

who took no insult

and refused no challenge

 

What did she see in me?

Fifty years later

she - gone

I still cannot figure – why me

 

There were many others

who saw

and wished for her beauty

 

But somehow

she chose

to save my life

with her love

Jim Hart was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY where he still resides. After beginning his working life as a drummer on rock and blues bands he spent thirty years in the NYC Sanitation Department.

Jim has had his work published in over seventy journals throughout the world. He has written five Poetry Collections, "Ramblings Of a One-Eyed Garbage Man," "A Handful Of Smoke," "Just Another Friday Nighty In Brooklyn," "Loving Sue," and "Missing Sue."

He is also the author of the Noir Harry Parker Myster Series, "A Tom Collins To Go," "The Aviation Cocktail," and "Bloody Mary."

Mr. Hart is a member of The Private Eye Writers of America and ASCAP.