Tuesday, March 19, 2024

3 Poems, With Thanks to Dimitri Reyes


I love following prompts for inspiration to write poems. A poet I follow, Dimitri Reyes, offers a prompt every Sunday on Patreon, and the virtual me recently attended one of his (highly recommended) Saturday workshops.

"Write a poem about a bird," Dimitri said one recent Sunday, which prompted a haiku about the keepsake pictured above. It serves as a memento of my late uncle, a priest. The cardinal is a bird of remembrance, a sign that those who have passed are with us in spirit.

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Haiku in My Living Room


Pray to my uncle,
Now a stained-glass cardinal.
Church, a bamboo cage.

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"Write about a favorite TV show," Dimitri suggested on another Sunday. So I flew back in time to write about a favorite episode, "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," from the first "Star Trek" series, a guilty Thursday night pleasure for Dad and me when I was young.

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Tomorrow Is Yesterday


It’s a Thursday night in March 2024,
And I have conjured my father in this poem.

Dad is a thousand miles away from me
In the same TV room in New Jersey.

He has boldly returned from the dead,
And we are watching “Star Trek” together.

Dad loves to pretend he’s Captain Kirk.
I love to pretend Captain Kirk is my Dad.

Suddenly, on the fluorescent screen before us,
Multicolored lights begin to flash. Sirens sound.

Dad holds tight to the arms of his chair,
Rocking side to side in an exaggerated motion.

The crew of the Starship Enterprise surrounds us.
We slingshot around the sun and land back in our TV room.

It’s a Thursday night in January 1967,
The day 2 feet of snow fell in Chicago.

My father sits in his easy chair, 57 years ago,
775 miles away from the storm.

He is still a thousand miles away
From the boy nestled on the room’s orange couch.

I join my former self there. I place a protective arm
That envelops my small body. I whisper in my ear.

“It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK,”
I say over and over again.

Soon, a tractor beam surrounds me.
Its light absorbs me.

My grasp on myself dissolves,
As credits begin to roll.

An otherworldly vessel -- this poem --
Takes me home, this image implanted in my brain:

Dad, like Captain Kirk, at the conn,
Exploring strange new worlds,

Changing my future forever.

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During Dimitri's Saturday workshop, we talked about our weaknesses as writers. I thought about how -- with the ability to try anything, accomplish anything, create or destroy anything -- I so often fall short of my ambitions. "On a blank page, I can do anything," I often think, with a boldness that rarely surfaces in my work. So, when prompted, I became a hollow men in 11 lines, and even ended the poem, with apologies to T.S. Eliot, with a whimper.

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About Me


Behold the hollow man.
Behold the writer without a soul.
Behold my face,

The lines that formed and hardened
When my brow furrowed in suppression,
When I pursed my lips and kept silent.

Hear the poems I never wrote.
Imagine images I dared not share.
Watch the ghost of me dissolve.

As I disappear,
without a whimper.


Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Ruthlessly Pruning My First Sonnet


One interesting assignment in a recent poetry class was to take a poem I've written before and pare it down by focusing on the economy of language.

I'm all for economy of language. As a journalist and editor in my past life, I let hardly any adjective or adverb survive.

But life has changed. At recent readings, I've been captivated by the performance aspect of poetry, less so with classical poetic form.

So I took this opportunity to take the first sonnet I ever wrote... for a girl... in college... when I thought I was so smart... and ruthlessly prune it to reflect my current life... for anyone who might care... right here... when I simply crave relevance and connection.

This is...

Sonnet 1

There's something in the air, or so they say. 

It's certainly not magic or the heat. 

It's just the moon, white-full and young -- the way, 

like water, people splash and spill beneath. 

 

And you and I remind me of the tides. 

We hate and love; we rise and fall. It scares 

me that I don't know why or that I find 

no fault in us, just something in the air. 

 

So still above us rests the moon, content 

and seemingly unmoved. It doesn't hate 

or love; it doesn't care -- without relent, 

without a passing judgment of our fate. 

 

The moonlight falls like smoke between the mist. 

What fools we are compared to such as this. 


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And this is...

Sonnet Unbound

You and I are tides 

under a faithless light. 

 

We rise and fall, 

splash and spill. 

 

Helpless, 

in the mist. 

 

Reckless, 

in our love and hate. 

 

The moon, 

relentless and immutable, 

 

casts indifferent shadows 

on our foolish fate. 

 

 

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Poem: 'Ja Cie Kocham'

Mary Baron, 1897-1974

Ja Cie Kocham

When I was a boy,
JFK was president in Washington, DC,
And all the words were Polish in Garfield, New Jersey.

All the words were Polish
As I held my grandmother’s sandpaper hand,
And we walked to Sunday Mass at St. Stan’s.

All the prayers were Polish.
All greetings were Polish on the east side of Lanza Avenue.
Everyone around us, an immigrant.

Returning from church with Babci,
We stop to pick a chicken to slaughter.
She haggles with the butcher in Polish.

At dinner, I devour tender slivers of the chosen chicken,
Mixed in a soup with chunks of rice,
As pots of boiled cabbage simmer on her oven top.

I catch her eye in the changing colors of the kitchen window:
A flickering glow from the outline of a neon bottle
Above the door of the neighborhood liquor store.

Babci knows me, although we don’t speak the same language.
She knows I hate the smell of cabbage.
She knows I won’t, I can’t, complain.

English words were never spoken in Babci’s house.
English words were elitist and foreign.
They confused and intimidated her.

Her child, my mother, spoke English rebelliously when she was young,
Loving all the English words she needed for survival,
Instilling that love in me.

Now I am my mother’s keeeper.
We have both grown old.
My grandmother died long ago.

I sometimes catch Babci’s daughter
staring at ghosts outside her kitchen window.
So I whisper in her ear, although I know she can’t hear me.

I whisper the only three words I remember in Polish.

Friday, February 9, 2024

Thank Yous From Newlyweds to My Grandmother (an unrhymed sonnet)

Mary and Jimmy, wearing a white tux.

He has giant hands; she, a slender waist.


Pat and Bill sincerely appreciate

their world in color, freed from black and white.


Rosalie and Rudy peek playfully,

retreating to their honeymoon cabin.

 
Mary and Hugo, dancing center stage,

hands tightly clasped, casting nervous smiles.



Norma and Emil, wearing Clark Kent glasses.

She has dangerous beauty, kryptonite.


Dolores and Libbie’s getaway car.

She stole his heart; he has a dark secret.

Florence and Uncle Charlie, now both dead.
When my aunt smiled, she made the bright world dim.


Sunday, January 28, 2024

Poem: '11 Roses'

The streetlights of my hometown

Project Write Now is a wonderful arts organization based in Red Bank, NJ. If you are interested in writing, or in supporting young writers, check it out.

I'm currently enrolled in an adult intensive poetry course, and below is my first poem from that class. I want to share it here, just because.

"11 Roses" is based on three prompts inspired by lines from the poetry of Eduardo C. Corral, and a discussion of his work, including "The Autobiography of My Hungers" (accounting for "my" poetic phrase in one of the couplets below)...

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11 Roses

I stared at the deer
Because it stared back at me.

I walked my hometown streets at dusk,
Invisible to schoolboys on careless bicycles,

The women in the nail salon, and the families outside the Dairy Queen.
My reflection in store windows, the only evidence of me.

I held my breath as I passed the cemetery at the edge of town.
Where my father lies.

On the recent anniversary of his death,
I had placed a rock on his gravestone.

It wasn’t there.

I walked further, into the woods,
Hiding an autobiography of my secrets.

How my heart is easily broken.
How I never stopped loving you.

How I am a glint of light now.
Not even a ghost.

In the aurora of distant streetlights,
I blend into the ramble and the thorns.

So I stared at the deer
Because it stared back at me.

Monday, January 8, 2024

What Songs Make You Happy?

As a Notre Dame alum, I don't have a rooting interest in tonight's college football championship... except for one thing:

I hope all the Michigan fans are happy at the end of the third quarter.

I hope they all sing "Mr. Brightside." Because, inexplicably, this song makes me irrationally happy.

This past Saturday, my wife Nancy and I were at Jersey Girl Brewing in Mount Olive, NJ, where a local cover band, Not Enough Jeffs, was doing a great job playing popular party songs. People were dancing; everyone was happy. But Nancy was mortified when they started to play "Mr. Brightside."

She threatened to take a video of my reaction, but didn't... because she loves me. But if she had, there might now exist a forever-embarrassing clip that would look a lot like this notable scene from "The Holiday":


Two other songs that my family knows make me irrationally happy are "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen and "River Deep Mountain High" by Tina Turner.

I've previously written about "Thunder Road" here, and "River Deep Mountain High" crept up on me recently (thanks to the Celine Dion cover version) when I attended the musical "Titanique" with my daughter.

My wife and I recently attended a fun and tasteful wedding reception where the couple employed a live fiddle player and a Scottish line dancing instructor. We tried our best to dance, and laughingly failed... but at the end of the evening, I had the urge to ask the otherwise unoccupied DJ if he might play "Mr. Brightside" to end the evening.

Nancy convinced me it wasn't the right setting, so I didn't. In retrospect, of course she was right.

Do I love her? My, oh my.

Not Enough Jeffs performing on a Saturday night in New Jersey

Still, I'm conflicted about these guilty pleasures. Not Enough Jeffs's playlist includes songs like "Flagpole Sitta," "What I Like About You" and "Sweet Caroline" (the "anthem" Trevor Noah cleverly sends up in his latest Netflix comedy special). So I'm thinking that perhaps I'm a cliche of a certain age.

Should I care, though? Isn't it wonderful some songs simply make people inordinately happy, for no rational reason?

What are some of your favorites?

I'm sure there are a few I should check out, to expand my horizons... and maybe learn how to dance.

Thursday, December 21, 2023

A Toast to Frank O'Hara

Lately, I've been haunted by the ghost of Frank O'Hara.

I found many references to the poet on the website and recent event invites from The Poetry Society of New York. They even sell a Frank O'Hara t-shirt.

Then, last night, I participated in an online workshop, led by New Jersey poet Michael Paul Thomas (you can find information about his future workshops... highly recommended... at his LinkedIn or by following him on Eventbrite).

Out of nowhere, Frank appeared.

Michael read from O'Hara's New York City "Lunch Poems," as he led us through writing and revision exercises. He based the discussion around how we develop a consistent practice in creative work.

"Do we always have to wait for lightning to bolt down our arm to the pen?" he asked, then answered with a description of O'Hara's practice of writing a poem a day during his lunch hours in the city. He simply described the world around him, then leveled it up with a poetic twist.

Michael urged us to write what we saw around us last night. So I did, and I've revised it a bit today.

I offer this poem to you, Frank, in Blogger's best typewriter font. I beg you to accept it.

Now, please stop haunting me.

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A Toast to Frank O'Hara on This Winter’s Solstice 

I’m sitting in a house that would otherwise be abandoned.

It’s my grandparents’ old home,

Which is still oddly filled with warmth

On this cold night in western New Jersey.

 

When I was a boy I would walk to the open field in the side yard

And gaze at the stars: the only source of light,

Save for the glow of the house and the headlights

Of a lone, lost, angry traveler bound for Pennsylvania.

Tonight, that sleepy country road is a four-lane highway.

From the upstairs bedroom window, I see spotlit car dealerships

Displaying comically large American flags across what is now Route 46.

 

The back road used to border acres of farmland.

Now, it provides access to the busy warehouses that replaced the farms,

And to the back entrance of TD Bank, whose garish green signage glows

Past the bones of the barn where Nonno used to keep chickens and a cow.

In the backyard, a cell tower looms over the ghost of a small orchard,

Which Nonna used to tend to make homemade wine.

Now, there’s a holiday-lit brewery among the back-road warehouses.

 

The hour is too late to talk to the Sun. When I look to the heavens,

Now, I am surrounded by ever-changing, earthbound constellations.

The stars have fallen from the sky,

And darkness envelops me from above.


Wednesday, November 15, 2023

The Legend of Peter Thonis

Peter Thonis was my boss for 12 years, retiring 10 years ago. Late last week, a family friend called with the news that Peter had died.

As his son Chris posted on Facebook, Peter’s doctors told him he had 3 months to live, given his Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

 

Peter’s reaction? “You can’t base this stuff off of years-old data. And, as you know, I’m not the norm.”

 

That was 17 months ago. Peter was not the norm; he was transcendent.

 

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Here are 3 scenes of what it was like to work with Peter Thonis:

 

Scene 1

I try to call Peter on an important matter, and he answers with a whisper. “I can’t talk now,” he says. “I'm in a doctor's office.”

 

I say, “OK, I understand…”

 

He doesn’t seem to hear me, though, because he goes on to explain that he was about to undergo walk-in surgery to repair a stomach scar covering stitches that had never healed properly.

 

“But it's something I'd rather not talk about,” he says.

 

“OK,” I repeat. “I get it. We’ll talk some other time.”

 

Instead of silence, I hear Peter’s dramatic whisper on the other end of the line.

 

“It was a knife wound,” he says conspiratorially. “It was from a fight when I was young.”

 

Scene 2

I walk into Peter’s office and say, “I need to leave work early today. My mother-in-law is coming for dinner.”

 

Peter: “I know what that’s like. Go! GO NOW!”

 

I head toward the door.

 

“Wait!” he calls out, “Unless you want me to think of something for you to do right now, so you have to work late tonight.”

 

Scene 3

Peter arrives at my office door at 8 a.m. to say good morning. We were working in an office tower at 1095 Ave. of the Americas, the same building where my Dad used to work. He’s completely out of breath.

 

“I’m going hiking with my brother this week in the White Mountains. I’m walking up the 32 flights in the morning to get used to climbing again.”

 

Peter spies an unopened bottle on my desk. “Could I trouble you for some soda?” he asks.

 

“Of course,” I quickly untwist the top and hand it to him.

 

“I really hate to do this,” he says, taking a swig and immediately regaining his wind.

 

“Wait!” He waves the plastic bottle in front of him. “Is this diet Coke?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Good!” he exclaims, hurrying off.

 

30 minutes later, I get a phone call from Peter.

 

“Was there an 8:30 meeting?” he asks.

 

“No, you canceled that last week.”

 

“Good, because I was on the 8:30 call, and no one was there.”

 

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These scenes do not portray Peter’s excellence in actually doing his job.

 

This is a photo of him with our friend and co-worker Valerie Vedda. The occasion was when Peter received the Communicator of the Year Award from IABC-NJ (International Association of Business Communicators) in 2006. Peter’s formal obituary outlines his many other career accomplishments, but here’s one real-life example of his work ethic:

 

On Veterans’ Day weekend 22 years ago, I was mildly annoyed during a day off to interrupt my leaf raking at my suburban home to return a message from Christine Nuzum of Dow Jones. It was about possible phone service problems. I logged in to work and discovered it was in light of the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in Queens. In the short time it took me to get back to Christine, I also discovered that she had reached out to Peter simultaneously, and he had already responded.

 

Peter had been hiking on a mountaintop in southern New Hampshire. The wind-chill factor approached minus 20 degrees, but he had stripped away three layers of protective clothing to get to his pager, find his cell phone, and dial her back without his gloves on.

 

When it came to Public Relations, he single-handedly prevented multiple media disasters over the years.

 

Here are 5 representative, if unorthodox, PR lessons I learned from Peter Thonis:

  • Regarding crisis communications, the most effective operating philosophy can be summarized in one phrase: “Go ugly early.”
  • Regarding leaks to the media, the advice is this: “A leak isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If it isn’t material, it may be just interesting.”
  • “There’s a thin line between being a ‘thought leader’ and becoming a ‘poster boy.’”
  • “You can’t say the word ‘jerk’ to the Daily News and not expect to be quoted.”
  • Regarding a fallback PR position on just about anything… When in doubt, your standby sound bite should always be, “Bring it on.”

Peter was also able to make tough decisions with ridiculous ease. He once described this side of his management style. He said, “You know, Bob, you only have to shoot one person, and it will never happen again.”

 

By far, his best quote about PR came in the middle of an otherwise meandering, boring meeting. Out of nowhere, he suddenly said this:

 

“Our goal shouldn't be to find a better way to tell the same story. Our goal should be to find a better story to tell.”

 

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As for the person, here are 10 facts about Peter (never call him “Pete”) Thonis:

  • He couldn’t say the word “surreptitious”
  • His favorite finger food at a reception was pigs in a blanket
  • At one time in his life, he was recruited by the CIA
  • He allegedly had the ability to stuff an entire orange in his mouth
  • He once sat at the bar at Kennedy’s (now closed) on West 57th Street and watched an entire baseball game (Peter was a huge sports fan) with Bill Murray -- but only because he was clever enough not to acknowledge who Bill Murray was
  • He had a pathological hatred for the New England clam chowder as served in the Verizon Center cafeteria, fondly recalling how his Mom made chowder from fresh ingredients
  • He once made a map for my family to follow that highlighted a week’s worth of activities on Cape Cod, adding the warning: “Avoid Hyannis”
  • He could, and would, show you how to use a wristwatch as a compass
  • He was an expert limerick writer
  • Peter and I both, unbeknownst to each other at the time, took violin lessons in late middle age

In truth, that last point is one of the only things we had in common.

 

I could never match Peter’s strength or confidence… or empathy. I recall his big heart. I recall his comforting embrace of a tearful co-worker as we all stood in stunned silence from our panoramic 32nd-floor view of the burning World Trade Center towers on 9/11.

 

I recall his support at the funeral home in Totowa, NJ, and his patience and kindness to my family after my Dad died. Peter revealed that he was filled with anger that his own father had passed away in his 50s.

 

I also recall only one day in our 12 years together that he did not show up where I expected him. When I asked Valerie about it that day, thinking he was perhaps unreachable because he had lost his 7th… or 8th… or 9th Blackberry device, she confided that Peter had taken off in his car for New Hampshire in the pre-dawn hours to attend to a health emergency involving his best friend.

 

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By coincidence, I had lunch with Valerie and her husband earlier this month in New York City. She spoke fondly of visiting post-retirement Peter at his mountainside home (that, when described, seemed akin to the setting of “The Shining”).

 

Excuse all the movie references, but Peter was a bit of a film buff. I’ve had other bosses who loved movies… notably, earlier in my career, Tony Pappas.

 

I began writing this on November 10th, the 5th anniversary of Tony’s death. He was another larger-than-life boss who led media relations for New York Telephone (later NYNEX). I’ve likened Tony to Peter O’Toole’s swashbuckling character in the 1982 movie “My Favorite Year.”

 

I never thought I’d work for anyone like Tony again. Until I met Peter Thonis.

 

Both, foremost, shared a love of exquisite writing.

 

Both had great, though differing, tastes in movies. Tony liked foreign films and “The Godfather” franchise. Peter was more of a fan of “Igby Goes Down”-type films and had an irrational love of Godzilla movies.

 

One of Peter’s favorite movie scenes was from 1997’s “As Good As It Gets.” It’s when Jack Nicholson compliments Helen Hunt by saying, “You make me want to be a better man.”

 

That statement, that scene, resonated with Peter, who always strove to be better.

 

I’ve thought of this often these past few days. It’s inspiring.

 

I’ve also thought of a post-credit scene to give these words a fitting ending:

 

In 2012, Peter sent everyone on his Christmas list, including his Mom, packages from Wine Country with a note, “Enjoy every moment of the holidays.” But someone hacked into the order and changed the message to “Enjoy every f**k’n moment!”

 

Such simple, profound advice, no matter how it’s phrased. Who knows what the future holds for any of us?

 

I only know what Peter Thonis, the legend, would have to say about that:

 

Bring it on.


Moonlight in Chatham during a family visit inspired by Peter