two separate things

Cycling through sleep and waking
is the analogue of night and day,
but it is always night on this journey,
night or day.

Sometimes I dream of you,
or dream of someone else
here in the night or day,
between planets, between suns.

I dream of someone else sharing my air.
I think I would be good at sharing my air,
and my water, too.

I would be good at sharing.

Better than I was,
when there was night
and day -
two separate things.

Immigrant Dreams

It is the height of summer
and another bouquet of basil
is clutched together on the cutting board.

When you pluck a leaf, the fragrance
engulfs you for a moment -
you are back in Sicily,
but this time you are not poor.

Tomatoes, engorged by recent rain
split their skins, not waiting for the knife.
The meaty fruit is the color of a sunrise
over the Mediterranean
on a cloudless morning.

The yellow squash and zucchini
are laying up in the dirt,
and it pleases you to imagine the box
you will carry into the church basement
with "FREE!" hand written on the side.

Gossamer dreams

What do you do with this?
morning memories of dreams

Gossamer wings like mosquitoes
that you cannot catch
and brush aside

cannot rid yourself of
even by trying to drown them in coffee.

two poems in Young Ravens Literary review

Young Ravens Literary review published my poems White Out and Falling Away.

http://www.youngravensliteraryreview.org/mark-bonica.html

two poems in Muddy River Review

The Muddy River Review published I chose the Rainbow and How Many Angels

http://www.muddyriverpoetryreview.com/Mark%20Bonica-1.pdf

"An Invitation, and Virgil" published in the Jersey Devil Press

"An Invitation, and Virgil" published in the Jersey Devil Press - see it here:

http://www.jerseydevilpress.com/?page_id=%207545

2/365

bend the wind with words:
leaves scamper - discarded skins.
today is darker.

32/60: gawumpki

In house Polish, stuffed cabbage was gawumpki.

Fat sacks bursting with hamburger and rice.

Everything smelled like cabbage 
and fried meat.

It took me decades to understand
fried meat smelled like wealth
to noses that had smelled hunger.

Old factories boarded up,
time was passing by.

A place that was opportunity, once.

The smell of cabbage lingers,
long after the meal is consumed.

All the children are gone,
no one knows the recipe anymore.

31/60: falling away (Published in Young Ravens)

It is late fall in the world.
We dangle our legs off the dock above a river somewhere.

The water is doing its moving/not moving thing 

of being here and on its way elsewhere.

Everything but the river and the dock begins to fade away:
first the things behind us become like smoke
because we are not holding them in place with our gaze,
then the trees on the far bank become hazy,
and even as they drift downriver like vapor
we look skyward and see that the blue has dissolved
leaving a starry blackness.

We are now flowing through the universe,
powered by the river's gentle current.

You lay back, feeling the wood through your t-shirt
against your shoulder blades,
and you begin to count the stars.

I look down river to where we have been -
it seems impossible to look up river
as that would be to know something before it happened,
which of course
is not possible.


see in Young Ravens

30/30: remnants

You have to write down your poems,
or ideas for poems,
or fragments of poems,

or the muse takes them back

and mixes them into the pot
of star stuff
for someone else to drink.

29/30: cold haiku

The cold settles like
a blanket, dark white and hard.
Snow squeaks under foot.

28/30: minivan haiku #6

Fire cracker sausage,
wrapper peeled back just right.
Minivan world turns.

27/30: the words of shoes

You can see the soles of shoes
flicking back at you
when you fall behind.

They are like eyes blinking,
or maybe winking -
you weren't meant to be up here with us,
you were invited along as a joke.

These are shoes talking, of course,
and they are borrowing your voice.

26/30: blackbird haiku

The river is white ice,
itself a winter snapshot.
The blackbird settles.

25/30: ice haiku

water runs down rock
faces and hardens to ice.
the wind does not bend. 

24/30: snow haiku

Crystal snow bites sharp

against cheek and eyes in wind -

we dig in again. 

23/30: epitaph

The letters carved into granite take far longer to fade

than the memories of the people who carve them.

Gone from our knowledge is wife and mother,

cherished son, devoted daughter.

She was almost certainly a wife and mother, 

but that says so little. Was he cherished?

Was she devoted?

So the stones would have us believe,

unlike the internet, what is carved

seems to carry some weight.

I would prefer you write my epitaph in sand.

Or maybe tromp it out in fresh fallen snow.

All I hope is that you remember me,

but let the memory purify in the sun and wind,

until only the finest essence remains - 

a one line description etched

in the only medium that matters.

22/30: life is heat

The coffeee maker lets out a plaintive beep
to say that time is up -
it's done its work for the day.

The ring of coffee left in the caraf will begin to cool.

Not now, but in an hour
the murky liquid will be cold to the tongue.

Life is heat, and tomorrow
she will bring forth the steam and the burbling blessings
again.

21/30: shine

The bend in the universe looms large today,
and the stars pile up at this angle.

They gleam like one tonight,
like a river of light.
I long to paddle my kayak
across the horizon
letting my hand hang over the side
and scoop starshine in my fingers.

20/30: by the cat o'nine tails

Over there where the cat o'nine tails grow
where the swampy trail runs out into pond and weed

this is where we stop and stand

this is where we watch the bees hum
and feel the breeze bending the air.

this is where we stop
and this is where we are.

19/30: minivan haiku #5

Can't find my twinkies,
can't find my vittles at all.
Minivan rolls on. 

18/30: who bends time?

who bends time?
the grandfather, the grandmother -

frail they might seem to you
but their spirit was mighty:

thunder-bear, rising on two legs
with clawed paw pitched to destroy;

river eyed-wolf, sliding in so quiet
teeth for rending soft bellies not-yet-round.

you see tottering, wrinkled children,
but you aren't looking in the right light.

your parents can see them as they really are:
bear and wolf,

you would see them too, but
they are just not looking in your direction.

17:30: flawed

Who am I to say what a good man is?
Flawed and bent, I fiddle from passion to
passion, always empty of song at night's
end, though I wish to be something better. 

16/30: minivan haiku #4

Gettin' some vittles
the minivan is rollin'.
Oh, Golden Arches. 

15/30: Despair

Imagine now being out on the ocean
not bobbing along the shore, appreciating the treeline
and the surf on the rocks

but in the landless expanse
with nothing but blue-black out to every horizon.

You are just skimming along in a two dimensional world
devoid of differentiation.

This is despair.

14/30: dishes and stuff

what can we say 

on the day after day -

so many commutes to make

and dishes to scrape.

13/30: the tension

They're walking into the night
together
holding hands.

Are they holding on casually, fingers just entwined enough
to maintain contact, or is it

holding on as if one of them might, bird-like, slip away?

You can see their hips have widened -
his and hers both,
and their gait is crimped
by a knowledge of the cost of falling.

Is this an evening walk
like any other summer night

or is this the last walk?

It's hard to say without measuring the tension
in their grip.

12/30: past places

Everyplace from the past seems smaller
and less looming
when rolling up on them
after a few decades of healing.

The road you lived on is crumbling
and some of the houses have their lawns trimmed
while others do not.
There is a junker in the driveway that used to be yours.

I wish you were there, standing in the doorway
so that I could reassess you.
Smaller, less looming. Maybe unkempt. A shoelace untied.

11/30: no place like home

I've decided to move my house up into orbit -
using party store balloons, like the old man in Up!

I'll be the star that is always with you -
at least till ten.
I've decided to work on my sleep,
and ten seems reasonable.

I'll let Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos fight it out
over who gets to fulfill my grocery orders.
Billionaires and their rockets,
need I say more?

You all will continue to scurry about here and there -
I'm going to be watching you from afar (and above).

There's no place like Home, Dorothy said,
but home just isn't here anymore.

10/30: snow

Each flake of snow is already falling when it materializes -
this is immaculate descent, born before conception.

You had an idea about life, and how it would be.
It was like this, you realize:
formed before you could articulate it clearly.

We are children, our feet are cold,
we have our hands in our pockets,
but we still look up to the sky,
even as the flakes land on our cheeks and eye lashes.

9/30: mini van haiku #3

haters gonna hate,
mini van don't want none that.
yes, check my Starbucks.

8/30: around this

Around this we can agree:
that destiny falls like stars
burning through the atmosphere
streaking across our skies.

7/30: for Man-Children

Willful deprivation and the endurance -
not a sport
to be ended with beer parties,

but a life of discipline

chaining down the passions with practice
and repetition.

All ends in pain.

Man-children play as if it does not.

6/30: the strange ones

are you going down where the strange ones live?

tonight,

tonight

let's go down

down by the rusted railroad tracks

down by the river past the tires and the broken shopping cart.

let's hang our feet off the broken bridge

and watch the water flow by.

maybe we'll see one of the strange ones

reflected up at us, kicking into the red sky.

5/30: Hey!

Hey! you want to say
there's this amazing thing
called Life! -
have you heard of it?

I know you want to say this
because I recognize you
as you whiz by me on the interstate
intent on the getting to.

what is it that happens
on the road to living
that leaves us strangers
when we arrive?

4/30: mini van haiku #2

mini van rolling
around town like a bad ass.
yo, the rain hides us.

3/30: the doe-woman's message

The second time I saw the doe-woman
she was far down the trail,

she was crossing with steps that seemed
to have no movement to them -
to be moving and not moving

her neck swiveled and our eyes met
and her dual existence
was evident in her black eyes.

What am I supposed to make of you?
I asked quietly, not moving, not wanting to spook her.

There are things you do not understand
was what I heard
though perhaps it was just the wind.

And then she bounded from the path
and was gone.

What revelation is that?
I am not such a fool.

2/30: mini van haiku

mini van jamming
down the highway to old school
the wind is outside

1/30: Impenetrable

This year we will penetrate the walls,
pass through the fogs,
out wit the guardians.

We aren't meant to be outside -
it's really a test -

this year we will pass
this year we will pass on.

a new project - 30 in 30

So I've tried to do a 365 - a poem a day for a year - and failed. I tried this year to do a 52 - a poem a week for a year - and failed. Now I am going to try to do a 30 in 30 - a poem a day for 30 days. Let's see how that goes.