To: Lasternet.com

AT THE PLAZA

I am sitting in the Palm Court at the
Plaza, sipping my second Margarita
(or is it the fourth?), wondering
how long I have been here.

Nothing blocks my view of the room.
The waitress took the opposite
chair away, giving it
to the incoming party of five
including the flat-chested woman
in the starlight jacket.
I listen as her companions
stage-whisper: “Occidental Oil”.
“Buy short”, “Zurich elves”
while she chases ice
with a mini-straw and sneaks
an occasional peek
at (I think) me through
half-drawn, painted lids.

Last night, melancholy and alone
in my small room on the West Side,
I looked out the window
and considered how the sunsets
grow redder as the year
draws on....

And who in the world was John Tyler?

To tell the truth, in these bad times
I can’t afford the tongue-in-cheek
fraud they peddle in this place:
palm trees in New York,
pearls that never saw shells,
dreamers, straw-grabbers,
queens-for-a-day.
Why do I return so often?

At the table behind me, a man
chortles and a woman breaks into
an aria of giggles.
I cover my ears to block their
ridicule, shut my eyes
to drown them in darkness
and I slip into fantasy.

I am dancing with Starlight Jacket,
inhaling the scent
of roses and pheromones.
She pulls me into her, stirring
the longing that possesses me
like the signet ring
grown tight below
this crippled knuckle.

The excitement is too much.
The room spins.
The fantasy ends.
I sit alone at the table,
an empty pocket Prufrock,
my bad ticker pounding,
gone Starlight Jacket,
gone Margarita,
Hovering maitre d’....

And who the hell was
        Hoagy Carmichael?

             Alvin M. Laster

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THE DANCE
(to my partner, my wife)

The dance is an exercise in grace,
     the body’s offer of compliance
         to the music, while each turn,
    each step, bonds with the beat.

                Every tendon, muscle fiber, heart
                    beat, is given to the discipline,
          as the body becomes bird, sprite
and graceful line in turn.

When I danced with you, my love,
    two bodies given to the song
        and to each other, it was always an act
     of love. Each step, each break, each dip
became a mutual dedication.

    I love you as a trumpet loves a riff,
as a dream loves its dreamer,
          while you, my partner, and I became
both loved and lover, melded by the dance.

                  Alvin M. Laster

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THE PARTING

Old friend, did you ever recall the way
we children played away our long summer
hours in our hideaway in the lush
overgrowth of Soapstone Mountain,
where we, an exclusive fraternity
of two, buried pennies in a tin can bank
          against hard times?

Did you ever reminisce upon a
pair of lusting teens on the make,
decaying condoms in their wallets,
making them feel like Casanovas, waiting
for the right moments and right girls,
while secretly afraid they would say,
           “Yes.”

I married a year after you to the woman
you found for me before we went off
to war, returning whole and reunited
to enjoy children and picnics
together at Sea Island beach, before
long forgotten words or deeds
sundered our bonds with the cleaver
                of rage.

You cannot know I have come
to see you, white and still, in your oak
and satin bed to plead forgiveness
for the many years of diminishing anger,
for being too proud to make the first
move or accept blame for our
           estrangement.

I am here to lament our parting, wishing
I had swallowed my pride, so that we
could have had that final conversation,
where I would have told you that you
remained in my thoughts,
that I grieved our fall from affection
to unwarranted bitterness, and that
           I loved you.

© Alvin M. Laster

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OLD SHOES

These old shoes have walked me
just about as far
as we can go together.
Cuff-buffed, worn, and weathered,
They squeak their tired protests,
while ulcerated undersides
emit faint, fetid sighs,
poor soles, to let me know
that trudgery is drudgery.
Now they tweek my tender
bunions to remind me
that even the best
of friendships can wear thin.

Tomorrow I'll tie the old
clodhoppers together, tattered
lace to lace and consign them to the
dustbin, dust to dust, before
I keep my overdue assignation
with new old shoes... wingtips,
fashioned out of fashion's vice...
the pair I bought in haste ten years
ago, but banished to my darkest
closet-corner, where they
wait like hungry hounds
yearning for a meal of bones.

But first I'll take
a few toe-stretching moments
in my sagging easy chair
to screw my courage up,
as I am wont to do,
before I suffer all things new,
untried, unsure of fit...
callous for lack of wear.

                    © Alvin M. Laster

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SORTING LAUNDRY

Snowbound Monday...
   and I am reading Nemerov
      in my easy chair by the window,
    large flakes fluttering like white
doves outside, piling up
     on lawn and lamp post.

You dump done laundry,
     warm on the bed.
    and begin to sort.
I abandon my book and add
   two hands to the mix.
laying ribbed socks on ribbed,

black on black, brown on brown,
     until I find a missing blue,
   clinging tenaciously inside
your red nightdress.
    It protests with a static snap
     as I pull it away.

We laugh knowingly, seeing
     the moment as metaphor
Our hands touch
     and cling briefly,
before we return to the work
     of sorting our lives,

sorting our countless tangled
    experiences into separate, but
     private compartments,
where we bury the darker ones
     deep under the pile.

                      © Alvin M Laster
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AFTER THE FALL

When the heat and the floods have subsided;
when the water has drained from the shorn land
and silence reigns once again upon the unforgiving
Earth, the searing wind will sweep the past away.

How long might it take for the waters to recede?
Would some life-form remain in the sea
to produce a simple organism capable of
crawling upon the ravaged land and take hold?

And might evolving forms possess historical
insight, some misty dream of granite meadows,
where foolish creatures predicted the Fall,
but continued their headlong progress to doom?

As I am writing this poem, I look out my garden
window, where crinkly leaves snow from an old maple.
A squirrel is busy collecting nuts and crab apples
to store for winter. The squirrel is innocent,

intuiting that he will harvest and store
forever. But I can see the gathering evidence
that the Great Fall has already begun, and wonder
whether giants may roam the earth again.

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DISCOURSE WITH AN AGING BRAIN

Old friend, permit me these brief comments,
posed to mend a growing rift in our relationship.
We’re both aware we have a common destiny,
that we are bound to suffer time together;
and we’ll no longer leap and soar as
when our blood was hot and sparking.

We know that there are limits to expectations,
but I have seeded you with soaring moments,
sensual highs, and intellectual promise, in
the hope that a harvest of memories would
fill my autumn cornucopia to the brim.

Instead you fumble the names of treasured
friends and obscure the spice of bygone
clusters of shimmering moments behind
an overgrowth of brush and shadows.
But let us not give time this victory. Shape up!

We still can put this show back on the road,
dazzle the dwindling audience, capture and focus
their attention, so they will say, “There’s old Al,
sharp as a tack and full of the old get up and go,
bright as the sun on a blue-sky day.”

How about a bright new enterprise, old buddy?
Set aside that old album with sepia photos
of faintly remembered names and places.
Let’s kindle new spirits, light new fires,
and sing new songs to spur us on our way.

                      © Alvin M Laster
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EPISTLE

Dear friend,

Nothing...
           but NOTHING
in this lifelong day could rate
a chuckle, let alone a laugh.
You might say this deadbeat
world was littered with
banana peels, and true to form,
I never missed a pratfall.
And me without a lude!

As if the bongos
          tuning in my skull
                 on last night's sour wine
were not enough, Con-Ed jackhammered me
awake with syncopated howitzers
at five A.M., and the inquisitors
down at UNEMPLOYMENT don't start filling
rice bowls until nine.
Talk about long mornings.

Like you,
         this city has abandoned me.
I tramped its filthy streets for half
the afternoon, searching for a friendly face.
No dice. So I hung out
in this creepy park watching weirdos
         watch me
             watch them
                  watch me
until my skin began to crawl.

I rode home in a desecrated subway car,
swinging on a metronome that ticked me
                      in
                  and out
of rancid armpits, while some
broad-assed woman pressed her buns against
my rear and gave me an erotic high
that kept me standing all way uptown.

I said my usual genuflected
           "Thank you, God"
on finding that my furnished room
had made it through another day without
a forced intrusion by some uninvited
junk dealer. But when I made
my hurried call to Dial-a-Porn,
hoping to connect before my subway
                  turn-on
                       turned off,
I got a neuter busy signal.

So here I sit,
my growling stomach silent now,
courtesy of Lipton's Cup-a-Soup
            and Oysterettes,
writing this final letter on a piece of
paper napkin, asking you to... please...
come back. Oh, please come back to me.
No long-term commitment required
               or expected.... Please.
Just for a day,
                   an hour,
                             a look,
                                    a laugh.

                                              Love,
                                                  Me.

© Alvin M. Laster

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PRAYER

Give me, each day, something to praise:
The bubbling laughter of a child at play
Or the daylit moon, floating in a haze
Of frothy clouds on a summer’s day.
Let me be pleasured by such simple things
As the sweet song of birds and the rainbow glow
Of sun on a dragonfly’s lucent wings.
Help me be humble and kind as I go.
Make my love clear to the ones I hold dear,
My family of nestlings gone from the nest.
Keep them safe, unencumbered by fears.
And at best,
Dear God, through their years
                          Hold them blessed.

                          © Alvin M. Laster

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BECOMING FATHER

Another day extricates itself from time
and calls me to a world of change.
I rise and don my father’s mask to
face the shaving mirror on the wall.

I hold my safety razor in my father’s
sausage fingers, pull taught the wrinkles
of our cheek, lift our chin and squint
our squint, as we let the razor ride.

I drop my gravely voice two octaves,
when I sing his daybreak song.
And when I walk in the world,
      I slow our gait
         and bend our back,
             while I remind ourselves of me.

                          © Alvin M. Laster

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CONVERSATION IN SIGNS

          they were only thoughts away
              across the room
      beyond the bridge of sound
                still
                     I heard them
              heard them speaking
                               heard them
               with my eyes

                    she spoke to him
               in flights of butterflies
                     he answered
               with a soaring of birds-in-hand
                      tipping his finger feathers
                into shades
                       of whispered assonance

    she wore on her face
           a sky of changing clouds
                     he wore
             the chalkless face of mime
                          and soon
                   the quiet room resounded
             with a symphony
                          of lilting poems
                   sung in silent chorus.

                          © Alvin M. Laster

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AT THE THEATER

If you had seen the play, “War in Two Acts,”
you would have heard its captivating overture,
Concerto for Grenade and Mortar Fire.

You would have inhaled the searing aroma of
spent black powder and become stoned
on the bitter brew of fear and burning flesh.

Between the acts, when the stage is lit with
flare and flame, your ears would be pounding
with the music of the Heavy Metal Bullet Band.

In the second act, you’d have seen a beautiful
seductress in diaphanous gown, pirouetting
down stage, toward you, beckoning as she spins.

She would be pointing a painted finger at the
most innocent and passionate participant... YOU,
before lifting the veil from her death’s-head face
to kiss you with her boney mouth,
as the music fades and the curtain falls.
                       © Alvin M. Laster

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EVERYTHING WEARS AND WEATHERS

Everything wears and weathers.
There is nothing old but cannot use
another coat of paint, a new facade,
a bold addition, some ornament refurbished.

This wrinkled envelope is house
for my corruptible machine of bone
and muscle which has seen better days.
It now plays tricks on me, screams for repair,

lets the bitter wind blow through,
and leans a trifle on its weathered beams,
yet still stands obdurate against
the escalating fury of the storm.

Tomorrow, I will move this battered shack,
every aging plank of it, upon a sky-high
hilltop, and set its creaking studs
where it can catch the sunlight

dancing on the window panes, while breezes
sing new songs along the eaves. And then
I think I'll paint the sighing shingles
dayglo red to court the hummingbirds.

© Alvin M. Laster

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VESPER

Beneath starglow and nightsong,
outside of stress and serenity,
twin beacons of green
search and glide.
It is the time of hunt and hide,
stalk and stealth.

The bobcat tracks the hare,
the snake forsakes rock for rodent,
the owl squeezes the last squeak
out of the mouse,
yet nothing dies,

but passes from
one form to another,
as life feeds on life,
feeds on life,
at night as in day,
on earth as in ocean,
forever and ever,
        Amen


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AUNT EMMA

Smell of rose water and
glycerin on her hands,
sour milk on her skin,
Sen-Sen on her breath,
Aunt Emma appeared each
July, like sun in summer,
to take her idyll, rocking
rocking, dreaming on our
suburban porch.

Sungold braids circled her crown
like wilted laurel, sometimes wispy
and askew, tickling my my cheek
as she leaned closer to whisper
with all her final “t”s and “g”s
enunciated, how she trembled
to hear Caruso at the Met or how
she supped at Sardi’s after openings.

The city lady sometimes walked
unsteadily, and blushing, said under
her breath, “Those dizzy spells...” and
shook another purple triangle out of the
thin tin box, before she gathered me
into her ample lap, called me “Pet”
and told me about missed chances.

Some mornings, she’d shake her
demons early and take me to the
candy store to buy Black Crows,
ocarinas made of chewing wax,
licorice twists or Jujubes for letting
her (she said) share my bedroom
and for shutting my ears to her snoring
and the sound of swallows in the night.

Each year she’d put a silver dollar
in my hand the day of leaving.
Then I’d go inside and take
the empty bottles from beneath the
pillowcases in the bottom bureau
drawer and cart them out the back way
to the rubbish heap without a word to
Ma and Pa, who anyway (I think),
knew all about it and were sad.

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DIANA AND I DINE AT THE SEAFARER

I lift my small daughter that she might see
the slithering bodies in their luminous
olive sheaths crawl one upon another
in one corner of the aquarium tank
at the Seafarer Restaurant on Wolcott Street.

Disarmed, defenseless, they drag their great
wood-wedged claws, their eyes swiveling
on rooted stalks, while sweeping antennae,
like robot sensors, search for the authentic
essence of ocean among the huddled masses
of armored hulls and segmented tails.

In this place of nourishment and gluttony,
these creatures wait their fiery destiny.
"They have counted more seasons than you have
yet to see," I tell my child, "although each time
their growing bodies cast away another
too-tight shell, sharp-toothed predators
chased them through rock and rockweed,
hunting the sweet meat of the nude crustacean.

"It is an irony of life, my precious child,
that these hard-shelled crawlers, survivors
of the terrors of the molt, should come to this...
the caged capture and the brief unknowing wait
for searing death in the culinary waters of the Seafarer."

As we are guided to our table by the window,
we observe the castoff casings, fire-red
and dismembered, heaped in shredded mounds
upon a dozen platters on the tables of other diners.
The waitress waits with pencil poised.
We order soup and pasta.

       © Alvin M. Laster

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CHANCE ENCOUNTER

The twilight music at the forest’s edge was
anything but symphonic, crickets and
katydids tuning their instruments, as I
picked my way along a woodland trail.

The scent of pine, spicy-damp, oozed
from the mossy path as I entered upon
a clearing, where, startled, I intruded upon
another figure softly panting at my side.

The warm presence of deer turned
a wild face toward mine, and for what
seemed stopped time, a young doe and I,
frightened by our surprise encounter,
stood frozen... two shadows in a clearing.

Ears pricked up, muscles tensed, she leaned
toward me till I could feel her breath upon my
cheek, smell the wildness of her musk, feel my
heart thumping, thumping wildly in my chest.

We held a long moment, before she bolted,
merging with the shadows, leaving me beholden
for that gratuitous gift of unity and the etched
memory of that chance encounter in the dusk.

© Alvin M. Laster

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RESURRECTION

in a struggling emergence through shared blood
i have come blind and wanting out of time
into the new morning of an ancient world

     where once block by block   I lifted pyramids
     built temples laid track felled forests traveled
     with the winds in sampans stirrups and cloven hoofs

i have followed blood-scent loved cruel men
planted seed at the bearded triangle of beginnings
and seen the flowers grow and multiply

i have gentled the dying pitied the poor
     shared crumbs passion and dark secrets
     and i have bitten the hands of the giver

i am mortarboard and dunce cap Paris and Helen
hunger and abundance victim and prey
i have trusted wolves and betrayed friends

thrust like a lancet into this midway funhouse
     a menacing place of distorted mirrors
     i am this years model of the holy ghost

an inherited patchwork of genes and random
incidents born with an immaculate mind
and a glass spoon in my mouth with which

     to dig the black hole where i will lay my bones
     at midnight   there to await like a chrysalis
     the miraculous and redundant rebirth of the world

© Alvin M. Laster

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METAMORPHOSIS

The winds of winter
that roared like rapids
through Banning pass
have spent their fury in prisons
of steep-walled canyons.
January rains have
changed the land,
leaving crack-patterned
mudcrusts in the washes,
and ruts and ridges that
flow like pleated skirts
from the hips of hillsides.

A new season has found
this thirsting desert
and spread a Jacob's
coat upon the sand.
Verbena flows in purple rivers,
redfinch and bluebird bloom
in the tamerisk.
Hanging hummers
bullseye the hibiscus,
flashing sunfire
from luminescent bibs.

The wilderness responds
to the season's flux.
A chrysalis bursts,
and spring emerges
like a buntinged butterfly
to cover the desert
with painted wings.

© Alvin M. Laster

GRANDFATHER TO GRANDDAUGHTER LEAVING

You are out the door, Granddaughter,
running shoes tied and sprinting, where
ghost runners, your father before you.
your grandfather way up ahead,
closing on the finish line. You have
left your old body, like the empty
chrysalis of a butterfly, behind you.

I see your mother’s hands, empty
as her womb, reaching out, almost
touching, hoping you will turn your
head back in a gesture of reassurance,
knowing that you won’t phone in at
eleven from such a heavy date.

Your backpack has been stuffed with
some of what you will need at school
and life, while your mind is waiting
to seduce the future, to break into
full flight, eyes focused on destination.

You will dig your toes into the wonders of
the world with the abetting wind of
history and genetics at your back,
experience recording the measure
of your progress like a pedometer.

Ghosts will be waiting for you at the tape,
cheering you on. Open your ears to
their longings and their hopes.
Those yearnings should be for
trumpets, heralding your success.

But know that this is just one of many
races you will run alone with only
the ghosts of your childhood and your
forebears shouting and pressing their
hands together at the finish line.
© Alvin M. Laster

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MAY FLY

May’s first warming kiss awakens
a sleeping pond, that wakes, in turn,
a million newborn sprites, lifting
on rainbow wings into a bright
new world’s one-dayness.

With singular intent they begin
their wild revels under the sun,
creating life, while courting death
in one abundant day. It is the Mayfly’s
birth and bridal day, when death waits
for the light to dim along the far horizon.

Today, my beloved, I stand with you
upon the loamy banks of the pond
that spawned these fairy creatures,
sending them to their aerial dance,
mating on the fly, like long distance
cargo planes, fueling in midflight.

Tomorrow these evanescent creatures
will fly no more, leaving the earth
around the pond slick with mica wings
and crushed bodies. They will have known
nothing of the blackberry summer,
the blaze of autumn or the crystaline

hush of a snowfall. They will
have done their worldly work
of casting their futures upon
the water, as we had cast ours,
so long ago, upon the land.
When we turn to each other,

we can see how the sun has tolled our
prior years in furrows on our faces,
and in silent unison, we contemplate
longevity: the joy and wonder of our
many days, fond yesteryears
and limited tomorrows.

© Alvin M. Laster

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THE MASTER CHIP

We have seen the blue planet floating
like a brilliant sapphire in space. Airborne,
we have seen villages, traced rivers,
streets, gorges through isinglass windows,

To: Lasternet.com

Alvin M. Laster - Poetry

EVER SO HUMBLE

PIGEONS

THE STORM

CROWS

DEAR THEO