20150531 (awakenings)

In childhood’s days I wondered

When looking into the mirrored

Parlor closet door and seeing

That special room reversed 

Of sofa, table. lamps and radio

Where did it all go when the door opened

To reveal a plain wooden back

On a storehouse of cold coats

It was on two outside walls 

My mother’s and father’s hats

A sturdy vacuum cleaner standing

At attention beside two bowling ball satchels

Each containing a forbidden ponderance

Of smooth swirling plastic scuffed 

From sliding many times along 

Those beautiful polished runways I found

Superb for dancing in my socks

While teams toted their final scores

Though now I know 

Where that mirrored room went

And how it would have been

An excellent time to learn of Narnia

And Middle Earth so perfect like 

Places I imagined behind the tall

Radio’s glowing dial. Yet then

I did not stop to wonder once

How those rolling plains described

And stormy seas I conjured up

Could fit inside our modest parlor

Much less within my head


c. J.S.Manista, 2015

20150530 (animal companions)

Loki’s getting these bumps 

All over his body, skin eruptions

That grow like a pencil lead

From a barrel atop his head

Let’s look at your horn I ask

He’ll resist a bit but between

My fingers I’ll find it sometimes

Wrapped with his curly fur every

Day longer. It feels as if the end

Is dead and with a quick twist 

I could break it off. I don’t. What if

That were the mole for years behind my ear

And someone constantly picked at it

Some are fat pads large as a half dollar

When was the last time you saw one of those

On his chest behind his foreleg just as

Described for Schnauzers at Web MD 

The rest are these hard red bumps that

Grow over time from tiny barely noted

Nodules. When groomed the first is 

Clearly visible upon his back. Fur grows

Again it’s gone. I respect my vet long 

In successful practice and when she prods

And pokes his tiny frame and says, “Dogs

Get these. Don’t worry,” and tells the ladies 

At the desk not to charge me for the visit

I feel relieved. She said “don’t worry” and 

Helped me feel comforted of my concern

Catch a pet owner with his guard down

And he’ll easily say “my children” or 

“Come to Daddy,” quite innocently

Revealing the analogue of care, totally

Unashamed of it being that kind

Of relationship


c. J.S.Manista, 2015

20150529 (storage)

Yesterday I thought to face the beast

That accumulation of my venial sins

The garage, the house, my life

The amalgam of tasks half-done

Dishes in the sink unwashed and waiting

In this case the garage one of the

Most generous autohomes I’ve ever owned

Space for one smaller car 

Because of all the shelving built up front

A mezzanine of dubious strength

A dumping ground of chosen

And inadvertent acquisitions. Home to

Some neighborhood puma who scoots in

Through the space where someone attempted

But failed to build a proper sill 

For the steel pedestrian door

It is she (he?) who in moments

Of undisturbed freedom probably bounds

Off the walls, the shelves, the boxes and rips

Stacked styrofoam to shards, topples bottles

Of old goo onto the tool bench and hides

His (her) mammoth turds behind the rolls

Of tarpaper, the fallen stacks of two by fours,

Which I discover while I tear from the piles

Mosquito lairs of sodden cardboard 

Boxes once stored neatly 

Folded upright, dry and off the floor

So that they today might hold

All manners of crap for dispatch 

Even themselves. Alas, they fall apart

‘Midst scurries of millipedes

I stand accused. My car parked 

Beyond the folding steel grate

Yes, some evil one might steal

The broken toy baby buggy or the cans

Of  dislabeled garden chemicals, the two 

Large rusting buckets of roofing tar

By sundown I had freed enough room 

For half the car and thought as I

Returned to the house, what other

Disaster festered while I lavished 

Love on the garage


c. J.S.Manista, 2015

20150527 (genes)

At the tips of our DNA are telomeres

Little tabs, zipper stops

That signal the end of the strand

To the replicating processes

And most of the time in their early life

They get it right. Perfect. Absolutely

For some reason, though, as life goes on

Like guards grown weary, the telomeres

Miss a beat and you get a bum strand

Which if it were music, or literature, 

One note off, a misspelled word hell

One among gazillions would still rank an A

But not an A +. Not in genetics. Nope

Lucky you if it gets you another power

In the game of life: seeing through clothing,

Or hearing numbers as notes. You might tire

Of watching all your friends' sagging flesh

Or become mathematically exasperated

At symphonies but it wouldn’t kill you

In real life though a lot of the time

That helical sport becomes 

The worm of your death, the alien 

Inside that grows to shove aside

Or rot what once was baby skin fresh

And functioning. You could complain

But for millions on millions of times

The sad telomeres got it right. Absolutely.

You had your time


c. J.S.Manista, 2015

20150526 (heritage)

I woke up this morning with my mother’s bunions

Her feet dangling from my ankles

As if they had been sawed off her cadaver

And stitched Frankensteinically to my bones

I knew I had her knees, flesh no more

Gray caps from washing too many floors

Or cursed forever to be shadowy skin

Long had my father’s chronic depression 

Taken root inside my head but with it came

His love of bad jokes and clever turn of phrase

His too abrupt judgment and sloppy

Sentimentality. My brother and sister strike me

More their own selves not parts stolen

From this parent or that. Funny 

How those long curlicues that set 

Our course could end up

Making such different things

c. J.S.Manista, 2015