Two Poems

Richard Schiffman

Reunion

Tomorrow I’ll lunch with four strangers
who meant the world to me a long time ago. We’ll meet
at Sagapo-- which means, “I love you”-- a Greek eatery
two blocks east of P.S.166 in Astoria, Queens,
where we did time together in the mid-twentieth century.
I’ll catch up on the lost decades with these icons
of my pimpled adolescence. Gazing at their boy flesh
gone awry, they will age forty years over brunch.
We’ll have lots to talk about is my hunch,
but less to reveal. Boys rarely say what they feel.
And men don’t cry over spinach pie. Still there will be
so much to remember, so much to forget.
We’ll toast one another with retsina, a wine
infused with turpentine, the sweet laced
with the bitter. I’ll suggest the mixed spreads--
the appetizers here are tastier than the main course.
We’ll smear some light reminiscing over pita.
Mashed with garlic and olive oil any vegetable
is delectable. We’ll wash it all down with water
gone under the bridge. Then on to the sterner meat
of the present day-- a near fatal plane crash,
kids off to college, those hopeless Mets.
The coffee here is strong, so we’ll end
with a caffeinated dose of politics. Over some slurpy
Mediterranean dessert, there will be something
that I won’t say to one of the guys at the table,
and he won’t say it to me. (Go find it--
it’s that Greek lingo at the beginning.)
Finally, we’ll head off to the school yard
for a game of stickball. When they choose up sides-- as usual, they’ll pick the poet last.

***

My Ghosts

My ghosts fly thick
in the haunted house of myself.
Little grievers loafing under beds,
hiding in vents, in stairwells.
Go outside,
their ghost mother says.
Go play with your spooky friends.

We’ll lurk in lightless rooms,
they bawl.
Alone to the bitter end.

My ghosts are shiftless and shapeless
and feckless and faceless.
They waft through walls.
They shoot the breeze. They live at ease.
Be a man,
their ghost daddy pleads.
Suck a little blood like Dracula.

We shall not stain our ghoulish sheets,
as bleached as Mary Immacula.

My ghosts are wallflowers at their own party.
They waltz with shadows and woo mirrors.
They beat themselves at solitaire.
They gaze and gaze at spectral navels.
Be a stiff on steroids,
their famished ghost wife begs.
Be an apparition with attitude.

Thank you very much, but we’ll stay stuck
in our bloodless blank beatitude.

When Richard Schiffman was a teenager he read in the Bhagavad Gita that he was the birthless, deathless, omnipresent Atman, the Self of all selves and not the deluded and paltry personality that he runs around pretending that he is. Ever since then he has felt somewhat embarrassed to write poems about his illusory self. This has not prevented him from doing so.
Richschiff@earthlink.net

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