gentle hour

these times i awake before you
before you have the chance to
draw back the curtains
heavy hung
to rally more sleep
i step out from my dreams to anticipate you

warmth unmatched by a late spring sun
keeps you tucked
to the neck under the down
and embalmed like a princess
eternally awaiting her king
and likely dreaming
for such

i push back thoughts fighting to
gain the day
to savor waking

slowly and without sound you softly blink
in the late morning
like a newborn pleasured by her arrival

i watch
envying your mother
for having witnessed your eyes'
first moments
but i will take the here
and try to cradle you just so

the twentyten snowfall (night durning)

newtown square

cook forest

lawrenceville

of spring tomorrow

no matter the fall
or volume of snow to feign our minds
into a belief of the clean white slate
the geisha mask of clean white beauty
melts inevitably.
spring opens the door for winter and
careless refuse randomly strewn
yellow and brittled by enduring yesterday sun
waterlogged by snowmelt
again finds our periphery
and presents itself as new.


within the ninety-three million miles
of space between space
of real estate without speculators
an open house would be
of no use:
we are one lot of wayward property
with a heated core fighting the cooling
crust where we too are fighting
sometimes loving.


still we can boast nostalgia
and speak of that
skinnydipping swimming hole of young dad of
grandma's jarred quince jam pectin of
old growth wood tremendously patient of
that night sky and its dusting of white sand
to remind you that somewhere
our future is already our past
and somewhere snow has yet to exist.

"Haiti, land of blue sea and green hills, white fishing boats on the sea, and the hidden huts of peasants in the tall mountains. People strong, midnight black. Proud women whose arms bear burdens, whose backs are very straight. Children naked as nature. Nights full of stars, throbbing with Congo drums. At the capital lovely ladies ambergold, mulatto politicians, warehouses full of champagne, banks full of money. A surge of black peasants who live on the land, and the foam of the cultured elite in Port-au-Prince who live on the peasants.

Port-au-Prince, city of squalid huts, unattractive sheds and shops near the water front, but charming villas on the slopes that rise behind the port. A presidential palace gleaming white among palm trees with the green hills for a backdrop. A park where bands play at night. An enormous open-air market.

'Ba moi cinq cob,' children beg of tourists in the street. Cinq cob means a nickel. They speak a patois French. The upper classes, educated abroad, speak the language of Paris. But I met none of the upper-class Haitians."

- Langston Hughes, 1956
I Wonder as I Wander

After 31 Years

Sunrise above the helipad marked the third day of my stay here. Upon the perch that is a cliff above the Monongahela, I can see the white garage door entrance to the place of the job that afforded me the healthcare that facilitated this recovery room. Just three mornings ago I was fighting back the trepidation of my arrival here at Mercy Hospital. Just about two weeks ago marked the thirty-first anniversary of the day of my double-rainbowed birth in Cheektowaga, New York. Although, on that day of this year, the skies above Pittsburgh required no clearing of clouds.

Unlike today, that day was as clear and as Autumn-cool as it was last year when I returned from my long two-wheeled journey. After such a mild summer, it is of no surprise that the leaves were still holding on to their green. A few honey locust had begun to peek gold along their lower fringes to match our bridges, but as I rode home, I found little other mention of the change. It would all come at once, the fleeting burst of color, so I certainly did not mind this absence.

I crossed the Monongahela, then through the urban core and its lingering diesel exhaust, and up to the shores of the Allegheny. Here I found a trail less traveled, and took it to a place of rusted warehouses and the flats known as The Strip. Before locks and dams, I am sure this area flooded annually. And before us, those who tamed the three rivers, there thrived a people we knew as the Seneca. I wondered about the randomness of my being placed here, right now on the edge of another civilization. I wondered why so few people take the long road these days, and why it took another anniversary of my birth for me to do so. All I wanted for my birthday this year was some time. On that day, I took mine.

I wrestled with the decision to arrive at Mercy Hospital for over three years and just as many sober birthdays. I took time, this time, because I still have my health. My heart is healthy and functions perfectly, mostly. The some of the time that it has not is what brought me to this decision to trust my cardiologist and voluntarily submit my mortality to the collective millions of hours and dollars dedicated to the study of fixing the bad wiring in human hearts. The arrhythmia known to those plagued with it as AF, was kept at bay in me with good food and good exercise until this summer for a reason some could guess but no one really knows. I had grown equally desperate and confident in my doctor's ability to fix this in me.

I arrived on Friday at 10:00 AM. It is now 9:00 AM on Monday. I have cycled through three roommates, all male, two black and one white. Joe, Darnel, and Mr. Billski, who is still here after his second heart attack with his oxygen and phlegm bucket. Joe occupied his half of the room when I had arrived, snoring upright in his chair. Eighty-seven and chewing tobacco since he was celebrating that day I had a few weeks ago by taking the long road home. He lived his whole life thus far up the street in The Hill and must have known its hayday. I could not determine if he happens to frequent this, the ninth floor, or if his stay was simply wearing thin the nerves of the entourage of nurses who continuously had to replace his remote heart monitor stickers. He would say they fell off in his sleep while feigning knowing full well that their adhesive was too strong for such an incessant occurrence. It was this or his propensity to knock over things that might clang and spill fluids all night long that kept the hurried ladies busy. And yes, there even were a few fire alarms as well to help mark that first night of bad television and thin sleep.

My second roommate Darnel arrived to the ER earlier in the day complaining of incoherence and lightheadedness. He attributed these things, almost proudly, to eating only two meals supplemented with unchecked volumes of Mountain Dew and sweetened tea, while fighting against separation from his wife for the entire week. Hospital imposed bedrest and regular meals and fluids, sans caffeine, seemed to take hold immediately. That night the forty-two year old father, fireman, and struggling husband slept like a breastfed baby. And so did I. By noon the next day, and in time to watch Sunday's game, he was gone and the second half of my room was mopped, sprayed, and turned over with fresh linen again, just in time for Mr. Billski – a reminder that I was still here.

Only half the procedure happened–the study part, not the fixing part–so here I sit, post-procedure, unfixed and with stitched holes in my thighs and a half-shaven chest, wondering if ever I should be fixed at all. This condition I have is lineage, as I am not the only Welsh with it. It is a bane, but it is also my watchman for restorative living. I hate what it has done to obliterate my teenage psyche of invincibility, but I am surely no longer a teenager. I danced a song with modern medicine but now I must tell her "don't call me, I will call you." For now, they gave me a drug to take to suppress the problem rhythms. I was told it should help bide my time until science can play catch-up with the burden I will still be carrying as I soon walk out the front doors of this place.

The Southside neighborhood of Pittsburgh has been my place of employment since I was first diagnosed with this heart condition. As the earth would tilt to bring the southern hemisphere its share of warmth, I would often find my bicycle commute to and from work to begin and end in darkness. From my perch here that is a cliff above the Monongahela, I have watched for three days the neighborhood take on its various forms of light and shadow from darkness to darkness as if it was a model train set town brought to life by a single source of artificial light. Cars, trains, people, blimps, planes, boats, birds, and rainclouds passed throughout these days here behind this glass, all mute to the hum of the recycled hospital air. I suppose it is time I begin to face with wider eyes and a clearer head that which we must all face as humans. However, I am encouraged: if not for death, I would never know fervor and how to live life.

Steel City, Police State

Steel City, Police State

pardon this moment to decry

but I am overdue

and there are strangers in my town

with guns

like corner pimps police loiter in riot gear

like armored linebackers police linger

and lust after delivering the lacquered baton hit

state city police national army guard militia linger

and drink bottled water

and watch

and warn opposition to decent

as if we had a greater prepotency to riot more than they

we call ourselves the city of champions

but here we are just another city

waiting only for the next pigskin sunday to arrive

we are the city of champions

lost in the backyard of a country of champion wars

but angry a few are still

about the rift in this today of great money

about leaving the forgotten forgotten and earth death unchecked

about those who heed only highfructosecornsyrup indifference

the riot police outnumbered those that joined the march with proper permits

down the one remaining street left free from jersey barrier barricade

while the great global twenty meet and greet and grin

while the tyrannosaurus banks still roam freely

Having the heart to race.

The women's race was well underway when I decided that I needed to use the bathroom for a second time since I had arrived at the velodrome. This isn't an easy task when your form-fitting attire consists of the combination of a full bib with a half-zip jersey – picture an olympic wrestler wearing both his unitard with a pullover warmup top and having to navigate a urinal – there is a good deal of time and frustration required to achieve such a task, and that is without accounting for the stiff road cycling shoes having to simultaneously navigate a wet tiled floor.

I had been nervous all day, waiting for my chance to finally race. The Mechanical Monster was kind enough to cover my closing shift at the shop so that I could finally experience the thirty laps at the twenty-five-miles-per-hour-pace and know the wind that was otherwise absent along Washington Boulevard. With the local racing season more than half over, I was experiencing a sense of urgency to at least acquire a taste before it was too late, marked by the changing hues of autumn. However, this urgency was humbled by the knowledge that I would not be in the riding shape I was before the season began.

Prior to my working at the bike shop, my commute consisted of eighteen delightful miles. These miles were known mostly by my bicycles unfamiliar to the race track, but were challenging nonetheless. I do, after all, reside in Pittsburgh, the city (of bridges and) of rivers and plenty of hills and valleys formed by these rivers. Now my commute has me barely traveling a mile, devoid of any fitness whatsoever. Where my commute was once my exercise, my precious free time has fallen short to fill this void since accepting the position at the shop. The irony of working at a bike shop for me is that I have less time and opportunity to ride a bike.

Tonight's pace was fast. I was warned of this early on by one of the race marshals, and soon realized its reality when I found myself at the back of the pack. I hung on, and was determined to practice mind over matter. This was a race for beginners and a matter not so daunting for my mind to help my body overcome. Six laps in, we were riding at the pace I had been told to expect. It was exciting, riding at such a clip in a peloton at least thirty-five strong. Six laps in however, my mind and heart decided to disagree about the matter at hand.

My heart rate monitor, which was holding steady at the rate I was expecting with such strain, suddenly reverted to its maximum reading of 240 beats-per-minute. If this was the case, I would be dead. Such a rhythm would denote a heart attack. What this meant instead was that my expensive electronics were being confused by a condition that my family knows well. After nearly a year of slumber, Atrial Fibrillation had torturously returned.

The race ended early for me, as did my my stubborn belief that mind over matter can overcome the particular reality of my not being as race fit as I would have hoped.

I don't sell bikes, really, I don't.

I recall the eighth grade. Specifically, I recall the end of the school year. We were kings and queens of the windowless building that year, prepared fully, as we thought, for whatever was coming next. After our summer hiatus, we would be heading to that other brick fortress across the dust bowl, the site of football drills and "Let's take it to the dust bowl!" afterschool brawls to which I was never privy, to begin the end of our lives in involuntary schooling.

I was in the eighth grade. One might assume that after three years of middle school and two sessions of Sex Ed, I might finally grasp the full meaning of that popular rock hit "Cherry Pie" by Warrant. One might also assume that I might have begun to learn how to critically think and abandon the crutch of fact regurgitation before the final session of English that year. However, only one of these things would come to me, but only by receiving the first average mark of my career. And yet, as I sat in my final class of my final day in this school for which I was too cool (note: pegged jeans with silver zippered pockets) I thought there would be nothing left to learn.

One by one, we kings and queens were called to the front of the classroom to receive one final lesson that day. It was my turn to receive a personalized slip of paper from this teacher who I would not appreciate until years from then, when I would master both those lyrics and the gift of independent thought. Upon my slip was a single word that was to be a summons, a prediction, of what profession the future might bestow upon me. I felt confident that finally, this man who had caused me to take up nail-biting that year, and I, might finally come to terms with a peace accord on this our last day of school with one another. He however had other plans.

Halfway back to my desk, I unfolded my slip and had to stop strutting. My confidence evaporated into disheartened awe as I read, more than once, the word "salesman". What ever happened to "Artist" or "Olympian" or "Guy Who Saved The Amazon?" Never, I vowed, would I become that balding, greasy middle-aged man type, who knew the most about Ginsu knives and worried far too much about the bottom line to spend weekends at home or an extra few dollars on a suit tailored within the past two decades. I was confused and appalled and probably re-pegged my jeans as I quietly sat back down.

I have since doubled in age, and perhaps in wisdom. Although, I currently remain partially employed by a bike shop, where not only do I help fix things, I sell things too. Perhaps the instructor was correct. Perhaps his not-so-apparent-plan-at-the-time has finally backfired and I have not fully steered myself away from the mundane. Perhaps this scenario is all the impetus I need to recall how I, entirely naive and still in the eighth grade, wanted something bigger from myself. Perhaps the bicycle is what I need to help get me there.