“Keys to the Moon”

I opened an email today,
a part of my past with a few
photos that shined,
a first of its kind,
memories on ice thawed
as her cocoa brown eyes
tuned my heart into songs
I hadn’t heard since
Ferris Buehler’s Day Off,
Mandela still slept in a cell,
Wall Street had no ceiling,
Reagan & Rocky fought the Russians,
computers were still for nerds,
bills were a grown-up myth
& MTV only played music videos.

Back when our pack
kept chaos in our pockets,
& chased everything we couldn’t catch;
laughs fueled our upside down nights,
Pepe Lopez style
spot to spot, party to party,
beaches & clubs &
gettin’ laid or passin’ out
on someone else’s lawn
none of it mattered
because we were full of lava
with keys to the Moon;
Time never needed a clock
every day was the middle of June
& the whole world was
five minutes from last call…

I leaned back &
glanced around my office,
adrift on a slow Merry-Go-Round
recounting dreams
the world had sold long ago:
laughter & tears,
careers & pallbearers,
ex-girlfriends & near misses,
garterbelt catches at weddings,
where I woke up one day an Uncle,
inherited my grandpa’s gut
& a few gray hairs –
haunted by echoes
most only hear
a few lifetimes later.

Her email opened a lens,
a missing link to happy times
& forgotten sins
I pondered if Love for a friend
overruled what-ifs & old Lusts
best left unsaid.

Either way,
I clicked reply
thankful she was in my life
again.

– Max Nomad

“Air-Raid Kids”

At my desk staring out
of a top floor window,
I watched bombers pimpin’
like Cadillacs on the ave, cruisin’
through a late fall afternoon
between screamin’ fighter jets
spiralin’ angry gang signs in
precision war dances
over a Naval base beyond
trees in the distance.

Behind macho talk,
news of fire & debris clouds,
paramedics & stretchers,
world leaders & armchair generals
never considered childhood
fears about assaults from above
family lost for no reason
or grown-up gibberish
about why the other guys
deserved surprises from the sky;

Later at a park, I watched
kids in swings, somehow
world drama didn’t apply there;
Chatter about God in any name
never spoke to those air-raid kids
in Manhattan, Afghanistan,
or with someone in a jet
gone to fight in distant lands;

Watchin’ them swing closer
& closer to the clouds, I
looked away, thought ’bout
a peace in my youth — now skewed
in young minds today –
& had to wonder
if the spin would ever end
since adults had turned
madness into habit,
& Hate, Patriotism & Fear
into a national pastime.

- Max Nomad

(currently unpublished work from my archives, written a few days after 09/11/01)

“Highwire Act”

Wide-eyed shadows
tainted with bloodlust,
whispered and watched us
sail through the void;
whimsical puppets in spotlights
flying from strings above.

Ringmasters and clowns
watched from the ground
amidst pissed bulls on parade
as our ropes cried
furious from financial strain
for that million dollar payday.

Onlookers watched us cast fate
swinging in the breeze –
Douglas Fairbanks stunts
on a dreamcatcher’s trapeze –
above a smiling pavement,
laughing without a safety net.

Life on the highwire,
a torn price-tag for riches,
makes easy deceiving
for blind, concrete believing
there’s nothing to lose in flight
amidst corporate vampires.

Somewhere in mid-air,
watching my ass ‘tween flips and flair,
hardened beyond rational fear
I wondered how I got here –
a page out of a comic book
without a place to land.

Faith, Hope, and Love
kept me goin’
as the Circus continued to spin –
striving to make it home,
only to be there by dawn
when the Big-Top opened again.

- Max Nomad