Hero Sandwich is Craig Sipe's first book of poetry. It is at once a whimsical, and reflective account of a life in verse, and the important people, real or otherwise who inhabited it along the way. It is about family, love and loss, the search for redemption, and then. . . . more love and loss. As the author writes in the books self-titled dedication: "To all my heros sung, and un, some who've flown, and some who fly, to lovers, leavers, and the one, for fathers grand or otherwise, and mothers of forgetful sons. To thinkers, drinkers, plussed and non, the nayer's scoff, and hoper's riseto stayers-up until the dawnand Myths that nourish fond surmise! "That about covers it. So have a bite of Hero Sandwich. And bring lots of. . . . napkins.

Hero Sandwich

By Craig Sipe

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 Craig Sipe
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-0810-3

Chapter One

Train Dream I have a recurring dream where I'm standing on railroad tracks in the somewhere of sleep: Train coming on in the rolling distance while I struggle against its pleading whistle to don air of pants One leg in, the other caught irredeemably in the knee.. It is an epic futility out there on the ties Locomotive light always failing the promise of impact; pants never achieving the destination of a waist. I inevitably wake to a curious, exhausted dawn after The Dream, and though my interpretative energies are long spent pondering the train I wonder more often why I never attempt to get off the track Boat Yard, November Night Their sail bones clank in the dark whirl as I walk amid these hulks ghost wrapped in their white shrink, lines twitching at the moon. These hulls are cold stone to the touch monoliths and I look up into dark ports, and imagine these eyes atop the sea, in the perfect literacy of the stars piloting home to this rest, the steady enviable bent of compass and keel. Empty rudders now, all these wakes of finished jobs And me brushing past their haunt mid-awe of a night in it's mystery of found ports and fear of lost ways Hero Sandwich To all my heroes sung and un, some who've flown, and some who fly to lovers, leavers, and the one, for fathers, grand or otherwise and mothers of forgetful sons, To thinkers, drinkers, plussed and non, the nayer's scoff and hoper's rise to stayers-up until the dawn and Myths that nourish fond surmise! My hero sandwich, done and re With chips and dips for sides Is kind repast with extra cheese, the menu's one and lonely price Forgiveness in the days of these Where lesser souls reside! Father He couldn't know, standing on the curb that morning in Manhattan but he unloaded his conscience on the five year old boy waving bye from the back window of the cab. Granddad rescued the family that day as the tale goes and we flew to Pennsylvania and new life banished of answers. So you write your own story, or it writes itself to fill in the spaces of the years with you somehow always culpable in the unfolding plot. Thirty years later by some miracle of reunion you sit with the man -ask the question- and he tells you that it wasn't your fault and a revelation takes place leaving you to wonder why you had to ask ... though you're now well beyond the unbelieving. The Train and the Room out Back A train went by in the distance and you could hear it passing every few hours or so from the back bedroom of my Grandfather's house My room. when mom came home after she and dad derailed. But the Train out back was always certain to its track.... no burden I needed to understand. My room, and commuter's haven in college, and mom felt so much better with me moved back in the house in case the old man fell And when she fell first, and the spill shut down the town The Train roared into that long night awake out there in the back Still my room when I moved away with the years and understood that home is more time than place the one so ever slipped beyond the great reclaim. And when my sister and I sold the house I slept the closing eve eve in that room my room train whistling farewell away to dawn One For the Birds One for the birds meant the last pancake of the morning was flipped out into the backyard for the starlings And one bold blue jay would always sweep -mid-feast -into the contentious flock to claim his propers. This was our show from the cottage window above the kitchen sink Granddad in his red-linen apron washing the dishes and me with the towel. Those breakfasts were ritual as a christening. Always on a bright Saturday morning we drove to his country retreat in the '49 Dodge the plaintive "whoa-ing" from its snow tires he claimed was the old car's plea to slow down ... and give it a rest. Heavy is the Full from pancakes and Leonard's aim was the groan from my end of the table all seized in the lead weight of the buttermilk gorge! There were no pancakes like his and none since, I think He laid that miracle upon the lumps in his batter.... peanuts he claimed. and their disappearing taste in the finished cake were perhaps my first leap of faith in things unseen. One for the birds and we'd back down the drive as the starlings quarreled as the morning wane into noon. And the snow treads "whao" I hear across this gray like a plea to slow down time. Sipe Bob chose the eight year old and his sister with cooties becoming Dad in the "I Do". How subtly context becomes genetic but there's a certain DNA to Clemente and Fords that is the stamp of an honest man on your soul. Dad sleeps with Mom behind the mausoleum wall. He couldn't choose the crypt for the love of his life that day so he left it to me and I picked the one by the window for the nearness of the light when he came to visit I should visit more often but I live far away What homage I pay lives without biology in the name I sign everyday- but still my own. Ho Jo Nights It was all about the hot dogs, -not those ballpark impostors- but the ones we had at Ho Jo's after the games ... Pirate games, in the days when the team rocked! Dad got the tickets at work and we'd go five or six nights a summer to cheer on Stargell, Clemente, and Maz in their pyrotechnics at Forbes on the City of Rivers. But no late inning slam nor abject slaughter those nights could assail the spell of the dogs ordered up in two's with an orange freeze at the Wexford Ho Jo's on the way home. Dad attributed their ambrosial properties to butter and the immersion therein of both bun and dog to render epicurean rapture! And we were two soul's in the cradle of heaven those Ho Jo nights and pity upon those who squandered their appetites at the game! The turnpike was a long silver ribbon on the drive back High beams on most of the way, Dad's foot clicked the floor toggle to the infrequent counter current of the traffic. Our windows were down and the am radio's tin hum chattered on with the highlights of our game as I nodded off already knowing the score. The Adventures of SuperNut I made up this hero once -SuperNut- and chronicled his exploits in the lost folios of the Crummy Comic Book Company. A goofy looking soul, SuperNut was, his whole face consumed with a gaping single-toothed grin and he flew around in husky tights and a cape always making things worse, always a peril to surrounding architecture but no one ever in a better mood after a blinding crash into the wall. The Crummy Comic books were...