from the Library of the Rejected

it’s not far away; just up the street somewhere

between Carmella's Italian sausage exhibition

and Alphonso's diner, where horrific cutlery

is displayed without concern for the safety of the kids.

it’s my responsibility to express myself or otherwise

keep my mouth shut.

literarily, I place myself in different circumstances

sometimes with people who are mostly incorrigible

due to their lawlessness and a lack of decency, who

roam the Earth like ghosts bemoaning their stations.

I breathe life into their lungs, dress them in guilt

and sometimes kill them depending upon personal interests.

for example: Manson disciple Leslie Van Houten quietly

departed my apartment during the early morning hours

due to my inability to form a positive opinion on the La Bianca twins.

so come on down to the Library of the Rejected and...

bring the little ones why doncha.

                   aging / a vignette

some crackpot on television

said: “it’s all in the mind”.

yesterday I was sitting

at the table and

I wanted a cold drink.

I pushed my chair back

to get a head start,

looked over to the fridge

and thought:

“is it worth the effort”?

so the crackpot’s got a point.

                    my god. what will my biographers say?

from a correspondence sent in haste.

It was nothing more than a scribbled notation;

an inclination from the borderlines.

It was uninspired, meritless and… let's see.

what else? ah, yes! dimwitted.

I don’t drink so-to-speak so I wasn’t drunk.

well, not so's you'd notice.

extreme daylight was beginning to piss me off

the way it does sometimes. well, all the time.

look. none of which is spoken here is to be seen

as an indictment of a criminal act.

but almost everyone I know is dead, or like me, soon to be.

so who's left to council in times of mediocrity?

well, that’s not fair. who am I to be granted immunity?

mea culpa. mea culpa. mea maxima culpa.

basta!–– my god. what will my biographers say?

well, nothing good I'll tell you that.

there’s water in the immediate

regions surrounding the stars.

it's not nearly as rare as Earth's water.

it’s not to drink. it leaves us to wonder.

what’s it doing there?

is the star’s lick of flame its tongue

seeking the water beneath it?

I'm amazed in the morning to find

that everything works.

vignette

                    his foundational principle:

create an interior then populate it.

away from interiors the human form dominates the street scene.

witness the hotrod’s aggressive right hand turn

screeching its tires heading towards its fate.–– and so it goes.

take cover! the assassin smokes a cigarette, its trail of smoke

is a burning fuse. 

and there are dreams to decipher of unaided flight and in one

he's flying and an alligator flies close by. these are the things

dreams do and if we record them they've accomplished their mission.

I'm in the backyard for a portrait. I don't recall the sky being as blue.

rare are the singular portraits of individuals and

because I’ve become one of them, suddenly I'm expensive.

before you go, look closely at his newer pictures. the depth of surface

is convincing without the use of two-point perspective.

horizontals, verticals and angles are enough to pull us through.

Uccello would have second thoughts about his illusions.

ah!..luminosity hangs like an attitude!

sure he occasionally pissed me off.

maybe he pissed you off, too, occasionally.

that was our journey as well. but wasn't it fun? wasn't it unique?

do you know what I mean?

   

                    early morning chronicle in one-liners 

“Jesus Christ I only need the one key”!

there's a cardigan sweater draped over the bedroom chair

and that’s enough to call it a wardrobe.

the little stain of spaghetti sauce seems permanent

and the hamper’s a mortal sin. 

the good news is.. the urine stream is blood free.

but listening to John Lennon pining: “go to a show, you hope she goes..”

brings an immediate image of Gina Scelsi.

there are times, although growing fainter, I'll fantasize a girlfriend

of the distant past to appear the same way now as she did back then

and when isolated to the brain's narrow corridors it is often true.

that alone is a good enough reason to become a poem-writer.

 

                    the art student’s left leg

In “the art student’s left leg”

we find a paralysis; an absence of motion;

a cold form element of a specific anatomy.

Its immediate creator is the hard pencil.

Its initial creator is the being, the human being

who creates then wanders off to the history of art

where everybody’s clothed and chatty

with prescribed books of art on their laps.

These books will assist in the conversation

inside the studio where art history is taught.

Yesterday it might’ve been the renaissance;

the Italian one. There are others.

The art student sits among his peers

with two legs, although the amputated

left leg sits on a page in a large pad of paper:

Strathmore. A lightly textured heavy mil.

Good stuff from the finest stand of trees

cut-down from the far-side of the world.

Possibly. Could've been Maine or Oregon.

Next time I’ll draw the right cheek of my ass.

I’ll call it “the art student’s right cheek of his ass”

and soon I’ll have a whole man made in my image!

I’ve been told this is how the God worked the form of man.

But his man is formed in clay. A messier medium, unless

the student artist is left-handed and working in charcoal.

  

   

                    

                   during the otherwise scheduled regular order

during the early years, Roseanne D'Spirito,

in a crisp-white Sunday morning dress

fell from the rapidly spinning merry-go-round

in the little, tar-smeared playground across from the church

while those of us who didn’t fall, spun-on in our glee

passing her as she struggled to recover her equilibrium 

in an almost freeze-frame event.

there she is! there she goes! there she is again!

as Roseanne D'Spirito, angel of the bleeding knees,

readies herself to latch-on to the first appropriate

handlebar and when it arrives, Roseanne D'Spirito, eight,

grabs the bar and runs with the speed of the platform

then leaps aboard with the grace of an Ali Shuffle!

damn the bleeding knees! this girl's no shrinking violet!

‘round and ‘round and ‘round and ‘round spinning through what is now

herein considered to be an enlightenment to the scheduled regular order.

1951 / Columbus Park