me, too

I, too, would like to be asked

to write a poem to be placed

inside a rocket rocketing into space.

a space poem, a rocket poem.

a poem written from far, far away.

a poem for Jupiter.

a poem for little green men;

little green men with big fat heads

and antennae sticking out, same as

the old earthbound television sets,

save they would see us before we'd see them.

a poem for nothing of nothing.

a poem better suited for the blindness

of an endless dark, matter-less, senseless,

the senselessness of emptiness.

a poem of ever seeming but never being.

my poem'll be a slow poem taking its time

hitching a ride in a fast machine.

that’ll be my poem. it'll be a love poem.

 

                   long in the tooth

there are certain idiosyncrasies

to the daily goings on of old people

which I consciously try to avoid.

nonetheless, when applied to my routine

they're accomplished with the best of intensions.

––I leave notes to myself everywhere

for just about anything.

“see doctor Mangioni, six months

from today, which is

Wednesday, November 13th, 2024"––

and if my head didn’t weigh

as much as a tenpin bowling ball,

I’d have a better chance at staying awake

when company calls. which is never.

but that’s ok with me.

besides, it's probably ok with whoever

the company would've been.

yesterday I strung the keys to the doorknob

so I wouldn't leave without them.

but leave to go where?... I don’t know.

1.

the roadmap is shrinking fast at the borderlines.

2.

the neighborhood kids stand on my lawn

simply for the pleasure of hearing me yelling.

3.

It's true. the one cardigan is enough.

4.

although the lapse in sensory perception was temporary,

I couldn't smell myself earlier this morning.

  

                  Pope takes a nap

the mass was long-

winded and the Cardinals were antsy

fidgeting under their blood-red cassocks

and as the choir hymned

an unexpectedly jazzy account

of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s

“Stabat Mater”, the napping Pope,

heretofore ignored, grunted

a deep-throated grunt

of papal disapproval, an almost

lunger-inspired grunt which

caused the congregation to laugh

waking the sleepy-eyed Pope who

instinctively began blessing

all who gathered there, and

in a sense, the choir’s crazy rendition

of Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater” as well.

of course I wasn’t there, but Marco Marcucci

heard it from Joey Fonseca who said he was,

and Marco told uncle Octavio Pieroni who

told William, my father who then told Romeo Levesque

who told his wife, my cousin Edith, eldest

daughter to Uncle Frank Toni, famed cobbler

to the residents of the north-end of town, and

this is the process with which the book of Genesis was written.

  

               why alternates

you may have inadvertently knocked

at the door to the wrong house.

could be you’ve run headlong into

the wrong man regardless of location devices.

even so, I’ll regard your arrival as a positive

response to an invitation.

nothing said here so early in the morning

will encourage you to rise up from the edge of your bed.

there’ll be no revelations or titillations and to be clear,

counter storytellers of the subject matter either living or dead

or busybodies or nincompoops

should’ve submitted their opinions by the deadline.

sure, there’ll be deep-throated grunts of disapproval and

sure, the antagonists will demand peer review documentation and

sure, Marciano broken and bleeding would’ve clocked Ali

with a “Suzy-Q” in the 15th, but...

damn! I’m just daydreaming, for chrissakes!

 

-Dream (a little dream)-

Naomi is in the valley. She reads

from a book of poems by Anna Journey

who is not yet born ––

"Dark Mouth like a Lullaby's"––

reciting to the child, the child beautified;

t-shirt screened in color:

"Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco" which

seems appropriate here.

Obligatory freight train, (the muscular geep)
runs northbound in the near distance.

Boxcars clack, labeled in precision print:
"Chessie Systems" –– glow cadmium

yellow on metal-ribbed
fields of cobalt blue. 

Neville thinks they're in too deep

as if the Ohio is to pull them down.

Naomi is seductive in the valley, hooks

the child below
the hollow pits.

Neville hooks

the bend at his knees
and the child

sways as he would in a hammock latched between

the blue Appalachian hillsides nearing the clapboard

house in the lowlands.

                                                          

                                                                

                                         

  

                the crybaby

there was a time

when the crybaby

beat fatso Bruno Mezzatesta

in a fistfight.

the victory was unexpected.

he was accused of being

a "scaredy-cat"

and Bruno paid the price

for his close association

with those who said so.

the place was a meadow,––

not the neighborhood meadow

adjacent to the Marconi Club,

but the meadow behind

the "Quequechan Housing Project" 

which we passed through

on our way home from school.

there were seven people

in attendance to witness

the fistfight, which to everyones  

chagrin turned out to be

more of a wrestling match.

but one late punch

to the back of his head

and fatso Bruno Mezzatesta

began his hasty retreat.

there’s an older snapshot 

taken at a family outing

where our young hero-to-be

is seen clutching a bag of

what appears to be

variety store popcorn,

rubbing his crybaby eyes

because he wanted potato chips instead. 

this final entry to the story is proffered

so that you are thoroughly informed.

                  -piano-

my daytime clothes are laid-out

at the foot of the unmade bed.

the drapery is noteworthy.

too bad I’m not a painter.

on the wall adjacent to the doorway,

hangs a Picasso drawing.

It’s a fake, but still nice to look at.

I leave all of it for breakfast.

here, decisions are made.

where to go, what to do, should

I carry more than twenty bucks?

robbers don’t ask that sort of question.

they just bop you on the head and take

what you have.

so why fret over the amount at breakfast?

take the twenty and that’s that.

wash-up, put the clothes on. tidy-up.

remember to take the keys. 

walk outside where the world doesn't give a shit.

 

 

disclosures of interruptions

mid-afternoon and the kids are running

around the house like a band of lunatics.

somehow they’ve found the old Gillette single-edge razorblades

I keep in the bottom drawer for sentimental reasons.

I should tell them to be careful, but

I’m busy.

the fatso across the backyard is mowing again.

his lawn looks like the scalp of a 14th century haircut.

the freakin’ kids are driving me nuts!

but there’s no bleeding, so..

as the old astronauts used to say: everything’s “A-OK”!