operator?

good morning. I’d like to speak to God.

yes. I can hold....

hello?

I’m on hold for God.

no. not that one.

not that one either.

no. the other one.

which number do I press

for the God who won’t

show up at the children’s wing.

well, that’s the one I want.

no. not the magician.

no. not the one who hates

people that make change.

my niece is a cashier at the

Stop & Shop and she’s fine.

I want the one who

laid down the rules

who kills everybody

the one who’s murdered

everything that ever existed.

that’s the one I want to speak to.

yep. I can leave a message.

tell him to show his fuckin’

hairy-ass face in the children's wing!

 

                   

I'm considering stars

as they change their shapes with time;

not about the war or children starving

in central Africa or what’s for supper, but..

about what the stars will look like

one hundred thousand years from now.

will their names be changed by those in the know?

the pictures they make in the here and now make little sense

without connecting lines drawn by man to explain them.

in one hundred thousand years the "Big Dipper"

will be bent out of shape. it’ll look arthritic.

in real applications it'll be useless for delivering

tomato sauce to the cosmic linguine.

what’ll the kids say when the "Big Dipper" can no longer

hold its goods and even my ash has been blown

free of the Earth?

 

 current status

there's a pleasantness

to the outside this morning

but I'm inside by preference.

certain things occupy my mind

including a simply diagnosed

but inconvenient rash on my arm

and the recurring pain of splashing water.

now I wonder:

is it a form of dreaded melancholia

in recalling past loves fondly?

 

                    Joe D’Elia was my father’s younger brother

a nighthawk barroom hopper.

fast walker. smooth talker. had his big toe

in the murky pool of Fall River politics at the entry level,

practitioner in hunting down street-wise women

who’d hunt him down right back.

had a steady girl. red-haired Rosie, cocktail waitress.

had a sleek automobile.

Cadillac de Ville which allowed him a roam-around attitude.

smoked Viceroy king size filter-tipped cigarettes

three packs a day.

let's remember Roseanne Marcucci.

well,–– Joe D'Elia was the guy who gave us a ride

to her junior prom in his Cadillac and never came back.

the place closed down after “good night sweetheart”.

a downpour. I was soaked through my tux.

Roseanne's skin was glazed like a strand of limp linguini

dipped in extra virgin olive oil.

the Route 6 motel was lit-up and flashing red across the highway.

  

 

the sighting

the virgin Mary

was under my bed formed by a clump of dust bunnies.

she looked younger than when seen tucked into

the half bathtub sunk into the soil in the backyard

near the grapevine’s succulent concords, purple and plump

on the vines overhead near the fence to the junkyard.

1954 was a good year for car wrecks.

the surviving chrome-plated hood ornaments of scantily clad women

winging their way forward from the hood's nub were a sacred find.

but the junkyard dog was a very cranky animal.

a good junkyard dog is always barking and growling like a lunatic.

another day and the dust bunnies under the bed changed their shape

to resemble auntie Alma, older sister to my father.

Alma, thick-legged with nylon stockings and spun-blonde

beehive hairdo, spray-fixed and perfumed like RAID crawling insect spray.

I'd daydream of Alma and under the late night sheets 

bypassing the virtues of the 14 year old "Mother of God".

I know. I know. I'm going to Hell in a hand-basket.

work on the ending!! (but the perceived value of certain imagery is measured on

a day-by-day basis. wouldn't you agree?)

                    made from lemons

"when God gives you lemons…"

that’s precisely how it should read.

check-out the children’s wing.

cancer as lemons:

wake-up and smell the lemons.

listen,.. deodorant with aluminum

works better than sissy deodorants.

about the environment:

I once walked across a field

hand-in-hand asking my early young love:

“what is this? is that mud”?

"no" she replied:

"it’s cow dung”.

how romantic is that?

the sorrow and the pity:

her name was Claudette

straight from the incubators

of Dominican Academy,

as french as they come and real pretty, too.

"lemon-headed":

sometimes I feel as though I am.

so I write poems to deflect my hidebound inclinations

and yes, she said: “cow dung”.

a love poem

                   vignette 101

I’ve been thinking about sleep.

strolling the floor toward the toilet

in the morning I think about sleep.

refreshed at breakfast, sleep shows-up

at the table like a friend, nodding

and smiling and intoxicating.

in my mind sleep takes me to the place

where nothing motivates, nothing adjudicates

and there’s no disposition, no boss, no antagonist,

no time clock, no deodorant with aluminum,

no yearning to be someplace else, no yelling

and no pressure to get the machine fixed

whatever the machine might be and where

I'm young and pretty.

ahh.. sleep.

                    goings on in the neighborhood

holy Mary mother of god,

known by her nickname: blessed virgin Mary,

was seen flying her kite

near the left field fence yesterday.

she seemed to be really good at it

tugging the main-string, pulling

her kite southward toward Marzilli’s bakery

then northward toward the billboards.

the kite’s tail looked to be a raccoon's tail

plucked from her only son’s Davy Crockett hat.

(I had one, too. tail attached)

she gets away with murder, that one.

nothing’s happening today, except

Joe the cop forgot his service revolver

and had to skedaddle home to fetch it before

some busybody noticed and squealed.

well, I noticed. but I learned through certain

innocent bystander situations on how to keep my mouth shut.

phase one: how I came to be a poem-writer.