Jeanie Johnston of Del Norte, Colorado writes:

Dear William,

I saw a photo of you standing alongside

your bicycle when you were kid.

do you still have fun riding your bike?

Dear Jeanie,

no. and certainly not the bike of my youth.

but your question got me thinking

about the circumstances of bike riding.

we rode mostly out of necessity.

we had no notion of health benefits,

or pleasant rides through the countryside on summer days.

we road to the variety store to nab cigarettes for our fathers.

we rode to snag loaves of Italian bread from the bakeries.

we road with the girls side-saddled across the top tubes,

the best rides of all.

we road to the dump to secure rare items discarded by man.

we road to the park, our gloves threaded through the handlebars

ready to play the game.

we rode for the utilitarian necessity of it.

like love.

                    how it came to be.

the graphics department was consigned

to the windowless basement.

It seemed only painters needed natural light.

but outside, in back of the little

art school, the light belonged

to anyone who would see it.

I began drawing a near dead white birch tree

which when finished was okay. but it looked

too much like a magazine illustration promoting something.

my junior year left the thought of advertising design far behind.

the white birch drawing, charcoal on paper, although disappointing

was photographed for posterity, but now missing.

the following afternoon I wandered into the light again.

an old spruce tree, somewhat weathered but majestic nonetheless,

caught my eye.

a heavy-handed compressed charcoal stick

moved frantically over the paper hinged to its pad.

this drawing did not disappoint.

it was also photographed for posterity and is also missing.

the year was 1966.

 

                    old age and rare devotion

while slipping into teeshirts

screened with messages

there was never a sense of mediocrity.

the messages were the medium:

front: “Champagne don’t make me crazy

back:  "Cocaine don’t make me lazy”

“Write-in Eldridge Cleaver for president”

“Unite Ireland!”

and so on.

with an approaching birthday many years ago,

my father, the liquor salesman on the road,

sent me a teeshirt 2 times my size with a message

because he knew “I liked that sort of thing.”  It read:

“Kiss Me I'm Italian” and on the back,

voluptuous, cadmium red female lips.

now long gone.

so stupid. so typically naive. so fundamentally department store.

try as I have over the years, I can't find another one.

                     the “permission slip”

if you leave the classroom

you have to have a “permission slip”––

a pre-printed sheet of paper

which will travel with you.

for example:

“this allows (blank) permission to use the restroom.”

(blank) is filled-in with your name.

your very own, personalized “permission slip.”

there were 23 kids in the classroom.

there were 6 kids in the hallway carrying “permission slips”

and another 7 standing at the urinals.

there were 2.5 million people in the United States.

there are billions of us in the world

and near half-a-trillion stars in the home galaxy

although they told us "Andromeda" is bigger.

as a 12 year resident on Earth, I took that as an insult.

estimated wait-time for an open urinal was anybody’s guess.

also, It was required that the “permission slip”

be returned to the classroom "un-folded" which

was quite an accomplishment while standing at a urinal.

Hugo A. Dubuque School archives

                     southbound in southern Ohio / 1971-1973?-1970

the sign read:

“last stop for 20 miles”.

surely I can go

20 miles without incident.

what’s 20 miles

when you’re driving

a fast car?

after 10 miles another sign read:

“death awaits in 10 miles”.

what's the driver

of a fast car to do?

so, I traveled on fearlessly

into Kentucky.

inside, the sign

above the counter read:

“We reserve the right

to refuse service to Anyone!”

I ordered the meatloaf plate.

                     Ramblin’ Billy

I’m sleeping without dreaming and then

I’m awake and the roses smell lemony.

not like real lemons but lemon-scented.

it sprays on and leaves a film of itself

and wiped-off there’s an artificial

scent of lemons.

the wood it leaves behind has a false face.

it looks like something I’d skate upon.

but I can’t skate. I’ve never tried.

lace-up high-tops with long, looping laces

and at the bottom, fierce metal blades are attached.

who would take the time to think of such a thing?

let’s just wake the fuck-up in the morning,

drink a cup and head to the ballpark.

let’s play the game. let’s get dirty. let’s slide

into second under the tag and let’s be safe every time.

 

                    my inflatable punching gizmo

there were a few.

I don’t recall

what each represented.

maybe

a Joe Palooka lookalike

maybe

a robber with a gun

maybe

a priest.. but

what I do recall

is whenever

I punched it

it glided downward

but rose again

like the Nazarene

or pork-belly commodities or

a mid-eastern war.

                   things I cannot do or will-not do because I cannot do

1.

In Dylan Thomas’ “the Poems of..”

the “Prologue” sets the motive.

through three full pages (of small typeface)

he rhymes the last word of the first line

with the last word of the last line, then

the last word of the second line

to the last word of the next to last line and so on

until both rhyming words meet in the middle.

I cannot do that.

2.

while leafing through the big, glossy-

colored Phaedon, David Loeffler Smith said:

“We see in Piero,…”  I don’t recall the rest.

I probably wouldn’t have seen it anyway.

who's to say? maybe I still wouldn't.

3.

many people find the unnecessary complexities

of Rube Goldberg’s apparatuses amusing,

where I find them to be how things actually work.

4.

there are those who, "do not go gentle into that good night"

and that tops the list of things I also will not do.