-in the back with my brother and my friend-

Sunday morning.
The front-seat  finds my father driving,
My mother at the passenger-side window
And my older sister sitting between them.
In the back-seat are my younger brother at the roadside window,
My friend Bobby Petrillo in the middle, and me,
At the curbside window. 

We sit in a comfortable car.

Wide as a bus.

In the back, the armrests hold barely an elbow.

They've got ashtrays tucked into them with little lids

That screech when you lift them.

Sit in a comfortable seat. Soft,

Like Grandma Pieroni’s couch.

Your hands are active in the back,—
Probing, slapping, picking.

In front, once you’ve turned the knobs
They have little to do.

Seat belts are on the drawing-board at the Buick

Division of General Motors.

Call out the names of the passing cars

Rumbling in the other direction.

The ventilation is on, the windows are open

And the rushing air to the inside
Is sweeping discarded paper goods around us.

My little brother tries to catch them in flight.

I’d like to slap the back of my sister’s head.

I wanted to go to Lincoln Park.

The adults there walk measuredly, looking around

At the same things they’ve looked at for years.

Everybody’s fat and eating something.

The kids are allowed to run only when they’ve closed-in

On the ride of their lives.

The best ones need two tickets.

The three ticket rides take you to hell and back

On a fast track.

My sister requested Reeds Road Beach.

Musical Beach. A fresh-water lake of still-red water

Where mosquitos stand on their toes.

My sister likes the music played over the loud speakers.

She liked “Rocket 88” and “That’s all right Mama.”

She could swim and float.

At Lincoln Park we knew the secret of negotiating 

The “House of Mirrors."

Look down at the floor and follow it.

It’s the easy way to walk out.
Help the little kids screaming for their mothers.

We’d backtrack to beat the system, bumping into

The lost souls feeling the giant mirrors with their hands.

Look at her, sitting in the front seat like she owns it.

I’d like to slap the back of my sister's head.

My friend laughs, daring me to to it.

Look at how silently she sits in her place at the front.

I see his eyes hooked by her hair going crazy
In the surging breeze of the open windows.

I don’t yet realize what it is about her.

Now we’re heading to ‘Musical Beach,”— a standing red-water

And the increased possibility of contracting tuberculosis.
On her request.
And her request was all that was needed.




                                               Quequechan

  

-eastside-

when I made my movie,—

well, acted in someone else's movie,

I was told by the cameraman

that he thought I was photogenic.

I’m twenty something and readying myself

for art school with the thought of possibly

becoming an advertising designer.

I didn’t want to design advertising necessarily,

but the only thing I knew about making art

was what I drew at the kitchen table at home.

but my point is I didn’t know anything

beyond the world that was laid-out for me

and the things that I took from that world

and maybe, hopefully, the things I put into it.

suddenly I’m photogenic.

In the movie I’m younger than I am; a skinny

sad-sack of a kid raised by a loving family, which was true;—

a naive, and good-natured kid in the movie, like I was

in life, I think,— and a kid floating around undefined,

the way I operated in the reality of my daily world.

world. house. park. schoolyard. 

the active playground, the stuff under the porch,
the rusting junkyard. my glove. my bike.
my living corridor.

all of this I'll take to the movie.

this isn't where I meet myself.

this is the stop which drops me off

to the slow expansion;
the lackadaisical maintenance. the diligence
in returning  

pulling the filling rolling team along;
the one rolled-out for me.

the one prepared which is made to be filled.

                                                    Fall River

-Tossing the baseball-

Look.

I’m small.
But I can catch.

Friday afternoon
And on the other side of town,
A kid and his older brother

Play catch in a field and Priest
Of the parochial school they attend, tosses
The baseball to them.

On my side of town, Priest is playing catch
With me and some neighborhood friends

In a small, tar-faced playground
Adjacent to the larger baseball park
Across the street from my house.

Priest tosses the baseball, gently arching,

Mindful of our youth.
Gerry whispers to Henry:

"He throws like a girl".

My feet are readied in their sneakers.

The glove is anticipating,

Leveled at the height of the shoulders

And slightly outward to receive the ball.

The glove is new, but I’ve broken it in

With the help of my father, the procurer
Of the six-fingered glove, of twine and olive oil.

Now It’s frozen in its placement of space,

My right hand tucked deeply into it,
The pocket to the face of Priest.

We’re young; seven or so, and Priest
Enjoys the fellowship he creates.
Priest.. enjoys.. the fellowship.

A few of the fathers
Observe the rite-of-passage nearby.
My father is on the road
Toward Buzzards Bay,
Selling booze to the seasonal bars
To earn my keep.

Norena Ferreira stands quietly

At the chain-link fence in a dress I haven't seen, then..

Underhand.
Priest throws the baseball

Underhand.

Overhand to my friends.

Underhand to me.

Look.

I’m small.
But I can catch.


The flight of the ball

Sweeps me into the lazy
Architecture of its arc.
My legs open-up, the knees
Bend into the flight,

The glove is rotated, waiting
Face-up like an empty nest and

Sinking slowly with a purpose,
The baseball

Drops to the glove's open pocket
And as quickly leaps from the pocket
Like a runaway child, falling

To the tarmac of the playground, where

Friday's twilight tincture's the atmosphere, where
Priest shouts-out: "A real good try!" Where

Norena Ferriera stands quietly

At the chain-link fence in a dress I haven't seen.

Quequechan / c.1950

-I picked-up the Robert Graves-

I pulled “The Last Night Of The Earth Poems”

From the shelf and as it was sliding out

The "Collected Poems of Robert Graves"

Standing next to it fell to the floor.

So I pushed Bukowski back in,

Picked-up the long troublesome Graves

And carried it downstairs for another try.

I sat down on the fat, leatherette "La-Z-boy" 

In the living room and began reading

"The Collected Poems of Robert Graves".

Well, some of them,–– fanning, stopping,

Reading, fanning, stopping, reading,

But not becoming fully engaged.
Mea culpa. Mea culpa.

Mea maxima culpa.
Behind me, the post-supper
XM Radio left-wing bloviators  propagandists

Are pulling their hair out over Obama

As right-wing propagandists pant

For the return to the days of that solitary tree

Waiting in the moonlit meadow on the outskirts of town...

Upstairs, and the illusive Graves

Is slipped back into the slot from whence it dropped.

"The Last Night Of The Earth Poems" 
Is pulled and carried downstairs to the fat "La-Z-boy"
Where my jitterbugging with Bukowski begins.

-Camouflage for Barbara-

In the Arboretum,

the early morning, a clearing

dabbed in dampness, the trees
greening with jabbing

jolts of sunlight pinpricking
a way through them,

a coldness

hanging over the sleeping-bag,

damp and uncomfortable,
It was your idea of something
romantic ––
and around us more reasonable
places to piss than we would find at home.

Later, stiffly drier, with city-planted trees
growing from the sidewalks where god intended,
we gather the little belongings

and head-out for the Fleetwood.

Bushels of hair, reams of beaten denim,
waves of smoke slapping us silly, first loads

of early morning's wash,— yawning,
sleepy, still sleepy after all that romance, hungry,
panting for coffee and eggs, breath like lemons,
I said: "it was your idea", through a tongue like emery,
a "true romance", you said, passing the thin trees
cracking a way through to a chance at life,

onward toward the Fleetwood which was my idea.

                                                       Ann Arbor

-Strike, Fall River-

Inside, the mills run cloth
run the cotton through

run the shuttled weave across the looms

the sweltering years of cotton run
the labor and sweat of it

fingertips and needles

and fibers of it
fibers dusting the inside space
pinpricking the working
lungs with its spores, where

bleach like acids
paint the eye-whites red,
bleach which saturates the woof where
outside the strikers gather in their rows
their sleeves rolled-up
their day-dresses sun-brightened
moved by body motion moved by wind where 

everybody’s skinny, the sinew of muscle where

In the distance, scabs go running
fast as lackeys run, fast as finks from the insides run  
where suspenders of fatter men expand

and cigar smoke clings to the walls, where
we admire the outside colors and we assume
that which colors the insides are different.

                          from: "Strike, Fall River"
                          Thomas Hart Benton