-from 1017-

Whitey’s Esso was a full-service station.
All of them were.

The job was to simply pull-up to the pumps and wait.

Whitey would be informed by a runner, one of us,

Who’d rush to the Marconi Club
Just beyond the billboards to tell him

That a car was idling at the pumps.

Sometimes it was too late.

Whitey’s out-cold.
Not a problem at the Club

Named for an Italian hero. Whitey was Irish.

He had a face as red as a tomato
Drunk or not.

Usually, our friend Henry Casper
Took care of the Station

When Whitey was out to lunch
Just beyond the billboards.

One such time, staggering back
He fell to his face
On the pavement of Bedford Street

Splitting his nose at its bridge.

Esso didn’t give a shit
As long as somebody pumped.

Gasoline was the money-maker,
Not Whitey.

We’d pick him up and walk him
To the small enclosure of the station,

Carry him inside and clean him up

And as Henry pumped his gasoline,

One of us would call his wife in Tiverton,
Across the Fall River line to the south.

Then we’d wait with Whitey,
Who displayed his love for us with exaggerated
Gestural performances until his wife, always in heels,

Blazing red hair dyed to be that way,
showed-up in her snazzy new Mercury
To carry him home.

And Henry Casper pumped the ESSO gasoline.

And this would happen across the street from my house.

                                                              Quequechan

-picking-up a few things-

It's chaos

and the cells are annoying

ringing Bach-tunes
as Bach did not intend them
to be utilized.

but the carts clash nicely
in metallic harmonies
and over there, an ambulance
comforts someone on the avenue

announcing that it’s on the way.

the rationale is
that this is the world I've chosen
to step into this morning.
the Stop & Shop is brightly

fluorescent, too.

from the parking lot
she walks away
from her cloistered dog,
agonizing
at the cracked-just-enough
car window
over why the fuck he did

whatever it is she thinks he's done.

then in the aisle where the beans are,
a cellphone is ringing its snazzy rendition:

"Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben."

                                                     5/21/12

-Abracadabra-

The low-lying clouds brighten

And below them
The asphalt is warming.
The street begins to waken
To its common activities. 

The cherry blossom tree
In front of the brown house
Across the street has flowered.
It will be that way for a few days
Until the blossoms fall,
Covering everything beneath them
In pink petals as if anticipating a function.

As of now, the blossoms
Have the morning

Running through them
As the population mans
Its early machinery, cranking-up
The engines of rejuvenation.
The heavy factories flex their sweltering

Muscles in the distance and the sky seems
To pull the smoke from their stacks. 
They’ll cool to postmortem

Grey in early evening
But before that happens
The interiors will grow hotter.

There was a time when
Not much seemed recognizable. Then

Everything showed-up unexpectedly
Like a knock at the door of the wrong address.

Now there are things to attend to

And stories to define or confess, you know,
In case the people show-up

With time on their hands and nothing
Up their sleeves.
I enjoy the recurring company

And the best part is they seldom
Make excuses as to why they leave.
They simply vanish to be found somewhere else.
Abracadabra.

Anyway, after reading one or two I'd rather not
Stick around too long myself.