-To each his own-

That's me

Standing on the corner
Leaning against the chain-
Linked fence of the park

Looking around,

Exhaling the forbidden smoke 
From my nostrils, 

Waiting for somebody to show up.

It’s early evening

Just before suppertime

When we’re usually expected
To be inside.

My parents left in mid-morning

Traveling to Tiverton, Rhode Island

And the wedding of a niece.

My mother left "supper on the stove".

Macaroni and cheese.

Not the packaged shit.

Home-cooked elbow macaroni,

Strained, multi-layered with cheeses

And baked in the oven

Forming an amber crust.

It stays warm on the stove.
My teenage sister has escaped to the house

Of the fascinating Edwina Mello

And my younger brother
Is rummaging through

The drawers of her bedroom dresser.
He doesn't know what it is he's looking for

And he won’t understand anything he finds.

But instinctively, he knows he has to do this.
It's a rite of passage.

That's me, standing on the corner
Leaning against the right-field fence,
The smoldering butt flicked to street-side
As adroitly as the best of professional smokers,

Looking around, waiting for somebody to show up.

                                                Quequechan

  

-exhibitionist-

when the Duncan

YoYo guy showed-up

on the tarmac of the schoolyard

we observed the miracle

of the YoYo

dancing on its string

the string we knew

as a tightly-wound ever-curling strand

its YoYo listing lazily

at the end of its run

string looped 'round the finger,

YoYo slowing its spin

to a dead rotation

like a dry planet

surrendering its last

chance at life.

form the schoolyard tarmac, the Duncan YoYo guy
rocked the cradle, the sleeper whizzed,

the walking dog bounced away and returned

with the snap of a wrist to the Duncan guy's hand.

sometimes,

two YoYos slept as they spun

and circled inside both his arms, one, two,
three times or more, the YoYo chasing itself on the fly

and when the piercing bell rang

it rang for an end to the exhibition

and the beginning of something else inside the walls

which had nothing to do with playing with a YoYo.

-From Claggart's tongue-

1.

It's a long night before the next night's 
Funeral prologue;— "I am an old man.."

And I’ve had my belly full of it.
Everything hangs by the short
Rope's end of this day's reading. Soon,
We look to witness the hanging death of Billy Budd,

Press-ganged to come aboard, as I’ve heard them sing of it.

I realize the sound builds layer on layer. But
This time,— it returns salutations.
This time,— the terrible beauties display themselves.

Ship's company's full-throated on deck of the ship,

Displaying its scenes by the movement of its planes upon
The Metropolitan's stage like an orchestrated waterwheel.

Soon they’ll hang Billy Budd for not but the heart's
Farewell to the "Rights of Man,"— Then 
For the strike of his fist to silence Claggart's tongue!

We participate, as ship's hands bear witness

To the tense procedure from the balcony's third row.

The House has split the ship amidships, and at the split
Of the bones of Billy’s neck;

Taut and fatal rope held-fast by the hands of the hands.

2.
With the "Bellipotent" dead then drawn

We'll haul-out taking to dry land.

                                      

                                      The Metropolitan Opera / 5/10/12

                                      New York, New York

-the soda-jerk at the drug store-

I know of a soda fountain

at the Oak Grove Pharmacy on the corner
of Bedford Street and Oak Grove Avenue.

there, you can order hot

fudge sundays, banana splits,

malts and lime-rickeys.

when the pills are ready, the pharmacist

will call out the name of the prescribed.

the soda-jerk is an older kid we know.

out the window is the street where we live.

the girl who makes me pant lives in the grey

three-tenement with a ringer washing machine
squatting on the first-floor porch.

out the big paned window, people are walking by.
men with soft hats banned at their brims.
women with purses tucked neatly into their armpits.

the cars parked on the street look heavy,
dressed in bulky sheetmetal, fenders like dirigibles. 

new-styled panoramic windshields distort the landscape.

the Hugo A. Dubuque School is straight up the avenue
beyond the cemetery where Lizzie Borden rests.
inside the drug store, the music is played
by portable radios lying on their backs on the counter.
the music is convincing, although most of it
seems to circulate inside the walls of the portables
where only some of it finds a way out.
what we heard was enough.

my older sister is with me and our younger brother.

the pills are for my grandfather,

my mother’s father who has sugar diabetes.

I saw a black growth on the side of the little

toe of his left foot one night as his wife, my grandmother,

my mother’s mother, soaked and patted his feet in a shallow
basin on the floor of the parlor in front of the television.

later in the month his foot was amputated in Boston.

later in the year his sight began to fail and he died soon after.
I thought he'd be buried in the backyard
near his grapevine with the cats and parakeets
but they packed him off to the funeral home
just beyond the bakery.

but before that, my sister, brother and me are sitting
at the counter of the soda fountain, the soda-jerk,
an older kid we know is serving his paying customers
and we’re just waiting there, spinning, always clockwise,
for our grandfather's pills.

                                               Quequechan, 1951, 1952

-now awake-

the sparrows are going crazy

and by their numbers seem

to shake the head of the leafy elm,

and the coarseness at the resonator

in the throat of the crow is amplified

by the early morning hour.

shrieking.

bloodcurdling.

something's going on.

there’s an otherworldliness

to the crow's stature,
its stately posture in the manner

that it speaks of its power,

its indifference to others

and of the sparrow at the face
of its own fundamental station.

It's difficult

to measure the physical

presence of the crow until

one stands upon the rail

of the backyard deck
at the sliding glass doors,

a lifeless sparrow

hung by a wing in its beak

in the midst of a mourning elm

in a deeply, greying dawn.

-early morning geology, or how I found a garden snake

and why that discovery had more to do with me than it did the snake-

It was easy enough to slide away

the pillow-sized rock

to see what, if anything was scurrying

across the concave, dark and dank

soil beneath it— that underworld

which belongs beneath rocks.

that's the purpose of rocks, regurgitated

from the icy mouth of the Laurentide sheet––

to lay there, and hide things, and shut-up about it, and outlive me.

this time, it's the little green garden snake,

more worm than snake who showed-up, bending it’s mild length,

too small to coil tightly, near timid––

and I wondered what it was doing under there;

a shelter perhaps. protection from predators, or waiting

for me to come by to push away the stone, to offer an option.

the little green garden snake appears to be uninformed,

but it knows something of its presence, prepped by a silent

instinct to make its house beneath the belly of the rock.

maybe this is what God sees as it looks down at me, curious

of the way I go about doing the things I do while it considers

my motives for its adjudication. who knows?

well––  little green garden snake, you have my attention.

...now what?

  

-Transfusion-

In the country, upstate near

Cooperstown and

The Baseball Hall of Fame

Where farms and would-

Be farms dot with dirts and grasses

Here and there

Along the wind of near-lost

Roads to apprehensive beginners

Where snow

Falls unquestioned in October

And shovels are pressed to

An early sense of duty 

Upstate

Where animals seem

To posses a curious sense of humor

Waiting until such time

As it becomes clear

That man might want to gather something simple

Like felled acorns

He intends to germinate.

But it’s the critters

Who carry them

From the earth at the trunks of the trees

Under Moonlight as man sleeps

Under Sunlight when

Man is busy within his own

Occupations,— inside where plants

Are transported and man is

Inattentive to acorns

That deep, that upstate, that remote

Dot of space

Where a man might stand

Against the dry

Tide of war for the acorn
This small

Tale is told.

-but to begin-

the glossy
pages of the volumes
are opened to their bookmarks
and the pages look up from the table.

the table is wide and long
and built of the darker, denser

woods.

It sits in the middle of the spacious

gallery of the Art School

where the atmosphere
is engaged and anticipating.

like any study-hall populated by students,

in time some will learn, some will

learn something, some will question
their attendance.

but to begin, this happened at the table:

standing, he neatly rolls
the cuffs of his sleeves to the forearm.
he’s not yet speaking.

but he clears his throat.
the volumes on the table
are ordered by relevance.

the leather band of his watch

is carefully detached from its clasp

and falls open at the wrist

with the gracefulness of quiet
residence. 

the watchband is flattened
and the face of the timepiece

looks up from the table.

but this is to begin.
he's not yet speaking.
but he clears his throat.

but he readies the volumes

and fingers the adam’s apple

of his neck as if anticipating
the words of his arrival.
he’s not yet speaking.
but to begin,
a forward thrust of the chin
and the faces look up from the table.

                          

-a reading in autumn-

I saw the first

leaf of the maple fall— (madness, 

starving hysterical naked,) and

Damn! It’s "Howl" again.

                       written 2012
                       

-be true to your school-

I assumed they knew what they were talking about

When they told me DiMaggio was a better hitter

Than Williams.

And maybe they knew something

When they told me Sofia Loren was better looking

Than Marilyn Monroe.  

I guessed they knew a thing or two

When they told me Marciano would’ve beaten Ali;

Told me it would’ve been Ali

In the early rounds, but Marciano, crouched, bleeding

And tenacious, would’ve found the moment.

Maybe Joltin’ Joe was a better hitter than Teddy Ballgame.

But I don’t think so.

I think you've got to be an old New York Italian

To believe such nonsense. 

Maybe Loren had the edge on Monroe.

I don’t know.

And maybe Marciano would’ve found the time

Like the old italians postulated as they gathered

At the spent holiday tables with their port and their beards

And their comparable expressions and experiences.

Old Pete Pieroni once said that the Italians were forced

To fight for the Axis by the brutally pompous Benito.

Not that old Pete was addressing the politics of war.

But more that he was grasping to excuse the Italians
Of their dismal battlefield performances.

But now that I'm older, I’m placing my bets on Sofia

And Ted and Rocky without factoring in

the Italians and their dismal battlefield performance.

   

-Voted "Most Humorous"-

Manuel Anselmo entertained
The student body of Hicksville High
For four long years

With a disposition to resort to excesses
When faced with a tepid response to a performance.

When audiences shanghaied from the corridors
Slipped from his grasp,
He forged ahead following them to the next class
Mimicking the inner-sole to inner-sole,
Slow-witted saunter of Milton Berle.

From out of nowhere, his elbow would jab

The vacant side of any available set of ribs 
As he cautioned the recipient to prepare for something;

Something he knew would surely fire-up the funny-bone. 

Let this serve as his eulogy,

Shuffle toward his casket in deliberate
Execution of the rite.

He died a young man.
His audience was young. 

Manuel Anselmo,

A plank of chalk,

Stripe-colored straws protruding from his nostrils,

A lampshade askew atop his stone-cold head,
His face, a grayer shade than living, the last
Powderpuff blotting the sheen before the closing ceremony.