-aphorism-

what is the nature of the idiom

or

what if it comes undone

as the cloth's weave when the errant

thread is pulled from it

or

how does it spend its time?

is the foundation of storytelling the same

as its history's structure

in that

the capstone is beautiful

the tie-stone strong?

2/13/12

-the mystery ride-

Let's hit the road.

To leave by car

We must enter the car.

Two doors and the front seats

Tilt forward to assist easy access
From the outside to the backseat.

Sometimes on the driver's side

The tilting seat will cause the horn to blow.

One slip-up could tipoff the cops.

Four doors and it’s every man

For himself.

Let's live the two-door life.

A life of two doors.

We're on our way.

Four doors and from
The open back window

The flat tongue of the dog 

Flaps through the air in its sparks of spit

Splattering the trunk;

The simple vacation of its summer days.

Two doors and in the evening
The Moon is all it could be.

She dials-in a smokey Platters tune,

they asked me how I knew
my true love was through

Climbing over to the backseat bench

She knows how it's done,—

Her petticoats whistle 

Across the naugehyde under
The headliner's yellowing domelight.

She bounces on purpose twice or more

Closer to the Galaxy's

Cockeyed fins in the only

Way to make them functional.

I of course replied,
when the lovely flame dies,
smoke gets in your eyes.

To leave by car

We'd enter the car.

The mystery ride.

A two-door life.

A life of two doors.

We'd hit the road, pair by pair

To the place where it stopped;

when the deep purple falls
over sleepy garden walls
and the stars begin to twinkle in the sky
for as long as my heart will be
sweet love will always be
here in the deep purple dreams

And moonlight beamed.

              

                          Quequechan

-at the Hugo A. Dubuque School-

1.

The turtle is turned on its back

Upon the asphalt of the schoolyard.
The turtle inverted has four useless legs
And its time is running out.

This is the age of death's exploration.

Killing creatures
Was a rite of passage for the boys;

Grasshoppers to the webs of the widows,

Toothpicks through the ladybugs,—
Squishing caterpillars beneath the soles
Of our sneakers,— tossing

Hornworms into the wacky throngs of red ants

Climbing over one another for a taste,
Tattle-tailing,
Waving their antennae, knocking heads,—

Displaying their intelligence.

The wackiest kid
Got his hands on a magnifying glass

And any slow-mover
Was doomed to the needled-ended
Spike of the Sun.

On their knees at the carnage,
The boys laugh like lunatics

Elbowing each other at the first
Crackling spit of bug-smoke

As the girls, their delicate arms folded
Just above the waistlines of the crisp
Day-dresses, lean on the high,
Over-the-head chain linked fence,
Blank-faced and anticipating.

2.
There’s a famous 1940s photograph

Of a drowned man sprawled on the beach

At Coney Island, surrounded by a semicircle
Of grey-faced onlookers in high-waisted
Bathing-suits as a few attendants fail
In their struggle to release him
Back into the sea of the living.

His young wife, kneeling in the sand
Next to his dead head,

Realizes the still-shot camera at the ready,
And smiles broadly as the shutter clicks
To document the scene.

She smiles because it’s instinctive for her to do so

Whenever a camera is poised in her direction.

The schoolyard girls observing the brutality
Of life and death at the fence near the tarmac
Are as engaged, but colder;

Austere at the moment of the truth.

3.

The Maypole stands for the school's
Mayday festivities

And the alternating boys and girls,
Dressed-up,
Starched and serious are walking
In a slow circle around it.
They hold in their hands, pole-attached strips
Of crepe paper;
Red white and blue, marching like benign
Circus creatures,
Corkscrewing the pole, delighting the audience
Of parents and teachers in attendance.

From the open doors of the red-brick building,
Down the granite stairway, each flight worn in the middle,
The electrical extension cord winds its way outward
To where the appropriate fanfare trumpets upon a folding table
From the portable record player.

                                                    Quequechan

-Elementals-

Into Saturday evening
And the ravioli are hand-made, the edges
Fork-pressed and in a bedroom vacated for the night,

A laundered top-sheet covers the double bed,
Is flour-dusted ready to receive them.

This is where the ravioli rest
As they harden overnight, a process
Necessary to hold the edges together 
When submerged into water.

The streetlights are on

So they won’t let us go outside.
Our mothers kept time
By the streetlight activations

And before our passion for exploration
Broke from their roots, we played outside
Close enough to home

That a mother’s call was clearly recognized.

When the streetlights came on
The names of the kids reverberated
Throughout the neighborhood.

In the evening from the kitchen window, the park

Looked cold, bluer, like a giant
Outer planet longing to be populated.

That’ll be our job in the morning.
And from the bedroom's top-sheet,

The ravioli wait their turn to enter the water.

                                         Quequechan

-Left behind-

I held back for a moment

Allowing the mourners to shuffle out;

Soft-talking, respectful smiles,

Handshakes all around as if congratulating

One another on their ability to survive. 

We’d decided on a closed casket

With a framed 8x10 glossy standing

On the lid at the head.

I think it’s the head.

The twenty year old air-brushed color pic

Has him sitting healthy, smiling and leaning

Forward at a severe angle, typical 

To studio portrait photography.

Maybe I should have opted for the Extreme

Measures alternative.

He’d be beeping away in a warm sleep

In the starchy room where I left him to die.

He travelled the distance necessary
Selling the company’s booze everyday

Miles from home where the ocean is,
Where the restaurants thrived in summer
Then shuttered his sales in winter
Returning home through the seasons
Dropping his heavy keys in the milk-
Glass saucer kept for them at the door.

He bequeathed to me

His corner across the active
Street where we lived;

The platitudes of his relations;
The unrealistic assertions of linking
Almost everything I did
For years to come, with him.
He bequeathed to me his half-
Measure of my birth and my youth.

I said: "We'll take this one".

It’s not the most expensive.
It's the least expensive.
It's bronze-colored.
Others were tantalizing,
Whispered as built of exotic woods.
I held back for a moment.

But in the end, I didn’t think
We should waste the money.

                                    Fall River