-third prologue-

I was the traveler

Now the confessor.

I was the young one

Who knew everything;

The same one who barely knew
The formula for tying his shoes.

I was dream-drunk when everyone

Around me was drunk with the same dreams.

But they moved on.

I don't know the reasons for why I didn't.

I'm left speaking to the places of my time
To anyone who listens.

There are the lives of others

And the deaths of some of them;

Of things recalled about their activities
And my own activities with them.
The poets call these things
The journey through life.
It's the simplicity paves
The way to the journey.

The distance between the tenements
Are measured from window to window;
Measured by the running
Count of the steps from the entries
To the upper floors.

I'll start at the beginning

Working outward to where everything is

And by glancing out the window
I see the kids running, 

Crossing the street

Between the park and the gas station.

The schoolgirl friends
Of my teenage sister are brushing
The lengths of their hair on overnight stays
Lighting the atmosphere.
When they see me through the mirrors
They continue as if I wasn't there.
But it's only now that I know I was.


See how the soft
Fedoras rest on their hooks,
Closing the books on the long day's sales.


Listen to the swish of the sponges
Across the table oilcloths
Releasing the pungent
Scent of petroleum.


Resting my face on the still-damp surfaces
I opened the windows
To the scent of petroleum.

I'll mention the warmth
Of the one true dance
And the placement of her secret locations.

That’s what has to be recognized.

It’s so simple.
It soaks like water and like water
It’s what keeps it living.

-to protect the innocent-

Louis.
Short-Stack Louie.

Louie Ricotta 
you little punk.

your brother’s a jazz drummer.

your father’s a dead saxophonist

and they played the nightclubs—

one stretch in Newport
at the Seven Seas Club on the beach
and I know this 'cause I was there

and you amounted to

an old man who lost his only

daughter through hepatitis diagnosed

as her liver failed.

Henry.
Hank.

Hank Ricotta— 

behind the wheel
of your father’s ’56
Chevy Impala

and me

riding shotgun, counting down

in Gino
Gasperinni’s ’57 Plymouth

Fury.

Christ,
the sounds we made that night
on 24 north,—

the Chevy's glass-packs rattling,
the Fury's hard-
drinking 4 bbl hissing and

now your father’s dead
at the hands of the aneurysm,
his tenor sax
molding in the basement, reedless
behind the water-heater

and your niece is dead at a young age too;
dead as her liver;
dead as the old man's sax. 
you had an easy back-beat,
Hank Ricotta.

Shirley,

cousin Shirley.
Shirley Cappicola— 
In the big tent in the woods

at the endless reservation,
a long, craggy pathway
from the clearing where

the picnic tables were set-up

over the cracking pine-needles

at the family’s reunion-
picnic-party get-together,—
you and me deeper into the woods
than family ever knew,— my palms
introduced to your breasts
underneath the silk-
like material of your blouse.
Shirley Cappicola,
cousin Shirley.

Saint Shirley of the Resurrection in the tent.

I think you’re living.

Tom, Tommy, 

Thomas Curricio.
half an Irishman,— you long-

legged freak with a big brain,—

come stand with us on the corner

where we let

our german-beezers down
and smoke a long Pall Mall.

It's where the girls show-up

on Friday nights
the spice of their mothers' Tabu perfume

dabbed heavily behind their ears.

Tom, Thomas Curricio,—

you can stand next to me at the fence

on the street-side of right field

where Gerry Sorpressata played
Little League ball with the Clippers,
fantasizing Jackie Jensen.

Roberto,
Robert
Bobby Prosciutto—
altar-boys that we were
in a class of altar-boys who
Monsignor Pepperoni
called "Apes." ..the audacity!
and we shared the altar
of the benediction masses
cloaked in smokey incense.
Bobby Prosciutto
romantic deep-sea diver—
Bobby Prosciutto
fatso heart-attack victim.
Shirley Cappicola had a thing for you,
you and your dark
italian ways.—
but bright-eyed and fair-skinned
I showed-up at the big tent first and
rest in peace, Lucia Ricotta.

-the Striptease Artist-

Route 6 east toward a strip-joint called the "Hangars"

With a carload of guys who play Buck-Buck
In the park across the street from my house.
Not long before this ride to discovery

We'd hide from our mothers under the porches
When the streetlights came on.

Soon, we’re sitting at a sticky, rolled
And pleated leather-like booth

Anticipating an adult woman who'll
Take her clothes off for us to the sounds

Of a swishing snare, pizzicato bass

And muted trumpet.

She’ll be wonderful with sequined pasties,
Tassels swinging

Clockwise and counterclockwise propelling
Her tits into the heavy atmosphere burning our eyes.

We’re too young to drink.
But we got inside because Hank Lozon's Uncle
Manages the joint on weekends.

This is where it’s dark, sweltering and red all over.

It’s like being inside an inflated parade balloon

And I don’t think we should eat anything.
But our waitress looks good and the M.C.'s

Cracking a few jokes into his mic whose volume
Is set to Amphitheater.

He introduces the next stripper as “Trixie Dixon”
And leaps from the stage in a single bound
To tepid applause from the scattered in attendance.

Then the red-lead atmosphere is spotted

With a crack of white light

And there’s Trixie, sitting at the edge of a stool
Confiscated from the near-vacant bar,

Costumed in trench-coat  and soft fedora

Whose brim folds softly to cover one eye,
The standard lit cigarette tucked between her lips,
Redder and wetter than a Bloody Mary.

Trixie's routine is billed to be that of a Private Eye.
But I'm the only one in the house who sees
An otherworldly impression of the Liquor Salesman. 
The downbeat to jazzy music

Cues her performance.

Trixie leads with a leg slipped into
A black nylon stocking pushed out
Across the floor

Down to the toe of her pump
Allowing the trench-coat to peel back
Like the skin of an over-ripened banana.

Our young waitress ignores her, dealing
Out carbonated drinks realizing the booth's
Occupation of potential deadbeats.
She's not too far removed from my age. 

I want to be closer to Trixie.
But beginning the routine, the stool

Slides from under her

And she falls on her ass to the hard stage,
The fedora rolling from her head into her lap,

Embers of ash from the cigarette still clenched
Between her lips extinguishing in her hair,

Tamped-down in an oily sweat.
Closer,
Trixie's face is seen to be puckered
Like the skin of a citrus fruit
And she rises awkwardly to continue the routine.
The trio picks-up where she left-off.

I’ve seen this before— when the drunks

Tumble out of the Marconi Club on Bedford Street
Behind the billboards in the sharp
Spotlight of morning, mumbling for something else.

As the Houselights slap a harsh "Last-Call"
And bewildered more than fulfilled, we pay our tab
In cash, leaving the "everybody's-in" tip on the table.

It's a fast ride west on 6 toward home
And too late at night.
But maybe It'll be okay.
And why not?— I'm old enough now.

toward this place

-toward this place-

If we begin here

travel in the one
defined direction

the destination
leading to what is known

where the dead mingle

with the living

where the old women tender
the old men in pedestrian

silence —

where the young men,
our fathers among them,

cultivate a space reserved for their sons —

where the young women,
our mothers among them,

teach their daughters by daily

execution, 

by fundamental deduction,

by parental extraction —

where we prosecute
the elements of living
in an open forum,

accessible and predictable,
from where we've begun,
where we ought to begin —

the connector of residence,
from the mouth of attendance,
to signal the stories out from their corridors
that we, left living, might speak of them.

the true rankings

-the true rankings-

Looking west toward the river

just before twilight, the Sun
cuts into the greying
horizon of Rhode Island

as if sawing through the planet.
The tenement houses
on the eastern hillside,
with one last burn against
the weathered shingles,

exhaust the daylight from their lungs.

It doesn’t stop the dogs
from nosing around on the street,

or me for that matter.
The dogs have their own
self-centered plans.

The street's less active

with everybody home from work
and ready for supper.

Maybe they’ll go out to eat.

The diners are open late on Fridays

and the food can’t be an object of discussion,
being the same as it was forty years ago

and the interiors too, save for the kids
who spin less aggressively
on their stools at the counters.

Earnshaws Diner,
sitting as far west as the land allows
before reaching the banks of the river,
rates 2 stars out of 5 with its hash and eggs,—
but earns another to total three,
after it was force-tucked beneath the new
95 West ramp,

adding to its early morning restlessness.

Sambo’s Diner
on Pleasant Street gets 3 out of 5,
not for its lack-luster menu,
but for the pleasure

of the crazy company it keeps,—
the Friday night parking lot rich
with threatening Super Stocks
intent for a shot at the highway.

The little Nite-Owl Diner
sitting by itself like a lost shoe
on the wide-open corner
of Pleasant and Eastern Avenue burns

the flat-side of the tongue
with a hot, melted-cheddar cheese  

scooped inside a steamed hamburger bun,

earning an extra star to make it 4, but only
after two o'clock in the morning.

Al Mac's Diner
at the foot of the Seven Hills,

the one which pressed its meatloaf plate
into our throats after the funerals,
where the working waitresses

called us “Honey";

Al Mac's,
gleaming in stainless armor,

the hungry tin-knocker’s dream;
the gas station attendant's
half-hour reprieve;
Al Mac's,
where the grinning City Council candidates,
glad-hand
the mouths-full sitting in their booths,
who show up in cuff-rolled dress shirts
three weeks before the elections
disrupting the revolutions of its perennial
population;

Al Mac's Diner,—
which greets the sunrise
with the clatter of beginnings

and where the burgeoning
Moon will lift its weight to sing its tune
of late-night romance;— 5 stars, easy.

                                              City of Fall River

-new nature, lone shooter-

this morning it’s the birds again,—

cawing, peeping, chirping and screaming

bloody murder, buried in the summer density
of surrounding trees.

late last night, the original 1933
production of King Kong
was broadcast on television
and was once again captivated by the scene
where we view the lush, dreamlike,
prehistoric landscape
and follow it into the greying density
as our heroes wander deeply into it
from the foreground

just as the spike-tailed Stegosaurus
shows up and rotates comically
before it drops when shot dead
during its attack.

but it’s the birds,— the dark creatures
crossing the distant sky that intrigue,—

the stop-action animation of their flight
adding a strange validity to an otherworldly
sense of being in a place where we know
intellectually that we don't belong.

a more sinister scene with the same
sky-crossing birds
at the extravagant Xanadu picnic
in the 1941 movie Citizen Kane

accomplishes its parallel link to the near-
tactile experience.

so I consider the birds this early morning
in the light of their ancestral movie-time portrayals

in an effort to be a little less annoyed
with the intrusion.

just the same,
I fondly recall my old Uncle Pete

who’d snare the common bird of the yard
through landscape trickery and after
a quick kill, pluck 'em and rinse them off
beneath the faucet of the kitchen-sink
before tossing them into the pot of simmering
tomato sauce giving it a kick.

                             

                                              

  

-among the perennials-

If I'm to be buried

temporarily preserved full-bodied,

to what plot of ground
shall I be lowered?

the grave will need an opening

and to accomplish permanence, a closing.

only then will friends and family,
I presume, show-up.

a private site in the city's cemetery
by its very nature will be pastoral
with identified species of trees,
a rolling landscape
and plenty of manicured pathways
leading to specifically selected occupants.

the gates of these places are usually
ornate and overstated,

erected in heavy cast-metal
swung on powerful hinges.

but only the living come and go.

there's no room where my father
and my mother rest in peace,
her enclosure laid over his

and further, there's no "poet’s corner"
to bid me welcome, and if there was
I wouldn’t make the cut.

maybe there’s an uncluttered place
in upstate New York available,
or perhaps a narrow slot in the crowded

cemetery close to home where
Lizzie Borden stays.

the rich have generations
of plotted family,

potted and buried like the roots of plants
which will not grow.

maybe I'll lie as resident among
the murdered,
among those who've killed them
and among the dusts of priests who once
presided over their burials.

maybe I'll rest near the running
brook among friends.

what spot of land will have what's left of me
to dwell among the perennials?