-A reading in December-

With Ferlinghetti’s “San Francisco Poems"––

His love-songs to the city, the bay and its bridge ––

Some of fishers casting nets above their natural side of the water,—

But all of the light, the light Ferlinghetti sees, and sees nowhere else,

And the Bridge, the Bridge,–– that Bridge piercing sun-colored,

The landscape of Saint Francis.

With Ferlinghetti's "San Francisco Poems"
A reading in December, holding fast to my edge of the continent,––

The hard drop of Truro, nor'easter slicing inland crossing the North

Atlantic, a light as much of steel as translucence, its blade of dissent

At the throat of my eye.

With Ferlinghetti's "San Francisco Poems"

A reading in December
He sings of its light, I read:

"..is none of your East-Coast light

                   none of your  

                               pearly light of Paris.."

Of the light he sees and sees nowhere else ––

    Ferlinghetti's singing as if ordained the warm-

Throated, love-

Sick 

    Bearded 

         Canary.

Wellfleet, Massachusetts

                                

-Kansas samaritan-

to take a piss

I'll pull-over to the breakdown lane
on Interstate 35 North to Olathe, where

a short walk across the shoulder toward the blind

of the woods shelters the sensitivities of passers-by.

but what’s a dead newborn possum

doing all the way out here?

it's got the snout.

it's got the grey skin.

it's got the pink dot

at the end of both ends.

not long dead;

no infestation, and in the palm of my hand

it feels pliable, as if death excused itself

at the moment of my intrusion.

I'll lay the lifeless newborn possum

down in the high meadow-grass
far enough away to avoid splattering,

enjoy a quick relief at the tangle of the sassafras

then carry it to the center lane markers
of Interstate 35 North to Olathe where it belongs

in the company of the spirits of its own kind.

                                             

                                     

-first love-

they told me:

get out from under the porch

be quiet on the stairs

be careful

be careful

watch the cars

don’t get bumped.

they said:

bring the change home

stay away from the ledge

she said:

if they jump

will you jump too?

they said:

don't drown at the ledge.

he said:

bend your knees

close your stance

choke-up

choke-up

go get me some Luckies.

she said:

clean your plate

there are kids in China

put those things in the hamper
she said:

what are you doing under there?

she said:

go get your father some Luckies.

they asked:

is this yours?

is this yours?

they told me:

pay attention.

they said: pay attention.

her name is Bernadette

her hair is yellow

the miner said gold

the poet said meadow

her hair is yellow

we sat on the quiet edge of the stairs

on the porch to her house.

her name is Bernadette 

the setting sun drapes

a violet's tint across her dress.

she said it's late

she said we shouldn't

her hair is yellow

she said let go

she said let go.

I said:
read my poem.

Quequechan, c.'53

         

            

                           

            

Third period requiem

Marsden was a cranky old man.

Marsden taught textile design in the cold,

Dank space located in the basement

Adjacent to the smelly toilets of the 3-

Story redbrick schoolhouse.

Marsden had whiskey in his thermos,

His mouth exhaling a sour breath which

Saturated the inner walls of our budding nostrils.

The index finger of his right hand was missing,

Sliced-off by a blade used to cut away the stubborn,

Tangled thread of a stalled shuttle some 40 years back.

Splatters of blood once stained a creaking manual loom,

But we didn’t know which one if it sat in the classroom.

Marsden was hunched-over with a bad back

And by the time we got to him, nearing retirement.

But he died first.

Maybe he bled to death.

Maybe it was a measured bloodletting;

An external bleeding in for the long haul.

Principal Robert Nagle announced his demise

Over the school’s cracking speakers

As we rushed like a band of lunatics

To the cafeteria; on the menu:

Franks and beans with tapioca dessert.

Two shriveled frankfurters

Forked over from a pan of hot,

Stagnant water,—

A ladle-full of pork and beans

Soaked in their own viscous, khaki-

Colored sauce, topped-off

With a paste of translucent nodules

Listed on the blackboard as "tapioca"

Pre-spooned into little semi-opaque plastic cups.

A fitting sendoff meal for Marsden

And Marsden deserved no less, no more, no better. amen.


 the Fall River Public Schools
 circa 1956

                                           

-confessional to friends and relations-

It might have been better

for all concerned

had one of greater abilities

survived to tell our story.

but I was the one left standing

and frankly, at the time,

I didn’t think I was paying

that much attention.

I’m often reminded of the fact

that I’m not a professional —

that I’m un-certified. I'm told

by those in the know

that my credentials are weak.

but I understand

that nothing elevates us

because of something accomplished

or absolves us from what
we might have laid-waste.

I've not become our priest.

    (although I do remember briefly
     accusing us of committing

     a number of venial sins,—

     but that was simply

     to authenticate our poetry.)

what I'm saying is

you might have done better

with someone else —
and of the suggestion that if I didn't do it

one of you would have, well,

the evidence preserved for us

implies that this would have been

improbable at best.

geography is widening its distance
as is the history between us
in the world we once occupied.

our names, for better our worse.

the positions once held by us are dissolvable, but recorded,
and there is no singular name to be held accountable,
nor cursed nor romanced from the blessed community, but mine. 

-the Sacred Heart Academy girls-

I was too young

to go to the dance at Club Calumet

but the girls from the Academy
tucked into my sister's bedroom

prepared themselves.

the door was slightly ajar,

never able to fully close

in order to shut me out.

my gait from the kitchen

to the parlor slowed to funeral steps
as I passed the intriguing goings on.

they examined their skin —

pressed the upper eyelashes

with an implement designed

to do nothing else.

they primed their hair

in sprays to hold the hairdo's down.

they dabbed

the backs of their ears

with Wind Song 

and the backs of their knees —

rolled deodorants then sniffed

the hairless armpits to certainty.

they listened to Elvis crooning
from a spinning 45, slipped their legs

into crinoline mesh

after conning the nylons upward

as far as they could go.

earlier, two of them took baths

in the tub, heating the cold porcelain.

later, I could hear them

giggling with anticipation as they ran
through the kitchen door leaving the house.

                                         1017 Bedford

-I say, a moving road!-

I would like to suspend

all that I know above my head

inside a cat-faced parade balloon

strung to my wrist, gas-filled

and bobbing

over the pavement’s curb

as the brassy parade passes by.

between the marching bands

the silent, shuffle of footsteps

belonging to inserted afterthoughts
which filled the gaps

was intriguing and often otherworldly.

participants smiling soundlessly,

waving silently, some groupings
with banners held at their waists
strung along a horizontal rod,
material flapping softly before the muted,
gaily clad promoters of their cause.

my position on earth was dictated

by the width of my standing body

at curbside, often clutching a web

of pink cotton-candy which clung

to my mouth and fingertips, the cheeks
of my face and even the stubble of my crewcut.

the clacking Budweiser Clydesdales

seemed benign in the distance but soon

became threatening by their size

and obvious power to maim or kill
if something snapped in their heads.

all it takes is one creative kid with a cherry bomb.

massive piles of manure left behind on the march

were amusingly avoided by the oncoming.

but now and then someone stepped into it.

here, the approaching drum-majorettes,

always stone-faced and lovely, tasseled

white boots gracing their marching feet

were the gold-cup reward for this young

horse manure observer.

the beauties, the adored ones, high-skipping

into mounds of smoldering horse shit,— but

purpose-filled, goal oriented, determined, unflappable,

just the same as me.

-the story of the finding and proving of the true house at 1017 Bedford-

1.

before there was a gang hanging-out on the corner

of Columbus Park at the right field line,— there was another gang

made-up of our older cousins and their girlfriends who were the older

sisters of those who will become our girlfriends.

but another gang before them,

those kids,— they were our fathers, and their girlfriends,
they would become our mothers.

those boys and their girls hung-around on the same street corner as we,

as did our older cousins before us.

the houses were much the same then as they were when I was young.

the look of the shingles was the same and the interiors were populated

by the same kinds of occupants roaming the rooms, shouting,

eating in the kitchens, watching televisions in the same parlors or 
listing to radios.

the great cabinet radio in our house

was located in the kitchen

against the wall between the bedroom

shared by my brother, three years my younger, and me

which smelled like the hamper in the bathroom,

and the bedroom shared by our grandparents

which was dark all the time.

through the narrow hallway

we find the parlor where

we watched television by night,

sprawled-out on the rug where we also

clung to one another during the hurricanes.

on those occasions, my father

laid tape across the windows, warding-off

the heavy winds and rising floodwaters

same as applied lambs-blood saved the inhabitants

from Pharaoh's nasty edict.    

off the parlor at the same wall

were the bedrooms of my teenaged sister,
three years my elder,

which looked like a small palace, filled with jewels,

exotic scents, linens and erotic nylon,

and of our parents, which was neat and orderly

with its consistently made bed where

at its foot, my father tossed his weary

trench-coat at the end of his day.

every animal we ever had lived and died

at 1017 Bedford.

a few of these deaths

were attributed to aging

but most were caused by violence.

the violence stemmed from impossible

attempts at escape.

the screeching of wheels,

the sickening thump,

a kid or a cat?

we had a lot of cats.

we had white mice, parakeets

and gold fish.

we had hamsters and guinea pigs.

no dogs.

not one dog.

we had but the one lizard.

we had rabbits, and at Easter-time,

a few living yellow peeping chicks

which were delivered to us

in shallow boxes by the same uncle.
In short time, these were buried near the craggy
vegetable garden across from the grapevine in the backyard.

once, one of our more adventurous parakeets

escaped into the wild when perched on the visiting
egg-man’s sweaty fedora

and it flew across the backyard cemetery,
then over the fence into Rachlin’s Junkyard

never to be heard from again.

our pets were requiems in the making; 

walk one in through the kitchen,

then carry it out to the graveyard in back

in the endless cycle of animal life and death.

I’m telling you this merely to set the scene.

but also to say that this is the place

where the poems were born.

for example,—

I thought about the one lizard we kept

in the small desert-like aquarium

under the window streaming lots of sunlight

as I wrote the recent poem somewhat dedicated to

Federico Garcia Lorca.

2.

the gas stove was old, huge

and hissed with burning blue flames.

the refrigerator was big, too

as was the winter-clanging space-heater.

the kitchen's single sink

was deep enough for two kids

and the toilet had its own little room

next to the tub

which had its own little room.

the telephone weighed-in at 36 pounds.

the screen door to the kitchen had cancer.

the linoleum, tuberculosis.

the wallpaper patterns were washed-out

but as ever-present as wandering polio.

my sister's room was a goldmine.

the television, miraculous.

every candy dish on every surface

was filled to capacity.

houseflies vacationed there in summer months

doped-up on island meadows of peppermint.

In this house, when my sister's girlfriends

came waltzing through for an overnight sleep-in,

some of them bathed in the tub before bed.

they took baths in my tub.

yes, you, Beverly Greenwood.

you, Beverly Greenwood.

3.

I'm speaking of you, Beverly Greenwood.

the ballpark was across the street

and so was the ESSO gas station.

the great Italian bakeries were across the street

and the Marconi Club as well, belching-out

its nighttime drunks in the early morning hours.

the cemetery was close by,

and by that I mean the cemetery for human remains.

the church was within sight

and the grade school, too.

the great and terrible Hugo A. Dubuque School.

Sandra, the girl at the desk

one row to the right

and three desks forward,

lived on Highland Avenue.

I wrote about her

in a couple of poems,—

one of them on seeing her house

from my bike for the first time.

I was lost on the day

when she knew she was rich.

that's right, lost when

she discovered her wealth,

her beauty and when enlightenment 

came over her.

the saddle of my bike

caught fire and singed my youth.

sure, we can still be friends.

Sandra died of leukemia

while in the 5th grade at the Hugo A.—

but this time, for once, it was something

that had nothing to do with me. 

4.

requiem aeternam dona eis domine.

and amen. and amen.

-Stop. Look. Listen.-

Requiem for the liquor salesman on the road

Hit by the train

The Doppler Shift won’t matter.

But a slow death’s like the funeral knell

With the Doppler in effect.

It opens with its soft alarm, then

Crescendo—

And it’s too late as sound collapses.

The tree

Falls and you aren't in the woods to hear it.

The star

You’re looking at isn’t really there.

You don’t

Hear the one that’s got your name on it.

It’s the last

Chesterfield that killed you.

                                                      

  

-intermezzo-

The child was born to grow

Within two enclosures.

Both would come to him at near the same time.

This is before he discovered the outside world

And what it could do with its open-ended

Possibilities.

The schoolroom introduced the first of strangers
More probable to connect than passersby;

Requirements in posture and clothing;

A fixed order of personality and stringent

Attitudes of community apart from those

Accustomed to while inside his active house,

With its racket, its eclectic populace
And its ever-present scent of potted water
Heating atop the burners.

The puzzle of life was pieced together
With larger fragments here,

Assembled by the simple physical movement

From room to room,— the narrow hallways

Linking them with warm introductions

And from the outside entryway's evening mystique.

He learned what there was to know,
Where everything was,
What to do inside each room

And that the secrets of life were kept
Behind the closed dresser drawers.

Each passageway was naturally mapped-out

And he exhibited an expertise in negotiating
The crazy geography.

The closed-form topography of his school-desk
Was Plutonian, as cold and as distant.

He was left-handed in the world of right-

Handedness.
He smudged the watery ink
As his hand moved to do its letters across the page.

His grandmother believed the left hand
Was that of the Devil’s making.

Inside the buttoned-up classroom, her conclusion
Was daily justified.

The electric bells
Of school announcements
Rang sharply
Against the smoother grain
Of the female voice
Calling his name
At the bottom of the stairs
From the entry at the open screen-door
To the waiting supper tables
Of the kitchen to his active house.

Now,— let’s begin.

1.