-taste’s good like a cigarette should-

the cellophane-

wrapped packs auditioning for acceptance
stand as in a chorus line
upon the tabletop side-by-side
reading stage left to stage right

from the line of sight of the audience.

filter to non-filter types of the same brand
may be accepted to be included in the line-up,
although "low-tar low-nicotine" brands are non-participants
dismissed as experimentations in novelty, but —

each pack exhibited is beautiful, seductive,
swaddled in transparent glazing
containing twenty cylinders of full, rich tobacco flavor;

each smoke round, firm and fully packed;

each inhaling smooth and mild, one less irritating than the other,
all come to the line recommended by physicians.

and at the last pack standing stage right

from an audience perspective,

we find the testimonial dinner programed in his honor

with the wife and the kids in attendance front row center.

—— How I admire

the fiction novel readers,

admire them as I imagine them

in the ritual of preparation,

opening covers as if turning

a sleeping child to lay on its back.

look, as they slowly run

the palms of their hands across

the interior spine as if not to disturb.

The palms linger. The wine

is poured — dark and red,

always exhaling, resting on the tabletops

in front of the couches.

——How I admire

the fiction novel readers,

for the plane of oneness they’ve come to,

for how they seem to have forgotten
the weight of the book.

—— From the gallery at the green of the course.

  

-Roger the Barber-

Roger the Barber

Whose one-chair shop

Is located on South

Main Street just before

The downtown line of demarcation
To the southend of town,

Cuts my hair while humming

Mozart arias.

He told me that he and his wife,
A graduate of one of the conservatories

Would regularly attend the Opera in Boston

When Sarah Caldwell ran the place.

But after his wife's sudden death
At the age of twenty eight

He stopped going to the opera.

From the chair, I asked him
How long he’d been a barber.

I asked him:
"Does the hair-cutting profession
Have a history in your family?

How long have you been at this location?

Have you ever considered

The two-chair configuration"? 

I asked him:
"Have you petitioned the city to take

The parking meter away"?

But that old Roger, he just kept
Snipping hair and humming Mozart arias

And I didn’t have to ask him:

"Was
      She
          Beautiful"?

                                 Fall River

-A click away-

It gets more difficult with time. 

I tell myself not to look

But each morning over tea and crumpets,

Over Bach Oratorios, and Oreos

Split in half like cymbals just after impact,

Under the canopy of stucco, two bulbs out, 

In all kinds of weather, I go to Facebook.

I see that someone has posted
A Poussin landscape with figures.

Two of the figures are seen in the foreground
As they carry the dead toward burial.

Responders to the post opine

With intelligence, emotion or by simple
But effective "likes" which allow for their inclusion
Albeit in the most fundamental opinion allowed.

I'm glancing out the window considering

The Portuguese guy across the street

As I have nothing to add to the discourse on Poussin.

It's the posters who drive the conversation

And each is driving a fast car, leaving me in the dust.

Across the street, the guy is yelling up to his wife
Who leans out of the tenement's third floor window

Just to the left of the pulley which holds a taught line.

He’s in the yard, it’s starting to rain
And the wind is building.

He’s aggravated and she’s imploring aggressively.

A bed-sheet has half-

Fallen from the clothesline and is tangled

Tightly around the top of the line’s pole.

She can’t pull the sheet in by the pulley
While it’s wrapped-up like that

And he's in no condition to climb.

He pokes at the sheet with a broomstick.

He slaps at the sheet with the head of the broom.

She’s screaming in Portuguese:

“Ir-para Casa! Sopish Caldene!”—

And it’s raining like hell.

The sheet’s too heavy, waterlogged
Like a genoa sail skimming a heavy sea,

And returning after a quick piss, I notice he’s gone.

The yard's empty and the storm continues.

His wife has closed the window

But the torn sheet’s a lost cause,
Its one free corner, flapping violently in the wind

Like a torn spinnaker.

Later, as the vinyl siding drips, I'm left to ponder

Whether or not they're eating together
In front of the television,

If he ever sees her as he once saw her,

If she remembers the man
Who vowed at the altar to always be there
And maybe this is why I can't spend time this morning
Considering Poussin on Facebook.

                                     Corner of Bedford & Eddy, Fall River.

                                             

            

-the iPhone-

With a dampened paper towel in hand,

I've wiped away a sticky,

brownish spill left on the kitchen counter

from last night’s bedtime snack.

It left a pattern resembling the Crab Nebula

the way it must actually be,–– a burned and nasty

trace element without the usual snazzy computerized

color enhancements from the inventive media labs.

I open my laptop to profound grief.

An Indonesian airliner's disappearance is reported.

It fell from radar into the dark vastness of the Java Sea,

–– Jakarta bound for Singapore.

Stark photographs are displayed on the front

page of the digital New York Times,—

people waiting for news of loved ones, a large private area

set-back from the unintentional cruelty of the terminal

where life is busily going on without them.

A young woman among the photographed
is sitting alone on a bench,––
her head bowed, her black, luminous hair 
falls in mourning across her face.

it's in her frozen isolation, the graphic stillness,
the inconsolable nature of her being, captured

in the indelible moment of her grief, which is palpable.

I'm drawn to linger there, to examine this photograph

above all others as though I have a personal connection to her.

At first sight she appears to be praying, but she’s not praying.

She's texting.

                                                  12/28/14

  

-again and again but this time, with the wife-

In the exploration of my history,

something akin to entering

a great room through a narrow portal,

I find the tenement house of a working-

class neighborhood.

inside is the deep-ended sink of the kitchen,

a claw-footed tub deep enough whereby two

large kettles of stove-heated water would

reach but one third of the way, cresting
at the widening circumference
of a mineral-tinctured stain
acting as the waterline of historical displacement,

various monumental television sets

tuned to near perfection by the slap
of my father’s hand upon the sleeves
of their heavy cabinets
and an ironing board which

when not in use was hidden away

in a back room closet
as if it had contracted tuberculosis.

here I find the corner of life at the chain-
link fence of the ballpark laying before the church

adjacent to a gas station which in turn is

adjacent to a row of advertising billboards

adjacent to a neighborhood men’s club of sorts

and north and west in walking distance,

the schools I’ve attended and a cemetery where

Lizzie Borden "rests".

soon afterward, whatever happened simply happened.

but later, I should say that although our marriage ended
after a few, or four plus intense years, nonetheless

my young wife was beautiful, seemingly without
knowing she was beautiful,— without

the need to make an artificial effort to be beautiful
and our son was born in August.

there’s a reason I’ve come to this juncture
in this rambling, truncated version of reporting
something of my life.

I’ve been told in the here and now that my

approach to the visual qualities of, and unusual

commentary on, young women, girls perhaps,

is due to the fact that I have never had an enduring,

decades long relationship with a woman.

I was told this directly, face-to-face over

lunch in a quietly elegant restaurant with an old friend

after I commented on a lovely, summer-clad

young woman, a girl perhaps, as we walked toward the restaurant.

but sitting there over a light lunch, listening, I should tell you...

this is the first draft of the opening page of my book:

“An Autobiography Of Me As Told To Me By Others”