-for Robert Walley in paradise-

1.
"Who Put This Here?

I Want an Answer Right Now!

Who Put This On My Desk”?!

It wasn’t me, but I knew who did it

And old Miss Sykes was tenacious

At getting to the bottom of things.

I was told she once tracked-down

A kid who drew a comical penis
Complete with wire-haired scrotum

And the words "Eat Me Raw"

Ballooned over its circumcised head

On the wall over the urinal trough in the boys room.

Her investigation was masterful

And the artist was soon emasculated

Before the entire class.

It wasn’t me.

2.
Death at the Austin Powder Company:

When the heavily bunkered, labor-intensive building
Designated as "Jelly-Stuffer No. 2" exploded,
(The building where finicky nitroglycerine
Is stuffed inside sticks labeled "Dynamite!") 

Rattling the walls of the "Slurry" facility,
(Bunkered half-a-mile from Jelly #2)

Where I worked, in deepest southern Ohio

Mixing Nitro-Carbo-Nitrate for the coal mines 

Of Kentucky and West Virginia, the team of assembled

Forensic investigators mapped the stages leading to the event

Starting at the farthest evidence found on site,
Far beyond where Jelly #2 was once located,

Then backtracking inward toward the crater's center

In order to determine the initial point of detonation.

Investigator #1 

"This here shoe belonged to Tom Johnson.

Tom was working the big Jelly-Stuffer

At the time of the explosion, so the shoe,

With half of Tom’s leg attached, well, it should be

Way the hell over yonder, but it’s way the hell over here.

That means it travelled like this from the "Stuffer",

Then curved that-a-way, then up in that direction like that,

Was pushed by sympathetic explosion shockwaves in that direction, yonder

And landed all the way the hell out here".

Investigator #2

"Watch your step, fellas. This here is Leo Fenstablaugh’s thumb.

Leo was Q.C.ing the dynamite crimper casings

At the time of the shot, so his thumb should be

Way the hell over there, but it’s way the hell over here.

Now that means there was one initial shot followed by
Four separate sympathetic explosions because..."

3.
Well, anyway, old Miss Sykes was like that,—

A forensic determinator and I knew she’d get

To the bottom of the dirty-little mystery laid upon her desk.

It wasn’t me but I knew who did it,—

And I knew she knew that I knew who did it.

To this day that grade school experience

May be the foundation of an occasional

Tinge of paranoia on my part.— But

You know, sometimes they actually are out to get me.

But the perpetrator behind the caper

In Miss Sykes' classroom wasn’t me.

I’m just the rat-fink who knew who did it.

                                   from the Wellston notebooks and 

                                   the archives of the Hugo A. Dubuque School

-The Greasy Pole-

The purpose of the Greasy-Pole is singular:

to prevent a challenger from reaching its top.

Holiday—

and the Greasy-Pole stands straight-up

at 30 feet or thereabout

and near its peak hang from their anchors

tantalizing meats in bulky form—

a rounded cheese of the provolone strain 

housed neatly in its safety net

and assorted trinkets tacked on the pole

nearly half-way up

defined as "grab-bags" as consolation

to the weak-of-heart, muscle and determination. 

But the Sun and Sky and Dreams align 

at the greasy-pole's tip, for standing thereon

is placed a starchy little American flag

and tightly wrapped around its staff, a crisp 

one hundred dollar bill,—— 

the staff dramatically pierced into a fat, tubular

whole salami.

                                         -Columbus Day Celebration

                                         -Columbus Park, Fall River

In 1959, Dominic Petrucci scaled the greasy-pole,

seized the salami with its flag and one hundred

bucks in tow and triumphantly descended the heights

to great celebrations, and quietly moved-on to continue

his only life.

Mr. Petrucci, known locally as "K.O."

resided alone 

in a third-floor tenement across from

the Marconi Club where his father

took near permanent residence,

graduated from high school,

served in the United States Navy,

was medically discharged,

returned to his hometown,

took menial jobs here and there,

hung-out at the neighborhood's

active watering hole which

his father bequeathed to him

and in October, went to the Park,

worked his way through the madding crowd

to center field and there, struggled to hold on

but ascended the Greasy-Pole, then descended it,

arm-locking the great salami and clutching

the little starchy american flag with its C-note

wrapped tightly around its narrow staff.

Dominic Petrucci briefly drove
for the "Vet's Safety Cab" Company 

and died soon after at thirty-two of chronic

liver disease directly attributed to alcohol abuse

no more than half-a-block from where

the Greasy-Pole once stood defiantly before him,

there, where the people cheered in great celebration,

the man who'd die in the room where the whole of his life

was soon to vanish from the mouth of the city of his birth

along with his singular accomplishment; all to vanish save here.

                                                    Fall River, Massachusetts

                                                  

                                         

                                                            

                                                          

                                              

  

-Pairing the bases-

I took the measure of a small group of poems,

Those which I've chosen to preserve

And because I publish poems on a blog

Passersby might determine them less relevant

Than the glossy-jacketed, tactile beauties pulled from the shelves.

I won't argue against that requisite.

But a few friends and acquaintances stop by,

Read some now and then,— then go about

The daily business of documenting their own faculties.

Everybody's active.

I took the measure of subject-matter;

The compartments within the geography

Of the local planet at my hands;

Family, friends, tenement,—

Church, schoolyard, slow-dancing,—

Playground, textiles, bakeries and junkyard,

Bound between two parallel streets

But running in opposite directions;

The nucleotide of Bedford and Healy.

Sub-settings fill the DNA of the structure.

Mother straightening up, preparing the table,

Swiping the countertops, balancing

The mantle's knick-knacks, weaving between

Elements in the chaos of the inside world,

Father driving hard toward the sales near the sea,

Sister's academy friends waltzing through, draped softly

In angora pink,— (It has to be beautiful)

Brother interrupting in every room with tricks up his sleeves,––

Water heating in twin-handled pots

Atop relentless burners of the gas-stove

In preparation for spaghetti or the tub.

Outside, father drives to the curb,

Sewer eats baseballs,

ESSO Station saturates

With a pungent scent of leaded gasoline,

Smokestacks exhale the hard smoke of running cloth,

Girls hang-around leaning on the fins,

Church tolls for the living and tolls for the dead.

It's the space between each toll which matters.

Sometimes it’s quieter on the outside of life.

The job is collecting the pieces,

Fitting them into the structure,

Finding the link which holds the bases together.

Growing old, I understand that a poem may be written
Which one would hope to preserve.

But to be preserved it needs to speak to the salt of life.

-God on our side-

1.
my friend, like myself

was an altar boy
and he wonders comically now

why he wasn’t

one of the sought-after,

one of the chosen few to star in performance,
a locked sacristy's twilight delight.

I'm found wandering around in my head

recalling the night of the great

circle-jerk at Gerry Marretti’s house

sitting over his father’s neighborhood market

where my mother, one of six mother's save our host's at the jerk-off,
signed-off on old man Marretti's weekly ledger
listing the necessary sliced italian meats.

now there's seven of us

beating our meats

over Marretti’s Market at the corner

of Bedford and Wall streets.

2.
I'm with Priest the night before,
nearing twilight

in what we called the “little park,” a tar-

surfaced slab with playground swings,

a merry-go-round and two listing, net-less hoops

comprising our basketball court adjacent

to the larger, more historically significant

Columbus Park which was in essence,

a Little League baseball field.

my house was on Bedford Street,

half-a-block from Marretti's,

across the street from the first base line

at the left field fence.

the church of "Our Lady of the Holy Rosary"

sat atop a small hill facing Wall Street

which ran north to south from the facade

intersecting Bedford running east to west

where in another night

seven kids would whack-off to the fatty scents

of peppered prosciutto and sliced cappicola.

3.
Priest is shooting "S" for HORSE, flat-footed

with an awkward two-hand chest maneuver

from the foul-line where the ball floats (no rotation)

and sinks to the tarmac before it gets close to the rim.

I'm on "no penalty letter" and he's done for.

Priest's shiny black Pontiac is idling beyond the fence

but he'll have no luck with me this late afternoon.

4.
near twilight on the night before the night
of the great circle jerk of 1953 and the hollow,

metallic ring of a basketball dropping to the tarmac
resonates in an otherwise vacant,
quiet little park in a game of HORSE.— me and Priest.

                                                            quequechan

  

-Notes for the poem in progress: "God on our side"-

Note: cap God.

Priest drinks wine at the altar, where we washed his thumbs with water.

cap Priest.
God's lurking behind the tabernacle door.

Priest buys a new Pontiac.

Priest has a new pitch.

Priest plays basketball on the playground tarmac.

Priest plays “H.O.R.S.E” on the tarmac.

Priest stinks at "H.O.R.S.E"..
Priest shows-up at testimonials and funerals.
Pontiac engine idles at curbside outside the playground's fence.

Note: a tightly inflated basketball

bouncing on the tarmac sounds metallic;

there's a sort-of pinging..

it emits an echo, a ringing of sorts ––

sounds of the Benediction, one note in the jingle
of the rocking thurible, the scent of Benediction, its belly
bloated with the smoke of stinging incense. 

Note:–– Pontiac's column-lever shifts to drive.

who knows where the Pontiac goes.

we see who’s riding with Priest.

we don’t recognize what’s what.

Note: Little League baseball's testimonial luncheon
is held at Magoni's Family Restaurant across the river.

Priest sits slurping the soup course at the head table.

Tony Scelsi wins team M.V.P..

Note: it was Tony riding along in the Pontiac
as it pulled away from court-side beyond the playground's fence.

Note: don't use caps beginning sentences save for proper nouns.

Note: it might be best not to mention Tony by name.

-Patti Paige Requiem-

“Patti Paige puts-out”––

I was told this along with others of my age group

By those older than we who said they knew Patti Paige put-out.

––The girls we knew would hang around the corner

Until their fathers tracked them down.

(It wasn’t hard to do, as their houses

Were pressed against our houses)

But these were the neighborhood girls,
The girls who "should know better,"

Who’d hang around on summer nights,
Leaning toward the "Platters" crooning from the dashboards:
"Heavenly shades of night are falling, it's twilight time.."
But they didn’t put-out.

––It seemed to be it was only Patti Paige who put-out.

This is what we learned because those older than we told us so.

No one I ever knew ever knew Patti Paige.

––But I actually laid eyes on her once.

My second cousin Donald Cicci pointed her out to me

As we invaded the Saint Anthony of Padua Church "Festa",–
Center at the enclave of the great and powerful Portuguese,
Three neighborhood blocks to the west at a planet's distance.––

––I noticed Patti from a crowd away, but clearly, and when

Donald said: “Let’s get back to the corner” I said: “No”.

––I watched her as she bent her torso forward in laughter,

As she sipped soft drinks with her friends.

I watched her as she danced across
The bandstand’s floor, girl to girl in sweet cheek to cheek.––

––She became my sole interest in lingering there,

More noteworthy, more intoxicating with each sliding step,
Nearing exotic when considering the stories told about her.
She seemed as something forbidden that shouldn’t be forbidden;
Nearing unapproachable;

A low-hanging fruit yet still out of reach as the ancient fable goes.––

––I sat in the gallery of opinion, witnessing her accusers

Convict her in the court without substance,
And although some are dead, some are living.––

––The dead went believing from their mouths that Patti Paige put-out.

Those still living spin tall-tales to the young amongst them,
Perpetuating the myth of the night they were told
By the elders amongst them that "Patti Paige put-out".

––No one I know or knew, or have reason to recall,

Knew Pattie Paige as I did, or as I remember now because,––

Well, I once saw her dancing.

Quequechan / c. 1957

-why voting-

I’m living within a municipality,

someone's concept of "district"––

I’m a constituent dressed for the occasion,

a pinprick of demography.

An uninterrupted line has been drawn around the neighborhood

inching its way westward, cutting into the river as if slicing a tentacle.

I could burn-up under the magnification.

Herein is the blood of the red corpuscle, the white corpuscle,

web of bone marrow, the hydrogen and carbon molecule;
all sorts of acids.

I’m as cellular as the next guy and when limited to the science of biology,

quite the same as everyone else.

Strange to know that when the human DNA structure is slightly altered,
the fruit fly could argue a case as to call itself brethren.

But it's through the application of consciousness which sets us apart.
There are divisions to consider and conclusions to be drawn.

Clear skies are slated for tomorrow with little chance of rain.

Sundown, and the city's incandescence is seen from half-way to the Moon!

-Corso Requiem-

1.

Gregory Corso hated requiems or so he said

during an intimate evening recital somewhere

in New York City, sometime in the mid-1960s.

I enjoy reading Corso.

"Don't Shoot The Warthog" alone is worth
the price of admission, which means––
the cost of the volume "Gasoline" from Amazon.com.

And I confess to writing my share of requiems;

the solemn song for the dead;

            the verse for the faithful departed;
                        the anguished plea for the repose of the soul.

2.
From my temporary perch

shared among the living, annuals all–– and
from what I've gleaned through the experience,
I'm suggesting that Corso might be on to something,

in that the ghosts of the dead might prefer to be left alone;

released from their forced participation of the requiem.

But the requiem

won’t leave the dead to themselves.

The requiem

keeps the names of the dead

at the mouth of the song.

Corso did admit to writing a requiem;

that, for departed Charlie Bird Parker,

the jazz alto saxophone player,

and further, Corso read his requiem for the great sax-man

to the gathering on that bone-cold, Manhattan night.

3.
Interestingly, after the reading he couldn't help
but interject an invented critique of praise by the reed-
smooth musician Corso romanticized would've cooly
proclaimed: "Man, I dig it"–– had Parker been alive to hear
his requiem read by Corso in the flesh.

4.

But after reading the "Requiem For Bird Parker" 
while sitting in the big, green naugahyde La-Z-Boy
in front of the television during a foamy Budweiser commercial
with the Red Sox and Tigers knotted at three in the top of the eighth,

I gotta say,–– man, I dug it, too.

-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
our grandmothers among them
tend to the old men,
where the old men
our grandfathers among them
tend to themselves
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 maternal extraction —

toward this place
where we prosecute

the elements of living

in an open forum

accessible and predictable

from where we've begun

where we ought to begin —

from the mouth of attendance
the connection of residence

conning the stories from their corridors

so that we left living might speak of them.