Angela deCorpo and the Egg-man

First floor tenement living and

The benefits are transcendent. 

From the entry, the stairs are there for visiting the others.

The upstairs neighbors visit

By descending them and knocking at our door

Or simply leaving the house altogether.

Inside, the kids scream for their way

Or plead for what it is they want for their own.

The mothers are quick to remind them that nothing
They see, feel, eat or breathe is theirs to own.

Inside, the water’s heating on the stove for a reason.

She stirs the spaghetti differently than she stirs the heavy soups

And differently than she stirs the thickening polenta.

Nothing is needed to stir the bath.

But the same pots are used to heat the water.

Outside, over the fence next door, Angela has hung

Her wash to dry on the line in the sun and in time

She tests the progress by walking the line,

Grasping the material

As it catches a breath of wind now and then.

Her technique is the same as it is with all first-foor

Tenement dwellers and when the clothes are dry to the touch,

A tug on the cloth relaxes the line

And the clothespins are pulled and placed in a pouch of cloth
Tied around her waist, there for the singular purpose of holding clothespins,
And the garments are released and are dropped by hand into a basket.

Unlike at our house, Angela has opted-out of the old

Interwoven straw form, in favor of the "New

And Improved" injection-molded plastic form of laundry basket

And although I see this as outside the neighborhood's character,

I admire her independent, forward-thinking attitude.

Inside, the local egg-man delivers a warm two dozen

Then climbs the stairs to the second floor.

He'll no doubt deliver another two dozen to Angela’s house,

The house just over the fence, connected to a pole by a clothesline.

                                                                       Quequechan

-translating myself-

what's missed?

           what's left to be resolved?

I’ve changed direction from time to time
           traversing draft to post

In what's become the category titled: "something of my life".

           today I’ll simply range from corner to corner.

there, the articles of attendance have been written beforehand.
           I occupy the Chair of "Tattletale in Residence".

here, the lessons learned are found within whatever is remembered

           and my specialty rests in the exposition of the reported.

I understand there's little to fear of litigation and what's missing

           will likely be that which remains forever missed, but

stories to be told linger in the salt-drenched

           shadows laid-bare by others along the way

and the world is round and recurring.

           now,–– who could that be, knocking at my door at this hour?

-a couple of hours at the opera-

I've committed a portion of the daytime hours

to a recorded performance of:

“The Gospel According To The Other Mary”––

a contemporary opera by the American composer, John Adams.

this was my second reading,

my first without consulting the libretto.

It always pleases me to unwrap an opera sung in english

accompanied by an english libretto.

I can’t always make out the words otherwise, particularly
with respect to throat-constricted countertenor singing
and if I pause to figure them out along the way, the music can rush by

without so much as a by-your-leave. so it's beneficial to have
an english language libretto accompanying an opera sung in english. 

In act 1, scene 3, Jesus calls out the dead Lazarus to:

“Come Forth!”––  he calls out more than once: “Lazarus, Come Forth!”

now comes music-making of the fiercest notation, deeply dark,
harrowing instrumentation, siren, far from worldly intonation, wailing

nearing "Elektra", building on parched, pungent outer-movements rumbling

in the distance an ultimate "HarumphHarumphHarumph.." 

why, it’s enough to knock a lesser man on his keister, or as with Lazarus,

wake the dead.

                                                                                             
3/27/17

-wonder of the world-

sitting in the stands

as baseball is played,
played in the rough of its game

not a pro in the park

where dugouts are benches

loose and loud and tobacco-spit free;
where baseball moves without money

and the beauty of the game is clearly seen.

the small set of stands at the third
base line are sparsely filled,
but active, without regular order.

the bakery across the street
behind the third base line sells pizza
shaped like the infield, a wide diamond.
the variety store across the street
from the first base line sells snacks
and ice-cold Coca-Cola.
cool, clear water bubbles from the fountainhead
on the corner behind the backstop.
the opposing left fielders share a five-finger glove,
tossing it one to the other as they pass
with the change of the innings.
in the stands, the people see this exchange
as a performance in "good sportsmanship"
sharing their pride with nods of approval
to their opponent fans, row to row.

the sun is setting beyond the western
banks of the river from the park where
baseball is played in the rough, a knotted

score at nine a side in the top of the eighth
as the voice from a wonder of the world
is heard from the mouth of the game.

                         

                 

                    

-on the morning after "Buzz" drove over the edge,

we find the tough guy laying on his back

above the covers on the narrow,

single bed in his room with the fingers

of his hands entwined behind his head;

an un-lit cigarette, pressed between his lips.

he stares at the ceiling fixture

recalling the movie "Rebel Without a Cause"
he'd seen the night before, as early

rock n’ roll's tuned-in at high volume

on the radio, tabled at bedside.

the filter-tip of his cold cigarette

is moved with the aid of an adroit

tongue to be clenched between his teeth.

this intriguing procedure is instinctive, as

the cigarette wags up and down

keeping time to the music's beat, where

the stubble of his "german beezer"

gives-way to daydreams of a cream-oiled wave

sweeping back toward his neck, where

the "duck’s-ass" Buzz combed deliberately,

would end in a spike, its testament of youthful rebellion.

the bones of his young ribs push outward
from beneath the glazed, veil of his skin

and for as long as he maintains his tenacity,

he ignores the calls of his mother to "go wash-up"!

soon, he'll stash last night's nabbed cigarette
for daydreams yet to come, and enter the kitchen
as family closes-in around the table, where

early rock n’ roll evaporates into the slow, pedantic 

drawl of "Today" from the television squatting in the parlor.

1955 / 2017

-Sofia in Pescara-

I'm a digital friend

more than twice the age

of a digital friend I can not reach.

Inside the little square where friends in stasis

gather at the edge of illumination, the young

Sofia from Pescara, Italy, rests an elbow
at the bar, entering brightly day by day.

Perhaps as a child her family
was much like my family;

her father’s house

much like my father’s house

at a time when I was young,

much younger than she is now;

house like a beehive.

Maybe we ranged from grapevine

to grapevine, we two;

played beneath the morning's

clotheslines and navigated

the crazy entries linking the outside

and the inside,–– the continents

and the years running between us.

She was far from born as I batted-down the sour

green apples from a neighbor's tree with a broomstick,

running for cover into the junkyard with my stash.

Maybe we crossed the same kinds of

weathered fences to the same kinds of vegetable gardens

where our grandfathers sprayed the swollen

hornworms, feasting on the same early tomatoes.

Over there,–– at the benches

beneath the shade of the tangled vines,

maybe the old men from Pescara drank their fill

of home-pressed reds as dry as their beards,
much the same as my grandfather and his friends,

in much the same kind of territory.

Sofia from Pescara, leans

her elbow on the bar in the square at the

edge of illumination, unreachable, yet day-by-day,

at the margins of my screen she enters

my space of time to introduces herself.

3/12/12

-Requiem for Russell Silvia-

1.
Russell Silvia was our friend,
near two years our elder,
near full-blooded Portuguese,
living among the nearly full-blooded Italians
in what amounted to a small city three block area.
Russell hung around the corner very well,

better than most and with a convincing attitude.

He knew how to lean back

against the ballpark's chain-link fence

and at the same time lean

his torso forward, street-side,
without the procedure looking
in any way calculated or forced.
He was a natural.

His cigarette smoking technique

was beyond reproach, igniting

the head between two, tightly cupped hands
regardless of weather.

This is what he would teach us.

Russell’s first drag of smoke was impressive.

What he did was..he'd press the Camel cigarette

to one side of his mouth, drawing its torrid smoke

deeply into his lungs while exhaling the residue

of smoke through his nostrils.

The process was unique in that it was done
as the flame was still burning the head of his Camel.

Now, it's true, that occasionally a trickle of smoke

may have drifted from the other side of his mouth,

but this was deemed to be an acceptable byproduct 
of the complete procedure.

Lung cancer would claim Russell far earlier than death
of any kind would claim any of the others of us.

2.
We took a break from the viewing

walking outside to the Funeral Parlor's expansive back porch;
a cold night, a brushed-yellow Moon reflecting on the river under riven,
Albert Ryder skies–– and gathered there

we smoked 'em the way we wanted to smoke 'em without any

of the technical bullshit impressed upon us by Russell Silvia.

Quequechan

-no school in '52-

awakened to the dead

of winter snowfall 

the side of the green

opaque shade's drawn,–– the space
heater's warmth drifts outward.

you can hear it
you can smell it

the heat of sheet metal pinging,— the scent

of sweet kerosine on fire.

it’s dark at winter's
early-morning hour

when school closings are reported
by the weatherman on television,

table-lamps are switched on

kitchen voices are muted

and the warmth of fuel folds
over itself in its slow approach

and you hear it pinging and know its scent,

when half-asleep is still asleep
and you lie there smiling

and you don’t have to do anything

or go anywhere.

                    

                                     

              

-George again / charcoal with smudging-

It was George again, now drawn in charcoal, smudged

for effect,–– clean, but for the effect in blurring the line.

I'd see him in the clouds every day,––

every day from my desk in the 4th row

and as the years progressed, every day

from another desk in another row of another year.

George in the clouds, under glass above the blackboard, spelling:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

It’s George in the clouds, hovering there

gull-white,

white-haired bauble,––  gull with a wooden

beak who could not speak nor blow his glossy nose.

So now comes the time for George to be drawn once again,
resurrected in his image as I know him at his best, this time

a brand-new face, a charcoal black,

a scribbling of cloud with its smokey effect.

There’s George again,

drawn by my hand, which could be proclaimed

the new hand of God. 

1.

Nancy in the Moon / a correspondence 

2.

What drove you to throw

your Brandy Alexander

into my framed etching

hanging

on the wall to the hallway

leading to the bathroom?

I did something.

3.

It's when dressing

for the evening's wedding reception

for the wealthier brother

of a wealthy friend, and you lost

one of your black high heels.

We couldn’t find it anywhere.— We

looked all over the apartment, under the bed,

in the drawer where my socks rested,

out the back-porch window

toward the neighbor's howling beagle,

in the box under the sink

where we kept the hammer and that useless sconce.

We were running out of time

so you slipped your feet into the glossy

white high heels instead and we ran

downstairs to the car and drove to Westport.

4.

In the great tent erected on the sweeping lawn
rolling toward Buzzards Bay and the pearly,
violet strand of the Elizabeth Islands,

the plump, already married jewish ladies frowned at their tables

beneath their starchy hairdos, pressed into too tight dresses

and raised their thick eyebrows at the sight of you

as if you were Palestinian — and they, with the distant,

scud-missile-weary eyes of their older cousins

sheltering somewhere in Gaza.

All this over the choice of shoes you made on the run.

You electrified the giant tent that night

with your black leather miniskirt and white high heels

as glazed as the faceplate of the Moon!

5.

In time, something I did disturbed the slender balance

of the natural order of things causing you to throw

your Brandy Alexander at my etching.—— christ,

I remember the process it took to get it to what it finally looked like.

6.

A mono-print intaglio on light-green hued heavy stock paper,

Pulled from the plate, 33 x 25 inches.

Three horses forward, mid-plane, two fanning away from the central horse,

All three with riders cloaked in what appeared to be a stance of war.

Beneath them two horizontal panels containing figures dressed

In the medieval garb of the peasantry, holding straw-headed brooms
And pitchforks cut from wood.

In the far distance a fierce battle is being waged.

Variances in color intensity permeated the background.

These variances were the cause of liquified white-ground,

Atomized over the zinc plate's surface before its acid bath,

A deep, Dutch Mordant etch to be flooded with ink.

As subject matter the mono-print made no historic claim.

But visually, so said my contemporaries, it was a real knockout;
Signed by me and dated 1967 at the base, far right corner in pencil

And presented to you on your birthday years later and,

You threw your sticky Brandy Alexander smack-dab into it

Shattering its glass enclosure like a mortal sin attacking an already

Blemished soul.

The end

                           

                                 

-I think I might have the answer-

It’s all in the comings and goings. 

the young pass through time navigating

year to year without a sense of delineation.

and the old? well, for most, (they) slow-down

nestled into more calming periods,

the years becoming deliberate, reflective,
allowing for the sorting-out of the accumulated.

(they) hang around at the borders of commotion

often grumbling at the activities of others, forgetting

that commotion was once once reserved solely for (them),

–– now (they're) left to consider brothy chicken necks, encroaching

visits of priests, and recollections of long lost gesticulations, the art

of exaggerated pantomime to emphasize the spoken word

which pressed (their) points of view

into animated conversational prominence.

understand, these assessments should be applied

foremost to the Italians, and somewhere therein lies

the answer,--deep inside the joints of (their) (our) my

historically active, but now all to easily detectable bones.

-after the event- DRAFT!

after the event,

people began to rise slowly from their chairs,

sorting their belongings for the ride home.

standing behind the back row of chairs,I watched with interest

a heavy-set woman performing this triage of outer garment selection,

beginning with items to be worn closest to her body to those worn outside:

first the sweater, then scarf, then coat, and lastly a large purse,

holding bare necessities and duplicates, just in case.

out of nowhere, a skinny man, 40 or so, walked across the stage,

eventually yelling into the standing microphone:

“There Are Pamphlets On The Table

 In The Corridor On Your Way Out”!

and then he pointed the way to the table

standing in the exit corridor against the back wall,

with four short stacks of pamphlets on top,
and in front of them, others were fanned-out
with a keen sense of imaginative pamphlet table-setting.

It's one of those long, cheaply veneered leg-folders

usually found at neighborhood testimonials for the presentation

of awards.

(earlier, I'd noticed about twenty of these tables,

(legs folded) leaning against a wall in an otherwise empty room,

before entering the hall to pick the chair with the most character.)

the guy on the stage has become increasingly animated
and his head is now tilted sternly, while jabbing his exposed 
index finger into the air emphasizing the way to the pamphlets,

and of course, his authority to do such a thing.

and now for the goings on at the folding table in the corridor:

maybe I’ll hang around to see if anyone takes a pamphlet.

“pardon me, ma'am. but what in hell possessed you to take that one”?