"Pride of the Marines"

The carpenters are intrusive 

Scurrying about their routines of the day

Invading the tacky linoleum of the pantry

Foraging for, and finding the food and water

They’ll lay claim to.

On the kitchen counter, one seems meditating

At the altar to the crumb of something,

Frozen in the ecstasy of its quiet benediction.

My young mother, most-often gracious and understanding

Sprayed it in the face with a can of "Raid".

“Get ‘im in the eyes, Mom! Right in the eyes!”

At the crumb of something,—

Mountain of sustenance to the carpenter ant,

It curled to a crackling fetal position and was surely dead.

Clearing the battlefield

With a swipe of the kitchen dishrag

Across the green formica, hard-hearted

As the steel of the carpenter's nail,

My young mother pushed onward,

Defending her house and its stores,

Into the theater of war at 1017 Bedford,

First floor above the sidewalk sewer which drank foul balls

Expansive ballpark, church, and gas station views

Rent, $15.00 payable on Fridays by the close of business

Heat and hot water included.

Quequechan

-the salesman on the road and the common utilities of the working class-

time was he paid the gas bill for 1017 Bedford, first floor
at the company's local headquarters downtown, across the street
from the "China Royal".

it was particularly eventful during snowstorms when he'd

travel down there by way of Buick regardless of road conditions because

it was the day after he was paid, and the gas bill had arrived in the mail.

the electricity bill was paid "down the Flint" section of town

a couple of blocks to the south on Pleasant Street at "Pleasant Drugs",

and he paid the druggist between prescription refills in-full, with cash money.

(I should mention that paying the Fall River Electricity bill

was referred to in the truncated vernacular as: "Paying the Electric".
and I should add that he paid the gas bill in-full, also in cash money.)

note: no one, including this poem-writer realized

the irony of a pharmacy called: "Pleasant Drugs" in 1953. 

“expert textpert choking smokers” / John Lennon

1.

––The petition’s been signed by ten thousand.

It might have gone to ten million.
It's been going around like strep throat.
all it takes is one, then another.

Regardless, it will get its measure of play.

––It says in essence: “not suitable.”

Priest signs the petition calling for "not suitable."

2.

––Yesterday, from someplace out there, a guy with a gun in his mitts
shot a young woman walking her dog at the tree-line to his property because

she looked like a deer walking a dog and not a young woman walking a dog.

––The night before her death by gunfire, she listened to

“Tristan und Isolde” on the radio broadcast from the Met,

dog at her side as she considered the merits of added grains in dog chow.

3.

––The petition was presented in protest to a Balthus painting hung

for the public good of a cat lapping milk from a plate alongside a seated

adolescent girl, one leg raised far above the hem of her dress exposing her

underwear, daydreaming through the earth-tinctured atmosphere of a silent interior.

4.

––It was Barenboim, a Jew, who under fire brought “Tristan” to Jerusalem

in an effort to slap some sense into it.

5.

––When Andres Serrano piss-dunked
the star-crossed Nazarene for the sake of its exhibition,

observers from the jurisdiction of the "Holy See"
saw themselves as pissed upon by Andres Serrano,
dispatching a representative to bop its glassed enclosure
with a ball-peen hammer causing some shattering.
––As for me?

I'm fully inoculated. My papers are in order for the most part,

I was fast up the first base line, and I don't hold any grudges.

-the cat drinks the Christmas tree water-

the cat drinks the Christmas tree water,

obscured due to the tree’s decorative density,–– but

I can hear her lapping.

the sound is captivating and lovely

running through the pine-scented atmosphere

when something else tells me something's not right with this.

but the ethereal head’s-up doesn’t carry with it

the sternness often associated with the fierce voice of God

and is dismissed as atmospheric static from common swamp-gas.

last night she slept under the tree, (the cat, not the God)

pine needles like dropped pick-up-sticks lying across

her black fur coat during a silent snowfall in the morning.

Season's Greetings to all, and to all, a goodnight!

-the Christmas gift-exchange tradition debunked- 

what if the three Magi didn’t show up,

misguidedly tracking Sirius Major instead?––

or Swamp Gas.

suppose one of the wise-guys decided to take a shortcut
camel-trotting into a gang of pesky, old testament Amalekites?

and what if this was the Magi holding the myrrh, and the other two guys                

fell prey to reasoning they somehow needed the myrrh.

suppose, while waiting for the myrrh, the two remaining Magi                        

came to exhaust their food stores,

causing their camels to make revolt against them.

sure, the child might have been born nonetheless,

justifying interior evergreens to be trimmed;
to be pop-corned, tinseled and bulbed, but
that would have been the extent of it.
hence, the Christmas gift-exchange tradition is debunked.

but wait...“pop-corned, tinseled and bulbed”?

now, that has a jaunty, "happy holidays" lilt to it,––
wouldn't you agree?

Season's Greetings! / The Mezzotesta Family.