-the accident with airbag deployment-

let's wander-off to a space in time just for a moment,–– whether

heaven or hell or the semiconscious distance between them.

it doesn’t matter when you’re punched in the chest by a mitt into a cloud

of industrial material.

––it settles over and around me, settles on my face, my fists, coating the leathery

wheel, powdering my shirt, painting my shoes, and finding its way

into my nostrils where the stiff little hairs can't keep up.

I'm alone inside the stuff of clouds, but for the guy in the other car who

looks like he’s in a trance, expression as blank as the animals, and through

this elapsed moment in time, this six or so seconds, I’ll travel with him because

he’s ascending inside his own cloud of airbag.

––looks to be an older form of cloud, bluer, a higher density, a coarser cloud,

not nearly as forgiving as my own cloud whose engineers have refined

the substance of its particles, advancing the science.

––but there he is, the other guy,–– powderpuff in blue, artificial gardenia

of route 6 west, drifter alongside cloud-to-cloud on our way to look upon

the faces of lost generations.

––but the scene around us slows its spin and soon enough, clarity regains its measure

of time, and I’m of this world again, powdered like a bunting, and so’s the other guy.

                                                       

               -suffer the children through small inconveniences-

                home from the corner store

                and the box has a small hole in it.

                I didn't notice as I pulled it from the shelf

                ignoring the other boxes of cold, dry cereal,––

                colorful displays hawking sweetness and ballplayers.

                It doesn’t appear to be a clean perforation

                as if retail sabotage had taken place, 

                nor is there excessive gnawing evidence

                as in rodent mischief,

                but more like some sort of shelf damage

                although all the above are possibilities

                at "Chasidor Leo's Market" across the street

                from the backstop in the early 50's.

                giving it the once-over, the rest of the box looks okay.

                the flat orange color is pleasing to the eye.

                nice illustration, sanctioned by Stan Musial swingin’ away

                regardless of factual inconsistencies.

               (how I love the left-handers)

                looks like good contact. nice form, too.

                don’t get to see much of Stan "The Man" Musial.

                National League. Saint Louis Cardinals. I’m not going back.

                a small strip of scotch tape will do the trick and then

                it's a bike ride to the city Dump on Pine Street with Ernie Carrocelli

                in search of frame-rail reflectors and other essential enhancements.

                            

-true confessions as told by me to Dr. Psycho-

1.
she was sensitive to my needs, good looking,

and slow-danced with the best of them.

wonderful body parts. wonderful.

––one starry night she went out with girlfriends

(who knows where)

and later they stopped at “George Dogs" on Pleasant Street

where she nabbed two with the works to travel

before finding me standing alone on the corner (only I know why)

and pulling to the curb at just below eye-level, the passenger-side

door swung open.

she swiveled out from the always preferred

"shotgun" position, and as the swishing of her material

brushed across my adolescent sensibilities, her girlfriend

from the backseat swept-in behind her taking the shotgun position

left open in the indefinable precision of young women in motion.

2.
"It only took a few seconds, Doc.

I don’t know what the fuck happened.

I was just standing there and this Chevy coupe pulled-up and..well,

the passenger door swung open, see? and then there was this... 
this... swishing sound and a bright light ...."

(dedicated to those who can relate)

-of Michael Joseph a grade school classmate-

Michael Joseph,

the kid with two first names, who once

forced a younger kid to drink mercurochrome
from its glossy little bottle, telling him:
"it tastes like cherry Kool-Aid",

had a goldfish, languishing

in an old glass goblet, sitting on the mantle

over a fake fireplace in the parlor

of his parents house on the third floor
near the corner of Healy and Quarry.

standing on tiptoes to reach the outer rim,

he’d spit on the surface of the water

amused when the goldfish wiggled up

for a little taste of the stuff.

Michael Joseph was just about the sickest little prick

I’ve ever known and through decades of physical separation,

there hasn't been a moment when my opinion
of him was altered for the better.
–– why Michael crossed my mind on occasion
is better left explained by the big sky objects.
but it might be because somewhere,
assigned to the purgatory section of my brain,
I reasoned that a story of him might one day
be offered to the poem-reading public.
–– well, now he’s dead.

I read his obit in the local papers and was not surprised
at the sparseness of positive accounts in the column.

Michael never married, had no children, no siblings,

no aunts, uncles, not a cousin listed, no pallbearers,–– 

nobody to speak of or at least who’d admit to anything,

let alone show their faces.

christ, even "Sam the Bum" who fell down the library steps
in a drunken stupor had pallbearers.

–– they're telling me Michael worked in the "ironing corridors" of a sweltering

factory outlet store, deep in the bowels of the north-end of town.

––"Men’s dress shirts $2.00, Men’s single breasted suits $25.50".

I've acquiesced to what the thought of Michael Joseph

brings to the table of a poet's intrusiveness.
–– but on the brighter side, the goldfish who suffered daily

under Michael’s foamy islands of spittle, well, I hear tell it's swimming

in clear waters with others of its kind in the suburbs of paradise. 

                again with “The Last Night Of The Earth Poems”

               and I’m growing weary of Bukowski.

               don’t get me wrong. It's not him, it's me.

               I enjoy the reading.

               I respect his place in the canon.

               I shelled-out at least 100 bucks on his books

               and all this without concern for my safety.

               but with Charles, sometimes it’s as if

               he’s having a nice conversation with himself, and

               well,–– don't we all, but

               he won’t let me slip a word in edgewise

               and I enjoy slipping a word in edgewise.

               so I turn the page and he’s at the bar again

               and he ends up screwing all the best women there,

               but not every night, he's gotta eat.

               and he tells us about them which is his job

               and he's very good at it.

               listen closely. these are love poems and they're sublime.

               that said, some run-out on him in the dead of night

               carrying hands-full of his stuff.

               others cling too much and are repatriated

               to the barstools from whence they came.

               I'm not finding fault.

               who in hell knows how long I'd last?

               but he’s pulled from the shelf with the best of them

               and a damn good shelf it is.

               all the best people, and

               a nice array of multi-colored spines to

               titillate the neighbors when they drop by.

               Charles spins a fine tale, –– thorny,

               like the stems of roses before you get to the roses,

               but the roses are there if you take the time to shed

               a little blood along the way, and he’s certainly a good storyteller.

               he makes it look easy, but it’s not, really.

               here, this morning is much like the nine mornings before it,

               counting seven to eight crows frocked in feather-black.

               a field of bluegrass green –– fresh blooms

               in cadmium yellow dandies nodding in the wind,

               a full-throated tree line when the sparrows are active,

               a pleasant view of the river when the fog lightens and lifts.

               everything seems to be in the right place at the right time,

               and it's clearly all the right stuff,–– but I'm recalling

               what Bukowski whispered to my ear that morning long, long ago:

                           ".. but as God said,

                               crossing his legs,

                               I see where I have made plenty of poets

                               but not so very much

                               poetry."

                lesson learned.

               (quotation from: "to the whore who took my poems"

               from the volume: "Burning In Water Drowning In Flame")

               

-How the cosmos came to be-

Something was missing from within the nothingness.

Carbon?

Older.

Hydrogen?

No. Older

As when the lonely gods

Opened their eyes for the first time

And chemical elements stiffened their backs.

This began to make sense.

Metal of sky is not made-up.

Water of sky is not handmade.

But–– whatever there was to be had, showed-up
Populating the nothingness.
This, too, began to make sense.

Then, the objects dwelling inside the burning space
With a chance at living beyond themselves,
Drifted from the nothing else with no returning.

The gods, noticing this, began to dance on their feet for the first time

And spinning their skirts, unwittingly began fill the sails of the stars.



Inspired by Kenneth Patchen's "How God Was Made"