-on this Friday morning-

to set-up his poem: "The Poet's Obligation,"

Neruda writes:

“To whoever is not listening to the sea

this Friday morning..”

so I stretched my skinny arm as far

as bone could allow to the air above my head,

waving the palm of my hand like a frantic schoolboy

who thought he knew the answer, straining from

the depth of my throat, all in seeking the great poet's

recognition.— well, it seemed that way.

so this Friday morning finds my head with its ear toward the sea,

my feet approaching the storm-fences holding fast in the last stand

against the wind, and from my hometown where ran an ocean of cloth,

recalling my baptism when the Chilean whispered something, asking:

“What is water like in the stars?

and I thought to myself:

who in this world would ask such a question? 

                                                       

-Tap dancer-

1.
The anticipation was nearly overpowering as a kid,
all of ten years, mesmerized by my Uncle Frank
laboring in front of the massive polishing lathe
behind the counter inside his cluttered cobbler shop.

When he shut it down, the whirring shaft of the lathe
slowed smoothly to a stop behind him.–– And then,

he finalized the task-at-hand by tacking metal "clickers"
to the outer edge of each new heel of my old Sunday shoes.

The quarter-moon-shaped clickers were strategically placed,

calculated by the wear-patterns of both the old discarded heels.

Frank was well aware of his culpability in acquiescing to my request,
but tacked the parentally outlawed clickers down, anyway.

2.
During that time and concurrently, it was by the patent-leather tap shoes
worn by my sister, three years my elder, that I first became aware
of the grater dynamic in the sounds of shoes clicking upon a hard surface;

her dancing feet on a fast-track through endless hours of deliberate study,

tapping over the kitchen’s worn linoleum after supper and into the wacky
situation comedies of early nighttime television, broadcast live into the parlors
of the neighborhood's hard-earned tranquility.

Hers, was the burgeoning of genius. 

3.
As for me, the clicking of my heels was no more than a cool,

short-lived sound repeating itself across the sidewalks of Bedford Street

or the narrow corridors of the Hugo A. Dubuque School, where

roaming these and other walking-distance locations
I might have made a name for myself as something of a local curiosity.

Quequechan

-René, Bernadette, and the Muscleman-

René Beauchemin is a wimp.

at the beach, the local muscleman

kicks sand in his face humiliating Bernadette

who romantically begins to consider the muscleman.

she’s squeezing the bicep of his right arm

even though the muscleman's left-handed.

René’s left-handed, too,
not that it matters in situations like this.

René was an ink-smudger in grade school.

(his left hand is sliding through the wetness of ink,
left to right on the cursive page of his letters.
old, and hard-hearted, Miss Sykes grades him as: "Failed"
in the category of: "Neatness")

at home, René is angered by his frailties

and kicks a wastepaper basket causing a trashy mess.

later, René works-out and builds muscle-mass.

he likes what he sees in the mirror.

back on the beach, René socks the muscleman

square on the jaw to win back the heart of Bernadette.

Bernadette squeals: “My Hero” and

excites René with a wet kiss to his mouth.

back home, Bernadette rewards René with the blowjob of his life.

-through the portal open to subscribers-

1.
––I'll lift the lid to expose the crazed eyesight of the world.

a column in the "New York Times" on-line reads:

“Pigs All the Way Down” by Michelle Goldberg.

I'll read Michelle over a bounty of blueberry muffins

and two cups of strong coffee.
I'll tune-in to 24 hour news on cable TV, too.
sometimes I prefer the madness to come at me on a loop.

2.

––history says: no one I knew ever tossed a rolled and tucked newspaper

over a white picket fence into the manicured front yard of a split-
level ranch from the saddle of a snazzy bike.

In my world we trudged up the stairs plopping the papers down

at the base of the doors.

Sunday deliveries were burdensome.
there are dogs barking behind the doors of the entries.

everybody’s shouting in there.
the television sets are tuned to amphitheater mode.
If "Little Richard" is pounding a piano, those of my kind are inside.

(the Mezzotesta clan seem to have a live chicken in the kitchen.)

the tenements were the incubators of our time.

3.

––meanwhile, Goldberg’s column is a good read as always

and the early blueberry muffins are sweetly moist and

the coffee's first rate.

as to the here and now, I don’t schedule my day

around calendar appointments, but
I know it's the way of the world nowadays, so I'll stay put.
the way I see it, it's the world's loss, not mine.

              -the "WOP"-

               1958

               and during a cold winter morning

               the "WOP" drives his old “Brown”

               tractor trailer from a loading dock in Fall River

               toward a destination set deeply

               into the State of New Hampshire.

               I ride-along on the run.

               he’s hauling semi-perishables for a Company

               originating somewhere in North Carolina.

               the old “Brown” diesel rattles

               and smokes through its single stack.
               the cab is cold and noisy

               and in time, its speed concerns me.

               Interlude:

               Priest said: "the right hand of God is placed there
               to traverse the four destinations of the sign-of-the-cross".

               (the "Holy Ghost" occupies two of the four destinations)

               "O Christopher,
               carry me safely across the fast-track
               of sheetmetal, semi-perishables and spent gasoline"!

               a windblown snow slashes
               across the windshield like a thousand sabers.

               the observant WOP

               tells me: “don’t be afraid”

               and cranks-down the gears of the heavy-

               laden Brown through a treacherous slope.

               there’s a "sleeper" behind us which stinks.

               we’ll stop along the way, but

               everything’s ordered to travel on the quick-step

               when hauling semi-perishables into New Hampshire.

               

               all night long the great Brown

               runs its cargo northward into the State
               where the "Old Man of the Mountain" reigns high
               above the craggy landscape,–– onward! north by northwest,

               well beyond the northernmost borderline of Massachusetts.  

               time is not on my side.

               

               over the fast lane of the run, the WOP
               leans-in and swings his left arm high
               above his head like a Whirling Dervish

               indicating to oncoming truckers
               that the southbound lane ahead is free of cops.
               this is the unwritten poetry of the trucker on the open road.

               I long for sleep, but I won’t crawl into
               the sleeper's bed.

               the WOP’s eyes are heavy-lidded.
               onward, the Brown! onward!
               damn this madness!

               close enough now to see

               the great White Mountains peek

               through a deepening twilight.

               we’ll sleep at a roadside motel,

               two beds and a pretty good TV set

               but only after the shuttering Brown

               backs into the narrow space of a loading dock
               at sunup on the third day somewhere in the granite-
               headed State of New Hampshire.

               'twas "Bay 13" as best I remember.

-knowing just enough about art to be unhappy-

where is the end of the line.

what if we pull back from its width.

what if we piss our pants in the struggle.

should we pull back anyway or say

fuck it.

is the line like the un-line of fickle Renoir

who couldn’t decide where the edge should be
of anything?

christ, how could he manipulate a sealed
tin of french sardines?

Ingres knew something about

what the line can do.

that left arm of Madame Destouches!

that’s a hell of an arm.

it goes on and on, elongated with greater
romance than Plastic Man’s arm!

Madame's left arm pulls your eye clockwise
through a slow-moving oblong to the sitting knee
and the oblong continues clockwise to the right arm
resting upon the backrest of a nicely upholstered sofa, but
with more abstract tension than a taut, hanging man’s rope.

it's enough to drive a non-practitioner crazy.

that said, I like looking at Ingres
and there are books on the shelf so I can turn the pages
to the pictures I want to see whenever I want to see them.

but that doesn’t mean I’ll be happy about it.