-through the portal open to subscribers-

9/24/18

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 bike.

three tenements, four, or six tenements, we trudged up the stairs

plopping the papers down at the base of the doors.
Sunday deliveries were burdensome and sometimes
after the plopping, the inner folds spilled from the outer fold
holding the headlines, fanning-out across the entry, titillating
the non-subscribing third floor residents on their way down.
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 entries stink of tobacco, fatty italian cold-cuts, stinging tomato sauce..

each has its own pinch of stench; some with a little more of one stench,

others with a little more of whatever the other stench is.

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.