a guide to riding home at twilight on the 24" Schwinn D-12


destination:

1.
twilight, and homeward.
junkyard south-by-east return.

point to Quarry Street horizon.

con the grips to hold-fast
against lateral drift toward the Flint
at Pleasant where "Carmella's Coney Island"
makes its living.

coast Healy downwind with pedals
aligned to the running wheels.

begin the starboard run
across the rusted hulks cloistered behind
the barbed-wire fence.

full to starboard.
steer from the weather-helm.

pump the break slowly.
the gate to the backyard's open.

It’s always open.–– destination.

kickstand if you have one that works.

2.
the interior:

the science of the interior tells us
the galaxy's center has a lingering
scent of raspberries and rum.

sure, the chemical menu
at the galactic hub is abundant
with scents of countless elements
recognizable to earthlings, but

for the ghosts of poets who long went before me,
helm's hard-over and I'm buying-in to rum and raspberries.


Quequechan

-random harvest-

the phone rang last night; It's Bach's "Tocatta and Fugue".

a girlfriend is calling.

she’s busy. she’s always busy.

lots of things on the fire; writing books to give people
a lift in need of one, jazzy front-girl in the manner of Peggy Lee,
on the move to strange-sounding places like Boca Raton and

Delray Beach where palm trees make their living.
then, on occasion, northward to where I sit, an old icicle

for poetry and haircuts.

she’s a whirlwind, that one.

even over the phone she gives me boner.

I liked the idea of the old land-line rotary telephones

during the time when standup comedian George Carlin quipped:

"when you dial, do you keep your finger
in the hole for the free ride back"?

there are no free rides anymore.
time was, "talking over the phone"
was a true sense of connection for the voice of man;

simply follow the wire.

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-the three-deckers ran to the clouds-

from the pavement the three-deckers

seemed to run to the clouds.

the four-deckers broke through

like inverted meteorites.

(meteorites are a better metaphor
than mountain-tops here because
there's a lot of action to the workings of meteorites)

still, that’s a tough climb.

Norene Ferreira

lived on the backend

of one of those.
four decks, two
apartments per deck.

that’a a small planet. 

It’s the stairway to heaven, boys

and I'm going up.

the ballgame’s over.

I'm one for four,

a dribbler in the gap
between

third and short.

I’m stranded at first.

now I’m climbing

the stairway to the stars,

a full nine years
of life under my belt.

no answer after three knocks.

a pause, then four more knocks
and still no answer.
I tell you, men, Norene Ferreira's
worth a minimum of seven knocks.

the long climb down
and I leave behind 

a column in knock arithmetic
lingering at the door without its sum.

it's a step to the corner

of Bedford and Johnston,

that’s one block from the ballpark

where the game was lost
and my house, a three-decker siting across the street.

submitted for consideration
on this day, Thursday,
August 15, 2019 to the canon
of countless unrequited love poems.

-the accordion lesson-

––it was held on a Saturday morning in a vacant,

oversized room in an old, redbrick building on Second Street.

I’m there with cousin Paul, three years my elder and against my will.

cousin Paul was in the early developmental stage of knuckleball techniques,

and I was beginning to notice something was going on with the girls;

something intriguing. 

metal folding chairs were meticulously placed in a circle such so

that even Leonardo might’ve assigned his name to it.

––seven mothers walked in with their kids in tow, each kid

struggling to carry his accordion at rest in its bulking case.

––the instructor, tall and lanky in his mid-twenties began the session

by impressing everyone with his rapid rendition of “Lady of Spain"

a tune I was familiar with and remembered singing as:
“Lady of Spain I adore you. Pull down your pants I’ll explore you..” 

––but ending his proof of qualification, the lanky specialist

pulled his accordion's intriguing bellows outward from the straps

making a sound only an accordion would dare to make.
the kids in the circle followed along in this learning procedure;

bellows out (shriek)  bellows in (shriek)  and so on.

––I sat quietly against the wall with the smilingly proud mothers, then
closing the session at one hour to the second, the exhaled accordions
were packed-up inside their cases like chubby infant vampires assigned

to their caskets and everyone walked out without making another sound.

Quequechan

-what is it you want, poem-writer?-

early morning music leads to

sightings of intermittent bombings and shootings.

over there, the ergonomic chair
sits at the table without concern
over the recent goings-on and all-the-while
I grow old along the way.

my son won’t be old until he occupies
my space within his own frame of time, but

it's only the very old who dare not scrutinize
beyond their immediate circumstance.

as for me in the meantime, the walk
to somewhere is accomplished with minimal effort.

but only by taking my place at the table
will the distance to reconciliation be travelled,

to a crowded, often unhinged existence 

waiting for its daily resurrection, where
the done-for will be done-in all over again.