-each, in a place of our own time-

a musing over a far younger poet

so I write things down.

so do you, I see.

let’s sit at the table
as we gather our belongings.

the interiors are cluttered

with all sorts of stories, but

we can sort them out, you

gathering those which speak to your residence 

as I do the same for those which speak to mine.

after all, we've laid them down for a purpose.

the spines
of books you've read are seen shelved behind you
and you've absorbed the richness of them, it's clear.

your documents are formal and convincing, unlike my own.

even so, we both hold papers of recognition;
the completion of certain formalities.

the papers I hold are older, vintage, you might say.

a patina casts a veil of time over them and anyway, nowadays,
who would make the effort required to seek them out?–– but,

still, it makes a lot of sense for you and me

to sit at the table to write things down, each 

in a place of our own time,–– with all the goings on
drifting in through the open doorways fully-clothed,

then drifting out, as naked as yesterday.

coming to account after the acts 

in the beginning, the confessional list

was somewhat truthful, an examination

of errant deeds usually with equally wayward friends.

later, the list was a quick invention.

we were busy.

we had bikes to attend to

and the girls were changing their shapes.

later still, no list was necessary;

the same sins recited on a weekly loop.

the new testament refers to this as

regurgitations in the face of God.

Priest knew. Priest didn’t give a shit.

Priest was waiting for the juicy stuff;

confessing the act of self abuse in the still of the night

or the back row gropings with Saint Shirley of Locust Street

in the balcony of the Strand on Pleasant and 

lesser engagements like..

smoking cigarettes in the meadow behind the billboards,

or tempting the slow-witted Micheal Joseph, the kid

with two first names, into drinking mercurochrome because

one of us said it tasted like strawberries.

but in the end it was always the same admissions and dispositions:

two "our father's" and two "hail Mary's" and one "act of contrition". 

-It was a fast dream-

there’s a street beyond a granite ledge in another time.

It’s a very short street, very narrow, only two houses stand there,
nearly pressed side to side, shingled in dark wood, rough to the touch.

a meadow across the street sits unto itself,

stiff, sharp-edged, yellow as khaki, no brighter.

It has a name, this street, but the age of rust
and weather has worn it down.

It’s better this way, that the little connector

has no name to be investigated.

Inquiries would not serve it well.

Inquiries will muddle its circumstance.

an inquiry would only serve to soften

the edge of its mystery.

the street is paved in small-stone gravel.

why bother to steamroll tar over such a place.

what’s the need of asphalt to a street like this.

there's a romance drifting in of cats strolling around the interiors
and parakeets peeping and children at play. yes, children growing inside
as if within the warmth of another womb. but, no.

I don't see them.

no animals, no people, no rooftop antennae

to bring the outside world inside with a static reception.

a proof of nothingness: there aren't any clotheslines
running between the houses hooked window to window.
It all looks dry of life.

the innermost planet revolves like this.

I won't go back after the story's end.
there's nothing left to unpack.

there's no longer reason to report a finding.

abandoned houses on Way Street / Quequechan

Of possible mercury poisoning, syphilis,

and a drizzle of music appreciation

Let's consider Franz Schubert.

Admittedly, I'm not drawn to his music for a day-to-day experience,

but I find the circumstances surrounding his death intriguing.

It might have been mercury, medically prescribed in his time which did him in,

or the syphilis it was meant to cure, but couldn't.–– Who knows?

I'll tell you who knows. Nobody,–– that's who.

 

Now I’m thinking of writing my own "unfinished" poem.

It seems easy enough.

All's I gotta do is stop short; done before its time,

as unfinished as the B minor 8th.

I’d have to be smart about it; no clues left behind.

I wouldn’t want anyone to catch-on to the subterfuge.
But I don't want to leave them to random guessing, either.

Who knows which straws they'd be grasping to reach an opinion

on my great unfinished poem!

In the meantime,–– was it syphilis or the poison of mercury,

medically prescribed that did in poor, poor Schubert?

Let's see.–– My straw says.. mercury!

-he can’t breathe but I can’t sleep-

a George Floyd requiem

I know now

what I should've known all along

that a grown man’s knee pressed
hard

upon a grown man’s neck does
murder
to the man who has the neck––

that the guy who has the knee

has the weight of himself
transferred to the knee,
transported to the neck––

that the knee
has the weight of two grown men.

attached to the neck is the head which

cannot move.
there's a pavement pressed to the other
cheek.

head has a mouth; it whispers: mama...

there's a frothing at the lips.

street-scene's in the gutter,
the scene seen on television
running on a terrible
loop.

in the evening across the street

it's that late night yapper
again.

dog, tv,
neck, knee.

dog, tv,
neck, knee.
say his name.
his name is breathless man.

he can’t breathe but I can’t sleep.


5/25/20

-Charles Ives in Fall River-

when Charles Ives stopped by
early this morning

we talked over coffee and oven-
warmed cranberry muffins.

I asked him about that hint
of Beethoven's 5th

three quarters through his piano study No. 9

and with dabs of cranberry dotting his whiskers,

Charles Ives snickered, asking:
“why? didn’t you like it”?

Sure, I said. Sure I liked it.
I then asked him why he left the door open

which seemed to annoy him and he walked out
leaving a half-eaten muffin on the table and
again, leaving the door open behind him.

-how we come and go-

the lightbulb above my head blew-out last night

as I thumbed through pages of photos taken from

a long-in-print, but long out-of-print, monthly magazine.

there was barely a noticeable pop when it blew

with no downward glistening of sight and sound

such as we've witnessed with historically intriguing

slow-motion film experiments, and there was little time

to react to the sudden darkness, as light was snuffed

almost as fast as the speed of itself. 

(there’s a photograph of "Yippie" leader, Jerry Rubin

from the civil unrest of another time, taken by Richard Avedon,

who also photographed the Beatles, Dovima with the Elephants,

Twiggy, and a captivatingly forlorn Marylin Monroe.)

In the Avedon proof Jerry looks dry, disheveled,

he smokes reefer, but–– 

years later I saw him in passing; a more polished,

closed-form Jerry, dressed-up, neatly trimmed and chatty, walking

with undergraduates north on Oakwood in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

-lone wolf / this way to grapevine- 

I was told my maternal grandfather

was a young, apprentice shoe-maker in the old country;

Lucca, Italy, near the western coast of the Ligurian Sea.

this was told to me by my aunt Antoinette Toni, years after his death.
for reasons unknown to me now,
I assumed he was a potato farmer in the old country.

but he lived his adult life, (all of my childhood

from birth through grade school) the family patriarch, residing
in the great interior of the house which housed the lot of us.

and of course, occupying the exterior, too.

there, he cultivated grapes from a tangled overhead vine

built before he came to this place.

but it was he, who tended the vine, pressed its grapes
into a sweet, dark red wine from his cellar, eventually
funneling the port into long necked, black-glass bottles.

a dank, midnight grey hangs in the air down there.

old stone and mortar walls crumbling,–– still holding.

a giant plaster-cased furnace defunct as a coal burner,

the floor, a dense, black, moist earth.

next to the press, a great cask and next to the cask

a discarded kitchen stool which held a small drinking glass.

It will take another poem to describe this glass.well, to begin,

the glass was used daily to sample the wine from the cask;

a small amount for swishing and swallowing before the glass was

placed back upon the stool. It was never washed.

It will take another poem for a more detailed description.

Its title: “The Glass”

the grapevine also served as comfort shade

in the sweltering summer months where he, his wife, family

and friends socialized under its canopy; the resonance
of the Italian romance, the germanic

stringencies of English and the strains in broken English 

murmuring through the atmosphere.

the kids played in the yard, strolled through the craggy

vegetable garden catching hoppagrassers.

I remember a few metal

folding chairs, more straight-backs in wood

and an old, weathered picnic table which gave me splinters

with benches on each side, all of which were placed

across the cement foundation of the small pleasure-ground and
the scent of rainfall tapping the dense canopy of the leaves.

-poem on this day-

the regional Bishop is

calling for peace in our time.

he's sitting in a chair befitting his station.

behind him hangs a reproduction

of Mary in the Clouds with Putti.

so I'm looking around the four walls of my room:

an early drawing from my art school days.

an early drawing from a friend’s art school days.

a small mirror. an abandoned three
penny nail protruding from its space waiting for something.

a photo of my young father in bootcamp khakis.

my young mother in the park with her sisters.

there are two interior windows at the corner forming a right angle and

if I factor-in the outside,–– houses, trees, birds and overcast skies.

so that’s that.

now this:

I should look around more often.

I used to look around more often

                       when I was a younger man.

maybe
I take things for granted.

I should know better.

things change.
sometimes life moves backward.

there are marching protesters again.

there’s a killer virus out there. there's the long
blue line of cops forming in tight horizontal formation

the way the Redcoats did at Lexington and Concord.

a decomposing president holds a Bible as if he's holding
a block of dry ice, glimpsing the spine to make sure it is what he was told it is.

June 5, 2020.

-“I don’t care if it rains or freezes, long as I got

my plastic Jesus, ridin' on the dashboard of my car”-

It was a familiar tune; well, familiar to those well-tuned

to the dashboard radio stations of weary salesman favorites.

plastic Jesus was cream-colored, about 3 inches high,
could be 4 inches as it got older or as the road got longer.

It was manufactured in some exotic asian continent hideaway,

its eyes set toward the open road, its base taped down for safety,

its back to the road’s receding history as are most moving objects ––

like hairlines or gums.

we don’t see this thing around much anymore, but

I sort-of liked the little guy.
he got the family to Horseneck Beach, or Lincoln Park, or
the picnic grounds at the Narrows, with a lot of yelling along the way, sure,
but resulting in only a few minor injuries.

reminds me of the time when Priest, sitting in his Pontiac

with its motor running in front of the rectory, was hearing
Albert Fazarro's curbside confession, Priest's head nodding along
through Albert's recital, especially attentive during the "self-abuse" section
as if he liked hearing about it.

Priest had one of these plastic guys sticking up there for its navigational assistance,
but Priest's plastic Jesus was a 5 incher easy

and during Albert's confession, Priest's dashboard radio
was playing: "Get a Job" by the Silhouettes,

followed by Albert's marginally sincere "Act of Contrition."

-a cookout-

holiday.

people are stopping by.

casually dressed to blend.

it’s a backyard cookout.

the people are in mourning,

a proclamation for the fallen.
for the fallen.

for the dead in heavy fabric blue

and heavy fabric grey, posing for pictures,

yawning, bloated, ––  the hunkered

doughboys of the trenches. the whistle!

over the top, boys!
the crackle of terrible fire!

the doughboys hit, slide back down
along the walls of the trench

where mud is the resting-place to eternity.

(drier sand along the beachheads absorb more blood,

but the stains are washed with the tide.) 

the youngster's ask:
"hey, dad, what did you do in the war"?
they lift their shirts displaying scars long before
Lyndon showed us his.

(for purposes of clarification, Lyndon's scar
was the result of gallbladder surgery.)

"hey, hey, LBJ!
how many kids did you kill today?!"

"It's from a Nazi bayonet, my boy", the fathers say.

cookout !

disinfect those garden tomatoes

plucked from the path of the hungry hornworm!

there are heroes to honor.
damn the hornworms and pass the piccalilli !

("piccalilli" is chosen here because I need
a four syllable word with the accent on the third syllable
as in "ammunition.")

spread the word over there. over there !

("over there" is taken from the WW1 patriotic tune
to warn the German's that: "the Yanks are coming.")

spread the word over there there’s a cookout over here !

5/25/20