Dolce:

1.

From the middle latitudes, prevailing westerlies

settle into their destinations

 ––and on a heading northeast by east

approach the mouth of Mount Hope Bay

––and driving further northward lay their introductions

upon the red-cedar clapboard at the banks

of the Taunton River running southward

––and there from a window's perch the young

cat, black and glistening considers her acquisitions.

(In the distance, muted rolls of thunder serve

as prelude to rejuvenating rainfall.)

2.

An interlude of sorts finds the breakfast table set

with seedless rye toast, glaze of pineapple marmalade, and coffee;

"a highly intense dark roast with smoky undertones and dried

fruit notes" as the bag romances the bean will come to be.

epilog:

The short-haired black patters to her station

enlightening the pale indifference of linoleum

when a knock at the door intrudes upon the morning's suite,

and I respond without apprehension to the unexpected.

 

-Including Fragments of a Poem Revisited-

1.

So that’s it.

I’m pulling out all the stops,

adjusting the dashboard's choke for a jolt of lead ––

yanking the chain transporting the evacuated.

I’m stepping-out with a new
pair of shoes or at the least
Shinola glazing the toe-tips of the old pair of shoes.

I, too, can tell a story.

2.

So that’s clear.

In the meantime, the restless poets exposing their spines

on the shelf have been known to repeat themselves.

From Mexico comes Octavio Paz.

I’ll read him again tonight when the traffic is culled by the late

afternoon time-of-day or the work-a-day weary hand of God.

Tonight, Octavio Paz

will have the opportunity to repeat himself.

        "My hands

         open the curtains of your being"

I've read this line before.

3.

Something has fallen beyond the tree-line toward the river.

        "My hands

         invent another body for your body"

Octavio Paz has come to repeat himself.

But didn't I say I, too, can tell a story?

"Salutat"

"Salutat" is hung for viewing.

In the fight game

a salute to the crowd comes
after the gloves are pulled by attendants
from the prizefighter's fists.
Outside the ring, the featherweight

stands exhausted, saluting his acceptance
to the crowd's recognition.
The oil painting, towering

above its own dimensions

glistens under a bronzed patina

in aging lacquer as if soaked in its own sweat.

"Salutat" is hung for viewing

and it smells of blood and spit in here.

Thomas Eakins at the Crapo Gallery,
The Swain School of Design, New Bedford, Massachusetts. (1966)

                                           

-Regarding Marguerite's Ascension-

1.

With the measurement of time and distance considered,

If a star exploded last night I wouldn’t have known.

It's a rare, deep sleep with clinical aids in capsule form

Dissolved in the bloodstream with the measured accuracy

Expected of any prescribed pharmaceutical.

As for last night's celestial activism,

I wouldn’t have known.

It’s in the raucous company

Of Hector Berlioz this late afternoon

Acting out his visions of Heaven and Hell;

Of how through circumstance, he who loved descends

Into the abyss as she, the loved-one ascends to paradise. 

"La Damnation de Faust" is its calling;

A fitting requiem to a deep-sky object

Reaching its existence.

2.

It's a wide berth the skies grant unto us.
Inside, another Monday begins to slip beyond itself

With little time remaining to consider what to make of it.

“and now it’s all... This!”  / John Lennon

The first installation:

1.

Christ, it's late.

I’m looking into gimmicks for a leg-up ––
a jumpstart.

Better to be more like Picasso

having fun painting bullfights on dinner-plates

with Bardot breathing down his neck.

2.

Morning, and the guy from “Saladmaster”

who beats-up on regular pans shows-up unannounced at the door.

He tells me of his idea to incorporate

the "whack-a-pan" gimmick into the sales-pitch.

I kicked his ass out.

The second installation.

A revisionist's catechism:
1.
The slow-roving Rabbi ran fast into bad timing.
That's why they killed him.

Sure, the guy was largely maniacal and probably misunderstood, but
I'm listing "bad timing" as the immediate cause of the Nazarene's death.

You bring a guy back from the dead four days beyond the fact

in the middle of the desert among an audience of scorpions and lizards?

I submit for the prosecution's consideration the charge against the Galilean:

Bad timing!

2.

Finale:

Imagine waking-up in the morning on the outskirts of a muddled consciousness.
Now imagine yourself capable of bringing them back from the dead.

The Infinite Nature of the Untitled Poem

I was a bike rider and then

a lover of women and then

an observer of women.
I was reflected within the drop of my time

standing alongside the transported.

We gathered as early folksongs eased their way

across the square of a marketplace

where tables of fresh-baked breads were set.

We ripped bread from their loaves,

sampled various cheeses
and tasted the dry, local reds
poured from the necks of perennial black-
glass bottles.
I took on the shape of hydrogen.

I asked: "Am I dead"?

The physical properties were senseless.

I took on a particle's shape

passing through barriers like a slick neutrino,

or the sage, Mr. Natural.

I became the smallest of living creatures.

The comic protozoa bumped into me
with what might have been their heads

then veered toward other destinations, going about

the aquatics of their infinite routines,–– and then

through what might have been the passage of time
I settled into the vast sea of introductions, waiting

for whatever might drift my way.

                  -the hoppa'grassa'-

1.

To stalk grasshoppers, the small-game hunter

departs the first floor tenement

through the creaking screen door of the kitchen

moving toward the backyard then into the deep
meadow grass surrounding the vegetable garden;

his weapon of choice, an empty jar reserved for preserves

of one kind or another, twisted free of its once faultless lid

now punctured with air-holes delivered by a hammered

six-penny nail.

The small-game hunter

stalks his prey on the fertile ground

where hornworms pant for tomatoes
approaching with the stealth of a lioness

eyeing her prey on the great savanna.

He’s a patient hunter, but fast-at-hand
scooping the grasshopper into the jar,

closing the lid with a quick half-turn at its flights.

But one grasshopper is never enough

and only when the count has peaked,

will he screw the tin lid down and the hunt is done.

2.
From the strength of her kitchen window,
his young mother calls-out with authority.

It seems the small-game hunter

has left the screen door open and the flies are coming in.

Quequechan / 1952

                 -A pre-concert situation at the first Smoot-

I had plenty of time before the performance

of Sofia Gubaidulina's "Offertorium" –– 

so I drove northbound on Massachusetts Avenue

toward its bridge spanning the river, but stopped short of crossing it.

I wanted to park for awhile on the banks of the Charles

overlooking Cambridge where Harvard and M.I.T. are seated.

From my sightline, Harvard, sitting northwest along the river

was set too deeply into the landscape to be seen clearly,

but M.I.T., up-front and imposing seemed to be staring me down,

curious as to what business a working-class guy like myself

would have in the "Athens of America".

I argued that although I was born and raised

in the "Armpit of America" to the south,

I had as much a right to be in Boston as anyone.

After all, I just wanted to look,

not being interested in touching anything

or engaging in a futile attempt at confronting

the complexities of its crazy equations.

Later, I found the performance at Symphony Hall

to be first rate and although my earlier confrontation with M.I.T.

remained unresolved, I had my hands full with confronting

the complexities of Sofia Gubaidulina's "Offertorium."