the complete history of the off-the-cuff line, abandoned by its creator

the line was pure poetry.

the line was universal in the cosmic sense of the word.

the line was truth personified.

the line was spiritual.

when written to be visual, the line was

no more than six inches long with a script

face in concert to the line’s length.

but the line wasn't meant to be written.

it was never meant to be seen as a line.

it was never documented as such.

the line was spoken in a whisper

lingering between its creator and me.

it was never repeated,––

not through two parallel adult lifetimes, nor

an endlessly changing geography, or tempestuous seasons,

or marriages, combined kids, or upon the limitless

paper trails of obituaries of which me and the creator have

heretofore escaped with our lives. 

and I waited for the creator to repeat the line,

to indicate authorship, to admit his responsibility to it,––

the line which has followed me through countless shadows,

friendships, more than any man's share of uniquely fine women,

and as I recall, four to seven parakeets.

we sailed headstrong to weather, scaled

the mountain of years from both its slopes,

opposed the furor of jungle warfare, and resented

the lazy attitude of peace, just like any two sane men.

when spoken, the line could shut the politician's lousy mouth,

wither the priest's foul hand, enlighten the Pope at the first

thought of impending black smoke,–– 

and through it all, the line lingered in the shadows, voiceless,

yet ever-present, unrelenting, abandoned by its creator,–– the line,

wading through decades of nonexistence for the right poem-

writer to come along, from the northern light of the art school's

windows of 1963 "life-drawing" class to now,–– to breathe back

into its lungs its singular life:

“if there was a bus to Paris in the morning, I’d be on it.”

 

                  -an appreciation of the common windshield-

one looks into it

to locate the driver

and passengers, and

one looks out from it

to see just about everything else.

apart from persons and pets of recognition

we occasionally find people we don’t know

from the inside of windshields which have

much the same properties, but the eye’s

penetration finds the interior goings on

to be far different.

take the drive-in movie for instance.

peering into certain windshields

we find lovers groping one another.

we see arms and legs, moving in ways

where limits to the pliability of anatomy are tested,

drenched mouths, which in other situations

would require the use of immediate napkins,

and hands with fingers in slow-motion, traveling

through the ecstasy of otherworldly destinations, while

the giant-sized screen on the outside of the windshield

operates within the confines of its reflected space, where

beyond this constriction, we find the planets and stars, and

occasionally on the inside of the windshield at the drive-in

we find the same.

 

                   -Hector, the dairy cows, and Bessie's victimization-

Hector’s a hired-hand

at a small dairy farm in Westport, Massachusetts.

he keeps the grounds well served

and the cows seem resigned to stay in place.

having said that, a few may wander off

on rare occasions and the cows which do,

exhibit no inclination to make a run for it

as their wanderings are casual and reasonable

with hardly a vocal utterance other than

what appear to be a few calls for unity.

on the other hand, Hector's dairy cows seem to be perpetually sorrowful,

forever in mourning, the Portuguese widows of the farmland, although

they've hatched no schemes to escape the doldrums of their station in life.

as for Hector, he ignores the occasional breaches along the fencing wire

convinced that his dairy cows are contented dairy cows.

....but early this morning, after an unusual milking session,

an underlying restlessness befell the cow-patch.

“Pssst,..Bessie. Listen-up. Look, you know all the gals really like you, right?

Ok. That's good. So.. you go over there, see? And when the guy sees you

he’ll go over there, too. And when he goes over there to rope you back in,

the rest of us can get the hell outta here... Ok?"

                   -A night's time in Boston-

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."

                   -Doomsday Tarantella-

the heavy, "streamlined" DeSoto

has three years to run its course,

J.F.K. is fast approaching his assassination

and at the right-field fence diamonds are trump.

I’m holding spades.

the chain-link at my back

is in bad shape,

but the outfield grass

is thick and street traffic is heavy.

the stinging perfume of incense

permeates the air from beyond

left field with the twenty-minute

performance of Saturday's Benediction.

there’s no reason to attend.

both parent and priest have given-up the fight

for our wayward souls, deflecting their prerogatives

toward our younger siblings.

I’m holding spades
in a diamond-strong field

and there’s little hope of staying in the game.

we're all smoking cigarettes.

our fathers smoke cigarettes

as if the one pulled from the pack

is the last one on Earth, but at this stage in life,

not enough of them have suffered on the cross

of the American Tobacco Company

for their sons to start considering the consequences.

street-side, the late afternoon

tenement windows are open, harmonizing the scents of bread,

tomato sauce, and hi-test leaded Esso gasoline,

and leaning my back against the right field fence,

a burning Marlboro is clenched by its filter's tip

between my teeth,–– whereby the skin of, I cling
to the game holding spades in a field of diamonds. 

"High, Low, Jack and Game" from the corner of 

Bedford and Stinziano, 1958 (?)

                  -sidebar personals coincidentally gleaned from Ben Martinez 4/23/2022-

Like Doo-Wop Blue Moon you saw

mullsen@..Stunning, Suc

ited 40s seeks als 30s-50s for a lov

photo in confidenc Seattle 39 SF

student/human w WLTM single, unpli

@..Bay Area Ear mind and sophist

gent, compassion for hilarity, cosine

love, actually. Ham Pair of unripe

punk femme & on liven these page

complete the hat spirited. wulfandcu

South Bay/San tractive, spirited (F) (P)

spinal or academic companion for a me

movies, concerts, meraviglla 1122@gm

Lithe, Lovely B man who wants pa

nyrb2018@..Pretty, Lovely S in her youthful, libra

for love, laughter, a confidence: phoebe

SF 65, lovely Cr ever would like to cus

like a warm bear, oc food with great joy.

                   -Easter. a quick look with the only known snapshot of the event- 

there are three Italian breads on the table

not including two stick breads, still warm

from Marzilli’s Bakery just off the third base line.

there’s red wine, spaghetti, ravioli

and a large antipasto platter, the stylings of cousin

Celia, younger than most of the gathered, but older than me.

she’s stylish, more contemporary,

has great legs and a warm attitude, with a hot,

but gracious bloodline of Italian and Spanish.

Celia died decades later in a dream when the

Volkswagen we were in, me and cousin Celia,

young again for her appearance in the Beetle dream,

sank to the bottom of a raging river. I survived.

there are dozens of squares of fresh pizza

sprinkled with oregano laid out from Marcucci’s Bakery,

beyond the right field fence and the billboards.

there’s a parakeet working the table, living the life

most parakeets can only dream of. Mary is her name.

her cage has an open door policy and she went missing

the following September when she landed in the gully

of the visiting egg man’s sweaty fedora and once on the outside,

flew like a normal-minded bird across the backyard, and over

the fence of Rachlin’s rusted junkyard, never to be seen again,

and there’s a cat wandering the floor, with the recurring distinction

of being the latest replacement.

this is the house and its company.

I could be nine, or 10. maybe eight years old, and

I can barely be heard above the crazy din of holiday chatter:

“hey! when’s Halloween?”

Bedford Street / 1953 (?)

                   -the gathering-

I attended the reception; lingered at the fringes of invitees,

and eavesdropped on the conversations emanating from

the gathering of those lurking at the margins of acquaintance.

some expressed their opinions of the caterers' performance.

a 30-something man, holding a warming highball

scanned the room for love, bobbing his head as the pop trio 

played in mellow shades of compliance to the requisite list.

a young woman draped in backless black with stern observational

attentiveness was pointing out certain discrepancies, and I drank

what I previously had no intention of drinking.

I'd taken the care necessary to dress appropriately, but

changed-up the moment I arrived back home where

the work in progress had been laid upon the table.

I remembered to check the obituaries before I left the apartment,

and double-checked them when I returned, concluding

to my satisfaction that no one of note had died in the interim.

my attendance at the event was recalled with a healthy measure of regret,

as I began to re-defined the night, and with it,

the work in progress which was laid upon the table.

                 

will

my bones to undefined ash

my activity to permanent stasis

will

the shadows of my thoughts to wander freely

the enterprise of my life to prosper truly

will

my dreams to the structure of their beginnings

my stuff to the remnant veil of its star.

                   Marat’s tub?

where’s Marat’s tub?

this seems to be

a high-quality item

particularly desirable

to the French, but––

word has it, as looks go,

It's like an old clog,

but it’s a tub

fashioned from copper.

It looks heavy

even when emptied

of its medicinal waters,

but even so, it appears

to be transportable

with just a little more

than a little effort.

breaking news:

I think I know where it is.

I think I've found Marat's tub!

could be.

there are other claims, but

It’s probably part of the permanent collection

of the “Musée Grévin”–– a wax museum.

10 Bd Montmartre, 75009, Paris, France.

but it’ll cost you over

twenty bucks (that's American) to see it.

also, an appointment is necessary, so it's best to phone ahead.

next up: where's Charlotte’s tumbril?

 

I'll open her up to read her in due time

Here’s Anna Mendelssohn’s:“I’m Working Here”

made available to me by the busy folks at Amazon

for half-a-hundred bucks,–– so I bought it, and it arrived

USPS late yesterday afternoon, all 779 pages of it, intact.

There it sits on the plain of the annex to a larger table,

its unknown contents already heavier than my brain,–– 

and looking at it, its bulk and its requirements, I’m reminded

of R. Crumb's vision of Charles Bukowski one morning

as he sat at the edge of his bed, hunched-over, lacing his shoes

thinking: “Christ Almighty, Now What?”

                   the original influencer

it was 1954. her name was,–– well,

it doesn’t matter if I tell you now.

what I can tell you is, that although intrigued

she didn’t know much about baseball.

one morning she showed-up inside the park

after lingering on the sidewalk behind the backstop

carrying an old, weather-beaten 5-fingered job.

I asked: "where'd you get that glove?"

she could catch,–– well, half the time.

what she did was, she'd lay into the catch

as if trying to reach the ball in mid flight.

I said: “let the ball come to you.”

she couldn't throw very well, saddled

with a schoolgirl's typical right-handed cork-arm,

and she couldn’t hit for shit. missed by a mile.

try as she may. and try she did.

she worked on her mechanics, opened her stance

and choked-up a good five fingers from the knob.

two years my younger, Saint Michael School,

and I remember Gina Cipollini with warm affection;

by the way she committed herself to the catch and throw;

to the organic ways the game is played, to come to her rightful

standing in the universal language of baseball which is to call:

"play ball"!

  -A layman's introduction to the first and second readings-

“That’s Fortunata. Trimalchio’s wife!”

Thus begins “Satyricon,” a one act opera buffa, 

some say opera seria (?)

by Bruno Maderna. (4/1920-11/1973)

I've enjoyed, have been amused by, and sometimes loved the Italians.

With "Satyricon" all I need is an English libretto, or an encyclopedia,

or grater attentiveness during the music appreciation lectures.

With the Italians we find the bakers, the shoemakers, the angels

and saints, Virna Lisi, born there, died there, an overwhelming

number of Popes, 

––and Don Fanucci;

the drunks at Club Marconi, their wives,

and their daughters..hmm..their daughters.–– 

But you might despise them, or try to ignore them or kill them

because they were in cahoots with the metal-headed Nazis during

the second war-to-end-all-wars.

But today, the Italians have mended their wounds

having hung them upside down to bleed the bad blood out.

but they're losing the romance of their crazy hand gestures,

due to a failure of the youngsters to comply with the instructions,

surrendering themselves to the nimbleness of their collective thumbs.

Maderna uses, borrows, and generally lifts from everybody;

Mozart, Wagner, Sousa’s tuba, and there’s even a snippet

of "La Boheme" tucked in there. (beautiful music, that "La Boheme")

This is my second encounter with “Satyricon” and my first,

following along with commentary, and with the libretto in hand.

I’m not getting it yet.

I’m not getting God yet.

I don’t get why I’m shelling-out a hundred fifty bucks a month

for better television reception, and after over seven decades under

the canopy of a gazillion stars, I continue to shriek at the firmament:

"Jesus Christ ! Is That Supposed To Be A Bull ?!"

So, "not getting" Maderna's "Satyricon?"

Well,–– it don't bother me none.

There's more than one way to skin an opera buffa.