-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 (?)