-travelogue -

this morning I'm considering U.S. route 6 from east to west;

east from gay, surfy Provincetown, Massachusetts, west to Bishop, California.

Bishop's also a small town and looks real pretty what with the mountains out back.

no particular reason for this Bishop, but I guess one's as good as another.

but first, we'll stop at the banks of the Taunton River at the foot of my home town.

refresher:

on our journey, the route 6 tentacle moves southward then turns westward

from the Cape across the Sagamore spanning the canal through Buzzard's Bay

eventually cutting a path between the house of my birth in Fall River,

("Quequechan" as the Wampanoag called it which translates to "Falling Water")

and the ballpark running parallel to the first base line.–– but first it cuts its way

through the Narrows between the fresh-water ponds of the great Watuppa nation,

into the exhaled lung of the Wampanoag where settling English land-grabbers,

––"Coat-men" they were called,––

made war against the indigenous Wampanoag people and their fierce

warrior princess, called "Weetamoo", the heart of the Pocassets, on the run for her life.

but the English hunted her down while Weetamoo clung to a raft on the river,

where the "Coat-men" found her and drowned her then fished her out

of the Taunton, and due to her rebellious––"how dare you"!–– attitude,

sliced-off her head, fetched wood for a pike and brought it to a point,

then set the pike fast into the dank river soil and there, pushed her head

from the neck of it into and through the point of the pike and pressed down hard––

hard down into the skull of Weetamoo, still drenched by the Taunton waters,

so the Wampanoag under her command would see what’s become

of their Sachem, heart of the Pocasset band of the Wampanoag Nation,

and her head stayed there for a long time, guarded by "Coat-men" sentries 

so that no Wampanoag could dare lay claim to her.

this happened in the mid-to-late 17th century at the banks of the Taunton,

a short, down-hill bike ride west from my earliest house.

now onward! west to Bishop!

travelogue

                  -Where can "Shorty" be?-

Elizabeth "Shorty" Fensterbau, who at 16, used me

as an early experimental barometer (with my acquiescence)

scooted from my father’s used ’53 Pontiac Chieftain, leaving the quick

scent of "Topaze" in her wake along with her underpants.

––I wasn’t confronted with the goods presented in evidence

until the next day when the oldman had his Pontiac washed

and vacuumed at

“Theo’s Shell Station” on the corner

of Bedford and Oak Grove Avenue.

A full-service provider.

I was barely a car driver at the time, and far less engaged

in the periodic rummaging of my sister’s dresser

searching for examples to the secret meaning of things.

 

What next?

––Maybe a romanticized recounting of a glassy-eyed Fensterbau

gazing into the firmament of the Pontiac’s fuzzy headliner.

––There’s more to be said of this poem's sweltering beginnings

of young romance on run. but––

building the stanzas within the larger, more substantive column

detailing with life’s monumental events isn’t as cut and dry as it might seem.

Again: isn’t as cut and dry as it might seem.

                                     -O-

––“The secret meaning of things” is nabbed from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s

volume of the same name.

––“Where can "Shorty" be”? is a paraphrase from Pablo Neruda’s

searing, unrequited love poem to“Guillermina” in the volume: “Extravagaria”.

––"What next?" is gathered from the title of Elliott Carter's brainy one act opera.

Notation:

I'm not ethically obliged to acknowledge "What next?"–– because it's a phrase

common enough without having to give credit to someone a lot smarter'n me

using it for the title of his opera,–– but as evidenced herein, I'll drop a name

anywhere, anytime, whenever and wherever I have the opportunity to do so.

                    an introduction without natural borders

1.

I came to this world a standard issue white man;

white,–– but not as the driven snow, or a fine Italian linen;

not blue-eyed and lily-white like the extant Polaroids of Jesus, but

a white man nonetheless.

no one can accuse me of being uppity. I'm not striving.

I’m born into this.

2.

tonight, reality showed-up at the door grinning like a lunatic.

I said: "whoa! slow down, reality!"

It spoke of the Sun.

It said: "you're in the deep-end to all of it, my boy."

I slammed the door in its face and went dizzily to bed.

3.

proposition of dreams:

If only for the sake of the outliers of consciousness,

should we not allow senselessness to occupy our dreams?

4.

a jibber-jabber fragment:

I've been accused of being a "chip-off-the-old-block."

as I grew into adulthood I took umbrage in order to defend

the property of my self,  but

reality, sneaking through the bedroom window whispered:

"William, isn't it true that the root drinks for the sake of its tree?"

"for chrissakes!" I screamed from beneath the sheets.

"who the hell can keep up?!"

which leads me directly to here.

 

 

                    ain’t got no time for nothin’

loading the page this morning

something’s on tilt right now.

what normally takes 1.3 by the time

now takes 1.7 by the time.

you check the space on your disc

your spyware

your malwear bites

you know what you got?

you got the cold sweats, my man

you got yourself

under your skin, my good fellow

you got no reason for 1.7

you got no rhyme for 1.7

you got ants in your pants

that girl from Bermuda

the rockin’ pneumonia

and the boogie-woogie flu

the suavé of Rico

the heebie & the jeebies

the shimmy shimmy ko ko bop

you got the sun in the mornin’

and the moon at night

but you ain’t got no time for nothin’!

 

                   -Sparks-

Drew Sparks drinks poems

like the Jack-

Daniels she downs at the bar

at "Mr. Flood's Party" on West Liberty.

She smokes poems like unfiltered cigarettes

employing the same facial expressions.

The poems aren’t mine;

they belong to e.e. Cummings.

Drew Sparks was born

in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

I was two at the time, living with family

in Fall River, some 60 miles to the south.

Cambridge is where e.e.’s father had a house

and once taught a few sleepy subjects at Harvard University

and I mention these things considering life's six degrees of separation.

But as young adults with different arrivals to the wild midwest,
me, with my drawings in tow which were better than my poems,

even though my drawings weren’t very good, ––and her,

with her weathered good looks, and passion for e.e.–– so,

I was fortunate that she considered me an object of interest.

Could be because I had a few bucks in my pockets, and

I’d buy her drinks when we crossed over to the "Del Rio"

during those wee hours of night when both of us had a free hand.

Sometimes we’d stumble

over to the "Flame" bar on West Washington

where slender young men kissed one another on purpose,

with open mouths over watered-

down highballs and chilled Chablis,

slow-dancing cheek-to-cheek

across the sticky linoleum which made

the rubber soles of their tennis-shoes snap.

It’s easy-going this morning in Fall River

with decades in time and many miles travelled between us

when Drew Sparks read from page 63, fitting it justly

into the blonde-

headed incandescence of the sweltering Flame:

“Jimmie’s got a goil

                                 goil

                                        goil,

                                                Jimmie

‘s got a goil and

she coitnly can shimmie...”

 Ann Arbor, 1969

Fall River, 2010