then what?  

the old gentleman is seen carting his goods to the inside

walking backward up the ramp to the lobby believing

it's easier to pull a cart than to push it. 

in November they lamented from the kitchen:

"this could be his last Thanksgiving".

but vital sign test results are in so the endurance required

in carting his goods to the elevator appears doable.

this is the landscape;  the cement-columned nine

story building with its fifth floor balcony overlooking

the river to the north.

there's no ready access westward. that would take a voyage.

but to the right and southward lies Antarctica, an iced continent

which he's been told holds the key to biological rejuvenation.

––all he needs now is the time necessary to venture that far

down the river.                                                                                 

 

                   from the death notes / No. 3

                   the catalyst for this poem is from "Masquerade",

                  masks by Saul Steinberg, photographed by Inge Morath

                

In short order my father’s skin color

(I can't come around to calling it a "complexion"

and even "color" seems a poor evaluation)

descended from a sub-value of grey, to the value of raw granite.

there’s a yellowing to the whites of his eyes, his brow,

a linear map running to somewhere in the distance, his mouth

constantly seeking water, his expression clueless, absent and fatal.

––my visits to his hospital bedside got to where I could distinguish

the differences between his groans of grief and his moans of pleasure.

––It was all in the tonal ranges;

the lower timbre pleasure, the higher timbre grief, the rare middle timbre

laying in the final performance of his lungs.

––I wondered during the last exhaling if the middle timbre was an indication

of him dreaming about the hilarious house party at the Gleason’s place

on East Sedalia Street in the summer of 1952, at which I was often told

by surviving participants, he was the life of.

   

                 

"clean gentleman / closing-in on the final stanza / used to be good-looking /

used to play ball / fine slow-dancer in his day / used to be good-looking;

good enough to say it twice.."

it’s being prepared by thinking ahead

like a post-it note reminding us to pickup bread, or the kids, or eggs.

there’s comfort there; almost as if the sticky little notes

have taken us half-way to the tasks we're reminded to accomplish

before we even leave the house.

it wasn’t that way at the dawn of man.

that’s a constant itch, right there.

preening was an invention by a forward-thinking

Homo Habilis whose christian name escapes me at the moment.

but the automobile was invented by the properly named

Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot of France, although

many might say it was Leonardo, or in the case of

orange-crate designs of the 1950s, some would proffer

the name of Ray Basinette,

who lived on Healy Street where he built

some serious orange-crate beauties in our time, but––

God broke Adam’s rib for kicks

which led It to other sexually deviant activities––

like the invention of Eve.

God had a boner for Eve.

that's clear, but who can blame him? certainly not me.

also, this poem is admittedly disjointed, but it's designed to be that way.

regardless, who has time to spend cobbling anything to some sort of coherence?

not me, that's for sure.

besides, the paperboy's delivery is on schedule for once,

and it's time to check the "personals" in the "classifieds" where

true love waits. 

 

 

                   -slipping into "bedlam and part way back"-

1.

ghosts of the confessionals, dead by suicide, are out to get me.

It’s nothing personal they say, but I'm told I should mind my own business.
It's true, I've slipped into poetry like a lubricated piston, without

a bloodletting commitment, and with sorely lacking academic credentials.

so tonight’s the night for a good dose of self-examination.

regardless, I’ll read another confessional along the way, followed by

a personal offering to serve as chaser.

2.

last night's piano playing by the Labéque sisters continues to roll

around in my head, (Francis Poulenc: "Concerto for Two Pianos")

and complicating matters, a local car dealer's boisterous nasality is running

on television like a mad cartoon.

but of the principles listed herein it's only "Ernie Boch"

who can put me behind the wheel with little or no money down. 

3.

the time is ripe for a pre-reading snack.

there's a sugary Xtra Mart across the street, but even under harsh

24 hour interior florescence it's been robbed at gunpoint three times

in the past six months,–– or at least I've imagined it could have been.

common sense tells me I shouldn't chance it.

It's with Anne Sexton tonight and we've come to an understanding; 

she'll allow me to approach the precipice of the abyss, but I gotta keep

my mouth shut about it.

"To Bedlam And Part Way Back" / Anne Sexton