the consequence of being on the receiving end of a tragic poem

I created her from a rib acquired through self-extraction,

placing the creation into an environment

suitable to the economic station I set for her.

I jostled her into positions according to my preferences

and she followed those pathways at my direction.

I allowed her to be considerably younger than me, and

under my tutelage she spoke with an admirable

clarity of voice in matters concerning her existence.

and then––

and then she became sick.

gravely ill. I made her that way.

I smeared her lungs with demon cancer.

I reduced her weight, toned her flesh

a pall of grey, and watched the struggle

during her dying exhalations putting an end

to the beauty I once bequeathed to her, and I tell you

if God was a poet, it’d be me.

on this day in 1947 / birthday greetings, "Reynold’s Wrap"!

It's a cold, damp night.

a dampness which penetrates to the bone. 

a cold, lacking even the remotest romance of winter.

I’m on my way home from attending an event, 

and street parking is as packed as SPAM in a can.

my forced walk of three blocks south on Bedford

from the installation of officers at the Sons of Italy Hall is

less than comfortable–– when without notice an old-timer,

cloaked in every garment imaginable which never before

belonged to him approaches for a handout.

I’ve got three bucks in my pocket, not one of which

will go very far, what with the price of a half pound of sliced

prosciutto the way it is.

so I part with two bucks and continue on my way, content

that I’ve done my part for the good of the neighborhood.

“wait”! hastened the old-timer, grabbing my sleeve

with a strong, skinny hand : “remember, friend !

ain’t nobody paints distressed aluminum foil like Ben Martinez !"

confused, and more than slightly alarmed, I hurriedly reach

into my pocket to shell-out the remaining single, before quick-

timing home, content that I’d also done my bit to support the arts.

   

                  -inside the game / a baptism of sorts-

my first time at bat, away,–– in a real game

with uniforms, with people in the stands, with umpires, three of them,

and grass in the outfield, with two parishes face-to-face,––

( Espirito Santo Church

representing the fierce Portuguese

deeply set into the land east-by-south at the banks

of their length of the river, swift and dark,

as foreign as the Azores from which their fathers came,

where grapes were cultivated and potatoes

farmed with the stern expression of Jesus on their skins,

and Holy Rosary Church representing the Italian community

set at the banks of its length of the river, swift and dark, but lighter

as we were held to imagine, with a sense of isolated visitation )

I struck-out on three pitches; the first two

swung-on and missed, the third leaving me flat-footed

with the bat's barrel circling over my left shoulder

no more than the amputee of a distant tree,

and this ballplayer standing alone at the plate,

a plate as unknown to him as a simmering pig's foot, with hard-

learned lessons in the consequence of taking a pitch down-the-middle

as well as the understanding in the consequence of geography.

 

                   Oh, no. It’s Charlie Loan’s cadmium yellow Sun

A painter friend hung a large abstract impressionist

painting by Charlie Loan on his bedroom wall

at his parents house in the southend of town, well,

more like the center of town, I guess.

I saw it there a number times while visiting, bullshitting,

and smoking cigarettes.

Charlie might not have known what he was doing

when he painted the picture in art school back in ’66.

The landscape was composed of nondescript shapes

in bright primary reds and blues and greens lined-up

at the base of the painting.

Above the landscape hung the Sun, bigger than it’s usually seen

from our standing positions on the planet, huge in fact, heavy with

a cadmium yellow’s fiery intensity.

This morning, the New York Times is reporting that the “atomic”

pigment used in cadmium yellow oil paint degrades with age

to a bland, chalky blob.

The Times was generally referring to Joan Miró, with mentions

of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, and Munch’s “the Scream”–– in that

the cadmium yellows there were fading fast into the chalky distance.

Those giants of art couldn’t have known what the time-bomb buried deep

within the pigment would do as the luminescence marched on all around it.

and poor Charlie Loan!

-It’s good enough / A love poem to a baseball-

Columbus Park / the early years.

We can look it over

from now to doomsday

It'll still be good enough, or

we can all go home.

We're out here

long beyond our limits

and if we don't play,

it's not a happy ending.

I remember this baseball.

Pieroni fished it out from the sewer

across the street last week.

Tony Scelsi dried it out in his basement,

wrapped inside a nabbed blanket like a bunting.

Now it’s the one we have.

The streetlights are getting ready to inhale

to the color of amber.

The bat in my hand is the preferred ash 29.

“I like the light ones”.

Cinquini yells: “No Chips”! as if it was personal.

Gasperini yells: "Play Ball"!

And why not?

It’s beaten and scarred and smells like a sewer,

but it's the one we have, and it's good enough.
They're always good enough.

Quequechan / 1953

                   reconstructing the system, and the benefits of staying put.

the apartment building, the home planet,

holds its occupants by gravity and age, as common

and rare as any carbon and hydrogen based, rectangular-

wrapped, interior-minded structure is capable of being.

inside, remarkable items are strewn over larger items,

and others needed for unique room-to-room requirements,

make up the environment for the common good of its people.

the atmosphere is breathable, such as it is with nitrogen and oxygen.

on the outside, the planet, designated by the "Fall River Geophysical Society"

as 140-503-EL, everything seems well established by the passage of time.

high-standing leafy structures, and low-lying greeny counterparts,

as well as wide planks of water dot the outside's natural order.

some narrower strains in water move from one place to another, while

the largest bodies of water, salted by eons of big landlocked rocks,

are often turbulent, very deep in the middle, and humanly uninhabitable.

outside, beyond the local group, lay the dark mysteries of everything else,

like Somerset, and Wyoming.

in closing, there is no requirement against staying put, but as a cautionary note,

devil-may-care wayfarers venturing beyond the edge of the planet will fall

from the precipice into the realm of dragons and serpents. 

(“greeny” is the brainchild of William Carlos Williams

to describe the color of the asphodel flower.)

   

                     the fast bus

It’s faster than others.

it’s faster than a line drive

off the bat of Johny Santos.

it’s faster than a hooker

ducking through the doorway.

it’s the bus which goes from

one place to another place

on the expressway through time

contorting the expressions

of its passengers along the way.

age and mechanical difficulties

have slowed its pace these last

few years causing concern

over its longevity.

some have said the city

officials have arranged

for its disposition to old man Johnson’s

"museum of previous metals",

and everyone’s feeling low-down.

but there are no ands-ifs-or buts about it.

the time has come for the fast bus

to travel the slow ride through the big lonesome

where nothing moves.

                   that day at the entrance to Rube Goldberg’s general store

I happened upon a stranger coming out of the storefront 

which sells architectural drawings of otherworldly mechanical devices.

he held a rolled rendering of a nonsensical contraption which supersedes

a common endeavor in his arms, much the way young ladies walking home

from stitching cloth at the textile mills would hold the Italian breads, fresh

from Marzilli’s Bakery located across the street from the 3rd base line, which is

by bending the right forearm in a hard left maneuver, while tucking

the warm, fragrant pane from the hand’s palm, then nestling the always

individually bagged breads into the bend at the elbow, which in a real sense

was a practical application of warm pane in assisted motion from one place to another.

meanwhile, the stranger stopped to ask me if I had a match to light the cigarette

dangling from his mouth.

I told him I didn’t smoke, and with a grunt, he went on his way.

so did I, as a matter of fact.

later, I remembered thinking: if taking all the elements of this human event,

and translating each element of the situation in mechanical form, maybe 

Mr. Goldberg would have an interest in blueprinting the mechanics of such a machine.

a few days later while visiting the store, and presenting Mr. Goldberg with my idea,

he said it was well beyond his ability because it was already "far too complicated".

                   cut! cut! cut! / another in a series of bad mood poetry

damn the founding fathers

screw the dow jones industrial average

damn the cockeyed decisions of the council

made for "the common good"

screw the umpires and batters and the girls

who shagged foul balls in their prettiness

damn the rich and the poor and the working class.

––do you remember the downpour in the middle

of the 5th, when the game was in a rain delay,

and the live-on-air television camera focused-in

on a solitary young man sitting in the abandoned stands

as everybody else skedaddled for shelter, and as the camera

zoomed in on him, drenched as a fish, glistening in drab-

green polyester, said: “fuck you!” with its international,

affirmative middle-finger gesture?–– that guy, that fish of a man,

pissed-off at the world because the world had failed him again,

in that singular moment of decisiveness had his say, and I loved that guy!––

well,...screw him, too.

                   

                    -climbing high into the sun-

I climbed aboard the cramped, Cessna 150 fearing for my life, and cursing

my inability to tell the pilot: “I ain’t gettin into that death trap”.

the pilot was a flight instructor assigned to the Fall River Municipal Airport

and the knowledge of that didn’t factor into my hesitance.

so we went up, circling the one-strip airport in the extreme north-end

of town, but when he realized my fear he…purposely shut the engine down

laughing, while telling me how safe we were. "see? It's like a kite"!

after a moment, he cranked-up the engine and the prop began to sputter and spin.

in a few minutes he decided to demonstrate a “touch and go” maneuver,

after which we circled and touched down on active runway 22R.

less than a week later, this pilot crashed that same Cessna 150 into the woodland

of sleepy Freetown where he was pronounced quite dead, and the Cessna was toast,

but–– I was alive, nestled in the extreme southend of town a quarter mile

from the Rhode Island state line where "cherry-bomb" fireworks were legal, and

could be purchased without safety concerns by maniacal "cherry-bomb" enthusiasts.

In other words: "got nowhere to run to, got nowhere hide".

see: Martha and the Vandellas for quote verification.