love, follow me

love, follow me

to the end of the water.

let’s take away

the rarest of things

from our findings.

let’s look

for the unexpected

guessing

what might be sleeping

underneath which rock.

and let’s give the snake

the road.

the snake deserves the road.

it’s the snake's road.

its bite hurts a lot

but it’s the bite of love.

wait! don’t pull

the bee’s stinger out.

you’ll get an infection.

and when the day eases down,

and the sun begins to sink

all orange and cooler to the touch,

let’s pee-script our names

in the sand. but wait!

I’ll do it for both of us

because across the sand

at the end of the water

my penmanship is better.

                   –I want–    (bronze medalist at "the 5th floor poet's jamboree")

I want time enough for time to put an end to it

and another five years to reflect upon certain outcomes.

I want the silver dollar uncle Octavio flipped to me

before he fled to Lucca leaving us one Pieroni short of a dozen.

I want to share another vanilla coke with the otherwise incorrigible

Norena Ferreira, (two rows to my left and three desks down)

swiveling at my side at the soda fountain of the Oak Grove Pharmacy,

where half-a-mile north (Lemuel Street) goofy Chuck Meville’s

old man hung himself inside his vacant one car garage and where three weeks

wheeling forward (September 12, 1954) I’d crack-up my Schwinn "Hornet"

a real beauty, into the chain-linked fence of the Oak Grove Cemetery where

the remaining significance of Lizzie Borden decomposes quietly long after

being found not guilty (June 20, 1893) of the frantic charges filed against her

(patricide and matricide)–– but things as they are, the Pieroni clan sans Octavio

marched on without skipping a beat. as for Lizzie, I think she did it.

Quequechan 

  

                   Requiem for "Bunny" Giambastino

In the beginning I was cool to Michael Earl Craig

but warmed-up quickly, and when I reached page 49,

high-tailing to page 58, I never turned back.

––it was only yesterday that Hank Casper

at the Esso station oiled and lubed my slow

rolling Oldsmobile and I hit out for the coast.

I wanted to engage the seals galumphing toward

the shore line at Herring Cove, as my copy

of Craig's “Thin Kimono” was laying on the backseat,

looking good, but not nearly as good as Giambastino,

hot from Jesus and Mary Academy, a proving ground

for Catholic schoolgirls searching for a truer meaning of life. 

––at the driver's benchseat I ate a creamy

peanut butter and seedless raspberry jam sandwich

pulled from a brown paper bag as the great white sharks

feasted on succulent harbor seal meat, and I wondered

with warm affection what it might be,

“Bunny” Giambastino was having for lunch.

 

                   the tool

I’ve invented a tool.

this tool adroitly fashioned from a common paperclip

is used to more easily extract USB flash devices

from the narrow port of my aging, often ailing MacBook.

now I can’t find it and it’s driving me crazy.

an invention such as this with one primary function

would not intentionally be placed very far from home. my pockets

are empty. closet hangings seem remote as to possibilities.

why would the car’s glove compartment have it, or

the drawer where the AAA batteries wait like the souls of purgatory?

this was the perfect tool, a tool with the singular purpose of its mother,

the wheel, or the confessional to a venial sinner’s propositions.

time, that most restless of creatures is not on my side, so it’s determined

that I build another tool, same as the one lost, without embellishments.

now is the time to head out to the workshop to crank-up

the heavy machinery and begin my labors to fashion a tool

made in the image of its itself.

                   “promise to obey”

at eight, I barely remember the wedding

of double-corona cigar smoking cousin Albert Pieroni

to Celia Esteban, the two-legged beauty from the east-

end of Providence, half Spanish on her father’s side,

the mother’s side, Italian.

she was born by the lick of fire.

between psalms, I remember fantasizing on what it would

be like to stick my head between her legs and fall asleep there.

this was one of the great daydreams of my life.

at the altar when she promised Albert to “obey” him, it made sense.

Tony “the pinhead” Scelsi, promised Albert the same thing

and wound-up in a dumpster behind the A&P. 

well, at least they thought it was Tony.

welcome the the family, cousin Celia.

 

                   the Tropic of Bedford

It must seem from afar to be a pleasant experience

growing-up in the Tropic of Bedford, and

to a large extent it is.

there’s little to no crime when standing amongst

such succulent vegetation, because who would dare?

rainfall is soothing and generally looked forward to

in the Tropic of Bedford, so much so that one can wear

revealing underpants and pose for the record without embarrassment,

and a sibling standing behind you grinning for no apparent reason

makes more sense in the Tropic of Bedford than it would,

say, on any crosstown bus in your own hidebound town.

otherwise, who would care to know what's going on?

––and there’s this:  upstairs friends are more likely

to appear from out of nowhere in the Tropic of Bedford,

such as in the case of crazy Ernie Carocelli. –– It’s magical out there.

and look. your hands may appear to be holding something

delicately resting in their palms, but it only appears that way.

this phenomenon would be seriously problematic in mid-

temperate environments, but in the Tropic of Bedford,

all is perceived to be the way it’s supposed to be.

here are the grapes for port wine from the tangle of their vines,

meadows abundant in earthy tomatoes and sweet-skinned fruits,

the dense rows of poplars and elms in the distance, and behind them

the junkyard running on its endless loop.

Quequechan

  

 

                   here’s how I see it

another poem of gloom, doom, and inevitability

brought to you by the guy who penned other poems along the same lines.

I’m on my death bed

inside the death chamber

with the stench of death

(which in my apartment

smells like an overdose of "Febreze"

Linen Fresh Odor Eliminator")

wafting into the nostrils

of those in attendance, with

old man death holding his time-

worn instrument at the ready 

sneering as a conqueror sneers,––

like Napoleon before his fall

at Waterville, or Water View Heights,

or whatever it was,––

or the sneering guy holding a Queen-

High Straight before a Jack-

High Flush hit the table

shitting on his puny Queen High Straight,

or the incomparable Maria Bento Bienvenido

playing me for a sucker after I shelled-out

nearly six bucks at "Nick's Coney Island"

then drove her around town in a vain attempt

in my oldman’s lightly used 1955 Pontiac Chieftain for chrissakes !

and that’s how I see it.