the friend

he’s visiting.

he’s talking.

he’s sipping coffee.

(the best. Gëvalia dark roast)

he’s telling a story

of which I have no connection

but I’m listening.

he says he’s dying;

an internal issue which

can not be resolved.

suddenly his skin is anemic 

suddenly his voice

is granular and his eyes

blanch the streaming sunlight

darkening the room.

he’s pushed himself

a thousand miles into

a foreign distance,

this stranger before me.

I've never known him to be dying.

I ask if he wants

a second cup.

he says no.

I pour myself another

this time to the brim.

it has to last the balance

of a lifetime.

                   treetops

inside, music is playing during a cool,

drizzling morning in May.

overcast skies but the light is translucent

and from the 5th floor balcony in a moderate wind

the treetops are swaying.

they’re in full bloom, dense with

maple leaves (mostly) and it seems

they’re keeping time with the music

like ten thousand kinetic conductors

each with their own interpretations, and

the remarkable thing is, it doesn’t

seem to matter what form of music is playing.

the trees know Bach and Cage and

jazzy-fingered Petrucciani and cool-keyed Jamal

and they know the shave-and-a-haircut knock

across the hall at door 504 and the roar

of the back-thrusting tractor trailers on their fierce

approach and during the intervals, silence.

they know silence.

                   did Antonio Salieri really offer his chastity to the God for a little recognition?

who knows the answer to this question?

certainly not me.

but I’d bet he thought about it.

I'll tell you this: if I was in his shoes I'd do it.

I'd do it in a freakin' second.

in the meantime, my one act operetta

languishes in the ozone of the unknown

while hyper-sensitive Puccini gets another record contract.

so Mimi died ! sure I wept. I'm as human as the next guy.

but big freakin’ deal ! in my operetta everybody dies !

all the stars die and even the mop-pushing stagehand gets it in the end.

how tragic. how utterly human. how perfectly operatic !

but,–– I dunno.

It's a crowded field out there with every Tom Dick and Henrietta

jockeying for limited prime positions.

I should try a different approach.

but there's little room for: "live and let live" at the opera.

It’s just the way of it.

here’s how I see it

at my Uncle Octavio’s wake

with the stench of death and floral perfumes

wafting into the nostrils of those in attendance

with the Grim Reaper holding his rusty

previously used reaper sneering as a conqueror

like Napoleon before his fall at Waterville, or

Water View Heights, or whatever it was,–– or the guy

holding a queen-high straight in hearts before a jack-high flush

in spades hits the table diluting his pride, or the incomparable

Maria Bonasera as I drove her around town to all her places of interest,

playing me for a sucker, and in my oldman’s slightly used Pontiac

Chieftain for chrissakes! and that’s how I see it.

  

                   the march of time

darkness had set its face across

the outside of life so I guess I was sleeping.

but this much I know; I know I wasn't screaming.

I don’t scream in my sleep, not that I’d be aware of such a thing,

and besides, no one has made accusations.

anyway, I'm certain that’s something to be reported to the authorities.

alas! my bedroom door flew open, and it got hot under the covers.

I asked of the intruder: “who the hell are you”?!

ashen-faced he cried aloud about the suffering of humanity,

so I surmised it was an angel sent to me to report the skinny

on the goings on of the neighborhood.

nope. y’know who it was? It was Herbie Oglevee Morrison!

and man, I gotta tell ya,–– that’s a guy who knew

how to belt-out a story!

                    introducing the greatest love poem on this page with a running critical commentary

––in you I feel the miracle of a day’s beginning

(the poet reflects on an early morning experience in self abuse.)

 

––the birth of two worlds, one of grapes, one of cloth

(he's talking about the freakin' backyard at 1017 again!)

––in the scent of obsession; the fragrance of irresistible perfume

(he's drunk. that's it. he's fuckin' drunk!)

––and why did you call my name when I had no right to be there?

(he realizes that another guy with the same name is the target

of her affection and retreats to his apartment alone, and repentant.)

thus ends the introduction of greatest love poem on this page.

Last lunch with Leonard Dufresne

––Historically memorable are 8 with the works to travel

at “Moby's Coney Island" from the steamy troughs behind the counter,

4 for me and 4 for Dufresne, in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Art students in 1966. We knew how far our stomaches could run.

––Most recently is the first stop on his "farewell tour" which

found us at the “Cove Restaurant” in the city of our births set along

the running Taunton below the hill of Fall River, Massachusetts

in the shadows of sweltering textile mills, and the lingering 

echoes of Sarah and Andrew Borden when on August of 1829:

               “Lizzie Borden took an axe

               and gave her mother 40 whacks

               and when she saw what she had done

               she gave her father 41”.

––At the “Cove” I ordered fish and chips;–– haddock,

the sweet, flakey catch-of-the-day gathered

from the nets of the stern-fishers out of the "Whaling City".

Leonard ordered cherrystone clams followed by

oysters on the half-shell; slimy little delicacies 

which made Dufresne moan in the ecstasy of a man in love,

and the best way to say “goodbye" to a life-long friend is don’t,

and simply let the man eat.