dissecting the cruel vocabulary behind the poem: “the smiling girl”

the tree is the noun among others of less import.

the smiling girl is the predicate, when obliged to make a singular decision.

the space of air between the tree and the smiling girl is THE subject.

as to the hanging man; he's listed in the table of contents under: "obbligato".

   

                    bad news and other offerings 

I’m still among the living, but wait. it gets worse.

now they tell me the carpet inside my apartment

is not a hand-knotted Persian, and look.

there’s the guy who owes me money.

I should let it go. he looks like he’s in bad shape.

I'll count his teeth to see if I’d win. hey, who knows?

next it’ll be reported that Margaret Keane painted “Guernica”,

or the dreamy theory that the universe dwells in a drop of water

in someone else's universe was bullshit all along.

christ. where am I going?

beneath the wrap even Pharaoh's dust.

but I’ve been thinking: “grab bags” still piss me off.

you pay a dime for a stapled brown paper bag

at Bastino's Variety and find a nickel’s worth of candy in there?

christ. what did I expect?

my oldman’s electric bill to be paid in full?

the panoramic windshield to be around forever?

the zipper of my corduroy pants wouldn't be stuck

in the down position all day without my knowing?

christ. yeah. I should let it go.

   

                   the peephole

I’m not sure when or if it was reinvented to its present form,

or if the height of it has remained standard through human evolution,

or if the guy in 803 who is wheel-chair dependent has one at 5 feet high,

or if it's been installed incorrectly so the outside can look inside, but—

I seem to make use of the peephole more often now that I ever did.

a knock on the door across the hall, the elevator doors chime open,

or the custodian's pushing the massive floor polisher heaving

like crazy "fatso" Tony Corvelli doing the "slop" at the old CYO dancehall.

but it doesn't matter.

soon enough someone else'll be asking these same questions

from behind the same door contemplating the same peephole.

I’m living within society's earthbound definition of purgatory.

the peephole will continue to take leave of my senses,

and there's little doubt  that the peephole will outlive me.

but as Vito Corleone said to Amerigo Bonasera: "buonasera. buonasera".

             here lies a reasonable man

he had his reasons and kept to them.

when encountering something he deemed

to be unreasonable, he would leave it to its own devices

and move on to more reasonable things.

when the reasonable man wanted something,

he’d weigh the prose and cons to decide

what is reasonable or unreasonable, then

draw a conclusion between the two, leaning

toward the most reasonable.

but if the reasonable man needed something,

even though it might be deemed to be unreasonable,

he’d hop right to it because he would assume

it was the reasonable thing to do.

on July 12, in the year of his Lord, he reasoned

that a bus ride up the mountainside would be faster

than walking up the mountainside, unaware that

halfway to his destination the bus, for unknown reasons,

for whatever reason, for reasons unknown but to God,

would veer off the cliff sinking into the murky muck far below

ending the life of a reasonable man.

the worth of my time

the lawyer looking into my case

charged me up-front then calculated

the cost to me of his time spent on the job.

well, okay.

but 40 years later I got to thinking:

what’s the worth of my time?

how would I calculate the worth of my time?

who would I send the bill to?

nearly everyone I know is dead, or dying,

or have gravitated to asylums or distant lands.

but leaving that aside for now, what is

the worth of my time?

I don’t do much but write poems.

I work at making them sound good.

It’s not laborious, I don’t sweat through them, and

I’ve never felt that at the end of the day I could use a stiff drink.

but to do poems is time-consuming.

I could be doing something else, as you know.

maybe a drive through the countryside, looking

at cows and daydreaming of milkmaids.

or going to the Historical Society in town to see

crime-scene pics of the axe-hacked Bordens.

but after so many viewings, it becomes commonplace.

(you see a couple of axe-hacked bodies once and you’ve seen them all)

I suppose.

but what is the worth of my time for rotating out of bed?

Is my time worth more if the facilities run dry?

well, I suppose no one knows nor should they know.

after all. it's my time.

now,–– about those milkmaids…

  

-too many words-

I should ease-up on the word count.

I should put into practice what I already know,

that words are not numerical points

to compile in order to win the big game.

to begin with, with that kind of logic,

what reasonable poet would use too many words?

I should go easy on the words.

it's true. some expose themselves as redundant

although each has some historical merit.

I'll adjudicate them as I would

wayward company when they linger too long;

those who hang around waiting to be called to dinner,

the maniacs who drop by who drive me crazy,

who throw eyes like carnival knives

when you tell them to shut-up and go home

as if it was you who dropped by and not them.

so yes. I panic when there's too much company to manage.

as I see it, it should've been "too many people are living"

and not "too many people have died".

as I see it, an investigation should be held

into the logic behind the lyric.

but yeah. I should ease-up on the word count.

                    I'll send some selected books of poetry to my son in Los Angeles

I've chosen 27 favored selections in all.

Some consist of rather short poems; one page and done;

Poems that hit like a flash of wet zinc dropped into

A vessel of molten zinc. (Don't try it.)

Others are long poems, not epic poems necessarily, but

Poems long enough to take-up 4 or 5 pages.

(Robert Browning ends his epic poem: "Fra Lippo Lippy"

With the line: "Don't fear me! There's the grey beginning. Zooks"!)

11 pages for one poem! That's half a night right there.

I’ll advise my son that to read all 27 books in one night

Will be the same as not reading any.   Besides,

Nobody can, nor should read 27 books of poetry in one night.

Reading 27 singular poems will be too much to ask of a son in Los Angeles.

This poem alone for example will be excessive through a 12 hour sitting.

                   with tired blood 

looking back to where history dwells,

where pleasant dreams are inconceivable

and domesticated cats keep themselves company;

where everyone is condemned to an equal silence

circumventing their concerns of what actually is;

to where the ultimate decision has been made

and there’s no turning back leaving me to consider

the gathered who'll receive me un-clothed, un-shaven,

un-industrialized, and empty-handed?

what's that sound?–– Harpo!

what's this mist?

will I tumble to where another Hell is Hell

but by another name? –– or

should I gulp a few from the dusty old Geritol bottle,

reconsider the options and order in for Chinese?