the old man and the wholly see

vignette

stretching with the morning's yawn 

my life unfolds before my eyes.

not the entire life one would expect.

there were missing cats and parakeets, notable deaths,

notable sleeping bag incidents, and

notable women worthy of remembrance.

not everything waits for the end of time.

not anymore.

months ago across the hall, two

empty-headed men

were loading a chest of drawers

onto a cart upside down.

all the drawers fell out and the items

in the drawers fell out, too, spilling their guts

of briefs and sox on the hard hallway floor.

I saw this through the all-mighty peep-hole.

but that experience, too, was missing

from my flash of life.

so when the time comes around and your life

unfolds before your eyes in the flash of a wholly see,

don’t expect to be satisfied.

                    the sweater

my favorite sweater

a perfect fit

smells good

after all these years

seems to look great to passersby.

the best time of year is Fall,

Autumn, when the maples

are changing but clinging

and I can wear my sweater

as the outermost garment.

I wore it once, only once

against my irritated bare skin.

I was too far from home

to change it for another.

when I returned home,

I pulled it off as if it was

an unwanted foreign substance,

as if it had betrayed me

and never thought the same way

again about the stupid sweater.

                    to the woman who disparaged my poem due to personality conflicts 

I said: look at this way.

you’ve been sacrificed on the altar of pure poetry.

the problem here is you wanted a pretty poem;

something like you'd find in the "special occasions"

rack at the pharmacy. 

you knew I wrote fractured poems, dumpster poems,

poems better suited for the large intestine rather than the heart.

you wanted a valentine heart. a make-believe heart. you wanted

a two-dimensional heart.

the poem’s heart is a slimy muscle beating blood beneath

the chest cavity feeding the veins and arteries of the body

as unapologetically naked as biology should be. 

that’s my kind of heart; a bloody sticky, gooey apparatus.

but that's me. you know,––  incurably romantic.

                   I went to the beach

rolled-up my old-timer chino pants

to just below the knees

kicked off my fat-strapped sandals

stuck my big toe in the saltwater

and a jellyfish bit me.

––well, stung me.

come to find out it was a non-toxic sting

and I came away with a little redness.

that night the jellyfish entered my dream

in the image of the horse-head of Woltz's satin sheets.

eventually, the dream faded without incident.

breakfast was uneventful.

for lunch I had lightly breaded fish sticks

nothing on the side but a little tartar sauce

and a tall, icy Schweppes ginger ale.

the jellyfish had a burger, medium, with fries

and a Coca-Cola.

  

 

                    vignette 

before death or weather

before hell or high water

before I discovered my left hand

well before a chicken foot

was spotted partially submerged

in simmering broth, pale yellow,

and horrifying, its tortured claw reaching...

in a time of dark ages before slow dancing,

or the introduction of Mr. Potato Head,–– 

before Mona Lisa and Virna Lisi made public

exhibitions of themselves, and before

routine civil-war amputations,–– there were,

well–– many other things.

but a poem has to stop somewhere within

its own devices.

(see "Zooks"! closing Robert Browning's "Fra Lippo Lippi")

                    the madman’s eyes of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

and there’s bling, too.

a golden chain holding a golden crucifix

set within a crucifix of gold,

the outer cross doubling down

to kiss the ass of God.

Fulton, a television star of the 1950s

wasn’t on the family's routine schedule, but

the comic genius, Ernie Kovacs was, and

baby-o-baby his wife Edie Adams was hot.

I mean red hot. genuine hot tamale hot. blazing hot.

but Fulton? christ! those madman’s eyes!

                   vignette

I may or may not know

the intricate workings of poetry

but I know how to work my own poems.

I know the image at the morning mirror

is a reflection of me, but the reflection

belongs to the mirror.

then this happened:

I recall my young sister in 1956

learning to drive in our father’s

heavy, 1953 Oldsmobile 88, its massive

steering wheel nearly the diameter

of God’s one good eye.

she navigated a right turn, hand-to-hand

from the bottom of the wheel,–– awkward

but it worked.

I know because I was sitting in the backseat.

as to what I know of my own poetry?

well,–– it’s from the backseat.

I know that.

                     William and his pea-shooter

in recital this is not what it seems.

in recital an explanation will kill

the momentum.

it’s a straw, better a plastic one

and some raw, unfrozen peas,

the articles of ordnance.

spitballs are disgusting but are

allowed as substitute ammunition.

no one dies in the exchange of fire.

the cemetery’s the best battlefields,

what with all the stones before brass

plaques with raised letters of the decedent’s

name, years living, ending in date of death,

often with touching quotations like:

beloved father, mother brother sister…

a warrior with his peashooter is

left standing, open to incoming fire.

these brass plaques were not intended

for pea-shooters, or making out with girls

on a silent night.

my tombstone will be upright, waist high,

and inscribed: “squatting behind this stone

is allowed for pea-shooters to take cover.

young lovers are welcome, too.

show some respect and do not urinate”!