vignette / the enlightenment of the meadow / 1950

I learned the mechanics of sex in the meadow on Healy Street

behind my house and adjacent to Rachlin's junkyard.

it was Michelle Sperling who whispered the secret to my ear.

she was older by about a year and whenever she came my way

it was met with a great deal of visual satisfaction.

in the meadow were two goats chained to an iron horseshoe stake,

the goats, feasting on the stiff meadow grass. 

knowing to what end would have only frightened me.

they belonged to a cranky upstairs neighbor of my aunt Pauline,

the first born of four sisters to Pietro Pieroni and Rose Giambastino.

in the meadow Michelle Sperling said:  "the man puts his thing inside

the lady’s thing where she pees.”

the usually hectic but fascinating supper table was, I must confess,

mostly weird-as-hell that night. 

Quequechan

                    from the Library of the Rejected

it’s not far away; just up the street somewhere

between Carmella's Italian sausage exhibition

and Alphonso's diner, where horrific cutlery

is displayed without concern for the safety of the kids.

it’s my responsibility to express myself or otherwise

keep my mouth shut.

literarily, I place myself in different circumstances

sometimes with people who are mostly incorrigible

due to their lawlessness and a lack of decency, who

roam the Earth like ghosts bemoaning their stations.

I breathe life into their lungs, dress them in guilt

and sometimes kill them depending upon personal interests.

for example: Manson disciple Leslie Van Houten quietly

departed my apartment during the early morning hours

due to my inability to form a positive opinion on the La Bianca twins.

so come on down to the Library of the Rejected and...

bring the little ones why doncha.

                   aging / a vignette

some crackpot on television

said: “it’s all in the mind”.

yesterday I was sitting

at the table and

I wanted a cold drink.

I pushed my chair back

to get a head start,

looked over to the fridge

and thought:

“is it worth the effort”?

so the crackpot’s got a point.

                    my god. what will my biographers say?

from a correspondence sent in haste.

It was nothing more than a scribbled notation;

an inclination from the borderlines.

It was uninspired, meritless and… let's see.

what else? ah, yes! dimwitted.

I don’t drink so-to-speak so I wasn’t drunk.

well, not so's you'd notice.

extreme daylight was beginning to piss me off

the way it does sometimes. well, all the time.

look. none of which is spoken here is to be seen

as an indictment of a criminal act.

but almost everyone I know is dead, or like me, soon to be.

so who's left to council in times of mediocrity?

well, that’s not fair. who am I to be granted immunity?

mea culpa. mea culpa. mea maxima culpa.

basta!–– my god. what will my biographers say?

well, nothing good I'll tell you that.