my son is reading “Howl”

with eyes framed in wings.

outside, people are walking across the sidewalks

specifically prepared for them to do so.

I know that countless stars

are hidden behind one of their kind.

I’m impatient.

I want the imagery to appear

before I start to mark the page.

this got me into trouble in New Bedford.

New Bedford an old salt

who went down to the sea in ships.

this to make oil

to make perfumes

to smear the nightly interiors

in a brushed-earth glaze

and to grease its industry.

all these things from blubber.

my heart breaks at the closing door.

my fear is being among the same sort of souls;

blanched-grey, all of the same mind and

suffering the same way without name tags.

they call this Heaven, once known as the back

bench-seats of limitless two-door sedans.

––my son has left Carl Solomon to his dust

and has moved to the Footnote.

 

                   

psalms.

I'm rich, some with less might say

and to some degree, warm-hearted.

maybe. it sounds distant. I don't know.

and not to nitpick daydreams, but

from time-to-time I've been known

to lift the head of God from the table

to the level of my eyes as if God's head

had eyes to see me.

my saints are ––

the liquor salesman on the road

and the inner-hatband stitcher

and my sister and my brother

and all my lost loves and loves lost.

if I bleed beneath the barber's

errant straight razor,

some might say I had it coming.

but when I die, the undertaker

will fold my arms, hopefully,

just the way I would have.

                  Manuel Alphonso writes:

Dear William.

What ever happened to

the “Woman in the Landscape”?

Well, Manny,–– she passed away.

She entered the scene and sat on the little stool

which I’d placed for her in the landscape.

I asked her if she would like some water

or a glass of vodka and she said: “No, thank you.”

She didn’t fuss with her clothing.

She didn’t ask questions.

She instinctively knew her mission.

I took out my fine point pen and a graphite stick

and began transferring her likeness to the page.

Eventually, I wrapped things up: “Well, I guess that’s it.”

She got up from the little stool, collected her twenty bucks

and vanished into the night like the angels do from our dreams.