-early morning geology, or how I found a garden snake

and why that discovery had more to do with me than it did the snake-

It was easy enough to slide away

the pillow-sized rock

to see what, if anything was scurrying

across the concave, dark and dank

soil beneath it— that underworld

which belongs beneath rocks.

that's the purpose of rocks, regurgitated

from the icy mouth of the Laurentide sheet––

to lay there, and hide things, and shut-up about it, and outlive me.

this time, it's the little green garden snake,

more worm than snake who showed-up, bending it’s mild length,

too small to coil tightly, near timid––

and I wondered what it was doing under there;

a shelter perhaps. protection from predators, or waiting

for me to come by to push away the stone, to offer an option.

the little green garden snake appears to be uninformed,

but it knows something of its presence, prepped by a silent

instinct to make its house beneath the belly of the rock.

maybe this is what God sees as it looks down at me, curious

of the way I go about doing the things I do while it considers

my motives for its adjudication. who knows?

well––  little green garden snake, you have my attention.

...now what?

  

-Transfusion-

In the country, upstate near

Cooperstown and

The Baseball Hall of Fame

Where farms and would-

Be farms dot with dirts and grasses

Here and there

Along the wind of near-lost

Roads to apprehensive beginners

Where snow

Falls unquestioned in October

And shovels are pressed to

An early sense of duty 

Upstate

Where animals seem

To posses a curious sense of humor

Waiting until such time

As it becomes clear

That man might want to gather something simple

Like felled acorns

He intends to germinate.

But it’s the critters

Who carry them

From the earth at the trunks of the trees

Under Moonlight as man sleeps

Under Sunlight when

Man is busy within his own

Occupations,— inside where plants

Are transported and man is

Inattentive to acorns

That deep, that upstate, that remote

Dot of space

Where a man might stand

Against the dry

Tide of war for the acorn
This small

Tale is told.

-but to begin-

the glossy
pages of the volumes
are opened to their bookmarks
and the pages look up from the table.

the table is wide and long
and built of the darker, denser

woods.

It sits in the middle of the spacious

gallery of the Art School

where the atmosphere
is engaged and anticipating.

like any study-hall populated by students,

in time some will learn, some will

learn something, some will question
their attendance.

but to begin, this happened at the table:

standing, he neatly rolls
the cuffs of his sleeves to the forearm.
he’s not yet speaking.

but he clears his throat.
the volumes on the table
are ordered by relevance.

the leather band of his watch

is carefully detached from its clasp

and falls open at the wrist

with the gracefulness of quiet
residence. 

the watchband is flattened
and the face of the timepiece

looks up from the table.

but this is to begin.
he's not yet speaking.
but he clears his throat.

but he readies the volumes

and fingers the adam’s apple

of his neck as if anticipating
the words of his arrival.
he’s not yet speaking.
but to begin,
a forward thrust of the chin
and the faces look up from the table.

                          

-a reading in autumn-

I saw the first

leaf of the maple fall— (madness, 

starving hysterical naked,) and

Damn! It’s "Howl" again.

                       written 2012
                       

-be true to your school-

I assumed they knew what they were talking about

When they told me DiMaggio was a better hitter

Than Williams.

And maybe they knew something

When they told me Sofia Loren was better looking

Than Marilyn Monroe.  

I guessed they knew a thing or two

When they told me Marciano would’ve beaten Ali;

Told me it would’ve been Ali

In the early rounds, but Marciano, crouched, bleeding

And tenacious, would’ve found the moment.

Maybe Joltin’ Joe was a better hitter than Teddy Ballgame.

But I don’t think so.

I think you've got to be an old New York Italian

To believe such nonsense. 

Maybe Loren had the edge on Monroe.

I don’t know.

And maybe Marciano would’ve found the time

Like the old italians postulated as they gathered

At the spent holiday tables with their port and their beards

And their comparable expressions and experiences.

Old Pete Pieroni once said that the Italians were forced

To fight for the Axis by the brutally pompous Benito.

Not that old Pete was addressing the politics of war.

But more that he was grasping to excuse the Italians
Of their dismal battlefield performances.

But now that I'm older, I’m placing my bets on Sofia

And Ted and Rocky without factoring in

the Italians and their dismal battlefield performance.

   

-Voted "Most Humorous"-

Manuel Anselmo entertained
The student body of Hicksville High
For four long years

With a disposition to resort to excesses
When faced with a tepid response to a performance.

When audiences shanghaied from the corridors
Slipped from his grasp,
He forged ahead following them to the next class
Mimicking the inner-sole to inner-sole,
Slow-witted saunter of Milton Berle.

From out of nowhere, his elbow would jab

The vacant side of any available set of ribs 
As he cautioned the recipient to prepare for something;

Something he knew would surely fire-up the funny-bone. 

Let this serve as his eulogy,

Shuffle toward his casket in deliberate
Execution of the rite.

He died a young man.
His audience was young. 

Manuel Anselmo,

A plank of chalk,

Stripe-colored straws protruding from his nostrils,

A lampshade askew atop his stone-cold head,
His face, a grayer shade than living, the last
Powderpuff blotting the sheen before the closing ceremony.

-relative measurement-

all my young life

he did what he did.

she did what she did.

all my young life.

all my young life

I see them doing

I see them adjusting

driving up and wiping down

exchanging barbs

exchanging smiles

enhancing the daytime racket

enhancing the evening’s dynamic

all my young life.

all my young life

the music
is moved from room to room—

I hear her humming
in day-dress and apron
wiping the oilcloths
wiping her brow with the back of her hand.

I see him enter,
tie and fedora
trenchcoat and ledger
car keys and weariness
all my young life.

all my young life

at the pots of boiling water

where spaghetti
is broken with a powerful snap,—

pot after pot from the flaming stove
and the tub is filled;

once washed and the tub is drained
and filled again.
not all of my life,— but

all my young life.

not all of their lives,— but

all their young lives.

                            quequechan

-schoenberg’s romance-

Before he drove head-long into it

sticking his neck to the twelve-

tone row, 

Schoenberg turned a tonal phrase.

Schoenberg was young

when they lined the walls

waiting their chance to dance with him

and dance with him they would.

The spine of the cactus was later to pierce

the wall-flowers in their ears.

But earlier, Tovelille listened to all of it.

Schoenberg danced with Tove,

one on the one-way road;— one to the twelve-

tone row.

                          

-let’s hear it-

father

at the wheel

exhaled smoke

to the windshield

hits and veers

through the cracked windows

like ghosts on the run

or death's angels
to return another time

mother

as close to the bobbin

as eyes can get
conning the material through

at the tuck of the laundered
sheets

at the sink

at the oilcloths

in and out of the narrow
pantry
to the kitchen's great expanse

sole attendant to the strainer
decides when and where
to stack the plates resting therein

father
at the day's labor ended

sits at the bean-
bag ashtray's arm of the easiest chair
the exhaled smoke is rising now —

mother
at the day's labor ended

sits at the nucleus
of everything of the inside completed now.

-From Last Night's Read-

Checking the pillow’s
Smear of drool for the profile
It makes —

(Time was they all

Looked like Ho chi Minh,)

Early in the morning

With last night's sensations
Of being trapped
Under water or

Under sand— as increasing weather

Turned against the house
Throwing a wrench into

Tomorrow's planned preparations —

When the neighbor’s deep-

Throated basset-hound

Intrudes through the open
Summer windows,

Long after television,
Long after consciousness,

And after a couple of hours
Of late-
Night

Bukowski poems

Tucked beneath my sheets

I'm thinking it's best to temper
Complaining.
But christ, another

Night of that baritone-
Howling lunatic across the yard
Broke the last

Strand of reason and anyway,

When all I can do in the darkening
Is remember the last poem I read that night,-

I'm doomed to live inside it in the light of morning.

                                 

-during the term-

the wisecracker was too big for his britches

and the others of his kind with their seat-backs

tilted precariously against the far wall were no better.

cut of the same cloth.

chips off the same old block. nobody
against the wall lives up the Highlands.

a new pack of cigarettes was the price

of this morning’s admission

and a hot pack of Lucky's was moved
down the row hand over hand,

each nuisance of classroom decorum pulling a hard-

packed beauty to be tucked behind the ear. 

but the old one in front with the chalk in his hand

and clouds of chalk-dust drifting to the legs

of his corduroys to rest there all day,

and the next, is scribbling

over the blackboard as if they didn't exist.

he thinks he shits ice cream.

I was somewhere in the middle of the blonde-

colored desks, not of the back-rowers, more in-line

than out-of-line.

but to crack the code, to enter their narrow corridor

of rebellion, of differentness, of dumbness and denial

for even a minute or two became an obsession.

I’d be busy looking around to find the knees of the girls,

the sweetness in the studious sets of eyes lurking behind

the bird-winged glasses, the tops of their curious heads

as they wrote down the fragments leading to conclusions,

those eraser-tipped lips,— and over the mountains

the row of the doomed behind them snickered at the world.

Their girls were someplace else. outside,

they’d meet-up at the hoods of their cars.

The fastest cars in school. But

on my tepid way to meet my own kind

I glanced inside the old one’s empty classroom

and there he was,— chalking the blackboard, smothered,

suffocating,— nervous in the service of anticipating

the horror we'd make of his morning's occupation.

                                            

                                                      JMMJHS