closing my survey of Priest Mezzatesta's reign

-when god looks like the guy on the ceiling-

1.
when I’m no longer engaged

either remembered

or not remembered

but dead nonetheless;

when recollections end,

when storytelling ends

and my early friends die as I die..

2.
Priest! MezzaTesta!— the chosen one
waits in the sacristy by way of the ballpark

(as was your preference) who, beforehand washed

the sweat of the game from its balls in your honor

for the honor of your company through the narrow

archway behind the purple curtain — looked like a form of,

some sort of..

heavy, felt-like material, hung where time-saving stores

in pre-blessed holy water was shelved,

(it's a natural thing) —  the sour scent of nicotine wafting

from under the yellow-stained fingernails and wait a minute!

I’ve got me a poem around here somewhere...


                                                       

-storm front-

last night I watched a dramatization

of the “Wannsee Conference” on television

as its participants discussed plans for the 

“Final Solution” then I went to bed.

in the morning, all the initial necessities of beginning

a common day were completed with, if not speed, accuracy.

I settled-in.

the winter months here are hard

and as a community, we've planned for snow
forecasted later today at upwards of two feet,
calling-in the fleet of fierce machinery.

afterward, the junior high school entrepreneurs

with scoop shovels perched on their shoulders,

treading snow in groups of three or five,
will mount their campaigns, calculating
each driveway’s earning potential.

when the time comes, I’ll negotiate.

as of now, the heavy overcast is deepening.

last night the “Wannsee Conference”
went-off without a hitch.

one hundred thousand here,

two hundred thousand there...

the S.S. Major suggested shooting them.
he is mocked by his superiors as a young
officer of the Third Reich with much to learn.

the S.S. Colonel argued for electrocution.
his experiments at the "Institute" on the infirm
and mentally defective showed "promising results."

they plotted the route of the trains to their destinations.

they considered the problems of

            cleaning the inevitable soiling

            inside the chambers.

            then they paused for lunch.

over schnitzel, the architect of the "Nuremberg Laws" said:
“Sterilization”.

he said: “We simply cut them off at this generation”.

the S.S. General interrupted:

"Six thousand is an equation easily solved".

he said: "Six million and the machinery
must be set in place". 

he said: “Just get them on the trains”.

the snow is beginning to fall heavily
and it looks like two feet, easy.
It's not a wind-blown snowfall.
It falls vertically and silently

like a requiem.
the driveway is long.
when the kids show up I’ll offer them
forty bucks, flat.

  

-Abracadabra-

The low-lying clouds brighten

And below them

The asphalt is warming.

The street begins to waken

To its common activities. 

The cherry blossom tree

In front of the brown house

Across the street has flowered.

It will be that way for a few days

Until the blossoms fall,

Covering everything beneath them

In pink petals as if participating in a function.

As of now, the blossoms

Have the morning

Running through them

And the population mans

Its early machinery, cranking-up

The engines of rejuvenation.

The heavy factories flex their sweltering

Muscles in the distance and the sky seems

To suck the smoke from their stacks. 

They’ll cool to postmortem-

Grey in early evening

But before that happens

The interiors will grow hotter.

There was a time when

Not much seemed recognizable. Then

Everything showed-up unexpectedly

Like a knock at the door of the wrong house.

Now there are things to attend to

And stories to define or confess, you know,

In case the people show-up

With time on their hands, and me with the universe

Up my sleeves.

I enjoy the recurring company

And the best part is they seldom

Make excuses as to why they leave.

They simply vanish to be found somewhere else.

Abracadabra.

Anyway, having been there, after reading one or two,
I'd rather not stick around too long, myself.

-Then in the end-

When I consider how heaven's been portrayed

Through the mouth of Priest, through the sweltering

catechisms of my early indoctrination, I wonder

how I’d fit-in if I made the cut.

––I'd question what the surface beneath my feet is composed of;

Could be the silt of Fog Land's freshwater bed as we dug-in

With our bare feet, me and Uncle Frank, twisting for clams.

––I'd search for the childhood friend

Who hung his spikes on the handlebars

Peddling fast across the infinite baselines.

––Maybe they'll say my old-man's a comic m.c.

At the Galaxy Lounge a few million light years to the west;

––That his hilarious intro, costumed in trench-coat and fedora,

A cigarette hanging from his mouth, the riven sales ledger pulled

From his pocket fanning his quick-blinking eyes, mimicking a young

Stripper's flirtatious routine, draws the crowd and headline's the nightly bill.

––Maybe they'll tell me the cruel display of pallid flesh on his deathbed

Is slowly transforming, and a brush of color is returning to his face.

Could be I'd be somewhere else.

Could be the old-man is, too.

Could be that in the end, I'll be reminded that

Neither of us had been a subscriber in good standing

to any of it.

-from the common encounters-

the nocturnal dream crawls into clarity

from its muddled space insisting on having a conversation.

I try retreating by humming a happy tune

while cupping my ears, but there it is like the roving

eyes of gaudy flea-market Jesus, following me

room-to-room on the hunt to secure my confession.

everything seems to be going the way of a waste of time, save

the fruit fly enjoying the sweetness of a quartered peach.

so I wait for the dream's inevitable evaporation when the great

occupations push their way through, inhaling rejuvenation into their lungs.

  

-The movie star-

When Myrna Loy

Sat upon the porch swing

Beneath a clear sky full of cosmic goings-on

Conversing tentatively with Cary Grant

In the old movie: “The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer,” 

Each syllable of every word

Dancing from her liquid mouth

Was pronounced with a delicacy

And fragrance which moved

The English language

Far from its Germanic stiffness

Into the fluid, romance of the French.

I'd like Myrna Loy to read my poems

To the Academy in Stockholm wearing
The dress she wore on the porch that night.

With her eyes wide-set across her face,

The observer travels slowly,

Eye to eye, planet to planet,

The journey pours from her mouth
Like a vintage wine, the slow
Grapes drawing the finish of earth's rich soil,

Its roots and minerals,–– with the dress

She wore on the porch that summer night,

draping her form like a sixth epidermis.

She warms the old men up with a glancing smile and then...

She reads.

                                   

-notation-

notating that the outside atmosphere

carries with it the same fragrances

which saturate the inside;

the scent of metal and water;

of warm bread peeled

from the baker's ovens, the significant

odor of leaded gasoline

and the broader, interior expansion

of sprat perfumes standing on dressers;

the calls of fire,–– the beaten

baseball, black and dank from rainfall

sitting on the sill in the drying sunlight;

needle strung cotton at the delicate

hands of thread mill stitchers, the aromas

of sweet tomato sauces draped across the cracked
and weeding tarmac of the playground, wafting

from window to window; the school-time chalk-

dust of the afternoon's fundamental arithmetic

coating our nostrils; and the still, morning fragrance

of June, even as the drowned, blanched and violet,

are fished from the water.

the night's gatherings in close quarters are face-to-face

at the supper tables, where a screen door away the narrow
entries linger as the links to everything coming and going,

street crossing to street crossing, each with its distinction,––

and if the destination has to begin someplace, it can begin here.

 Quequechan

-weaving between the living and the dead-

In the clearing under moonlessness

Andromeda spins as far as can be seen of light;

maybe it spins there still, far beyond the here-and-now

and from the banks of the river looking eastward,

the slow hill rises revealing a new incandescence

in the fabric of neighborhood of which almost nothing

is now recognized;

the strike of the Sun on the weathered

wood of my earliest house now slapped in vinyl;

past relations bobbing their heads into view
as if from the shallows of purgatory; the heavy,
endless line of automobiles warming-up

by the curbstones at sunrise in mid-December,––
all in natural order have run the course and still
the great romance isn't slowing its reach

and I like the light of the page in the morning.





                                       

-Substance-filled-

The fading LP cover

Has her standing defiantly elegant

In a gown of gold lamé.

His nickname, heavily indented

Into its upper-right corner in pencil

Attests to its ownership.

I imagine something of a heaven—

That my father is smoking a Chesterfield,
Inhaling its smoke without consequence,

That his kid brother, Armand, is no longer shaking
In a central nervous system of gelatin with intrusive Parkinson's,

And that my early friend, second baseman,
Is lacing his spikes on the stairs to his porch

Across the street from the third base line.

Maybe they visit one another on holidays

Drinking to each other's good fortune, making the young
Girls swoon the way they did in the neighborhood of the living.

My young father looked sharp in his basic-issue khakis.

Starched. Bloodless. Lucky,

The way a World-War was seen

Through the eyes of 1941 Minneapolis.
  

I’d like to think there’s a reason
To search for the meaning of things—

That we reach for the missing beauties—

That we bring to the table, elements
Notated from the commonness.

I imagine something of a heaven;

That Julie London, poured into an evening
Gown of gold lamé

Is singing the late supper show at the Galaxy Lounge—

That at the cocktail tables between sets

She's asking around

About a young G.I.'s situation.

-Requiem from behind curtain #2-

The curtain is drawn along its tracks.

The older nurse smiles my way sympathetically

Knowing my father is done-for.

She was trained in an era

When overt compassion had standing.

The young nurse went about her business

Like a sweet machine.
I watched them both from the entrance to his room.

The older one glanced at his occasional face

Tucking and rolling and brushing the sheets

With a gentle swipe of her palm.

The young one pulled, squeezed and jerked

The transparent tubes, bending over his narrow bed

As if she was adjusting a carburetor;

The bed without a wrinkle.

It's the young one I'll think about on the drive home.

In the morning her ass is beautifully defined

Beneath the drape of her starched-

White uniform and she sports a little

Blue pin above the breast at the collar

Which calls her to order.

It’s surprisingly active in the corridor

Justifying the sounds of its mechanics.

Nobody’s screaming inside the critical care units.
The comatose lay silently. 

Pistons continue to oxygenate.
Metals and plastics fill the space of clinging life.

The older nurse smiles sympathetically

As she leaves the fading bedside for the last time.

The young one’s already servicing the old

Gentleman pumping away in the room behind curtain #3.

                                              The Truesdale Hospital ICU,
                                              Fall River, Massachusetts

-the visiting american-

Today,

Japan’s Prime

Minister declared

the great and terrible

tsunami which leveled 

to splintered wood

too many homes

once made for living

too many cows

once raised for milking,

too many cows to be counted

removed or remembered

or the bobbing bald-

headed automobiles,

the drenched, craggy sweep 

of the northern landscape

once hunched and working

going about itself——

once fields of the meadow

once muscle at the pistons

of rice and machinery

of villages farmed and fished

negotiating reeds where once

upon a time its lovers clung 

on standing docks

at the branching bonsai 

shading the distance,

at the petals 

of blossoms,——  

now torn there to grieve 

the dead strewn among them,

under them, 

under the fragments left for the living,

dank as the atmosphere, to be:

“The worst disaster in the Country’s history

since World War Two.”——

and that’s where I come in.

I was barely visible,

just weaned from the curiosity 

of my own toes.

But later I remember through "News

On Parade" through the racket

of the Plaza Theater, the ornamentation

of the stately Empire Theater, where

the fierceness of the Japanese Empire

came to its end,— my Country 'tis of thee
the insurmountable

shock-wave blows Japan to smithereens

in the year of our lord.

now trembling 'neath the lights

the lifelessness in dark agony

Japan’s Prime

Minister is looking at Japan

all over again.

                                 3/12/11

-Norena up the stairs-

When the door opens

To the second floor landing

At the top of the wooden stairway

Attached to the side of her house,

Norena steps out with her mother in tow.

His bicycle with the broken kickstand

Lays on its side

On the asphalt of the sidewalk.

Norena's brown eyes are round

And warm as the Islands of the Azores.

Her mother has the eyes of a mechanism

Cutting across her face like a chiseled

Vein at the wall of raw granite.

On the pavement, the bicycle

Calls his name in the voice of his first love.

                                    Quequechan

-touch of life, touch of grace-

the morning after New Year’s Day

and I awakened to the same cat leaping upon the bed

approaching my head nudging my head with its head

as if to wake the dead like the elephants do.

It's the new year's realization that as of now

I’m still among the living.

but the minimum monthly payments aren't due

for another week, although they tell me

I owe more this month than I owed last month

so it seems the new year, same as last year, regardless

of the cat's insistence and the diligence of the elephants,

do not allow for a "grace" period.