-With García Lorca in Fall River-

Federico García Lorca

Writes of seeing the green

Frock-coated lizard, meditating.

(One drop of crocodile)

Then comes the green-

Coated outfield a quick step

From my earliest house.

(One drop of planet)

Northward,

Along the tree-lined avenue

The great stone Victorian sits

Jewel-coated.

(One drop of tenement)

In that direction the eye sees.

In this direction the eye drinks.

(Two drops of journey)

With García Lorca in Fall River.

                                    

-the mirror-

the mirror

hits the spot

for the young with a quick

last glance on the run —

it serves the aging

morning-groomers

prepping before the fall.

the mirror

confuses the senses

of cats

and last week

the parakeet

flew into it with a dull

sickening thud as if

it'd had enough.

children often seem

puzzled by the mirror as

they neither appear to like

what they see nor dislike

what they see

and the blankness

of expression is instructive

as it goes that way

with me sometimes,—
one morning

presenting the articles of surrender,

another morning and onward with a warm

faucet-water splash to my face.

-Poetry with spatial accompaniment-

1.

It wasn't meant to accompany the poem, but

from behind the writing table music was playing

through the slick machinery:

Morton Feldman's: "Two Intermissions For Solo Piano".

the poem (not this one, but the one in question)

seemed to expand its meter committing itself to

Feldman's elasticity as if the keys

(of my MacBook, not Aki Takahashi's piano)
were destined to, well, fill-in-the-blanks. but

as it turned out it wasn’t very good.

(the poem, not the Feldman) 

the Feldman was pretty good.

2.

I like the pacing and spacial mobility of Morton Feldman.

he allows the listener time to...

leave the table and walk to the snack bar at the fading

of one chord and return to the wheelhouse of the poem
with a burger and fries and refreshing ice-cold Coca-Cola
in time for the start of the next chord.

                                                                

behavioral suggestions during my reading at the "Sons of Italy Hall"

feel free to walk around, to eat and drink,

to excuse yourselves and quick-step toward the door.

feel free to stay for the long haul to the benefit or the detriment to posterity.

feel free to wear lapel pins indicating your sociological preferences.  

feel free to make yourselves available to ushers if bewildered by

certain passages or misguided imagery. 

feel free to come-about from the effects left in the flotsam 

of God and Flag as presented by officials beforehand.

feel free to gossip amongst yourselves if bored to death or tears.

feel free to be enlightened, or to scream bloody hell while calling for my head!

the above fluorescents will inhale to signal an end to it

and the ritual of gathering your belongings to begin.

finito.

                   

-what's to do in '72? / an exposé in pre-cellular time-

to begin, walk inside. 

choose a stool at the counter, and sit on it.

make the necessary physical adjustments.

within a minute say “Yes” to coffee.

pull the menu from the little nickel-plated rack where the paper

napkin dispenser also resides. pull a napkin from the heavy dispenser.

use two hands and even then it won't be easy.

(of course it will tear. don't worry, it's an institutional flaw now commonly

accepted as inevitable) open the menu.

choose your breakfast from among the 20 available entries.

tell the waitress who, like you, writes things down, then slip the riven,

acetate-covered menu back into its slot.

the coffee's delivered in a thick, utilitarian mug.
create its personality with the specialties of cream and sugar.
take the first sip cautiously, followed quickly by a more assertive second sip.

fidget with the spoon lying in repose upon the thin paper napkin;

"Geneviéve Odalisque" in stainless steel.
(this is how one considered things within the restless, empty latitudes

of pre-cellular space and time)

readjust yourself on the wobbling stool and feel free to take another sip.–– 

look around. there's nothing more to see. don't linger. relax. what seems

an eternity only seems that way.

avoid tapping your fingertips upon the counter, more likely than not in a

nonsensical beat.

consider those who might be trying to call.

consider them stagnating inside the twine of wires dipping gracefully

between their poles.

inside the diner the naked exposure of self is palpable.

swivel your stool, swivel your head, presume to a fault

who might be calling..

and with your plate of breakfast slipped in front of you, eat.

                                          

-at another diner-

––seating is at near capacity.

I'm lucky to find a stool at the counter that doesn't wobble.

It's a cranky diner but worth its salt.

this happened in New Bedford, Massachusetts

where 19th century whalers went down to the sea in ships,

where the great sperms were hunted for the surrender

of their necessary oils, and Inns, sitting low at the sides

of narrow, unpaved roads were called: “The Bucket of Blood”—

“A Stove Boat” and "The Widow's Watch”.

––today I’m at the “Shawmut" in the presence of men and women

eating hot food and drinking hot coffee as if they had little time to finish

before returning to their responsibilities.

waitress smiles warmly with my approach.

grill-man nods a sweltering greeting in the quick.

stern-fisher, whose yellow slicker is stained, still,
with the grime of last month's haul, silently minds

to his plate, same as is done within the walls of his house.

as with all diners, the menu's the size of a continent.

––I order up, and to the counter girl it's no surprise.

It's the meatloaf plate.

I contort my expression with the first sip of hot, strong coffee,

the last of the pot.

in time, a heavy, utilitarian plate is placed in front of me

within the constricting confines of my station.

there are strangers all around me, and yet I feel at one

with my brethren at the "Shawmut" today.–– truth is,

I wouldn’t have lasted thirty seconds at “The Bucket of Blood.”

-Poem-guy: diagnose thyself-

as time advances in its cavalier attitude

and the chart's architecture
is drawn from appliance to appliance,

but the poem-guy has decided to

drive to the Cape today, up Provincetown,

the chart's instructions are first, to open the refrigerator door,

poke around in there and then,

rummage through the fruit bowl, fingering
between the apples and bananas
sitting on the kitchen table and then,

as the chart prescribes, a quick navigation should be performed
under the sink where the cleaning poisons are placed
with their handy spritzing nozzles and lastly,

to complete the self-diagnostics, the poem-guy is advised to:

check the big hook on the wall near the front door
where the car keys are hung in anticipation of another morning

and if they're hanging there, where they're supposed to be,
the chart's prognosis will probably conclude
that it's okay for the poem-guy to drive to the Cape today.

-Louie. the tough guy-

Luigi Mezzotesta was small of stature,

smaller than any of the other boys

at the Hugo A. Dubuque School,
smaller than more than half the girls.

Louie was a punk.

Louie was the Rico Bandello of the hallways.

Louie was like a small, mad dog

who doesn't realize the fierce significance of the doberman

and goes yap yap yap yap yap yap yapping 

directly into the snout of the disbelieving pinscher.

the after-school fistfight with Manny Mederios,

(last row at the back wall) lasted all but four seconds.

one punch and Louie's nose was swelling, blue and bloody.

Louie just laid there, propped-up by his elbows in the middle

of the dry, yellow meadow behind the billboards
staring into the blood-red tincture of semiconsciousness
exhibiting the blank expression of the dazed wildebeest

clamped at the neck by the jaws of the lioness on the savanna, which 

was altogether a fitting end of the day for Luigi Mezzotessta. the tough guy.

1952? 1951?

-the instruments-

now there’s birdsong and piano playing.

the early morning sparrow has found a natural hole
formed in the bark of the great sugar maple
just outside the window, street-side behind my working space,

and she's woven her nest of twigs and brush in there.

the sparrow is diligent in attending to
relentlessly pleading nestlings, and

there’s Debussy’s "12 Etudes", rarer than sparrows

shimmering the atmosphere of the interior.

now come the sounds of nestlings
pleading for a taste of the succulent earthworm;

of Claude Debussy's "Etudes", released from under

Mitsuko Uchida's fingertips and me, in attendance

during a light, cooling rain in the midst of yet another

miraculous moment in time.

 Swansea / late April

-occupied rooms-

1.
In one room, Gregory Corso is talking about

the Memphis of greek mythology.

In another, I'm talking about Memphis,

Tennessee.

but,

both led to a couple of poems

and I think most poem-writers will tell you

that sometimes just a word overheard said in anger,

or an act of love or hatred, or something of discomfort,––
or of a place referred to by others

or a misplaced hand,

could travel beyond themselves,

as in a dream sequence, or the sting of a hangnail,

almost anything
could move toward the act of poem-writing.

2.
you see, I’ve never caught a fish

outside the marketplace, where

the fresh-dressed silver-glistened bodies 
are laid in state in rows by type over beds of ice.

nor have I been shot at with malice of forethought,

nor have I otherwise yet suffered,––

but

I know of others who’ve suffered,

some in my own house,

none of whom, as I recall have been shot at,

or have caught fishes outside the tense marketplace,
but –– they've spoken of places and things and so on and so forth and

well, with this convolution at an end, that said –– there's poetry all the time.

-saga of the lonely young woman-

1.

at the bar with the songbird,

the band’s jazzy frontgirl, personal healer

to the emotionally needy,–– overlooking

Narraganset Bay, the mouth to Rhode Island Sound,

overcast atmosphere, but bright nonetheless.

It's cool, for May 30th.

menus at the ready, the house

black angus burger for me,

Bahamian conch salad for her.

I’ll have a "Narraganset" Lager Beer.

(when in Rome..)

I ask for a pilsner glass.

she wants a "Bloody Mary" with "Ketel One".

our bartender’s pleasant without being outrageous.

there’s a young woman sitting alone at the far end of the bar.

she’s a red wine drinker.

she appears to be in some sort of distress.

her secret love is our bartender’s sidekick

chatting at his station.

she’s smiling and talkative in his presence.

he’s charming without being totally engaged and she seems

to sense this in his attitude when he walks away.

he addresses customers with a helpful: “can I get you another drink”?

he asks her the same question with the same inflection

and continues with his tending of others.

2.

the bartenders meet near the middle, near the equator,

for kindred repartee, closer to our end of the planet.

she’s on her second glass which is now, nearly empty.

she’s pathetic, lonely, forlorn and sweeps the last red

flow of wine to her lips and is done.

he rings-up the tab, placing it in a snazzy, leathery ledger

and she pays him with a scroll of its pen and leaves the bar.

he wipes her away with a brisk, damp cloth.

3.

we’ll talk about seagulls now, hovering out there for a morsel of bread,

a french fry spotted on the wing,–– a human offering of recognition.

                                                 

-the pantry-

the pantry made a more practical case for being

than the formal parlor, which was separated
from the crazy living room by a lintel arch.

one small window at the end of the pantry's
narrow interior was all that was needed.

the parlor was sterile in comparison,
cloaked in heavy plastic and closed-off 
to commoners by a proximity zone
as if an investigation was in progress.

the pantry had petrified
raspberry jam speckled on its walls.

It had the little aluminum strip running along the edge

of its counter like a belt holding the green formica in place.

it was in the pantry where the occasional mouse
would be found with its head caught in a trap

behind the little latched door under the counter

where the cleaning poisons were stored.

my young mother would lament: “poor little thing” as my father

lifted the tension of the fatal bar sprung at its neck,

pinch-gripping the animal by the end of its worm-of-a-tail,
tossing it into the backyard for the cat's afternoon performance

attended by me, the kid upstairs and usually a cousin or two.

   

                                                                      Quequechan

              

-topical, tactical, popsicle, bicycle-

of the earliest of friends:
the flavor of choice was cherry red.

(color of my Schwinn) ––

we'd suck the sweet syrup out from the convex turn,

the edge of its sides to a glitter of ice.

Inside the corner stores, the freezers, chest-high,
smoked with cold at the lift of their lids.
curbstones were best to split the beauties at their spines.

we're close to home at this stage of life;
the ballpark's active, the bakeries are warmly scented, the red-
bricked mill-stacks billow smoke above hard labor, the calm 
reflections of freshwater ponds and the Moon-geared
mechanics of saltwater tides, link to neighborhood, whose
poetry lay waiting for its evolution.

call me a weak interpreter of the virtuosity expected of such an endeavor
and I'll tell you that it's strong enough; that I came here, as they have,
documentation in hand, procured at the altar of a place on the hillside
at the banks of the river that you, too, are well aware of.


Quequechan / mid 20th century

-the  "Monday morning again"  blues-

from the archives:

keeping-up with accounts

of terrorist attacks

is as easy as refreshing the digital

pages of the New York Times;

one tap of the index finger and the "update" is in.

I'm well informed.

It’s reported at length, that

at the nightclub massacre in Istanbul, the count

has climbed to 39 dead from 17 only hours ago.

strange how the numbers roll from the press.

strange how they roll from the poet’s tongue.

who's in charge of this solemn arithmetic?

how’d he get that job?

"he knows somebody downtown".

It’s always been that way.

the cherry jobs go to the guys

who know somebody downtown.

my father missed several opportunities

to climb the ladder in the liquor salesman’s
success story, the tragic opus ending with
the new guy who knew somebody upstairs.

the guy who knows somebody downtown

knows somebody upstairs.

39 and counting in Istanbul.

I hear-tell back in Nam, they counted

whole bodies with each scattered body part
found in the bush.–– a lurking,

black pajama-clad (one size fits all) Viet Cong,

(conical rice-hat-head-shade) tripped a claymore,

each body fragment found determined to be

a whole person, the arithmetic's summation scribbled

on the pages of Southeast Asia’s daily ledger.

"thirty-five kills".

(could be the scattered parts of one Viet Cong)

still,–– "thirty-five kills".

who was it got that counting job back in Nam?
who is it counting the dead in Istanbul?

                               

-origins in poetry for the less-than advanced reader-

1.

I'd learned early on

during my formal elementary education

that the planets (of which, glossy representations
were clothes-pinned above the blackboard
strung on a wire from the Sun, outward) were worthy
of a rare classroom attentiveness.

the planets held my interest by the gravity

of their mysterious individual behavior; that beyond the planets,

the universe was big, even back then; that my standing between

the Narrows of the Watuppa, and the ocean-seeking Taunton,

wasn't the center of everything;

that if I traveled beyond the southend of town by car or bike,

passing the "Dairy Queen" and "Ponta Delgada Drive-In,"

I wouldn’t fall from the Earth's edge into the abyss, with
who knows what

                          waiting

                                    down 

                                            there.

at about the same time as this early understanding of

the solar system's globular cluster, and the vastness beyond,
I began to notice that Norena Ferreira’s legs

were more fascinating than I had previously realized,
an observation belonging less to any discussion

of my formal elementary education, than to a discussion

of my informal elementary education.

2.

these recollections came to me after a reading of Schubert’s 8th in 2009.

-elements to occasionally entertain-

the blown piston-rod broke free of its exposed
souped-up engine and whizzed passed my german-
beezered head while standing with early friends along the shoulder

on the quarter-mile straightaway of Route 6 East late into night

after Sambo’s Diner closed its doors, giving way to the pungent
scent of burning rubber and spent, high octane leaded gasoline.

close to death for the first time at the shoulder of Route 6 East.

later, they said my childhood friend died of "natural causes"

in Miami, which is perfectly understandable

and another early friend, he died in a Fall River hospital of lung cancer
in a semi-private room next to a guy traveling down the same

unrelenting avenue bound for endlessness.

I sometimes think about that other guy laying there

with only a folding screen standing between him

and everything else there was and all which might have been.

(all are added to the expansion of things to do
within a limited time, compressing with increasing momentum)

and there are other things, too,––

like that very early tactile sensation of a small square of linoleum
lifting away from the kitchen’s floorboard near the sink.

you see, it snapped whenever I released the linoleum after stepping on it,
so I kept doing it,–– stepping, releasing, snapping, until they told me to stop.

"You'll make it worse!" they said, as though I was merely picking at a scab.