-aural amusements in recital-

reading the poems of others to myself

in a small room without reverberation,
the readings are imagined as readings in my voice,

the voice I recognize as my own;

the voice I hear when ordering take-out at the "China Royal"

(for that “personal touch”)

or when talking to my son on the phone
about matters of import twixt father and son.

he lives in Los Angeles by choice,
although I've absolved him from feelings of guilt

if I croak alone in an unseemly manner.
(more can be found of "LeCapri Motel" elsewhere in the canon)

this morning, while "listening" to one of my poems

in my own voice in my own head, the reading morphed
to the voice of a young Naomi Replansky, adding a streetwise,
Queens, N.Y. punctuation to an otherwise dreamy little poem
of true romance.

well, nearly true romance.

but along with her voice, an exaggerated image of Naomi
appeared to me, reciting from behind a lectern
with a Camel cigarette hanging from the far side of her mouth
drenched in a duck’s-ass.

this absurd sighting brought early neighborhood to mind;
images of Carmella Tacovelli, the tough-talking
mother to “Pappy” Tacovelli who, through the seasons
played the game battered and bruised from the crouch.

and there were other sightings.

I’ve experimented with other voices in recital, too.

like the John Wayne drawl, the charming
falsetto of Wally Cox, of Marilyn's breathlessness
and even the ill-tempered staccato of old Miss Sykes,

my 5th-grade correctional officer while doing hard time
at the great and terrible Hugo A. Dubuque School.
(and more can be found of this institution and others elsewhere in the canon)

I've enjoyed listening to all of them and often lingered,
but eventually gave-way to the familiarity of my own voice.
(once, just in time before falling from the edge like others of my kind)

the good news is
the annoyingly dour voice of God
hasn’t appeared to me in recital yet.
the bad news is
I hear the lectern rolling into place.

-not last night's sky,

but tonight's sky which is clear

and ripe for a wandering eye, the waxing

crescent contributing in its muted role.

I'll walk a short distance to "Nancy's Country Store"

open 'till 10, for a sugar-free, low-sodium drink

touting an "advanced electrolyte system" then a shortcut 

through the backyards on the return to the house, but I won't go inside.

––I'll wander around the landscape absorbed by the lushness

of late August's atmosphere, a lingering mid-evening scent

salted by the southerlies skimming the bay, 32 points of the compass,

stars all over the place, and I still can't make out the pictures.

––the stars are eating themselves to death,

devouring themselves in a fierceness barely understood

within the realm of our natural order of things.

neither man, woman, laughing hyena, king-shit, nor insect

can begin to fathom the ferociousness of stars.

the romance of the great open-air convertibles should remain

within the province of the Moon, as dead as it is.

there is no romance to be found in the stars up-close.

––tonight, cloaked beneath a glittering firmament 

which deepens its fatal attitude with increasing scrutiny,
it's determined to be too god-damned out here,

and the time for retreating into the house has come.
Swansea / August / 2018

                                           

-Notes from the 4th-

There’s a lot going on, what with the clinging

stench of searing meats from backyards

grilling in every direction and my awkward resistance

stemming from neighborly invitations when I take out the trash.

Nighttime, and the celebrations continue

across the river where fireworks ignite over the slow

rising nature of the city.

First, a beat is struck like the pizzicato

of a stressed bass chord, the canister

shot from its ordnance, then the silent expanse,

multi-colored, born in the flash of its hub.

From this side of the river, the largest displays appear to range

from the southend of town to the north-end of town, where

from my line-of-sight, rooftops draw upon the light

as the river draws its light reflectively, like a planet
formed in liquid water revolving an arm’s length from its Sun.

Soon enough the atmosphere fades to black,

save the population’s incandescence pinpricking the hillside.

In the end, a field of stars

above the eastern horizon continue

from the face of the deep, beyond the breach, where

the glint of embers are falling.


                                                        Swansea







   

-Say hello to Larry n' Cecil-

Together they're dysfunctional

As obsolete as a drawerful of engine cranks.

Or so we thought.
What's left of them was once the cold-blooded

Preserves of history, but not so fast.
Say hello to Larry n' Cecil

And allow us to introduce ourselves.
We're the ones who presumed you dead and buried.

We're the ones who thought we had it in the bag.
We're the hollow-eyed four-pointer rope-yanked

To the hood of your smelly Chevy pickup.

Enjoy the resurrection, boys, and yeehaw!

The party's on us.

Writ upon the Electoral College madness of 2016

  

-The death trinket-

I’ve noticed that the cat

when approaching something new

laid upon the rug will step forward with

a hesitant posture.

It seems as though this is true for just about all cats.

European kids will instinctively kick

any idle ball within a foot’s reach.

In my Country, the default mechanism is to throw it.

As for the domestic parakeet when

considering its cage, well, it seems

as though the inside is as good as the outside.
Perhaps the bird disagrees.

––There comes a man to a nation, spewing

a mouth’s-full of sneers through any open portal.

This man is inflated across the waistline like a 19th

century Daumier cartoon buffoon. –– This man is vulgar.

A scalp-full of fool’s gold is spray-fixed in place

by handmaidens specializing in filament dynamics, and

––if Rube Goldberg himself set down a design for a man,

this is the man he’d build,––comically ridiculous, unnecessary, absurdly

exaggerated without the inherent charm of Rube's usually absurd exaggerations,

exhibiting the pomposity of Mussolini, and he'd be coldblooded, and

intellectually hamstrung singing "God Bless America" from amplified

megaphones stationed all over town on a never-ending loop.

                -Virginia Fox, vaccinated-

                 drying-up

                 at the half-length mirror

                 it’s hard not to notice the convex
                 arch of the belly, the drapery

                 of skin at the fore-neck, the blue-

                headed retraction

                into the tangled thicket and the remnant

                of a grade school’s polio vaccination

                which by this time has all but vanished.

                a more direct examination reveals

                a clearer image of what was once

                a robust site, the nucleus

                surrounded by the tension

                of healing hairline fissures.

                now it’s seen as a dot, unremarkable,

                although the glazing is brighter there

                than the pallid skin surrounding it,–– like

                a primordial pool.

                from the corridor, the jolting

                bell calls us to our desks, but first

                a close examination is made of the injection site

                below the left shoulder of Virginia Fox, interrupting
                the slow-arching smoothness of her skin there.

                It will soon become a confection of sorts,

               more of a blooming,–– a dandelion’s petals

               circling the gleaming at the hub and little sense of a wound

               and because of this, it’s Virginia Fox who comes to mind this morning.  

-the American bison called buffalo-

the first time I saw the Great Plains Buffalo,

was at the “Buttonwood Park Zoo”––

a small zoo in New Bedford, about 15 miles

from my house in Fall River.

Buttonwood Park was on the short-list of possible

Sunday afternoon attractions along with "Lincoln
Amusement Park", route 6 east,

Horseneck Beach, 88 south, Westport,

the “Shrine of Our Lady of LaSalette” up Attelboro
(where the ancient French women prayed the rosary for an encore)
and best of all, secretly planned extended family “Mystery Rides”,
the logistics of which were worked-out by Uncle Frank and my young father.

"Who knows where the “Mystery Ride” will take us"?!

after church, the cars lined-up at curbside at 1017 Bedford,
with Uncle Frank’s car in the lead position, followed by
my father’s car, followed by Cousin Albert’s car with young
wife Celia riding shotgun, followed by Romeo LeVesque’s car
holding his wife, cousin Edith, followed by the gang of Pieroni’s
in three cars, followed by the Gasperini clan, the crazy Petrucci’s,
the Burtoncini’s and lastly, the Cippolini family, usually crammed into two cars.

this Sunday, the Mystery Ride ends at "Buttonwood Park Zoo".

that’s where I'd see the Great Plains Buffalo for the first time.
out back, a large fenced-in pastoral area is set aside for the buffalo to roam,

but a smaller pen was set for visitors wanting to view them.
from the busy walkway there’s a shoulder-high chainlink fence

and just beyond that, a higher chainlink fence enclosing the buffalo pen.

but inside this fence, five inch diameter iron piping,
chest-high to the buffalo, ran continuously along the interior perimeter.
the buffalo seemed docile, but once in awhile, one of them

would bang his monstrous head on purpose, into the pipe with a resounding clang.

and they’d grunt on occasion, but beyond that and the head-to-pipe banging,

they’d just stand there as if waiting for something expected.

their liquid eyes are round and luminous black.

their hair, golden-brown at the withers is matted and riven.

their noses are wide with wet, black nostrils where the grunting

seemed to have come from, but it comes from deep within instead.

the whole place stinks.

the dung covers the ground in there, it sticks to their hooves,

is plastered across their asses.

I count three Great Plains Buffalo in the pen as I see them for the first time.

I think they’ve come to understand where they are.

I fear they’ve forgotten where it was they’ve come from, hauled from afar 
to Buttonwood on a Mystery Ride of their own so that one day I could take a look.

     

-the accident with airbag deployment-

let's wander-off to a space in time just for a moment,–– whether

heaven or hell or the semiconscious distance between them.

it doesn’t matter when you’re punched in the chest by a mitt into a cloud

of industrial material.

––it settles over and around me, settles on my face, my fists, coating the leathery

wheel, powdering my shirt, painting my shoes, and finding its way

into my nostrils where the stiff little hairs can't keep up.

I'm alone inside the stuff of clouds, but for the guy in the other car who

looks like he’s in a trance, expression as blank as the animals, and through

this elapsed moment in time, this six or so seconds, I’ll travel with him because

he’s ascending inside his own cloud of airbag.

––looks to be an older form of cloud, bluer, a higher density, a coarser cloud,

not nearly as forgiving as my own cloud whose engineers have refined

the substance of its particles, advancing the science.

––but there he is, the other guy,–– powderpuff in blue, artificial gardenia

of route 6 west, drifter alongside cloud-to-cloud on our way to look upon

the faces of lost generations.

––but the scene around us slows its spin and soon enough, clarity regains its measure

of time, and I’m of this world again, powdered like a bunting, and so’s the other guy.

                                                       

               -suffer the children through small inconveniences-

                home from the corner store

                and the box has a small hole in it.

                I didn't notice as I pulled it from the shelf

                ignoring the other boxes of cold, dry cereal,––

                colorful displays hawking sweetness and ballplayers.

                It doesn’t appear to be a clean perforation

                as if retail sabotage had taken place, 

                nor is there excessive gnawing evidence

                as in rodent mischief,

                but more like some sort of shelf damage

                although all the above are possibilities

                at "Chasidor Leo's Market" across the street

                from the backstop in the early 50's.

                giving it the once-over, the rest of the box looks okay.

                the flat orange color is pleasing to the eye.

                nice illustration, sanctioned by Stan Musial swingin’ away

                regardless of factual inconsistencies.

               (how I love the left-handers)

                looks like good contact. nice form, too.

                don’t get to see much of Stan "The Man" Musial.

                National League. Saint Louis Cardinals. I’m not going back.

                a small strip of scotch tape will do the trick and then

                it's a bike ride to the city Dump on Pine Street with Ernie Carrocelli

                in search of frame-rail reflectors and other essential enhancements.

                            

-true confessions as told by me to Dr. Psycho-

(a love poem of early man)

1.
she was sensitive to my needs, good looking,

and slow-danced with the best of them.

wonderful body parts. wonderful.

––one starry night she went out with girlfriends

(who knows where)

and later they stopped at “George Dogs" on Pleasant Street

where she nabbed two with the works to travel

before finding me standing alone on the corner (only I know why)

and pulling to the curb at just below eye-level, the passenger-side

door swung open.

she swiveled out from the always preferred

"shotgun" position, and as the swishing of her material

brushed across my adolescent sensibilities, her girlfriend

from the backseat swept-in behind her taking the shotgun position

left open in the indefinable precision of young women in motion.

2.
"It only took a few seconds, Doc.

I don’t know what the fuck happened.

I was just standing there and this Chevy coupe pulled-up and..well,

the passenger door swung open, see? and then there was this... 
this... swishing sound and a bright light ...."

(dedicated to those who can relate)

-of Michael Joseph a grade school classmate-

Michael Joseph,

the kid with two first names, who once

forced a younger kid to drink mercurochrome
from its glossy little bottle, telling him:
"it tastes like cherry Kool-Aid",

had a goldfish, languishing

in an old glass goblet, sitting on the mantle

over a fake fireplace in the parlor

of his parents house on the third floor
near the corner of Healy and Quarry.

standing on tiptoes to reach the outer rim,

he’d spit on the surface of the water

amused when the goldfish wiggled up

for a little taste of the stuff.

Michael Joseph was just about the sickest little prick

I’ve ever known and through decades of physical separation,

there hasn't been a moment when my opinion
of him was altered for the better.
–– why Michael crossed my mind on occasion
is better left explained by the big sky objects.
but it might be because somewhere,
assigned to the purgatory section of my brain,
I reasoned that a story of him might one day
be offered to the poem-reading public.
–– well, now he’s dead.

I read his obit in the local papers and was not surprised
at the sparseness of positive accounts in the column.

Michael never married, had no children, no siblings,

no aunts, uncles, not a cousin listed, no pallbearers,–– 

nobody to speak of or at least who’d admit to anything,

let alone show their faces.

christ, even "Sam the Bum" who fell down the library steps
in a drunken stupor had pallbearers.

–– they're telling me Michael worked in the "ironing corridors" of a sweltering

factory outlet store, deep in the bowels of the north-end of town.

––"Men’s dress shirts $2.00, Men’s single breasted suits $25.50".

I've acquiesced to what the thought of Michael Joseph

brings to the table of a poet's intrusiveness.
–– but on the brighter side, the goldfish who suffered daily

under Michael’s foamy islands of spittle, well, I hear tell it's swimming

in clear waters with others of its kind in the suburbs of paradise. 

                again with “The Last Night Of The Earth Poems”

               and I’m growing weary of Bukowski.

               don’t get me wrong. It's not him, it's me.

               I enjoy the reading.

               I respect his place in the canon.

               I shelled-out at least 100 bucks on his books

               and all this without concern for my safety.

               but with Charles, sometimes it’s as if

               he’s having a nice conversation with himself, and

               well,–– don't we all, but

               he won’t let me slip a word in edgewise

               and I enjoy slipping a word in edgewise.

               so I turn the page and he’s at the bar again

               and he ends up screwing all the best women there,

               but not every night, he's gotta eat.

               and he tells us about them which is his job

               and he's very good at it.

               listen closely. these are love poems and they're sublime.

               that said, some run-out on him in the dead of night

               carrying hands-full of his stuff.

               others cling too much and are repatriated

               to the barstools from whence they came.

               I'm not finding fault.

               who in hell knows how long I'd last?

               but he’s pulled from the shelf with the best of them

               and a damn good shelf it is.

               all the best people, and

               a nice array of multi-colored spines to

               titillate the neighbors when they drop by.

               Charles spins a fine tale, –– thorny,

               like the stems of roses before you get to the roses,

               but the roses are there if you take the time to shed

               a little blood along the way, and he’s certainly a good storyteller.

               he makes it look easy, but it’s not, really.

               here, this morning is much like the nine mornings before it,

               counting seven to eight crows frocked in feather-black.

               a field of bluegrass green –– fresh blooms

               in cadmium yellow dandies nodding in the wind,

               a full-throated tree line when the sparrows are active,

               a pleasant view of the river when the fog lightens and lifts.

               everything seems to be in the right place at the right time,

               and it's clearly all the right stuff,–– but I'm recalling

               what Bukowski whispered to my ear that morning long, long ago:

                           ".. but as God said,

                               crossing his legs,

                               I see where I have made plenty of poets

                               but not so very much

                               poetry."

                lesson learned.

               (quotation from: "to the whore who took my poems"

               from the volume: "Burning In Water Drowning In Flame")

               

-How the cosmos came to be-

Something was missing from within the nothingness.

Carbon?

Older.

Hydrogen?

No. Older

As when the lonely gods

Opened their eyes for the first time

And chemical elements stiffened their backs.

This began to make sense.

Metal of sky is not made-up.

Water of sky is not handmade.

But–– whatever there was to be had, showed-up
Populating the nothingness.
This, too, began to make sense.

Then, the objects dwelling inside the burning space
With a chance at living beyond themselves,
Drifted from the nothing else with no returning.

The gods, noticing this, began to dance on their feet for the first time

And spinning their skirts, unwittingly began fill the sails of the stars.



Inspired by Kenneth Patchen's "How God Was Made"