-the third in a series of love stories devoted to early baseballs-

this is the third story.

it’s the one about the sewer

squatting at the gutter in front of my house; the house
across the street from the corner ending the right field line.

there, the sewer waits in perpetual attitude, inhaling
baseballs run afoul, its breath exhales of everything

once belonging to something from someplace else.

our neighborhood law states intently that

this sewer will never hold our baseballs within its putrid belly.

it wasn’t always, but sometimes I was called upon

to crawl inside its granite-heavy maw into

the stagnant drench of the sewer squatting at the foot of my house.

grab hold the backside of my withered belt, my young brothers.

hold tight to the riven denim at its cuffs and the looping

knots who bind the hightop sneaks.

hold fast to this slender body, loved-ones, for I’m going in.

               -The immediate family-

               Incidental Preamble:

               I grew to enjoy my standing in the classification of “Immediate Family”.

               It meant I could push my way through the crowds of well-wishers
               and walk directly into the Intensive Care Unit.

               Of my early immediate family, my young sister, three

               years my elder, seemed blessed with talent.

               I say “blessed” without knowing who it was or what it was

               which blessed her with talent.
               Call it the Holy Ghost.
               Call it her tenacity.

               Call it a forced critique from the morning
               egg man delivering farm-fresh, still warm,
               dotted with chickenshit and little strands of hay
               as he stood at attention at the screen door of the kitchen.

               (she’d tap for anyone at first notice)

               or it might have been the result of

               enthusiastic reviews from Uncle Joe, a cool guy

               who smoked kingsize menthol and had a calling...

               Talent is defined here as: dancing,

               singing,–– performing on short notice 

               for relatives, parental friends, or
               the Encyclopedia salesman, as my little brother,
               three years my younger, watched with curiosity

               from the wings of the hallway

               while I hid under the bed until the coast was clear.

               As for me, my parents did make an effort

               by shelling-out for saxophone lessons

               taught by a neighborhood nightclub Jazzman.

               I don’t recall my little brother

               taking lessons of any kind, but

               years later I drew a penciled portrait of Joe,

               my father's younger brother, from memory
               long after he died (too young in life) by "undisclosed means".
               the local paper's obituary section wasn't ready with an exposé

               for the likes of Uncle Joe.

               The belching saxophone was short-lived, too,

               but as things were I had no complaints.

               Most of my cousins were forced into taking
               accordion lessons.

               Quequechan / early in the fifties

-Almost zero / a Requiem for old Miss Sykes-

Almost zero.

Not the outside temperature in winter, although

Here in Paradisum it wouldn’t have been an outlier.

December classroom’s hot with steam.

The third aisle in from the door is sweltering

By the grace of Bernadette Baker.

My head will come to rest upon my forearms, draped

Across the lid of the desk regardless of season.

Who knew the limits in the span-of-attention as I did?

Nobody, but for the grievance of old Miss Sykes.

The report cards delivered by my hand pushed my parents
To the precipice of exhaustion.

It’s probably 1955 and "Almost zero" confronts them

Like a blast of wind from the throat of Carol.

Backyard tree's uprooted in September 
And roadways are flooded, knee-deep.

They asked: “Is Rebop in the house”?

They feared the loss of reception and the pains of Hell.

Widows were stripped in masking-tape to ward-off the wind

Like old testament lamb's blood brushed at the doors
Upon the edict of Pharaoh.

Then the cursive scrawl in blood-red: “Almost zero”
Writ by the withered hand of old Miss Sykes adds to the pile

Of frantic goings on confronting me and my earliest house.

Finito

-including certain observations-

1.

I am not now, nor have I ever been a professional painter of pictures.

having said that, I have painted a few pictures in my time,

and some were actually palatable to the naked eye.

a few might remember: “Novitiate at her Bath” called:

the “Nun Painting” by its admirers, whereabouts unknown,

now lost to history.

also, there's the little Chardin wannabe: “Items on a Table”

immortalized in a poem addressed to long past love, Isabella Howsenauer

and is assumed to be in Howsenauer's possession, and considered lost.

2.

I want it.
I want the lost little Chardin wannabe.

I want the lost “Nun” painting, too.

I want all my lost stuff.

I want to gather all of it in my arms

like Vincent was gathered by Paul,

like Jesus gathered the other Paul,

like John gathered his own Paul while skiffling at the Woolton fête.

3.
I want to sleep with my stuff lost to the aether,

to smell the crooked paint of it,–– unfurl
the rolls with their hairline cracks at my loins.

they're every woman I’ve ever known or dreamed of,

living or dead;

It'd be like sleeping inside the Pleiades, all seven of them;

young and burning with a new kind of fire.

4.

Ah! but for the stars, I’m too old for any of it, and don't you see?

I'm soon to be lost to history myself, don't you know.

          -breaking bread with the common birds-

          5/16/19

          in the morning they glide in, then it's a wing-flapping

          approach toward the empty feeder.

          it’s a natural touch and go.

          but the feeder's refilled and the birds fly back,

          land, commence to pecking seed and soon

          the base is laden with birds wing-to-wing, holding on
          for dear life, pecking seed like a bunch of lunatics.

          the standard double-feeder, purchased at Walmart

          for twelve bucks, is emptied of its morning’s seed

          by mid-afternoon.

          say what you will of the fierce-feeding piranha,

          they have nothing over the group of sparrows at my feeder.

          if this continues I’ll be broke by December.

         “breaking bread” is a common phrase,

          now free of its old and new testament shackles.

          on holidays, groups of friends and relations tend

          to gather and eat together around a festive table.

          the breaking of bread.

          three mornings past I was biting into a toasted

          Portuguese muffin glazed in raspberry jam,

          standing at the window as the birds feasted
          on seed at the freshly-filled feeder, and as I see it,

          and for the sake of early morning poetry, that's close enough

          to be considered the breaking of bread with the common birds.

          

               -the temporary residence- WORK ON THIS !

               the temporary residence is unrestrained,

               what with intrusive friends and relations,

               the spacial availability to house visiting dogs,
               residential cats, common bird varieties
               gorging themselves at their feeders and me.

               I occupy a corner room with my stuff.

               I’m allowed free access throughout the house,

               its in-ground swimming pool, the shed out back

               for the storage of questionable items assigned to purgatory

               and lounge-chair relaxation on the property with a morning cup

               and a westward view of Mount Hope Bay which is first rate.

               it’s too soon for me to become an adjunct curiosity,

               but I’m ready to hang-on by my fingertips.

               I have a sweltering girlfriend who lives inside the Sun
               among a clutch of coconut palm trees,––

               an ex-wife who’s become understanding of my short-

               comings and a parakeet who seems to recognize me.

               I don’t eat very much, but

               I’ll eat what’s put in front of me
               like the dogs and cats do at their stations,

               and the birds at their feeders.

               inside the joint, Arnold enjoys swinging in his cage after a meal.

               but none of 'em write no poems,

               a double negative I can live with.

  

               -Rose and Pietro and a soundbite from Lennon in typical form-

               "what happens when the bubble bursts"?
               
               1.
               history's finer plateaus are revisited
               now and then, so

               some of the early characterizations

               cling to the current nature of things.

               but I’m less easily distracted

               and my span of attention has increased.
               even so, it remains a short crossing.

               I've cultivated an ability to zero-in.

               so this is the way it is.

               I do more than just look around.

               I consider my findings and tell short stories
               (stacked narrowly at the beam)
               of occasional interest to a small audience.

               but my prints are all over the place.

               2.
               an ancient Italian woman introduced to me
               the two-knot system of securing my laces.
               she struggled against the tenacity of my left handedness.

               she brought a husband and her knowledge of the old world

               to the new world long before Mussolini's inversion at Mezzegra.

               it was Pietro, her husband, who introduced

               the measure of peace to an otherwise frantic interior.

               he had his peculiar easy-chair set-up with its fixings in the kitchen

               with an occasional chicken or two, also inverted, bleeding-out,
               hanging in the entry

               and still,–– after all these early goings-on and other things,
               I'm reminded of Lennon's lament from the backseat of his limousine
               when he came to answer:–– "I'm still waiting for the bubble".

              

            -the confessional and the young woman on the run-

             1.
             the steps to the church are forged of chiseled stone
             quarried from the city's ledge of granite.

             I've climbed them.
             once inside, I looked things over;
             used the holy water to dab the trinity.
             I'm church legal.

             I'll choose a back row pew to better sample the fickle
             confessional line, (the mortal sinners make me wait)
             side-stepping into the pew, dropping to the kneeler.

             I've knelt there. babbled a prayer.

             not a very good one.

             2.
             someone’s speaking,
             one to another one.
             the sound's muted,

             a strange kind of resonance.

             (Jesus to Judas?
                     Judas to Priest?
                            Quavers of the early drowned?)

             finishing, I'll use the required right hand.
             you know, the hand of God.

             
             (here, proximity is close enough)

         

             father

             son

             the holy ghost gets two.

             

             3.
             during the un-enlightened ages on a Saturday afternoon,
             I lifted the kneeler to slip to its waiting position.

             I'm next to confess and then,

             she draws back the curtain with a fury
             fleeing the box as she would the scene of a crime.
             (she's young and warm-looking, like a pane fresh from the bakery)

            

             I’m in.

             blah my sins.

             so sorry. so sorry.

             

             It’s a penance of 5 “Our Father’s” and 5 "Hail Mary’s” for me,

             but I've learned to do the time in little more than a minute.

             an "act of contrition" more or less to tidy things up.

             the "act of contrition" is like a feather duster, clearing away

             the flotsam left behind by the venial sinners. 

             now homeward through the ballpark
             hopping the left field fence with time on my hands
             enough to covet my neighbor’s goods all over again and build
             erotic fantasies over what in hell it was she'd said she'd done.

             c.1952 / Quequechan

             

-on this Friday morning-

to set-up his poem: "The Poet's Obligation,"

Neruda writes:

“To whoever is not listening to the sea

this Friday morning..”

so I stretched my skinny arm as far

as bone could allow to the air above my head,

waving the palm of my hand like a frantic schoolboy

who thought he knew the answer, straining from

the depth of my throat, all in seeking the great poet's

recognition.— well, it seemed that way.

so this Friday morning finds my head with its ear toward the sea,

my feet approaching the storm-fences holding fast in the last stand

against the wind, and from my hometown where ran an ocean of cloth,

recalling my baptism when the Chilean whispered something, asking:

“What is water like in the stars?

and I thought to myself:

who in this world would ask such a question? 

                                                       

-Tap dancer-

1.
The anticipation was nearly overpowering as a kid,
all of ten years, mesmerized by my Uncle Frank
laboring in front of the massive polishing lathe
behind the counter inside his cluttered cobbler shop.

When he shut it down, the whirring shaft of the lathe
slowed smoothly to a stop behind him.–– And then,

he finalized the task-at-hand by tacking metal "clickers"
to the outer edge of each new heel of my old Sunday shoes.

The quarter-moon-shaped clickers were strategically placed,

calculated by the wear-patterns of both the old discarded heels.

Frank was well aware of his culpability in acquiescing to my request,
but tacked the parentally outlawed clickers down, anyway.

2.
During that time and concurrently, it was by the patent-leather tap shoes
worn by my sister, three years my elder, that I first became aware
of the grater dynamic in the sounds of shoes clicking upon a hard surface;

her dancing feet on a fast-track through endless hours of deliberate study,

tapping over the kitchen’s worn linoleum after supper and into the wacky
situation comedies of early nighttime television, broadcast live into the parlors
of the neighborhood's hard-earned tranquility.

Hers, was the burgeoning of genius. 

3.
As for me, the clicking of my heels was no more than a cool,

short-lived sound repeating itself across the sidewalks of Bedford Street

or the narrow corridors of the Hugo A. Dubuque School, where

roaming these and other walking-distance locations
I might have made a name for myself as something of a local curiosity.

Quequechan

-René, Bernadette, and the Muscleman-

René Beauchemin is a wimp.

at the beach, the local muscleman

kicks sand in his face humiliating Bernadette

who romantically begins to consider the muscleman.

she’s squeezing the bicep of his right arm

even though the muscleman's left-handed.

René’s left-handed, too,
not that it matters in situations like this.

René was an ink-smudger in grade school.

(his left hand is sliding through the wetness of ink,
left to right on the cursive page of his letters.
old, and hard-hearted, Miss Sykes grades him as: "Failed"
in the category of: "Neatness")

at home, René is angered by his frailties

and kicks a wastepaper basket causing a trashy mess.

later, René works-out and builds muscle-mass.

he likes what he sees in the mirror.

back on the beach, René socks the muscleman

square on the jaw to win back the heart of Bernadette.

Bernadette squeals: “My Hero” and

excites René with a wet kiss to his mouth.

back home, Bernadette rewards René with the blowjob of his life.

-through the portal open to subscribers-

1.
––I'll lift the lid to expose the crazed eyesight of the world.

a column in the "New York Times" on-line reads:

“Pigs All the Way Down” by Michelle Goldberg.

I'll read Michelle over a bounty of blueberry muffins

and two cups of strong coffee.
I'll tune-in to 24 hour news on cable TV, too.
sometimes I prefer the madness to come at me on a loop.

2.

––history says: no one I knew ever tossed a rolled and tucked newspaper

over a white picket fence into the manicured front yard of a split-
level ranch from the saddle of a snazzy bike.

In my world we trudged up the stairs plopping the papers down

at the base of the doors.

Sunday deliveries were burdensome.
there are dogs barking behind the doors of the entries.

everybody’s shouting in there.
the television sets are tuned to amphitheater mode.
If "Little Richard" is pounding a piano, those of my kind are inside.

(the Mezzotesta clan seem to have a live chicken in the kitchen.)

the tenements were the incubators of our time.

3.

––meanwhile, Goldberg’s column is a good read as always

and the early blueberry muffins are sweetly moist and

the coffee's first rate.

as to the here and now, I don’t schedule my day

around calendar appointments, but
I know it's the way of the world nowadays, so I'll stay put.
the way I see it, it's the world's loss, not mine.

              -the "WOP"-

               1958

               and during a cold winter morning

               the "WOP" drives his old “Brown”

               tractor trailer from a loading dock in Fall River

               toward a destination set deeply

               into the State of New Hampshire.

               I ride-along on the run.

               he’s hauling semi-perishables for a Company

               originating somewhere in North Carolina.

               the old “Brown” diesel rattles

               and smokes through its single stack.
               the cab is cold and noisy

               and in time, its speed concerns me.

               Interlude:

               Priest said: "the right hand of God is placed there
               to traverse the four destinations of the sign-of-the-cross".

               (the "Holy Ghost" occupies two of the four destinations)

               "O Christopher,
               carry me safely across the fast-track
               of sheetmetal, semi-perishables and spent gasoline"!

               a windblown snow slashes
               across the windshield like a thousand sabers.

               the observant WOP

               tells me: “don’t be afraid”

               and cranks-down the gears of the heavy-

               laden Brown through a treacherous slope.

               there’s a "sleeper" behind us which stinks.

               we’ll stop along the way, but

               everything’s ordered to travel on the quick-step

               when hauling semi-perishables into New Hampshire.

               

               all night long the great Brown

               runs its cargo northward into the State
               where the "Old Man of the Mountain" reigns high
               above the craggy landscape,–– onward! north by northwest,

               well beyond the northernmost borderline of Massachusetts.  

               time is not on my side.

               

               over the fast lane of the run, the WOP
               leans-in and swings his left arm high
               above his head like a Whirling Dervish

               indicating to oncoming truckers
               that the southbound lane ahead is free of cops.
               this is the unwritten poetry of the trucker on the open road.

               I long for sleep, but I won’t crawl into
               the sleeper's bed.

               the WOP’s eyes are heavy-lidded.
               onward, the Brown! onward!
               damn this madness!

               close enough now to see

               the great White Mountains peek

               through a deepening twilight.

               we’ll sleep at a roadside motel,

               two beds and a pretty good TV set

               but only after the shuttering Brown

               backs into the narrow space of a loading dock
               at sunup on the third day somewhere in the granite-
               headed State of New Hampshire.

               'twas "Bay 13" as best I remember.

-knowing just enough about art to be unhappy-

where is the end of the line.

what if we pull back from its width.

what if we piss our pants in the struggle.

should we pull back anyway or say

fuck it.

is the line like the un-line of fickle Renoir

who couldn’t decide where the edge should be
of anything?

christ, how could he manipulate a sealed
tin of french sardines?

Ingres knew something about

what the line can do.

that left arm of Madame Destouches!

that’s a hell of an arm.

it goes on and on, elongated with greater
romance than Plastic Man’s arm!

Madame's left arm pulls your eye clockwise
through a slow-moving oblong to the sitting knee
and the oblong continues clockwise to the right arm
resting upon the backrest of a nicely upholstered sofa, but
with more abstract tension than a taut, hanging man’s rope.

it's enough to drive a non-practitioner crazy.

that said, I like looking at Ingres
and there are books on the shelf so I can turn the pages
to the pictures I want to see whenever I want to see them.

but that doesn’t mean I’ll be happy about it.