the new ballpoint pen, an occasionally prose form poem

It’s the latest arrival. It was found in a gift packet

from my health care provider along with unnecessary information

on where I should go, and what I should do before I go, and

who I should see when I get there.

the ballpoint pen is substantial in its heft, twin-tone in color

incorporating a twist-turn of the barrel to expose the tip.

I like doing that. It’s sensational. sometimes I’ll just pick it up

for no reason other than to simply twist and twist back and twist

again before the final twist finds the ballpoint retracted.

I haven’t yet used the pen to write something or even test it

to see if the ballpoint functions. I have coffee mugs filled with

ballpoint pens, and cocktail glasses and drawer’s full.

In the mid 60’s, a TIME magazine cover

graphically displayed an American army officer, an “advisor”

to the South Vietnamese military, who'd been shot dead at a time

when an American combat death in Viet Nam was a rare occurrence.

clipped to his breast pocket was a “Paper Mate” ballpoint pen.

an art school friend quipped: “I bet his pen still works”.

that elementary juxtaposition between life and death, between usefulness

and uselessness was instructive.

as it lays upon the table, this latest arrival is less historically significant

as ballpoint pens go, although its place in the canon of historic events

has yet to be written.

2/15/24

                    sailing westward conning southward

I dreamed I was sailing aboard the “Pinta”––

the boat as much of purgatory as purgatory itself

such as not to be seen in the company of Columbus.

we had horses and goats and pigs and piles of shit to shovel.

at the starboard rail I could see the “Santa Maria”, glorious

at her sheets, the unforgiving hemp catching the wind as if

she were the breath of God !

I’d sell my soul to be aboard the "Santa Maria"!

I don’t recall much of the little “Niña".

she looked awkward and alone like a wayward child being

swept away by the wake of the water.

arr, the “Pinta’s” a working-stiff.

arr, the “Pinta” gets up at daybreak to shovel her shit.

blast if the "Pinta's" stink don't stick to me like the morning's head it is !

––later, when the sun warmed enough, I asked my therapist the meaning

of this dream, but he referred me to someone else.

my dreams frightened him, but nevertheless I didn’t want to drive

such a distance as to affect my mileage, so I didn't show-up for the referral.

––If I was half-the-man I am, I’d say the dream was telling me something.

but it's during the realm of consciousness that the dream reveals itself,

and I fear a coming bout with scurvy from consuming dried, salted anchovies,

and fierce constipation from chomping into jaw-breaking hardtack biscuits.

but such is the life of a common swab, and arr, ye fuckin' "Pinta"!

                    during the time of once my young wife

1.   we ran headlong into turbulent water.

I think now's as good a time as any to realize

that what's still available to us is to be reclaimed.

let’s take back the rarest of things from our failures

and our findings.––in other words, let's take a walk.

let’s discover the unexpected, exposing

which of God's silent creatures might be sleeping

underneath which rock.

 (this time if it's the snake we'll give the snake the road.

better to surrender to its argument than follow in its tracks.

this time let's decide that it’s the snake's road)

2.   when the day releases the Sun to begin its drop

beyond the water's end,  burnt-orange and

cooler to the touch,  let's act like children, pee-

scripting our names across the narrow spit of sand

to claim the moment as our own.  but wait!

this time I'll write our names for both of us.

this time my penmanship will be better.

                    I want

I want time enough for time to slow itself down to a heartbeat

and another five years to reflect upon certain outcomes.

I want the silver dollar uncle Octavio flipped to me

before he fled to Lucca leaving us one Pieroni short of a dozen.

I want to share another vanilla coke with the otherwise incorrigible

Norena Ferreira, (two rows to my left and three desks down)

swiveling at my side at the soda fountain at the "Pleasant Drugs" Pharmacy,

where half-a-mile north (Lemuel Street) goofy Chuck Meville’s old man

hung himself inside his vacant one car garage and where three weeks

wheeling forward (September 12, 1954) I’d crack-up my Schwinn "Hornet"

a real beauty, into the chain-linked fence of the "Oak Grove" Cemetery where

the remaining significance of Lizzie Borden decomposes quietly long after

being found not guilty (June 20, 1893) of the frantic charges filed against her

(patricide and matricide) but things as they are the Pieroni clan sans Octavio

marched on without skipping a beat, and as for Lizzie. I think she did it.

Quequechan 

  

                      Requiem for "Bunny" Giambastino 

––it seems like yesterday that pal Hank Casper at the Esso station

oiled and lubed my cousin Paul Pieroni's heavy rolling Oldsmobile,

and together we hit out for the Massachusetts coast at Provincetown, curious

to witness the gathering harbor seals galumphing toward shore at Herring Cove Beach.

Pieroni's well worn copy of "Wink" magazine was laying on the backseat

looking real good so I reached over nabbing it for a look-see, astonished to find

that the covergirl closely resembled an enticing neighborhood beauty,

two years my elder, and hot from "Jesus and Mary Academy" a proving ground

for Catholic schoolgirls searching for a truer meaning of romance. 

––on the benchseat to the right of the Oldsmobile's massive steering wheel,

while thumbing through the pages of "Wink", I ate a pre-spread creamy peanut butter

and seedless raspberry jam sandwich pulled from a brown paper bag my mother

had carefully folded from a previous school lunch as the great white sharks off the coast

began feasting on succulent harbor seal meat and I witnessed the carnage through

the agitation of the North Atlantic feeding frenzy, while fantasizing over what it might be

the incomparable “Bunny” Giambastino was having for lunch.

 

                   the tool

I’ve invented a tool.

this tool adroitly fashioned from a common paperclip

is used to more easily extract USB flash devices

from the narrow port of my aging, often ailing MacBook.

now I can’t find it and it’s driving me crazy.

an invention such as this with one primary function

would not intentionally be placed very far from home. my pockets

are empty. closet hangings seem remote as to possibilities.

why would the car’s glove compartment have it, or

the drawer where the AAA batteries wait like the souls of purgatory?

this was the perfect tool, a tool with the singular purpose of its mother,

the wheel, or the confessional to a venial sinner’s propositions.

time, that most restless of creatures is not on my side, so it’s determined

that I build another tool, same as the one lost, without embellishments.

now is the time to head out to the workshop to crank-up

the heavy machinery and begin my labors to fashion a tool

made in the image of its itself.

                   “promise to obey”

at eight, I barely remember the wedding

of double-corona cigar smoking cousin Albert Pieroni

to Celia Esteban, the two-legged beauty from the east-

end of Providence, half Spanish on her father’s side,

the mother’s side, Italian.

she was born by the lick of fire.

between psalms, I remember fantasizing on what it would

be like to stick my head between her legs and fall asleep there.

this was one of the great daydreams of my life.

at the altar when she promised Albert to “obey” him, it made sense.

Tony “the pinhead” Scelsi, promised Albert the same thing

and wound-up in a dumpster behind the A&P. 

well, at least they thought it was Tony.

welcome the the family, cousin Celia.

 

                   the Tropic of Bedford

It must seem from afar to be a pleasant experience

growing-up in the Tropic of Bedford, and

to a large extent it is.

there’s little to no crime when standing amongst

such succulent vegetation, because who would dare?

rainfall is soothing and generally looked forward to

in the Tropic of Bedford, so much so that one can wear

revealing underpants and pose for the record without embarrassment,

and a sibling standing behind you grinning for no apparent reason

makes more sense in the Tropic of Bedford than it would,

say, on any crosstown bus in your own hidebound town.

otherwise, who would care to know what's going on?

––and there’s this:  upstairs friends are more likely

to appear from out of nowhere in the Tropic of Bedford,

such as in the case of crazy Ernie Carocelli. –– It’s magical out there.

and look. your hands may appear to be holding something

delicately resting in their palms, but it only appears that way.

this phenomenon would be seriously problematic in mid-

temperate environments, but in the Tropic of Bedford,

all is perceived to be the way it’s supposed to be.

here are the grapes for port wine from the tangle of their vines,

meadows abundant in earthy tomatoes and sweet-skinned fruits,

the dense rows of poplars and elms in the distance, and behind them

the junkyard running on its endless loop.

Quequechan

  

 

                   here’s how I see it

another poem of gloom, doom, and inevitability

brought to you by the guy who penned other poems along the same lines.

I’m on my death bed

inside the death chamber

with the stench of death

(which smells like an overdose

of "Febreze" Linen Fresh Odor Eliminator")

wafting into the nostrils

of those in attendance, with

old man death holding his time-

worn instrument at the ready 

sneering as a conqueror sneers,––

like Napoleon before his fall

at Waterville, or Water View Heights,

or whatever it was,––

or the sneering guy holding a Queen-

High Straight before a Jack-

High Flush hits the table

shitting on his puny Queen High Straight,

or the incomparable Maria Bento Bienvenido

playing me for a sucker after I shelled-out

nearly six bucks at "Nick's Coney Island"

then drove her around town in a vain attempt in my oldman’s

lightly used 1955 Pontiac Chieftain for chrissakes !

and that’s how I see it.