-"the Island of women"-

There's an island inhabited by women.

The figure of man stands in a skiff

Paddling toward the island.

From the viewer’s line-of-sight,

Activity is seen on the island as the women 
Go about the chores of daily life.

Some are building a habitable structure.

Another pulls a great fish
From the water at its banks,
From the water, knee-deep,
A great fish with her bare hands!

From behind,
I asked the gentleman
How he'd approach the women

To communicate his intensions.

I was hungry for information.

When the instruments of their labors

Are laid to rest for the night,

Do they dance with one another?

Is A cappella singing involved?

How will the great fish be dressed?

Do they sleep beneath the stars?––

And the gentleman bid me stop;

His approach to the island 

Is endless and recurring, he said.

I inquired of him

The reasoning behind this futility,

The mythological endlessness to row

Toward the island of women.

"Anticipation" he said.

"Of the destination" he concluded.

                                             2011

                              

-Drop of island-

Lying 3 nautical miles off the southwest coast of Martha's Vineyard 

No Man's Land

There’s a cold history told in the surface

rust of unexploded ordnance.

Sometime in the 1940s the U.S. Navy
lobbed its rehearsed volatility into the kettle-ponds
and outwashed plains of No Man's Land 

scattering to anxious flight, the Island’s nocturnal
Leach’s Storm-Petrel.

Now they won’t let me in— 
even with my hands tucked 

harmlessly into their pockets.

Picture the outer cliffs to the south 
as standing their ground against the sea, 

pushing its aggravated agenda 
into the face of the scaling clays 
who form the barrier heights 

protecting the inland habitat of mysterious 
No Man’s Land.

Now they have to stop the overland prints
of the aggressive Silver Poplar. 

And why not?

It doesn’t belong there
any more than they say I belong there.

Purple Loosestrife roam like nomads 
uninvited in a closed geography.

Too smitten a defendant against the allure of the Strife, 
the indigenous habitat yields.

I guess it's the same with me.

Human intrusion is coincident 
to the spread of the stubborn Phragmites, 

the invasive species pushing native plant-life around
like the bully it is.

But I just want to look, walk bare-footed on the sand,

whistling sea-shanties to weather along the tides of saltwater.

I’ve never embraced the squatter’s intent, 

nor dropped a metal round 
to oxidize upon the barren 

sweep of the cobble-spit, 

exposing a back-side as if presenting,
finned and ready.

Tell them I have no heart to stand defiantly 

in the midst of having no standing.

Tell them I'll promise not to take to root.

God-damn the bloodless 

shells of the bombs!

I just want to set my feet on 

No Man’s Land for chrisssake !

                 




















  

-laszlo at the pieta-

1.

metal sounds a scent through polished stone

then dust is moved from the head of it,

and the forms’ purpose is altered.

glitter of steel reflects the plaintiffs’ eye, 

and through its accuracy prosecutes its case 

across a hushed-

blood dropping from the populace.

why is elevated stone so noisily challenged?

but see how the airborne dust of the stone 

retreats to gently cling to it.

2.

she remains calm-eyed at the burning entry,

and that’s where the mallet gets its nerve this time.

the nature turns here.

she cleaves to a mourning’s disposition.

the child continues its graceful notation. 

this stairway leads to its crooked roof.

3.

the kids in the balcony are going nuts! 

images fly like flattened 

popcorn boxes crossing a screen’s projection 

leaving behind authentic trailers of themselves.

   

snacks in the lobby escalate in price as wrapped-  

colored sleeves of silver and gold, seduce a strange  

sort of tithing.

4.

with its succulent shape at hand,

and into a lobby’s dimming light, 

the glance in the stone’s endeavor 
is moved to quick inversion——

   

from the passions of its chisel, 

to the passions of its mallet.

                                               5/21/72

                                               2009

                                                                   

-like eve sometimes- 

1.

I looked to Durer.  

The copper platform yields its cold disposition. Fruit, 

once ribbed to the stem, once ribbed from Adam,   

twice pissed away.

That’s what’s left of her heart.

That was no snake.

She could have passed it through a bowel.

She could have loved me, too.

But she let herself go 

the same way temptation turned

Eve’s ear to its tongue. 

(vegetation pales at her skin.

a sweet

juice clings to the ends of her mouth.)

2.

That's the woof of the warp.

It weaves like that crazy little lizard

sweeping the sandbank on its weather-side.

But that’s still straight.

This dust is sand-smoke,

the tide of its water.

She could have spun me to the symbolism of her calling.

She could have taken the time to love me.

I'm as pliable as hell at the face of such beauty.

3.

I looked to Balthus—

the management of such imagery.

Earth-toned, nearly primitive pearl 

as true to its plane as any contrition illuminated 

through a needle's point. 

Such is the perfect utility of space.

I can’t get away with anything.

She thought I said that she should love me.

Except for the poems,

I didn’t have a clue.




                         Fall River

-the old-timer-

The old-timer lives upstairs,

Has a wife there, has framed pictures
Of smiling family tacked on the walls

And propped-up on the end-tables. 

He tinkers with tools in the basement.

This man is older than I am.

His sight is slipping into darkness.

He walks with hesitating carefulness

And one of his hands is seen to shake

Involuntarily.

I don’t now what he’s attempting to assemble,

Fix or ruin in the basement.

He will die soon enough.

He has informed me that his niece

Has been willed his belongings including
The new cable ready television sitting
In the living room.  

When asked what his wife of nearly

Sixty years of marriage, of being there,
Of daily knick-knack dusting, 
Of nagging, bed-making, straightening-up
And years of dispassionate silence while sitting
Nightly at the side of his Lazyboy
Five feet from the face of the screen
Will be left with during the lonely, 

Singular days of her remaining life— 
He simply grunted, walking deliberately
Down the stairs to the basement to all
His dark and secret things.




                      Bedford and Eddy / Fall River

                                      

-Ohio slow dancing-

Let’s not roll the dice.

What else is there to lose?

Somebody in another room

Slates the take

But it’s us

Beating time to the song.

Let the others dance their way through

The same way we use to

Before stepping on each others

Shoes.

I remember that dance from a dream:

Sinatra showed up at the mic with a five
Dollar haircut 

Pencil-thin bow tie hanging off the collar by one
Side of the clip,

Scotch from the watery rack.

Let’s ease into it,
The song of "you and me".

There’s nothing left to break.

I remember the dance in my dream:

"Goodnight my love,—

Pleasant dreams
And sleep tight my love,
May tomorrow be sunny and bright.."

Only to watch the others

Dance the tune through.

                      

-morning problematically-

Settling in to sounds of a man

with his cane
flying fast through the air,
through the space of a room,
and turning the MacBook

on to production,

I couldn’t tell

from her picture

as a Facebook friend

of a Facebook friend of mine

whether Miranda Estevantes 

was in the process of

taking her eye-glasses off

or putting her eye-glasses on.
Frozen in that time where we have
no time to think, now eternal,

in her hand

half-way between her eyes

and the flat bridge of her nose.

The early morning hour brings

the brain’s first steps

climbing from its cerebrospinal gel

like the first fish with legs slithering 

out of the pool of muck,—

mouth half-an-inch from the brim to coffee,

eyes grimacing at the first 
pour of light tumbling

through the southern-faced windows

just beyond the screen
where exists the sidebar
Facebook friend's icy photograph.

I’ve tried my best to live

a peaceful life,—

sometimes simple,

sometimes complex,—

sometimes with too much to remember,

sometimes feeling

like I’m the only one

who gives a shit about it all,

sometimes with the television on.
It's hard enough to focus.

I want Miranda Estevantes

to make up her mind.

But she’s frozen in the space of a square

as a Facebook friend 

of a Facebook friend of mine,

and it haunts me like the sliver

of a splinter's-pinch on the fingertip

incurable but for the space of time,

exacto-blade digs in un-resolved, and

Miranda's cruel square of planet, and me,
mosquito in her slick drop of amber 
and like poor Hattie Carroll who

never done nothin’ to William Zanzinger,

I never done nothin’ to Miranda Estevantes.

                     first poem of 5/12/11 ——

                                              city

-interior-
 beach scene #2

On an agitated winter 
rectangle of beach,

scene-setting so typically extraordinary

I lay the beach down easily
tern and plover conscious 

to the floor in my studio

so that it’s called-up,

that the salt of it sticks in my nostrils

shakes to my wisp of hair

dust-globs turned sand-

grains grimacing inside the spaces,

the twisted angles of my toes

mouth-dried like a sailor

lip-skin chapped in the windface,—

the interior brightening through

like ice-light dropping in 

from the horizon, moon-balloon  

waiting my decision as to tides

eastbound coast at my frontside
traffic heavy street hums

and the local 

city bus breaks and squeals

when it makes the pick-up stop

out my window,
and the walls tighten their grip

just at the right time for the water's
ebb-tide and the dust to circulate.


                                   Fall River