-aphorism-

what is the nature of the idiom

or

what if it comes undone

as the cloth's weave when the errant

thread is pulled from it

or

how does it spend its time?

is the foundation of storytelling the same

as its history's structure

in that

the capstone is beautiful

the tie-stone strong?

2/13/12

-the mystery ride-

Let's hit the road.

To leave by car

We must enter the car.

Two doors and the front seats

Tilt forward to assist easy access
From the outside to the backseat.

Sometimes on the driver's side

The tilting seat will cause the horn to blow.

One slip-up could tipoff the cops.

Four doors and it’s every man

For himself.

Let's live the two-door life.

A life of two doors.

We're on our way.

Four doors and from
The open back window

The flat tongue of the dog 

Flaps through the air in its sparks of spit

Splattering the trunk;

The simple vacation of its summer days.

Two doors and in the evening
The Moon is all it could be.

She dials-in a smokey Platters tune,

they asked me how I knew
my true love was through

Climbing over to the backseat bench

She knows how it's done,—

Her petticoats whistle 

Across the naugehyde under
The headliner's yellowing domelight.

She bounces on purpose twice or more

Closer to the Galaxy's

Cockeyed fins in the only

Way to make them functional.

I of course replied,
when the lovely flame dies,
smoke gets in your eyes.

To leave by car

We'd enter the car.

The mystery ride.

A two-door life.

A life of two doors.

We'd hit the road, pair by pair

To the place where it stopped;

when the deep purple falls
over sleepy garden walls
and the stars begin to twinkle in the sky
for as long as my heart will be
sweet love will always be
here in the deep purple dreams

And moonlight beamed.

              

                          Quequechan

-at the Hugo A. Dubuque School-

1.

The turtle is turned on its back

Upon the asphalt of the schoolyard.
The turtle inverted has four useless legs
And its time is running out.

This is the age of death's exploration.

Killing creatures
Was a rite of passage for the boys;

Grasshoppers to the webs of the widows,

Toothpicks through the ladybugs,—
Squishing caterpillars beneath the soles
Of our sneakers,— tossing

Hornworms into the wacky throngs of red ants

Climbing over one another for a taste,
Tattle-tailing,
Waving their antennae, knocking heads,—

Displaying their intelligence.

The wackiest kid
Got his hands on a magnifying glass

And any slow-mover
Was doomed to the needled-ended
Spike of the Sun.

On their knees at the carnage,
The boys laugh like lunatics

Elbowing each other at the first
Crackling spit of bug-smoke

As the girls, their delicate arms folded
Just above the waistlines of the crisp
Day-dresses, lean on the high,
Over-the-head chain linked fence,
Blank-faced and anticipating.

2.
There’s a famous 1940s photograph

Of a drowned man sprawled on the beach

At Coney Island, surrounded by a semicircle
Of grey-faced onlookers in high-waisted
Bathing-suits as a few attendants fail
In their struggle to release him
Back into the sea of the living.

His young wife, kneeling in the sand
Next to his dead head,

Realizes the still-shot camera at the ready,
And smiles broadly as the shutter clicks
To document the scene.

She smiles because it’s instinctive for her to do so

Whenever a camera is poised in her direction.

The schoolyard girls observing the brutality
Of life and death at the fence near the tarmac
Are as engaged, but colder;

Austere at the moment of the truth.

3.

The Maypole stands for the school's
Mayday festivities

And the alternating boys and girls,
Dressed-up,
Starched and serious are walking
In a slow circle around it.
They hold in their hands, pole-attached strips
Of crepe paper;
Red white and blue, marching like benign
Circus creatures,
Corkscrewing the pole, delighting the audience
Of parents and teachers in attendance.

From the open doors of the red-brick building,
Down the granite stairway, each flight worn in the middle,
The electrical extension cord winds its way outward
To where the appropriate fanfare trumpets upon a folding table
From the portable record player.

                                                    Quequechan

-Elementals-

Into Saturday evening
And the ravioli are hand-made, the edges
Fork-pressed and in a bedroom vacated for the night,

A laundered top-sheet covers the double bed,
Is flour-dusted ready to receive them.

This is where the ravioli rest
As they harden overnight, a process
Necessary to hold the edges together 
When submerged into water.

The streetlights are on

So they won’t let us go outside.
Our mothers kept time
By the streetlight activations

And before our passion for exploration
Broke from their roots, we played outside
Close enough to home

That a mother’s call was clearly recognized.

When the streetlights came on
The names of the kids reverberated
Throughout the neighborhood.

In the evening from the kitchen window, the park

Looked cold, bluer, like a giant
Outer planet longing to be populated.

That’ll be our job in the morning.
And from the bedroom's top-sheet,

The ravioli wait their turn to enter the water.

                                         Quequechan

-Left behind-

I held back for a moment

Allowing the mourners to shuffle out;

Soft-talking, respectful smiles,

Handshakes all around as if congratulating

One another on their ability to survive. 

We’d decided on a closed casket

With a framed 8x10 glossy standing

On the lid at the head.

I think it’s the head.

The twenty year old air-brushed color pic

Has him sitting healthy, smiling and leaning

Forward at a severe angle, typical 

To studio portrait photography.

Maybe I should have opted for the Extreme

Measures alternative.

He’d be beeping away in a warm sleep

In the starchy room where I left him to die.

He travelled the distance necessary
Selling the company’s booze everyday

Miles from home where the ocean is,
Where the restaurants thrived in summer
Then shuttered his sales in winter
Returning home through the seasons
Dropping his heavy keys in the milk-
Glass saucer kept for them at the door.

He bequeathed to me

His corner across the active
Street where we lived;

The platitudes of his relations;
The unrealistic assertions of linking
Almost everything I did
For years to come, with him.
He bequeathed to me his half-
Measure of my birth and my youth.

I said: "We'll take this one".

It’s not the most expensive.
It's the least expensive.
It's bronze-colored.
Others were tantalizing,
Whispered as built of exotic woods.
I held back for a moment.

But in the end, I didn’t think
We should waste the money.

                                    Fall River

-To each his own-

That's me

Standing on the corner
Leaning against the chain-
Linked fence of the park

Looking around,

Exhaling the forbidden smoke 
From my nostrils, 

Waiting for somebody to show up.

It’s early evening

Just before suppertime

When we’re usually expected
To be inside.

My parents left in mid-morning

Traveling to Tiverton, Rhode Island

And the wedding of a niece.

My mother left "supper on the stove".

Macaroni and cheese.

Not the packaged shit.

Home-cooked elbow macaroni,

Strained, multi-layered with cheeses

And baked in the oven

Forming an amber crust.

It stays warm on the stove.
My teenage sister has escaped to the house

Of the fascinating Edwina Mello

And my younger brother
Is rummaging through

The drawers of her bedroom dresser.
He doesn't know what it is he's looking for

And he won’t understand anything he finds.

But instinctively, he knows he has to do this.
It's a rite of passage.

That's me, standing on the corner
Leaning against the right-field fence,
The smoldering butt flicked to street-side
As adroitly as the best of professional smokers,

Looking around, waiting for somebody to show up.

                                                Quequechan

  

-exhibitionist-

when the Duncan

YoYo guy showed-up

on the tarmac of the schoolyard

we observed the miracle

of the YoYo

dancing on its string

the string we knew

as a tightly-wound ever-curling strand

its YoYo listing lazily

at the end of its run

string looped 'round the finger,

YoYo slowing its spin

to a dead rotation

like a dry planet

surrendering its last

chance at life.

form the schoolyard tarmac, the Duncan YoYo guy
rocked the cradle, the sleeper whizzed,

the walking dog bounced away and returned

with the snap of a wrist to the Duncan guy's hand.

sometimes,

two YoYos slept as they spun

and circled inside both his arms, one, two,
three times or more, the YoYo chasing itself on the fly

and when the piercing bell rang

it rang for an end to the exhibition

and the beginning of something else inside the walls

which had nothing to do with playing with a YoYo.

-From Claggart's tongue-

1.

It's a long night before the next night's 
Funeral prologue;— "I am an old man.."

And I’ve had my belly full of it.
Everything hangs by the short
Rope's end of this day's reading. Soon,
We look to witness the hanging death of Billy Budd,

Press-ganged to come aboard, as I’ve heard them sing of it.

I realize the sound builds layer on layer. But
This time,— it returns salutations.
This time,— the terrible beauties display themselves.

Ship's company's full-throated on deck of the ship,

Displaying its scenes by the movement of its planes upon
The Metropolitan's stage like an orchestrated waterwheel.

Soon they’ll hang Billy Budd for not but the heart's
Farewell to the "Rights of Man,"— Then 
For the strike of his fist to silence Claggart's tongue!

We participate, as ship's hands bear witness

To the tense procedure from the balcony's third row.

The House has split the ship amidships, and at the split
Of the bones of Billy’s neck;

Taut and fatal rope held-fast by the hands of the hands.

2.
With the "Bellipotent" dead then drawn

We'll haul-out taking to dry land.

                                      

                                      The Metropolitan Opera / 5/10/12

                                      New York, New York

-the soda-jerk at the drug store-

I know of a soda fountain

at the Oak Grove Pharmacy on the corner
of Bedford Street and Oak Grove Avenue.

there, you can order hot

fudge sundays, banana splits,

malts and lime-rickeys.

when the pills are ready, the pharmacist

will call out the name of the prescribed.

the soda-jerk is an older kid we know.

out the window is the street where we live.

the girl who makes me pant lives in the grey

three-tenement with a ringer washing machine
squatting on the first-floor porch.

out the big paned window, people are walking by.
men with soft hats banned at their brims.
women with purses tucked neatly into their armpits.

the cars parked on the street look heavy,
dressed in bulky sheetmetal, fenders like dirigibles. 

new-styled panoramic windshields distort the landscape.

the Hugo A. Dubuque School is straight up the avenue
beyond the cemetery where Lizzie Borden rests.
inside the drug store, the music is played
by portable radios lying on their backs on the counter.
the music is convincing, although most of it
seems to circulate inside the walls of the portables
where only some of it finds a way out.
what we heard was enough.

my older sister is with me and our younger brother.

the pills are for my grandfather,

my mother’s father who has sugar diabetes.

I saw a black growth on the side of the little

toe of his left foot one night as his wife, my grandmother,

my mother’s mother, soaked and patted his feet in a shallow
basin on the floor of the parlor in front of the television.

later in the month his foot was amputated in Boston.

later in the year his sight began to fail and he died soon after.
I thought he'd be buried in the backyard
near his grapevine with the cats and parakeets
but they packed him off to the funeral home
just beyond the bakery.

but before that, my sister, brother and me are sitting
at the counter of the soda fountain, the soda-jerk,
an older kid we know is serving his paying customers
and we’re just waiting there, spinning, always clockwise,
for our grandfather's pills.

                                               Quequechan, 1951, 1952

-now awake-

the sparrows are going crazy

and by their numbers seem

to shake the head of the leafy elm,

and the coarseness at the resonator

in the throat of the crow is amplified

by the early morning hour.

shrieking.

bloodcurdling.

something's going on.

there’s an otherworldliness

to the crow's stature,
its stately posture in the manner

that it speaks of its power,

its indifference to others

and of the sparrow at the face
of its own fundamental station.

It's difficult

to measure the physical

presence of the crow until

one stands upon the rail

of the backyard deck
at the sliding glass doors,

a lifeless sparrow

hung by a wing in its beak

in the midst of a mourning elm

in a deeply, greying dawn.