-for all the benchseat manipulators-

the old men are dropping like flies.

the strangers listed in the newspapers,—
the grandfathers, the uncles and the portuguese

guy who lived across the street who

dropped like a lazy fly ball
to the outfield grass on Tuesday
and is now ready for viewing.

I was young and lived through it

to what I am now which is old
but still living.

It’s hard to disapprove

of one's earliest yearnings,

those which are expressed

as a rite of passage.

even so, I was hesitant

to drive up there with her,

up the hill to the Narrows where

the forest blinds the standing water.

It was untrue when I told her

we'd go to the movies and then

cross the street to someplace nice to eat.

It came more easily to tell her

(after I stopped the car,
after I shifted to first gear
from the column and turned
the engine off and cracked the window,

after I pulled the lever up
and pushed the benchseat
back on its rails as far as it would go)

softly, cautiously, with but a modicum

of the current situation's half-truth, that I loved her.

-For Olive Goffe in paradise-

Serenade:

Olive,––

your grey sweater frays

at the hemline of a common twill.

Olive,––

I am a poor boy, too. (pa-rum-pa-pum-pum)

but not so poor as you.

Olive,––quieter than a leaf.
smarter than the blackboard.

Olive,––
did you smile my way when all the while

you knew I was not looking?

shame on me for being the fool who

didn't know any better.

Coda:

Olive,

I leave this missive for you, and when I die,

will you pant for my bones?  (pa-rum-pa-pum-pum)

Fall River Public Schools

"pant for (my) bones" paraphrasing  "for Marylin M" / Charles Bukowski

-first meaningful act of disobedience-

they gave me a bike

and I was going to use it.

what did they think

I was going to do with it?

where was it they assumed
I wouldn't go?

I was the cave-dweller

looking toward the horizon

beyond every sight and scent

of my neighborhood planet,—

out there, over the mountains

beyond the clouds
far from the river,

the open gates, the broken fences

across the backyards of no-man’s-land,

across the stiff meadow grasses

beyond the billboards,

the backsides of the billboards,
the sides without pictures,
the sides with the architecture,—

southward where the mill's granite
walls are red-colored,

where the trees at twilight seem
dressed-up and dancing like newer women,

where sound seems muted,—

out there, into the black-hole where nothing
looks like anything I've known
or smells the same as before

and I won't be coming back.

they said: “don’t ride it across the street.”

don’t ride it across the street?

they gave me a bike for christsake.

where’d they think I would't go?

                                     Quequechan

-on another page-

It was then I realized

As the wafer of communion
Was placed with fingertip precision
At the flat-side of my tongue,

The wafer I couldn’t swallow,

The one that stuck

To the roof of my mouth,

From the tongue to the sacrament,
The holy eucharist,
The tongue sticking it to Jesus,

The tongue of Judas and the Priests —

The tongue later retracted
In a booth at Al Mac’s Diner,

A plate of eggs over easy,
With friends at the table,
That life was traveling forward

In another direction

From that of the doctrines
Of the Holy Rosary Church,

The church with its stone facade
Rising on a low-lying hilltop
Behind left field.

Inez at the Diner was more inviting —

The music of Jerry Lee Lewis
Romancing from the juke,

Superseding the Agnus Dei,— 
Inez of the Diner
Smiling as we sat in the booth at her section;
Inez, who wore an artificial flower
Pinned to the lacy collar of her dress of fading pink,
Inez, who called me "Honey"

And wouldn’t he have smelled like olives

And stale perspiration?

Wouldn’t Inez have let him in
To wash the crusted skin
Of his sun-burned feet?

Wouldn’t our dead friend be made living

And baseball made whole again?

So at the rail for the last time

I rose from a kneeling position,—

And on my way to the world outside,
When Jesus called my name for the last time

I said:— “Now who do, who do

You think you’re foolin’?”

                                        Fall River

-Wisdom-

1.

Somebody told me Jews 

Like to drink

Manischewitz.

I know one Jew.

Joy Liebmann's desk was adjoining my desk

At the infamous grade school we both attended;

Her careful eyes wide-open to her books.
She was studious

And ignored me as she should have.

I'd drop pencils to the floor and then

Under the canopy of hard wood hinged in iron, 

I travelled northward from the tops of her brown & whites...

2.

I befriended Edward Meckelberg

At the face of harsh

Peer opposition in junior high school.

I know two Jews.

Edward was an outsider, socially funny-looking and brilliant.

Crazy Michael Joseph, the kid with two first names,

Informed me that Edward didn’t believe in the Virgin Mary,

Of whom it was drilled into me at Saturday catechisms,

Was the hand-picked mother-to-be of baby Jesus.

But it was Edward’s Mother who introduced me to Gelatin,

Which beforehand I had only known as JELLO.

3.

The Nazis (Let us all spit-up now) told us 

That Jews have long, convex noses,

Beady eyes and smirked hunched-over

Looking for cover 

As they counted their reichsmarks.

You've seen the illustrations. 

I know seven additional Jews. 

One has what seems to be a normal nose,

Dark-brown eyes, and works for tips as a waitress

At the Nite Owl Diner on Pleasant Street.

Of the other six, one has a nose like 

The Portuguese guy watering his lawn across the street.

Another has eyes for terra-cotta

And makes it into figures who nearly

Escape from their enclosures.  

Another is a bank teller. He counts money,

But it’s not his money.

Of the other three, one has a nose like Durante,

The "Schnozzola," substantial and crowd-pleasing.

His eyes seem normal enough.

The sixth of seven has one working eye,

A terrible accident, and I don't remember

Anything about his nose which is probably a good thing.

The seventh of seven slept late in the morning; 

Her eyes opened slowly like the lids of most treasure chests to sunlight

And of her nose, well, her nose was formed like that of the polished 

Marble-pink of the Renaissance Madonna long before

The mallet of Laszlo Toth struck. 

The Portuguese guy across the street

Would call it: “Belo.”

Me? I’d call it: “Jewish-Florentine.”

-a theoretical world-

from a storefront doorway the sign to passersby reads: "We're OPEN"!

street-side, the plate-glass window displays selections of its inventory. 

the street is busy with activity and gatherers of belongings are just getting started.

people greet one another presenting kittens from their hands, presenting images 

of accomplished work and images of the accomplished work of others;

some who are living, others who are dead.

curbside, a jovial old man introduces two small dogs in tutus dancing on their

hind legs to the music of an accordion amusing the children.

artists, poem-writers, bloggers, diarists and sports fans; idle gossipers, digital

self-portrait aficionados and lonely hearts fly through the arena's atmosphere

like ping-pong balls sprung from a field of mousetraps.

the variety store carries news of the plaintiff's accusations, of noteworthy adjudications, certain character indictments and exposés of the populated interiors;

it carries news of the evening's visible planets masquerading light, advancing

the proposition that false-faces will often intrigue us.

on the local front, the latest report tells of the 24 inch Schwinn's mid-morning

crack-up on the avenue near the cemetery.

it's assumed that this is the cherry-red beauty that has weight and occupies space.

two old-timers are standing at the storefront's window;

one is inside looking outward, the other is outside looking inward.

                                         

 The River

The river widens southward in its trek,

Greying as it runs from below the hill of the city

Driving as an arm to the sea by things which are measured
And by things which can't be measured — then

Drops to the mouth of Narraganset Bay.

The water's color is perceived the way it is

From particle absorption from certain minerals,

And by reflections in the atmosphere, greying 

From sediment kicked-up from the silt of its bed.

Testimonials are written above its banks

From the hill-clinging tenement houses where

My friends were living at my side, and where

Everything was written in indelible text.

I came to know the river with them, from the foot of the hillside

Where, before our time, railroad tracks were laid
Running north to south from Boston to Providence.

We went to the river to smoke forbidden cigarettes,

And throw harmless stones into the running water.

We rode bikes, played ball, disobeyed or mothers and fathers, and

Maybe I'll go down there tomorrow to hold hands with their ghosts.

Could be I'm doing that now.

                                   

                                

-Quequechan Testament-

1.

shawled in mourning

black out there, —  two Portuguese

widows speak with reverence across the fence,

the subjects of God, of laundry and bread.

–– and from the sites of commerce

gulls glide panting above the restaurant spoils

as homeward, lovers untangle the knot of sleep

and cats awaken to the same curiosities.

such is the city's opening vocabulary.

2.

how then to interpret

the language of one's own salt.
I'm not the proverbial fish-out-of-water
I once in defiance pretended to be.

but as it is, if my residence is questioned

I'll be ready with the answers.

                                        

                                        

                                                        

-one of those moments-

you weren't getting
anywhere, my friend
and neither was I.

the songs from the record player
spun ballad to ballad
as we assumed the positions

of standing outside the music
with our hands in their pockets.

but hell, my friend. somehow,
from somewhere in the distance
I found her

and we crossed the crowded floor
slow-dancing at the Anawan Street hall
on that warm summer's night.

you remember the girl, my friend.

you elbowed me in the ribs to notice her.

she's the one leaning on the parallel bars at the wall,
distant and planetary —

the one whose hair was back, the jet-

stone of the riverside housing project who

unfolded her arms 

from the buttons of her blouse

as if to say yes.

I know, my friend.
that was then,
and then was a long time ago.

but hell,

she was the one
slow dancing in my arms, my friend
and that still counts.

-let it be written-

in the beginning

God created the heavens and the earth.

and the earth was void of life

and darkness fell
upon the face of the deep.

but the corner

of Bedford and Stinziano streets
was populated

by the boys and their girls who

activated its atmosphere
and in the process

God laid as warning
a number of venial sins
at the doorsteps of their souls;

sins dropped at the Drive-In
over the burning naugahyde

of the darkened Ponta Delgada;

sins dropped
at the Waterworks of the Narrows

overlooking the fresh-water
Watuppa Ponds of the sweeping
Wampanoag Reservation;

dropped at the Plaza Theater’s

crazy weekend commotions
and the Empire’s muffled
balcony explorations;

dropped at the last embrace
by the entrance to the ballpark's

musty dugouts at twilight and behind
the blinds of the peeling billboards;

dropped across the sea-salted 
sand dunes of the Spindrift where salt-
waters of ocean murmured

under evening skies

and growing weary of pin-

pricking so many stars, and influenced

by what it was the boys and their girls were up to

God said:  "Let there be Light"— 
and sure as Hell, there was light.

                                       Quequechan