-The death trinket-

I’ve noticed that the cat

when approaching something new

laid upon the rug will step forward with

a hesitant posture.

It seems as though this is true for just about all cats.

European kids will instinctively kick

any idle ball within a foot’s reach.

In my Country, the default mechanism is to throw it.

As for the domestic parakeet when

considering its cage, well, it seems

as though the inside is as good as the outside.
Perhaps the bird disagrees.

––There comes a man to a nation, spewing

a mouth’s-full of sneers through any open portal.

This man is inflated across the waistline like a 19th

century Daumier cartoon buffoon. –– This man is vulgar.

A scalp-full of fool’s gold is spray-fixed in place

by handmaidens specializing in filament dynamics, and

––if Rube Goldberg himself set down a design for a man,

this is the man he’d build,––comically ridiculous, unnecessary, absurdly

exaggerated without the inherent charm of Rube's usually absurd exaggerations,

exhibiting the pomposity of Mussolini, and he'd be coldblooded, and

intellectually hamstrung singing "God Bless America" from amplified

megaphones stationed all over town on a never-ending loop.

                -Virginia Fox, vaccinated-

                 drying-up

                 at the half-length mirror

                 it’s hard not to notice the convex
                 arch of the belly, the drapery

                 of skin at the fore-neck, the blue-

                headed retraction

                into the tangled thicket and the remnant

                of a grade school’s polio vaccination

                which by this time has all but vanished.

                a more direct examination reveals

                a clearer image of what was once

                a robust site, the nucleus

                surrounded by the tension

                of healing hairline fissures.

                now it’s seen as a dot, unremarkable,

                although the glazing is brighter there

                than the pallid skin surrounding it,–– like

                a primordial pool.

                from the corridor, the jolting

                bell calls us to our desks, but first

                a close examination is made of the injection site

                below the left shoulder of Virginia Fox, interrupting
                the slow-arching smoothness of her skin there.

                It will soon become a confection of sorts,

               more of a blooming,–– a dandelion’s petals

               circling the gleaming at the hub and little sense of a wound

               and because of this, it’s Virginia Fox who comes to mind this morning.  

-the American bison called buffalo-

the first time I saw the Great Plains Buffalo,

was at the “Buttonwood Park Zoo”––

a small zoo in New Bedford, about 15 miles

from my house in Fall River.

Buttonwood Park was on the short-list of possible

Sunday afternoon attractions along with "Lincoln
Amusement Park", route 6 east,

Horseneck Beach, 88 south, Westport,

the “Shrine of Our Lady of LaSalette” up Attelboro
(where the ancient French women prayed the rosary for an encore)
and best of all, secretly planned extended family “Mystery Rides”,
the logistics of which were worked-out by Uncle Frank and my young father.

"Who knows where the “Mystery Ride” will take us"?!

after church, the cars lined-up at curbside at 1017 Bedford,
with Uncle Frank’s car in the lead position, followed by
my father’s car, followed by Cousin Albert’s car with young
wife Celia riding shotgun, followed by Romeo LeVesque’s car
holding his wife, cousin Edith, followed by the gang of Pieroni’s
in three cars, followed by the Gasperini clan, the crazy Petrucci’s,
the Burtoncini’s and lastly, the Cippolini family, usually crammed into two cars.

this Sunday, the Mystery Ride ends at "Buttonwood Park Zoo".

that’s where I'd see the Great Plains Buffalo for the first time.
out back, a large fenced-in pastoral area is set aside for the buffalo to roam,

but a smaller pen was set for visitors wanting to view them.
from the busy walkway there’s a shoulder-high chainlink fence

and just beyond that, a higher chainlink fence enclosing the buffalo pen.

but inside this fence, five inch diameter iron piping,
chest-high to the buffalo, ran continuously along the interior perimeter.
the buffalo seemed docile, but once in awhile, one of them

would bang his monstrous head on purpose, into the pipe with a resounding clang.

and they’d grunt on occasion, but beyond that and the head-to-pipe banging,

they’d just stand there as if waiting for something expected.

their liquid eyes are round and luminous black.

their hair, golden-brown at the withers is matted and riven.

their noses are wide with wet, black nostrils where the grunting

seemed to have come from, but it comes from deep within instead.

the whole place stinks.

the dung covers the ground in there, it sticks to their hooves,

is plastered across their asses.

I count three Great Plains Buffalo in the pen as I see them for the first time.

I think they’ve come to understand where they are.

I fear they’ve forgotten where it was they’ve come from, hauled from afar 
to Buttonwood on a Mystery Ride of their own so that one day I could take a look.

     

-the accident with airbag deployment-

let's wander-off to a space in time just for a moment,–– whether

heaven or hell or the semiconscious distance between them.

it doesn’t matter when you’re punched in the chest by a mitt into a cloud

of industrial material.

––it settles over and around me, settles on my face, my fists, coating the leathery

wheel, powdering my shirt, painting my shoes, and finding its way

into my nostrils where the stiff little hairs can't keep up.

I'm alone inside the stuff of clouds, but for the guy in the other car who

looks like he’s in a trance, expression as blank as the animals, and through

this elapsed moment in time, this six or so seconds, I’ll travel with him because

he’s ascending inside his own cloud of airbag.

––looks to be an older form of cloud, bluer, a higher density, a coarser cloud,

not nearly as forgiving as my own cloud whose engineers have refined

the substance of its particles, advancing the science.

––but there he is, the other guy,–– powderpuff in blue, artificial gardenia

of route 6 west, drifter alongside cloud-to-cloud on our way to look upon

the faces of lost generations.

––but the scene around us slows its spin and soon enough, clarity regains its measure

of time, and I’m of this world again, powdered like a bunting, and so’s the other guy.

                                                       

               -suffer the children through small inconveniences-

                home from the corner store

                and the box has a small hole in it.

                I didn't notice as I pulled it from the shelf

                ignoring the other boxes of cold, dry cereal,––

                colorful displays hawking sweetness and ballplayers.

                It doesn’t appear to be a clean perforation

                as if retail sabotage had taken place, 

                nor is there excessive gnawing evidence

                as in rodent mischief,

                but more like some sort of shelf damage

                although all the above are possibilities

                at "Chasidor Leo's Market" across the street

                from the backstop in the early 50's.

                giving it the once-over, the rest of the box looks okay.

                the flat orange color is pleasing to the eye.

                nice illustration, sanctioned by Stan Musial swingin’ away

                regardless of factual inconsistencies.

               (how I love the left-handers)

                looks like good contact. nice form, too.

                don’t get to see much of Stan "The Man" Musial.

                National League. Saint Louis Cardinals. I’m not going back.

                a small strip of scotch tape will do the trick and then

                it's a bike ride to the city Dump on Pine Street with Ernie Carrocelli

                in search of frame-rail reflectors and other essential enhancements.

                            

-true confessions as told by me to Dr. Psycho-

(a love poem of early man)

1.
she was sensitive to my needs, good looking,

and slow-danced with the best of them.

wonderful body parts. wonderful.

––one starry night she went out with girlfriends

(who knows where)

and later they stopped at “George Dogs" on Pleasant Street

where she nabbed two with the works to travel

before finding me standing alone on the corner (only I know why)

and pulling to the curb at just below eye-level, the passenger-side

door swung open.

she swiveled out from the always preferred

"shotgun" position, and as the swishing of her material

brushed across my adolescent sensibilities, her girlfriend

from the backseat swept-in behind her taking the shotgun position

left open in the indefinable precision of young women in motion.

2.
"It only took a few seconds, Doc.

I don’t know what the fuck happened.

I was just standing there and this Chevy coupe pulled-up and..well,

the passenger door swung open, see? and then there was this... 
this... swishing sound and a bright light ...."

(dedicated to those who can relate)

-of Michael Joseph a grade school classmate-

Michael Joseph,

the kid with two first names, who once

forced a younger kid to drink mercurochrome
from its glossy little bottle, telling him:
"it tastes like cherry Kool-Aid",

had a goldfish, languishing

in an old glass goblet, sitting on the mantle

over a fake fireplace in the parlor

of his parents house on the third floor
near the corner of Healy and Quarry.

standing on tiptoes to reach the outer rim,

he’d spit on the surface of the water

amused when the goldfish wiggled up

for a little taste of the stuff.

Michael Joseph was just about the sickest little prick

I’ve ever known and through decades of physical separation,

there hasn't been a moment when my opinion
of him was altered for the better.
–– why Michael crossed my mind on occasion
is better left explained by the big sky objects.
but it might be because somewhere,
assigned to the purgatory section of my brain,
I reasoned that a story of him might one day
be offered to the poem-reading public.
–– well, now he’s dead.

I read his obit in the local papers and was not surprised
at the sparseness of positive accounts in the column.

Michael never married, had no children, no siblings,

no aunts, uncles, not a cousin listed, no pallbearers,–– 

nobody to speak of or at least who’d admit to anything,

let alone show their faces.

christ, even "Sam the Bum" who fell down the library steps
in a drunken stupor had pallbearers.

–– they're telling me Michael worked in the "ironing corridors" of a sweltering

factory outlet store, deep in the bowels of the north-end of town.

––"Men’s dress shirts $2.00, Men’s single breasted suits $25.50".

I've acquiesced to what the thought of Michael Joseph

brings to the table of a poet's intrusiveness.
–– but on the brighter side, the goldfish who suffered daily

under Michael’s foamy islands of spittle, well, I hear tell it's swimming

in clear waters with others of its kind in the suburbs of paradise. 

                again with “The Last Night Of The Earth Poems”

               and I’m growing weary of Bukowski.

               don’t get me wrong. It's not him, it's me.

               I enjoy the reading.

               I respect his place in the canon.

               I shelled-out at least 100 bucks on his books

               and all this without concern for my safety.

               but with Charles, sometimes it’s as if

               he’s having a nice conversation with himself, and

               well,–– don't we all, but

               he won’t let me slip a word in edgewise

               and I enjoy slipping a word in edgewise.

               so I turn the page and he’s at the bar again

               and he ends up screwing all the best women there,

               but not every night, he's gotta eat.

               and he tells us about them which is his job

               and he's very good at it.

               listen closely. these are love poems and they're sublime.

               that said, some run-out on him in the dead of night

               carrying hands-full of his stuff.

               others cling too much and are repatriated

               to the barstools from whence they came.

               I'm not finding fault.

               who in hell knows how long I'd last?

               but he’s pulled from the shelf with the best of them

               and a damn good shelf it is.

               all the best people, and

               a nice array of multi-colored spines to

               titillate the neighbors when they drop by.

               Charles spins a fine tale, –– thorny,

               like the stems of roses before you get to the roses,

               but the roses are there if you take the time to shed

               a little blood along the way, and he’s certainly a good storyteller.

               he makes it look easy, but it’s not, really.

               here, this morning is much like the nine mornings before it,

               counting seven to eight crows frocked in feather-black.

               a field of bluegrass green –– fresh blooms

               in cadmium yellow dandies nodding in the wind,

               a full-throated tree line when the sparrows are active,

               a pleasant view of the river when the fog lightens and lifts.

               everything seems to be in the right place at the right time,

               and it's clearly all the right stuff,–– but I'm recalling

               what Bukowski whispered to my ear that morning long, long ago:

                           ".. but as God said,

                               crossing his legs,

                               I see where I have made plenty of poets

                               but not so very much

                               poetry."

                lesson learned.

               (quotation from: "to the whore who took my poems"

               from the volume: "Burning In Water Drowning In Flame")

               

-How the cosmos came to be-

Something was missing from within the nothingness.

Carbon?

Older.

Hydrogen?

No. Older

As when the lonely gods

Opened their eyes for the first time

And chemical elements stiffened their backs.

This began to make sense.

Metal of sky is not made-up.

Water of sky is not handmade.

But–– whatever there was to be had, showed-up
Populating the nothingness.
This, too, began to make sense.

Then, the objects dwelling inside the burning space
With a chance at living beyond themselves,
Drifted from the nothing else with no returning.

The gods, noticing this, began to dance on their feet for the first time

And spinning their skirts, unwittingly began fill the sails of the stars.



Inspired by Kenneth Patchen's "How God Was Made"

First light / Divertimento for Hildie

Morning

Breaks to Clingstone on the Dumpling, then —

The bitter seed which lies in wait

Within the grape's confection 

Kidnaps the sweetness.

Light

Navigates to wood and glass

And blood-red paints

The craggy
Core of the icy peach

As the fault in the grapefruit

Goes unlearned until

The harsh
Introduction of its formula
Stings the naked eye.

Morning

Skies drape

One salt-weathered house; one

Woman sleeping.

Newport, Summer, 1977

-the shopping cart inquirer-

once, there were two plungers in the house.
today, one is missing.
the other one has never been any good.
it begins by plunging acceptably,
but during the release, the rubber continues
to fold into itself causing a wet mess.

so it’s off to “SmartRite Super Store” for two plungers.

the toilet downstairs has always been a problem.

It’s a weak flush, is what it is.

It’s busy at the “SRSS” this morning.

but the plunger department is easy to find

with a nice presentation and a good selection.

I’ve noticed that most are fitted

with long yellow handles.

handles such as these used to be something of importance to me;

sawed from its rubber bell, the yellow stick makes a fine-
looking stickball bat.

but my stickball days are far behind me.

here’s a shopping hint: always pick the plungers

toward the back of the row.

nobody’s manhandled those babies!

I have pride in my selection of two

outstanding plungers, one fixed with a semi-gloss black rubber,
the other fixed with a muted red rubber, a sort-of oxblood color,
a nice terra-cotta look to it.
there'll be no more mix-ups between the upstairs
toilet and the downstairs toilet.
I think the muted red will be best downstairs.

there's no need for a shopping cart.

but even the speedy "12 Items Or Less"

register aisle is long and slow-moving.

what’s this?

two carts toward the register, a woman

appears to have more than 12 items.

looks like she’s trying to pull a fast one

by hiding a bunch of stuff under a coat in her cart.

I may be a poet of ill-repute, but I can spot subterfuge

from the end of a long line with the best of them.

they’ll nab her at the register.

there’s the coat.

there’s another sleeve of something else.

there’s a blister-pack of D-cell batteries.

I’m spotting many different colors
of cloth and blister packs edging their way
from beneath the coat’s parameters.

a rough count already has it at eleven items.
she's at the edge of compliance.

wait a minute!
that's her coat inside the cart!

It's all so obvious now.
she took it off to walk around the “SmartRite”

to be free of its winter’s weight.

she puts the coat on at the register, one sleeve at a time
like any normal "SmartRite" customer.

“this is mine” she tells the harried, blue-vested young woman

tapping keys for a living in order to reach an ending, which,
by-the-way, is also what I do everyday.

           -Tombstone territory-

            An introduction and requiem
            with cameo appearances.

            Here is the stone,
            Chiseled in the name of Frank Toni

            Cobbler to the southend of town

            Tender to the riven steel-toed

            Boots of the working man,

            Savior to the broken espadrille strap, the forlorn
            Lady’s last chance at one night out,

            Glazer to the Snapjacks

            Of Jean deBerry D'Quesne,––

            Frank Toni,
            Heart like wading Christopher

            (Long before he was speared in the back!

            Et tu Cardinals in red-feather frock,

            Flock of Pontiff, a Legion of Doom is what it is)

            And Frank, such as he was,––
            Seamster of heavy leather,–– the blood

            On his hand is the nub at the wheel. The pinky-

            Fingered badge-of-honor recipient,––

            The man who said:

            “They’ll be ready by Friday”

            But they’re racked at pick-up,

            Tagged and glistened by rouge on Thursday.

            Frank Toni, husband, father of three, soup-slurper ,
            Third number on the rotary dial, Fogland clam-digger,

            Cobbler to the southend massive, dead
            Near five decades now.

          -facing the place of falling water-DRAFT DRAFT

           the Sun sets in the west in the town of my birth.

           looking eastward from an important window, the small

           city is rising above the Taunton, with its splash of houses,

           in the complexities as any of its three stories, glinting on the landscape at twilight,

           what a sight !

           It’s cool tonight and by this time, the Sun

           has changed its effect, a warmer tint across the city,
           also called: the “Spindle City” or the “Granite City”.

           best, is an early Wampanoag designation:"Quequechan",
           which translates to the language of the Longcoat as: "Falling Water".
           the place of falling water.

           I lived across the river, an old-timer
           scratching the dryness, tapping keys for a word's sake.

           

           I'll consider what it is I've forgotten;
           what it is over there which is being withheld.

           and now’s as good a time as any to scan beyond its banks.
           that’s where the kid who has my eyes lives and he's got my poems.

           the Sun rises in the east here in my town;
           it slips over the rooftops, the steeples and smokestacks
           and from across the widening river, when I've a mind to,
           I can hear myself waking up in the morning.

           and what a crazy thing to say. but what a sound it all makes.

           and what a sight it is to behold.

           Fall River, 1951-1959 / Swansea, 2018