-It’s that goddamn God again-

Requiem for Rose Giambastini

the walnuts are falling.

they drop from a plastered ceiling.

but how?

It hurts when a walnut bops you on the head––

when another stings the back of the neck

as you bend to grab the walnut (that bopped you
on the head in the first place) from the green

linoleum.

these nuts have hard

shells.
one way is to split them open by hammer on the tabletop.

best to cover them first.

those old nutcrackers weren’t meant to crack walnuts.

they don’t work the way you want them to work.

they open just wide enough to fit the walnut between the handles, but
too wide for the palm of your early hand to see the process through.

the walnut slides around haphazardly within the nutcracker.

It takes a sure hand and bothersome placement.

you've got to find the equator–– presume the other side,

                                                    the dark side of the walnut,

goes ‘round to meet the teeth of the cracker's lower jaw

and when the time comes to realize where the falling 

walnuts come from; from what? the hand of God?

a paradise of water-stained plaster and a chorus of disturbing
laughter from those in attendance standing in the hallway?  no. but––

It doesn’t matter. I’ll hold to the imagery

and when my maternal grandmother dies, the walnuts,

if they fall at all, fall far from the realm of enchantment, but––

with enough lingering interest in the charm of the thing to tell yet another story.

1017 / 1948 (?)

-aunt Eva-

when I first wrote of Eva  (spun-

blonde beehive hairdo, spray-netted to stay put,
muscular calves, fleshy thighs and

peek-a-boo nylon

stockings, sitting on the couch

in front of the television)  it was due to remembrances

of recurring visits to my father’s house

and Eva,

married with young kids of her own

is considered now, to having then been on the young-

side of her late mid-thirties.

but the reported hemline shortness of her dress

is misleading.

it just appeared to be short because

she’s tall and weighs-in on the heavy side,
more Italian than French and I doubt
the hemline was considered inappropriate when

she bought the dress,

probably at the storied "Cherry & Webb"
Department Store on South Main where

my young mother

(and plenty of other mothers
far above her financial station)

shopped for special occasions closing-in from the near horizon;

(expensive)
apparel, neatly folded within perfumed boxes to carry home and save
with descriptive "Cherry & Webb" logo printing on their lids

and this, before (it could be argued, early proposals
in experimental gentrification) the first Shopping Mall appeared,

constructed on a large parcel of land on the wooded frontier)  but
in the here and now of this story, there sits Eva again,
near fully-clothed sitting on the couch in my father's house and

although parallel descriptions as those herein can be said of Aunt Alma,

this exposé continues about Eva, and this selected pinprick of her time on this Earth.

1017 / 1953 (?)

          -a consequence in raspberry jam-

          introducing my two-and-a-half year old son

          snacking after his feeding of nutritious food

          prepared by the hands of his mother.
          I've provided the snacks and now his hands, his face

          and hair are coated with sticky raspberry jam

          and what appears to be cake frosting, although

          no trace of cake can be found anywhere in the house.

          his mother is in another room and seems content
          to have left him in my care.

          my immediate concern is to find a way

          to wrestle him from his passion for sugar and clean him up
          before I'm nabbed in the act by his anti-sugar campaigning mother.

          I’m intrigued by his singular dismissiveness at being
          such a sticky mess.

          It would drive me crazy.

          everything he touches from his tray sticks to his hands.
          his hands stick together, finger to finger.

          his hair (Monica Vitti blonde) is matted in tufts of petrifying jam.

          I wouldn’t last a minute.
          I'm a plugged-nickel if his mother shows-up sugarless and scowling:
         “Damn It, Billy! Get Me A Facecloth With Warm Water"!

          Ohio

  A commissioned poem of "Fighting Al" Johnson, who,
  By way of the Kamikaze, went down to the sea on his ship.

By the Basin: The Northwestern Philippine Sea, April 16, 1945:

"Fighting Al" Johnson, chief machinist's-mate, was killed in action

Aboard the USS Hobson, DMS-26, a fast destroyer-sweeper in mid engagement,
Stove-in by a pilot crazed "Zeke"–– a heavy torpedo, one engine, two-manned

Meteorite of an aircraft during the bloody offshore Battle of Okinawa.
––Back home, his three year old son lived-on to become the sole proprietor of noteworthy

"Hartley's Original Pork Pies", South Main Street, skilled in fashioning,
For the workingman's palate, the best pork pies in the city of Fall River, Massachusetts.

––A patron, long of Hollywood and Broadway, USA, would one day come to proclaim:

"I love these little things"!

That would be the once beguiling star of stage and screen, Patricia Neal.

––You'll remember, she's the gal who won the pathos of "Klaatu" (the Emissary) 

Utilizing her understated charms to coax him to submission in order to save the Earth's
Population from eradication by the scowling "Consortium Of Other Planets".

Klaatu will be back.

We didn’t change our ways.
The USS Hobson, DMS-26 afire and broken but afloat and under power,
Continued the fight of her life, holding her valiant dead within the burning of their stations,
Headlong into war's fierce commotion upon the black, Northwestern Philippine Sea.

Epilog:

"Fighting Al" Johnson, killed manning an ack-ack anti aircraft gun port amidships

Was buried at sea.

Patricia Neal, star of stage and screen came to retire during a fight of her own, residing

On the Isle of Manhattan with occasional stopovers, southend of Fall River, for a dozen
Hartley's Original Pork Pies to travel on route to her beachfront home on the great

Coastal island of Martha’s Vineyard. ––– The End.

This poem is commissioned by Fighting Al's only son, his namesake, Alan Johnson,
second guy on the corner to own his own car,–– a new, six-cylinder, four-door,
wedgewood-blue, 1959 Ford Custom 300, three gears forward on the column.

-airmail-

an introduction to a commission

so it’s been about two weeks since this happened:

I opened the side door to check on the day's mail.

It’s an old, small rectangular metal box with a lid

which has a narrow slot for the delivery of
the standard monthly bills, letters, greeting-cards and the like.

for larger items, the lid lifts to accommodate.

but the slot, like I’ve said, is narrow and the lid

opens, but slightly which causes problems when

fetching magazines, shopping-mall fliers, and the always

amusing shoutouts from local dealerships who

want to buy my car and can give me the deal of a lifetime.

as my hand digs in, my old friend Alan Johnson walks up the road.

––he knows I write things down.

he wants me to write something about his father

who died when Alan was three years old.

he’d like me to write something about a man

he never knew, nor loved and didn’t remember.
with my hand stuffed inside the narrow mailbox and nearly
held there without consent, I began the age-old struggle
confronting artists of all stations, which is
to proffer excuses, no matter how ridiculous, to avoid
committing to perform such requests.

"A band of criminals stole my MacBook and I can't do anything without my MacBook."

"For christsake, Alan. I’m going to croak soon enough myself"!

but then –– but then,

Alan (Chico) Johnson, once a young Bedford Street compatriot

through our time in the 50s into the early 60s tells me:

“He was killed aboard his Destroyer in World War Two by a Kamikaze”.

so the poem dedicated to "fighting" Al Johnson is nearing completion.

-the red-coated fox-

approaching the east-facing window into the backyard

at the tree-line, and there’s the red-coated fox.

the fox is on the trot from north to south

with the river behind her glistening under early skies,

her long, narrow snout erect and observant, occasionally

swiveling to starboard where I stand, with the black,

short-haired cat watching at the window.

the fox seems to enjoy the dew-cooled, green-coated
lay of the land and the river as I do on early morning walks,

but the fox is not alone in the community she's made for herself.

westward, the new neighbors have three adult Great Danes

with the population of joggers and small-dog walkers

of Gardners Neck Road protected from them by a hastily erected

pole-wired fence.

they’ll bark at anything or anyone crossing their line-of-sight, but

the Great Danes don't indicate an immediate physical threat to passersby.
they seem content to simply bark their preference to be recognized.
but no more than a nudge of their powerful heads would be enough to push

the wire-wall down.
In that event, it's every neighborhood Bichon Frise for itself.

across the road further westward, the young mother and female child
walk to the end of the driveway waiting for the school bus.

the Great Danes bark at the sight of them.

the young mother is intensely concerned, but

the female child is intensely curious.

stopping for the pick-up, the kids in the school bus are intrigued,

feeling safe within their cadmium yellow sheetmetal cocoon.

at the south-side window I can see them

pointing toward the barking Danes from the port-
side windows of the school-bus.

when the bus moves on, the female child goes with it.

the mother walks up the driveway and into her house.

the Great Danes shut-up during the brief pause at their fence.

(quickly, but with common sense interior caution)

I've moved to the east-facing window where

the fox has stopped trotting, sensing the sudden

silence of the Danes, but the cat's active, trying to

prioritize the views of the drama playing out before her:

red-coated fox to the east-northeast

or three Great Danes to the south by east

or mother and child to the south by west
or school bus by the nub of its hood due south

where intermittent cadmium yellow lines assist

on a heading toward the Bay.

-aural amusements in recital-

reading the poems of others to myself

in a small room without reverberation,
the readings are imagined as readings in my voice,

the voice I recognize as my own;

the voice I hear when ordering take-out at the "China Royal"

(for that “personal touch”)

or when talking to my son on the phone
about matters of import twixt father and son.

he lives in Los Angeles by choice,
although I've absolved him from feelings of guilt

if I croak alone in an unseemly manner.
(more can be found of "LeCapri Motel" elsewhere in the canon)

this morning, while "listening" to one of my poems

in my own voice in my own head, the reading morphed
to the voice of a young Naomi Replansky, adding a streetwise,
Queens, N.Y. punctuation to an otherwise dreamy little poem
of true romance.

well, nearly true romance.

but along with her voice, an exaggerated image of Naomi
appeared to me, reciting from behind a lectern
with a Camel cigarette hanging from the far side of her mouth
drenched in a duck’s-ass.

this absurd sighting brought early neighborhood to mind;
images of Carmella Tacovelli, the tough-talking
mother to “Pappy” Tacovelli who, through the seasons
played the game battered and bruised from the crouch.

and there were other sightings.

I’ve experimented with other voices in recital, too.

like the John Wayne drawl, the charming
falsetto of Wally Cox, of Marilyn's breathlessness
and even the ill-tempered staccato of old Miss Sykes,

my 5th-grade correctional officer while doing hard time
at the great and terrible Hugo A. Dubuque School.
(and more can be found of this institution and others elsewhere in the canon)

I've enjoyed listening to all of them and often lingered,
but eventually gave-way to the familiarity of my own voice.
(once, just in time before falling from the edge like others of my kind)

the good news is
the annoyingly dour voice of God
hasn’t appeared to me in recital yet.
the bad news is
I hear the lectern rolling into place.

-not last night's sky,

but tonight's sky which is clear

and ripe for a wandering eye, the waxing

crescent contributing in its muted role.

I'll walk a short distance to "Nancy's Country Store"

open 'till 10, for a sugar-free, low-sodium drink

touting an "advanced electrolyte system" then a shortcut 

through the backyards on the return to the house, but I won't go inside.

––I'll wander around the landscape absorbed by the lushness

of late August's atmosphere, a lingering mid-evening scent

salted by the southerlies skimming the bay, 32 points of the compass,

stars all over the place, and I still can't make out the pictures.

––the stars are eating themselves to death,

devouring themselves in a fierceness barely understood

within the realm of our natural order of things.

neither man, woman, laughing hyena, king-shit, nor insect

can begin to fathom the ferociousness of stars.

the romance of the great open-air convertibles should remain

within the province of the Moon, as dead as it is.

there is no romance to be found in the stars up-close.

––tonight, cloaked beneath a glittering firmament 

which deepens its fatal attitude with increasing scrutiny,
it's determined to be too god-damned out here,

and the time for retreating into the house has come.
Swansea / August / 2018

                                           

-Notes from the 4th-

There’s a lot going on, what with the clinging

stench of searing meats from backyards

grilling in every direction and my awkward resistance

stemming from neighborly invitations when I take out the trash.

Nighttime, and the celebrations continue

across the river where fireworks ignite over the slow

rising nature of the city.

First, a beat is struck like the pizzicato

of a stressed bass chord, the canister

shot from its ordnance, then the silent expanse,

multi-colored, born in the flash of its hub.

From this side of the river, the largest displays appear to range

from the southend of town to the north-end of town, where

from my line-of-sight, rooftops draw upon the light

as the river draws its light reflectively, like a planet
formed in liquid water revolving an arm’s length from its Sun.

Soon enough the atmosphere fades to black,

save the population’s incandescence pinpricking the hillside.

In the end, a field of stars

above the eastern horizon continue

from the face of the deep, beyond the breach, where

the glint of embers are falling.


                                                        Swansea







   

-Say hello to Larry n' Cecil-

Together they're dysfunctional

As obsolete as a drawerful of engine cranks.

Or so we thought.
What's left of them was once the cold-blooded

Preserves of history, but not so fast.
Say hello to Larry n' Cecil

And allow us to introduce ourselves.
We're the ones who presumed you dead and buried.

We're the ones who thought we had it in the bag.
We're the hollow-eyed four-pointer rope-yanked

To the hood of your smelly Chevy pickup.

Enjoy the resurrection, boys, and yeehaw!

The party's on us.

Writ upon the Electoral College madness of 2016

  

-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.