then what?  

the old gentleman is seen carting his goods to the inside

walking backward up the ramp to the lobby believing

it's easier to pull a cart than to push it. 

in November they lamented from the kitchen:

"this could be his last Thanksgiving".

but vital sign test results are in so the endurance required

in carting his goods to the elevator appears doable.

this is the landscape;  the cement-columned nine

story building with its fifth floor balcony overlooking

the river to the north.

there's no ready access westward. that would take a voyage.

but to the right and southward lies Antarctica, an iced continent

which he's been told holds the key to biological rejuvenation.

––all he needs now is the time necessary to venture that far

down the river.                                                                                 

 

                   from the death notes / No. 3

                   the catalyst for this poem is from "Masquerade",

                  masks by Saul Steinberg, photographed by Inge Morath

                

In short order my father’s skin color

(I can't come around to calling it a "complexion"

and even "color" seems a poor evaluation)

descended from a sub-value of grey, to the value of raw granite.

there’s a yellowing to the whites of his eyes, his brow,

a linear map running to somewhere in the distance, his mouth

constantly seeking water, his expression clueless, absent and fatal.

––my visits to his hospital bedside got to where I could distinguish

the differences between his groans of grief and his moans of pleasure.

––It was all in the tonal ranges;

the lower timbre pleasure, the higher timbre grief, the rare middle timbre

laying in the final performance of his lungs.

––I wondered during the last exhaling if the middle timbre was an indication

of him dreaming about the hilarious house party at the Gleason’s place

on East Sedalia Street in the summer of 1952, at which I was often told

by surviving participants, he was the life of.

   

                 

"clean gentleman / closing-in on the final stanza / used to be good-looking /

used to play ball / fine slow-dancer in his day / used to be good-looking;

good enough to say it twice.."

––the first part:

it’s being prepared by thinking ahead

like a post-it note reminding us

to pickup bread, or the kids, or eggs.

there’s comfort there; almost as if

the sticky little notes have taken us half-

way to the tasks we're reminded to

accomplish before we leave the house.

––the second part:

God broke Adam’s rib for kicks

which led It to other sexually deviant

activities such as the invention of Eve.

God had a boner for Eve.

that's clear, but who can blame him,

what with her prancing across the garden

on her tiptoes plucking apples bare-ass naked?

––the third part:

 this poem is admittedly disjointed,

but it's designed to be that way.

regardless, who has time to spend cobbling

just about anything to some sort of coherence

in the time of "click" and move on?

besides, the paperboy's delivery is on schedule for once,

and it's time to check the "personals" in the "classifieds"

where true love waits. 

 

 

                   -slipping into "bedlam and part way back"-

1.

ghosts of the confessionals, dead by suicide, are out to get me.

It’s nothing personal they say, but I'm told I should mind my own business.
It's true, I've slipped into poetry like a lubricated piston, without

a bloodletting commitment, and with sorely lacking academic credentials.

so tonight’s the night for a good dose of self-examination.

regardless, I’ll read another confessional along the way, followed by

a personal offering to serve as chaser.

2.

last night's piano playing by the Labéque sisters continues to roll

around in my head, (Francis Poulenc: "Concerto for Two Pianos")

and complicating matters, a local car dealer's boisterous nasality is running

on television like a mad cartoon.

but of the principles listed herein it's only "Ernie Boch"

who can put me behind the wheel with little or no money down. 

3.

the time is ripe for a pre-reading snack.

there's a sugary Xtra Mart across the street, but even under harsh

24 hour interior florescence it's been robbed at gunpoint three times

in the past six months,–– or at least I've imagined it could have been.

common sense tells me I shouldn't chance it.

It's with Anne Sexton tonight and we've come to an understanding; 

she'll allow me to approach the precipice of the abyss, but I gotta keep

my mouth shut about it.

"To Bedlam And Part Way Back" / Anne Sexton 

                   -the posing / 1934

consider a photograph; a snapshot taken

during the courtship of my father and mother.

they’re sitting on a couch in a room which

resonates with me even now. he’s seventeen. she’s sixteen.

how do I know this? because the photo is dated

on the backside, and because I know the year

of their births I can calculate their ages, and this

from a man who as a kid seemed alien to arithmetic

unless I’m miscalculating everything I'm assuming now.

but I’m not, so let’s continue. of course they’re fooling around! 

they'll easily find themselves far from the family interiors.

he has access to a car. he’s adventurous, a handsome young man

well into the edge of exploration. she’s lovely, she's reserved, and

at the edge of curiosity. her glance tells you she's well-aware of how

she hooked the big one from the Walyos on the corner of Bedford

and Stinziano. It's not difficult to imagine where they'd go

when they slipped away on their way to exploration.

ah..the little unpaved road along the Narrows of the sprawling Watuppa,––

a place known only to them and others of their kind, the same as it was

with us. sneaky. but–– I can chart the direction of his hand navigating

toward its destination. I can sense the activity of her breath as

the applications came to her skin.

I know the reasons why the dark confessionals were tossed

to the ash-bins when all of us began to realize a thing or two.

                    From Raisin Bran Way, Palm Beach, U.S. of A.

I nearly missed my appointment due to dampness.

The sand was coagulating and running slow, and the local horse

hoofing to the barbershop took a wrong turn.

Lucky for me the barber had his leeches on a short leash.

He knifed my hair leaving only a few open wounds to my scalp

as the leeches sucked away my tired blood, bless their little hearts.

This guy’s the best.

Later, I purchased some six day old mutton on sale,

(not too many maggots) and horsed to my hut, finding

only three of the kids had died with the yellow-ochre fever.

It’s certainly good to live in such an exciting modern time.

Someone said: “Let them come to "Raisin Bran Way"

hence to whither and die after a soulless life.”

 

-William's resumé / please adjust the curvature of the brims of your caps

to indicate the era in which you played the game, and be seated-

he sports a baggy uniform, bats left,

choke's-up 3 fingers as coached

and favors a closed stance in the box.

he crowds the plate, can’t hit for shit,

but bunts with reasonable accuracy.

good speed up the first base line,

throws left, although long range attempts

display a cork-arm's tendencies. 

he plays the position bequeathed

to him by Teddy Ballgame, and calculates

the arc of a high fly ball to a proof.

he was nearly beaned facing

Johnny Santos, "Espírito Santo" fast-baller,

and once shook the hand of Red Sox speedster,

Gene Stephens during testimonial festivities

at the close of the CYO’s ’59 Season

held at "Venus de Milo" banquet hall,

Route 6 West, Swansea, Massachusetts,

just over the Fall River line,–– choosing

the chicken offering over the fish offering.

art school.

                   the common faults of man

he was quick to defend his passion for the heavy American-made bike,

the bike that had weight and occupied space, and he realized before

any of his grade-school pals that come-hither-eyed Virginia Fox 

was far more fascinating than "best looking" front-runner, Malinda Coyte.

later, he attended meetings reserved for "members only" (and one invited guest)

and they say his father was once a committee vice-chairman, having a hand

in stage productions by the Anna Magnani Memorial Players.

one day before the setting of the supper table he shook-out the change

from the old pickled-onion jar and discovered he had racked-up enough cash

to settle an uncomfortable dispute with the estate of Malinda Coyte.

It's true that he’s known his share of poets and derelicts, attending many

joint sessions for discussions on how to convincingly define which is which.

these are but some of the common faults of man. let him be.

he’s not dissatisfied with these results, and yes. I said:

"the old pickled-onion jar".

The early years with the passerby, Jake “Skinnyhead”

Jake "Skinnyhead" lived just beyond the billboards to the east,

then northward toward the city's landfill called "the dump" and a half-

mile or so west of the cemetery where famed acquitted axe murderess

Lizzie Borden is surely remembered, dead and buried.

I recall Jake as having a compressed, tubular-

shaped head with big, protruding ears, and a flat sort-of nose

like that of a seasoned welterweight.

Jake was short of stature, slumped forward,–– a foot-shuffler,

maybe in his mid forties. He was a real person, not one of those

character participants made-up for the sake of a story.

Jake was seen regularly, walking passed the ballpark, the Esso station,

and my earliest house, the only house in the neighborhood which stood

directly over the sidewalk behind the sewer that ate foul balls.

The drawing:

Charcoal pencil with brushed-white conte crayon highlights,

on a sheet of Strathmore grey, 14" x 17" lightly textured drawing paper,

completed long after art school, but long before now.

I might know the original date of the drawing, but I might not.

The fun part, in part, was my journey through the process

in cobbling fragmented images gleaned from the bowls of memory

to make a face for Jake which I could live with and maybe, hopefully,

Jake "Skinnyhead" could live with, too.

Quequechan

                   -of beauty and a recollection of distress-

the midwest, and the night was clear and you were cranky.

you went out with the girls,–– a night on the town, but

beforehand, I watched you dress, curious as to why

you consciously chose to be with me.

I was mesmerized by your attitude in not realizing

the beauty of your reflection, brushing your jet-stone hair

with a smoothness as if you were brushing a measure of silk.

I waited at the face of the television for your return,

and when you did, the evening and its anticipation lost its clarity.

we went to bed at the same time. it was late. you were drunk.

you stank of coney island wieners with meat sauce, and extra onions.

the sour stench came from deep within your stomach, upward,

beginning at your wormy intestines, and outward as you snored,

wheezing through the coagulated interior hairs of your oily,

coney island wiener, meat-sauced infested exhalation.

I wanted to be Laszlo Toth, bopping your nose with a mallet just to keep

it quiet so's I might get some shuteye, but even under such distress,

I cautiously went to sleep believing your beauty would return to me

in the forgiving light of morning, and it did.

the coffee perked electrically, the eggs crackled in their olive-

oil bed, and as the turned-milk was poured into the sink's open drain,

the romance came back to me,–– shuffling through the kitchen portal

in pink fuzzy slippers, yawning, and yelling.