He was a hit
and could have charmed us
into believing Dickens
had read Light in August.
Then he ‘fessed up –
worked in advertising!
Look, it was 1972.
We held the deed to
Yoknapatawpha County
yet that jingle man
was forgiven
like a bad debt
we felt ourselves
already owing.
Good Suburban Soil
Slow burning
roadside
mulleins signal
with a dim
yellow flame,
poor,
compacted soil.
Consider also
Queen Anne’s
thigh high lace
beside butter
and eggs
that wink
like old neon.
Chicory caps
the mood:
petals a blue
men wish to find
in women’s eyes
they are fool enough
to skid to stops for.
Sunrise shovels and picks
disturb shoulder earth:
suburban transplants
that never take
to the straight
and narrow.
Siren
A fly buzzing a nicotine-glazed bulb
as if it were an overripe pear
lures me back to a stormy symphony
where rain rims a tent like glass
beads veiling a lamp in a medium's
drawing room.
The power fails, lights flare
and die, but my lover's touch
is a rare filament.
I'm on an island now
convinced the drops tapping
my window like a wooer's pebbles
are the same beads
that circled the canopy.
I walk the bluffs watching the wind
exhale her crystal form
then shamefully break it into drizzle.
Dizzy and shivering, I am soaked with her.
Struggling to reach a shabby bar that’s blurry,
suspended over the harbor, I drink her
drink, Creme de Menthe.
Humming Debussy, I entertain her
under twin rows of track
light and many hours trickle down
before her last dampness disappears
and a fly buzzes my glass
as if the sweet pool were her remains.
At the window, I find that my rainy medium
has deserted me.
In the harbor masts are jerking
like violin bows.
Charlie Donn
Neither the serpent
nor the butterfly tattoo
established true identity.
The popular goateed face
of Buffalo Bill made it
official after the Halifax blast
killed Charlie and nearly
two-thousand more.
My father vaguely
recalled the disaster.
Having attended a Wild
West Extravaganza
in his youth he was more
excited about Bill.
I recalled the Cummings poem
about that showman, ending,
“how do you like your blue-
eyed boy Mister Death.”
But it is Charlie celebrated
in the Maritime Museum:
brown hair, full set of teeth,
all his body art described.
HMS Picton was his ship.
His service belt encased,
coiled like the serpent
that once hissed on his arm.
Some visitors imagine
the butterfly flapping
like the lips of Mr. Death
worn thin.
"In the Year 2525"
Childhood memories of my brother
Dan, nine years younger are few.
I do recall Hurricane Carol
the month before
his birth and that can be termed
prophetic judging
from his turbulent life
that ended early.
As adults we often spoke
of youth and an incident
he mentioned stuck with me.
Once in grade school he was amazed
how a teacher turned a future one
hit wonder climbing the charts
into a mesmerizing lesson.
After that, I often kidded him,
"That tune with all the years,
who the heck sang it?"
“Zagar & Evans,” he'd reverently
reply as if they were saints
before breaking out a smile.
But no 2525 chance for my brother
since he failed to find enough
kick to trudge
the 111 days to 54 –
the age matching his birth
year and that destructive storm
yet sometimes I play with time
and the cool and calm
school teacher is coaxing
Dan into staying
by reprising the Zagar & Evans
class and turning it
into a two hit wonder.
Alive
At age seventy-one
I still talk about the wild
ones of my youth
who vanished
just to reappear
as survivors in a
parent’s obituary
scattered across
the country
like colorful
pushpins
in a manhunt map.
Sometimes obit
photos go back
in time.
Younger than I
ever imagined
their reckless
offspring
would ever
live to be.
Rustic Living
A filing cabinet drawer is the oven
squatters use to cook
Thanksgiving dinner:
turkey and stuffing,
pumpkin pie, the works.
It’s the last of the banquets
authorities say,
enjoy, eat hearty.
All tents, shacks and lean-tos
will soon be demolished.
Country living,
ranching and farming jobs.
Sell your bounty at autumn fairs!
Learn to worship God’s great
outdoors as he intended.
Dumpster diving,
garbage snacking,
breakfast vodka,
shaving by Zippo light,
things of the past.
But when the chill
in the rustic air
collides with memory
and sunrises and sets
lock in a shade
of cranberry and
“in and out” baskets
spied on a desk through
a window look
perfect for dinner rolls,
it’s easy to lament
that keeping
a ex-Accounts
Payable drawer
at a steady 350°
is a city knack
to use or lose.
The Whitest Heat
I want to know everything
from minute one
but my recall is but a stub
of sneaky fuse badly in need
of expert repair.
So, charging the past like a centaur,
I return to a familiar burning myth
to share the stalls of memory
mares, their crimson manes tangled
hints of my history
sparkling lies for all I care.
So skillfully grafted
my previous trips,
I’m a fireproof raider
galloping into the whitest
heat of remembering.
Then a stretch of arm
as if a trick rider
in a wild west sho,
I grab a globe of asbestos
yarn from Satan’s rosy cat
to try to set a brand
new trail that’s just
another fuse flaring
as swiftly as a bead
naked rosary.
Extra, 1976
Having a smoke
between cars
on a train
from Nice to Rome
I watch ostriches
gallop through
a grove of lemon trees
and pencil a note
on the title
page of Kerouac’s
Mexico City Blues.
I recall a snapshot
of him, age 31,
a brakeman’s manual
in his pocket, East 7th
Street, New York, 1953,
cigarette to his lips
and I imagine a director
had shouted, “Action.”
Approaching Carrara,
I picture him on a set
leaning against a marble
statue in the Vatican
instead of the wall
in a Gotham photo.
The train slices
a green field,
a girl drops her
lover’s hand to hold
a camera on me and,
and for my part,
I quickly fill
my lungs and pencil
a credit for her.
Dance Lessons
Tall figures dancing and oblivious
to the surf-puddled sand were mirror
images of a pair lithely waltzing
in a dimly lit window beyond
the boardwalk reminding me
of what an old woman once said
in a dark smoky lounge:
“Your dad was a hell of a dancer,
God rest his soul and his feet.
Too sad this jukebox is dead,”
she added, returning to the bar,
a youthful spring in her gait,
that was mine as I approached
that beach mansion door after
witnessing those couples
stepping so stylishly.
Nudging open the door as if I’d lived
all my days there I strolled
to the ballroom where kindly moonlight
sneaking through rain-chiseled alleys
on dirty window panes revealed black
footprints covering the hardwood floor.
On hands and knees I read dance names
where you’d expect “Cat’s Paw.”
As I stumbled off every lesson trail
as if studying with Arthur and Fred,
I thought of that old lounge woman
pictured my father flat in the ground.
How happy I’d been
that jukebox was on the blink
as dancing wasn’t part
of my old man’s legacy.
At four in the morning I staggered out.
The seashore lovers were gone.
Kicking off my shoes I rested
my clumsy feet
in the refreshing pools late
of romantic dips and whirls.
I moved this way and that
as if a little kid playing
in his father’s learned shoes.
Tubes
A feeding tube
seems the only link
left to the world.
None of the old
music her kids play
to try to spark
a hint
of response
works
so they are
happily fooled
by the wide-eyed
and alert motion
when they slip
on her reading
glasses
and bingo
the four
years of
fading away
erase
and for an
instant family
feedback tubes
like her
catheters are
in place.
Like Magic
The Blackstone
River was the first
channel I chose
for Dan’s voyage
to Narragansett Bay.
I tossed ashes
at angry falls
for flow enough
to assure
a proper
send-off.
I launched more
of what was left
of him from
a railroad trestle
we used to fish off,
into the waters
of the Ten Mile
for a backup.
All the time
in the back
of my mind
the trite phrase
found on
the label
of many
a box, bottle
and can:
“Just Add
Water.”
Snow Beat
An outrage of spring snow
meringues the forsythia
as mockingbirds and robins
are crazed mapmakers
plotting wild getaways
with star stitched tracks
to make some sense of it.
Making slush of highways,
towns and bridges, I lay waste
railroads, cities – even states.
Sometimes when a foot falls
precise, heel on heel
but slightly off to right
of one that’s dropped before
I stamp slender
asphalt hearts.
Every step is a beat;
I’m morning’s plodding pulse.
Call me too
Father Time, my beard growing
longer as flakes gather
like albino bees, silent as petals.
When the birds line a maple limb
like strikers, I turn
my foreman job over
to rays of oncoming sun.
What Sets the Sun
It's not
the ring
of forsythia
acting
the dancing
wind's
shimmering
skirt hem
or buxom
peach
trees
sequined
in pink
that set
the sun
leering
but ivy
resuming
its climb
up the
shagbark
hickory
like a
Rockette's
stocking.
Sabbath Contraptions
Five and change
for a hundred
Sunday supplement
tulip bulbs.
To sweeten the deal
six grape hyacinths.
I remember
a Sabbath contraption
that fit any wall socket:
made building or house
a giant and grand
TV antenna.
No more screen blizzards,
It failed
and the bulbs seemed
too runty to pack
the thrust to spear
the ground
if they survived
squirrels and moles,
they’d grace the earth
likes spindly ears
of TV reception relics.
But if they do blossom
likely they’ll entice
gangs of deer
as well as their Sunday
supplement photos attract
checks and money orders
Luncheon
A man who used his utensils
European style – knife ever
Active for even an omelet
Occupied my eyes
As my ears caught the words
Of a woman who spoke
In a refined manner about
A friend who had not known sorrow –
Didn’t suffer a pimple
Until she was twenty-six
It was eighty and muggy, mind you
When a wild springy haired
Bearded gent sporting a thermal
Vest and an overcoat entered
And lured a glance
He gulped hot coffee black
I watched him walk past
The window with four bundles
Neatly tied and uniform
I pictured both a helpful husband
Preparing the garbage
And a loving father
Wrapping birthday gifts
Also a sailor robbed of sea
Roaming the world
Recalling fancy knots
I imagined the woman
Of belated sorrow
With her head on the artful
Carver’s platter
Pimple dispensed posthaste
As if it were an errant
Caper and the insulated
Man packaging it neatly
Not to be opened
Until a conversation lag
At the next cocktail
Party when folks feel
Locked in greatcoats
Temp eighty degrees and
Rocky drinks
Are bubbling like lava.
Litter
As if it strikes them
as too good to be
ever true
goldfinches darting in
and out of tall brush
ignore a mound
of fresh bird seed
in the corner abutting
the self-storage sheds.
A spent home pregnancy
test lies by a weedy splendor
of chicory blooms as blue
as eyes and negligees
is rampant even in
the slimmest of asphalt
crannies and the poorest
of surrounding soil
in this parking lot
I walk mornings,
fitness less a goal
than wool gathering.
One large discount
store survives,
the other once a tad
classier languishes as does
Praise The Lord Gifts
and a Hallmark Store.
A condom,
tenure as trophy
long ago done browns
on a truck starved stretch
to a loading dock,
a latex lesson
in litter longevity
but hardly as effective
as the rubbers
in memory --
a girlfriend
rolling sacrificially
as if bareback
might be too good
to ever be recalled
as true.
Grandparents
Lisa sits outside
her cardboard box
that used to house
a Hotpoint range
watching pigeons
picking over
carriage horse
droppings.
She remembers
her grandfather’s
coop of racing
champions.
A woman in a fog
bends straight-legged
as Lisa’s grandmother
weeding her garden
but she collects
crusts the birds ignore.
Lisa tells her friend Chiffon
whose breasts are bulging
out of a daisy print dress
like newborn infant heads
that grandfather’s pigeons
are as white as wedding gowns.
Her grandmother grows
hollyhocks as tall
as basketball players.
Doorstop
When my shovel finds a rock
in earth tilled
and sifted a spring ago,
I think of one
I failed as a kid
to excavate
a hundred miles east
of here.