4. SPECIAL THANKS
to
Barbara Peabody
(cover art and inserts)
and
Adam Weimann (artistic editing)
(copyright@2016)
Francis E. Crowley
And to Patrick Hamilton
A special thanks for all those back issues of
POETRY
5. A DOPEY TROPE
Soap bubbles rising softly in the breeze
Solace of dappled shadows on a late afternoon
‘what-might-have-been’- a projected narrative
Extended landscapes you might easily have seen
In convex inconsequential refracted colors
Floating above the English village green on many
Adventures you might easily have led had you
Not wandered off in the foggy night dreaming
Of Rothenburg turrets of Dungaire Castle
In Kinvara, like a future retrospective of your life.
Inevitably soap bubbles drift into a solid object
And ‘POOF’ gone with only verse left behind
Vacancy at the Cedar Bar dearly missed much like
Dylan Thomas, Hart Crane. “CRAP!” Your bubble
Alternatively could have lasted, drifted, transfigured
Into the giant disco ball above the dance floor of
Studio 54: slippery sex, sticky seats in the balconies
6. No bathroom doors in your imagined future a dark
Catastrophe of personality you clearly courted and
“…it is never too late to have a happy childhood…, ”
Some still say. You might say: “…he loved me in an
Overcompensating way, had you made the 1980’s
Discovering, raving, smothering David Wojnarowicz
East Village op art popping up, floating over the Piers
#28 empty semi’s scabrous, synonymous sex, scrawled
Cartoons in chalk on all the empty walls, skylights ….
Consummated ecstasies of bohemian reveries you might
Have championed at MOMA in pastels, crayon, collage…
“BLAM!! …..POW!” AIDS is prowling in all the corners
“Oh, Frank, at least you missed that plague; all other
Bodies, bubbles of hope, brothers’ lives broke on that wall!”
7. For Frank O’Hara
(1926 - 1966)
On the fiftieth ANNIVERSARY of his death, July 26, 1966
Opera lover, pitch-perfect seer, bird shit on my pen this morning, goose
droppings on shoes, blue sky bulging above my breakfast table, it’s been
fifty years, buddy; blessings on you, good man with a good heart, art
curator, painter first, raconteur, buddy at the bar. I’m overlooking deep,
Kinney’s pond, soft breezes from the nearby beach. You 50’s Muse, male
Marilyn Monroe, golden god with freckles, master of irony, scintillating
collage, spittle on your chin, underwear around your ankles; you Irish lyre,
plucked harp with gum on the twisted sheets. True to your Muse, you
mimetic Genius of rambling lyrical voice, your untamed tropes like soap
bubbles lift into daydreams. BLING! Bling! Among your rushes of thought
Apollonian are the crazy lyrical collages, a mirage in vatic, ecstatic lines
containing exhibitionist’s fears, a queer and antic sensibility, the sophic
seer’s gift to live 50 years in the future……“COME OUT AND PLAY!”
‘NOT TODAY.’ You prefer isolation in your bird-cage loft, blending the
bar’s chiaroscuro with compassion for closeted dreams of solitude in city
street scenes. Today, you are separate from the mainstream……….
8. CONTENTS
The Arc of a Dead Friendship...................................................................1
The Throat .................................................................................................4
The Gift of Paradise Lost ..........................................................................6
The Eye of the Seagull ..............................................................................7
Provincetown Morning 9/22/10 ................................................................8
My Bold Young Beauty ............................................................................9
The Spoken Word Revolution.................................................................11
American Smooth....................................................................................13
Agape.......................................................................................................15
Detours.....................................................................................................16
The Invisible Son.....................................................................................20
To Dylan..................................................................................................21
Sublimation..............................................................................................23
Barrio Man...............................................................................................24
The ABC’s of Libidinal Fantasies...........................................................26
P – Town Ditties......................................................................................28
Gifts of the Hidden Self ..........................................................................30
Blessed Be ...............................................................................................34
The Crystal Rose .....................................................................................35
CT Hospice July 31st
, 2014 .....................................................................36
These Days ..............................................................................................37
On the 100th
Anniversary of Hostilities in WWI ....................................38
9. A Digital Love Affair..............................................................................40
The Race to the Finish Line ....................................................................41
The Arizona Inn.......................................................................................42
Sexy Seventies.........................................................................................44
The Mayflower Protestant Holiday is an Oxymoron .............................46
In Memory of Bob Jacob ........................................................................48
Acceptance .............................................................................................49
Circle of Light ........................................................................................50
Generative and Transformational Grammar ...........................................51
Desperado ...............................................................................................52
American Pie ..........................................................................................55
9/11 .........................................................................................................57
Ode to Prednisone ..................................................................................59
Regeneration ...........................................................................................60
Tab hunter and Me .................................................................................64
Poem for a Puggle ...................................................................................67
Speaking Truth to Power.........................................................................68
The Poetic Fallacy...................................................................................69
The End of it All......................................................................................70
Madison, CT............................................................................................71
Halcyon Days ..........................................................................................73
“It was the Cold that sent us out………….”...........................................74
10. The Heiress and the Homeless Man........................................................75
Poia* ........................................................................................................79
Appendix .................................................................................................81
Pages for drawing………………………………………………………
11. 1
The Arc of a Dead Friendship
Not long as a lifetime nor short as a meteorite,
Is a blasting acrid ozone smell of your arm pits.
Lingering in those loose fibers of used beach towels
That wiped clean the bones of you alone broken.
You or me?
Let’s see,
Your sweet breath brings me back
Dancing on soft toes tunes irresistible.
Takes two to strain a relationship they say.
Who first pulled away imperceptibly?
A single strand of ponytail brown hair
Left on piebald sweaters shared blended in your brown beard
You stoned me with suppressed moans Cri De Coeur.
Let’s see,
We sit apart this morning, same coffee shop as 15 years ago
Accidentally today unacknowledged unloved.
Whose fucked up childhood first figured appeared in memory’s warm fireside?
You feeding driftwood to the fires like beached detritus feelings of loss loneliness
compulsively blindly repeating finally
12. 2
Briefer chats short circuits of collapsing connection.
Today same stools remembered crumbs of
O’Donohue’s BLESSINGS over bagels at Cohen’s.
Our cars nudging together,
Firebird red for you.
Gray Aveo for me.
Red headed you.
Garrulous gay gray grandpa me.
My secret room of aging empty of love.
Briefer looks now,
Returned books, broken dishes, bleak verse left on doorsteps.
Blind childhood feelings stillborn,
Strangled with the cord of close connection reborn
In the warm womb of new beginnings.
Body piercings, tattoos redrawn from frosty unicorn to fiery dragons
Turned into a nemesis skywriter hired to stream the words
FUCK YOU HARRY!
In a frosty breath across the heavens.
Like some wicked Christian witch rattling bones in his brocade.
Me Borodin
You the inflated demon in Walpurgisnacht
Meteorite vapor trails mixed into skywriting with the message
13. 3
GET LOST!
We posed, pranced, pissed each other off.
Doe-see-doe detached tendrils of loving tenderness finally
Perhaps you needed children to crow you to sleep to dream
Ancient desert saguaros not yet desiccated to soften your
Stringy sinews of infancy.
Your stony heart, your wooden frame.
Single black crows searching the parking lot seeking a renewal.
But my salad words of dementia prevent my walking over slowly
Saying soft nothings wishing for forgiveness a hug surrendering
To your narrative arc of a dying friendship based in childhood
From the golden bowl of empathy re-glued.
14. 4
The Throat
I am the genius of old age
These days on Nevsky Prospect
My knees ache in supplication and prayer
Singing selling piebald knit hats lipstick peach and myself
I am a genius
I am the throat of Russia
Singing devotions in humility and hunger on my knees
Seeking red meat to feed my joy, my grandchild, my life
My hope for firm dense breasts for her future
She sings so wantonly on this street corner with me
I am the throat
I am the voice of hunger
In the back alleys on my knees
Seeking black bread honor codes justice rules and rubles
I am the voice of babushkas aging pensioners
I see only the ankle tattoos of tourists
Standing over me
I am voice
I am grief
In the voices of bereaved mothers against the war
My own dead sons: Sasha murdered mugged on this spot;
Alexei gripped his strong chest, they say, in astonishment
15. 5
Both fathers who sang their grief away in the choir
Worked two jobs, trolley drivers rising at 2 a.m.
I am grief
(Music)
I am hunger
Of spirit, Russkaya Dusha
Most days I sit a little as in Soviet times
Under Monet’s ‘LADY IN A GARDEN’
Her silhouette in diaphanous white lace and parasol
An icon in a green garden poised in serenity and grace
Ah! Russian ark Hermitage take me back to my
revolutionary dreams back into the painting
I am hunger
16. 6
The Gift of Paradise Lost
When good friends and family fall away like leaves
Bleeding red, orange, leaking in yellow photo frames
A younger self, slim, supplicating, sure-limbed, holding
A green thought in a green shade, a sapling in a dream,
But for that idiot-faced moon always smiling as a curse.
Wonder if that foolish youth might have kept his leaves
Longer without so many seasons of tragedy, loss and grief
Perhaps hurled headstrong to the edge of mad verse
By the daemon, a blissful, mindless run of creativity
A dance between father and son before perishing into spring.
17. 7
The Eye of the Seagull
The yellow eye of the old seagull, solitary
Scans the blue sun-drenched sea for tender treasures
Famished, an artist in her simplicity
She dances like the plovers to the rhythmic waves – forth and back-
Each washing ashore a new delight
Backing into the wind, she’s a clown
Ruffling feathers inflating her form
A brown young offspring doe-see-doe’s – sings a wailing cry –
Synchronizes with mother’s every step
Beak to beak to receive the catch of the day
There is none mother and son
Locked in a primal need to feed and be fed
Passive in her patience she persists
Until worn down she lifts into the breeze,
Floats down the beach to a distant peace and lets go
18. 8
Provincetown Morning 9/22/10
At low tide the wide stretch of soft, sandy beach just after sunrise greets dog-walkers and painters up
early for coffee. I enter the painting just off MacMillan Wharf. An empty brown bag blows round and
round in the rising breeze rippling the smooth water. Flocks of pigeons circle. “Tally ho!” a toothless old
salt riding a bicycle shouts to a passing pickup truck.
The tile imprint of three -toed pigeon feet in the soft brown sand;
Stubby, broken off, wooden stumps of a long ago wharf like rotted teeth in the gummy
sand;
The town hall bell rings dependably at 8 a.m.,
Even though every town clock on tower, school and ship is off by hours.
A fishing trawler’s long, blasting horn signals departure
The Jolly Roger flaps atop one of the many sailboats tied up.
Another old salt surveys his landed skiff at lowest tide this morning;
He’s in tall rubber, black boots – long, brown, leather coat – and he sports a long, white
ponytail as long as his brown and white dog’s;
You can overhear those who have lived their entire lives here, “If you live here, never
allow yourself to become jaded over the natural beauty. Where else can you walk home
from work on the beach every day?”
Glorious weather at Race Point Beach: the flashing rainbows in the spray above the line
cresting waves like wild horses’ manes in the deepest breath of the sea at the windy finish
19. 9
My Bold Young Beauty
Composed by the Emperor Hadrian on the death of Antinous (a faux poem in his voice as
I imagine the depth of his grief and loss)
I used to have you as my diadem.
My diachronic memory; it’s true
Socrates had his Alcibiades –
Achilles his Patroclus –
Should not Hadrian have his Antinous, too?
Do not refuse to play your part
In the service of Art
And civic responsibility.
From lassitude, anxiety, fear and sloth
You’d grown to love me:
On the lion hunt fused into one flesh,
As our horses reared;
Purple and gold stitched into one cloth;
Ripe grapes entwined on the vine;
Red togas in tapestry;
Fiery lines of poetry
Enshrined in perfect rhyme.
So, I’ll fashion clay, mud from the Nile,
20. 10
Marmoreal bone of pure white stone
And lapidary flesh to caress
Instead of your sweet breath,
Your wet tears and tantrums, too.
I’ll build cities for you,
Share your God-like image across the world,
For you held, when we loved,
My ecstasy, my mind, my soul, my Genius!
In the porches of your ear;
You were the vessel for my breath, sweat, creative fire.
You are the vision I propose
For all Time and Truth;
Your tomb will flower in the desert of my repose.
21. 11
The Spoken Word Revolution
In 1985 Marc Smith was still alive: “Take the poem off the page and put it on the stage!
Spout them, shout them in the air from your blowhole; sex drugs and rock ‘n’ roll are
dead, gratefully; must not be read from the page; no “prancing poetry”; no reading
aloud from the scroll; it’s the rule
No longer sterile in a scansion cage this poem’s feral
Released in the wild two yellow cat’s eyes scan the crowd
The smoky dive’s alive with grunts growls howls gutturals
No sphinx to kinx the meaning just stomping feet greet the grey beast
‘START THE SLAM!’ “WHAM, BAM! THANK YOU MAN!”
It’s a crowd of hams hoping to win this heat “Hold up your 10’s!”
Hearing a new beat to life in performance under the hot lights
The huge cat’s teeth breaking jaws cracking open the line!
‘IT’S A FIGHT!’
Bombastic elastic fantastic acrostic slick ‘DIM THE LIGHTS’
“How many bad angels can fit on the head of your dick?”
Hip-hop makes me feel more alive in this dive
The bar keep doesn’t give a crap if it’s doggerel hog hollas
Sestinas sonnets from angel headed hipsters or rap
The line-up of poets and pipsters, hip cats and crew,
Crawls to a close when the audience throws poo
22. 12
No longer LOVE DEATH LOSS ROMANCE
Now every line fights for life it must sing and dance
We’ve heard inspiration from Blake, Whitman’s free verse;
Emily’s universally loved but her lines too terse
At last show’s over the voting winds up with a three-way tie
“WE WUZ ROBBED’ shouts the rest, but the best is to be!
It’s catman, a first-timer young girl with banana blond curls
And the man from Morocco facing off in a whorl of bad words
A “death-match Haiku” is the final test; the topic: scatology and turds
You can guess the rest: catman controlled his snarls self-mythology
Rose in robust challenge with cadence, compression, a 17 syllable song
Gave his best purring, meowing, litter-box rhyming ding-dong
Licked his tabby paws in an ecstasy of self-valorization
Went on to the Nationals in a Nuyorican year won the SLAMNATION!
23. 13
American Smooth
(For Rita Dove)
First the footfalls, echoing;
Then the full-faced joy
Of his lighted eyes: “chaKEEta, chaKEEta”
He calls to birds
Behind my back door.
A small blond boy
Skips into view
In the hand of his short grandmother;
He, like a MUNI bird
In green fatigues and red cap;
She in magenta and black
Mocking his innocence.
I’d like to feel, again,
The unalloyed joy
Of that light-hearted skip and song.
Struggling to keep up,
He punctuates his stride
With a slide and quick hop
24. 14
Of his little legs-
American smooth
On his way to school.
Across the street now,
Then back into view
Safe and secure
He hops down the road and disappears into Saturday.
25. 15
A
AGAPE
GIFT IN A
WINTER GARDEN
YOU WAIT OUTSIDE
MY WINDOW, EVERGREEN,
LIKE HOPE NEW - MINTED
IN MY MIND. I AM AGOG
LIKE A CHILD, AS I GAZE IN
WONDER AT THE PATTERN CAST
INTO THE SNOW LIKE SOME ANGEL
ALONE AT THE TOP. MESMERIZED, I GAZE
OUT MY OPEN WINDOW, AGROUND IN A VISION
OF DESERT PLACES AND EMPTY SPACES IN MY
HEART. ANESTHETIZED BY A BLADE-LIKE BREATH
OF PINE I INHALE YOUR SPIRIT LIKE A FIRE-EATER
UNTOUCHED BY THE ETERNAL FLAME. THERE IS NOTHING
I NEED DO IN LOVING YOU BUT WATCH LIKE CANDLES
LEST THE LIGHT GO LOW. LIKE A WREATH ON THE DOOR
LIKE A SAND CASTLE ON THE SHORE, LIKE A LEAF
IN THE WINTER WIND, AND LIKE THE CHILD WATCHING IN A WINDOW
I AM AWAKE TO YOUR LOVE. I AM AGAPE AS I GLOW.
THANK YOU FOR EMBRACING MY SHADOWY SELF AS YOU
WALK THROUGH MY EMPTY SPACES AND FILL MY
DESERT PLACES FULLY WITH AGAPE. YES,
I WILL EMBRACE THE BURNING BUSH.
26. 16
Detours
Libido in a Speedo
Spandex in flex
Sixty-five
And still alive
Looking at my best
Cruising on a quest
For love with a hunky guest
I’m half-way home
But still alone
Can’t stand another pest!
Could never love a man with a cell phone!
Identities are detours, too,
Non-negotiable… and, yet,
Let love’s language be lost
At what cost?
And you’re a label for the rest!
Down denial aisle
Exile of desires seemed best;
Now traditional aspirations eschewing,
I’m campy when I’m screwing!
Don’t claim the grasping middle-class;
27. 17
You’ll never make it there!
The Catholic Church, hypocrisy…
Will change your heart’s geography!
Guys, look in the mirror;
Relax, just let it be.
Amontillado dressed in drag and mask;
Miss Dee Tours (get it?!)…………Me!
Some memories are detours, too:
Sad, sick, sensibility;
Indulgence, deprivation,
Disease and alienation,
Powerless, not free;
Destruction, doubt, despair
( giving myself some airs);
Digressions, delays, depressions
And lots of false expressions!
Fuck that guilt and self hatred!
Let’s start to integrate;
No more daily compromise,
Lover, kids, a wife and lies
Harmful dichotomies
It’s the old human story,
All in the name of God’s Glory!
Cracked open like a kid, again,
28. 18
I don’t count it as sin.
I was powerless, not free…
Finally found my own true voice
Within my poetry!
Family is a grateful feeling
That comes at you all at once;
There is a greater Higher Power!
(how could I be such a dunce?)
Larger patterns infuse my soul;
Surrendered to reach my goal.
When you’re gay and grateful,
No longer “other” and “hateful”,
“HOME IS WHERE YOU GET TO,
NOT WHERE YOU’RE FROM.”
(how could I be so dumb?)
Like Dorothy I needed to dance
Down the old road,
Grateful for God’s guidance,
His detours directing my load!
It seems I needed adventures
To accept myself at last,
To know that God really loves me
Just the way I am!
29. 19
(these days I’m having a blast!)
Personal boundaries inviolate
(I no longer cry-a-lot)
Keeping plants alive for five
And pets alive for two,
I’m ready for a relationship!
(I’ll use condoms when I screw!)
Now, it’s a personal growth, evolution,
No more doubt and confusion.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Takes my breath away!
30. 20
The Invisible Son
(For Matthew Shepard)
I had glass skin when I was young
Too thin to feel, to bleed, to sin
I couldn’t say hello to him
No hug, no cuddle I couldn’t win
His affection attention the man within
His heart he saw right through the skin
And now I scream, “I’M OUT!”
My rainbow colored skin is in
Refracted light now breaks my bones
Illuminates the heart within
Yet still I can’t resemble him
Reflect the man, his heart, his skin
I still can’t say hello to him
31. 21
To Dylan
My cuddly Abby and your cute Colette,
Our two respective, cozy pets,
Could possibly be a lesbian pair,
If they wouldn’t scratch out each other’s hair,
As jealous cats don’t easily share
While staking out a private lair.
Let’s plan some long weekend to get them together,
While we in my bed get it on with leather;
At first we’ll tickle them gently with feathers.
To sweeten the pie we certainly won’t scrimp:
We’ll create great dishes of noodles and shrimp,
And we’ll show them with candles and music
How after dinner we lovingly slow dance.
But a trance – like look Abby gives me, when I offer her
Scraps, might say “…fat chance, you fool,
I’m not eating that crap! And I’m not buying the lesbian rap!”
This will tell me that she’s not easily swayed
By persuasion or naps, but we’ll show them two cats!
We’ll passionately prance to my bedroom entwined,
32. 22
Convince them that romance is sweet
And that we’re happily horny when we’re both in heat.
Well, we’ll try food, sex, leather and feathers,
Hoping that eventually you’ll live life together;
This coyness, ladies, I will disparage,
Unless you’ll be ready for a Boston marriage.
So, if tickles, tough love, shouts, smells and shrimp
Won’t bring this about, then, Dylan and I will call a pimp!
33. 23
Sublimation
At Beyond Bread today – all raucous noise: slammers
The bread slicer not mellow ‘cuz it stammers
Sounds like jack – hammers, loud poets shouting
And all the kids rapping screaming pouting
Everything in here is on the setting of “BELLOW!”
Between parents’ legs, chairs, tables the kids run
Yelling in cell phones – their sounds bouncing
Like them off tin ceilings into frying pans
Increasing in volume until they crack eggs!
Grandma, grandpa, and the kids – such class!
Unfortunately, the parents on the skids; their ass,
Economy’s bad; much doubt and angst prevail
Where the FUCK is the declining middle class?!
In the men’s room the old gents take their time
Patiently at mirror preening, combing white hair
Looking closer – even combing the handlebar;
Young bucks dash in, do business, and depart
Without washing, grooming, or leaving a fart!
34. 24
Barrio Man
“Without tears there are no rainbows”; Native American Wisdom
By his slow gait and shuffle he appears to carry his defeat deep in his bones
under his tie-dyed hooded sweatshirt. A Christ-like figure in brown sandals,
pushing a heavily-laden grocery cart, he seems unaware of the moving crowd
35. 25
carrying him along, as he shuffles. A black, Rasputin beard hangs from a
mud-caked face in the wave of revelers and spring, 4th
Ave Street Fair goers in
Tucson’s hippie-district, he is colorful pushing his cart with a misspelled sign:
“HOUSLESS, NOT HOMELESS.”
He labors to push his metal grocery cart, bouncing across the newly installed
trolley tracks, linking 4th
Ave directly with Downtown and the Old Congress
Hotel where Frank Dillinger was captured. His cart glints in the hot afternoon
silver haze; it holds light blue blankets, torn shelter-cardboard, big bags of
caramel kettle corn, three water bottles and several discarded pairs of blue
jeans on top. As he approaches, I notice his light green eyes staring vacantly
and his bandaged, swollen left ankle which causes him to limp along, almost
dragging his foot like a suitcase tied with rope. A brilliant, light blue Mexican
butterfly strangely floats above his hood, alighting from time to time on the
cart.
36. 26
The ABC’s of Libidinal Fantasies
Acceptance of Brian’s ways in enjambment
with me let’s see imaginatively let me count the ways
I’m dancing with your mind the body not far behind
the clutch of abandonment there it is
I’ve felt it again…………………………………………………
How do you handle your sexual appetite
without every night getting into a bar fight
Beauty is finding one attractive trait in each person
below the belt but your mind makes me giddy
as I undress you from crew cut under your backwards baseball cap
small ears appear I like your lobes frontal fortress of eloquence
in universal thought how did you become so consummately educated
while shadows on acne-faced cheeks compete with growing beard?!
your words cushion each crafted idea as if in confession
as if in rehearsal for Shaw’s “MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION”
so gay and light in tone a smile to drive it home at men’s book club
Compassion too in full measure, evident in your look of cleft chin
37. 27
cheeks flushed in chagrin empathy for the characters
hidden in crinkles around the blue eyes betraying Zen
a smile collapses the cleft as I probe with my tongue this wisdom
I’m a fool for such strength of thought in a small body so thin
I don’t want the quid pro quo’s the “ho’s” arrangement
painters not poets are my heroes equally through Michelangelo
how did you grow so mindful before your boyhood hardness
fully gives in to a man’s bump your Adam’s apple softening in sin
you are apparently a revelation of reverence for others
a father’s nurturing face contained within a blooming mind
have you lived before in much earlier times? Born over again
and again and again into universal consciousness? a new kind?
Dimples appearing after pimples in the dark underbelly of dissembling
38. 28
P-Town Ditties
One poet’s a cotton swab
Another’s a thorny knob
A third twitches my ears like flies
A fourth catches me in the headlights
Gravity used to be my enemy;
But now my friend is forgetfulness.
Road-kill clothes
Like turtles and toads
Cloak a mystery
Discarded ideas
Like shadows of sparrows
Create our synchronicity
I talk and text; therefore, I am.
The opposite of poetic abstraction is a smiling child skipping on Commercial
Street
39. 29
And a nocturnal sea bird silhouetted
Against the shimmering, moonlit waves in the bay.
Don’t fight the bodily functions;
Just apply some sweet unctions.
40. 30
Gifts of the Hidden Self
“Where did my beard go?
Stolen?” you ask
“…moments and a sure smile
..so fine and free to see you
…yes, it was release for me
..seeing you once again”
41. 31
Thank you for driving me home
Your loins pulsing in long white trousers
A squeeze of your long slender fingers
In the headlights I waved sure smile
No guile you waved my proffered look
Thank you really good verse an open book
Terse like you, laconic too, and sweet
In hope and promise
Sometimes longer lines like your endless inseam
Awaiting my tongue
To give voice to love
Traveling all your back roads in Tucson’s fantasy
Beard is already growing back
Less black and grey more red in memory
Loving you in true colors rainbow flash
Is he Melville, Whitman, Crane, Merrill you see
Or me in lineage of bardic beards?
“I can only be me,” I said once to a blond lover
Like you intoxicated with glee seeing the real me
These days I prefer lusty love your long lines of poetry
Your inseam my tongue slowing climbing the arch
Of your toes, size 13 feet curve of slender legs up up
The back roads as Whitman I celebrate your body
42. 32
Electric erotic your lines asymptotic as Melville
I take stolen moments wanting more than a glimpse
Of Hawthorne’s tender distant unsmiling regard a touch
Perhaps of your gorgeous fair face dark hair burning
Coal black eyes as Hart Crane in my lofty interior
Self-absorbed Romantic gaze I want to penetrate your
Charm no harm to the necessary fantasy preserved
As a glistening memory of us in amber twilight glow
As Merrill on an overdue pilgrimage to Nova Scotia
To honor Elizabeth Bishop storm light showers of brilliants
Pump organ hymnal circa 1915 I adore your buttoned up bliss
And yet I desire so much more this visit
My arms around your 34” waist a lit match at dawn
Hearts beating each to each as I reach the far shore
You are most fine and free
I release you forever from my fantasy
Some future visit my loins may drive home my lasting
Sweet regard for you next time I promise to show
A full, grey, bardic beard like Robert Browning
When I next return from Florence or the land of Puritan snow
Please don’t always remain only in memory in fantasy
Even though you shall always be way, way beyond my reach
45. 35
Blessed Be
It’s not about me anymore
memories of a broken past
surfing the giant wave of epiphany
I no longer seek control; I’m crashing in a roll
Down, down to drowning until my board lifts
Unexpectedly, corn-holes the cone soars upward
into the stiff sea breeze of spiritual winds
46. 36
I leave myself behind
I am Icarus up into the sun
Balance harmony moderation
‘whom’ was I trying to please
the rigid formulas of life’s predictable
daily dull discordant symphony
birth, death, birth…….. death strutting my stuff
Macbeth “ OFF! OFF! Wet suit of mortality
I drop away with my board boring life of egocentricity
My battered, broken besieged body in my Hospice bed
ear wax dissolved in salt water
I hear joyful yells of the free:
Rise up with me!
47. 37
The Crystal Rose
As Modigliani did in Paris
always linger a little longer over the supple line;
caress the poet’s image combine her rhymes;
embrace reclining Akhmatova; feel her warm form
Modigliani’s loving lines aquiline nose regal head
legs elongated in aristocratic elegance in her supine pose
“angel-harlot” to the regime a crystal rose to persecuted poets
hope to Brodsky Tsvetaeva Mandelstam Mayakovsky Pasternak and Blok
How wondrous was unencumbered love in the tortured twenties!
feel Modigliani’s tender touch stretching her torso with his brush
a black orgasm of Acmeist art dissolving like lace snowflakes
Leningrad’s high winter sunset-red windows warm bodies within
48. 38
CT Hospice 7/31/14
Like a child’s cradled mobile of sailboats above the crib
The sails on the sound today appear weightless
As if hung delicately from the sun shimmering skirting along
Tops of white crests and strung along invisibly to earth’s end
A great billowing cloud-hand appears and stirs the sea gently
Then huge three-master sails lift higher on the horizon
All in tandem as seagulls chasing after muscle shells do
Soaring on white strings of breeze against the darkening hand
The wind screaming louder than gulls and angry violins
The storm rolls in with the fog bank like spreading fingers…
49. 39
These Days
I PREFER ANTS AND APES TO THE HUMAN RACE THESE DAYS
Ardvaarks dinosaurs and screeching diving seagulls
Anything without malice
Even march peepers
Until hope and hook of compassion
Rip out my heart flying crashing flapping on the pavement stoned
These days of bombs, poison gas, missiles, I.E.D.s, and drones
I prefer bugs coyotes crabs crawling under rocks too
So screw you until we’re alone
In caves cracked open to ease the work of worms
Eating from buckets, can we hope, dissolve burned-out homes, assuage bitter
sclerotic souls?
50. 40
On the 100th Anniversary of the Commencement of
Hostilities in WWI
“What a world! What a world!” says the wicked witch of the West who is not dead.
“Now, I see, after 100 years of mourning me,
That you’ve learned to target children first:
Milala Yousafsai, Rafah’s United Nations’ safe schools,
Three Israeli teenagers on a hike, Syrian hospitals in Aleppo for spite
Russian school children, Chechen toddlers, infants in the Holocaust
Tossed willy-nilly out windows into Nazi fires, bombs whistling lullabies,
As they rain on Gaza…………………………………………………BRAVA!”
Folks, she’s ALIVE and selling arms with her helmeted, wicked, flying monkeys who
Roam the wide world,
Selling fireballs for billions: Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Qatar, UAR, Israel, Saudi Arabia,
Syria, Lebanon,
And she sometimes gives the most potent wands away free to mercurial friends
And even to their enemies:
“What better way to start WWIII,” she says,
“Having everyone else do my dirty deeds!”
“Do not think that the enchanted forest will hide you, for in ’39 I dispatched that bitch,
Glinda, and no solace which you seek will assuage my bucket of hate and bitterness
51. 41
which rained down on me in childhood…for 1,000 years I’ve had my way; I’m not going
away…I’m not melting…”
The old wicked witch of the West is not dead
She’s using disguises and spreading her lies
Her malice is bubbling in coffins of lead
The old greedy witch of the West is not dead
Her tanks go on rolling, trampling folks under beds
She’s shape-shifting countries and herself in our heads
Causing chaos, starvation in camps where refugees fled
52. 42
A Digital Love Affair
Some say that opposites strongly attract
Different types in love must certainly be cracked
You are so anal
And I, so oral
We’d soon find a way to start a quarrel
Confusion would confound our give and take
We’d create crises like layers in a tall wedding cake
You are cerebral; I more like Caliban
You, Ariel, on the run while I get a tan
We’re so far apart in station and class
I’m from the peasants; we eat cabbage and grass
You’re from the Brahmins, born under glass…
Now that we’ve met in the flesh at last,
Please take your forefinger out of my ass!
53. 43
The Race to the Finish Line
Is this just another crime show…oh, God, NO!
I see your smiling, boyish, photo-freckled face
Big teeth already in; you holding a sign, waiting
“please win this race dad – alpha and omega”
Who’s soon to cross the finish line…!
Oh, I long for that lost, long-ago time
Of soap bubbles and sand boxes,
Back yard, innocent tree houses to climb….
Martin…where have I heard that name before?
Another Martin gone in his toothy prime;
Day of infamy, living in the horror of Patriot’s Day
Please someone connect the dots………
Timothy McVeigh, too, not many years ago
Took our breath away on Patriot’s Day
54. 44
The Arizona Inn
(For Darrin and Maurice, my Two Tucson Muses)
Three whimsical hearts in Kartchner Caverns
Relaxing in the slower competition of difference
Showering together under dripping stalactites
Slapping ass playfully then touching tenderly
Groping at last in descending darkness laughing
Stick figures, prehistoric drawings on wet walls,
Animals rampant, faint primitive Picasso circles;
We are holding hands in the dance and brevity of bliss.
Three-person-time drips hour-glass slowly
In a suspension of cadence diction and rhyme.
The MUSE is confused, too, by dripping time
We three in silent pose like Grecian
Nudes on red-figured urns turning
Like tattoos into ancient cave drawings:
Stalagmites incorruptible by modern taboos.
Suddenly the MUSE shouts, “WATCH OUT!”
55. 45
We are crazed hummingbirds in
Succulent, incoherent, night flight.
Bats out of caves craving water food sex
And shade. We are Ephebes wrestling
In mud, vying for top, catching the roving eye-
A flashing reflection in a lover’s gaze.
56. 46
Sexy Seventies
A babe sucking at the breast again
Awaiting the rest again soon enough
Before the inevitable octogenarian aquarium
Cluster of crabs contained restrained in wheel chairs
Wistfully contemplating copulation regeneration
The dreams of desire die hard among the dead
Do not die but hide in fatty folding flesh in cracks under rocks
Tidal pools of the moribund moon; they come out to feed
Under the yellow eye of searching gulls by day
Vigilant night nurses risking everything for sexual play
Creation copulation among the rocks at lowest tide
Dead cocks ruined bodies of babes corrupted by age
Attempting to cancel the tides of desire that inspire:
Miscegenation with crustaceans, old brown breasts like sea-bed clams
Flattened to fading green seaweed, dry humping seahorses,
Purple string hair like stinging tentacles of bloated starburst jellyfish
A lingering last desire like a slightly over-ripe juicy luscious yellow peach
Slaking my salty thirst after a late summer swim dripping on my tongue
Which probes opens the furry halves sucks the curves of releasing skin
Into the crack of two to the peach pit, as I bury my face in it.
58. 48
The Mayflower Protestant Holiday is an
Oxymoron
A Madison neighbor on Columbus Day Observed protests;
He squints in recognition on his quick stop at Starbuck’s:
“There should be a Mayflower Protestant holiday,” he opines
59. 49
And smiles enigmatically or is it ambivalently; “We self-employed lose,” he adds.
I’m not sure if he’s complaining selflessly, drawing attention to his self-valorization.
He’s a yellow-jacket on the way to the inner hive alive with Calvin, pausing just long
enough to insinuate my fault.
I de-mythologize his ethic and deconstruct his compulsion:
self-righteous Puritan bastards who first came
showing a stronger will than the natives to instill fear of an angry god;
he could do with a slightly smaller SUV
see more of humanity on street corners.
He’s miffed by a poet’s puzzled look
I throw back his mild protest: “ants and bees continue to work,” I say; “so why not you?”
He laughs at the analogy. “Hey, you may write a poem on the Mayflower Protestant
Holiday in that clever way.”
“I will,” I say, “TODAY!”
60. 50
In Memory of Bob Jacob
Signs and portents: goose honk like a tuning fork
Signals seasons of dying bodily senses sink
Shut down sap retreats in fading trees birds
Leaving no longer south but inward to soul’s core
Your words like drying clothes hung out on lines
Hold fast November winds blast the picture glass
Cast the white billowing sails of boats on the bay
Your still breathing lungs in full verse at play
Your songs still living and loving fully in service
Rooted in rocking chairs still summon God’s Grace
Twinkle in fading eyes rustle in paper thin leaves
Of skin in shrinking bird like bodies no longer bound
61. 51
Acceptance
Lord, grant that I may see today
Hidden beauty in human need
Not just in melting dew drops
On pine trees in the walk to the sea
Help me to feel that unmet need in me
As a motherless child rocking dreaming dying
Rocking to sleep in the arms of today’s mother to me
Cradled comforted incarnated…a soul slips silently…
Help me to shed my strong ego’s vanity
Molting in transparency keeping in loss
Cracking open egg embryo naked in new skin
Arms claw-like curled up close for birth
Help me to see beauty also in surrender serenity
Like settled seagulls on three roof peaks in tandem
Exposed soldiers facing south patiently, patiently
Hoping in arctic January for a little radiant heat
62. 52
Circle of Light
February 14th
, 2014
Outside, diamond sparkles on deep frozen snow
Moonlit prisms on ghostly white extended arms of pine tree branches.
They bow down and genuflect, groaning in the body’s heaviness
Inside, expanding circles of consciousness crossect busy lines
Mandalas grow in ochre red crayons I sometimes hold for John
He draws, directs radiant accomplishment, pride painted over
He adds brown leafy vines like love; “It shows through,” he says,
looking up at me. Green lichen cover concentric circles then slow.
His hand tires; breathing more slowly, he feels inner peace flow:
like drawn blood it flushes his face with radiance, acceptance, letting go.
Loved ones like silent, heavy pine trees standing in a closed circle
of light round his bed, a diaphanous glow in luminal moonlit snow
63. 53
Generative and Transformational Grammar
(For Noam Chomsky)
my ass fell my cheeks tell from a tattooed star like embedded syntax formerly fixed like
Polaris then wobbled on its axis walking parallaxes wandered roamed far into Orion
passed Betelgeuse around Rigel and Saiph avoiding a black hole retrograde into horny
Taurus’ static form. How those clever Arabs knew which myths to shower across heavens
to perpetuate their stories while the Greek gods flew among them. Now as old men we
look earthward with corns on toes veins popping on bulbous noses old man’s hose a
prayer for surgery. We are wraiths of stardust too soon strewn across our milky way.
Altair in the eagle, Aquila, home to a shadow earth, our dark star, forbidden planet,
alternate universe.
In your deep wisdom and understanding of human imagination, which myths will we
invent for perpetuation of beliefs? Which transformations in the loins of loving Hercules
fertile vocabulary birthing galaxies with a syntactical hug and kiss can you suggest for
the perpetuation of this planet? You, Noam, are an expanding Nova that sparks hope and
bliss
64. 54
Desperado
Long curly dark hair
Thin hips and lips
Guitar strumming on 4th
Ave sidewalk
Case open for small change
“Thanks” with sweet smile in an ironic style
Been covered with a thousand kisses
In urinals bars and rock cafes
When not out mending fences
(memory: sunny soccer fields
Youthful tight white shorts
Shadows shifting
Lithesome young men stretching lifting
Leaps suspended like hovering humming birds
For the Frisbee shot)
Now, desire like walking rain in the desert
Floats forever on your heart’s horizon and
Two-steppin’ struttin’ – never sluttin’ –
Bustin’ your beautiful ass shovelin’ horse shit
Always hittin’ the road
65. 55
Never holdin’ a man in your arms
More than two days runnin’
Now you hang out with rocks at all the gem shows –
“You’d better come to your senses”
And get outta your head –
“You’d better let somebody love you”
And get outta your bed
You think you’ll always have
Your soccer-ball butt, your youth, your strut?
You’ll part your hair on the other side
You think you’ll glide into old age?
You’ll shed your worn, cracked black boots
And DESIRE like a desert dream
Will cause you to shudder in your shoes
66. 56
American Pie
My longing for this town breaks with morning song
The golden shouting sunflower head
No longer across the way a nose stuck on like a lump of unformed clay instead
Rainbow flags in windshields of delivery trucks
Gay men in clumps dragging cell phones on loose leashes
Doggies like people walk into the ‘Wired Puppy’
Unmolested grunting to each other at tables
“…swipe again: doesn’t accept the cards”
Shirtless, buff ‘Neanderthals’ bow – wow! Eat ‘bolo’
Drink red – eye double shots espresso eschew the muffins
Use toasty toilet: “one for pee…two for poo”
Varla Jean Merman vamping it up
“Hi! Hi!” AMERICAN PIE on the radio
Suze Levi came in yesterday
Still singing in the band, FRENCH LIPSTICK LESBIANS
No competition and no U-Haul
Sasha, the Russian painter, driving his vintage Chevy
Sean, Sean, did you write the book of love in your song, “senior, Pie c’est moi
Marilyn from Hofstra, class of ’96, and the music never dies
If it isn’t biking, it’s Reiki and vintage Mercedes’ too,
Drifting politely
67. 57
Leisurely until patience ends in a bump and scuffle
Crystal blue eyes searchingly shout “screw YOU!”
“Oh! Wired Puppy! Your wiring has killed off
Communication compassion and deepest human sympathy
Among entitled wasps and the rest of us just under the surface
Lurks murder mayhem… monstrous behavior…
Friday before Irene… a town where spinning, clanking old
Bicycle wheels sound brassy jazz in symphony
With the growling horns of more delivery trucks
“…we’ll, have a good time then.”
And the dune zombies
Drink Wired Puppy red eye outside
Matching pug pooches sit patiently
Awaiting their other daddy… and treats from the cookie jar
They identically reflect… the smooth symmetry of owners
68. 58
9/11
Truth is no whore
Although she often gives me a standing ovulation
It is 3 a.m.
She is knocking right now on the door of my dreams
With her remarkable sense of metaphor
I was learning how to make rice and beans, again
With Gwendolyn Brooks in white gloves and gown
James Baldwin in a black sequin stove-pipe hat
I get up, float to the door, invite her in for some love-making
Put on the decaf coffee pot she looks me in the eye laser-like
“I need a good man to believe in me, as a husband does a wife
As two gold swans on one great pond in September’s pure light”
“I am not he,” I answer, “believe me!
Even though you are my best mentor mistress muse
I do not have your humility honor hope your defense against
Khadaffy’s crooks, kooks, dictators, dupes, corruptors, contagions
Those who failed to connect the dots…between the FBI and the CIA
I am a weak soft spider’s voice…in the web
69. 59
“It’s true,” she answers, “I cannot be bought cajoled stored
For some future brave new generation to face
Like your corruptible race I cannot be arrested like Assange
Covered up like Khodorkovsky suppressed like Osip Mandelstam
Twisted by dictators demagogues demanding adulation ‘accomplished’
I am not bemused by those who repeat history every 30 seconds
Those who try and fail to fuck me… have premature Iraq-ulation…
My armies of infinite facts are legion like rogue asteroids
Roaming the universe blasting CANT* bombast received religion rancid lies!
Remember: Patience is the highest praise”
As I reach for her nurturing embrace as a child for his mother
I wake…ah…it is only Abby’s sweet whiskered face
…another dream… but I think…
The only thing that matters in life as in art is she…her beauty
And that THIS TIME!…THE FIRE!…on the edge of glory
*CANT: “insincere speech full of platitudes
70. 60
Ode to Prednisone
It doesn’t make me psychotic
Or even neurotic,
But I must admit
I feel like shit!
I want to curl up in a cozy bed
And enjoy the visions in my head
Of zooming broomsticks, but instead,
I lay awake half the night.
In my imagination
Neither asleep nor awake
I shape – shift,
All sensual earth and clay,
Into Caesar to live another day,
Then Cleopatra’s air and fire,
Her gold, jewels, and Lyre,
Then water, sparkling soap bubbles –
All old troubles and hurts
Heaped on the funeral pyre –
Final release in the reddening smoke and rising sun.
71. 61
Regeneration
Oh horrors!
There’s a buxom hooker strollin’,
Struttin’ on Sabino Canyon highway,
Carrying her wrinkles in a bag.
Chiaroscuro
In afternoon light,
Delightful in black.
She’s stopped for a moment,
Set her stiletto heel for me.
Oh, no! a real “ho”!
She stands aggressively,
As I slow; I stare.
She glares provocatively,
Defiantly. I stop.
Tall, blond, smartly dressed,
Slick smile, statuesque.
What’s she doing here, I think,
Smack in the middle of innocent dreams,
Of suburban queens,
Among houses of buttoned up bliss?
72. 62
What’s she doing, ALONE!
Walking so far out of town?
Could this be her territory?
A pimp OUT HERE? Just outa sight?
She stands out, a cactus wren
Among scurrying, suburban ladies
Lusting for malls.
With her huge bust
Determined to make a sale
She leans down, peers in;
She’s a wench, a tart
Looking for balls!
I’m gay, I say. I smile.
I just have a question or two:
You look so out of place;
Is this your space?
She guffaws, blatantly, buffo,
Looks me in the eye.
“Every now and then
I feel a communion with the birds,
Desert powers;
73. 63
I’m free and clear
These hours of peace…….
I feel………..
I can love and be loved….
I can let go….. forgive….”
But nothing grows in the desert, I say,
But cactus and razor wire.
You’d be surprised, she said;
And I was. Desire
Like walking rain in the desert
Floats forever
On her heart’s horizon.
75. 65
Tab hunter and me
Screaming bus rides
Clean clothes with Tide
Little Linda down the street
My busy mom but
She fed me Chinese feasts,
Took me to the movies,
Stoned me with her kisses.
We share a lot, Tab,
The same story:
Crazy, controlling moms;
A father’s fleeing footfalls;
Parallel tracks;
Parents cracked
From overworked childhoods;
One sibling, too.
How I loved you,
Fell for your big screen muscles,
Swelled in my seat,
Watching ISLAND OF DESIRE
Twelve at the time,
I broke a taboo with you!
76. 66
My body screamed that night
For your tight, tanned skin,
Your milky smile, blond curls
And your rich, blue veins
Of cowboy blood spilled for love.
I craved you
Under childhood’s patchwork quilt
Of guilt and glory;
Wanted to be you,
To crawl into the cracked mirror
Of Hollywood dreams;
Admired your savvy, horse sense
In spaghetti westerns
In war scenes –
Even with DEVINE –
THAT SCREAMING queen
Anthony Perkins, Rock Hudson,
Buttoned up boys like me,
Led half-lives
In a 50’s straight jacket and tie.
You never came OUT , Rock!
What a crock!
Hidden, unhappy hunks
77. 67
Hoping to pass,
We fooled only ourselves.
You’re now 78, Tab.
It’s not the same face
On the back of your book,
But I’m still hooked on ISLAND OF DESIRE, just not on Linda Darnell
Who never did it for you either.
You’re still my fantasy
In sticky sheets –
No split image for you and me!
You gave me intuitive gifts
For a whole life
78. 68
POEM FOR A PUGGLE
I sought God’s guidance when I woke today -
new hope, a path, a way – witnessing last journeys
bedside with families, I’m learning again how to pray ;
no judgment, denial, doubt, despair, depression I see -
just delightful detritus, the driftwood of lives displayed
collected to comfort the brothers, mothers, fathers and me.
“You see,” God says, “perceive how the heart knows how to play
this late hour with painting, photography, singing, poetry!
Look out these grand windows: the playful sea, white sails
chasing shadows, dark angels, seagulls dipping and diving,
like souls soaring in membranes of mist, a curled puggle’s tail
chasing the breeze and the plovers as they dance by the sea.”
Oooops, that’s my pooch, Charley-Ray who got away from me
yesterday on our stroll – slipped out of his harness during a pee
and a roll in the sand, fish-heads, seaweed, sour dough of debris.
I’m chasing his tail, embracing, snuggling, cuddling, renewing,
rolling in shells, sponges, throwing driftwood back to the sea, so
don’t hold back, curtail, desist or deny a playful heart. Be free!
79. 69
SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER
If it bears repeating once then thrice
a bare parched plain of yellow ochre
red barrel bombs our treaty partner
drops: northern Syria 50 children killed
school and doctors SANS FRONTIERE
decimated related to our own mistake last
October, so who answers for the next time
“…a tragedy that never should have happened” (David “Be-tray-us” )
fire on bed-ridden children screaming
desire to die as quickly
treaty partners deny truth……………..
when the love of power transforms into
the power of love, when a U. S. Senator’s
answer will come on a dove’s broken wing,
when reasons swing back and forth like
hanged men in the wind from Afghan friends
who create “…a perfect storm of human error…”
in repeated bombing runs on the wrong site
uncorrected strikes while 30 staff and patients
die…. 37 wounded in their red ochre tents
only divine reasons supply a cover for the dead
I am in the bleakest blackest depression
80. 70
The Poetic Fallacy
Pigeons and airplanes
Perhaps?
What is that loud hum above
In the apartment over me?
Could it be
A slide master
Madame, in flagrante
Washing the floors
Rolling dough
Practicing bowling
The rhythmic coo of pigeons
Confused me
Their sound carried down
The vents from the roof
At night it continued
But I thought
No one could make love
That long
This ain’t no po’ man’s paradise
Ain’t no Palm Springs
81. 71
The End of it All
It will come
Out of the blue
Like a bird a phoenix in flight
Our heads will hit the ceiling
From the impact
Our teeth will fall out
We will crawl around like dinosaurs
For days
In the haze of debris
We will not see the sun again
Until our ancestors’ bones
Rise from their graves and dance
And the dead moon
Will remain impassive
82. 72
Madison, CT
“Are we there yet?” children shout
As they pour out
Of trollies, Model T’s, and prams
Most men on this summer morning
Are dressed in pink polo shirts
Imitating each one’s individuality
No one would think of goosing stone statues
Arrayed along the sculpture mile
Except me she grandstands
Under a tree upside down
In sagging roles
Of bronze smiling fat
Balancing on small hands
Mocking the town fathers
Embroiled in the political vat
Of the biggest police scandal
Connecticut has ever seen!!
Within one gentle hour
Sitting outside the Beanery Café today,
I see mothers’ and fathers’ forgo cell phones
Not miss the up-turned eyes
83. 73
The daisy prize held
In childhood’s hand
Fathers for once follow the eyes of their sons
Mothers wipe cream cheese not shadows
From their daughters’ eyebrows
Passing dogs on leashes
Release clouds of shedding fur
As children caress them
A six-foot slim transvestite –
Not a queen- carries herself
And the antique show’s catalogue
With dignity and the traditional couple
Next table notice, say a respectful word
I hear the cheerful song of sparrows
Swinging down for daily crumbs
Harmony re-appears in the soft gift
Of summer’s magic
84. 74
Halcyon Days
This morning the foothills and the mountains are combing the clouds
For showers sun breaks through
The honeycomb shadows cast superstitions in the Lost Dutchman’s mine
A plump featherless rooster, the elusive Sasha, floats by my window
I search for history an expressive metaphor transformed from life –
Something universal in human experience that connects us
Before school days, before masturbation, Afghanistan, Chechnya,
Russian mothers against the war –
Before Mayakovsky’s and Esenin’s suicides –
Before all Pushkin’s children were plundered poisoned pilloried
Before Putin’s puppets……………………………………………............
Before the bone-crunching brutality of youth –
Bullies before they were boys
Ah! I have it: open the nesting doll, one inside the other, inside the other;
Grasp this rooster’s leg this Russian road runner tiptoeing by my door
I’ll beckon him in bless him bestow a kiss on his bald head,
Squeeze out a smile………………………………………...
85. 75
“It was the cold that sent us out………”
Into the night for firewood
Any twigs visible in the light of matches
Ali is near I can hear Shahid scratching
No food without fire the baby is sick
Tomorrow comes quick as we wake before the dawn
It is no school for us we work in the field
But I have one book from one American and hope
Then, hope died for me
I see boys’ bodies scattered on the hillside
Bombed back into the Stone Age
Pieces of flesh flakes of brown skin
Like dirty snow falling gently in first light
Like red kites floating after the cut
In slow motion down to earth and another day
A roar in the sky rosy-fingered dawn reveals
The fire-spitting beast that kills
Suddenly, silently at first it comes so fast
86. 76
The Heiress and the Homeless Man
A homeless man I know
All smiles art, work, and show
Sits at Walgreen’s his back
Against the wall
This morning’s offerings
Artful faces on envelopes
Like prayer flags and flowers
Laid out
From his sack of paper on the walk
“I get anywhere from eight cents to twenty dollars!”
He says, showing some missing teeth;
That’s very Zen of you I thought
And I bought something basic
“beat” in his smile and
In his envelope too
It’s not Modigliani
But it will do
His girlfriend is in the slammer
A bike accident
Cost her foot, his house I like his honesty gifts
His warmth grit
87. 77
His Buddha’s smile
No guile
One special envelope
Covered with poetry and art
He sent to her last month
But the face was returned,
“Unsealed – received in Tucson”
The art and verse on the back
Had been cut or torn away
He went down to complain
The mystery at the P.O. unexplained
With his back to Walgreen’s
For nickels a day
He gives his art like apples away
On this street same store
In the 50’s an heiress appeared
Giving her greenbacks away
Her poet’s cottage her painting too
Ruth Walgreen Stephen greeted
Robert Frost donated the cost
Of keeping a place and poor poets alive
“I once saved a woman,” he says;
“She screamed;
Some man grabbed her purse.
88. 78
I knocked him down
Held him on the ground
‘til the cops came;
No one else
stopped to help!”
“Now this store
Lets me stay
All day if I want;
It’s now my spot on Speedway and Craycroft”
“I’m fifty-one
Still strong, and
I know what I can do!
Been in prison;
It’s prison art I show.
I’m not some cat
To throw quarters at.
I’m no hobo without a heart!”
He stands up
We shake hands, hug
“What’s your name?”
“Mad Dog John –
See, I sign that way”
I choose one
A grinning pumpkin mug
90. 80
Poia1
At his tavern, The Trinity Tap, in 1946 on New Britain Ave. West Hartford, CT
(For my Dad: 1911-1996)
1
The story of Poia is from the Blackfoot Tribe of the North American plains; grandfather and
grandson redeem the past in the power of love to heal.
91. 81
He lived a circumscribed life
Of combustible crises ailing wife
Sleepless nights – not from me –
A crushed thumb in the factory presses
Slightly sweet smell
Of boiling potatoes unpeeled
Wafting down three flights
Of dusty wooden stairs
Mixing the telltale tenement odors
Of damp resin soot closed pores –
Olfactory memories of peat-bog fires and Irish lyres
Ancient cottages by the sea
Music is wounded kinship’s last resort
Sweet/sour syntax of coming age
Natural joy of a little sweet boy
Buried before the fall
An orphan with an orphic prophecy
Alone in a dark universe after all
Longing to be comforted cradled in a father’s arms
Guided by a grandfather’s wise tears
And the setting sun’s painted path
92. 82
Bolt upright in my bed
I sat at 3:00 a.m.
An earache? A deep care
Terrible worry balls in the air?
What could get me up again?
Ah! A dream sweet vision hand in hand
Grandfather and grandson
Sharing their stories on heavenly stairs
With strains of Shubert’s “Shepherd on the Rock”
Floating in mid-air
But it was only the paperboy’s radio outside
And his persistent cough that carries me off
93. 83
Appendix
In reading the June, 2015, monthly Poetry Magazine, TRIPPING on “Seven Letters,”
reprinted for poet, John Wieners, I am in HEAT with his take on “making it NEW,” Ezra
Pound’s dictum of pressing the “refresh button,” for the sclerotic 300 years that came
before (John Wiener’s passionate put down, except for John Keats, of the old ways). (see
p. 264) I’m loving the freshness of his views, news to me, from the Black Mountain
School of enthusiasm (1954-55) just before it closed under the tutelage of Charles Olson,
Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan. Wieners is a FIND! For me in my search for mentors to
help me make my own stuff NEW! FRESH, again, to view and hear.
In short, the new ‘pudding’ is in the natural form: as Creeley says, “…Form is never
anything more than the expression of content.” Wieners has several startling, self-
discovering, prescient steps for the process of composition in the “white heat” of
following Charles Olson’s Socratic teaching there at Black Mountain which sets John W.
on fire:
1. Get “The Fuck” out of your own way by eschewing the route of the
“EGOTISTICALLY SUBLIME.” Get over yourself!
2. As poets, we have the talent and the technical craftsmanship to record life’s
experiences in form: experience IN; poetry OUT. An example which comes to
mind: Robert Frost, “The way a crow shook down on me the dust of snow…”
3. (p.262) “Wieners was 23, confident, and devoted to Olson with the zeal of a
convert: “Projective Verse in mind, he expresses disappointment at the regular
line breaks in a poem Schuyler submitted…he urges him to think of his rhythm
more physically, to add ‘the twist of the hip’ and imbue the lines’ energy with
the force of breath…” POETRY
4. (p.271) “What Olson does demand of us is that we go back blind/have no rules,
but, as he says, those the poem at hand demands.”
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Which is only to say that when you are in heat with a passionate embrace of a new poem,
let the form bubble up naturally from the crucible, even if you fall over the cliff:
“yesterday over the cliff; today on top of it.” (JW) and, run, don’t walk, with it to your
nearest, trusted MENTOR, for reaction as you declaim it loudly, do the dance of it,
discover its form naturally in its natural rhythm and “twist the hip.” Get the fuck off the
academic style podium and out in front of the lectern.
(letsfrankiethepoet on Tumblr.com)
(And please look me up on poemhunter.com)
Francis E. Crowley
