Thursday, July 31, 2014

MALEVICH

Drops of patinas
paints belonging
to D.N.A.'s canvas'
of a new century's
expressionist eyes
into a transformation
of a Russian freshness
from angular shapes
and sustained colors.
PICASSO'S TIME

An embrace
of revolutionary paint
that faces mirror dreams
against the daylight
in a remembered time
escorted from refugees
from fascism
engraved by your signature
when history doomed art.



CONCERNING THE MOON

Before laboring names
until we remember
the right disguise
of the moon
high over the street lights
on our avenue of flower shops
and book stalls
the present is weightless
for those who sleep walk
vanishing in a human voice
on angel's step ladders
shrouded from wild stares
of a melancholy poet.
A POET'S IMPLICATIONS

You set out
apprenticed for life
with your hands on
stalking words as proofs
in language shadows
of apprised verse
from unlettered reason
of imminence of rhyme
in attuned hunches
of turned on verbs
unloosed sentences
and suspected convictions
hiding in concave lines
surfacing from
your  short earth-wise time
impacting your own survival.

IN OUR NATURE'S CAPACITY

In our nature's capacity
sunshine glimmers
from the countryside,
city and open sea
in a now toxic world
when clear water and sky
are secretive as acid rain
among dead fish and birds
now fall as intruders
crying out in branches
of ash trees and ocean
as mourning doves
witness the frankness
of an earth-wise reality.


RODOMONTADE

Boasting early in the day
you won't take your leave
of sashimi, fruits or grapes
from the table of contents
after a Firbankian brunch
of more than a combo
of any continental breakfast
consisting of inflated talk
of your next novel novel
outdoing Nabokov
in a play above yourself
with a vast pavilion
of images to impress
the fourth estate.





Wednesday, July 30, 2014

WALLACE STEVENS' PEACE

No conflict
with roses
in your hands
reaching out
on your balcony
each petal
once under worms
runs by the sea
you glimpsing scars
from the sunshine.


Tuesday, July 29, 2014

PLANES DOWNED

At kgb, cia headquarters
during the cold war
every day on our borders
planes are downed,
souls drowned in the waters
from Weimar to Warsaw
in all governments' amnesia
about the fallen jet off Maylaysia
O repent,on the streets
Whitman's,Pushkin's
sons and daughters.


WAR CRIMINALS

Why do war criminals
survive so long
from Weimar to Warsaw
where they did wrong,

Justice must cop a plea
with a bibliography of libel
even pissing off your survival
when given a free Bible.

GEORGE BLAKE AT 90

In the complexity
of the cold war
with sex and a shower
and a vodka drink
what is life for
if there is no sin
or higher power
to worship Him,
you met "The Five"
Guy,Andy, Antony
Don,Kim
and were jet sent
as a K.G.B. agent,
who knows your heart
you played your part
like the dramatist Marlowe
as history will show,
even in Wormwood
Scrubbs prison
you were sanguine
and in the know
risen over the walls
and forward onto Berlin,
with a Russian gold medal
on your bare chest
you had a reason
to rest from your labors
and to later peddle
the story of your life
denying you were
a traitor to the West,
"The Five" were gentlemen
as your history survives
and you are buried
with your own glory's reward
wearing an Oxford tweed vest.



Monday, July 28, 2014

YANNIS RITSOS ON LEMNOS

The military colonels
exile the thirst
for freedom
Yannis remembering
his twenty first  birthday
in a fervor
of fevered expression
yet you suffer
working on islands
from life's painful images
amid political repression
your language amazes
as you write in silence
Yannis Ritsos
survives on Lemnos.


W.E.B. YEATS

With a hidden mask
of nature
winter skates around ice
on such sunny days
we ask for poetry
of dear old master Yeats
whose sorry fate
is in images
of a once forbidden
pagan cold beauty
in effusions of language
amid alabaster memory
you sum up the age.


OSCAR WILDE

You charmed
and disarmed us
with satire
like Orpheus
playing the lyre
yet because of sex
that was once a secret
but not a regret
sent to gaol,
spent in your nights
from a desolation of Hell
you turned to Jesus
in isolation
only you can tell,
as night falls again
on the world wide stage
with courage in language
covering your soul's pages.

REVERIE IN REVERE

a tornado
ripped an auto repair
shop ripped by winds
as flying debris
blows roofs away
as a lone poet
who built a sand castle
on the beach
wakes up alive.
AN ACTOR IN MY COMPANY

Tossed from the Strip
after he escaped
on his Harley
to route 66
in the snow
wanting a dream
to be an actor
in his twentieth year
out to Chicago
doing Brecht
then to New York City
studying with
Stella Adler
doing stand up
to make money
in the Borscht Belt
and being Hamlet
in Provincetown's
summer stock
going to Miami Beach
as a chess bum
writing letters
in four tongues
to the elderly,
like Whitman visiting
veteran hospitals
of the war wounded
finding safety
at twenty five
only on the stage
of his own collapse.

PUZZLED

Puzzled by nightfall's
last chance to survive
on San Francisco streets
as a runaway
from Long Beach
having been fired
even from his teen band
he himself founded,
desperate and unemployed
was at last treated
by reasonable Dr. Freud,
and to the world's shame
became an underground spy
hounded for God's name
in a more than seasonal high.

ANDY'S INTERVIEW

Making your mark
out of wisdom
trapped by a mugger
yet feeling alone
by your graffiti walls
yet being nailed
by the press
searching for
your lost sleep
at the Chelsea
after visiting Andy
at the Factory,
who crosses himself
before the interview
child-like
as you are shot
by an emergency
muzzled manifesto.
THE BODY

the body
was remembered
dismembered
remodeled
forsaken on the street
became a saint
in New Orleans
then coded
recorded
put on file
in the rue morgue.

A MOMENT TOO SOON

Your Spanish friend
betrays his best friend
for a green guitar
he rewinds
the Almadovar film
in the Madrid cinema
tells me his grandfather
was into dada.

PRAGUE VISIT

Trying to hum
the violin part
of Mozart's Prague
a young Venus
of tonight's soloist
smiles,
we are all exiles
I tell her
with no more
space than a rope line
after the recital
or in a firing squad.


THE VOICELESS

A guillotine tour
of Paris
telling the guide
my cousin
fought in the resistance
mendes france
became president
it started to snow
cloud like
i sign autographs
Guy tells me
of his second love
affair in two days,
an old man
takes of his shoes
tells me
he is a survivor
of the camps
shows me numbers
on his arms,
under the tar sky.


VELCRO LOVE LETTERS

Guy, a guy
on the grass
sells grass
in Colorado
i offer him my velcro
love letters
the correspondences
of john denver
and he buys it,
just kidding
i say.

CITY SQUARE

The statue extends
her arms
to the Infant of Prague
and Joan of Arc
in Paris
where flies
dust off occupations
a poor tailor
speaking Yiddish
has a black suit
of an auto da flame,
moths rise
from the last payment
of blood for milk
like the whispers
of a Masonic death.


BODY SHOP

Watch how people
get out of their cars
to the auto body shop
the know nothings,
intellectuals,
slightly fem metros,
the touchy guys
slide in behind
the macho frames
head first ones
with beers in the back
on a mechanical morning.


KENNETH ANGER'S PLAY

Under wired glasses
with strange love lines
your plays are open,
I'm watching intently
and admiring the dialogue
of human wounds
in my cycled leather coat
at a phallic visionary
whose animated words
rise to a pockmarked audience
lonely for truth.
DENISE LEVERTOV'S TIME

Enlightened rain
at a peace march
with Denise Levertov
I'm sleepwalking
wrapped in my parka
with these voices
of earth -wise hope.

STRAW MEN

Holly trees
at Christmas
on the road
getting the high five sign
after a sobering night
by maple syrup stands
a guy selling his art
to buy gifts for his kids.

VERSES ABOUT LOVE

Taking counsel
from the trees
under the rain,
I removed her splinter
from the woods
seeing me
down the road
picking blackberries
disarming myself
with verses.
SISTER POETS

Bitter impoverishment
you moved
next door
we thought you were
mere tourists
until we found
pictures of you
with splits in your wrists.
THEODORE ROETHKE'S TIME

In a random generation
the Indiana's air
stills your valedictory breath
by honeycombed verse
dust walks a night wakes
your words are cast
in shadows
along back porches
city bookstores
and on wooden benches
of our libraries.
SIBERIAN POET

On a veranda
telling us
of Siberia
in your collection
"Cold Plasma"
you liked jazz
Billie Holiday
Yevtushenko
and chocolate tunes
as a four seasoned
refugee
read his own poems
telling us
how you were unloved
adopted
not hugged or kissed
until you came here.

AFTERMATH AFTER MATH

Aftermath
after math
of geometry
you pass
with a gentleman C.
AUDEN:ENCOMIUM

Meeting you
at St. John the Divine
where you read
I'm resting on my bruised
shoulder
and understand
your poetry contains
Icelandic myths
German schools
Spanish politics
Russian translations
French aphorisms
American speech
and your English ways.

A FRANK O'HARA NIGHT

No night time
here at the Cedar Bar
with my sax blowing
an hour before
on the side walking me
criss-crossed down town
it's a spring sadness
at the beer and piano gig
with the grapevine
deflowering gossip
at the broken water cooler
as the last cruise
comes to an end
and no one wanting
to be seen
going home alone
a strange golfer
from the 'burbs
walks in
sits on a stool
boasting of his
hole in one
and everyone laughing
as he orders drinks
all around the house.



INTRODUCING GINSBERG

A kiss at my neck
and it's Ginsberg
at my urban read
with my Dutch uncle
a poetry critic
in the audience
yet he is not embarrassed
by innocent  America
after being tortured
by the Gestapo.
THE CHALLENGER 1986

in class
shocked by the fall
unexplained
by science
explosions
wishing to be a bell
to leave my lecture
on the desk
hours are missing
from our bodies
the rain admits
us to remember
the half-opened
windows.




AT THE AUTO BODY SHOP

6 feet 6
with a tiny 'stache
in the auto body shop
with a mechanical smile
waiting for my Harley
to be fixed
as Coltrane plays
telling me
he enjoys my poems
won't charge me
and asks me out
for brunch.

CAPE ANN

On a dog day
in early August's
bestial humidity
in you pink tunic
over the bridge
saturated with sex
and Sextant
in a sunbathing outfit
trembling at
the hunk surfer
offering you
a maiden cruise.

LOCOMOTION

You played
my music composition
"Locomotion"
on the piano
wearing cha- cha heels
you got
at the pawn shop
in Lower Manhattan
with the flower children's
chorus waiting for us
at the block party dance
every partner
pants at you
with your Brigitte Bardot
denuded outfit and haircut
you click with us
in a Sixties fury.


MONDRIAN'S PRINT

Found on the beach
by a blanket of sand
red upon orange
sounds of the sea
on beds of love
where five fingers
take you home.
AT THE WATER COOLER

and he is going
with lynn
and she is going with
tom
and now he is going
with tom
and lynn is going
to Hollywood.


JOHNNY MATHIS

Listening to you
on radio waves
by the beach
from juke box
day dreams
under a cross-eyed
sun.
SEQUENCES

a dream sequence
which won't stop,
warfare carries us
on our backs
night visions
of a day at peace.

THE DOLL'S HOUSE

1938- The Landsman daughter Julie completed the final piece of the doll's house
          a tiny green sofa

1939- the  dolls's house removed by neighbors now in hands of a Gestapo man.

1940- Sold to a pawnbroker in occupied Belgium.

1941- Bought by a Nazi soldier.

1942- Taken from him by a higher ranked German officer.

1943- One piece, the green sofa has arrived at a transit station in Warsaw.

1944- Art dealer finds it in Amsterdam.

1945-Auctioned off, bought by an American G.I for his daughter.

1946- The doll's house minus the sofa located by a New York City pawnbroker.

1947- Julie Landsman, the only survivor in her family walks by a lower Manhattan pawnbroker shop, finds the doll's house like hers. She never comes back to the shop.
AT THE SAVOY

Jazz
a feathery boa
ebony keys
Sarah Vaughn
I'm playing the piano
at nine years old
after snarled hours
on the M.T.A.
kept you awake.
THE DISAPPEARED

They put you
in a van
after you spoke out
for the disappeared
arranged your own
interrogation
counter-clock wise
for a Saturday occasion
by the table
torture equipment
scissors,
a water board,
taking your I.D.
in a hide and seek
manner,
a few postage stamps
as they pick your pocket,
it reminded you
of sixth grade
when you were charged
with being a hooligan
as grandfather
was called
a cosmopolitan

Again all
they found on you
was poetry.


NED ROREM AT 90

Since the day
I heard your songs
and read you Paris diary
knowing you knew Lenny B.
Coward, Barber,Virgil
in the music world
smothered in tongues
of the greats
your impulse to compose
the final opus awaits.



STUDENT SUICIDE

When you remember her
wooing our patience together
on the blackboard sentences
now, still in my memory
after all these semesters
only half erased
you staring out the window
in outer space
always fearing that day
was too late
to say anything
wishing to God
that someone will be present
in my hiatus or absence
on leave or at break
or my coming sabbatical
holding up any resentment
or presentment of pain
with omens or amens
in your suicidal short story
at creative writing class 101
with a propitious chance
of it happening on a weekend
when you were away
you took to calling on her
like any other pupil
as she stares at nothing
with hang dog eyes
but not giving way
to half-speech
or fears or prophecies
she herself spoke of
in her writing
when a life is bleeding
and my humbled questions
go unanswered
in her life sentence
with an urgent plea for mercy.

Sunday, July 27, 2014

NEW YORK CITY 1989

With the romantic
gone
here in the French
underground
once again
playing jazz
to a melody of Mahler
and Rameau
before a French mirror
doubled up
for Mallarme,
the wind
has Paris icicles
for us
in the restaurant
we murder croissants
by the portmanteau movies
of Jewish refugees
seeing bridal angels
of Chagall
in the night and fog
by a synagogue
of our passing.



IN MANHATTAN 1966

Antiromantic
Andy Warhol
a passion to the lost,
I'm on a sleeper car
the ex-camera rolls
for we underground Beats
are giving our readings
on street corners,
with a lost Anna Karina photo
when married to Godard
we find at the Chelsea,
I buy a lunch poem
from Frank O'Hara
at the Cedar Bar,
here is
cheap vodka in draws
as time lapses
in my synapses
of taboo tripping,
after Andy demanded
to be electrically shaved
for the boy next door
carrying an imbibed state
for an extra in "Flesh"
needing a prescription
for a drug free America
losing a nude display
of Gordon Parks' sequences
after getting the "Shaft"
on the way meeting Lana
a transvestite
who asked me for a light
and turned herself into
a bulbous yet
nosey chaperon
asking me to do
her laundry
of lace aprons,slips,dresses
of silk, Egyptian cotton,
and chancy things
drifting in the wash
in bathed bleach
of celestial swimsuits
from Esther Williams'
technicolor sets
swirling shirts and blouses
lifted things from Macy's
from a drawn basket
in shiny scents of lystoil.


ST. PATRICK'S DAY

When disengaged
and the T.V. media show
only go go boys
and girls
from leather bars
takes away
the joy of the Irish
it is selfish
of those in propaganda
who rough it
on a three clover field,
I take off
to get a green bagel
go home
and read Hegel.
A MANHATTAN DAY

Mugged by reality
bugged
and anchored
by the media
I sleep walked
to the Factory
after watching
an Almadovar movie
terrified by a sea monster
(who was right on)
who held a poster
to ban whale hunting
here when I was
a summer anchor
in Babylon.
SEX EXPLANATION

You zipped off
a hip love letter
with a Freudian slip
and I tripped
wearing
bachelor buttons
reading
a deflowered Genet
hawking the Phoenix
from a Harvard Square
after a peace demonstration
and sex explanation
with hot Trojan air.
READING SAPPHO

In the January thaw
awakened on the icy lake
reading Sappho
over a powered snow
meeting hip Nina
wearing
her pricey Freudian slip
all flowered
with kid gloves
and she quoting Aiken.

TRAINS

Trains
meant Anna Kerenina
and Garbo,
or World War 2
and the Gestapo
or a runaway escape
from the zoo
of an ape
or the men of the Stasi
jumping from the wall
to land free
in a cultural poverty.
A YOUNG MAN'S AMENUENSIS

A kid named Gentry
got stoned
not for adultery
but for being an adult
spoiling his metaphoric
future by gambling
with his pastime
by cheating at cards
sharing moist goodbyes
with girls in blonde curls
or twenty year old
boys with toys
to make him sex crazed
at eleven
he walked out of Sunday
School when he heard
of heaven
once asked the local rabbi
about Passover's
leavened bread
and the Sadduce's
objection to the resurrection
of the dead,
for the kid was a genius
everyone said so,
some called him Jesus
never a Pharisee
or Phillistine
always had red wine
with his erection set
on football games
he always bet well,
went into the navy
loved the sea
and had an experience
with God
and went into ministry
to save himself
from his own hell.



PRIEST CRAFT

The priest told us
in meditation class
how to picture Jesus
from Dawson and Loyola
he had wit, this Jesuit
telling us the goal
was to be in God's will,
with understanding,
memory,
and exercising your soul,
he loved
hearing confession
and wrote fearless novels
of cloak and dagger mystery
with great affection
in constant composition
for we all stand at his wall
needing spoken intercession
and heeding his mediation
in our stranded lives
because of our love history,
yet all his definition's
advice was free
or we are AWOL's recreation
after our soul's examination
when in our own soliloquy
we have painted ourselves
into our keen imagination
from a leading colloquy
always in our preparation
by this fourteen sainted station.







COUNTRY STORE

The manager
his left arm
in a sling
and a lank one
at that
and his knee
in a cast
after football practice
he offered me
an ice coffee free
mixed with an elixir
and sang me
a cowboy ballad
about a girl
he lost forever
until he took up
preaching
and he told me
he had everlasting life.



TAR BAR

In her high heels
she was nervous
in the chorus line
a slight lady
in front of ten
bearded ragged men
judging her
and in the end
falling for her
as she ran out
of popular music
spoiling her
metaphoric rise
as Miss America.

ONE OF MY ACTORS

One of my actors
in my Original Theater
roller bladed
to his audition
he had tunnel vision
of his lines
with an eidetic memory
so I kept my eye on Adam
he left us
for the Big Apple
since I had no funds
to pay him for his worth
then went to Hollywood
and became a star
but when I needed him
he always came back
to us in roller blades
until he fell off
listening to Coltrane.

TWO GUYS

Two guys
at least we thought so
by judging
their appearance
on stage
jam on keyboard
in a stag show and tell
me,what's it all about
these days
of misfortune
and ill gotten wishes
to be different.

A PAINTING SOLD

A nine year old
hides her finger painting
of a mother and child
on a carriage in Paris
from her father
who is an auctioneer
takes the painting
from her and sells it
they move to the Riviera
the older brother writes
a novella
in an ancient tongue
of an ebony past
that never existed
and the father
auctions it off
and they move
to New York,
their Brooklyn cousin
has a burnt out rage
with flashbacks
to war's agent orange
and in a defoliated moment
of a primal scream
puts on his soldier's
uniform, limps by
the family and rifles them.




SOMNAMBULIST POET

In the farthest corner
far from attache cases
and the fruit stand
eating a pear
before a little antique shop
he murders a Danish
plays chess,
devours a cheese fritter
has a cold cafe au lait,
it's only 6 A.M
he goes to the zoo
to free the monkeys
with a special key,
watches a cardinal
try to enter the ceiling
of the cathedral,
dreams he is:
a Samurai warrior
a secret hashish smoker
a stand down comedian
a woman in drag
a citizen of the world,
perhaps a ghost,
minstrel maker
on crucified strings:
the poet cannot cease
to play.



SONG FOR A TIME

A child dreams
a song for the ages

wanted:
an outlaw

wishing for a smoke
on the verandah

a selfie
for a former diva

hiding her Havana
from her husband

a guy in blue denim
thinks he's the law

and captures the outlaw
with a lasso

A screw driven carpenter
nails himself to a stake

The favorite giant panda
is let go

Even fisticuffs won't save
the prisoner

Rain is a foreclosure
for the a bird watch

The kid's song
wins a world wide prize.












ENTER:CAFE

Sky
only shadow over,

following
the bird language,

wings of a Jamesian
mourning dove

reckless Sumatra tea
with a honey cake

windows washed
by a kitchen boy

two playing chess
speak Russian

doing math with
a child genius

a limping spoon
of constant delight

an actor and his heroine
reciting Racine

a once Sartrean comedian
thinks everyone else is crazy

a Beckett look alike
writes his play in braille

dark voices as a woman
accepts a stranger's ring

outside:

Scores of people
at seven A.M.

want a breakfast
of French waffles

and a ladyfinger
is enraptured

someone wall writes
graffiti:

Like loneliness is
a personal aroma.



Saturday, July 26, 2014

PARIS PRE-OCCUPATION

Flesh as birch trees
by a peasant's anonymity
the poet hides
his Pissarro
and Chagall paintings
fearful for the Vichy
secret police
a German shepherd
is near sighted
a shepherd of death
for France's shame.
BY THE JUNIPER

By the Juniper
and poplar
you are a Jeremiah
absorbed in life
to save your people
knowing exile
is coming.


A MANHATTAN T.V.

You shaved
after phone sex
for the flesh potted gal/pal
planting Lola on stage
doing Tallulah Bankhead
imitations
after Body and Soul
played on century old ivories,
Persian cats
slide by hot red
lipstick smeared
on you
with five exclamations
points as finger paints you
on uncensored night music
running out
of thorny imagination
in your five scattered
web face lifts in the mirror
still hides your sideburns.
MATISSE

Quiet wanderer
in the landscape
at Collioure
the plumb line
with three bathers
in the aril noon
expecting the evidence
of imperceptible rain,
you walk
with a bell tower memory
over the lava's
colorful wheels 
of time and shade
as the earth collects
sunlight to last
until you emerge
lulled to the sea
with limpid apparitions
of a half dressed
spring of rhythm 

SNOW BOUND

Snow has muffled
my speech
at Beacon Chambers
rooming house
frozen like grackles
on my window sill
hearing the Advent bells
as the midnight storm
continues its chanting winds
my hunger is murdered
under a red blanket
writing a Beat poem
for an underground mag
with a host of syllables
in front of my mirror
with lipstick stains
my mouth contemplates
bread and love
hearing disco,
black roses appear
in my vase
and Walt Whitman
is behind the drapes
music moves your hips
Lorca spreads his thighs
to my Beat poem
Garbo whispers to me
holds my hand in hers
with a rose in her hair
and my poem is translated
by her in Swedish.
ROBERT MOTHERWELL

The blown sax
in roseate tones
over the stop signs
at the Cedar Bar
and a poet
under the hichhiked stars
looks for Motherwell
in his dungarees
hanging on every word
about expressionist art
as the anarchic lights
last all night
O'Hara drops in
for a drink
it is snowing
and only a lunch poem
like a sailor's leave
survives.


MODERNITY

With smooth jazz
my teacher and mentor
Jack played at my gig
reminding me
of D.H.Lawrence's
hard body
my girlfriend said
tasting woodsy
and natural
(she must have gone down
to meet him)
with great human
passion yet
working class
and Welsh
at student studios
he was always late
drawing Blakean images
in my music notebook
until he left us
for New York City.

THE DAY I MET AUDEN

The wintry day
of half muffled speech
though weary
from the taxi
in my red pastiche
of an overcoat
as a son of thunder
meets Auden
become enlightened
as we discussed
Eliot and Titian
and Keats' Grecian Urn
drinking a Sprite
in a Jamesian mood
invited to nones
at the Advent Church
on Beacon Hill
where Lowell
had his funeral parlor
among the blue bloods
and many wives
driving all to madness
from incestuous mirrors
by December's
conspicuous snow
and this poet and truant
now in private marble halls
near broken Greek statues
heads up to private legacies
trapped by his instinct
under aristocratic curtains
by travesties of past wills
as only laughter offers
a respite of escape
of stray sympathy
among these wasps
always fatally complaining
as idle memory builders
lost in chromatic fevers
and wrenching high estates
of Anglican virtues
in playfulness
of family riddled disasters
these Boston patrician exiles
with tentative sadness
bitch to enthusiasms
self-indulgent necrologies
taking a fortune cookie
and say a blessing
at least knowing you
W.H, in your charm offensive
as you promise me
to attend my first reading.
THE RUNAWAY


Because life tells us
you disappeared
by hiding under
your dad's shades
you lived in guest rooms
in modest corners
on slate roofs
behind split ends of books
in stalls of San Francisco
under limber lost furniture
a suffocation from fear
and loneliness
having to sell your body
to the highest corner pimp
of pitiless low down promoters
and prompters
in a changeless play
upstaged uptown
circling under your eyes
by inchoate mirrors
who try to capture your soul
and body for slavery traffic
eating sunflower seeds
with the birds
hiding in church basements
behind rotted apple barrels
or under newspaper stands
until a good Samaritan
rescues you
jumping between bicycles
near a boutique
on Nob Hill
in a no man's landing
you expect to die
in your pea jacket
or the overcoat
from the Salvation Army
watching the making TV show
" The Streets of San Francisco"
and applying to be an extra
in  the cherry bomb
police drama
of political intrigue
at city hall
hiding at a No Parking Sign
you tried to steal
licking blood
from your wounds
for holding up your life
as guys pick you up
along the 666 highways
of San Bernardino
for apparitions' drugs
looking to find friendship
of a cool few years
as the blood moon
closes to inherit
your shoe less time
in time served
hearing the devil's trill
in death's informality
as you get back to school
and study the cello.


ASHCAN SCHOOL

A restoration
of art's seriousness
disappearing shades
of all realist painters
like John Singer Sargeant's
portraits as the sun enters
the Boston residences
on Beacon Hill
after the Symphony
reminding us
of a patrician past.



POST POSTERITY

night apologizes
for an Apollo
of a poet
the sexiest
and youngest
life guard
on the beach
waves us on
in his white
Russian blouse
near the sea's undertow
knocked down by the tide
as Igor waves me on
reaching a gravity
in the Cape's home harbor
here he lived
as an artist
quoting Lermontov
to me
his avant garde
ocean partner
and rescuer for the day
by junkie beach combers,
cowboy tourists
rusty from Arizona.
city priests,
mystics from St. Petersburg,
soap opera has beens,
lovely lesbian Island poets,
as posterity obeys us
morning birds buzz,
we have no apologies
nor elegies to write on
the dunes branches
we drink a cold beer
listening to the Red Sox
in the shady shadows
of orgies we suspect
are happening,
we want to forget
the snows on the steppes
of America and Russia
we want abandoned love
to be merciful
under ocean lanterns
bathing in among
the boat boys and gals
lifting fish with our hands
out of the sea
taking a cold beer
listening to Liszt's sonata
finding a copy
of Genet's The Balcony
I take my mouth organ
from my blanket
to play smooth jazz
near a sand castle,
Igor walks
with a seeing eye dog
he is taking care of
thirsting for any news
of reality.




REC ROOM

Jim at the gym
hanging from the rings
and brass knuckles
he sold me
at the pawn shop
putting on his Greek cap
after cruising the Aegean
fishing for a Havana
cigar of love
never losing any strokes
under the ocean liner
he being a porter
on the shuffle on board,
Jim,not caring
what men or women
think of him
after consumption
took hold of him at sea
wanting to be a stunt guy
or an actor of Ionescu
or in the theater
of the Rhinoceros
going to Mexico
to paint murals,
being a tour guide
in San Francisco
quoting Whitman
and Rousseau
with the peace
of his Christian science
in the piss
of the moment
picking up his clients
for a night cap.


HOLLY WOODLAWN
MANHATTAN 1970

With her turkey straw boa
and a secret sign
of those who love her
like today's Lady Gaga
half-alive,not washed up
waiting in daily
nightmarish bars
for Trash to make
her famous
I spy a Bette Middler
look alike,
a guy next to me
is full of benzedrine
and cold cream
planting fairy dust
from his Hollywood playhouse
nourishing a bagel
tells me he knows Andy
and can get me in the Factory
but maybe not get me out
I defend Holly
as an American goddess
as I defended May West
and Lana Turner
even as drag queens
at the stag parties
out West
among the trappings
of the elite
with my uncle near me
to watch me among friends
who will live and last
only in my poems.







BY THE CHARLES RIVER

Signs for a room mate
on a church wall
entering the monastery
hearing the psalms
at St. John, the Evangelist
no Phillistines around
but a nice guy
cruising by the river
after an all night affair
at the Algiers club
he's like a Blakean angel
in a modulated voice
of an opera tenor
we enjoy the grass
and sartorial heavens
the Latin Mass
as wrestlers
and lovers of the Word
as a pal of his weekend
bacchanals
he needs someone
to share the rent.


(for Paul Goodman
in memory)
LOS ANGELES, 1980

Myth changes
everything for a poet
con-men
ex priests
sex police
non stop
stand up comedians,
as I drive along
in my Harley
carrying Paul Goodman
in a knapsack,
he goes on after me
but who will
easily admit him
by the stage show
as his legendary aura
haunts the hysteria
of the audience
there is an L.A. applause
from an hour of silence
feeling rootless
dressed for a city climax
Paul is a sleepless ghost
before a dressing room
with a guy putting
him on and his make up on
and Paul not resisting
summer slides
the inexorable self
of creature comfort
to ask and mask love
in a lover
under guiltless tables
long desired
and conceived
on the pages
of the Times
and Free Press
with his lavish pastiche
Paul snaps my picture.




HARVARD SQUARE, 1990

Thinking of James,
Hawthorne and Emerson
near the Brattle Theater
I go by academic doors
to the Carpenter center
to watch a Fassbinder film
and lecture on postwar
German films,
after a croissant
and latte
walking by an old Quaker
meeting house
as my audio sensibility
quiets down
after "Lola"
I hear street musicians
playing Ives,
it's May Day
with no more snow kisses,
love bounding me along
the cold pantomime face
of a clown
holding his hand
out for money,
my childhood sensitivity
hangs from brass knuckles
from a pawnshop
of a free booting time
as a former runaway
refuses to mimic sleep
takes off his boots
shaking off the ashes
from a Lenten dawn
as a Passover mourning dove
shadows the university
this poet wishes
to throw salt in the air
on the edge of independence
by the Charles River
knowing only my poems
will recognize me
I take out my sax
and blow everyone away.




SUNDAY TWELVE NOON

The guy
with a bow tie
looking respectful
at the garbage pail
until Sunday's
respectable pass you by
and he eats
the left-overs
of a fast food lunch
as the trash collector
and city inspector
look him twice over
and their watch dog
wants what's left
in the pail
and the dog lovers
catch you
picking up the trash
and the garbage men
take your lunch
from the lurch
in the trash
and the old guy living
no better than a dog
God spelled backwards
as I hand the old man cash
and he is picked up
and searched
by one of the Sunday ladies
who washes you up
and brings him to church.




ANDROGYNY NIGHT

Ambitious fragments
of your romanticism
in the prism
of your Lady Gaga glasses
I was a man
full of music and laughter
watching you perform
at the club cafe
you motion
in gestures of a mon cheri
smile with a cherry
on top with your renovated
male/female body language
wrestling with the mask
of the feminine inside
and out of
your song& dance routine
picking me up
in your lap top smile
doing Dusty Springfield's
"Son of a Preacher Man"
you feature your legs
in a pornographic red eye
with a restless lover
sitting on a jealousie window
as I blow the summer blues
from my sex and sax
like any forsaken sleepwalker
carrying a pink lady
out to you
as the rain outside
absolves us
this Sunday morning
in our denuded lives.




OROZCO

Mexican crust
of dangerous art
in your arteries
ashamed of the stammer
of a reactionary past
when our mouths
dream dioramas
lured by revolution
to a jet back
drawing of orange wire
sponged for the bread
of drang and drama.
PIET MONDRIAN

Five fingers
bleed out
on the airy knees
of a drawing keyboard
x times waking red
making us alive.

ASPEN

Sending me
to music camp
the stars are alive
by drenching rain
and I have a string
theory and violin
lesson tomorrow
then solfege class
though safe conduct codes
I still camp it up
with my roommate
listening to contrapuntal Bach
watching Sergei
in his blue Russian blouse
wanting to look
in his long suffering eyes
at the right window
as the light
and rain flashes through
notes of your new symphony
you compose
and dedicate to me
laughing from fatigue
playing ping pong
at the twilight table
for we have no answers
to summer voices
as a feral cat crept by us
up from his newspaper bed
feeding him
like clockwork
by an old saint's calendar
bloodshot in eyes and arm
of unelected sleep
removing the stigmas
of our past
menaced by 3 D glasses
left at the T.V. screen
with moveable voices
watching black and blue
movies on my flat abdomen
with crossword puzzles
waiting for us
on the weightless scale
of justice
for two young prodigies.






MORNING MANHATTAN,1992

A quarter to seven
grafitti rats on you
empty ninth circles
of corpses,
a dirty swatstika
on a beaten leather coat
from a skin head
fell off a Salvation Army truck
night sweats
from a dark German beer,
The Tears of Petra Von Kant's
dialogue won't leave me alone
to sleep it off,
nightmare of an electric chair
installed by Caryl Chessman,
where is Ricky Nelson
when I need him
to rescue him
from his airplane crash
needing his wry smile
in this polyglot time
of my winter solstice
speak memory,Nabokov
to me in Russian
my vision is dilated
the City needs
to be criminally updated
on the A.M. charts
to rock myself
out of the cold bed
here at the Chelsea,
wash my future
swear by my past
launder the present
under the sun
and weight lift my day.
MYOPIA

Impressionist world
of harsher truths
echoes five dimensions,
factor in deafening music
enjoying a car race
with maimed feet
on speed
in a grand indifferent world.

THE WEALTHY POOR

You are tired
of suffering gladly
in your extravagant coat
from the Salvation Army,
telling me
as I interview you
for a human interest story
in the Free Press
or what's left of it
how you,Howie
stole a racing car
when you were fourteen
ordering seven drinks
from your boy scout canteen
spouting off
your life time story
for the fourteenth time
on a park bench
with no one else here
to wink,laugh or overhear,
somehow the brandy
makes you feel ordinary
as you start to make
fisticuffs at me
calling everyone
a bastard or bitch
spilling your wallet
and limitless wet dreams
on your Bermuda
getting your way
at the bar last night
sitting by the piano player
playing twenty pick ups
with no luck
for you are a child braggart
an upstart wealthy poor
as the unmoved bouncer
handed you a warning
and a dark coffee
under half-closed eyes
a poet and journalist
rescued you
from the wrestling coach
next to you.


FLASH FLOOD IN THE COUNTRY

In the shape of a spout
by a fountain in Halifax
pissed off
by a flasher in the country
during a flash flood
when all we wish for
is to catch salmon,
in an aviary corner
a shadowy man
creeps up by the tent
by a blazing anger
of the sun
we hide out
in my parked car
yawning by wrathful windows
this serpentine creature
creeps up on us
with dirty hands
of a distinct hour
posing without references
only to a body part
with a mechanical
maniacal gingerly grin
fingering his frankly
poorly stuffed shorts
from an underwear,
with a plate glass mind
watches us as he circles
around the car
without boundaries
in the liquid silence
as acid rain pummels us
from oxidized bodies
we call
the Canadian mounties
who always get their man.



(for Tom Gunn
in memory)
FOUR DECADES

In forty years
knowing it all
cold during the day
night sweats
you never wept
secretly
with closed lips
on either side
of the pond
re reading your words
with a life size drawing
of a phallic friendliness
with a green cap on
and huge pockets
never running out of music
we speak about privacy
of the poet
from dispirited windows
of my interview
you did not want
disciples only discipline
showing me pictures
of fresh faces
at your reading,
you pass me
the French bread
as risen yeast
of forty unleavened years
we watch the frosty stars
over the Bay.
San Francisco
is always within reach.

AT NEWPORT JAZZ FESTIVAL

So extraordinary nights
with you
by the brimful moon
and topical stars
that occasional wind
from the sea
to river run us
in contrapuntal overtones
as invisible echoes of my sax
play a B flat
as a flamboyant solo
forgetting any desire
to sleep
by the concave heat
wanting to start over
and start a day by yourself
wishing to surf and move
on the bluest wave,
with another splash
of a foreign body interview
with impressed publicity
away from
a long winded silence
in response to love you.


LETTER FROM BOSTON
1999

Before the century
is over
wanting to clothe
myself in sunshine
among syllables
of my ink dream's
quilted eye
amid a candle's
brief coffee house time
sweeping away
the dust of indifference
with chimeras
of a poet's recognition
as a butterfly circles
on my balcony
overlooking Revere beach
you know life is only
a dress rehearsal
from our sleep walks
on shapeless pillows
when thresholds open
on reality
from ghostly air vents
on my back porch
reading your letter
posted from Boston
with images of dawn
taking the blue envelope
and pressing
the landmark corners
as a sign an era is gone.


Friday, July 25, 2014

LOS ANGELES, 1968

The motel room
travel stained
the last Playboy
and Gideon
with no place
for a lost believer
in art
a sorry laughing
street worker
has an impotent arm
wrestler next
door to the piano bar
murdering a donut
when baffled
by the Free Press ads
knowing the stranger's
foot fetish makes me
out of touch.


CAMBRIDGE ST,BOSTON
1971

Listening to
Coltrane's "Evidence"
afraid and alone
on Cambridge Street
despising any
writer's colonialism
or pop culture
with the second show
sleeps us in
watching "Klute"
my hand in your color,
as a poet steps in
a shower bath
conversation with a stranger
who suddenly shows up
saying he is a revolutionary,
my car is abandoned
to a dishy suburbanite
who looked like Lot
backing out of strip clubs
in the Combat Zone.

No straight talk,
Sir,when one is twenty
no longer passing out
tarot cards
after every encounter
session
I'm playing an
impressionable solo
by the Braque and Roll
meant to enlighten us
by a shrinking shrink
from Harvard
with Timothy Leary
for the skinny value
of it all,
life is in space shots
to the moon walk
of what possibility
of being nothing but song.
BOSTON, 1968

On the Charles
without a Kennedy dollar
at the fuzzy piano bar
in a Back Bay suite
waiting for uncertain flesh
by feckless shore leaves
from Nam
Vets treated as
Jamesian ghosts
returning home
blowing away secrets
as in a penumbra of clouds
by C.I.A. operatives
disguised by plastic surgery
by Macnamara's band
of brothers
at the Kennedy School
crawling away
from independence
and raging against
the adolescence
when we ran out
of popular music
as beggars emerge
from underground tunnels
taking a lesson
from Jane Fonda
by the mother wind
in self same mirrors
silences smell
of war,visages
of villages
ineffable bombs
writing to moms
in metamorphic pastiche
between a crease
of a century
where four seasoned
refugees hide in trains
with foreign bodies
of expatriate existence
fleeing parental storms
of daily nightmares
of c.b.s body counts
among walking bankruptcies
of the deafened 1940's
with the Dulles bros.
of Church and State
helping rearm
the Nazi revanchists
in the bleakest of horoscopes
on transit in locution
of the final solution
with interest
of horizontal ruin
in time at high noon
amid Dorothy Killgalen's voice
with death coming
to her flesh
in human memory
of the dead Kennedys'
your insides fall
from disinfectant days
in dust baths
of new cable visions
flowers die from pollution
bloodshot in solitary rooms
your bed fills with dominoes
instinct pushes
out the war fever
self flogging on brutal Sundays.

IN THE VILLAGE

He/she
was called
Morning Glory
or Bella Donna
Zola, Thirsty
Veronica
until the iceman
cometh. our director
on stage
to do my plays
these gal/pals
with cat shade eyes
from sleep houses
in the Village
with costumed earrings
falling off
on broken sofas
carrying beautiful italics
in lexicons of commerce
a vocabulary
into a third sex
of interpretations.
TIME OF WELL BEING

0'Hara is gone
like lobster meat
along the waterfront

Sunday's Times
hangs on
your obituary

a tongueless notice
to escape
the artist

the Bird becomes
my hand of a ripped
off needle

the church pages
Lenny Bruce
as heroine for

Billie Holiday's
''Bless the Child"
as O'Hara is remembered

in the Cedar Bar
Frank,you fresh monkey
among the field mice

of Central Park,
in a time of well being,
flames everywhere

strikes the innocence
of the subterranean,
James Dean swears.

UNDERTOW

Surfing on board
in drizzling light
to bathe on an ocean
speckled and anchored
among islands
of archipelagos
will thread over
the breakwater
a trembling apparition
by sand fly black waves
the brushwood rests on
my orange kayak
by old cargo ships
near the home harbor.


i
MARC CHAGALL

hosts in the sky
on an unspoken wind
the prayer wheels
always driven
in our eyelids
for a tender rapture
below milk white stars

The village house beyond
homelessness in exile
rents passage to borders
in language of her own
we take evasive joys
gardens of a little wood
beside a fallen ladder

The stars milk white
as sundown in my room
leaves music of the spheres
in a crippled beggar
expecting phantasms
in his grey gone eyes

The room
is still a child's
incomplete as a gesture
in echoes of the wheel
picking up stones
by empty houses
awaiting a pardon
in a vocabulary of God.





ST. SEBASTIAN

It's the eyes
that meet
like arrows unknown
which cannot reach
or paint
the madness
of your olive face
perhaps only
the moon or sun
may circle you
when nights
have gone crazy
and you try to hum
the Sixties notes
left outside
the Factory
the night Andy
was shot
for nothing
but a manifesto,
sober secrets
will find you out
now in the snow
St. Sebastian,
darts in front of you,
even in your pockets
of self reflection
you cannot escape
your own marks
and remarks
of rapture.


SUICIDE

out of a glass window
out of a love poem
out of a book review
out of a lost recital
out of grief
out of the unexpected
out of disbelief
of an unexpected stanza
of a tiny contagion
out of Young Werther's
ending,
between a murdered
blood orange
and a sponge of hyssop,
being the yellow Christ
in Gaugin's painting
under a sunset sky
on the clearest morning
passing an acrobatic cloud
one February night
out of a painful bone,
a murmured separation
the last wrinkle,
the final affront,
a still birth
a spoiled spleen
a castrati tease,
Laddie's dead,
love letters
turning up
in green
spin the bottles
on the beach,
forget -me -nots
on a muddy road,
a boy/ girl scout book
with hearts
for the group leader,
a memory's sleep
after watching
Bergmann's "Virgin Spring",
out of a doctor's face
after a diagnosis
or prognosis,
out of a flood
in the basement,
a child not located
out of thoughts too complex
in a convex drop seat
unhinged in a taxi
out of a telephone
numbers stare





A COLLECTED POET

You once said
you hated "romanticism"
when the hearse passed
you also despised
zoos,
1990's Gucci loafers,
sweatshirts
with city names,
bus companies
with their runaways
hiding from themselves,
empty shelves
of used bookstores,
boxers who won't quit,
opera singers
who cannot bow correctly
who turn into pop stars
after make overs
at bewitching hours,
Hollywood starlets
who love everyone,
so called religious martyrs
with the same mantras
who would hang you
for a price,
all mother superiors
yentas of androgeny
collecting pennies
down town,
Divine look a likes,
who do not listen
to the boy
at the mirror
somewhere crying
in his mother's
Freudian slippers
the humiliations
from his older brother,
all the feral politicians,
you hated "realism"
once upon a time
that era is not over
it's for those
camera ready,
it's for those uprooted
we live for.
IN CAMBRIDGE


A platter
of murdered cheese
on a cracker
why does it matter
in your easy chair
campaigning
for peace
on your lap top,
your neighbor Rick
comes by
who is now ex male
thinning his air
uncut,
with highlighted henna
once wishing to be
a Bruce Jenner,
but now to be a female
as model and mannequin
in a twisted sister
store window,
chilling out
his captive hands geared
for sunshine on the roof deck
turning bronze
not wishing to be
a Harvard Square
in a once all clear world
that queers him
after Nam
and Uncle Sam put him
on his wheelchair of torture
from his muscled culture
reported in time
for his own space
when his rich parents
threw him out
with a once homeless scent
of incorrect encounters
when he was a bouncer
in the straight/gay bar
with the fearful dark light
in hidden corners
when silence
is frozen
in daily nightmares
of your chosen identity
down long corridors
here in Cambridge
dropping his specs
talking flat swear words
delicately scrawling
little poems of graffiti
asking me in the hallways
to always turn out
the lights
by floorboard ears
I play sax all night
in the mute hours
on newly painted
billboards and scaffolds
on days you cannot exchange.





PLAYING MAHLER

Amid whirls
of arpeggios
you return
to kindertoten songs
it started to snow,
your worn gloves
off music sheets
and stand
over the bare iced
keys of the grande
in the storm and drang
overturning all the years
the exercises you plan
playing with sounds
outside is a sleeping wonder
in the woods
of the Black Forest.
WANT AD

Wanted for dinner:
an ex clergyman
ex-con
or exorcist
to be an extra
in cinema verite;
you must be obsessive
compulsive
an over eater
or ex bed wetter
be musical
an experimental wanker
and expect no pay.

You must not fear
mosquitoes,chauvinists,
or universalists,
the posthumous dead,
Wagner or Plath
skin head fascists
popular culture
or pop art,
you must do you part
and prove
to us you can be
always intact
broken in the cast,
above all you can act.
OUTLAW

My neighbor's kid
wanted to be
an outlaw
or an outsider
a side kick
a renegade
became a runaway
an army brat
a cool cat
in our band
before he started
to kidnap himself
by drunken brawls
smothering
any creativity
from his sax lips.
APPOINTMENT

You have an appointment
with love
over a blanket
in the spider webbed garden
he/she will be waiting,
be early

You have an appointment
with death
under a window
the light alters time
in a mute still day
yet shadows
from an Evergreen
ebbs at dusk,
be late.
HOLY LAND EXCAVATION

In a sunlit dig
the equipment gone
at dusk
from a few thieves
as kids wave us on
where another light
at the bottom hides
a motionless jade dish,
the dog under our legs
finds us on speckled yards
with a copy of bronze jars
an old map
on empty ground,
my field glasses
need to be washed,
an intelligence
needs new sources
with ideas for a day
when the dog locates
something of stone
we return with picks
to our expedition
excited to clear
the earthly dust
of five civilizations.
WAKING UP

Waking up in darkness
in chimeras' dreams
by my open window
through first light
the blanket bed sheets
uncovers me
following the buzzer sounds
on the clock radio
playing Bach's partitas
along the wallpaper,
I'm dozing out of shadows
soon swallowed
by blood oranges
under a balcony sky
of congealed sunshine.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

MARK ROTHKO'S PHILOSOPHY

Born to ghetto fear
and persecution
modernism's language
was part of your
final solution
in abstract expression
scattering your suffering,
Rothko,who would have
believed it, came of age
as a Nietzschean
Manichean hero,
your confession.
CAGE'S "MUSIC OF CHANGES"

What computer
in congruence
of chance
in art's convergence
would dance on
your tonal range,

Cage,
to exchange notes
of your language
in a tech new age
for the indeterminate
and estranged,

and to recreate pitch
for a suitor's lover
from the neutered bitch
on a fearsome
reactionary past
on a sophisticated date
in a novel cast,

you change music
as you wait on genetics
game and theory
in unnamed psysics
to chart and sing
a machine of I Ching.

GEORGE TSUTAKAWA'S DESIGN


Named after
the first president
a resident of Seattle
did not prevent
a family internment
during the war
embattled by
the government
yet your gifted hands
and fingers consent
in bronze
with fountain designs
as wisdom increases
in being transfigured
by the visibly divine
of fine arts.

PAUL HORIUCHI
(1906-1999)

Born near Mt. Fugi
with collages
on a wall
in a diaphanous
flash of manner
in Shikishi design
as in Boat House,
dazzling us.
ROSENQUIST'S POP ART


Outrageous
   yet gorgeous
   structured
in culture's entertainment
 yet sculptured
    for our amusement.


CHONG WITH CELLO

Bach
in depth of
her colorful ,horizontal
spiritual and vertical
in her lines
point "Toward Heaven"
ISAMU NOGUCHI'S ART

in stone
and white granite
with augite,
light marble,
iron in pure lines
from basalt 
your rocking voice
emerges 
as body art
from nascent
skin texture
of your minimalism
verges in sculpture
from Buddhism's prayer
merges as modernism
in our arts culture.

REMBRANDT

The collaborators
of the fascists
in the Holland
of their houses
by the canals
of Amsterdam
wanted to own you
for their greed
for you had paintings
of the Old Testament
and the holy family
as Jewish people
in your paintings,
the remnant
after the war
will honor you.
DIEBENKORN'S GEOMETRY

Like Hopper
your drawing and paintings
add up differentiated
with aesthetic art
in ascetic parts
transmitted as color.
THOMAS BERNHARD'S LIFE

You played cello
and violin
and like this poet
you loved Gould
read Wittgenstein
meditated on death
felt caged by your age
in the body of language
you could not escape from
except for eros's
breathlessness
in novels of retreat.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

MESSIAEN'S "CHRONOCHROMIE"

Intervals waken
time colors
in transparency
to be the birdsong
from 18 stringed
instruments
as fingered temperants
between tones,notes
and commingled syllables
within a visionary
repose of creation
from voices of solos
along pure solitude
of harmonic silences.




MAPPLETHORPE'S FLOWERING

In black glasses
remembering Floral Park
Queens where you grew
down and up
town in color field nudes
from an animated
petal on petal.
BASQUIAT'S WAY

where glances
color sky
of shredded life's
unfrozen
by images
beneath ragged beauty.
ALBER'S HOMAGE

Your "Homage
to a Square"
blue, green,yellow
in a boxed rubric
causes me
to lose myself
in such mirrors
of pleasure.
WALTER ABISH'S ALPHABET

In novel grains
of minimalist A
followed by B
beyond length
of hurt
waking to
fascism in your own story
yet escaping death
not erased in solace
crashing in a prisoner's rage
of terrestrial history
in a depth in language's
identification of survival
as a heightened cosmic
evidence of crime
yet with comic understanding
in a direction of your italics
from black nuanced diction
of your time
how German it was.


TOBEY'S CRYSTALLIZATION

White writing
as if on a sea's floating
plankton mood
of small scaled ice
after a crystal night's silence
of winter's abstractions
in a Zen gesture
of intrigues passing
a shock of acoustics
and echoes informs light
of its death scars.
MIRO

Black on white brushes
your 13th ladder
on light moves
your hand strokes
over chromatic escapes
in dreamless
sight reading
from crystals
of charred memory
in landscapes
from Majorca.

SUVERO'S SCULPTURES

No extravagance
in brown reddish
coalition
of unconditional
networking of stone
in a white shadow
inexhaustible
as a happening
experimental
in silence.






JEFF KOONS "SANDWICHES"

Color in your printed
digested time
longing for an eatery
of sumptuous living
on your platter
when appetite is active
in a gravity of rolled
orbits of movement
on echoes of a canvas
of inconstant toast.

JUDD'S MINIMALISM

A few yards of light
on floor pieces
or sleek furniture
the paintings hurt
from beauty's
starkness
on miniatures
flickering in sealed
untiring chairs
of a new eyed age
slanting in a freed
culture pregnant
with paintings
appeasing legends
of your unlocked mind/
body language,.

Monday, July 21, 2014

JASPER JOHNS'S INFLUENCE

You took Hart
and Stevens
at their word,
knowing
the beginning of a work
in spite of back breaking
is the melancholic way
of understanding
the immense cosmic
geometric self
involved in poetry
even in an abstract way
when lighting's spectacle
gives painting a miracle
in an aesetic sense
with the flickering passing
of electric blue resonance
caressing new language.


NEWMAN'S "14 STATIONS"

You are secular
admitting your art
is to be separate
from any religious
consciousness
yet to take a journey
of a man's agony
without a Forbes-Burney
to the 14 stations
of the cross
in a contemplation
of your modernism
in 14 rooms
to think how God
was all alone
before His moving
death at Golgotha
where Abba, his daddy
abandoned Him
even in Abaddon
that he took everyone's
sin with Him
as the angels
cover their wings
on the eternal tomb
not wanting to lose
one soul.



Sunday, July 20, 2014

WHO SEES IT

Those who see
what seizures bring
in the culture
of Caesar's king

For Julius C
like Dostoyesky
had the furious instant
of a want of epilepsy

The essence of their fears
was an experience
of such an existence
taking its toll on years

Of such a precedence
of a precarious way
that only genius
could escape its way

By ruling or writing
on its various stages
epiphanic in sight
it panics as it ages

Excited in escent
when it begins
not delighted when
taking it on the chin

When a spoon
is in your mouth
any afternoon
north or south,

Is it from sin or genes
you wonder
or just inherited
in the back of dreams,

It takes a shrink
to decide
what to think
as you many times died

but live again
to tell of your story
its all in your history
a mystery and glory.








Saturday, July 19, 2014

METH AS MYTH 101

You want to be high
and tried Ecstasy
a seizure of an instant,
given to you by
your ex who also told you
sex had a De Sade thing
that took you over
as a human being
and in your psychotic
state of bliss
(without blame)
you suddenly became
a monstrosity
wanting more crack cocaine
or nameless gold
those narcotic forms of L.S.D.
from old Dr.Timothy Leary,
your hack professor,
an ex druggie
from Amsterdam
uses as an example
in class,
"You count down
a sample of narcotics
on the counter
as you encounter
meth as myth,
and then Smith add up
your thoughts,
and what do you get?"
Smith sits there stunned
others are bummed out,
this is what was taught
in a free university
of hot nonconformity
some students acceded
to act like an ass
to snort with junk
in all geometric shapes
and blow all norms
in the halls
to lay with dolls
and hunks
playing audio tapes
of German punks
and winding up
sunk in bed
and nearly dead
in a funk
knowing now
meth is a myth,
take a Beat's advice,
if you take this class 101
get rid
of glass and ice
fire and chalk,
run with life
when all breaths talk
of speed
it leads to death.






BATAILLE AND BRETON

So enlightened
by a new surrealism
but two critics frightened
and fighting each other
in an ongoing polemic
with materialism's words,
Breton wishing to be
near a philosopher's stone
in a poetic idealism
of earthly paradise,
Bataille living in the history
of temperamental catastrophe
with dialectical eyes.

Friday, July 18, 2014

POSTERS

We use to visit
a poster store
in Harvard Square
standing for hours
enjoying Toulouse-Lautrec
Paris gardens
in the Belle Epoque"
and Picasso's
"Made Hand with Flowers"
of Dali's Blue Snow"
or Van Gogh's
"Under the Blazing Sun"
Mucha and art deco,
enjoying the surreal
in all of Kandinsky
the revolutionary ones
of Eli Lissitsky
and Warhol on the wall
it was so much fun.

PAVEL TCHELITCHEW'S VISION


With a luminous gesture
shaping his bio
as a Russian seer,
an anatomical artist
exiled like Lear
in the snow
a friend of Stein in Paris
drank a matron's wine
and with Sitwell his patron
not embarrassed to hear
of his gay adventures
in his pictures
smiling with Cocteau
on the Champs-elysees.

KEEPING A JOURNAL

The international bard
Rilke,kept a journal,
Soren Kierkegaard
the Danish philosopher
lodged an untidy diary
and the French novelist
Stendahl, the author
of Le Rouge et Noir,
had his forged bio. notes,
and the artist Delaquoix
drew on his own daily quotes
near his new canvas,
Verlaine and Rimbaud
let their words out
for future quarterlies
they wrote with persistence
and kept the arrogant details
whether in Paris or Africa
of their still life as partners
asking for justice
not to be embarrassed
or too ridiculous to fail
others thought it
was just preposterous.


JUNG AND FREUD

Two shrinks in 1909
thinking of the unconscious,
Jung the collective choice
compare each others dreams
in a new age spirituality
with his own jealousy
toward Freud,
in his personal research
yet territorial in mind
going for the duality
that binds us in reality
in seems,
both universal in voice
their own totality
with an energy in kind.


Thursday, July 17, 2014

BRANCUSI AND Mdm.NAPOLEAN

Arms breaking through
stone in Paris
for the phallic
Mdm. Napolean
in a lighted corner
no one is embarrassed
for her blushing spasm
who but Freud
understood the orgasm
only critics are not annoyed
nor the Romanian workman
recently hired
to help with the massive
gesticulating of culture
from modernism's father
of metaphoric sculpture.



JORIE GRAHAM'S VENTURE

Under a stiff vacancy
at Radcliffe college
imparting a new feminist
trend of knowledge
Jorie Graham has arrived
as men are back inside
the dorms of Harvard Yard
in the halls
playing hockey
with no stick or balls
for a new template
and norm has been cast
at last women are free
with their own hymns
for their own natures rule
at the Divinity School,
to teach their own philosophy
not Santayana or Nirvana
but Susan B. Anthony
Sontag,Vendler, Steinem
and of course goddess Gaia,
yet Jorie Graham will inspire
a generation of friends & fans
without Sylvia Plath's mayhem.





THE AVANT-GARDE

The avant-garde poet
is often temperamental,
must be hard
as Swiss chard
on his dish
in this leafy admixture
topped by mustard,

A bard of strong belief
having an invocation
of unselfish praise
with a force of phrase
yet gentle as Eluard,
knowing his own ways,

In mimesis and imitation
which is the poet's state
of mind in creation,
like John Milton knowing
as a Puritan
what paradise is lost
will be regained
every promised nemesis
crossed in his quatrain,

As Solomon's song of songs
gave out great beauty
yet he feeling wronged
even as a king
ate down with wisdom
for his culture's kind,
waiting for his salvation
but not from his
immature critics
or the enemies mankind,

Signing in a bard's
invitational signature
as an obligation,
a poet of gravitas
has his own premise
among his coffee
and demi-tasse


As promises of fate
in his novation,
doubting Thomas
expects no reward
at this late hour
yet receiving an oblation
in his power
his ovation is assured.





Wednesday, July 16, 2014

A POET'S ALPHABET

A poet under exhibition
has a quotidian ring
nothing pedestrian
in a Pierrian spring
but like a rose
in the carrion garden
after a week's condition
may expose him/her
to singing or laughter
my monsieur/mademoiselle
without technique
if need be a poseur or swell,
for all our creativity
aims for conviction
in every sentence
a conceited repentance,
even with perfect diction
may sow our own defeat
for proclivity and pardon,
poetry cannot be didactic
even for the secret critics
it must have spontaneity
and be reactive to the limit
yet relatively attractive.

A STRANGER

He said
he was from Hoboken
he was broke
and broken

He had been hiding
from the police
he had some ID's
in his valice

He had gone
the wrong way
Esau was lost
on the highway

Asks others
for a hand out
with a masked cry
then a shout out

A lone ranger
with a hush
toward this stranger
was in a rush

He escapes again
from two cars
says he wants
to be like the stars.

PROUSTS SENSE OF TIME

The lamp light
waits for grandma's kiss
you slip into a day dream
with your manuscript notes
perched on your knees
between powdered puffs
all windows closed
so no air or sounds
will disturb
your somnambulist hours
a memory of a madeleine
will close your world
weighing down another day.

ASHBERY'S SHADOW
July 28 BIRTHDAY

Ashbery's shadow
in Central Park
leaves the lilac trees
in the darkness
of a newly arranged
kick ball field,
thinking a birthday wish
doesn't make the film
from the camera
footage real,
or a refreshed orange
may drink in a fragment
of a childhood memory
distinct from the art
on a Cezanne canvas,
here on a bench
two cops with first aid kits
give lasting attention
to a drug intervention
on the other side
of the absent minded grass
by a tripwire fence,
curiosity is not nullified
on speed by
the motorcycle driver,
drugs not mentioned
in a boy scout
handbook any longer,
being stoned
on disembodied language,
nearby a swearing in
at a muggy ceremony
on the loud speaker
for a new American citizen,
as a marathon ends
by an ice cream
concession stand
by the arbitrary dusk.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

JONES VERY

You met Thoreau
and Emerson as a poet
in a transcendental glow
from a mystical time
and chose rhyme
to musically sing
for a bardic Muse
in a Pierrian Spring,
when you composed
Shakespearian sonnets,
then you had
a mental breakdown
others call
your religious madness
as a scholar,
before you wore the collar
at Harvard Divinity
when diagnosed
as bi-polar,
claiming you were
the Second Coming,
loving women
yet reckoned that lust
has no righteous sensibility
you say your diary,
recalling your duty
from your motto:
"to sacrifice beauty,"
is in escro in your memo
until you bit the dust.




EMILY OF AMHERST

What nursed you
was not immortality
though your aching life
cursed its own morality
and became opaque
here at your lonely grave
in Amherst
a few friends at visiting hours
come by to bring tulip flowers
and to share in your irony
when Satan bound
the Puritan children
in a false desire to care,
you make your argument
as a critic writing letters
in your soul's conversation
acting as an agnostic
to your betters
composing interrogations
in your pose
of self inquisitions
wholly imposing yourself
on others you cannot save
in the true atheistic position
from your aesthetic reality,
nor do you expect
the wealth of eternity
to respect your own modernity
here at the grave site
I long for a maternity
at first light's flame
asking sister Emily
to remove any masks
since you are
now part of our family,
a kin does not expect you
to know our behavior
from any blasphemy
at encounters
in our confessional verse,
all we professionally ask
is poetic mortality
which cannot be our savior
without any didactic
savoir faire or sin
life appears solely academic
here at your cemetery
among the sting from bees
in a universe we share in.


Monday, July 14, 2014

AWAKENING

You awake
as the sun gives
asylum,

on river beds
of tall grass
a deer in the dunes

my orange kayak
is ready
for the ocean

the oars
are set to sail
out of the home harbor.

STANISLAW WHYGOSKI'S MIRACLE

You survived death
famine and crematory
such would be
your last breath
in your history,
yet you were alive.
ILSE LASKER-SCHULER'S DAY

When you escaped
a German death,
half of my heart
became your dream
we sighed as Joseph
of old,
your story told us
we could be a light,
somewhere a glimmer
of hope for life
in your Freiheit.


HANS MAGNUS ENZENSBERGER


I met a friend of yours
at the Goethe institute
he was impressed
by my polyglot
prize of languages
in my questions
to the reader,
we notice
in the open air crowd
as we tear ourselves away
some deep faces
on the street
who meet outside
the library
for a break
who also celebrate Hans
for his satirical ventures
which wake us up
in the Sixties
the political inside us
all the volatile, lyrical
and poetical ways
which burn us both
in song and golden beer.
UKRAINE'S POZAYAK

Inside ash cans
suitcases
school book bags
candy wrappers
tea in samovars
salt and pepper shakers
a bottle of whiskey
in a red snapper
is hidden a surprise
just arise
from your day bed
an have a look.
UKRAINE'S NEBORAK

Re educate
the rain
a Cezanne bowl
of fruit and dying
flowers,
making a landscape
of wooded wild roses
water falls to the earth.
CZECH'S FISCHEROVA'S VISION

Alarm at the deaths
of children
when music goes deaf
in the Prague symphony
when a Capek painting
is missing
like Jews and Roma
during the war.

NADINE GORDIMER DIED TODAY
July 14, 2014

A long life
in a political landscape
of South AfrIca,
we understood
your novel understanding
of relationships
when color barriers
was considered a crime
yet a woman of her time
was against apartheid
and censorship,
justice will out
today your voice died.

IRINA RATUSHINKA'S SURVIVAL

They could not break you
in the slush 
of their propaganda
the snows of Russia
stopped Napolean
and Hitler's shadow
they could not notice
that even in the snow days
there is a thaw in spring
as in the sunshine
you my still sing a tune.
SHLOMO REICH'S TIME


Traveling with the Roma
in Transylvania
and among you own
lost tribes
from Romania
to Beersheba,
you became, like Baruch
under the long suffering
prophet Jeremiah
a scribe.
DENNIS SILK'S HOLY CITY

You saw the kids
with their soccer ball
the religious
in their white shawls
the exiles from all nations
with a call to pray
your imagination
said to stay,
enough of the decadence
all the decay
all the formulations
quotations
explications
explanations
final solutions,
the voice said to stay.



GUSTAVE KAHN,SYMBOLIST

Feeling abandoned
by the Word
scattered over time
your tender voice
summons angels
like blue tinted birds
in plate glass windows
on a house of worship
you mourn your exile
in the shadow fringes
of your rented garment,
soon better days
may arise above us
for a wise poet and prophet
will wash away your tears
from your dark eyes
when Messiah in his years
will be recognized
and a new paradise
of love just dreamed of
will be realized.



Sunday, July 13, 2014

EMERSON'S REVOLUTION

When organized religion
declines and self reliance
is realized in a new region
by an all knowing mind
science is finalized
superstition is most legion
to boast of for mankind
each of us has nature's ability
to reach mature responsibility
and power from institutions
knowing in an age and hour
there are only private solutions
in a discovery of wisdom
as a prophecy of freedom
and human understanding
in the wonder of God
who moves and lives
in our being.

THOREAU

Returned from Walden
inspired by his journal
seasons pass toward
a poet and hermit
as thought and nature
are reasons to mature
where wisdom is sought
hating slavery and war
with vocal bravery
for freedom
in local Concord lore.
CANADA'S ATWOOD

Whirling winds
collapse all utopias
a marinated narrative
eats up our vegetative
states in paradise lost
in new Aesopian time
dined out on arsenals
of gruesome hunters
who gradualy take over
our environment
and wipe out animals
as deers and elks
drink mineral water
which man pollutes
without green solidarity
taking bloody bandages
of fatal memories looted
on distant battlefields
with distorted disguises
giving lies to dreams
betting on lethargic
maximum futures,
a poet demands justice
in burning up energy
and lost Capital in cities
without approaching
warfare or encroaching
on human welfare
half a millennium long.
CANADA'S LAYTON


All night is pervasive
as you restore our insight
expecting your humor
in the persuasive rumor
to enlighten our lives.
CANADA'S E.M. KLEIN

Complexity
in an unshaved
propensity
as an end game
of unbehaved words
you need a dictionary
of contrary shame
when the nations
unmasked pretend
to be sorry
but ask for your name.
MURIEL RUKEYSER'S SONG

The soul clothes
the body of a poet
expectant in prayer
the sextant has gone
away for the day,

In the synogogue's light
you take out
a skeptical pen
and yellow marker
out of you purse
thinking of Solomon
in his temple's verse
wanting to compose
a dialogue for her Maker.
GERTRUD KOLMAR'S PASSING

A woman passes us
in a German poetic vein
voices from memory
1945 glasses taken
in the rain.
C.K.WILLIAMS

You wrote of the lost
among the nations
in the Holocaust

Deaths in the Shoah
a lamentation
in the breath of Torah.
GERSHOM SCHOLEM

You sent on July 10th
1934 a copy of The Trial
by Kafka's design
and your own poetic work
with the same name
to Walter Benjamin
with a hidden warning
in a prophetic revelation
but Benjamin will not hear
nor leave Europe
for then Palestine
all the rest is an obituary
on the Spanish frontier
as Benjamin chose
the nations rope
over the mystical divine
of Israel's hope.
JOSEPH MILBAUER'S FATE

The Seine drives you
to be crazy for love
or a sentence of death
forget the pretence
hold your breath
and wish to live
or on waves to die.


PIERRE MORHANGE'S RESISTANCE

Pierre, you knew
philosophy as a teacher
and lived in Lorraine,
dismissed as a professor
in the Vichy regime's name
because of being a Jew
filled in the underground
and joined the Resistance
to give justice a chance.

RADNOTI'S LAST JULY


July, 1944 fevered
by the Mountains
of Zugubica
cities murdered
with the citizens
to the wall
or firing squads
with your Serb
French,Polish
and Italian brothers
huddled by your side
where life is abandoned
and died.

JON SILKIN'S LOSS

The death of a child
gives a silence to words
you exchanged grief
in your breath and spirit
as an exiled poet
searching
for some relief
just to find
the tree of life
under the sun
in a world of unbelief.


ISAAC ROSENBERG'S MARCH

March 31,1918
still practically a teen
life was taken from you
in the Great War
as the powers that be
continue to wage for
but you are not lost
to language or time
as you breathe on us
at this hour
always asking humanity
to remember their crime.
WALES' DANNIE ABSE

A humorous loner
having a comic sense
in your soul and body
of Whales
like a modern Jonah
of the numinous
you could not fail.

MARTIN ROBBINS'S WAY

You encouraged me
in language
yet as a cantor
sung
in a tongue
you could not read.

Saturday, July 12, 2014

FONDANE AT AUSCHWITZ

You were the poet
for our century,
from Romania and France
accused by the nations
as always,
you compose a collection
Ulysses, traveling
in a new language
seized in your hallways
being accused
of being a wandering Jew
then double crossed
in the name of Judas
pretending to be Jesus
put in the gas chamber
as Assuerus in ashes.


OPPEN'S OPENING

In your hands
oncoming with fresh
experimentation
colors of language
dotting the page.

YVAN GOLL'S ALCHEMY

Admixture of spelling magic
from an exiled solitude
the critics embrace you
no matter what the mood
for words drift beyond signs
into a telling surreal pattern
like birds on high rises
wildly scatter in
Berlin, Paris or Manhattan.
NATHAN ALTERMAN'S EYES

A joy for children
as we read your verse
under the juniper tree
when boys and girls
leave the soccer ball
on the field
for your poetry.
ARTHUR GREGOR'S MEMOIR

Expelled
hunted down
who had witnessed
as a child the loss
of a generation
the fascist dross
searching for a crown
on life's double cross
for Abraham's children
wishing to survive
in a scattered nation
soon to change from a libel
as prophesied in the Bible
lyrical poetry became alive
in a deeper confrontation
from a dying sleeper cell
as your spiritual vocation
will sow, reap and excel.

THE RAMOMES' PASS BY

The Ramones' pass by
under the stars
several dying flowers
are spied in a hearse
as punk goes down
from a funeral car
life blows up in reverse
yet they went so far.
LARRY EIGNER'S MEMORY

The ocean in Swampscott
and Marblehead
summons our voice
as children motion to
you in a wheel chair
suffering from a palsy
yet what fragments
of words seen
in your paper mache
of a smile
from ten kilometers
of the embracing waters
while I play a quarter
violin in an open house
nearby
I won't forget you.




EDOUARD RODITI'S LEGACY


Every tenth man
and seventh law
the third bell
and ninth circle
in a labyrinth
on earth and hell
but we won't tell.

NELLY SACHS'S LAST DAY
(1891-1970)

Bitter herbs for us
even in the suburbs
the smoke hurts
between our ribs

Our eyes cannot
wash out the ashes
we need a shield
of a second skin

Our tongues are dry
yet we are asked
in our Babylon
to sing a song of Zion

In the furnace
of a disarmed affliction
our fingers reach out
sister's face turns gray.
LEV OZEROV'S QUESTION


You, Lev Ozerov
are at Babi Yar or Lvov
it's the time of year
for the esrog and lulov

In your tent's
leafy tabernacles
peering through the sun
God has a question for you

Silence has no answer
for so much long suffering
nor song or dance
as David your first king

The grave faces
cannot save our sorrow
better write a love letter
to the Lord tomorrow.


ILYA RUBIN'S EXPRESSION

They found your samisdat
in the underground
that which you express
with generations
of profound tenderness
they always come early
or when you are asleep
guards eventually
find the bard,
yet with what destruction
of the avant- guard
they reap.

BORIS SLUTSKY'S LESSON

Putting up
anti fascist posters
near by a priest
saying his pater nostras
what you have learnt
is that a familiar fire
whether in Inquisition
or any position
is desired
by those who hate us
and of course Jesus
but they won't say it
they know it's a sin
lest they too like books
in Berlin be burnt.