Tuesday, September 30, 2014

LI PO'S WORLD
(701-762)

Our lives
in gestures of rivers
make their eternity
only through words.
DU FU'S VOYAGE
712 -770

Reading to himself
in the flying wind
as absent air
releases snow flakes
on the bittersweet earth
to find his own body
in a soft glance
captured as first light
between passages
in slow traveled lines
of pleading verse.


Saturday, September 27, 2014

DRESS REHEARSAL

It's already six o clock
for the dress rehearsal
for my play "The Beards"
in the shady early night
the actors in form
and shaped for the sound
of their performance
and hopefully no chance
of any break down
in the last love affairs
or at sleepless insomnia
checking that no one
of the extras is left behind
if an actor has had glasses
of vodka or rum
the morning before
and that the choreography
has matched the upstaged
scenes as were decided
last week
that all costumes are
back from the city laundry,
the hors d'oeuvres
wine and cream dips
are ready for the cast party
and after playing
marriage broker
psychiatrist and a prophet
as well as art director
for a fortnight
we are ready, like Hamlet
or a ham to cut up
for our "Beards."
 MANTUAN
 1447-1516


A city on a hill dream
from a Christian Virgil
awakes to fulfill you
into writing ecologues,
as Mantuan,
the Carmelite poet
writes masterful dialogues
without interruption
from a monastery,
searches for words
against impolite corruption
at warm summer's noon
now perched on a hammock
trembling inside
by a tree's birds
nesting on branches
for an upturned future
of a church's reform.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

PREDICATBLE

Predicable
as cards, stars,
a gurgling from the crib
with a mirror's impression
apple and honey
at table,
outside dawn arrives
on the dark blue shore wave
sea bird wings sky borne,
Mozart meet Shakespeare
in the park
teenagers hang out
a thought on a page
of the printed future.




Tuesday, September 23, 2014

COPING
(In memory Cesare Pavese
 1908-1950)

Bouncing his leg
off the table
saying farewell
to his nerves
nibbling at his soul
to wish he were
at a year or century
earlier or later
having seen anger search
for him in his stress test
in signals and signs
weighing on his life
of literary exertion
scaling in different
directions of Italy
like a weather vane
under Turin's grey sky
for so many seasons
trying to forget a memory
of mountainside sorrows
in noiseless playgrounds
and college libraries
reading Dante and Virgil
expecting change
in an earthy twilight
or on the seashore
with promises unfulfilled
in love and punishment
from an arbitrary existence
yielding to a squeezed fate
of vigil and desertion.

Monday, September 22, 2014

THE DAY STARTED

The day started
with the dream of two sails
at the bowsprit ends
over sunny sprays
of blue dolphins
by an impassable passage
for our shadowed boat
a melancholic hour
with lonely students
playing cards on deck
at day break
from a night of feverish
clamor turning into sighs.



ALONE

Alone by the Cape's
sun, rocks, shore,
briefly meeting
the evident dunes
and wild roses
stones picked up
in my horizon
now in a sailboat
as waves move
my subterranean soul
remembering so clearly
a fine seasoned refugee
and art friend's phrase
of being transformed
by natural color
when every
exiled thought
whispers
its liquid solitude
of a passing sea voiced
on a blue kind of sky.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

SCHUBERT'S DEATH

Schubert's death
and the maiden
played for hours
transfigured
an angel pointed
to a misty sky
recording circumstances
embracing through
our familiar spells
moving us in recognition
to harmonize
the night's sharp air
believing your notes
are gestures to survive.



ORANGE

Now burnt orange
in the yellow sun
light of Mondrian's
disconnected discovery
of chilled lines
as we following
shadows shade in orange
escapes fiery paints
combined in echo
footsteps by a canvas
against a wall
of sketching landscapes.

FALL ORANGE

Fall is an orange,
defoliated leaves us
breathless as we visit Rothko
with orange as red on red
as his color spectrum,
a sponged creation in its flow.

Friday, September 19, 2014

RIVERBEDS

Singer on sand
by the shore line
among water flowers
the echo waves
its solitude mirrors
of your own music notes.
VISIONARY

Dreams hidden
in a far off cry
signals a witness
entrapped
by reason
and furtive love
yet knowing
whom he/she is.
ARRIVALS

Hot housed roses
up to noon time
in the surrendered hours
of your green sleeves
working in the garden
under a sightless sky
with the departure
of a mourning dove
along Frog Pond.
AT HALL'S POND

Clearing the orange foliage
between September blankets
on the tall greensward grass
between earth and sky
a bird on white birch
branches out from
your own shadows
ascend by the fountains
to wings on water.

ONLY RAIN

Only rain
fills the earth,
covering a pastoral
by the home sea harbor
over my bicycle
along voiced shore birds
under a spotted sun
squeezed under the elms.
ON AN EMPTY HOUR

An empty hour
on an ingrown day
risk buried
by distant words
sleeping on my images
on the infinite grounds
of our muted nature
on unexpected blankets
thankful for dunes
and left like an eagle
on green hills to soar.


WATCHING OUT

Through the windowsill
of geranium's space
where bird wing prints
survive on resting places
of a chilled twilight
watching a sandwich man
deliver rolls of beef
with a seasoned refugee's
shopping bags tearing
an arm loaded with wine
and French bread
hurries in his steps
passes through the wall's
rough plaster walls.
TOLSTOY AT YASNAYA-POLYANA

Who in times past
an aristocrat
strolled by pines
drank like the swallows
scourged from passion's
once grey Gogol overcoat
turns out to be weeping
on a Fall's dance
of the hours
over bare-iced sheets.

He walks this night alone
by breakwater's embankment
through a mute September
yet knowing his fevered ways
where black bread
is only a genuflection
of a hunger much deeper
than his own peace.

Over a lake landscape
the birdsong's communion
of a child's awareness
pervades him
here in these woodlands
the dreadful cold blazes
under a full moon
of Autumn's fretfulness
with a deep seclusion
only a Count may hide.


PREJUDICE

Group thinking
they are all reds
capitalists
peaceniks
warriors,
machos
pussies,
fanatics,
killers,
disloyal lovers,
traitors,
terrorists,
pansies,
all like that,
look at yourself
in the garden
on the soccer field
or in the photography store
with your sister & brother
and make a selfie
seeking a pardon
for being human.

NEW LIFE

Helpless September
overgrown with ferns
and greensward elder
heaving with song birds
along Walden pond
a salty sea voice admits us
to hold on to my bicycle
for a new life
not caring who laughs
from the woodland
at our buried secrets,
artifacts, lovers lane,
nor blush at the breeze
when sleeping on caresses
in the clearing meadow
by the dunes light shadow
along cranberry bogs
by mildew roads
we are in nobody lands
among a forest's
haze of leaves
as four gulls overhead
with high pitched soundings
cover the tall grass,
squirrels and garter snakes
wound by pine tree trunks
a poet makes a hammock
and reads Thoreau.

ON THE BLUEST HILL

In whirlwind gusts
every leaf was gone
in the coal green darkness
of early dusk
of the Fall's bluest hill
daring the frosted birch
to acknowledge
premonitions of our fate
in a living windy move
of rain on wellsprings
gathering by aspen
of sparrow and grackles
behind smothered brushwood
and a poet in a red scarf
from luminous days
living a hundred years
beyond the clearing
seizes on memories of words
to rejoin his quick step
asking for wonders and signs
in the slanting sunset.

CEDAR VALLEY GROVE

How fragile
your hands
at the piano
has the dawn
grown still
except for Chopin
swollen by memory
from a time,
not ours, anymore
a leafy earth dust rises
across the road
after your spellbound recital
under a quarter moon
you walk on bird feathers
on Cedar Valley Grove
your fingers alive to us
radiating at dusk.

CANADIAN GEESE

Rain instead
of radiated showers
as Canadian geese
cover the roof
of the fine Art's museum
make their understatement
of leafy noises of sky echo
waiting to hear me out
as we approach
the dazzling court crowns
of Velasquez,
admitting light
of Vermeer and Homer
the unquenched nature park
of Fantin- Latour's woodlands.

SECRETS

A mute voice rises
by resolute crows
on an ash tree
a poet between branches
stuck in the brushwood
of a smothered sweater
carrying wild roses
between his fingers
along the bee lined edge
of the grove voiced jays
with dark possibilities
of silent twigs fallen
by acorns on earth
you locate your love letter
implanted a decade ago
in the pollen's low clearing
covered with marigold
in the green absinthe bottle
still shut in a wanderer's space
of time's even equilibrium
held in my sheltered fate
of an indifferent noonday
that the wide worms path
will turn in my absence
to impalpable roads
from my cold sandal feet
covering blankets of secrets.





SUNLIGHT

Not leaving you
in a shadow of sunlight
following on the road
noticing apple picking
on long resonate fields
your warm presence
disclosing wild roses
in the hilly pockets
stretched out
among the yellow scrub
with a glimpsed laughter
at a feral cat underbrush
from thoughtless groves
we excavate ripe hours
beneath a bird width sky
in a furtive wood
to catch the clearing
among breadth
of pleasant spinney vines.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

WITH FAVOR

With favor escaping
an apprenticeship
of hopeful undertones
explaining the post-
modern art lectures
of Rapallo
and Padua's studios
of the last texts
while memoirs
are coupled with
translations of Dante.


MIRROR

A third skin
by the warmth
pressed to the vessel
of ironic arbitration
from a disruptive
interview
of your paradoxical persona
from sunlit windows
interweaving
your passages
of a voice spectrum
as a fragmentary day
shields you from illusion
of influence
from a world scaled back
of dead weight.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

A LIFE

With energy
in a single silence
near a river bed
with notebook in hand
by edged rocks
off the sea coast
lying on a blanket
of speechless reminiscence
full length
in the abrupt sunshine
dissembling his papers
by the deck of boats
in the home harbor
watching bees everywhere
in a grimace of worry
and shapeless nerves
breathing years of words
near a lost compact
with two boys stumbling
in the ditch water's edge
under a warning sign
for our protection
in a shattered gorge
and land passage
to recover loss
in an undertow
a swimming memory
of being there years before
among noxious cat calls
and hasty judgments
by growing wild flowers
garden snakes and turtles
in a a life deserted
remaining only as gestures
of my trembling fingers.

Monday, September 15, 2014

A CANADA EXPERIENCE

A poet late
for his urban read
takes a wrong u turn
emerges on the boulevard
between two countries
winds up
behind the beech tree
gazebo and esplanade
meets a French woman
sunning herself
on a blanket by hedges
next to her oil portrait,
she gives him directions
and asks to accompany him,
they arrive early
she translates his poems
for the Montreal audience
then is awarded a contract
by an art studio director
who sees her portrait
and elopes with her
and the poet in the courtyard
huddled into the shadows
signs his autographs
on the back desk corner
spending a restless night.




THE PLEASURE SPHERE

In a flowing checkered mu-mu, the internationally broadcast TV reality show host Renata speaks over her microphone.

"Today we make history as our pilot series "Robot Reality Show" broke all records. We know the controversial nature of our commercial free program featuring robot sex sessions and the lessons for us all. Yet it's that time of the week as our guests and contestants come to us from all walks of life. We have included all races, all sexes,from the religious to sex addicts anonymous, to the homophobic to the living necrophiliac robots. All may try their hormonal skills with our different robots designed by Dr. Ron Cage whom he recently added the S. and M. Robot and Mr. Dastard and his partner Sissy Birch. Now who is our first fit guest tonight, Philomena, give her a full robotized hand of welcome. Our first try out contestant to see who is most compatible with which robot is Bing Meriwether."

Bing is about 6' 6"; an ex-baseball player.

"I was injured in a hurting place."

"What is your preference, Bing Meriwether."
 
"Looking over the robots I like home gal Sal."

"You mentioned your favorite books were "Gulliver Travels" and "Black Beauty" so we have teamed you up with Robot number 1,Sal,who will try to give you satisfaction from your hurting place. Two life guards now harness Bing with Robot number I Sally whom you see dressed in a pink taffeta rodeo outfit. Now let them go at it. Don't be embarrassed big guy. Under the curtain we are all the same except for size and shape. Meet Robot number 1 Sally as she is now wound up. Take your time as this reality show lasts 24 hours a day. All the civilized world is watching and listening as our leading shrinks like Dr.Bulge and his partner Dr. Skulls with Ron Cage our designer have created this modern reality show of shows."

The ropes of the curtain come down and Bing's clothes come off, and now we head into the Pleasure Sphere on a bed of roses. None of the couples knows they are being recorded by public private and government spy agencies who want to recruit all the contestants. Sally allows Bing to enter her robot suited machine.

"Wow,this is living and I don't have to prove anything."

"How can I best entertain you, Bing?"

"Just go slow as I am in recovery."

"How much shall I strip off right now, big boy Bing,you being the strong and and silent type."

"Take it all off.  I've been in a coma since I played the outfield and all other positions. But I got caught in the post game summary on the sports channel 24 camera when I lost all the balls sent out to me as I removed my glove".

"So you had another hidden life?"

"The newscaster found me hiding nakedly in the dug out. But now I'm out with you,Sally. You can see I'm a man not a bat boy."

Philomena starts up the robot puts Bing inside it. A few sexual sounds from the multiplex as an orchestra plays "Take me out to the ball game." The camera moves away as Renata introduces the next guest, Leslie.

"Leslie you said you could not decide if you wanted to be entertained by women robots or male ones. You took our sex test with Dr. Bulge and Dr.Skulls and you appeared in personality and temperament as bisexual. We watched your intra-sex reactions to two of our robots number 2 very female and number 3 very male as we watched your member move and enlarge or discharge at the outcome and the results are not definitive. What do you prefer here Leslie Wood one of each?"

"I thought I was a happily married metro man and a well known stand up and  late night talk show host with the highest ratings until George came on to me as my summer replacement and then my co-host. Then I felt I was missing only messing about with half of the human race. At least that's the good docs told me after my hypnosis, analysis and diagnosis."

"Don't you have a mind of your own?"

"I try to process everything until I had sexual amnesia which brings me here was put on your sex blog and in an infra sex box for two months to improve my image.What do you think of my image? I had the highest ratings as a TV night host. I am Leslie Wood, after all."
     
Leslie walks along the stage.

"Which robots have you chosen?"

"Number 5, Jan and 6 Anonymous."
     
"Great choices."

"Jan and Anonymous come out of your closet, and Leslie go behind the curtain," as the curtain closes.

"I'm a little hot under the closet."

"We have assigned you, Leslie, as a cosmopolitan composite of the modern metro man. So take your pull pill with mineral water and let's have a fun time."

"After five marriages and bloody divorces I've about had it with sex. The Daily Sun gossip columnist says I'm suicidal and I can't face anyone in bed."

 "Leslie you have the four R's our  doctors told us before the show, rejection, resentment and rebellion and retention, all fatal."
       
"I thought everything is private here, Jan."

"Except to a femme fatal like me who invaded the good doctors office a half hour before the launching of the show.Now I propose to give you our pill pull potion and then if and when our climax happens at the end of the show and hopefully our ratings go sky high after you die from all our sex acts you will have our necrophiliac love with us as Philomena as our witness."

"I'll be damned. Let's go for it."

Leslie is positioned with Jan and Anonymous after Leslie literally dies our special necrophilia silent treatment appears on the screen. Our next guest Vera wants to go with S and M Robot number 6 and Mr. Dastard, number 7. Vera an elegant model gets into the double robot suit and her two fit choices emerge she is angry.

"I want my lawyer. I won out sexually over both the S and M Robot Mr.Dastard and my favorite Sissy Birch."

"Our spies tell us you broke up the robot machine and jammed everything up. You will be held accountable,Vera."

"Because they could not give me satisfaction or even to give love to each other. These machines have no emotion to give out."

"Vera calm down, will you?"

She takes a fiery plug and sets fire to the set. Renata and Philomena announce a temporary cancellation of the show. Bing walks out on fire and goes after them.

"Give me back our pleasure sphere.I want to be inside Sal forever and the media has taken her away from me. I want Sal, I want robot number one."    

FRAGMENTS

Allegories,
a silk stocking,
a bourbon glass
in an actuality
of fragments,
thoughts,
opaque sun,
improvisation
at the 13th station,
a paradigm
worn of desperation
in the Jerusalem
cross,
a partial vision,
by a rock
water colors
its clam shell
shadows on pale stone
reefs, unbelief,
the last fish surviving
in the Yantgze river,
or a scene
of Heddy Lamarr
in a Hollywood
orgasm in "Ecstasy,"
the Toulouse Lautrec poster
damaged at matinee
played by Jose Ferrer
in the movie house,
a partial eclipse
the aurora borealis
sky writing.

Saturday, September 13, 2014

WHAT IS NORMAL

Smart
from the start
Cowper
Blake
with break downs
and long suffering
as once revenants
awakening an inward start
in an artistic sense,
forsaking their part
expected to be played
with complete indifference
parlayed by language
on bets and vetted
of an original parlance
as proper lyrical gents,
with nonsensical Edward Lear
or castoff John Clare
their lives scoffed in arrears,
like poor Rimbaud,
Montesquiou and Baudelaire
my God, as a dandy
having an honorary degree
of divine favor handy,
and by the good wake
of their bandied souls
would ache with mine
at the words taking up
their arbitrary tolls,
as Artaud and Poe
give them
a literary break
the Muse will not
let go,
or Eliot, Joyce
who heard a dissident
voice from a nervous soul,
like Sylvia Plath
for all her wrath
in confession
while not divine
in her profession
set us on another path,
or Sextant
with a wit and talent
in her quirks to tell
all the lit-crit jerks
needing repentance
of her long suffering intent,
and our local friend Lowell
in his poetic works
whose commentary
was not a vocal crime
even in his "Imitations"
in momentary space and time,
yet spent on by critics
whose local intimations
they found didactic,
like restless Pound
not of sound mind
in their assignations
and sent away
on unsavory grounds
of political assassinations
being absurd
and eccentric
pacing around like a bird
with their mind racing
bound by sleeplessness
to confess their story
and sum up the poetic age
in a melancholy hell
just for glory of the word.

OUT OF PASSING

Out of passing
the risk of the sea
waves to us,
out of passing
the earth captures
a caravan in an odyssey,
out of passing
outer space
rescues a sky
of astronauts,
out of passing
red fruit and flowers
at a funeral cortege
of populist poets
who enter the Square.
THE METAPHYSICAL

As a meteor drops
into the lyrical quatrain
a sky bird stops in
her perennial refrain

a spider webs us
on the bark of a tree
outside a chorus
of larks initially.


THOMAS MANN

Reading you
makes Germany alive
for those of us
who rose
from your legacy
in a democracy
to survive.
INTERLOPER

When you go
beyond the norm
in any field
at school or dorm
even called a fool,
we do not need
to conform
just slip out
in the pure rainstorm
shout for what's not
in another's brain
and your lips are hot
getting warm,
your ego is secure
not ever hidden
from any apocalypse
be surely and cleverly free
in your id and sinecure
let them call you interloper
for they have no cause
in art, the word or beauty
nor hope in nature's kind
or for love, law
or state of mind.


Friday, September 12, 2014

THE AGE IN AN INSTANT


Instant latte
instant news
instant life line
instant diagnosis
instant nothingness.

SQUIRRELS

Under the birches
squirrels race
each other
the sun peeks out
at their shadows.
BY THE POND
(1995)

The postman is back
without war fever
becomes a mercenary
for a poet on leave
who holds his dog
his life on a leash
by the sink
reading a thin envelope
of acceptance.
THE DEVIL

Do you expect the devil
in his hunting party
still these days
is after the unchecked arty

or with his casual laughter
to fulfill his business part
will decide a terminal genocide
or just the usual deicide.
AUTONOMY

With a hint of suffering
at my words exposure
by the bird house
trying a stint of composure

Breathing in and out
asking for a higher power
pills on window sills
are near a geranium flower.
IN ALL LONG SUFFERING

In all long suffering
I continue to write
even on a blanket
with a critic's insight
taking a chance
as the bird searches
the lake for white bread
it's as a glance
for the right words instead.
OBSERVATION

Mozart you remained
composed
with a Requiem
became suddenly
the part
written for himself.


WHEN EVERYTHING

When everything
gets to you
bringing you daily
news of the casual
cluster bombs
explosions,casualties
the agendas of state
propaganda to hate
and dogmas to retaliate
wait,be still,
there is no thrill
in the strong arm will.

ANOTHER URBAN READ

Sleeping on
twining blankets
with passion flowers
by the river beds
of Public Gardens
near pigeon coves
clinging to
tenacious branches
dressed by print outs
for another urban read.



EXHIBITIONS

They had art exhibitions
in those snowy days
of Bacon and Davis
music came off
the jazz frescoes
were early to get here
now there is rarely
a blushing excitement
only seeing patrons
artists and critics
pop pills without inhibitions.
RECALL THE CHILD

Recall the child
who hands out
her songs
her back to the sea
with the voices
of the shipwrecked
on liberated sand.
WHO BOTHERS

Who bothers
with the Turkish bath
souls with lost sandals
bathing away the vapor
now on an Ottoman
remembering
his hardy grandfather
reading the newspapers here
warning of war
among the soccer players.

GIVING FAVOR

Being generous
and disappearing
as the wind
lost to an age
that was for a chorus
of Bach
I raised my voice
to sing praises.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

BY CHANCE

By chance
the sunshine magnified
my thoughts
speaking of affections
the sea
suspended hours
ambushed by doubts,
playing Bach.



UNDER BEECH TREES

Under beech trees
the branch presses
against my shoulder
a wound
from my initials
planted
a penniless poet
on the frontier
of language
saying my international
words will go forth.

ASTONISHED

Astonished
that the shame
of being alive
extracted by memory
of a cloudy German beer
in the embrace
of survival
from Hansel and Gretel
underfoot by
the Black Forest
of memory 1939-1945.
WATCHING

Who is watching
a leaf leaving
the earth
in the wind
of a city rising
like your own
captive
at the gates of security,
or the dunes
by the sea lovers
as in Key Largo
floating by
with its flamed treasure
by a shipwrecked cargo.

AS IF

As if in the sunshine
the street made
me apologize
for the silence
of my vanishing
to go beyond
the sidewalk
and on the grass
of this new future
in my absence
near the river
to play on the dunes
and passing by
you emerge,
my love,
shadows land answers
reminding us
of being located
in the light.

AS IF

As if our sleep
broke up the sky
and blindfolded,
as if the echo
from sea shell
healed our injuries,
as if the promise
of love surprised us
by closing our eyes,
as if our pocket verses
of pocket money
made us prosper.


RUNAWAY SAX PLAYER

Hiding under
the snowy windshield-wiper
in my water soaked taxi
a revelation of riffs
to play for tonight
from my broken door ajar
in blindfolds of laughter
with flakes thumbing out
on a guy going to my gig
who hibernates here
traffic jams with me
until we get into the club
at midnight rawboned
and bathed by song.


Wednesday, September 10, 2014

TALKING HEADS

Heads of politicians
tales of magicians
stand up comedians
down and out musicians
they all come on
late T.V. with their notes
in their back pockets
with no brains but brawn,
Rob who plays a front man
for the mob and rackets 
all made up for the Soaps
near the weary face of a star
with an Oscar winner hope
in an open sports car.

JEFF KOONS

At his New York City exhibition
cycles of cloudy tongued bones
in a modernity of green eyed
water oils holed in your airtight
paintings of space and time.





LISTENING

Listening
to chamber music
a nuclear family
after a Sunday boiled dinner
in a New England cottage
transfixed by shooting
of snapshots of a deer
taken on their way home
now sorted out on the table
invite an ancient neighbor
for desert
with a severed blueberry pie
under her arms
who always
makes you feel alive
by her reading.

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

REASON TO BE

Your old world society
from frozen Minsk
always wanting acts
to dance or sing
came to Minskys'
with Ivan and Sasha
chosen
over the pale Pinsky
while I played
a pasha
with music by Nijinsky,
my stage manager
who spoke Russian
always said "Nyet"
except for my poetry
of my raison d'etre
my enfolded world of Pushkin
turned me into a Whitman.



CONNECTED

Everyone is connected
even in New Haven
the maven was
everybody's friend
she wrote her initials
with purple nail polish
on the poplar tree
a thousand years old
even from the river's
lazy smoke
the lumber Jack
from Seattle
sought her advice
a big lummox
had a bagel and lox.

NEW YORK PLAYHOUSE

An unreal reel
in the wired center
fold in high society
going by me to buy
a Manhattan transfer
as a mta power line
falls for us
on our way
to an audition
about a woman
in a Village shelter
putting a topping
on a Marilyn Monroe
battered birthday cake
she cooked
and prepared
the frosting,
she sewed our costumes
until the bottom fell out:
liberation.






FACE LIFTS

After the sixth
face lift
you draw out
from your lower lips
a neo realist picture
in your mind
of a poet
in a German mood
who left Weimar
for off off Broadway
to star in Fortinbras.

A WEEK

A week into the season
and a college kid
shooting hoops
is complaining
about a weed tax
and Heidegger
is he a dream angel
a mystery man
or merely a footnote
for a futurist story line.

PHOENIX SEPT 8

The most rain
recorded in history,
as your diva's song
is also recorded,
over a runaway time,
a sunrise
is up now for Phoenix
remembering
when you tried
to translate your child
chocolate dreams
into a Spanish Beat poem
by a sound proof studio
after watching River
in "Stand by Me."

AT THE CHELSEA HOTEL

At dinner
at a time
before selfies
eating escargot
and Seattle salmon
with a household goddess
once named Cliff
an ex Jesuit
now in a tweed mu mu
who complained
about changing roles
in the soaps,
who feared junkies,
Roger Vadim,
and loved Candy Darling
read Kaddish in Danish,
had a snapping turtle
and once raised
a tortoise
for a two mile race
asked me to read
my latest Village Beat verse.
SUPER MOON

September eighth
a sky engulfed
the largest super moon
remembering how
to sleep the night
by playing chess
on the prewar bench
saved your life
now by the fruit stands
in the Paris market
before a little shop
of gloves and antiques
you read Poe
in French
eating a cheese Danish
and a Vienna roll
with a cafe au lait,
meeting a Jewish guy
from Munich
a psychiatrist,
at eight years old
was already a threat
to the Reich
who knew Schoenberg
could recite Rilke
and tried the organ box
of another Reich
when the country
had already gone crazy
incognito all through the war
a wayward educated recluse
living in libraries. print shops
and used bookstores
his son an astronomer
discovered
by a Hollywood star
of soap operas,
now exploring the universe.


ALWAYS

Always on time
the light goes on
on the hallways
Spain gave you
two husbands
Vietnam,
a divorce
you volunteered
for the hot line
to help out
the Samaritans,
born again for a day
new age for a night
of tarot,
a primal scream
for a four letter word,
love
wanting invisibility
an unwanted profile
you drew on experience
for art,
trimming lilacs
by the window blinds
the sun was slated
from the roof
you met a French guy
from Quebec
who was cool,
played sax
on the tall dry grass
by the dunes,
you create a painting
knowing time
is only a slanted face
on his watch
and you wait
for the visible sign
hearing his tune
"There are no returns"
recorded for posterity
you accompany him
on the double bass.


Monday, September 8, 2014

THE FEVERED SEA

The fevered sea
beneath the boulevard on
first light sidewalks
with incandescent space
curling into the dawn.
RADIO WAVES

Radio waves
to us
on the oars armpit
as lobster seekers
with their nets
on the boxwood boats
hear my music
setting out
early
to a Beat poet's muse
scenting the rain
in the home harbor's
first light.


CAMPING OUT

Waking by syllables
on my tongue
sounding in uncut
music sequences
of smooth jazz
camping out
under Maine's maples
my orange kayak
straying from the Coast
as any grass hopper
with my field glasses
checking out landscapes
and salty marshes
for my laconic diary.


TURNING BACK

The sea dream
and my red eye
will not turn back
near the Corinthian canals
to wave on an oar
from a tourist orange kayak
floating by sibilant winds
with an astonishment
against the crab curled
Minoan white sky
out of desperation
to locate the lighthouse
by the undesired rocks
as a gull rises
taking as a sign
to disregard fear
of a ship wrecked paralysis
or story from Osiris' lore
along another minor axis
of my mind's nightmare.

TELLING ME

Telling me
you want to take courses
to explore a time tabled life
from the Cape's sea beds,
to study earth's resources
over books of knowledge
on buried outlooks of forces
in maps, whirring voyages
by sign languages
primary walls
shelters, pest houses,
Morse code,
passion flowers,
lodestars,landfalls,
flying islands
vatic prophecies,
sentient expressions
music sequences,
talk down consequences
orisons, horizons
beyond your own,
telling you
search and research
until you find
the perfect petal
assigned stone
and harmonic chord
then be assured
that your attention
reaction and satisfaction
to every cynosure
will be ordered
in your opened mind.



Sunday, September 7, 2014

NICHOLAS WINTON

Children spared
from smoke
because you
transported life
into others.

MONDRIAN

An orange drink
of Mondrian
blocks out the night
falls like cinematic
red eye
of an ex camera
shot of vodka.

WAR REPORTER

At dusk
someone waits
upon an ocular silence
for the unknown solitude
in a secretive letter
of a revenant's passing
from an exile's absence
an earth's tenant
hoping his jocular wit
and avuncular humor
will carry him
as a foreign war reporter
in his blurred travelogue,
to a landing of peace.





ON STAGE

You played a wishful 0phelia
for a conveyed media
while I'm a raging Hamlet
defining words of amnesia,
this is an age to blush
on settings by the avant garde
in the modern crush
to stage manage,
waiting on the language
of an Kierkegaard
or an Auden
among the engaging rush.



CLASSIC SATIRE

If you are nervous
feed on Sextus Propertius
reaching for Venus
and in lust,just read Catullus
needing a poet's skill
there is the spirit of Virgil,
in your hurting middle ages
diddle Dante's pages,
for more of "Paradise Lost"
passages of Milton crossed,
expanding a confessional
at once Puritan,Catholic
(then secular) Lowell,
wishing to go over
Poe's Gothic path
stop first at Baudelaire
and Rimbaud
or drop a hand
on Bishop,Sextant and Plath
or at a Pound canto,
playing the lyre
or witty liar
the poet's critic
is ready to conspire
slandering a Nero or hero
try writing classic satire.



BACH

Only when I play you
unaccompanied
with a violin solo
in front 
of my musical hands
will my day be a wonder
to contemplate my need
and know in spirit
the lyrical poet understands.




VALENTINO,GARLAND,RIVERS

Your public adored you
in life and at your death
Valentino, swooned by
those who go to movies
and left out of breath
Garland, put garlands
on your neck
you held our hand
in your entertainment
on a slight cheek and check,
Rivers you make us laugh
to smile at each others' jaws,
and showed us in humor
that all of us have our flaws.

Saturday, September 6, 2014

A BIKER

A biker
with bourbon
in his back pocket
started to quote
lines of my poem
under farewell clouds
on Massachusetts Ave
a neo realist incantation
I played on my sax.
KENNETH REXROTH
1905-1982

Scrawled your name
on city graffiti walls
the day after your death
you know
why I don't wear
black shirts
or fail to watch
the Blue Angel.

 GRAFFITI ARTIST

They want you hung
as a criminal offense
that is,Banksy
Lanonov and Dubuffet
put out for dry
on every wall,
even today.


EDOUARD RODITI
1910-1992
(In Memoriam)

Call on
the exile
always,
the orange lost
among the tassels
of a pomegranate crown,
the whitest sail
over the murdered tide
of a century.


BETWEEN TWO HILLS

Between Beacon
and Nob Hills
in every encounter
of an impressionable solo
singing in the hail ,snow
of Verdi's Othello
prepared for tragedy
and screened out fury
out of tarot prophecy
or the changing pages
in a Pinter play
shaping my brows and bows
the stage whispers
that captures my past
of a literary coup
without patience
of a grief group
in a theater room
of arbitrary gloom.



ON CAMBRIDGE STREET

Listening as a Beat
to Coltrane's "Evidence"
toughening out my sax
on Cambridge Street
meeting a cat
who despised
popular culture
want ads
writer's colonies
second hand clothes
straight ex cons
extras in cinema verite
under or over eaters
water bed wetters
the posthumous dead
chauvinists,
universalists
ex priests
the three stooges
Cagney,
Bette Davis
post code film noirs
dishy suburbanites
Turkish bath conversations
now playing smooth jazz,
wanting nothing but song.





2OTH CENTURY

A student asked me
if I miss her,
no, nor the trains
to death camps
in the subway
of my subterranean spirit
waved her on
in perpetual motion
by lion doors
until you met this poet
over a cup of espresso
speaking Esperanto.
ON MY PYRENEES HONOR

After we read
of the useless death
of the philosopher
Walter Benjamin
outside Barcelona,
not forgetting
the Lincoln Brigades
Republican parades
not forgetting
the new Inquisitions,
auto-da fes
under the threat
of Benzadrine
or the strongest coffee
rinds can open up
a Basque sky cafe
an artist revolutionist
tells me four times,
"He wants to be free
and knows I want her
for my fictive tattoo."
JAMES DEAN

You saw his bewildered eyes
and you wanted him
at least to know
that East of Eden is close by.
FASCISM

You can see it everywhere,
fascism or imagine it,
pink as boredom,
selfish as a room
full of fun mirrors,
and who are these torturers,
jurors with torches
for parades
bored in cleaned up faces,
these death programmers
who are washed up by maids
wanting to take your bread
buying brown shirts (on sale)
or sweet appearing ladies
bound for Hades,
the greedy,needy and unmerciful
we do not need or pity you
for you make misery
on other breathing souls
with all your wit and writ
orders on our borders
guns. slogans and weapons
for your good life
is in the death of others.
WANTING TO SPEAK

Wanting to speak
and yet transform
language line by line
is for a poet and reporter,
only God knows
the order form
what will age or divine
or be recorded.

Friday, September 5, 2014

A SIGN ON

An imploring sign on
the solitary road
for actors to audition
with a modernist film crew
in the warm countryside
under a credible sun
with a cast of thousands
to capture an annexed sense
of cinema verite adventure
for an eventual  reality show.



MARATHON

Jostled by crowds
emerging from
March's cabin fever
a carnival frenzy
at the start up line
amazed at the energies
of sanguine runners
as students pass out
bottled water
and a poet watches
for the crowning laurel.

KEEPING WATCH

Out of the home harbor
raindrops slip
on the dockside
liquid winds
are heavy in silences
by seabed shadows
only hurried waves
in my red eye follows
an orange kayak's direction
to the port of call.
POST SILENCE

After war weariness
and the leaden news
is consumed
with a banana
by an evicted pianist,
watching through
his bay window
at a dazed sailor off shore
who waves to his lover
feeling abandoned
with a new long coat
from the pawn shop,
a cupped drink is offered
from her hands
to the latest homeless widow
who shivers by sparrows
at the dead end street
by a once working
flushed city faucet
before the water supply
was ruined,
as a once stammering poet
relives his reading
of his poster memory
at last night's long party
celebrating the peace treaty
in language's distrust,
now thunderous clouds
appear over eight bells
at the Square's
cathedral stained shades,
as a football lands
on stained plate glass,
a feral cat washes
by the fruit market
finds a soldier's shoelace
to play with
by the Lion of Judah doors,
suddenly a two eyed ray
of transparent sunshine
scatters our consciousness
for today's city venture
in the cold madness
of a white shirted dandy
in a nomadic unveiling.





Thursday, September 4, 2014

RECOGNITION
(in memory W.H. Auden)

Your days
not thrown away
nor far from fate
destiny or aim,
Auden's lime light
touched by time
as if modernity's
mime arranged it
with no one blamed
for a poet's rhyme
nor especially
initialed or assigned
by a quatrain.



ON MOTHER'S DAY

By the railway station
a runaway hops
on a train's caboose
when dusty winds
lops over the plains
the child cut loose
with hunger pains
not yet with memory
of a family name
or secrets to be regained
for his strange fate
as a man
is still to be arranged
in a murmur
for a woman
in first class
who lost her son in war
will not allow
the boy to be orphaned
but takes him as her own,
what else she says,
is a mother's day for.






AN OUTSIDER

As an outsider
like any spider
under a wall
like wild flowers
which devour
tall grass under trees
near the waterfall,
or a bee buzzing
for hours
with a bizarre call,
or a ship's voyager
with a star compass
under a shower of meteors,
the wonder
of a poet's metaphors
cast in language
becomes ours.


Wednesday, September 3, 2014

SHARK ATTACK

At the spark
of darkness
passes by seals
in your kayak
now turning back,
a last light reveals
its shark attack.

BAUDELAIRE'S LAMENT

Days grow shorter
fearing silent organs
on a dusty armchair
you lapse from mimicry
of a past without a fanfare
or the artist's future
except for Delacroix,
insomnia won't erase you
nor music notes sounding
behind Persian blinds
you lie on springs
for blankets
with undelivered kisses,
it's only your childhood
which puzzles your table
answering in the dark
until the first light
of silence opens you
to the boundless air.


PRELUDE

A cat
under the piano
dislocates Webern
on a forgotten night.



LET GO

Let go,
last petal of Fall
matched point
by the bees
on the tennis court
consenting
to be indicted by words
like a swift sunshine
at the jazz festival
under the hushed air
of the crowds.
SEPTEMBER BLUES

The sky is frozen
yet first light mingles
over the Square
the wings of the last crow
on a heavy wind
send an audible chill
on my left shoulder,
hearing a veiled sax
from budding lips
play over first light
from shuddered tongues
in the public park
near the Esplanade
two runaways
chase after hornets
who sting.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

CULT

He found himself
in a difficult cult
being diffident
and indifferent
to an unthinking result
was his own fault
this sore soul was found
without an I.D.
only a leaking wallet
and all his funds
ground on a beach
in a poured out vault
sink holed into the sea
without a sound
within no soul's reach.

FEAR

A nameless void
in a peopled sidewalk
shadows link us
by halting fear
stirring first sight
of its elemental purpose
getting a strange hint
in a graven state
of mind alternatives
we choose a passage
in a flowered path
by wild hued roses.

RESEMBLANCES

Always to shine
yet hidden by trees
as shore bird voices
are unsettled on rocks
hovering to rise
early off the island
yet surface early
on home harbor waters
with a thousand tunes
from resonate sounds
of my own exiled longing,
REPETITION

Chastising oneself
on days of repetition
like a canary in a cage
avid for change
to break out and sing.

Monday, September 1, 2014

PERFECTION

Neglected harmony
willing to find justice
even in red vein leaves
and faces of a wild rose
by skinny river beds
a breath on a shell
springs up on the sand.

ANOTHER VENTURE

Feeling like stray gulls
exiled by the sea
intending to fly south
losing sun and breath
on a clear landscape
as dawn follows us
in blind light by leaves
powdered by wild roses
spreading the countryside
in absolute sunshine.
ORADOUR-SUR-GLANE

We are still calloused
for memory's scars
as Oradour remains
in our fixed picture
recalling us to remember
in every century
the citizen victims
of the fascist massacre
in the war.