THE QUARTO


The lobster cargo now
bound for another port
here in Gloucester
by Good Harbor
seeking spoken  support
in prayer that sings out
from fisher kings
tiny statues now broken
over the ringed floor
from the Northeaster
on their knees,
their strong wives
once behind shades
of their cottage house windows
listening to echoes on radio waves
of their rough sounding lives
during the pelting snow storm
turning to rain which melts
and parks its shadows on earth
pounding with a northeast wind
on frozen mornings like this
icicles form as silhouettes
across these jetties
waiting with curiosity
for any possibility of rescue
in these dark green seas
with sea birds disappearing
and you hearing the breath
of the volcano type hail,
four stories high, staring at
the hump backed whales
expecting a picture with tales
from your ship, the Quarto
once on a striped star shipping lines
by the heavy drawn locks
and you now sitting by the docks
sipping Portuguese wines.

IN THE BASEMENT

In the basement
of dream and bird
those days of sunshine
when leaves turn a blush red
after a night music of love
and letters arrive
from an unknown city
saying my poems
about the sea
have moved you
here is line by line
voice by voice
by a now known name
and picture
from a kinetic light.

TEX

Tex was born
dirt poor
from out of eight
if it weren't for
the senator's wife
(he became a man of State
gave up i ching
then joined Heaven's gate)
and would not have any offspring,
she stood behind the seats
at the general store
but had to wait
on the soda jerks
to get any sex to articulate
her needs and had Tex
carry up her cup of mojo trays
and became her own prose lore,
she rightly suspects
Tex would run in a get away
from wealth and home,
while listening at eleven
to sports on the radio
he tuned out one day
and joined the rodeo
pushing a healthy horse
and the bull about
in a ring of course
which was his seventh heaven.

ONE NIGHT STAND

The pride one moment
and the void the next
with an empty text
repeating itself
each gigolo night
after night
in a routine
of not even listening
to a date
blind or not
on the spot or off the record
about how your half sister
was born in an iron lung
or reborn in a convent
because there was no rent
only rented garments
how you were a great
gentlemen of Verona
as a stud understudy,
or wanted to be a secret agent
on the James Bond set
or how you were an artist
repainting "The Yellow Christ"
by Gaugin in a forgery
or a once member of the clergy
in a pawn shop black robe
to get in good for a weekend
with jet set religious mentalities
but whose middle aged
morality play was the theater
of the absurd,
soon you were toast
or compost
with all your end games
came to haunt you
as you flaunted yourself
out to all sexes
just for the money
lacking any testimony
who you ever were.

ELECTIONEERING

They wave
they shout or laugh
about half wave elections
or show a brave face
of an elephant or donkey
and we do not know
about the intrigues
or who is in league
with labor or the conservatives
to honor what keeps or lives
on the other side of the fence
meanwhile we do not want war
but a peace memorial
with an editorial against
any selection of business
or governmental injustice
and for cheaper rents.

AT THURSDAY'S END

The worst offering
of yesterday's standing
in the chorus line
at the play's dress rehearsal
in the college basement
amid snacks and cookies
is a sudden forgotten tune
you sang with strum und drang
for us amid rich human feelings
with overwhelming sentiment
in the scent and sentimentality
of your last red rose hat
of French chapeaus
in October's music shadows
you put on for us in a festival
for a feel easy show's rehearsal
about Marlene Dietrich.

DO YOU SPEAK SPANISH

Unknown roses sent
after my last short film noir
written in my basement
"From a distant Denver or die"
as a dear John
love letter purloined in the West
is discovered with it
in the margin of a Spanish novel
found in a green bottle
by a newly -wed couple
at a Cape Cod harvest festival
promoted and implanted
as Poe phantoms rise up
this October morning
and a barefooted child
squatted on an Persian rug
by a fading hyacinth
recites from her own composition
an enchanted apparition
composed into night music before.

THE WOMAN WITHOUT SHADOWS
DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN

Watching the collaboration
between the composer Strauss
and the sublime poet and play write
Hugo Von Hoffmansthal
after many years
brought me back
to a Weimarian hope
for a democrartic aeon
just as I read Musil, Bloch
and the Mann brothers
but it was not to be
or not to give up
on literature or Kultur
even after seeing Fassbinder's
long film based on Doblin's novel
at the once Marx Engels Platz,
what operatic shadows still quiver
from the woman without shadows.

WHEN I LOST

When I lost
the night music
briefly
in a chamber recital
at a basement in Frisco
yet restored by Mozart's
clarinet's harmony
in the slow third movement
all indolent regrets
groundless secret passages
suddenly appear
in the third movement
it reminds me
of the orange squares
in a Mondrian
on the arts balcony overhead
speaks to my estrangement
like a mirage of notes
listened to as in an experiment
of my words.

STOP

Stop at the red light
from the old red light district
the dusty basement apartments
over a bygone cinema
with putsch of old loves
that wound actors and actresses
up for veteran entertainment
halfway up the steps
of the now stripped flowers
in the park dives
driving in the grey dusk
by nests of bird calls
of an unsettled past.

MISSING OUT
(654765)

Missing out
as a missing person
for a mid century
of victim hood
in this neighborhood
before the war
you thought you knew
whom you were
her only explanation
a tattoo of numerology
the lying biology
of botched science
the psychology behind us
based on racism,
the face of fascism
until you are discovered
in a sanitarium
and partially recovered.

THE GHETTO

The ghetto
has noisy dawns
between life and a death
marching close
in miles of sprawling
fates,respites and promises
if you will only leave
the premises with vacancies
in your eyes always available.

IN A MOMENT

In a moment
you are lost in the fog
or saved by the light rain
which you drink
from the large basin
by the ancient fountain
in the deer park
here in October
feeding the animals
in a secret tongued language
as some will go underground
like Beat poets
and political prisoners
not heard from until the spring
and here on a wooden bench
made of oak putting
my library card
in a Proust's volume
speaking of the Vanteuil sonata
for violin
as the last shovel
gathers the reddish leaves
in the winds smoke in,
suddenly meeting a friend
from the  classroom past
sensing her own loneliness
as she clutches her Matisse poster
from the Metropolitan
on her brown tweed shoulder
asking me out for a drink
squeezes my neck brace
now hurting in seconds
once scarred
during a marathon run.

WHEN TIME RUNS AWAY

When time runs away
from rain on windows
and drops in on another
sea and season on us
we ask for perspicacity
and the capacity
to survive the city life
out here in the Cape's country
under October's reddish leaves
and swelling tuber branches
to breathe and expand
by these aspen and poplar
on the greensward scythed
tall grassland trees
as the rain dissolves
brushing on my blanket
near a stone monument
of a hermetic past,
intercede for me,
you who hear my silence
amid the ocean sirens
in exile from love.

IN JUSTICE

In justice
and out of patriotism
or greed
or the need of revenge
the skies do hear
the rain showers
on concentration camps,
Emmett Till
Hiroshima,
the passports of the unknown
seeking another path
in the adjacent line
of work
the artist's hand
loosened in a lost time zone,
the poet at the crossroad
of faith from the slow solitude
by a window's concealment,
the play write swallowing
her actor's primordial pride
in despair at a third act,
those surpassed by music's fire
calling the siren's cry
in motioning a separation
of desire over the flames,
the friends of the arts
in dialectical mercies
attending what joyful chorus
is left to kiss the earth
and the tall grass blades
by the greensward forest
of our diurnal mirrors
which haunt our awareness.

WORDS

So many words
like plums to peel away
or escape from the scales
and balance out your day
those table of contents
in your daily routine
of chit and chatter,
what does it matter
good news is within.

WHEN OUT OF TOUCH

You wait for a ride
no one is there
at the rainy curbside
and take your bicycle
not matter the traffic jam
you play your inward
smooth jazz in your coolness
opposing the thoughts
that hasten any demise
and decide to go by
the Bay side
to witness the Greek ship
along the shore
imagining ancient days
of travel in the sun
by the heated stones
in sight of heroic statues
drowning in Orphic praise.

WHEN BESIEGED

When besieged by questions
as to the state of your mind
we transform it
from tempers and tempests
distilled by answers
a life over
the rocks Ulysses walked
and Penelope waited for.

IN ABSENCE

In absence
of a contrapuntal note
in a slow note
held over
by an imperceptible
melody of a Bach sonata
parlayed by David and Igor
half-lit by the concert hall
that only fades by monody.

CREATIVITY

Out of a concave mood
from staring out at
a starry sky
words understand
the poet's misfortune
where twilight cooks
and paints toward
your old trees
suddenly offering you
a new blue plate
special menu
which matches your indigo
mood brushed by aspens
in bloom along a long
dusk walk.

A SOUL

A soul wants to know
what you taste like
a heavenly rhubarb pie
after the church bazaar
or devil's food cake
as a left over crumb
from a soiled napkin
after an oily mute nightmare
scattering your limitless
thought as a fated accomplice
after treating yourself
to a Roman a clef mystery novel
not laughing
in a desert a la cart.

TRY OUT AUDITION

"I'm not here for games," she said
waiting for the tryout
of her audition
checking out her lines
trying to be on point
in a whole-toned instruction
telling us she passed away
in her last four plays
off off Broadway
as the artistic director
sleepwalks in the studio
from the subway curb
ankle deep in rain
to interview actors
under advisement
from his fugitive doctor
over in Denmark
not to be double minded
or vain
in his quest for his roots.

OCTOBER BLUES

The rain, the sun
the roots from bulbs
have already dried out
yet playing the blues on sax
to survive the coming winter
plants us blindly in the night
of our own hermetic habitat
that stays its resin and radiance
in a jazz violin's luminosity
far from the city's deepest waters
playing in nature's hands
from cool air night's darkness
here by the blue lake's mouth
by Rockport's childhood
early morning home harbor.

GLENN GOULD'S BACH

In so many rooms
of quiet pianissimo
in rainy unknown villages
or Canadian concert halls
there is a glowing expression
on the spellbound faces
that Bach is momentarily agreed
to be uniquely yours and ours
without a jealous melancholy
from the music critics bench
whether in German ,Spanish
English or French
he speaks to us again.

SEFERIS'S SHADOW

More of Seferis' shadow
in a nameless fire
among the docks
swerving against the sea
spaced clear what blows
in a light wind's fragrance
breathing in the tide
with two friends
who cannot decide
their assured fate
under a haunted sun
or desire to move
from the voice of rocks
in a naked vanished time
along the Corinthian canal
chanting in a blind light
an astonishment of words
you put down on paper
by a glass mountain
of sea birds.

IN A RUDE AWAKENING

In a rude awakening
from the middle ages
of knight and king
sounding from Arthur's
round table box
opening to Chaucer's pages
of a Chanticleer and fox,
passing in an anthology
of Spenser and Shakespeare
we all fear for Hamlet
King Henry and Lear
then onto the Romantics
and a new environment
Keats, Shelley,Byron,
until the Gothics of Weir
like Edgar Allen Poe,
then we are modern
in an engagement
from Eliot to Auden,
now everything is posted
with a click of the wrist
in a blanket arrangement
we twist from our pillow.

HELL'S ANGEL

Lucifer told Pound
to stick around
and to marry
Dorothy Shakespeare
interfering as an angel of light
he was going to change
the atmosphere,
Pound agreed
to stay clear
of democracy
for a newly found
way to hell
whereby the intellectual
will sound "All is well,"
and Mussolini and Hitler
were just small mentors
to sound their bell.

THE SPANISH FILM

Watching the Spanish movie

"La Venganza"

taking a chance

to voice the oppression
and censorship
of those who suffered
under dictatorship
and a love story
of wounded passion
knowing history
lances and renounces
our human screen
to sustenance confession
and open our eyes
of shadows from its images
in a hard-breathing film
of treachery, solace
and inconstancy.

COMMUNICATION

Admittance to the lab
of science
she then attends a seance
of metaphoric prophecies
swallowing words
in variations
which lets you slip up
on your hard nosed homework
feigning an exhaustion
of a bruised thesis
then decides
helter -skelter to attend
a lecture on the gestures
of film deconstructionism
forgetting the charm
that delights in you.

AT THE PARK BANDSTAND

Woodwinds face each other

on the flashing memory

from the gazebo

as first date disappointments

are often beaten up

by the musical media critics

after parental storms

play interference

on the football field

from a pastoral quarrel

here after the game

rested out to musicians

from the summertime symphony

as each others handy notes

of arpeggios are lost

on the park bench

before the early bird performance

now gathered up from the breeze

by an eager fan wearing

a cross,shell and star on her arms

embraces the sun's  burning light

caressing her glaring program

flares over upon us string players

and she saves the night.

POSSIBILITIES

Possibilities of day skies
heightens the sun's rays
in an ex camera moment
of a synaesthesis  of art
from a linguistic impressure
of your subjective reality
in a romantic image
from a recent portrait.

AT THE CAFE

On the thirtieth of October
by a bread basket
and a carafe of red wine
on a granite table
your gesture empties
out your last love story
in a noonday human shade
with a disguised handful
of fast Italian motions
as a glamorous intimidation
takes over your imagined worlds.

TIME OUT

It was noonday
as a Dash passed me by
rain filling the curb
near my borrowed Moped
as a dubious sports-minded
crowd on the left side
on the toll booth
headed for the ball park
one guy brandished
a large home made banner
of his local team
tasted Charles river air
as his twin brother
puts on his baseball cap
backwards
taking off by the sandy dunes
on the right bank
as chestnuts fall from the trees
resembling a painting of Corot.

FORBIDDEN FILMS
(from nana's advice)

The index
rejects sex
or what is wrong
Midnight Cowboy
or King Kong,
check and balance
if you get the chance for
Quo Vadis or Ben Hur
or to M.G.M. musicals demur
in a dance to a lyrical song
always take out a rental
that doesn't make you mental
forget the Snake pit
try a film with wit,
always be a lady or gent
that's entertainment,
nana's advice,
think twice.

MATTISE'S WINDOWS AT VENCE

Stained glass windows
at Vence by a tree of Life
perhaps of recompense
for your health's recovery
as abstract flowers
pass the seasoned hours
of the church's discovery
in rose,black,purple, red
embedded by a cross
and crescent moon shed
near golden flames yet not lost
nor named in your creation
by the fourteenth station.

BY AUTUMN OAKS

A student lamp burns late
in a freshman's dorm room
reading T.S. Eliot
by ancient oaks reigning
outside landscaped orchards
the scalloped rain
awaking sparrows on branches
the reader wishing to be back
at the garden gate hammocks
near faded clotheslines
yet preparing for the crew race
along the Charles this October.

LIBERATION

Exiled by way
of stars
only the rain
opens its last suitcase
before drowning
in the Danube
by a bird's own flight
over stones
on a roselip by mountains
of unwritten memories
of the nameless
we praise.

ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ'S HOUR

In a chaos color
of a mural
in an October flash
through light
of a city traveler
the eye
full of pronouns
wounds the hot earth
near the warmest body
at sea,
when even the sleepless
will rise on canvas
to blanket the earth
with pantomime green
innumerable as half- moons
on a brackish shore line
of trees.

RENE MAGRITTE'S TIME
(1898-1967)

A primal cluster
of colors as three
oranges in the night
fall half-knowingly
on our consciousness
over the trees lawn
with a transparent tongue
absorbing meteors
of words and shapes
where a child's notion
in rustled myths
now absorb
by a muse's voice
that even a vase
may become a sculpture
or sepulchre
at the same moment
as the October hill leaves
will offer up its clay.

ELUARD'S POEM

They took you
from your poem
during the war
everyone expected
the streets to speak
of you but your words
were read silently
by park benches
as wayfarer winds pass
children wrote out
their names
secretly named for you
knowing it was a language
of love that wanted
to preserve your memory.

SURVIVAL

A jazz recording of Satchmo
and a  Greta Garbo portrait
survive the last war
in Warsaw
yet in our inherited memory
of music and movie
the future lives out
in our lives
of unplanned joy
sinking in parables
of our own survival.

IN THE LAUNDROMAT

On Saturday night
sax put away
by pacific waters
surfing in a celestial swim
and compressed
from a scarecrow wash
among uplifted clothes lines
of foreign bodies
vanishing in lights
empty sacks of socks
cook's aprons
in bathed bleach
waiting for the sunrise
drift as powder clouds
here where strangers
become instant friends
as silk, cotton slips by
as chancy arrangements
swirling shadows
knock against each other
as love or art objects
disappear in shiny scents
and accents pulled as words
from a drawn basket.

HUMAN MIRACLE

The passed away will rejoice
that line your bookshelves
Cavafy is more comfortable
by the billiard table
or playing chess
with Auden by the attic Greeks,
that on your art shelf
the yellow Christ
of Gauguin would fit in
near the conflated trees
of Rousseau,
that life itself will not waver
but shines against hurricanes,
flames, executions
for we rise on marvelous dunes
watching soaring blue birds
covering tumbleweed fields
reaching tremulous skies,
our words will be retrieved
like paintings
from every Beckmann, Klee
Chagall, Renoir, Velasquez
and paper cranes and kites
may be as the likeness
of love letters
in this printed world.

AT ROBERT DUNCAN'S WAKE

Still you speak songs
in a no name wind
with footfalls to flourish
in your whole notes
as a frieze of ourselves
all will be loved
cared for,
everything, even sunshine
rises to walk
by crippled water
we travel now not alone
on the greensward valley
by the black mountain school
near the bluest river
as diminished chords close
on the hard drive
still you, Robert
speak now without words
as your minimalism rises up
in our footloose language.

NIGHT SKIES

Night skies
hearing Ray Charles
anywhere on the earth
or Coltrane
from a blast of sax
as if everyone's solo
connects notes
of our correspondence
lighting up our club,gig
or apartment
when we have a free night
to visit,make friends, laugh
at stand up or write
our sit down diary
or walk under a reprobate rain
on my faltering city Square
by gas lamps
of cyclopic buildings
to the home harbor
to throw in unlucky coins
in the latitude
of a transparent wind
as waves by the sea wall
rise by the bay side wharf
or siphon off a beer
in a cafe spiked
until the next day
by rumors of an encounter
from a stranger's tongue
overhearing the stupor
of an exiled morning
circulating in a glass
of my own invisibility.

READING PATRICK MODIANO
(Nobel Prize winner,Oct. 8 2014)

In the Parisian sun
with a hopeful sun
through my French
jealousy window
reading your novel
"Missing Person"
about the Occupation
nervously alone
awakened by these lives
in thanking your words
by furtive corners
transfixed by your images
from my naked eyes
melted by loneliness
about informers and heroes
as echoes of the Resistance
now from your geography
where humanity spills
its locution
from a grieving time
you bring memory to life.

METAMORPHOSIS

Tonight October's car mirror
outside lover's lane
night shadows
presses bachelor buttons
in a Freudian book
saved from burners
pushing our century back
on its blood trails
of fully loaded trains
for whitewashed sentences
carried out with no convictions
by death squads
all over the European theater,
as the Hollywood
actress next door
kills echoes
of daily nightmares
and will not forget
her starvation diet
on the refrigerator door.

EAST WEST FALL

Thursdays at noon
with gentlemen and ladies
at Boston's Durgin Park
have their boiled dinners
with choice Chinese tea leaves
baked beans and Apple Betty
facing the waterfront docks
as runaways board ships
with their flower children
off to San Francisco
by uneasy Autumn sleep
to outlast every fortune teller
predicting we will meet
a foreign soul and body
in our future lives
by a last summer rose dooryard
hearing old fairy tales
from our French teacher
wanting to search
with our  outstretched hands
by expressive city lights
beneath unknown addresses
of telephone directories
to find our extended families
reminiscing about our childhoods
from frazzled northeast winds
when October becomes absurd
on a cross country road
and every good intention
lacks eligibility
by a tin roofed setting dusk
lures us from the Atlantic
to the Pacific's breeze
from fluent lunar hours
in new blood moon shadows
moves every unseasoned traveler
to make us somnambulists
under Nob Hill's red eyes.

JACK KEROUAC'S TIME

Your language
follows all time pieces
up the watching stair
of verses you share
in hollow coffee houses
of the 1950's cafes
like the Red Drum
where your grief fills
huge mugs joined
in the sublime jazz
with your notes
like landscapes
remain open seas
of our likely correspondence
offering uneasy poems
when your shirt
is taken off on the road
between life and departure
remaining the same bodies
from the century's dust
as visionary flavors
crowd forty candles.

WITH HENRY JAMES

Passing by your street
this October
by ephemeral chrysanthemums
swept by the darkness
in dusk's night air
at 2 Washington Square
your New York life
in harmony of patient stones
staring at brick-faced houses
at sundown's hiding places
seeing through fine shadows
from neatly dressed windows
with a reluctance of pleasures
the fears of inheritance
the minor pains and destinies
on these Fall serene hours
for your time of novel writing.

AT SUCH  A TIME

Raging war,
epidemics,
ethnic cleansing
revolutions,
final solutions,
smothering victims
voices,
choices
in the perpetual saga
of the ineffable.

PLAYING BOSTON

An October rainstorm
below high windows
overlooking Boston Common
a sax in heard
by the bandstand gazebo
a sunrise bleaches us
below the blinds
playing Boston,
our cards held in check
never expecting jokers
in jazz clubs
on a faded smoke filtered
newly seasoned dawn,
we decide to leave the table
to walk on the Public Gardens
near the swan boats,
aristocratic twigs fall
near Frog Pond acorns
by thousand year elms
tugging on yellow jackets
now passing
revolutionary graves
dealt by an old hand.

WATCHING BETTE DAVIS


Watching Bette Davis
in "The Letter"
as a star in torment
from dramatic necessity
when at last love became
unfaithful in cold flesh
and a jury did not decide
rightly for justice
on the injured party's side
because he was departed,
coquetry and jealousy
blinds the actors
in this killer movie
with a pleading case
pulling in our critic's power
with a chance warning
to our cool minds
even at our age
for any character's flaw
from the law's chance
of palpable innocence
when in a fury of rage
steams out of control
to unwind the silence
in the conscience
of a thriller film
about a lost soul.

WHEN WE LOSE

When we lose someone
it's as if the earth
of our inland soul
moves an indifferent time
to an open space of grief
from an insensate pity
here under tinder woods
of Fall clouds that resemble
a nervous sky alphabet
which leaves us alone
from late aspen buds
being quiet to our hands
as we are recounting
rain showers
by the Blue Hill's lake.

BY THE HOTEL ELEVATOR

By the hotel elevator
on an impalpable holiday
is the loneliest scene
as sleep walking suit cased
yet tranquilized survivors
half -open faced
sandwiched between
bar and lobby
provide and divide space
to these seasoned travelers
reaching for teapots
and glasses of white wine
doled out with napkins
under doubled chins
from slow kitchen helpers
because it is always
a long trip and cold
from another's hands
looking up to the balcony
in the latest fashion show
losing yourself in mirrors
of soft lights moving you
away from Mozart's muzak
stumbling up the steps
to your inner sanctum
to celebrate sounds
of your lost appearance
sauntering in lost thoughts
by habitable towels
undressed by the sink
your mind not intact
or awakened by the rush
of blinded window last light.

CONNECTIONS

From your secret location
in a glance's view
of new information
as yet unknown
yet may be true,
from any vetted apology
yet unspoken to atone
in any regretted vocation
or out of the blue pardon
among the wood's rock garden
there is a moonstone,
as in Stravinsky's"Firebird"
many elocution's force
before a dancer's outside call
in full curtained voice
with blinding secret wonder
a ballerina emerges in a theater
among nature's belladonna
on steps of connections,
out of rain and thunder
in a poetic word's
language's ballet
by answers and questions
to the critics' directions
at night and every day.

HERE BY THE WINDOW

Here lies the ocean
always hungry
for another sailor or poet
any Ulysses
staggering after time
in the late darkness
to show up hungry
in a Poseidon watch
of a sun's return
on the beach
with a South wind
three notches below
the boat once grounded
with a ravaged survivor
in the sorry sightings
and breezing sail of winds
running toward land
eager to escape Troy,
and war, tombs, escapes
with an earth-wise poet
greeting you
from his window blinds
remembering your story
full of births and departures
misfortune and ventures
out on the sea's distance
now from his epic verse.

WHAT WE HAVE

We have a starting point

in life shaped for us

like a geometric sculpture

of Giacometti,

climbing uphills

like Sisyphus

but forced down

by stones and rubble

that give us trouble,

we have darkened sea

with a lark's cry at noon

but we weigh diving

into a day's just surviving,

you make a run

on the starting line

in your life's marathon

but time may run out

even here on the lawn.

IN A PAWN SHOP
(Oct 7, 1849 Poe's passing)

In a pawn shop
in New Orleans
among famous named
and unread Poe volumes
and library antiques
when you unashamedly
need a leak
waiting for the auction
to begin
your weak nerves begin
to be in shreds
as Poe begins to speak
in heady whispers
and then out loud
in the midst
of a Gothic horror
of the boisterous crowd
and what if critics think
that my accent
is like his
as the business starts
my breath swirls
and my heart beats
a million times
as if there was my rhyme
with a raspy verse
of his reciting in time,
none leave the premises
or want to think
of an arbitrary curse
or a detective's crime
this being the anniversary
of Poe's death
as an old inspector
in a raincoat
from the basement
holds up the first book
of his to sell
and all goes well
for a hour or two
as the room empties
its traffic of retinue
yet here is Poe
or a facsimile
resting in an armchair
by me.

RAINED OUT

Rained out on Sunday
for your
official performance
but still the numbers
of patrons arrive
and you do not care
what the media
or your manager says
and you open the hall
with extra keys
find an electrician to do
lights and a friend
to pass out the programs
call up the critics
get up on stage
until the initial dawn
and blast your sax.

DON'T MENTION IT

The possibility
that the street
you walk on
collapses in a sink hole
or a meteorite hits
like a glacier
on your noonday
and you miss work
in the inferno,
or "Death in Venice"
become a reality show
from the riverbed flood,
or your old wounds
of your expressive words
open up as you meet
your ex lover
by the city walls
running for your lives.

BELLADONNA WEEKEND

In "little Italy"
watching the film
"Il Sorpasso"
after the cast party
having orange pasta
at 3 A.M.
with two guys
disputing Nietzche
and Che
waiting for the Sunday
papered over reviews
of my play,
expecting to rise
up and jog in Central Park
on my belladonna weekend
from your night shade
in a better mood.

WHY A POET

Why do words
fall on my countenance
just as the dancer
of Swan Lake
awakens her feet
at her nightly performance
reaching a Russian
surreal painter of light
like the Dutch Vermeer
mastering his brush strokes
on a canvas
he must complete,
like a jazz musician
Benny Goodman
or Louis Armstrong
words fall on me
as a Beat
every day of the year,
the poet like bird song
as a spirit breathes
with such ease belongs
as a prophetic seer.

ON LOCATION

Move your arms
said the French director
like the Renaissance statue
of David by Michelangelo
let your voice resound
in the range of an Italian tenor,
your body
like a lion, stud or stallion,
your earthy eyes
like Valentino
every nuanced expression
as in Eisenstein's Potemkin
with romantic poetry lines
under studied by Wordsworth
Byron, Shelley and Pushkin.

ON BOARD BZ'S SHIP

Beyond the home harbor
you hear the morning call
of birdsong reaching high
over the sound barrier
by reefs on the ocean,
a ship's noted passenger
hears the brief melody
and composes
a jazz sonata for oboe
in b flat major
attends its premiere
in Paris,
also listening on board
a poet writes his lyrical epic
based on that one note
theme in his word play,
a Polish artist washes
the canvas of modernism
after hearing
the air born winged singer
in the impalpable wind,
yet what of the canary
who escaped its cage.