APRIL FOOLS US

April fools us
by a Muse's amazing ways
who spells it out
under her nature's breath
with a hundred excuses
from our winter's guest
since being in our nest
offering a feathered high five
yet hands us birthdays
of a survivor's success
making us feel alive
from under the weather
wanting to sea dive.

Now we play chess or boccie
on grounds once covered
with snow white memory,
waiting for a fairy tale spring
contained in nature's secrets
whispering our earth-wise regrets
for being four months indoors
with cabin fever
now we rest with Jason
our golden retriever,
soon to recover the shock
by the changing of our clock,
being wall flowers
now going wild
near the river bed
from newly planted saplings
arranged in the countryside
by gardeners on the dock.

Humming birds are freely
flying by the seaweed basin
on a deserted Bay side beach,
here a lone jazz poet
plays an alto sax
in his own paced awkwardness
breathing out on the sand
reaching for his solitary exercises
at his arm's length
from troubled sharps and B flat
augmented in solo sounds
as any cool cat.

His wounded double life
emerges as a musical poet
and jagged Beat
he still turns up the heat
in lyrical volume to sing out
his speech of floating blues
on fresh blankets to recover
his love for language,
as we follow him by the Cape
known for his long black locks
of unfolding hair
and a one day Whitman beard,
whose life is on loan
composing his daring verse
from a thousand notes
draped in soft tones.

Perhaps a few beach combers
may often remember him
as that nonconformist
who quoted Baudelaire
and outlived his day dreams
by drinking in his good words
and refusing a rocking chair,
he is still heard in rare echoes
reciting from a book of Thoreau
by the woods and shore
of early morning songbirds
in voice overs
from his jazz piano.

READING VILLON

Reading Villon
in the open streets
amid the chattering classes
reading their news on line,
an orange kayak resurfaces
from its tightly knotted anchor
protected from the winds
by the seas home harbor
and an unusually friendly jay
even brushes off from us
on the last sponge cake of snow
over the salty water docks.

It is the last day
of crazy March
where four harsh months
of a freezing troubled repast
as a red cardinal
addresses me in blank verse
my second hand bicycle
passes by the welcome wagon
by river beds
near the first tourist ship.

We begin to realize
time and images are only
for this last March day
with my gloomy sunglasses
at a bygone season
with our rapid astonishment
at a foursome playing bocce
on the white beach sand.

Watching the ice fishing
on a breathing barge
of a shining eternity
in the weathered thoughts
of every third rate philosopher
drinking in the local pub
as a smooth jazz guy
hunts for some sun
all winter
who still falls for the love
of a once soap opera star
clenching her hand
now out of luck for the lottery
he wanders alone
like Villon
raising his riverbed eyelids
into a celestial spot at first light
when oysters appear again
on the blue plate special
of the fish shack bar
every Thursday.

LOST

Lost to the prince
of the air

in the Alps
where souls

suddenly disappear
by a convincing scream

with the collapse
of German wings

as a lonely bird
sings a poet's words.

EVEN IF

Even if no one reads us
this day
here or at the bookstore
my fans and friends
are only one step away,
for a unique reality to enjoy
my hemisphere of words
they are assured of a welcome
with the honor of my decor,
as a former stage
and art director,
that in my unique
metaphoric, once historic world
there are at least four star actors
spending time by paging me
to suspend reality
if only for tonight.

It seems to be O.K.
even in this  small softened
day dream
of a drama's verse,
we may still fall in love
with a Shakespearean star
in a critically traded universe
that our poetry will live on
despite it all we are
who we are,
you even may doubt
that the Romantic writer
is on an ageless search for love
as in the comic  film
"A Coffee in Berlin"
with everyone our enemy
above all we cannot win
with daddy,even a shrink
cannot censor or begin to think
of the irony of our words
from our body language.

ULYSSES

Ulysses of war and sea
of exile and Penelope
we still hear
your war memory
as in Homer's diary
now housed next to mine
I'm playing a jazz solo
in the spring cleaned attic
waiting up for our journey
to have a mile run by the sea,
hearing a poet's staying echo
of unconnected fragments
marking in outlines
and texts from my repertory,
still feeling a bout of cold air
from my old balcony
wishing to catch blue fish
in the deep ocean
far from ditch waters of the Bay
along the low tide's sea
in this mysterious spring day.

CALLAS

With my opera glasses
of indelible memory
lent to me in adolescence
by my uncle and aunt
Maria Callas appears
as Lucia in the mad scene
with laughter and tears
on the beautiful Met stage
here in a dramatic set
sings her bel canto aria
amid a choral palace
of raucous applause
from drama queens
she in her taffeta gown
with a glamorous gold tiara
in di Lammermor
a poet still remembers it all
as the surging crowds
make it to the door
there is more clapping
on the balcony and floor.

WATCHING "BUFFET FROID"

A fantasist watches
from his movie chair
over the French channel
Bertrand Blier's black comedy
"Buffet Froid"
between a breath
of Paris night life
and existential deeds
a  crazy detective suddenly
uncovers riotous deeds.

He question and discovers
we are all out of place
there is no truth
and consequences
to embarrass
how we are often mistaken
in our own life's sequences.

MARCH 28

The cello strings

are playing solo Bach

in the snow you have lost 

your belongings

and now your bearings

in the sound proof studio

your son is reading Engels'
"Anti Duhring.'

TIME

Time marches by this day
away from the Ides
and decides an ode
of our own parched history
recalling the old weathered canary
once feathered in bright yellow
which escaped its cage
and in the light
to reveal what is possible.

LOST

Lost in the finale
of the Fifth
unable to say "No"
to a labyrinth
by circling a frenzied note
in an elegy of sadness
returning to the coda
that enfolds me.

JUST LIKE ANYONE ELSE

The river is luminous
anonymous
like a mystery of survival
of a hundred year turtle
spaced between stone
and shells,
that concerns
no one in the sunlight.

NOT SORRY

Not sorry for all the stories
you told me in childhood
that became my friends
by the moon of my rebirth
losing the scales on the piano
in mystical speech
of my own melancholy.

NEVER UNDERSTOOD

Never understood
by my own loneliness
born in grief
with a mystic sense
of mistaken snapshots
surviving by rebirths
of nature's making
and night music's comfort
a man of the dawn's ashes
in a survivors grey suit
speaking an alembic
alphabet language
in a foreign tongue
and body count
of momentary day dreams.

OUR EYES OPEN

Our eyes open full of doubt
on a gray Boston morning
from our river bed window
to watch a bird on Beacon Hill
where mildew sputters
on once meadow snows
in buried drifts
on shadows of divided light
from wavering city lanterns
a poet on a park bench
near the Frog Pond
trembles in silence
beneath a faint sun.

MARCH

March is the strangest time
to sit alone in a coffee house
with an old memory of the Bay
as unrolling sunshine
reaches these stained windows
to shade us
from silent winter blues,
the still air is empty of birds
over the hilltop trees
when snow shadows
the greensward park
or gusty wind shouts
hiding us in the dark,
a poet is still alone
in first light patches
thirsting for words.

WHEN LIFE DRAGS

When life drags us down
and we sense our crown
has fallen in exile
we silence our ambiguities
even truthful verities
we accepted from youth
by living out
new possibilities
we publicly lack
and privately concentrating
on a better kingdom
in a far country
as in Kafka's or Terz's "Trial"
by watching our back.

RODIN,RUSKIN,RILKE

Stones as symmetry
in contrary fashion

where only art atones
awakens to passion

in literary metaphor
this as a summary of it

not mistaken by sculptor
critic, secretary, poet.

IN THE ALPS

In the windy wet Alps

at one window's plane crash

the rain and ashes shadow
disappear in the yellow sun

from trauma and drama

as fellow secrets collapse.

MIDDLE AGES

Don't get excited
one dawn you are knighted
then indicted
then dead.

SO MANY

So many word pictures
in this laborer's mind
as floaters of John Clare
in phrases to unwind.

BORN AGAIN

You who were born
on a sad day
under the Matterhorn
mountain
think of your son
and daughters
then begin to drink
the waters
at the fountain of life.

INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE

Bach took from Vivaldi
and Gramsci from Marx
street poets look to Pasolini
as tiny birds ascending larks,
where are the solo phrases
discovering our concertos
and ease of words,
there are few critics
to praise us in the know
for we who are often lost
in  reverie or ennui
as Poe's ravens or Rilke's angels
in the cross walked snow.

WALTER BENJAMIN'S FRIEND

If you not not met Gershom
would Kafka
have meant so much
or Klee's "Angelus Novus,"
even Brecht,
in your nervous state
of an unpractical mind
where history makes progress
in its cold dialectical steps
on the sons of mankind.

NAMING CHILDREN

Today meeting
a mother at shopping
told me she had triplets
recently
naming her children
of this new age
"Sky, Fly ,and "Spy,"
and they began to cry.

WHEN

When you cannot forsake
your life
of all its bitterness
yet ask take a leave
of absence
as Sappho's children sit
on her lap
by rings of trees
to bask in the wind
eating fruit
learning Greek
or throwing a ball,
they knowing to seek
the presence of ease
as they wave to a poet
over the waters
who in their presence
still wants to please
her daughters.

RUSSIAN LETTER
(In memory
Daniil Kharms 1905-1942)

You wrote me in Russian
from the Ural Mountains
to tell me
my poetry reminded her
of Daniil Kharms
dying in a prison asylum
from starvation
during the purple red siege
of a fiery risen Leningrad
you were the third person
in the fourth country
between two centuries
to tell me as well
that there is a connection
between us,
perhaps Daniil is now speaking
at this hour to me through others
even from his unmarked grave
without any riverbed of flowers
or ready laurels
nor grave monuments beside him
or any lamented bells be heard
yet at moments of the day
we will remember you,
Daniil Kharms,
though quoted verse
of a noted poet disarms us
we will be devoted
to fulfill your memory,
in small edited books
of knowledge,
Daniil who understood
that all poetry is a gift
like songbirds scattered
in the sacred wood,
for when any of our words
are outlawed by the state
or bodies burned in a war
amid a law's scared censorship
we are all harmed at our door,
giving out my maxim
"that poets need to be appreciated
in life's secret tears and laughter
and years ever after,"
we as yet have not learned.

ADVICE FROM JOHN MILTON

Life has smeared us,John Milton
that our love for Him
or for nature will not last
circling like Lucifer's lie
that we are cast
as a lost victim in the pit,
forgetting any icicles
in the drifts out by my door
soon there will be buds of green
outside my rear view mirror
as we drive along the Bay
covering the twigs and trees
taking it easy in the sun,
this March freeze will be over
by the Charles river,
blue jays will soon besiege us
on the Longfellow bridge
by large Puritan houses
now turned into latte cafes
where I will again play sax
in my smooth jazz way,
a Boston spring is coming
taking up my second hand bicycle
regretting the Arctic breath
and my clouded obsessions
with the past,
opening my windows
on the future wonder
with my Beat poet's words
under the town clock's window
singing out hymns with the birds
to lyrically embrace
the birch trees in the cold wind
with all of winter's dark shadows
even on my face.

WHAT MUSIC CAN DO

Regardless of any news
for any meaningless wishes
of my obsessive compulsion
to write in a rear view mirror,
it's time to change the clock,
to emerge from your own abyss,
we hear what music can do
even with introspective blues
the rock songs of " the Doors"
or grave news on T.V.
our mood suddenly rejoices
in the interlude of an aria by Bizet
with its alto voice of a minor key
listening to an opera recording
here leaning out on highway
sensing at the ocean's edge
amid the mad swirl of "Pearl Fishes"
we acknowledge the critical success
of Bizet's opera
in a lover's expression
taking away any emotion
of seasonal depression
in my own confessional largesse.

A VISIT TO MARDI GRAS

On St. Charles St.
Dixieland jazz
appears in a hat passed
out of nowhere
with confetti in a parade
of witnesses,
it must be an obsessive dream
of Poe from a century repast
along Canal and Bourbon
in a Lent costumed underground
with airs of old Absinthe
drowned in my course of tears
as Tennessee Williams is alive
crossing St. Louis Cathedral
with madrigals singing
above live jazz bloused blues
with crowns on our head
we sign out from our hotel
impressed as royal kings and queens
with shaving cream
or lipstick returned to their kits
yet our still life portraits
is not burning out in our party outfits
of fiery New Orleans memories
with gold gowns and silver coins for tips
when dawns drags out
another day as if prepared
for a last Apocalypse
a few souls carrying as safety pins
in their back packed search
for a brown or green scapula
near the St. Louis' church
near the Mardi Gras
with a Creole pecan laced dessert
for a last supper from their carnal sins.

WHERE SHE WAS

Where she was
ticks off in my memory
like waves
of a thousand lights
and faces here
in Tokyo,
amid twilight places,
to take obsessive pictures
of a snowy city ablaze
in its midnight life
over clear star gazers
with a daughter's enigma
of lost love
as one eye fills with water
trying to breathe in
the presence of dangerous air
where rumors stretch now
in alleys and valleys
as in the poems of Yokio Mishima
spotted for casual
or sensual personal desires
from geisha dancers
in memory of a thousand days,
a stranger is not forgotten
nor one kiss on a dense stone
even in the zen garden of peace
as an innocent west wind
whisks past our fear-sweat
and the hot fires of adolescence.

EXPOSURE

It's time to be consequential
and a bit more courageous
of all our potential threats
around us,
as Beats obsessive to words
we must rise above rhyme
rhythm and our fallen reason
and get back to poetry on the streets
with new existential face lifts
not forgetting
from the outrageous past
amid reactionary and contrary walls
of surrounded Philistine envy,
but to embrace a pure love
from shadowed gates
of ancient cities and deserted towns
where the volcanic past
arises from the dust
by rains and ruins
engulfing our possessions
with sleep housed memories
of unexplored excavations,
carrying heavy shovels in our hands
traveling the seven seas
wearing a voyages sailor coat
of Ulysses searching for Penelope
wishing to embrace
Circe's magic bracelet
by Daphne's green tree,
our specs to the wall,
counting with searchlights
for the magus of a buried life
wanting to have a dialogue
with one of Robert Browning's
dramatic monologues,
or have a charismatic heavenly vision
of Rabbi Jesus Aramaic journeys
up the Mount of Olives,
here in a present tense hour
there are no dead bones
from the greatest to the least critics
after all we are vers-librists,
with a prosody and mean rap
or hearing a Rolling Stones melody
with the laughter
of Gershwin's Paris rhapsody
insisting for music as lyricists
not ever to be embarrassed as mystics
but to live as kings ,queens or priests.

CLOSE TO HER
(for Emily Dickinson
1830- 1886)

Close to her love for words
with a familial feeling
like a blue bird
of being alone yet free
in our unconventional nest,
reading her secret passages
trying to understand,
she is clothed in a silk dress
at a poet's haven and royal realm
by golden butterflies
confessing to me on my laptop
her foiled imaginary sins,
we rest in folded pages
and passages of my own diary,
here by New England's flower beds
this poet's soul forgives
all that is contrary to love
and lives in eternity's hours,
we rest on greensward grass
by her cemetery river bed
I'm presenting a red rose bouquet
to Emily of Amherst
feeling obsessed like her
by being always an outsider
implanted like love birds
by branches in a first spring garden
watching from our swings
the tiny spider
dissolving its web by the birches
urged on only by the East wind
over the honey and apple walls
of the farmer's market
perched near the horse's gates
feeling as a thirsty outrider
knowing her discovery of verse
has no regret in language,
which has blessed and pardons all.

IDES OF MARCH
for Emily Dickinson
1830-1886)

Driving no love away at night
in my hansom cab
Emily and I ride on a horse

my heart murmurs at her urges
to write poems together
keeping my quiet handsome rumors
of a Beat poet's secrets to himself,
on a mute road full of birches
with icicles hanging on
a country white church
here mourning bells and doves
sing and ring over a winter retreat

in the smell of a scented woodland

seeing dawn come into focus

at first light in a small town
by the bride of Amherst Common
where Emily Dickinson resides,

near the forest of black bears

who also hide out on the Square,
I'm acting tonight as Brutus
focused on the Ides of March
to air out his poetry
by the powerful new branches
waiting for a green spring,

searching for bread sticks
and a Caesar salad
at the Lord Jeffrey inn
and later to attend
a college Shakespeare symposium
and  later to watch
the Visconti's film "Ossessione", 1943

amid emerging birches
in greening of this hour
eyeing fragile limbs of saplings
in gentle tidings yet to flower.

 MEMOIR

The night music
of every temperament
will darken all lips,
blankets of smooth jazz
over us
better times for a memoir
or letter,
better put out the light
or read Phillip Larkin.

WANTED:A PEN PAL

Likes soaps
blind dates
Ash trees
news
weather
cooking shows
and so it goes
like fluff puff
into the trash.

FIGHTING OVER

Fighting over
scrabble,
sex,
the single life
a double life
double beds
insoluble solutions
art institutions,
over puzzling faces
mirrored travels
unraveled river beds
traces of the past
rubbed off graffiti walls
by the hotel lobbies
in strange dream cities
of the desert
inhabited by Rimbaud.

GONE FISHING

A politician
has no admission
of a provocative understatement
in its own media mission
without a government permission slip
within his/her  grip
cutting to the chase
says," for all his trouble
in the bubble of Foggy Bottom
I'm going on a fishing trip,"
as the double speak
press says, " we got em".

TOULOUSE-LAUTREC'S NIGHT

Your hands move
mobbed by women
decked out in finery
and yellow lemony parasols
a fob in your glasses
with a critic's limpid eye
Henri Toulouse-Lautrec,
your hands move
freely from your pastel mind
winding downstairs
on the white balconies
your knees moving
with the dancers
ill at ease this night,
your hands won't stop
at the brushstrokes
of nervous energy
in a horny romancer's mood
shortened by the critic's dare
of a music hall interlude.

PROPHECY

To the sun
return soon
to the winds
hold back
your winter laughter
to the river beds
run through new flowers
this afternoon
it is a long hour
for the bird song
of springtime to be overdue.

IRISH BREAD

Mary, the earth was not singing
through lilting melodies
of cloudy melancholy or dance
on St. Patrick's day, 1966
when you made Irish bread
for us in an impoverished March,
after your two sons were drafted
sent away by Uncle Sam
to a far country
sister tracing in school on a map
a worn-out distant Vietnam
yet rays of first light appeared
on your closed showery
window pane
through your hope chest
and fragile furniture desk
where we read Ulysses
of James Joyce in secret
writing in my three storied novella
the hearth riddles and tales
in the clutch of spinning
top of the morning greetings
between the bread and wine
lids of potato skin and corned beef
at last celebrating peace
in bottles near the sacristy
doomed to a mother's capacity
for love and trembling faith
in a world of home bound magpies.

POTENTIAL

Expecting so much from life
as the sun began
this morning
the possibility of early spring,
a sight of a pandemonium of birds
on the birches
a day of green expectations
everywhere in a melee of joy
even in our deconstructed time
that language will conceive music
from its existentially dormant potency
undisclosed from winter blues
there is a flurry of hope
in the windy air,
a love potion on everyone's lips
a marathon to be completed
and a hundred lines of poetry
on a free press
running through
our earth-wise world to be heard.

IDENTITY POLITICS, 1970

I can't tell what you are
or who you are
trembling inside
your foreign tongue
words move me
from your harried fingertips
outside your managed pretenders
who escorted and extorted us
in the ways of conversing
bridging the love gap
of a decade's surprises
crossing a court of thresholds
of blind dates.

LIFE GUARD


Chuck, the life guard
now far away in Frisco
saved sister
from downing
she was a rainbow to us
when we were nine
dropped into a bloodshot world
from a diving board
all of us only small bodies
that summer of haunting shadows
needing rescue,drafted to Nam
we even named our cat Chuckie
after you.

I.D.

I.D. lost
no passport
only a transport to death
on Good Friday,1945
you being an ordinary actor
in a small hamlet out of no where
when your poems fall out
of an Salvation army jacket pocket,
with a color photo you naively spy
a round up of children
heading for a scout meeting
by campfires on the tall grass
and sent to their ashes.

A LIFE WITHOUT US

Time placates these words
in a deserted breath
stopping by this green taste
of spring in a repast
crunching Japanese rolls
in a Zen garden
on this peace bench
admiring the yews
far away from home
in a life without us
or a second time
to check us out
in our absent tour of duty
yet resilient memory
nailing a poem by my right hand
of a once pledged friendship
plagued by twigs of war
and forecasts of prophetic peace
now by sunlit riverbeds
will pass over a pardon
for our last photo and narrative
addressing us by name
by the coffee house
a soul offers to cross over
with me, hand to hand
at the finish of a marathon line
with only love's forgiveness
at the other side of the world.

WHEN YOUR LIFE

When your life mushrooms
in your earth-wise field
near the windy dunes
of your hiding place
which whisper
from a sheltered sunshine
words of an excited embrace
stolen from your diary
and you listen to bird song
in a belated pleasure
which holds you today
to the the retracing
of that desire,
if only of that echo
of a past tenderness
were not a lost mirror
in the pockets of memory
of your lover's shabby coat,
it may be time to listen
to the ash trees
once again in your face's tremor
amid boughs and branches
in this blushing brief sun shower
making no noise
yet rain falls on every leaf
in the woodland foliage
as a whitetail deer stops to eat
motioning his nostrils
in the taunting soft air,
you ask to live through
a trackless field
to locate a pointed path
you were once guided to
you wait without a map
clustered by a lover's quarrel
for a noonday welcome
without any more suffering.

HESITATION

At the glass window
a once day dreaming student
now twenty five
and endeared to poetry
hesitates to put on
her brand new skates
until she reaches
a blind blue hill rink
invisible to the quarry,
as a visitor of graffiti whispers
in the wind as he initials
the local Elm
marked above her
that he, her former tutor
in the language department
is in love with nature forever
waits by the tallest tree
near the clearing woodland
frozen in ether
with a photograph
from winter's last welcome
of bears and foxes
now has written all over a branch
of a hundred year elm
his new poetic lines
and waiting for her to skate
at the annotated spring.

WHAT FORM

What form
will you fill out
to reform
the stated
x rated hold
on the ten fold
portfolio
of the coming storm's
imbroglio.

CONSENSUS

Exploding to out him
for the revolting time
just for the record
adjusted to public opinion
transferred to mass media
in a close-up, selfie, tell-all.

TWIN SENSIBILITY

Not to be double-minded
or underhanded
a doppelganger
to a stranger
whom we met on a German T.V.
Soap opera in disguise
and became a transgender
having posed
and been disposed
by the unwise media
about all her troubles.
and a second hand reader

WALKING ON GLASS

Walking on glass
which is black ice
harrowing March
expecting resistance
on the urban landscape, 1980
setting out for Harvard Square
over Longfellow bridge
with a green back pack
expecting spring to show up
but only a guy with two holes
in his arms and eyes
asks me for directions
in the midst of thunder.

ANDRE MASSON'S SUBSISTENCE

Psychedelic
in a search
without food or drink
in a canvas
of art
in which no one
need be a critic
(unlike Bataille) think.

CHACONNE OF BACH

Withering stops
on the bridge
and violin bow
moves
on this player's elbow
for an echo's rhythm
which guides and glides
his poetic and traumatic
expectation climaxes
into a rendering beauty
its direction drops off.

PI DAY

Infinite number
        kick backs
after our off center
    worlds hurl words
of a universal perception,
   minding what has critically
  been realized in historic sense
 as time and on pi day
we are in a manic deference
not added nor compromised.

GAMES

Games
  that we play
in a deception's basis
  from our mind's gloss
wishing for a stasis
in a loss from a sense
   of aboriginal reception
crossing our perception's defense
from blindness and shame
of our original ( kinds of)
   conception.

ON A NEW CHAIR

Someone is whispering to me
about the chaos
of intangible memory
our shadows hidden
by a Marcel Proust's library
near a lemony canary in its cage
as seen in the sunshine
at the edge of a wine glass
left to me by nana Mendes
my guitar standing in silence
near the serene reading room
waiting to be played
by a visiting exiled poet
full of suspicion
murmurs at his own fate.

MARCH MUSIC

Shadows fall
near the mirror, coat
and once soiled banner
held on a marathon run
in March
from another time ,
wanting to play sax
as my notes dance
in a good mood
vibrating a curious scaling
from our chilled out tones
to sway smooth jazz.

 WHEN A NEW VOICE ARRIVES

The sun disquiets
our memory
as a surrealist poet
signs autographs
against the elm
after his urban read
then after a party
in his honor
plays his alto sax
from chapped blinded lips
addressing the eager crowd
on the riverbed zen peace garden
recounting my a double life
as a poet and musician
asking only
that millstones be created
from language into bread
on a hungry street of fountains
for a surrogate future
making even a lily blush.

WHAT IS NATURE

Say to the clouds
give up your rain
to the scaffold
give up your poets
who want to live,
to the grassland
stay back for March
for soccer games
to the dunes
crush the sap of Maple
for your morning pancakes,
by the marshes
have a cup of Bourbon
from Paris
to remember me by
who will always
be back to the edges
of nature.

OUTSIDER

Have you ever felt
like an outsider
others making sure
that our world's nature
is not real
that we are not of it
like a spider on the vine
we cannot always choose
our path
but like the poet Plath
go line by line.

PLAYING HANDEL

Playing Handel
in my mind and head
playing you
for a month at a time
on one small corner
of the universe
in sound proof studios
on the ball infields
or by the ocean sands
under a beautiful foreign sun
washed bodies of water
with you swimming out,
your notes not lost in visiting
to honor those under Asian ashes
or in European concentration camps,
when you feel
like a thousand days
of long suffering,
we can always hear you.

VIOLIN SOLO

The bow's strange
story as it turns
on Bach
for inspiration
on the Hatch shell
the wind glimmers
on the Boston Esplanade
under the Charles St. bridge
by lovers bones
like the other night's
swaggering inchworms
on stretched out hours
by once iced sheets
blanketing our flakes of memory
under the hundred year evergreen
where my childhood music stands.

MARCH 11

Birdsong crosses
the one eyed sun
in a melodious brush
on a swallow's wet wing
from a strip of blue sky
clearing the trembling frost
from a once kissed snow
in the impoverished garden
by my bicycle stand
on the west lawn.

DISCOURAGEMENT


When discouragement
meant a set back
now it is a bent flower
on the hedge's meadow
and a return to spring
of towering blue
on the hill's slope
as seagull wings follow
from the sunshine
a debut of dawn singing
in a reflected first light
the earth sparrows chant
on its furrow's renewal.

HITCH


Film archives
and documents
records
its secret
prints
of horror
that picks up
every life
under fascism.

UNSAID ALMODOVAR

Stars bicameral
maps our lives
on scopes
of versions
from Almodovar
in a sextet of form
with films
on imaginative hope.

THE NEW WAVE

With Chabrol
and Agnes Varda
in Paris 1958
the lines dim
in diary
outside the frame
in documentary/drama
as a new wave birth.

MARCH SOLITUDE

After the cold abyss
escapes every interned fate
of us in an ambient season
when weary lakes overflow
with her once visible view
of birds flying South
from clear eyelids
now open for its scenic punishment
from those with cabin fever
as unlocked snow showers
from the French window panes
play on with its whitened flakes
from an absurd weathered sky
which hesitates to move
its wintry tenants
from water logged roads
that are long winding in slush
we reach to find our horizon
from frozen incognito days
that oblige the sun
to now avidly chastise us
from corners of breezes
altering our earth-wise enthusiasm
for a scattered spring celebration
covering over snow kissed banks
in a newly feathered wing of season
lying by the nest of woods.

PROOFS

Proofs are tender
shifted to a stiff pen
dripped ink dreams
of a credulous line
about a viability
in your proverbial hands
a visage to flower
from a quivering loss
implanted in a sentence
which wakes to survive.

THE LAST SEPT.

Elizabeth's Bowen's
novel now a film
like a Checkov play
knowing their aristocratic days
are numbered but believing
art and life of the aristocracy
are worth going on
between two worlds,
a remarkable period piece.

MONDAY BLUES

Two pairs

of purring cats

want to play guitar

clearing out a path

between the Gothic wisteria

in the walled garden

not making a sound

by the laundry bags,

were the window to open

spring will sweep in the dawn

to pass its new colors,

a fawn is photographed

by a sixth grader

on her bicycle

there is a peaceful silence

near the woodlands.

MARCH

March makes fools
of us all
the breeze chilled
on the white fields
moving our eyelids
that awake the dawn
making us restless
the wind too
wants to shout and sing.

SAVED

The dawn saved

in his tongue

from the poet 

survivor

carrying a white flower

in his hands,

the last light is out

by the shivering elm

the moon still shines

after the war.

BACH FROM SZERYNG

Overflowing the bridge
Bach moves us
the string's knowledge
never breaks.

THE SEAGULL

Watching James Mason
and Simone Signoret
in director Lumet's "The Seagull"
brings back the sky, earth and sun
in the life of the Russian theater
arriving at the ultimate answer
to questions of a living,breathing
way for each character actor's reason
to survive another season.

LANDOR


Walter Savage Landor
in your lavish Jacobin
rather chipper dress
for the Tories media
fitting in with a poet's poet
with your lancet adage's wit
you wish to transmit,
and to hide your acedia
languor and knitted stories
and beverage's liquor
but not your chit and furies
made for today's cinema
and in sitting on decor
made for bio pic's movies.

RAVEL'S DREAMS

For the left handed
Ravel dreams
no more war to pick up
where the last ended
hearing the piano
and bells in the corridor.

RESURRECTION YEAR 1945

Time is blindly an overflow
of the Volga and Rhine
ninety dead bodies
desiring to pass over
before an Easter and Esther's fire
alive only in Messiah's memory.

CATALAN'S ESPRIU

Landscaped by dusk
at the oppressive sky
when a life and love aflame
will rise up and never die.

ON THE ISLE OF PATMOS

St. John the Divine

bedazzled by revelations

of human speech to share

here in Patmos

jutting out from islands

as any exile loved of Jesus

amid obliterated dust

adjusting to his new nature

in pure underlined words

which will show justice

to the nations

with Mary under his care.

DEATH CAMPS

Stalin and Hitler
sign a pact
for the world to review
soon all Poles will be maligned
who won't serve their contract
as death camps are in view
yet soon these slave citizens
some brave Christians and Jews
will be attacked in '39
in a brown and red hue
of coal and ashes
intellectuals are sacked
and put in line
when fascism is renewed
and freedom has resigned.

PLAYING HANDEL SONATA IN F

One memory
we will not forget
playing Handel's violin no.12
sonata in F
with a newly polished
pianist, Mr. Press
when I am ten years old
in short white pants
my recollection
like a flight of words
of classical notes in the recital
our memory moves easily
to live with the past
with a perfect echo's miracle
of pitch
which outlasts us
for a music we cannot resist.

TO FREUD

Unmasked thoughts
are often not unalloyed
ideas keep repeating
in my mind
places, spaces,
accents and traces
as taut fears placating me
in kind,
dear Dr. Freud,
where do I go
to cope or ask
when everything
is division
and needing
to be assured,
in berating woman
and mankind,
here on a cold stuffed sofa
caught by my own
contrary derision
yet here in Vienna
you are marked
in a commentary
with an antenna
reaching out to those
hopelessly annoyed
by ways
of constant competition
within your own visionary soul
even after we fairly
realize our void
life has but a short chance
with a for instance of miracle
only in philosophical precision
as sex and death,
you tell us in your text
within all our hallucinations
among the accidents and ancients
ultimate understanding
is our goal.

RIMBAUD'S APPEAL

Longing for an exile's home
after a week
Rimbaud,whether in Paris, Java
or in quarters of French Afrique
is a wild child in an underdog age
an embarrassed alien on the planet
feeling shapeless as last night's dream
he has spotted another orphan's
foundling in its seamless nest
hearing a bird of prey's song
who also cannot find rest,
yet setting out to run miles
in his search for water and bread
among the alleys as a poet guest
from an abyss of thieves
without any church or abbey to seek
a soul not dead yet invisible to beliefs
not noticing or admiring the galleries
refusing any kiss of peace
nor reconciled in rounding words
even during holy week.

BAUDELAIRE'S SPRING


You greet the dawn of April
without a care
like the fragrant wind
as sweet remnants in the air
or walking on spring leaves
expecting birds to sing canticles
like mourning doves
who rise above the church bell
believing in a love we share,
Baudelaire,always feeling
as a vagrant albatross
with a poet's words of miracles
yet after passing the unwell
in the hospital hallways
you seize the moments
when laughter is vulnerable
from your own double crossed despair
in perceiving Hell's torments ache
as your troubled life is unfair
from your emanating wake.

POET VISITS

When poets
like Lowell
visit Pound
or Morike
is at Holderlin's bedside
or Goethe
stops in to see Heine
the sound cools
our nature's breath
knowing we are already
with prayers for the dead.

GEORGE FALUDY'S TIME
(1910 -2006)

George Faludy
with your love
for Villon
in Hungary
persecuted
for your ancestry
translated Heine
and vilified
by Nazi Germany,
translated Erasmus
for he too was civilized,
and not dated
but universal in time
like Moses and Jesus,
so George,
don't be surprised,
after every ism is gone
as every herbal mimosa
leaves the chorus of earth
and your mature prism
has been critically analyzed
to the satiric laughter
that the world's media
bestows
on less politically orthodox
who would not understand,
imprisoned like a Socrates
given to the hemlocks
we believe in your charisma
George Faludy,
as a miracle poet
of blessed memory
has been finally recognized.

CYBER BULLIES

How would you
describe him/her
with a twitter mind
as a bitter cyber blogger
who writes to harm or hurt
as any stupid thug or flirt,
exchange your black tie
knee pants, shirt
or mini skirt
and look at yourself
critically in the mirror
we think you may have a soul
and really better things to do
with your bully pulpit time
as any Gentile, Christian or Jew
why not have an artistic goal
than destroy other lives
by turning to computer crime.

SAMUEL BECKETT'S TIME

End gamed
shamed as persons
rendered on
Krapp's last tape
hung by pages of rope
from a lying tongue
with no list for hope
in an age of fascism
men turned into soap
when a refugee artist says
in many languages
he is framed.

ALAN TURING'S CODE

Alan Turning suffers his fate
in patterns of a computer code
designed by a genius' mind
beyond any word games to suit
in my ode to honor his memory
from this elegy for his life
to save us from fascism's state,
as in the Manhattan project
science would also explode
for democracy too has a code,
like-wise everyone
has been gifted
with different equations
even in sexual ways,
the cold 1950's Brits finding
as in Oscar Wilde's older days
that buggery was worse
than any burglary
in their very absurd contextual ways.

PINTER PLAY

Not knowing
     yet moving
  along blindly
   acting in Beckett's
     "last Krapp's tape".

DUKE AND DUCHESS

They never fooled me
this comely pair
with petty bourgeois charisma
as clever warrior faces of racism
as the Windsors tie the knot
with a snobby air
and a love for Hitler's fascism,
these two pro Nazi folks
who hated their own U.K.
appearing on U.S. TV.
after the war with comedy
in laughter and stale jokes
as foul traitors they were
like those with a choir
of religious piety
appearing on Variety shows
pretending to be gladiators
of teaching truth and harmony
while preaching to society
when they are truly hostile
(in comity to their own history)
of reality to free speech
we who can see through them
in black and white
within our reach,
shut off the screen and go away.

SILENCE

Pindar knew the verity
of silence
amid blips and stars
of heaven's history
even facing apocalypse,
with wisdom's sincerity
or the gods sanctity
on your lips
you may make a difference.