MIKHAIL LERMONTOV'S LOVE
(1814-1841)
birthday October 3

His eyes are still on us
not embittered
like an onion or radish
for a Russian son not selfish
but with good humor
even now his wise voice
at the door sill is heard
not since Pushkin
in the graying air
of our neighborhood
there is a choice songbird
also along the Neva
who hears of a lyric poet
at his last duel in death
near the paradise river bed
under the blond light
your memory is borne
on an October dawn,
for a fool rarely knows a poet
until through the night
an emerging sunshine appears
as we eye the moving length
and breadth of a sailing swan
of many gazing years
who passes though waves
taking its slavish wading toll
yet still has her wings
we remember and love you
Lermontov on your birthday
within every rainbow shade,
our soul faces your spirit
which sings in a chorus
to us of a poet's way
writing "The Hero of our Time"
with brave embracing words
sharing your tears in rhyme.

WALLACE STEVENS BIRTHDAY

October 2 1879-1955

October, as red leaves
expire on the fields
under oak tree rings
by a chorus of songbirds
along a bus route
over Hartford's roads sing
we remember your spoken words
by an open border of woods
in classic crystal breezy moods
shielding us with an expanse
on a translucent nimbus light
in a number of  sky clouds
raining down with winds
on tendril green meadows
in rows of wild flowers
at our own solitude
when you spoke to us
Wallace Stevens of beauty
in our storms
by open wells glittered
and ready for the sunshine
by river beds
to keep us in winter forms
over a long devotion of poetry
under snow blanketed sentences
knowing of you in our dorms
from your reading gestures
at our slumbers to be warm
as your surely fruitful phrases
allow us each day to be reborn.

THE CAT

The cat on my Baudelaire
jumps and purrs at me
on my sofa chair
she then ignores me
curled up by the fireplace
near ingot fringed blinds
of French unhinged doors
when Bach plays me
on the harpsichord
then the cat sways
in her wood covered spot
near the open welcome mat
by bench blankets
near my learning library draw
of Rimbaud, Valery, Verlaine
and De Mello Sophia Breyner,
always alone in the morning
as a moody Autumn sun
by my university neighborhood
welcomes us in corridors
through hallways and stairs
before my Charles river run
in held up in rainy hub breaths
over the Longfellow bridge
by cool bones of Rob Creeley
at Mt. Auburn cemetery
through a chorus of songbirds
feeding and drinking by fountains
near the bird watchers club
along a melodious forest
in visions not to be forgotten
before my return to rest up
as images race before me
for my reading commentaries
near my backgammon table
where there are cards
for a game of solitaire
as a city bard out of Zion
takes up a wine cup and bread
over a solitude of words
alone from a tower of Babel
living like an exiled Daniel
among lions in Babylon
in this millennia.

SECRETS

The informers
were in his dorm
he said,
bullying
in a speechless night
torturing him
socially,economically
even politically
trying to steal
his engagement ring
now out of sight
by jalousie windows
of blinding rain
he wrote a poem
on his bicycle
of his love in a quatrain.

SINCE

Since I do not rise
until my motionless hour
moves me to my chair
heaven and earth is wise
to my behavior
not abandoned elsewhere
from my sleep eye dream
of exile from Toledo
picturing El Greco's "Savior"
he seems to share
my wine and bread
on my knees
when any form of despondency
or despair brings me back
from my printed galleys,
to look out from my window
at moving bocce, hockey
and soccer players
sharing the field
by the Charles river's breeze
along the dawn's sky voices
shielding over the sea's edge
by trembling branches
over the Longfellow bridge
hearing familiar birdsong
at this very moment
with shadows of visitors
on the balcony fearing the rain
as mourning doves appear
outside my studio at eleven
when listening to Verdi's
recording of the opera Nabucco
my mind is racing
by a lending library of Esperanto
waiting on my desire
in memory of the pastimes
of my reading Proust
outside the Paris Tuileries
for there is life's love in art
where time flees
what it disposes in youth
will never depart
since there is forgiving
for the living and the dead
we exist ala carte.

TO FREE A POET

To free a poet
is to instruct our nature's lore
like an Emerson or Thoreau
we may even explore
the craggy conduits
in a lunar exploration of Mars
or an eclipse of a red moon
on a relaxed night out
like this
with an September passerby,
when the breeze rises
on your back
to remember the lost stars
and then tomorrow
as in a metamorphosis
take a noonday walk
here over the wheat fields
of Van Gogh
remembering his eye and ear
of the potato eaters,
that in a quick repast
only life's passport matters
to be stamped
when we hear or witness
the early peal of bells
before the snows arrive
on Palermo's Mount Etna
and there is intimacy
by the river beds near cats
on blankets which vanish
without any forgiven death
on the Spanish steps
when a few leaves turn crimson
and the twigs and acorns
fall on the sunflower grounds
of visitors to the museum
there on the marquee
is the poet Pasolini's film
"The Gospel According
to Saint Mathew"
is playing this Sunday,
"Lets go."

W.D. SNODGRASS'S CONFESSION
(1926-2009)

You had been
to public and private
confessional school
not only as a visitor
throwing your papers
from the artist's ashcan
and opening the draw
to the tight day dreams
in your dry eye ruminations
of erasing lines and rules
off white blackboards
in your own uniqueness
minding your own business
on the first hand shelf
of your personal darkness
to expose a current
of rolled up electric light
preparing the land way
for footsteps of the Beats
who hide in the corner
not hoarding words
by long lines in the day
not buckled in an armchair
but rushing to own
an oral profession of oracles
washing their feet
in a miracle of words.

ROCKPORT'S DAWN

In a welter of waves
a chorus of birds
nestled on green waters
sheltering on a raft of rocks
where my kayak rests
near fallen branches
at the northeaster wind's
spoken woolly dawn
here a poet's open door
closes for an outside read
by a tree-trunk of words
my spirit catches up
after a thousand mile run
as an oak looses acorns
on crimson leaves
for a trial marathon.

BY THE EASTERN SHORE

We spilled out dream words
on the white sands of love
hearing the gull voices
as budding shadows
and Greek columns of castles
rise by birdsong at noonday
by the gazebo of geraniums
remaking our blanket images
on our canvas of yellow mums
clouds dance above us
in a chorus of eraser darkness
we have our lunchtime
of choice blood oranges
answering in a witness
to nature of "No and Yes."

PLAYING SCHUBERT

Playing Schubert
at my first violin recital
drinking a chocolate milkshake
that my teacher Uncle Scriven
and Aunt Sarah
brought to me at rehearsal
for an energetic appearance
in the museum courtyard
when Myron my piano accompanist
makes his way on stage,
I'm in my fresh white short pants
taking my animated fiddle
into my muted hands
motioning my body language
at this moment of living out
Schubert's fantasy
as the audience falls silent
and my notes play out
until the applause still echoes
in an orchestrated  harmony
of my audible still life
under the Picasso.

TRACING YOUR IMAGES
(in memory Robert Lowell
 1917-1977) passed Sept. 12

Emerging September images
as first sunlight filters
your morning presages
passages of your time
and emerges at our walk along
over these pavements
on ancient cobblestones
by your Beacon Hill history
drawing us near the river
refreshing our memory
as mineral water
assures us by Boston Common
at the stunning fountain gates
of an interweaving day
spoke to our thirst and hunger
as a chorus of songbirds
on sight read branches
are heard where oak trees
offer acorns on the Esplanade
as passing marathon
joggers run by us.

WE NEED JOHN DONNE

We need John Donne
as the sun is set
for a poet
over the pulpit
as a conduit
of words in the spirit
at least Hopkins
or a Jesuit suited
to reprimand
war as sin and injustice
or the discipline
of Ted Berrigan
Dorothy Day
or Merton
to speak for peace,
let genesis begin again
release the doves
in a metamorphosis
as birds of love
increase, let us begin
as a dramatic "no man
or woman is an island"
for we critics of fascism
are in a crisis
in a time of politic Osiris
rising as comic paganism.

INNER CITY BLUES

In the time zone
which never sleeps
and Motown awakes
over what is inscribed
as Hebrew lettering
on a Swahili blackboard
not far from the city
a poet walks alone
by a thirsty bird sanctuary
in blocks of slow clouds
basking with his sax
in the sun
a blues voice moves this way
through tall buildings of clay
a woman over Jacob's ladder
on her staircase
is swaying under sunshine
in an unknown tongue.

A GREENHOUSE VENTURE

A younger one devours
French bread
standing there
by the greenhouse
near the playground
of slides and see saw
with a toothpick
in hand
flexing his smile and muscle
watches me reaching
on the porch for a peach
and D.H. Lawrence
not knowing what is mine
or his business
near the Blue Hills and woods
with a ruddy way to dip
and dive in Houghton's pond
when he was nineteen
a first light overcomes us
as he combs his hair
in the careless and callous
plunge into the water
here was a tourist guide
and a life guard
soon gasping for breath
only the freshman swimmer
made the purer drift of wood
float from me that saved
his raw body form
from the stranger of mouth
to mouth life from death
over the purple solitude
of a bard's bitter adolescence
he cannot fade
until the sun enfolds us
in the fresh miraculous air
of a blanked out memory.

DANCING HOURS

Dancing hours
by leaves and ashes
on a September lawn
day dreaming in the margins
of living like Flaubert
reading out loud
the story tinged with grief
of Madame Bovary
still flecked
with a proud novel memory
yet wanting relief
by the Charles river bed
from an Indian summer day
heated by the sunshine
sunk down on a bench
in a sanguine dawn
of buoyant Autumn
no bird song grieves,
today the rent is due
maybe he too speaks
in a French accent
with a bottle of red wine
wanting everything new.

JAMES DEAN
(1931-1955)
Sept 30 death

The light on your Porcshe
stops your car
on route 466
heaven stops its mirror
from night corridors
in a Hollywood Styx
you were once driven by
your acting mobility
now you are lost
in the lines
of cops coming by
to the suburb's neighborhood
watching adolescent bones
rise in a window shine
when the sun in your eyes
become cross-wise
listening to the radio
from a descant of melody
opening your five star doors
by unfixed road signs
in shadows of your nobility
over curbs of lantern wicks
remembering "East of Eden"
to get over any way to paradise
with a night of film clips
and a nip of white wine.

DIEGO VELAZQUEZ'S POWER

(1599-1660)

In the cool museum room

in the first snow of morning 

after Bach, brioche

and a Spanish latte

by a chorus of airy sparrows

with laughter in the esplanade

you, Diego overwhelm us

at the hidden art wall 

of your airy Bacchus

or at the supper at Emmaus

with scenes of Jesus's family

or staring at courtyard portraits

you have a Sephardic flair

which loves the valid sunshine

in your bardic divine gestures

painting in your space and time
Venus and Cupid not forbidden
by an artistic Dionysus god of wine.

LAST BIRDSONG

Last birdsong of a chorus
leaving us alone in the desert
with a box of harvested seeds
from the eucalyptus
for our reconciled needs
in shadows for us
along with a daughter
like heart-sick Penelope
with mourning beads left
over the boat sail waters
of a once exiled hopeless ship
waiting for a handsome son
of promise and exile
in a Ulysses' dream of return
just to see his smile
of this former warrior
as the Greek sunshine burns
and Homer writes his Odyssey.

FALL TWILIGHT

Twilight tenderness
on beds of earth and sky
dwindling lineaments
of a great returning love
sleepless by the porch
by verandas ivy high art walls
over Fall's bonfires
of ashes on red leaves
eating fortune cookies
raspberries, pomegranates
Jaffa orange peels, grapes
newly grown and harvested
not wanting the darkness
of shooting stars above us
having candied meat
from a roasted fireplace
on a table mat
full of herbs and sunflowers
consoling us
for turning back the clock
to the exodus or Iliad
or wanting an expectant snow
we read the proverbs
to say one word
of either "Yes" or 'No."

MATISSE CUT-OUTS
(1869-1954)

Cut it out, Matisse
in your cut-outs
geometric shapes
your hand written phonetic soul
suddenly calls us after liberation
asking us to live with courage
your wall art upgrades
Vichy masks
in your apartment splicing
into a scissor forming work
in a fingered atomic clock
for our emergency rooms
in your ruminations
during an occupation
we just asking for existence
not essence or existential threats
essential for animal skins
just to make us a human miracle
in a mineral and vegetable diet
yelling in tortured German
against the wall for Freiheit,
you cut us off in a future
with sutures for survival
you are not late in your cortege
in your prestige and revival
just bandaged up by war.

PIETER BRUEGEL'S CONVERSION

In the Sixties
hearing talk
about Marx, Engels
at an urban table
while having a bagel
lox and cream cheese
then a despondent actor
arrives and leaves us
for a T.V. rehearsal
talks of "Three Sisters"
of Chekhov and "The Tempest"
by Shakespeare
with an art student
puts down a conduit of books
with her last test
discusses Pieter Bruegel's
the"Tower of Babel" and "Hell"
and his "Conversion of St.Paul"
from a Jew to Christianity,
yet not appalled as daily news
of the nation emerges on a radio
from a young future correspondent
listened to and challenged by
all these socially changed students
with their enlightened reviews
of a universal humanity
in a rudimentary manner
contrary to what was expected
so early by the morning clocks
that was able to form a quorum
in a half-eaten breakfast
as an an avant -garde poet
goes to class on Kierkegaard
which the professor
nicknames me through the year
in a quick cafeteria repast
their conversation stayed with me
though many arduous pages
in the college library
looking up a montage
of art, politics, economics
in an objective way.

HIERONYMUS BOSCH'S WAY
(1450-1516)

When stammering
for a word or design
to move my day
for a serious drawing
on paper,canvas
over a napkin
in an apron of repast
in mysterious remembrance
when out of interference
or remonstrance
a delirious picture
of Hieronymous Bosch
"The Garden of Earthly Delights"
welcomes in my mind
that space and time
will wondrously unwind
(as Paul Valery recalled
about you in prose poetry
in mastery and singularity)
like a fresh dazzling wind
and my night's memory
will recall what my search
was also all about,
the mysterious way
art expands into a morning mirror
of my anonymous history,
surviving my own abstract
revived expressionism.

PIRANESI'S ROME
(1720 -1788)

Drawing us to the dark side
spliced from
an encyclopedic memoir
of old Roman dreams
at reactionary tyranny
walls etched
in dreaded memory
from carbon dated ink
now validated
by an upstaged time
incarcerated from
an imprisoned art
as only a neo classic artist
like Giovanni Piranesi
with a clever illustrated presage
and feathered passage
emerges for a coming change
in a stunning Romantic age
from prisons and catacombs
of the past decorators in archives
from newly risen lives
of never finalized perspectives
dying through weathered ruins
of a museum's airless corridors.

ANGELS

Whether de Chirico's
Jewish Angel

or Chagall's with violins
and rabbis in bluish skies

who dive hurriedly to the earth
for a brief space from all sorrows

by effaced griefs
of tomorrow's colors

at brief dawn's sleep
summoned by a musician's art

and granted to give
relief to us

from sparks of exile
from our mirrored life boats

at least a belief
in hearing from you

as eternal light in a chorus
surprised by our rejoicing.

BACH-BUSONI TRANSCRIPTION

Several notes
that Chaconne partita
plays on my violin stand
in a rustled solo
is now realized
to be rounded out
and modernized
from beats in a metronome
by my mirrored notes
as my bow plays on
engulfed by a piano
on one hand
as a limitless glow
of the sun pours
through my window blinds.

W.S. MERWIN'S EXPRESSION
Birthday Sept. 30th

Spliced with life's comma
through a coma of warfare
rife with a clasp of hilltop wind
you hand over hours of speculation
in a provocative expression
giving your voice to us
by a thousand sands and words
lifted in praise on grounds
of your chosen field
over an eternal fiery flame
by thistles, names of stones
over a poet's sky diving
on limbs of a city and sea
next to leaves of laurels
anointed as a visitor arrives
with Autumn's birthday gifts.

T.S. ELIOT AT CAPE ANN
(1888-1965)

Radiance in the eyes
of landscaped sea-waters
in postcards sent by a poet
who finds duplicate shells
to salvage in a darkness hull
embracing the morning beach
and all who walk by the Coast
acknowledging your time here
by the long suffering waves
and eventide of hands
hidden in lapsed memory
in the mist and fog
out of first light lanterns
of miscarried dialogue
reaching out to rolling angels
cast as a newly reborn Hamlet
knowing only the speech
which whispers in the west wind
kilometers away
by you on park bench
near a two lane rose garden
among lapidary fields
the ocean at his back
reaching out for words
in a maze of stones
granting a watchman
of ships and lifeboats
has entered the wharf
by the tall grass dunes
along the home harbor
T.S. standing there alone
weaving his whispered voice
near the flock of swans
who follow his shadow
will not be lost
in a soliloquy in French.

PAZ'S PASSING BY
(1914-1998)

Paz's passing by
his voice remembers
when city streets
would welcome words
of civility
and humanity
your thoughts
a repast of taste
with the intimate
reprimanded recurrences
and sentences
of your stranded past
you speak and sing to me
over names that slept
a thousand days
in rose blossoming
over deserts
of thirst of watering holes
from Mexico's sounds
ascending in the dawn
even now
his gated shadows are here
enough reported
and said by your cortege.

R.B. KITAJ'S POET WRITING
(1932-2007)

At the Berlin Jewish museum
a poet writing turns toward me
embracing signs of history
and art from California
from your yellow studio
at those days R.B.Kitaj once
traced back in Berkeley
in drawn paints on screen
of wet silhouettes
remembering his tribute
to Creeley and Duncan
who visit you, Kitaj
in London, 1977
with unrelenting brushstrokes
from outdoor cafes of lovers.

VIRGINIA WOOLF'S PART
(1882- 1941)

In your living room
of entrance, entr'acte
and departure
from crystal goblets
you drink and draw in
from blinds and awnings
of a fallen crossword abyss
in your answered mind
from a metamorphosis
of a quest on boulevards
overlooking the sea
flowers found on roads
you pick up rose petals
near the fountain water
wrapped in quiet silences.

WALLACE STEVENS PASSING
(1879-1955)

A crisp tongue rolled
over the lawn mower
by Paris green
at dawn's walk of the dog
moving to leaves on fire
alive as September songs
from Connecticut's lone
astonished figure in the sun
waving only to the wind
in all directions to Hartford
with a post -war cut poem
pasted from the vessels
of his outlook opened
at a blind optimistic notebook
his crystal pocket watch
in his trembling hands
remembering how Whitman
entered and left our world
as a well known influence
now here is another cortege
where uninhabited ants
live in a coffin
of unknown tantrums
who move over
to hear a drum roll and tantara
all the way to Santa Barbara
while you, Wallace Stevens
await to have others
in the academy to remake you
from your own image
of renewed language
from square toed critics
who have gone before you
with their own petulance
love, prejudice or parlance.

YVES KLINE'S TIME
(1928-1962)

Monochrome
in blue  on  blues

leafs in gold
     on blue

performance art
    of Kline on Kline's

blurred blue
  sponges

painted from the
  void after Vichy left

watering holes
    right at the void of space

with a dying laughter
     of a young voice

stained by history's
     being and time.

DI CHIRICO'S DAYS
(1888-1978)

Existence in the color
from metaphysical mixture

in paradox shaping
sky forms skinny clouds

in the corridors of entangled
controversies in a less

than still life
of juxtaposition

subject to methods
of quick stop critics

in attributive justice
of crossword ambiguity

from your Jewish angel
in surreal form.

PICABIA'S PARTING
(1879-1953)

Rattled in crash courses
of a century's delightful dada

in ventures as my sparrow eye
whispers on a branches diction

painted as entangled neon shadows
into a pursuit of vibrant colors

from paranoid brushing quirks
morphed into a chilled canvas

climbing up a poet's ladder
to wild alabaster silhouettes.

LEON SPILLAIART'S ART
(1881-1946)

Veils in seascape
like pale Poe symbols

A dilettante watches
landscapes too as silences

at the Musee d'Orsay
with his tutor in Paris

laughing at wall art
of a performing Redon

a fellow Belgian somnambulist
turns the corner but cannot locate

the sleepless abstracts embarrass
us until after the echoes of night.

ELIZABETH BISHOP'S WALK
(1911-1979)

We waved as grackles rose
on Cambridge Common

standing near the Charles River
a young poet on the corner

near the news stand
by the first rays of the sun

his alto sax blown near
the bicycle racks

waiting under every limb
of a hundred years of Evergreen

holding Virgil as a guide
by the law faculty

A Mass. Avenue sighting
needing your company

as you returned from Brazil
refreshed and vetted

I'm palpitating by a hornets nest
in an allergic reaction

after a therapy session
on meditation

shows you his new poem
and abracadabra,

the dead wind of September
becomes alive.

JANE FREILICHER'S REPUTATION
(1924-2014)

You crashed against
the careful landscapes

in an avalanche of paint
as a tenant of breathless

wall art
scents of a kindled hand

knowing your signature
will not remain suspended

in water shed reputations
along the Hudson

from a raining downpour
of hypnotic spellbound drawings,

in a lightness of a viaduct
of being connected.

LAUTREAMONT'S LOVE

Chant to me
Lautreamont with love

for the transmuted words
to make everyone's phrases

as one limitless lexicon
in a Pascal dictionary

of quoted fervent meditations
over third chronicled graces

from mangled mirrors
in your ambulatory quotes

on trespassed made up faces
where destiny waits

on exiles on islands
continents and archipelagos

in deserts thirsting
for lost traces

of disappointed excavations
or dug up horizons

impervious records
of updated trials of sentences

in gulag snows
bloodied by coffins

with funeral directors
watching the last deer leaps

there is a copy
of your verses everywhere

in Las Vegas motels
of second chances

and comings amid fawning
illustrations reading you quietly

in corners of gated
Potemkin villages

by German concentrations
on scientific amnesty

by coroners of round two
camps of laboratory experiments

bad mouths Orwellian language
of 1984 out of context

with post war Fassbender
film stars as the STASI

spies on the underlines
of poll watchers in Berlin

there under moldy blinds
in housetops crowds watch

under seven stories told
by the mass media

about Nazi zoo parades
connecting battled tested

veterans of Stalingrad war games
by the unhooked gaping wide

flings from head quarters
of the cartels and brothels

a former crematoria S.S. general
visits an Argentine small town

by the farmers produce
at the general store

here once iron clad wings flee
a common dimentia caseload

at a mocking bird club generally
wishes for a friendless memory

hears a singing canary (1968)
at Prague and Paris windows

near the Texas border
an unprotected guard

with the former Peronist mustache
washes in the gold dusty town

hearing your voice, Lautreamont
a farmhand takes bids for an auction

of paintings stolen in Vichy
during the watershed year,'43

located in a used bookstore
by a lost Maldoror

relocated in Stalag,1943
even they have your number

that number remains
on your arms intact for history

you find Lautreamont
in a Jerusalem library.

CONSTANTIN GUYS

Baudelaire's guy
Constantin Guy

a Dutchman drawing us in
who painted landscapes

who would pay him much
attention of his sketches

or "Three women in
a Carriage"

if you were not killed yourself
by a horse drawn carriage

or loved by the Fleur du Mal
Parisian poet on my shelf.

RAYMOND ROUSSEL'S AMBITION
(1877-1933)

Quotidian remains
for four hands

on time spaces
on forty apocryphal stories

higher than "Impressions
of Africa"

transforming a poet
or a prophet Tobit

into the suburbs
of a cloudy day in Paris

sitting on a benchmark
of lost remains

of carbon dated
history of your quotes

inspiring "Phonotypia"
from a passerby French student

late for a Sorbonne film class
about "Casablanca.

ALBERT ROUSSEL'S ELIXIR
 (1969-1937)

A musical feast of notes
lending us a contrapuntal library

of totality in depth
in rhythmic a tonal beat

of jazz morphed into a pre beat
poet happening a century later

without Bach
or Offenbach

immersed in early token pleasures
without sentiment or regiment

but raised in bated brass
of misplaced harmony

on blank pages
from a measure divertissement

in phonetic piano potential
affording disloyalty of form

from diminished chords
in a meshed manifesto trick

containing pictures
of blues singers.

MALLARME'S MIND
(1842-1898)

Pollinated words praised
inhabiting a soul spinning

in a spell of words
combing the sparkled dawn

over a butterfly year
of your eyelids vision

in a triangle sunflower
implanted in a lexicon.

ALBERT MARQUET'S WORLD
(1875-1947)

You embraced Matisse
your friend

in a remarkable
Marquet's world

of Fauvre called as "Beasts"
in shirtless sleves

colors landscaped
dubbed into echoes

into an abstract recreation
as harmony of glassy windows

on a portrait of convoluted
note in a music of virtuosity.

MAGRITTE'S NIGHT SHOWING
(1998-1967)

A caress of sunlight
in your palette and hand

embraced in hide and seek
colors of trembling

as in "Shadow"
in a snowy field of birch,

shines on precious trees
the art has a temperature.

BUS RIDE

At California's entrance
here we depart
Omaha all aboard
with John Denver
even Lord Baltimore's here
get up kid,
take off your Gogol
overcoat and blue beret
Big Apple, next stop
your urban read
is ready for first announcing
in his buzz
bz, you are on call
for this stand up appearance
our sentence is well eaten
as a word scattered salad
no ride is as tentative
as shadowy figures
as a poetry
in the underground
translated to film nostalgia
the quicker to get there
to recompose
in a song of writing
my insecurities not shown
at the microphone
with a refugee script
about war and peace
a poet wanders in a tumult
of compelling crowds
my audience applauds
in vagrant curiosity.

MICHAUX'S MARVEL
(1899-1984)

Abstractions of timeless verse
in an encounter

visually of a carefree
red outline

and a diving pantheon
of falling marginal words

into a communicative psyche
as mushrooms in awe

of a higher blue consciousness
in ecstasy's expressionism

alarming the world
of reflective talent

on illuminations in space
of deprived elements.

BRAQUE'S GIFT
(1882-1963)

Beyond a sharp note
of colors turning paint

brushing shapes
in a geometric gallery

into a kaleidoscope
altar of introspection

incense of rare flame
a bird song flight

on a rope of a throbbing
red sunset by the Seine

in Michaux's heights
of cubist understanding

whispers as playthings
in pinnacles

of lamplight waves
in a ghost sonata

from a zen tongue
and fragrance of hyacinth.

PONGE'S PASSAGES
(1899-1988)

Along the wheat fields
of Van Gogh

one day more exists
nearer the silence and crevice

on the cold blood orange
hands of the beggar

coins fly out magically
in poetry's disappearing pockets

as if children at a puppet show
amazed as the police arrest

the innocent on the Occupation
corner during the roundups

even on the days of awe
there is only long suffering.

CHAR'S CHANGES
(1890-1960)

Crossing the boulevards

drinking in a cafe

hearing kitchen chatter

and the clatter of knives

wanting to ingest juices of justice

in a powerful mirrored room

in an imagined mind on voices

higher than Autumn's tall trees

from a shadows understanding

a violin plays Franck's sonata

you buy a single rose

from a wandering flower child

you imagine fronds, ferns, palms

descending on Braque's zen garden

walking by the Seine
with a black umbrella

a child with a star is not safe
in a bird's nest

during the Occupation
your bristled heart knocks about

for the right passage to safety
for you and her

will join the partisans
with the wind on your heavy backs

cradling freedom
like robin red breasts.

PIERRE REVERDY'S ROAD

You are singing love
in words of cypress

in a voyage of light
by the Seine waters

of a river bed of roses
from embers of loneliness

and islands of indifference
in a tentative voice of smoke

from a century of oppressor
and hunters of life

in the hiding places
of a Parisian cafe

we greet you
enchanted by words.

BRANCUSI'S STONE
(1876-1957)

In an uninhabited room
we pass the acrostic display

you having been born
with a minimalist art

in a visionary
from geometric lines

transported through time
hands and fingers

in these deep indexes
of diminutive  heads

and bodies of language
beaten out of rock

from marble,wood
the bronze and metal

in Dionysian exoticism
and Byzantine eroticism

from dada fish tails
and birds in spaces

without wings or feathers
of curvaceous cubism

of spilled creative miracles
for a once secretive language

of art opened up as an oracle
to be witnessed for all centuries.

THE SKY

The sky plays with paints
among the rainbow spell

offering us shade
by the poplar trees

we sit on a bench
under a tree of life

my Polish friend and poet
reminisces about his past

those dark Hitlerian days
of a tiresome occupation

as tall cries still linger
from the ghetto torched

the nights of Stalinist fears
as Warsaw neighbors whisper

begging over his peace songs
encircling an innocent youth

with fetters and red feathers
on May Day's long parades

yet here we are eyeing birds
in Central Park

watching a late marathon
by the river beds

munching on a green apple
as thunder's rain drips down

as shadows of Autumn echo
from cloudy brown acorns

cover the branches swing
near the lights of hills

an adolescent is dying
of a chattering laughter

and a playwright
loses at backgammon.

WE ARE PASSING

We are passing
to another world

with fresh anemones
in our hands

they will survive
all barbed wire

beyond the wheat of the pale
in villages of freezing grey

My heart hears feathers
counted on flying wings

beating on tall grass ravines
and murmuring shadows

Heaven knows each village
all branches of a lost family

by the light of river
and now at peace,

though the rain
falls on six poplars

it is quickly covering over
the sky memories of Autumn.

WHAT IS A POET

Line by line up
in the shadow

of a translation
from landscaped heirs

of the oracle bearers
and miracle enchanters

off islands of the sea
where adventurers

carry the hero body
to the Homeric figures

in the rising thermometers
of added voices of Ulysses

by the unwelcome home
of another generation

augmented on sons and daughters
boats pass by as Penelope watches

a heroic mirrored face
returning from warring winds

So many years of poetry
recorded by farewells appear

even on a Synthian and Ural
jeweled crown and spear

by the loving gate keeper
playing on words

writing as a rival fabulist
with a navy in review

as an iconoclastic scribe
along the flower river breakers

not abandoned by absence
or times of devotions

hearing a tribal chorus
wait on blinded voices forever.

A JAMESIAN MOMENT

Needing a Jamesian moment
in Manhattan or Paris

when you are always here
over five stories to tell

love from a mismatch
from an old understanding

to catch an abandoned train
of the master's thought

only for art's forsaking us
do we speak in luminous tones

an all clear signal
by the deserted wind

to signal for tendrils
and exiles by the river run

that he too trembles
with us at this hour.

THE RETURN OF CHUCK CONNELLY


No art is ever ended
or left on a scaffold

or roped off, drip dry
in a museum or mansion

but is a liquidity's
of color and shaped

expansion of your eye
in an antennae's extension

for second viewing
and third showings

here in a museum
in your art house

no misguided lights
of cameras are inside us

but emerge
from others sabotage

like a Van Gogh ear piece
on hold back cul-de-sacs

in loveliness
of stone

from geometric shapes
of flesh in a tour de force

we are resurrected
as art like jazz atones

in anecdotal riffs
on an ambivalent landscape

through terrifying voices
in self inhibition

until the time is ready
for a measure of disclosure

by significance
of a catalogue or recollection

absent on art wall anonymity
from the wold's envy or enmity

no invitations sent out
from original cave artists

in aboriginal connection
with new found fossil bones

waiting for a gallery exhibition
in abstract modernist expression

Chuck Connelly you do not return
you never left us.

BY THE OCEAN FRONT GAZEBO


The air turned cool
by the ocean front gazebo

Alone on the sandy beach
near the rocks and stone

of this home harbor
to hear sea voiced echoes

or share my art prints
in abandoned frescoes

a solitary bird draws us
emerged from the dunes

he too was searching for
the living waters and bread

as my cello string
broke into a Bach solo.

HAMLET'S SKULL

Inexpressible except by verse
open in the mouths of angels

are your remains not buried
or burning a Blakean soul bright

in the snow of grave winters
of old England or in new chapters

you live because we live on stages
in a reckless age of ground zero

often dulled by abandoned
of popular entertainment

or abomination of universal will
we play you again

shaped by fortune in nature
or skilled in majorities

of the dull politic
and chattering classes

that we approach you
with love in dreadful overkill

but you are dear Hamlet,
be still and know no grief

we invite you to watch us
with new costumes and cast

for who wrote of your past
had an understanding of belief

that your skull and skill
in my hands will outlast my words.

CALLING ME SHAKESPEARE

At a stage
in a bright walk on

from my many costumed
make -over for the competition

before the Original Theater
got off the ground

sounding off off Broadway
in a broadside ticket

for a free performance
for the matinee's green tea

when a massive snowstorm
hit our rehearsal

and all the roles
were in context reversed

for a once in a life time
Sixties midnight showing.

IT IS SO IMPORTANT

It is so important
a passport of memories

going nowhere
as a Mozart miniature

on the grand piano
about face with my initials

engraved later on an
acoustic guitar case, a tree

in Central Park
hearing a ram's horn

by a touched alive
metronome by notes

of my restlessness
until my uptown recital.

IN MY ARCHIVES

In my archives
small teeth of words

bite years of experiments
with language fragrances

partitions of proverbs
fragments of alphabet soup

with celery sticks
and oyster crackers

with my joy knowing others
discombobulated by life

will have a rooted communion
drinking in my globular ideas

reaching into my Kultur files
and spells to know more

than any  abandoned exile
or rosetta stone prophet

than a moment
before your flight

before you are translated
in a return of wisdom literature.

OPENING UP

Opening up
to tendrils of clouds

in epiphany absences
of escorted souls

lost on blind dates
of calendar blackouts

in dream sequences
of life departing as an anchorite

finding a love letter
in a prayer closet back East

next to the Russian
abandoned tea room

where fortunes are made
with chocolate cookies

by dying faultless
on lingering sleep houses

until your free dream
turns into daily nightmares

of ocean liners sinking
or war's landmine fears

or your future poetry's double
is not a spouse showing up

we will be optimists
not matter what prognosticators

say about the rain or snow
in the forecast.

MY RESCUE


Watching cranes, swallows
pipers,dolphins, grey whales

from Baja under showers
a hospital ship rescuing me

from the shark floating waters
entangled by rope on buoys

in my London Fog preaching
from my red kayak's sea life

and a crab fisherman
resembling Pee Wee Herman

rubs me the wrong way
if you see through a port hole

from an undertow shark movie
leaping from leagues of Jules Verne

a prophet raised from the dead
like Jonah in my own Nineveh

thrilled to be back on land
with a 1970 "Save the Whale" button.

IN THE ABLUTION

In the ablution
of ambition

of several summer
shaves and showers

your beard
still waiting for you

on Central Park West
with mirror

and bagel over jalapeno
and cream cheese

fixing her dyed red hair
eyes glued on 9/11 mourning

of her friend Andrei
who came to all of my plays

off off Broadway,
Frisco, Boston,

eating a Russian belintz
cheering me on

as our names fell over
on his last computer screen

the first plane
did its thing

and he was through
with political correctness

his old man said weeping
at the memorial.

RAIN AT MY WINDOW

Rain at my window
faces the Hocking print

my light turned off
the sax case opened

for my gig tonight
dawn uplifted by the canary

in the cage
we call Treasure Island

showering to limit myself
to one dorm visit

for my urban read
in a fourth gracious invitation

turned down for ennui
and a Sartre deconstruction

passing out with a lapidary thesis
"On laughter in Nabokov"

written in the fourth form
on "Butterfly" McQueen's part

in "Gone with the Wind"
from critical drama script

written in purple passages
in Greek letters

in my junior year
while my philosophy professor

was on sabbatical
in Quebec

when the erstwhile cheerleader
changed her buttoned down sex

to be a colorful man child
in the application

to Lagos to be chosen
a peace corps operative

while secretly working
for another agency

that promotes harmony
in the Virgin Islands.

IN THE BELLY


In the belly
of names and geometry

Brancusi emerges
unscathed by his critics

from rocks and stones
thrown away

as fish bones are chopped
from a clam chowder

off Newport harbor
as a visiting shapeless

Russian poet reads Bely
to his bright students

enamored with a ghosts love
as a port au prince scholar

passes a Gautier
and Poe ghost poem

in his backpack
of a newly translated

Derek Wolcott notebook
he got on the islands

sent to his summer pal
named Erica before Eric

majoring in alchemy
and chemistry 101

wanting to flood the earth
and sky with French  poetry

merges in a distopian
universe of the academy.

BEGGING TO BE ALIVE

Begging to be alive
in a raggedly Andy world

among tapestries
and frescoes

of the Factory
somewhere over the rainbow

with Judy Garland
at the Punchbowl

mid century
of Minelli in Berlin stories

rests only on Cabaret memory
of the Borsht belt comedian

somewhere in the Catskills
a young handsome waiter

is reading Greham Greene
in a Russian translation.

THE LAST STANDING

The last standing
at the ocean

reeds pass by
a green bottle

with a prophecy
motioning us for the ages

inside we read
the ancient script

in genesis language
fishing to Freud's parthogenesis

inside our psyche
we hear fiddling musicians

in Russia beyond
the pale, the Urals

a remnant in fringes
saved from  death camps

from the echo of the Gulags
and Marxian nightmares

of the annoyed intelligentia
bodies lost in absentia

the unemployed distopian
and the lumpen proletariat

ride together on the yellow chariot
pale horse of Iscariot

an old man
from the last cave

of civilization's ship of fools
realizes he is the last survivor

asks for a savior
or savoir faire piece of veal

with lemon
and mushrooms

in a litter of his last meal
with wine and cheese

by gold dust still shining
in Olga's earing

at the light house
and lamp post

his passport
last stamped in Polska.

YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS UP

The last wedding cup
smashed for good luck

in Berlin 1932
Lot in his lottery

has lost out
the righteous forsaken

by the body politic
the Reichstag will burn

as a stag party is held
citizens eating venison

books are thrown to the floor
and Weimar is no more.

TRANSFIGURATION

Hearing the ram's horn
down the lane

opening the book
of the lamb

in a Blakean shadow
of the great I am

in new Jerusalem's
unruly Chelm

after transfiguration
and Jacob's troubles

are over
and done with

the sun
on the emerald green

we shall enter and smile
both Jew and Gentile

into that holy city
over a wedding threshold.

NEW YEAR

New year clears
the old calendar

School books
dropped by the rain

Sephardic shadows
in Toledo

Ladino is whispered
again in Spain.

A LOVE IN THE SHADE

A love in the shade
with a strumming guitar

a waking rose flowers
in Sharon's fields

bells of courting
for a millennial wedding

the lion and lamb
rest on the mountaintop.

BLUE

Blue as Smokey Mountain
in the incense of voices

from anger to prayer
a light in an ascending wind

up on Jacob's ladder
covering our world view

as a body of a living Sabbath
and forgiving temple

a refuge of rest to bless
in glory to glory oracles

a watchman for miracles
cleansed from darkness.

MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT

Criminal hands
in the ministry of transport

hiding their intentions
in Aesopian langague

manage to kill off
whole populations

in a siege of freedom
under the director heads

of Mr. Prefect
and Miss Perfect

of the profiteers business
while death marches

the body language
inhabits not inhibits justices

all eye in efficiency
of the mapped protocols

lead to the disclosing
of the over sighted losses

witnesses for the prosecutor
the public is not in the dark

who do not hear despairing cries
of departing children on trains.

THE RADIO WAVES

The radio waves
on the beach

my manifold voice rises
above the open salty sea

over cliffs and pinnacles
nearby the gazebo queue

where a refuge of poets
share their recollections

in the cave of books
as every syllable accents us

by translating the covers
of spellbound souls.

MAKING UP REALITY


In a cafe
under a space of images

amid smart phones
and hook ups

with rap and heavy metal
heard in rings

beaming caveats in speech
of smoke in mirrors

a single voice
recognizes a psalm

from the wilderness
of the young.

NOT KNOWING

Not knowing
what rolls on camera

in the lens
of past tenses

to understand
the salient memory

of inexpressible
future lenses

in a story line
by asterisks

of expectation
into voice responses

into a language
resting an oasis of time

of bygone hours photgraphed
from uncommon directions.

FALL MEMORIES

Fall memories
jostle like leaves

or first snowflakes
floating under roofs

as a minor bird
in trees shadow us

awakens a still life poet
hymning by his studio

watches the moon's path
from his window pane

over his phlox visit
to the rock garden

his words emerge
later in his art folio

darkness as transparency
on a winged branch

as if time stopped
at the village inn

by the harvest fields
of blackberries.

WAITING

Waiting
for a translation

suited for the best
train of ideas

in the marathon spell
of symbols and lexicons

in open spaces
printed in the field

of a poet's blotter
shining across the page

in a signal of bells
from carpets of language

raised at our journey
in an alembic server.

IN ARCIMBOLDO'S CIRCLE
(1526-1593)

In a circle
of Arcimboldo's heads

of lettuce
fruit and frescoes

on bowls and tables
of flower beds

prepared for us
even frozen vegetables and fish

piled on still life shows
of an Ahasuerus feast

suited for snowy prints
of our every repast wish.

IN AN HOUR OF HOPE

In an hour of hope
around a circle of melody

you again believed
in Anne Frank's goodness

until you read the morning
papers without the naive

nature of a child
doomed by racial hatred

to die young
among the engraved sickness

tattooed on the arms
of memory

without time to touch
the tree of life

somewhere off the road
the mirror of her room

remains amid Hollywood
stars now turned lemony

in the coats of many colors
around crippled Joseph's pit

by his Dutch uncle
who turned away.

SPEAKING TO US

On the upper lip
of wanting love

and favors
toward evening

yet devoted
to the winds off

the Cape's water
in your orange kayak

you plunge quickly
into the high September surf

with a wave
toward the tremor

of a shark nearby
you paddle with prayers

that encircle you
holding onto the reeds

of marsh and mind
stretched out on the beach

after the holiday showers
happy as a beggar poet

with flesh
on baby skin, bones, cheeks

unscathed
by vanity.

WHERE THE LIGHT

Where the light
goes off

however superfluous
the time or whitewashed day

found you by the river
separated from the source

of each other's eye
you still are able

to write a four letter word
on graffiti's city's blackboard

in a dialect of love
that few bother to look up

and live under the trees
of midnight lanterns

under the somnambulist streets
of a wounded ex Nam veteran

who was unwittingly drafted
and grafted into

the peaceable kingdom
having disappeared

into the newspaper
only after eighteen years

of devotion to art's
dexterousness

in the land
of opportunity

by acting out
Munch's "The Scream"

in a locked in unit
of demoralization

after the naughty bullies
starved you

into submission
as a model prisoner

yet you blossomed
as an actor,

a demur fashion poser
always draped in white suits

who loved a complimentary
ride on the merry go round

far from the edge of town
with survival skills

of a boy scout handbook
devouring your mother's prayers

or reading Rimbaud
barefoot in the beach.

SOMEONE CALLED

Someone called you
but left no message

like the last message
that left your skin raw

and no one had your back
to the wall art flower child

who was a runaway
in the far country

of the prodigals
somewhere disheveled

searching for oracles
or at least a riddle

to question the answer
in exchange for the distant call

you hope will be recorded
for your one miracle

in your language
of adolescence

as you listened at sixteen
to alto sax by the door

yet you were hung up
on for no reason

yet wonder
why you are a still life

there amid a poet's voice
as midnight falls

on the urban read
at the club playing sax

or hear your destiny
onto a Beat's last words

or here after tuning
in your curiosity

at the pawnshop
with all your possessions

even Dostoevsky's
"A Raw Youth"

along with his Crime
and Salinger's Catcher

when all the city tears
and country laughter is gone

you still search by yourself
on the river of your amazement

along the high dunes
for Leda, the black swan.

IF

If this were
your only day

only line
to the outside world

only outlet
for your kayak out to sea

if only my voice on the piano
will play one note

and misquote me
on the sand or snowflake

if only to disappear
in the last paper's eulogy

and one and only prayer
were left on earth

if only enduring love
has our initials on a tree

they would meet others
on branches paradoxically.

IN FALMOUTH ,SEPT 10

After playing backgammon
waiting for football practice

in a school uniform
his late brother left him

in a far country
war close to home

now killing off a cider donut
between classes

of Latin, Greek
and Hebrew

looking for a cheerleader
to encourage him

amid scattered showers
he takes out a kayak

off the shoreline
thunder strikes his prayers

he makes it back
after catching a salmon

and watches a rainbow
as a sign in clouds of sky.

WHAT IS FALL

A country table of strawberries
with tiny insects crawling

near the swings
by tall grass dunes

Green and crab apples
falling with rhythmic acorns

on a late barefoot guarantee
the season has exchanged

nature 's budding trees hear
a rush for a welcome wagon

over a faraway harvester echo
for another sugary longing

for black currant jam
stored in the pantry

as red leaves by a poet's hammock
under a sleepy September shine

near the grinding mills
of wheat upon wheat

AFTER

After the lights
turn into laughter
your small talk
hovers in familiar lips
by vapors of silences
here a cello plays
in a Schubert quartet
from a classical circle
of smiles in recital
from four hands
in a rhythmic greeting
of applause lingers
especially in a risen
dead soul at the back
of the concert hall
from a worn Gogol overcoat
who speaks in a dialect
that only poets
from Bely island
remember as we listen
to lasting piano notes
the time has a riddle for us
right at the counterpoint
of captured verse.

PICASSO 'S POWER

In exile reaching your space
with painted voices

from faded unsealed canvas
that stands between us

in forefingers repose
when art history opens

to borders over a walking earth
of your revolutionary lines

in a memoir letting loose
bedazzled draped doves

from slate roofs of the sun
rises over Evergreen branches.

AT THE CAFE

You write poems
on napkins at the cafe

pulling down curtains
of Venetian blinds

by a triptych
of wall art

the pianist plays
etudes of Chopin

our embrace of words
unwinds till dawn

we part our bread
in the corridor's embrace

there is a mirror of red
lipstick face to face.

LET'S SAVOR

Let's savor the dawn
already awake

reading Leda and the swan
from words of Yeats

in the sun's rays of light
we ask a favor

here on the greensward lawn
among the songbirds

and you along the fjords
seek rewards to be braver.

MEMORY OF A SUMMER DAY
BY DEL TREDICI

Floating forever
treble notes
in threads of cellos
stay by us,never out dated
in memory of a summer day
of such a chorus
or his acrostic song
for "Final Alice"
with sax and piano
in the anointed knowledge
of disjointed words
a music metamorphosis
cleverly created.

ANDY'S TAPESTRY

Marilyn and Liz
chosen for beauty of soul
in Andy Warhol's tapestry
shown in Tel Aviv's museum
remember the Persian
king's Exrxes business
as our twin Esthers' live
for our prophetic history,
picture your identity to dream
for such a time as this
as He extends His sovereignty
to believe in her scroll
and above all in his imagery
loves to forgive
in your own metamorphosis.

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S REIGN
Sept 9, 2015

Popular ruler of England
since Victoria
a defeat of fascism
brought euphoria.

ARIOSTO'S DAY
(1474-1533)
Sept.8

Verses of history
accountable to prosper
here as a birthday for Ariosto
who writing with ferocity
"Orlando Furioso"
expected to take a chance
in an Italian visionary plan
from a poetry
on Charlemagne and Saracen
helped create the Renaissance
of the human and nonsectarian
in an enlightenment
for Gentile, Jew and Christian
and inspire a Shakespearean view
in the "Taming of the Shrew".

ESCAPE

Place -Dr. Mamalian's office
Jacobi
Time, 1968

M. What brings you to a psychiatrist, Jacobi

J. My history. I was the only survivor of genocide as a family hid me during the war.

M. I can relate.

J. On the plane ride to New York City a lady stared at me with such hatred. I thought only

    victims were on that plane. Later I saw that woman in Central Park who told me to remove

    my shoes from the bench. My kind was not wanted.

M. You must have been terrified.

J. I graduated N.Y.U. and soon joined the Justice Department and through the files relocated

   this woman and filed charges since she was a Nazi; they were unable to send her back. What

    would she have become, a munitions maker in a factory or a Stasi spy.

M. Sometimes we cannot escape our history or our destiny or D.N. A.

J. I marched with Dr. King in Washington, D.C.

M. Are you happy?

J. I hunt for fascists in my daily nightmares.

M. Your war is not over.

J. Maybe I should join the security forces all over the world.

M. Where is security young man?

J. That's why I am here.

M. Me too. I hope, Jacobi you will find out. Please keep in touch and let me know.

   The end.

EDITH SITWELL'S DAY
(1887-1964)


In your drawing room
with so many reviewed
by the avant-garde
like the Russian painter
Pavel Tchelitchew
later your eyes sink
in the hope for peace
having survived the blitz
yet here again
on your birthday Sept. 7
in a bard's voice of radiance
with a read and recording
to enchant our generation
after your chocolate cake
you spy on a branch of finches
by the pine porch swing
together with dancing sparrows
with nine songbird wings
together with dancing sparrows
on our slate roofs,
Edith Sitwell translated
in color and humor
to a poet's heavenly realm
you are not forgotten.

CRAWLING

Crawling out of the past

to a walled bedroom

with a toy lure 

transmuted by a world

of adult eyelashes

to make a daily diminution

of long suffering

with handcuffed flighty

signals of practice

in colors of blue and brown

of a twelve toned musical time

up the way to string a guitar

for a new fluted melody

by stranded Punch and Judy

puppets to help 

now in first socks
and potato sacks
resembling costumes
of a perp walk

with still life troubled images

in small photos

from your clusters of days

at our life's first guiding

in the scrawled graffiti

drawn by a Beat poet

near a carriage drawn

to the city's Central Park.

SURVIVAL ADVICE

Those who hear my voice
or have eyes
to lean on my shoulder
who live crust by crust
water by water
rumor upon rumor
you hold onto the bridge
by the rails
witnessing the ocean below
keep your passport
in your poetry pocket
clutching for life
your identity also meant
a quick death to the bubbled up
hate- filled generation,
hold on for dear life
whether on wagons,
staying on cattle cars,
living in the snowy camps
of the far country
where poets read
in the underground,
there will be a last train,
grab it.

PRAGUE FILM

Saw the Prague film
about the button lady
sewing and surviving
in a seam of a Kafka' slip
cutting though blades
of a cold machine
in "A shop on Main St"
with four questions
not begging to open
an answer to pass over
until our exodus
to a better generation
knocks at a wrinkled heart.

THOSE SOULS

Those souls lost
tempest tossed
or nearly drowned
will be found,
those down
by minefields
not located
declared missing or dead
will survive in a flash
by the open boat sea
now relocated
floating on stars
playing a sonata of Debussy
those without leaven
will rise as my words
reach out in a century
to the once hungry
mocked as chosen
with their Messiah's rabbi
frozen in a far country
will be set free
while in the city and colony
among the remnant
those refugees sent out
scattered in a ghetto's
repentant penury
with all obstacles
will find their identity
are now in a third heaven
saved in miracles
among nests and shelters
of once caged songbirds
now on juniper trees
celebrating with a company
of once hungry troubadours
with bread and wine
reciting my poetry
in long corridors of eternity.

A WHITMAN POET

The reef remains
departed from the breeze
and uprooted silences
after the rain leaves acorns
spilling over the home harbor
it's all brightness here
as our footprints hand us
an embrace of shadows
by sparrows dancing feet
over open windy spaces
we move our still life's
and anointed oils
near the shore line
tangled with fishing rods
in a search for eels
after a morning jog
a lobster boatman waves to us
and speaks in Italian
under the glittering sun
as the last summer tourists
fold up beach blue umbrellas
between the silences of the sea
as gulls call out to us
from the docks and roofs
in a chorus of birds
over innocent trees
capturing landscapes
by an art student carries
a drawn brown canvas
full of paints
reaching out by the gazebo
near the park bandstand
a Whitman poet plays riffs
of smooth jazz on an alto sax
as seabird winds voice
by the woods of deer and fox
nearby the underbrush
and new students search
for lost landmarks
under Plymouth's
entangled Mayflower roots
as a guiding first light
on the sandstone,quartz
and unending rocks
opens our eyes
on the ditch waters.

THINK TANKS

The dust raised
for political machines

well-oiled enigmas
desiring research

into tell-tale tracts
of highway road rage

on rank and filed away
in the limitless universe.

UNDERSTUDY

The sky
being understudy

to the earth woken up
in dew

shutters open
minded enlightening

the sister dream
of musical notes.

IDEAS

Ideas entangle
generations

by strings
of a Catalan guitar

in the nostalgia
of cool liquid memory

on a barefoot day
of encyclopedic knowledge.

SAMIZDAT

It's not for an absence
of book marks

hidden by dark
threads of an exiled coat

with a fistful of time
in thorns

as a freezing wind
of memories.

SEPT. 6

Feeding the grackles
near the apple trees

full of new unquiet
and beginnings

with lesson plans
of geometric distance

in your new leather
case of schedules

you write initials
on doubled up walls

turned away
from summer's graffiti

salt lick squirrels
hit and miss

on pine comb grounds
acorns fall

from oak branches
on rays of first light.

A FOOTPATH

A footpath of dreams

sleep housed you

by the riverbed

now sea voices of birds

in a chorus from the dunes
sing along the stones

outside your window

a brush of breezes

on the tall grass

off the sandy cape shore

winds wrap up our morning

in a landscaped favor

in the light of swans

near the ocean kayaks

by the juniper tree

departing all lamentations

a poet in the home harbor

nearby the family waters

writes his diary

on the port of call 

turning away from

the Venetian blinds

to awaken by the gates

of the city at first light

carrying figs, dates

pomegranates, dry fruits

Autumn welcomes us

our footsteps by sailboats

near eagles and swallows

by leaves on the branches

the wellspring mouth opens

a poet's words for the future.

AWARDS DAY

T.V. ANNOUNCER-GREG GOTH

CHARLES WORTHWELL

IN A T.V. STUDIO; year 2084

GREG- Over a billion people are watching us today, Greg Goth for you since you won the highest

score for the People's Screen award but you have guarded your private life, now you have for the

first time agreed to this special interview on Friday night talk, we are greatly honored. Why the

change of heart,Charles Worthwell.

Charles- Times change, so do people. You know Charles Worthwell is not my real name but

the studio's in my early years  acceded  to the prejudices of the masses and I was willing to do

anything to advance my career.

Greg- Like what

Charles- Change my politics, testify before the government or secret police, arrange my colorful

orientation or sexual nature to play a part they wanted, it's part of the job I said or cut off contact 

to anyone if I was told to. It was all pretend back in the day. Now I want to come clean. You know

I was one of the first to take Dr. Malt's fountain of youth pill, now look at me. Not that I don't

exercise as much or go for face lifts as needed. I changed my religion several times, whatever

was popular or in vogue at the time but never lost my soul.

Greg- You once ran for governor.

Charles- I wanted so much to save the endangered species, but when the act was passed  anyway

I withdrew. I sometimes felt I was an endangered species.

Charles How so?

Greg- Before liberation we could not speak our peace and words were forbidden words

and language and society was more controlled. Now everything is better, of course.

Greg -Is there anyone you want to thank for your success?

Charles- My current wife Charity Case and Sonny, my publicity agent and longtime friend.

Greg- I can't help thinking there is something you want to say but have held back.

Charles- Would you back me up or hold my back.

Greg- Of course.

Charles- Then help sponsor my wife's Charity Case's charity.

Charity walks out on stage.

Greg- What an honor for us, Charity. What would you like to say.

Charity- The fountain of youth pill has free samples; you will live better or longer but we need

 to give this extra fresh elixir drink to the world.

Greg- May I try it first

Charity- Be my guest and the first

Greg drinks the elixir and turns into a child.

Greg. Gagga giggi. Gagga Giggi. Ga..

The studio audience lets out a shriek.

Charity. This concludes Friday night talk.

The end.

WATCH THE SPARROWS

Who watches the sparrows
in Central Park

as they stir their wings
not expecting tomorrow

yet humbly provided for
ironically in one word answers

as the leaves and acorns
drop near the marathon

Carmen an opera star sings
an aria of Bizet

Russian miracle dancers
with ballet shoes

hustle by a guitar player
new to the city

with Whitman on his knee
feeds the birds.

DAYS OF YULI DANIEL
(1925-1888)

With the last perfume
of Stalin's breath, 1941
in Yuli Daniel's den
listening to Chopin's etudes
and Scriabin's Ecstasy
played by a friend
exiled to the Gulag
until he graduates to heaven
the tiny drawings in the snow
presages the death
of the systematic machine
resting on the conscience
and silence of the West.

ON A DREAM VACATION
(1992)

Ladders are up
to the sleep house

by the largest island on sea
hitting on no actors

who signed a hunk extra for
a contract with costumes

on the dotted lines
for an outside performance

of Antigone one night
Oedipus Rex, the other

you were hard up
after silent celluloid

student films
only the free press

would review us
with Tiresias

as an anonymous critic
praising our Original Theater

scheduled us for a festival
off off Broadway, next season.

OVER ISLANDS

Just one sunset

catching Casablanca

in a midnight showing

dropping off at fashion week

you disarmed a dressing gown

made of seashells

from Spectacle

islands watching

a poet speeding by

on a once pawned motorcycle

with a used copy of Milton's

pocket sized "Paradise Lost"

blinded by waves of hands

brushing off leaves and acorns

of your solo marathon run

by the breaking night

off the whirlwind
wishing you could sing Bach.

DATA

You want to be reserved
for an eternal thirst

yet data driven numbers
tick you off

in graphs of forsaken
times of testimony

as humankind's reason
gives us the right to live

you share your destiny
while protesting

the stolen
technology reports.

SEPTEMBER FOURTH DAWN

The neighbor's dog dashes
outdoors by the riverbed

as two scholar's books
about Nabokov's lapidary

butterflies fall
on powder lines

of the bocce game
set for after school

hearing about the sink hole
near Harvard

while others whisper about
his wife's rock garden phlox

extending into suburban bushes
by gathered memory moss

birdsong calls on branches
in radiant sunshine

a fox appears behind
the brambles

we heard about
another cosmic event

after her son was lost
in no man's land.

TOWARD MORNING

Put the plans aside
in solitary September
full of overwhelming art
awaking the strongest wave
of your hand greeting the day
with still life green everywhere

Turn to sunshine bursting
over dazzling house tops
with birds on slate roofs
also trying to decide the moment
to move horizontally South
by the cool limitless breeze

Tell yourself and yours
of the white whale you visited
on your watch this summer
feeling as if Melville's diary
opens up your poet love
to the page that bears your name
and sleep upon it tonight.

IN YOUR FUNKY WAY

In your funky way
after the bandanna
from your auburn hair
in the second hand net
we found at the bazaar
along with my blue visor
taken along the beach
now removed from us
you sing out
as my sax moves
along with you
on the dance floor
remembering my poem
you left in the cloakroom
and recognizing enchantments
rescuing us in a later than
you think Manhattan moment
in my mobility of riffs
a thousand sounds
in luminous hands
of reborn black tulips move
in a nocturnal laughter
embracing the night.

BLAISE CENDRARS TOMB
(1987-1961)

Whoever reads
the gravestone
there is none
but ashes
with the sun setting
in a light corner,
remember this:
the glittering of life
by shrines of honor
on islands
of liberation
for stars in a footage
over by an art film house
on such name days
of seminal virtue
understands modernism
with Blaise Cendrars.

LICENSES

Every license
lies in laceration

in disheveled files
of every bureaucrat

all the way from Berlin's
Stasi to Russia's Gulag

in eight mornings
by men as wolves

gnawing on crusts
of brown bread

in a squalor of darkness
hatred and graft

the price of body parts
haggles in the market place

tearing us apart
in suspicious hallucination

reading in the college library
the first of revelation's aroma

with a new dilemma's reality
deep in salient shadows

of deconstruction theory
with every diploma

ending at graduation
taking away any attraction

of a printed privilege
at theology's replacement

for he has sent out his word
in the world, not of it

with all knowledge and drama
for a poet's revealing.

GETTING YOUR NEWS


Getting your news every day
banner headlines never change

deadlines of a century
merely exchange their print

weighted in favor of cables
satiated for a mediocre run

on hopeless pavements
of desperate penury

the next ogre rubs out words
to text his squinted fables

by an air conditioner
that blows hot or cold

up six stories
of venom

about hairline fractures
accidents, drownings, murders

in the asterisk face
of frontal Orwellian truth

down corridors
of the basement press office

the soul draws its fundamental
conclusion to pretend reality

is the business
to write on skeptical pens,

making notes in red and yellow
from quotes on journal margins

as nations make their entreaties
with a bargain for peace

only the find war
from an orifice next door

as doves are released
by the newspaper's express

everyone thinks
they themselves are blameless.

EINSTEIN'S LAST HOUR

A tolerant visage bearded
in an intolerant age

formulas for death
marches over Crystal Night

citizens lying before you
in village massacres

math used in a final solution
by warring bureaucrats

citizens taken away
and you an exile of the State

and all the Socratic wisdom
in a hemlock

and all dreams and lamentations
daily nightmares of Jeremiah.

GOGOL EYES

You had this dream
about Gogol's eyes

amassed with manuscripts
weighed down by guilt

on an Arbat snow
he had a vivid vision

that his pocket watch
was lost in the other world

in a repentant soliloquy
he became Hamlet

in the space of his last minute
he spoke to Pushkin

waves of tears
to Fyodor in punishment

garments of the rag picker
on his rented wagon

what in a matter of time
do words obey.

SHARK SIGHTINGS

On a colossal ferry
white sharks are sighted

below the docks
eyes and a Van Gogh ear

catches the expression
no one takes a selfie

except in a flash
of momentary survival

in memory's context
from a pocket camera

from a minimalist
startled artist on board

with a space and canvas
in dramatic expressionism

you wave to the horizon
in a telescoped ship

with an ambiance of chatter
in a vertical still life.

A POET'S DISTILLATION

Listen from my eyelids
on a somnambulist sleep

Hear over my voice
in the harmony of woodwinds

Cry over the long suffering
in the hands of the innocent

Circle around me
in a primordial shadow

Whisper for the unpersuadable
who vanquish all powers

Expect a genesis of birth
to flower in small rooms of color

Know revelation is transformed
in the shape of a lion and dove

Respect the woods and sea
alive with rejoicing

Think on a sky of mystery
in the pure poem of the spirit.

LOSS

Loss is worse
in late summer
crumbling leaves cross us
over our descended paths
regardless how grave
of your Poe mourning
was up at the attic
writing a piano sonata
about him
sighting familiar scenes
in his many scaffolds
by your daily nightmare
of the poet raised up
on last electric chair
reading "The Raven"
in your tomb's deprivation.

STRIKING A CHORD

A familiar cruiser ships its cargo
outdoor on this hallucinated hour

rain breaks up the tiny wild roses
of our rock garden curiosity

questions are taken down green hills
answering the lawn's lambent faces

An organ plays Vidor's toccata
striking a chord from the fountain.

ONE FOR BECKETT

An trained actor
returns from history plays
with her dramatic physicality
intact by reflected lines
on her haunted face
once told by her great aunt
from Oxford
who met an ex clairvoyant
that she will be protected
knowing what humanity sets
in first drafts of second acts
the second thoughts
not distressed in Beckett's trilogy
all alone on the stage
feeling no longer anonymous
doing as a life would have it
unraveling lines by surveying
a show of applause hands
united beyond theory.

SEPT. 2


In first squirrel eyes
the days gone by
break open
by magpie sounds
on the Evergreen
dazzle from sunshine
reading in distraction
a silent student film
in a foreign tongue
on the city park bench
towards twilight
as my solitude
takes over
in the moment.

WHEN SUNSET RISES
AUGUST 6

We hear dribbling
in hoops outside
the greenhouse
writing maxims
and metaphors
after playing Bach
and then smooth jazz
sunk in off season joy
from my lamentations
about Hiroshima
bending down
to pick up these blueberries
reading a Mishima novel
and my neighbor left
crackers and Gouda cheese
writing a one act
then shape an action
painting and sculpture
for out of stone
is a Japanese rock garden.

AN ARMSTRONG RECORDING

Clearing out old 78's
and jazz
in the company
of Louis Armstrong's voice
for the gazebo bazaar
near the serene waters
off Cape Cod
the North wind
brims me over with tones
of a past musical circumference
a local poet reaches
for the diving board
with silly snorkels
to be a spy for OO7
among the blue fish below
now by the yogurt stand
and lingering
to narrate the day
with a local action painter
once playing in the Mikado
who exhibits himself
in a fresh tanned face
with an excessive compulsion
of constantly washing himself
feeds the grackles and sparrows
goes to his Vineyard shrink
then slips away
holding his toy poodle
in his flailing arms
when my life cannot part
with Armstrong.

LATE TO BEING FOUND

Now who gazes
at the eucalyptus tea cup
leaves at the back door
after being out raced
on my bicycle
hearing morning bells
on the hillside monastery
one forgets landscapes
that distance loves
to capture once
which is ours to lose
to contain a dialect
and gingerly photograph
of three visiting cardinals
with a singing  lesson
out on branches
over a country boutique
a poet names Mallarme
Whitman and Nerval
in a tremor of the wind
on the tall greensward dunes
under a poor mother's clothesline
I'm murdering bread
left for the birds
too late for the bus
and any ode to the schoolyard
not being in my metabolism
trying to slip away
in my own disposition
with large almond eyes
seeing a dog washed
by his blind walker and rescuer
near a tiny sail boat
on the home dock jetty
near becalmed waterfall
an unprepared shadow
of an East European actor
now on the Soaps
seeks his own absolution
in the fun mirror
of a traveling circus
near the railroad tracks
out of breath
and downhearted
by a thwarted memory loss
after the war and occupation
wants to remember his lines
and clean his fingernails
before the red lipped
curvaceous lion tamer
wielding a whip
with a Hungarian accent
like his own smiles
to make his day.