AFTER

After jacking up
the car
and taking my kayak
out to sea
speaking to a student
about her major
in French literature
especially Balzac
and Baudelaire
while carefully playing
backgammon
on a park bench
when it is nearly dark
and losing to Anna
wishing her
a happy new year
seeing a sign
searching for a missing
Doberman dog an alley,
but do beware!
near a bar
together choosing
to speak to a stranger
by the city church
who is praying
on his knees
to the King of the Jews
inviting him to dinner
saying he is a sinner
in his nearly fainting behavior
crying on a creche
to his Savior Jesus
telling us
of his writing his memoir
and how his thesis
is on Renoir's painting
"The Bathers"
I'm listening
as I use to play
the violin solo
from the opera
of Massenet's "Thais"
by meeting a single person
who tells us in his words
on a playground swing
seriously relaxing,
holding up my jazzy
alto sax
in bars of a riff
near a lost bird's wing
"There is no security
only love we cannot refuse
even as authentically
we must choose the justice
of humanity
we are constantly hearing
about cyber hacking
of reporters on the news."

GRANDMA MOSES
(1960-1961)

In the gallery's perspective
watching her painting
"Shenandoah Valley"
art discloses
a larger retrospective
of Grandma Moses.

MY FRIEND EMILY

Emily spurned
all other artists
in her art thesis
but Turner
whom she adored
as much as Blake
and the Dutch masters
such as Vermeer
another Romantic
a generation later
in a metamorphosis
shaping our critical future.

UP HERE IN MAINE
( JOHN WELLIVER 1929-2005)

Up here today in Belfast
in my kayak
by an island off Maine
back in an ice fishing spot
at Penobscot Bay
close by woodland streams
thinking of Neil Welliver's
spare drawings
in his rough landscapes
of twining bare birch trees
painting in an underbrush
of snowy wonder
in "Shadow"
as an informer of art
defining nature for us
as a chorus of warblers
and other nesting birds
making their intensity
to partner a way by me
at dawn in a poster- happiness
from my resting words
as an intercessor in dreams
feeling like St. John on Patmos
composing and delivering
spiritual letters
as a visionary poet
it seems on an island marina
hovering over this river bed
to be sharing in Canada.

A FREEDOM POEM

Reciting this freedom poem
in a reading in today's
student hallway's light
remembering that December
167 B.C.E.
as the Maccabees worked
against any brutal fascist energy
just the pagans in years past
were hailing and adjusting
to the trilogy
Satan's dark synergy
of Haman ,Hitler, Stalin,
which will fail from
their propaganda instruments
in their one world plan
we choose a Son's miracle
of Resurrection
as we refuse to give in
to them for a direction
up to heaven.

NEW YEAR GREETING

A reveler ,traveler
poet and troubadour
greeting you my readers
from my sound proof studio
with a poster-silence
in my underground
feeding the sparrows
and tiny grackles and birds
sounding  out by the snowy
branches near these shadows
of the Elm and Evergreen trees
trying to relax
and play my clever alto sax
on this narrow roof
turning into a sharing
of my word's language's
endearing and enduring
for my reading guests
in this new year.

A HOMELESS GUY

A homeless shivering guy
Bob Lester,
the theater and film star
a once a former student
of mine reaches out to me
Les was out of the country
in Canada
once jailed for growing pot
and with a walking stick
robbed in
a skin head mob attack,
soon on this very spot
of the up and coming trial
walking along the beach
wanting to sail in a kayak
anchored on the waves
I now realize was mine
here at Cape Cod
at this romantic spot
on a lover's lane
upon this last day
of the year
having a tiff with Jane
a former girl friend at a bar
leaving his fish and chips
on the passing plate
in the dining room
having a selfish wish
with a fortune cookie
says does not want to behave
until he is feels
completely free,
wanting a stiff drink,
begins to think
of his once amazing career
in acting
and literature is over,
delivers to me
his best limerick
with a smile
knowing I'm also a poet
while holding onto
a three leaf clover
to deposit
in my new Christmas vest.

WILIAM HARNETT
(1818--1892)

Down the long corridor
fascinated by
William Hartnett's
like his still life
clarinet paintings played
over instrumental themes,
a violin hanging
onto a door
with a torn piece
of sheet music
others as a "Dutch jar
and Bust of Dante"
"Cigar box,Pitcher
and the New World"
"Lobster and Pester Lloyd"
or "Still Life and Le Figaro"
Another of Havana cigars
or "Le Mot D'Or"
at the back of the museum
by rack pictures of Peto
a possible mentor
but no imitator of table top
we decide to stop
at this innovative
persuasive inventor.

PETO'S ILLUSIONISM
(1854-1907)

It was a D.C. dawn
by the National Gallery museum
outside it is snowing
minding my own business
after my slumbering dream
feeling stress in a faint
needing a cheese croissant
with an omelette
and two cups of green tea
as a jazz poet takes out
to play riffs of his alto sax
from his pea jacket pocket
with a map and address
going up and down the street
to take a look at a still life
of John Peto
without regret
saw an early painting
"Fruit, Vase and Statuette"
and a chaotic jumble of books
piled in an enigmatic heap
called "Job Lot Cheap"
and "rack and door  pictures"
shaped in tatters
scattered in frayings
and scuffs
in the rough and ready
from a painter's steady hand
yet to Peto it all matters
as I begin to wake
at his rack and porous pictures
like at the back
his "Tea Cup and Slice of Cake"
as the chorus of sun pours out
from feeding the birds
from an all blue sky
my words roll out
for an early reading
in Washington's capital
of our country.

DAVID JONES' TIME
(1895-1974)

All the varying magnetism
in his minimalism of painting,
amid the anchors
of an enigmatic plastic art
and anachronism of history
David Jones emerges
as literary genius
trying to sum up the age
with thumbs up
to every contrary audience
of the nations
at a religious variance
by the silence of variations
in his legendary mysticism
as in "Parenthesis"
to glimpse Celtic poetry
with the Imperial Roman,
Saxon, Welsh,Western,
in a poetic forum
of facts on the archaeology
theology, architecture
in an editorial to sum up
the psychology, anthropology
in the artifacts and dry bones
covering over a memorial
of a culture's intimacy reaching
as our own bard's
extraordinary inner psychology
in parts of a dramatic verse
of man's hardened
lost humanity
in the cross hairs of horrors
of the First World War
in a span of a sorry sighting
from lairs in the near and far
of Flanders Field
he abides as heroic author
in our own English literature
relating to a modernist
who atones
in his own conversation
and Christian conversion
from a vision
not locked in stone
from his boasting soldiers
shields of a Holy Ghost faith
from a poet running into
all of politician's betrayal
and reward by holding onto
a poet's sword of the spirit
from a Holy Grail
which deposits
his last breath and blood
reflecting a heroic epic battle
in the muddy flooded dunes
between the English and Welsh
in an itinerary of "Y Gododdin"
with strident actuality
and vibrant sacramental reality
from his holy water
vessel of the Church
in his hands he ventures out
with a missal
and searches with slings
at the battle of Catraeth
taking his legendary wings
with Malory's Morte D'arthur
in his own pastoral version
of Eliot's "Wasteland"
from his emerging reputation
and his accidental iconic
legendary "Anathematata"
Jones never boasting
like Esau
with prudent discipline
but is humble in the law
as he gave and forgave
his enemies
in a vision of his own salvation
and from his expiation of sin
telling of the consecration
in details of the Mass
which encompasses history
in a fragmentary paradox
as he completes an epic
not seen since
Milton's "Paradise Lost"
and in his folio art
going back to the ancients
which rends to our history
by caves and rocks
of Lescaux
 (whom like Marcel Proust
or BZ Niditch)
confounds the language
in remnants to save
and sum up the age
of homo sapiens.

JAIME DAVIDOVICH'S ART
(1936-2016)

A thorn on the side
of a great painter
of minimalism
and activist of surrealism
visits us
in Argentina
at Cabaret Voltaire
his Dada performance club
with imitations of Evita
to rub on his colorful
vocal canvas
setting off explosions
in lyrical, sexual, intellectual
texts of his own notions
over walls, out of doors,
covered sidewalks
floors, alleys, local galleries
over a sheet
with his video camera
always ready
as an installation artist
to light up in hallways
as in "Road in 1970"
or on "3 Mercer  Street".

JAMES JOYCE'S 100

Today it's James Joyce's
hundred years
since the publication
of "Ulysses" thundered
that kept us all awake
vetted in long chapters
yet was totally persecuted
and even prosecuted
for the creation of words
and fiery choice phrases
to be brought up
seizing the force of an age
of Irish culture to be taught
holding the sipping cup
fraught with conversation
that will amaze language
to empower literature
in Gaelic and English
to be enigmatically sought
in a thrilling indirect narrative
that still makes Ireland alive
and keeps the novel form
for another generation
to survive.

TOM

Tom had a green
thumb on the farm
who was quite intelligent
enjoyed a political
or ethical discussion,
played drums
and knew all the stops
on the organ
and learning the percussion,
attacked as a football tackle
and last seen
this past Autumn
on the local T.V. screen
when he was numb
in his right arm,ankle
and had a head concussion,
his nurse in the hospital
was Methyl
who was an artist
and play write of the Absurd
from Austin Texas
she had a word from a friend
to send Tom to a hospital
up in Boston
there she bought him
two Hocking paintings
and a Lexis for Christmas
then the couple
married soon after
and then Tom joined
a band called
"Rocking Laughter."

RUBEN DARIO'S TIME
(1886-1816)

After a fix
for the wounded
and hunted
for his wounded words
all over Nicaragua
Felix Ruben Dario
in Managua
slips away
in the sunshine
for it was a surreal
time of inconvenience
when ever day
offered him a sentence
for life
in a knock down
in a concealed
punching bag
he grabs onto a phrase
to save his life
from his unmade bed
he feels too fevered
of reverie
and Latin's obscure signs
in a missal
he wanders like Reverdy
like the stars
through a century
of poverty's
universal dismissals
spilling milk and riddles
by the  homeless cat
seeking in language
to assuage his hurt
with revelations of solace
or in a fiesta to flirt
wishing sea voyages
in a landlocked country
he scatters like Medusa
over his pawn brokered
once stolen globe
holding onto
Spanish proverbs
garnished spices and herbs
by a varnish table you set
my red marginalized
city notebooks
he suddenly realized
in a destiny without regret
imagining a Judas tree
near a Jesus one
with  carob and hyacinths
in the sun
Dario's day
has begun in a still life
with unjust solitude
in rambles
of elegies
he adjust a bard's mood
of deflowered reunions
he knows about
after a night chill
unmasks grief
from unholy idols
and on sandy faces
and statues of saints
kisses painted on
rungs of Jacob's ladder
from holy tongues
colorful words are plastered
on city walls
under the stars above
amid a love revolution.

OUT OF CHELSEA

Out of Chelsea
walking by a bathhouse
out of the closet
of noted poets
by daddy's safe deposit
after picking up his savings
putting on a blue collar
not giving a damn
remembering his brother
coming back home
as a paraplegic in Nam
and his apoplectic ravings
against Uncle Sam
near graffiti walls of sex
somewhere in the Sixties
in the day of Andy
and Candy Darling
a daring Catullus
leaves the hotel
pink and sandy eyed
and tells us
of his miracle Jesus dream
last summer
on Fire Island
amid class, race
and gender wars
in the rouged
and roughed up face
by a losing type
of skin head thugs
in striped pants
after Mark left the Fugs
to all night dance
and speak of a rendered
identity politics
to last for a dialectical
and diabolical
inherited and
unmerited generation
as Mark leaves the mezzanine
after shaving
heads for a local cafe
wishing for lox
on a bagel
with dark coffee and cream
leaving the price of mammon
for a slice
of Scandinavian salmon
to discuss Hegel
amid texts of Marx
meeting a companion
wanting to start
and sacrifice for
yet another little magazine
with bz on the cover
asking me for epigrams
of a Shavian nature
and spittle grams of dope
gratified in his own name
to satisfy his own status
and nomenclature
from an ex lover
who lost hope
last night listening to Handel
in the laundry rooms
with his clothes stolen
by a wounded Achilles
amid a hundred Trojans
by candle light.

RESCUE ON CAPE COD

Whether turtles
stranded on the beach
up from islands
within our reach
lost in the cold waves
or a humpbacked whale
there is no furlough
on Cape Cod
now back from the gazebo
as we sail on a boat
or kayak
to a rescue
as we leave the dunes
to care for
injuries animals
or floating mammals
with our first aid kits
and tourniquets
in our fingers and bones
as a God squad
shapes us
by a chorus of birds
stirring us with energy
under a jagged sun
to free mammals,animals
and humpback whales
as our goal
by creatures without hope
held by human string
and enfolded rope
with new photos
spotted and featured in sight
we save our own souls
as nature would direct
creatures  to rise alive
upon or beneath the sea
as it were our lives instead
in our  own paradise to atone
for  years of human
cruelty and neglect
with a new liberty
as understood
and to select those barely alive
in their under water lungs
from our neighborhood
now with hope
to survive and thrive
who would be hung
by string or rope.

A LOST ART

A slippery art
tarnished on
a slippery nightmare
after eyeing Munch's
"Scream"
of unfinished wet dream
in a long distress
at "The Bald Soprano"
well acted as memory
in Ionesco's reception
releases in awareness
filling her limpid eye
in knots of the modern
what brushes by us
as we rush by
in our art's stroll
we quote Eliot and Auden
dispersing an outcry
in a promise of Iris
and gentian, gladiolas
in a fifth column
aching to flee
arts as a foreign body
at a metamorphosis
in an exiled love
from a metallic kilometer
above neurasthenia fields
from a sighing voyage
as Ulysses with shields
with his poetic utility
of miles out to sea
vibrating by the pier
of fishing nets
Penelope waiting
with many regrets
holding onto
a blue fish vase
with ship phantoms
in a motionless
wishing well hour
to support gestures
from the underground
with wonder saves
as our culture shapes us
in Picasso's geometric art
from our enigmatic century
in a sound and fury
to tempt the waves.

JOHN CAGE'S ERA
(1912-1992)

Trajectories
of painting history
from the factors
of Warhol's factory
in its faint risibility
of comic oboes,
auras of conceptual
mutual happenings
in acts of dramatics
passes as art's
attic journeys
in faculties
to laugh at our era
at the obliquity
of our theater
here after.

DANCE

(for Geoffrey Hill
1932-2016)

Haughty Salome
in naughty epicenter
ancient histories
Kant or cant
from our enemies
in your respectful
retrospective
as ladies snap
their fancy umbrellas
on Jews who can ill afford
visiting their galleries
you exposed
the fascist vagaries,
the cantos of Pound
sounding like Henry Ford
from wonders
of the underground
starting from the upstart
Herod's initation
and invitation
to rebuild Jerusalem's walls
in the clamor and glamour
of humiliation
looking forward
to liberation
at our savior's death
from imperial gangs
vaporous gangs
of Germanicus guards
playing dice
gambling for our lives
taking the night off
to meet up for Jesus.

A..D. WINAN'S AT ANGEL CITY

From the Beat
of his San Francisco
meeting Bukowski
in the mean streets of L.A.
A.D. Winans
widely read
from the over heated lockers
at the gymnast exits
passing by
a music rocking matinee
there exists instead
a transformed
Wolfman Jack,the man
suddenly appears
from behind our back
to perform from the dead
with new dialects
of dialectal language
instead becomes
a lyrical seer
from an anguish of 24/7
of playing musical recordings
in the most aged selfish thread
after a brief trip to heaven
from a fetid vacant smoke
into Hades
a weird itinerant poet
like Artaud,
who also died
was denied as a spoken genius
now mystified by the ladies
whom they deify
suddenly appears ahead
on route 66
all the highways to Styx
we see the coming beast
still burns us up
with a once wise guy
out of the closet
holding out his cup
as a car jolts on arrival
with his hope of survival
from vaults and cesspools
in basalt volcanic rock
or in titanic structures of stone
from pillars of salt
needing soap and waters
cold from overflowing dope
undersold along the West Coast
by Pacific ocean reeds
motioning us from high pillars
of commotion
to fulfill all his needs
in new births, and latter deaths,
scattering his five star deeds
by breaths of brushing poses
of his artistic deeds
knowing a future expectancy
is in the cards and on his beeds
with a missing joker
death warrants,
exigencies,
academic rants,
chants,
variations,
rations,
variables
in anti body emergencies,
from C. I.A., K.G.B.
or the domestic Stasi
and German spy agencies
all the way from the Nazis
prearranged in passages
on passports for  passengers
on ships of fools
and their hangers on
lead by the ghost
of Charles Manson
after murderous bacchanals
still boasting
on the West Coast,
here are mustached cowboys
laughing out in rose fatigues,
sheriffs out
for the work-out wise
these guys in bending iron
in non smoker gyms
of hungry brutes
raised from dust bowls
to take out their frustration
with a vast leap
into the deep underground
of in fighting
sleeping out
over a qualitative leap
who circle around
on motorcycles
with new wheels
with sight reading grenades
that their lives conceal
escaping their frozen solitude
as echoes stir
from a blind ballerina
named Katie Cinderella
whirling in a dance macabre
of a future Salome
whose fella Sam
an enfant terrible
is handwriting
with graffiti by L.A. walls
with Divine dancing
on the boardwalks
preening and prancing
with David Lockary
in a snit riddled
with his own mockery
near a jelly fish tank
of thanking go- go exiles
in similes and smiles
of his child's resemblances
over his unbalanced sheets
when echoes shot out
of an instant camera
from those chimeras wanting
to get out of
a photographic memory
in noon day mirrors
and out-of doors
by pallid statues
as artificial flowers grow
in San Francisco, California
with a rococo sense of light
as an unsettled guest lies
on Long Beach
playing his Basque guitar
under the stars
on rocks of ice sculptured
by a box of open shoes
and bread he sells
after the harvest
outside the farmer's market
and rests along the earth
giving out
free bell-shaped aloes
as a succulent tubular plant
at the stem and rosette
and stamping invalid passports
on sunny hot desert flats
by shadowing shadows
of queers who come out
without regret
of a high time
after a life of crime in knots
with hand jobs
in mirrors of strife
and street wars ramped up
on campy cliff notes out
in lipsticks mirrored rouge
at the Moulin lounge
outside Sing-Sing's metropolis
uncovered over our borders
with hunger on the streets
advertising for a bride
to ride and quoting
in huge capital letters,
"DRY RUNS
ON THE GALLOWS"
let's decide to meet
sometime on the dance floor
and bring on a poet
for  a partner
in the orchestra pit
before the finale's apocalypse.









n

THE PASSAGES OF OLSON

At a river
near Good Harbor
as Olson
walks by crazy stones
deposits & delivers
in his Language poetry
to an audience in Gloucester
once a fishing village
by filling the steps
of a passage
from a poet's audacity
well wishing the shore birds
more with his perspicacity
exploring the waves
in a cobalt blue water
knotting hooks after
from the gobbling fish fry
and laughing at the squid
cooking in the oven
when his limpid eyes roving
hidden from a retina 's horizon
in a faulty covering
the glassy sea and earth
of a silent sky flight
as the plover and birds pass by
we are motioning oars
from the drawn abyss
on a common rider
where only an oblivion follows
open to thunder boats
as Olson swallows the cider
near a northern eider sea duck
with white plumage
from a luckless colored head
with soft down feathers
lining the rest
of roaring waves
at the weather west
of the underground
crashing sound reefs
and radio waves,
all the human cargo
over a half submerged red sun
from pirated glimpses
in treasure hunts
distillations of silhouettes
over the wet docks
with egrets having measured
an adventure on these rocks.

NOBODY LIKES MARCH

Nobody likes March
as a demon trickster
in a trickery of subterfuge
as he quickly emerges
from a dorm
under the huge canopy arch
at a stormy time of gloom
standing up at a wedding
by a bedding bride or groom
beckoning into an intrigue
of subtlety in conception
in his duplicity of narrative
from an isolated livable sense
of pretense with chicanery
to outlive any sense of fraud
in his every unjust sentence
as he adjusts us in a charade
and berates repentance
of he who hates God
before every lining up
of the people to parade
in a facade and berate
before a steeple
at the firing squad,
or over any earthly altar
leaving him or her
reeling in their sins,
or needing to take spring on
with catatonic winds
by forcing a few flowers
out of the dew's emerging
to sprout on a meadow's earth
than decreeing a new snow
from a weather report
or asking, masking
making or mistaking
for an early hour
at the widow's windowsill
by hanging onto shadows
of a sleeping pill
and having a still birth
as the sky
is abstaining of rain
of an isolated March
from the calendar
yet frostily leafless
of dead branch birch trees
as bird feathers rise
in a lurch up to the stars
quickly as a breeze lies
across the river barges
to gather up a frosty leaf
in Satan 's astonishment
to admonish and abolish
belief in every ma n or woman
what every demon wishes to do
as he drowses to entwine,
not renew you in the Bible
for he hates the Divine Word
in his span's spectrum libel
with strife in his spectrum
to kill off life
in a continuum of the Son
which inspired John Milton
the Puritan
as earth overturns earth
upward to heaven
from graves greensward paths
once luminous with snow
I' m feeding the birds
with my last crumbs
which saves us
for a March reading
until this past semester
of Sylvia Plath to review.

SOLSTICE,
(DECEMBER 21 2016)

On the lucky hole
in the solstice of 2016
at winter's equinox
a poet is ice fishing
up in Vermont
with an awesome scare
of a continual sorry dream
before first light
is lifting from the fog
near the homecoming lorry
doing exercises
and a basin wash of my gear
in the Bay
by my anchored kayak
after a nightmare
amid a week's rain
in liquid silence
at the sky's softened amnesty
waking out
of a rudely continual dream
turning  out in my blankets
in the hall
after sleepwalking
and sight reading
from a Mozart score
all night
in my overalls
at this open cloudy hour
now listening to the radio
of Horowitz piano playing
in a nocturne of Chopin
my memory carries
that music inside shadows
of Warsaw
when this poet visited
the ghetto to lay flowers
and pay my respects
without much language
at the memorial
and then back in Boston
wrote a newspaper editorial
to dovetail my grief
in my brief life span
then sharing
an Andrez Wajda film
"Ashes and Diamonds"
by hosting a class
of Asian students
with their abandoned unbelief
at the Second World War
wishing to emulate a hero
from the encore and echo
of history's worst nightmare
in a cursed time
of mass murder and crime
yet we are plaintively
here in the cold air
watching a  lively flight
of a rookery
delightful cormorants
diving into the cold waters
swim toward us
along infinite streams
of enfolding dunes
of greensward tall grass
and sand dunes
soon it will be spring
with some brothers
or sisters boasting
others rejoicing of surviving
in a French, Danish, Dutch
as a New England winter
passes by
now watching at my art bench
from my one open eyelid
the radiant sunflowers
to blossom
with June crickets
and moths,
or playing catch,
or again reading
Nabokov's "Lolita"
while like St. Francis
feeding the tiny birds
embracing a dry day
when we can
and catching butterflies
from a chrysalis all around
with no more snow flakes
to be found
drawing down
another dawn time
of a speechless absence
in my art's perspective
find my barely touched
yet chosen sculpture
of skill for over a year
still covered over
with a silk cloth
hidden and now revealed
in the frozen attic
of my retrospective culture
from one concealed eyelid
as I'm listening to Massenet's
opera "Thais"
at an open window sill
then playing my own riffs
on my alto sax
when famished
and almost murdering
an almond croissant
assigned and finishing
this semester's term paper
of reading Hegel and Marx
feeding and devouring
a bagel and salmon lox
having a vision of Paris
reciting Baudelaire out loud
with an imaginary albatross
nearby watching larks
and Sylvester the Persian cat
wanting his milk
or a sand piper bird
hovering to sing by the shore
with embarrassed regrets
like a ghost of Hamlet
and at a loss for words.

AN AESTHETE'S NARRATIVE

A now neighboring aesthete
after a rain storm
shoulders his knapsack
who was once
a day laboring teenager
telling me of his late father
a carpenter from Montreal,
I was waiting for his arrival
at the backpack bench
as this young foreign body
washes his feet in a pail
and waits to be warm
before he enters my kayak
waiting to sail
and the catch a glimpse
of a humpback whale
wants only to speak French
in my company
he tells me how he lives
outdoors in the sun
blinded by a student memory
from the loss of his parents
in a car accident
as he recalls the incident
in his own poetry
from a sorry state of mind
speaks of his recent visit
to a museum in D.C.
and of the fiery brilliant orange
in a Turner portrait
and landscape at the Tate
with its flaming fire
catch an innocent
prophetic vision
abdicating the enigmatic light
in his blinded eyes
catching me aware
as he unwinds
by the sandy shadows at sea
watching a lonely comerant
diving near me
knowing we are all in exile
barely within reach
of a prudent survival.

EXPECTATIONS

Forgetting it's dawn
with its daily tasks
and the hands at five A.M.
on my grandfather clock
as I leave for Vermont
feeling alive
carrying my sax
along these woods
of leafed Maples
not with a condemned look
at any frog or toad
where pines,mimosa ,
phlox run by Skylight
Pond Trail head
near Goshen Brook road
but who asks anything more
as we climb ever closer
in the morning fog
to the Green Mountains
and relax on nature
where bees are whirling
by the Evergreen trees
and a phalanx of birds
are basking in the sun
after the fog lifts
from a gaunt sky clouds
and when first light is done
by river beds
feeling famished
I play riffs on my tenor sax
our fearless crowd is to dine
with some plain, cheese Danish,
and almond croissants
with bottles of red wine
delivered to other tourists
watching robins rise
over our heads
until we are finished
standing near by to visit
a poet from Montreal
at the French restaurant cafe
near an ice fishing pond
amid these waters of Vermont
as birds fly in branches
amid a breeze from birch trees
as our crowd is searching
near by a park bench
thrilled at a dog rescue
of a slippery shih tzu
by Lake Champlain
when our prayer wishes
will not delay but rock true.

PLYMOUTH HARBOR

Catching a glimpse
of a humpbacked whale
in a heavy mirage of winds
which seem to increase
as we sail in my kayak
with a friend
from Greenpeace
memory logs in
Plymouth's home harbor
in my ghostly blog
writing on Melville's dialogue
in a reign of dreams last July
among dunes, seaweed, dunes
the green waves shiver
over sandstone streams
shaking mean time
from an unfolding abyss
along scattered shoals
at a day's disappearance
only my memory saves me
of this dancing whale
as in a living metamorphosis.

OFF MY BICYCLE
( December ,1999)

Off my bicycle
in December
back from Plymouth rock
on my orange kayak
as a whale watcher
back after a snow storm
on my Governor Winthrop desk
forgetting the time or season
of my grandfather clock
by catching the warmer sun
reading Helen Vendler
my former English professor
about Emily Dickinson
whose views vary (in a way)
of her own reasoned philosophy
contrary to a Puritan glossary,
while waiting for a new century
I' m in the hall
reading Oswald Spengler
about his cycle theories
lunging in on history
after the sponging madness
of several friends company
playing musical chairs
with a nostalgic laughter
at Christmas break
carrying the bard Catullus
in my arms from the library
and listening in the dawn
as we wake early
to hear a Bach cantata chorus
from the Harvard-Radcliffe choir
in an old recording
singing for us,
as we're eating a spinach
and cheese croissant
as a confection
and drinking a warm saki,
I'm in an old wizened sweater
and overalls
reading the bold letters
of Berryman and Lowell
as Akari recites
and tells us of her part
for an up and coming
five act series
of Japanese Noh plays
and freezes on her masks
in the underground poetry
now in a frenzy of her task
of acting out
of a wounded sensibility,
I'm sharing and relaxed
thinking of my own ability
as we jam on riffs of jazz
on my soprano sax
reciting our own slam poetry
to perform in the old library
for our predominately
student audience
hidden under the silence
of darkly hidden corners
at a once varsity dormitory
now a three circled row theater
with its widely
red marked marquee
outside the sports building
we are supporting the story
of a novel literary proof
from Leonard and Virginia Woolf's
free spirited chapters
here over a roof
above the city of Cambridge
wanting to just relax
from the strife and noise
of school girls and boys
in our wintry vacation plan
adjusted from our deep affection
at least for a poet's sensibility
of knowledge
in a spin of a life span.

JUST ASKING

Just asking for the sun
to shine
on the barely naked trees
masking snow
in the dead wintry air
taking my leaves
visiting a Vermont poet
in a skilled lettered occupation
with her toddler moving
by her unwilling wheelchair
thanking her this winter
for a standing invitation
that still
in my pea jacket pocket
since the spring
yet understanding
Andrea's  deep regret
of how she fell
feeling sleepy
over at the ski hill
looking for a locket
in the January thaw
of shadowy white
deposits from the sky
we are both wanting
a cheese croissant
and a cup of red wine
near these ski river beds
in Stowe at an early hour
we're swaying
with a prayer's echo
by a Bay's tree branches
and a single geranium
on the glassy window
over her balcony
by a bell tower shadow.

HOMELESS AND SPEAKING

Feeling a bit balmy
a night within him
at the Salvation Army
or Pine Street Inn
traveling to Boston Common
through dark sleepless hours
with practically empty bins
sitting with his knitting
collapses on Park Street bench
the air emphatically
naked as the Elm tree
he takes his leaves and naps
in melancholy flesh
over the helm of seasons
up in Maine
missing the fishing season
with secondary sorrow
for he has literary plans
set for an arbitrary tomorrow
wishing he
quietly  plain speaking
was back interviewing
with that Globe reporter
who gave him a twenty
or was it a Lincoln
now feeling exhausted
busted and invisible
knowing you were
once smart enough
in this rough and ready
trade to pull your own weight
even on the old freight cars
at Penn station
you use to read
the New Yorker
and the Nation under the stars
now with indolent suffering
and the face of vigilant want
you cannot forget
that Montreal cheese croissant
or the Ben and Jerry's treat
up in Stowe Vermont
as Joey feels a weakness
on his knee caps
under snow-drunk skies
to some he is only
a  reluctant soul
a vagrant taking his toll
as in a disguised shadow
with a few fallen words
to the wise
for out of pollen
there will always be a flower
on this repentant dawn
for in the trash can
near the swan boats
and grassy dunes
at an early bird hour
Joey finds his fortune
in a lottery
as his life resumes.

DRIVING TO AMHERST

First I will decide to take
out my old motorcycle
or revved up used car
with my kayak on top
and charged up
or set loose
after my douche
from the cold garage
as the strong January sun
quickly hits on me
with my desire to visit
Emily,
the eccentric Miss Dickinson
we still refer to as the belle
of Amherst
looming large
in my own poet's imagination
knowing of her understanding
of my frequent visits
in a standing invitation
every new year
it's already crazy traffic
as a gloomy melancholy
sets in after the holidays
here over wounded roads
my hands resting
on a symphony of horns
by a cacophony of noise
along the super highways
not wanting to be a casualty
anchored to other bodies
as a troop boy of scouts
murdering their oranges
wave to me
stopping to buy violets
and a sour doe bread
at a tiny shack
back on open ended road
feeling like John Kerouac
on his journey
wondering what I bought
to eat and for Emily
hopefully was not from a cult
but who knows
the difficulty
in this day and age
it is to have a business
or to earn
or make a living wage
and meet up anonymously
with a Dunkin coffee cup
for a non belligerent friend
or even to learn or discern
from a language
whom we cannot offend
as I ride by a bearded guy
with "a Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy"
from that science fiction
broadcast from the B.B.C.
as I'm taking out a croissant
my aunt Sarah sent me
for Christmas
from Burlington,Vermont
from her bread and breakfast
at the student rooming house,
a red scarf, Russian hat
and my small Persian cat
from my glove compartment
hoping every day to love
dream and be reborn not cursed
under the ancient Evergreen
among a Jamesian realization
that some clever happenings
do not change
as I'm busily driving by
apple and chestnut trees
the squirrels are busy
as we pass the Esplanade
with a thaw breeze for miles
without street signs
or what passes
for law or civilization
as this poem emerges
within range
of Amherst Common
seeing a peace sign
of the Sixties
to make love not war
from Quaker fallible souls
who quietly go about
New England
with their honorable goals
hearing a talk radio station
with loud voices
force fed on oldies
and war horses
by a river bed
engaging with the words
of this metamorphic poet
a hurting a bit on my knees
yet knowing that my verse
will be translated
in many languages
of the universe
and sent overseas.

A SEASONED REFUGEE

A seasoned refugee
roughened from five continents
feels free enough
to repent in the dunes
asking for a blanket pardon
by Franklin Gardens
amid blackbird cacophonies
and Mahler last symphonies
by the past icicles o a gazebo
life excuses him for a lost bicycle
in the circling of obscurity
of a country snow storm
under once warm
fallible umbrellas on the beach
having a vanilla Sunday
as ravishing gulls amuse
with mysterious wings
within reach by the seaweed
the lighthouse shines
hiding its shadows
by oak picnic canopies
as a child hunts
for coral shells
over the indigo shore
a lone chickadee sings.

WINTER'S DOGGED NIGHT

Sleigh bells
and a bright fire flickering
candles of the holidays
still glittering at daybreak
waking abstract colors
on a silk screen
the cat awakes
for her milk
as a poet bicycling
in the dawn's brightness
with a musical, lyrical
desire sees a cardinal
on the lawn.

UP IN VERMONT

Up in Vermont
a poet making the holidays
relevant and taking
the time for the Lord's glory
offering a Gregorian chant
and telling the Christmas story
before the offertory is given
knowing we sing our hymns
breaking the bread
drinking the wine
even being divinely forgiven
for the Samaritan and sectarian.

PAUL GOODMAN IN PROVIDENCE
(1911-1912)

He found this guy
without two cents
waiting at a bus stop
in Providence
who is twenty
with a bong
but really younger
singing crazy songs
under the stars
will quickly vanish
a his last note
on his Spanish guitar
about love's forgetfulness
why the world is wrong
as a runaway
who caresses
his handsome skin
likes his voice within
he may not find again
or not pick a fight
with a kid in shoes
shorts and sneakers
forgetting the clocks
when love is in the air
not to lose the night
as a sugar daddy
will share
as a sociologist of love
once abused
for a twisted love or just used
in a maladjustment
(who can guess)
you wanted many things
(not to brag)
begun by Susan Sontag
in your happenings
with killer innocence
as a mask of Platonic youth
is taken off and a jazz riff
of beauty released to duty
if who but Paul Goodman
minding his own business
is picking up pebbles
by June's tall sand dunes
along six coppery miles
seeking that call of a smile
in a peaceful photograph
or writing that lasting paragraph
risking a sleepwalking trial
licking a chocolate candy
in bands of a vanilla cup
for a thousand hours
in guilt of his own failings
watches this kid as a ghost
almost fall
from the span of railings
in this pale skin night
when everything came off
that could sing out
from the love and laughter
ever after Walt Whitman
you are not alone
his small voice recalls
playing with a campy fire
on the rocks and stone
in a constant bone up
of a dauntless desire.

EDWIN ALBEE'S LIFE
(1928-1916)

Straights
he said rather graciously
and temperamentally
in the hotel lobby
picking up his camera
in a photography exhibit
by the shoe shine boy
feeling numb
yet playing footsie
on his corner chair
but not falling dumb
in a two toned happiness
to engineer and share,
we all miss Edwin Albee
who mounts the elevator
unwilling to sleep
downs a heavy German beer
with the freedom
of a deep hand gesture
in officialdom
even to piss until he creates
a greater play of welcome
in his autobiography
than "The Zoo Story"
a stranger to himself
with all his fame and wealth
as a new hurting actor comes
to town that he is meeting
with the back of a playbill
not in any defeating stealth
by playing at the Schubert
and to share the thrill
in the Great Commonwealth.

JAMES SCHULER'S SCHOOL
(1923-1991)


Not going by the rules
when you were obsessed
with the dead flowers
given by the boys
of Fire Island
the last June paintings
of David Hockney
Judy Garland tunes
perhaps your world
collapses in your praxis
of language
or were just nuts
ignoring the parrot
you got for Christmas
half in laughter
for someone in the village
was always after you
in language of "No reply"
from street smart chaps
you believed knew it all
believed it all
saw it all
dreamed it all
and now will outlast
us all.

A LETTER TO JAMES MERRILL,1980

When nothing
but life is in peril
in death and sex
with a letter out
to James Merrill
as he is drinking ale
under the stars
in Biaritz
or at Yale
or on the balcony
at the Ritz
singing to himself
Cole Porter lyrics
or new panegyrics
in his inherited wealth
telling us a dream
of a poet
having or taking a shot
at the political scene
in Hollywood,
simply James Merrill
be good at your poetry
in your academic hood
from praxis and practice
filters as he reasons
with the bread of rhyme
buttered and preferred
with the raison d'etre
in your taxi dream
with reasons
of the inaccessible
in a metamorphosis
of oxygen of your heart
from the digitalis
spilled from your limousine
in a foxglove muscle part
that only God could guess
into a lonely heart of love
you will confess in French
in your past literary art
will heavily weigh in
at your last bench press.

OFF THE COAST, 1968

Off the Coast
near the trembling waters
on the beach's barbecue
an eccentric poet
mostly reaches
for the meat loaf
by the Cape's water
while I'm shaping
this geometric design
to paint on a canvas
by a laconic stream
of wild flowers
this saint of a poet
in a windbreaker
says his morning prayers
sits by the shore
adjusts to a metamorphosis
at second hand hour
refuses to go war
for Uncle Sam
and prays for peace
for the U.S.
and Vietnam.

OLD MASTERS

Over moves
of silent pawns
at my invitation
Joe attends this table
with his confirmation
at the early dawn
as an honorable hero
with a confirmation
his long arm
clutches the king
and calm queen
edges closer
in his long offering
as a master to play again
with royal care
lame with drowsiness
at his brother's loyal mate
behind his back
about playing dead
Joe remains seated
dumbstruck at his fate
yawn as he caresses
in one hand
and hammers instead
the black and the red.

AN UNDERGROUND MAN

Taking a break
after miles of detours
without a sound
except for tiny birds
who awake skyward
near the police station
he yawns at nature's riddles
wishing for an omen
or even an amen
poorly dressed
in heavy wooly Russian garb
holding onto Dostoyevsky's
carbon sheets
onto his right arm
walking forward
on the Moscow streets
with an icon of St. Stephen
and bouquets of tears
at his own regrets
full of tears.

AT SOBIBOR

Carnage all around us
as my neighbor told me
about Sobibor
was liberated,
don't be surprised
that the Hell fascism created
in the war is gone
and here is a survivor
and asks me
as a favor to return
with him to the camp
as we set out for Poland
as they stamp his passport
I saw the numbers
of hatred
234678
on this artist's shoulders
snow blazes on empty fields
as a sun set on the red sky
we view the souls and bodies
hiding shadows
of dread and regret
as even the wild flowers die
Misha offers me
and a handkerchief
by frayed leaves
of my disbelief
at exile, deportation, death
everyone around me
is breathless with grief
as Misha's sister sits
to pray on the last chair.

WINTER HAPPENINGS

With sleeves
rolled down
on the desolate beach
over Cape Cod
within reach of a tourist ship
we slip away after a drive
and survive the nights
of another December holiday
of art and worship of God
safely at the shore docks
with winter campers
under a red umbrella
by the river bed rocks
searching for shells
hearing cat calls
from a teenager
with a buzz cut
eating a vanilla Sunday
trying to play
rock music
resembling Mama Cass
on a nose flute and bells
from winter happenings
he 's a tall stranger or tourist
visiting here from McGill's
Montreal campus
as he watches me I'm shaping
an abstract geometric design
on the blank canvas
with my modernist painting
of butterflies and egrets
someone else folds post cards
on her Indian blanket
another says
he's a French palm reader
an eccentric dude
named Gemini
who lives by the astrology signs
and lies in the rough
within reach
of anyone who will supply
him with "Stuff"
likes a good time
and prophecies on the go,
watches me at my bench
and for a dime recites Rimbaud.

WHEN PROUST'S TIME

When Proust's time

drifts by as a madaleine

and he softly lifts
a croissant in green tea
from the back of the pantry
or a coffee latte in cups
waking up constantly
as a nomad
from the "Plaine Monceau"
in a constant insomniac's dream
back at the country from hours
of another night and day
staying out of the rain
by hearing and sight reading
a Gregorian chant
in his half waking out
from his slumber

that now seems as an eternity

watching the dusty
blanket covering
of a laughing night snow
melt into icicles on the grounds

outside your home

he manifests a desire
to cut loose
and socialize in a bar
the one with the golden dome
and a noose for customers
as he hid in the corners
of the forbidden shut in doors
wanting take off
his pajama's robe and belt

as he paces the floor
willing only to get up

in search from the dictionary
for the library's right words

to describe the church
on Sunday at delightful Combray

now realizing it is almost four
in the early morning
as he smelt the lemon flowers
amid many birds and sparrows
who sing quietly over branches
in the narrow geranium garden

over the white leafy branches

by corridors of the Evergreen
as her branches are covering
the contrary forms of icicles

at the beginning of first light

before awesome hours ripen
and the storm is over

in the rolling luminous sun

was coming through as shadows

from the Venetian blinds

as you're closing the window
loaded with dew and frost
always walking in your hallways

feeling lost in new epiphanies
his mind has set loosed
to slowly compose
and review his night's notes
revealing a melancholy poet

yet a bit lyrical yet gloomy
in he opens
his wide spectrum
of confessed marginalized notes
on this early morning's
listening continuum
listening in his mind
to a piano sonata of Chopin
and thinking
of Saint -Saens' melody
in "The Swan"
from his "Organ Symphony"
number 3 in D minor
feeling troubled
as it dawns on him

it's a new hour
taking a few chances

as he stumbles out 

of his daybed slumber

reading what he wrote

warming up by the candles
near the thin yellow margins
out of "Remembrances
of Things Past"
as he drink a lemon juice
when he pictures the pigment
in his dry skin
of a still life portrait of himself
by Jacques-Emile Blanche
as his voice is frozen
by the cracking fireplace
as he at last puts on
the thick blue Christmas
sweater this December
given  by your late grandmother
who gave it to you
yet thinking of his loving loss
as he hears her calming voice
and of Baudelaire's "Albatross"
as he make sad gestures
over the large drawing-
room mirror undressing
and feeling a bit weightless
and in his quickened mind
falling down museum steps
in another catastrophe
of a introspective imagination
in putting up a Renoir tapestry
of retrospective paintings
visiting his masterpiece
"The Lace Maker"
at the Louvre's Paris gallery
together with thoughts
of Vermeer
as he slowly undresses again
feeling as a manikin
by the dark screens
of his boudoir photos
taking out his love letters
in uncovered business
of his betters
out of the bureau
knowing if he were
to make a late fainting scene
there will be more antics
from this passenger of art
feeling as a stranger to himself
spilling out an angry
and obscene scene
of an adolescent's delirium
in a constant drama
from an auditorium's
worst ranting nightmare
in more of a histrionic scream
as you whisper curses
listening to an recurring
auspicious theme
from a Rameau's organ sonata
number 3 in D minor
as you wish for a bicycle
to labor by the home harbor
on a novel memoir of the sea
from the last winding wave
in a span of your own
present company
Proust's makes yet another
secret vow to behave.

A BLUEPRINT OF A DAY

You may outline
what you expect
for the day
as you drink your juice
in your full glasses
but think as your time
passes by the flower garden
of tall grasses and geranium
now frozen with snow
we are by a winter's scene
on a stony street
by the Fine Arts museum
you receive an agent's call
with a familiar voice
after the vetted storm
with an invitation
and a carnation
for you to perform
at a comedy club
of your choice
with a two- part
voice of invention
as they send you out
in transportation
of your choice
in a sports car
caravan or limousine
at the last city light glows
and today's chimeras
are passing
to the star's farthest horizon
through your windows
watching the home harbor
catching the last sunset
for life is in the shadows
not needing another man
or woman to plan
your silhouette night
not having to beg
for an egg omelette
under a Christmas light.

NOMAD POET

Refusing to compromise
in the whole universe
you thrive as an exile
in every season
wrapped from your striving
in nature's reason
to make us alive
swaying by a wounded oak
or elm of accumulated snow
amid a liquid silence
when only the birds spoke
on tree branches
of photographed shadows
as we survive in exile
from the storms
enduring by a winter sun
and January thaw
in a soon warm spring
from a hinterland memory
with our riffs of jazz
working with a saw
with wood in our carpentry
or race car driving
out of our neighborhood
facing every day at risk
yet writing fiction or poetry
as a nomad at our library desk
or painting a stone pillar
in memory of an obelisk
or make a recording
with some highlights
of your year before
from your a diary on a disc.

PARIS TIME

Drowned out icons
from paintings
and murals
of Provencal
as exuberant as it says
and musical
than the great Pierre Boulez
in creative modernity,
needed inventions like the joy
of a living airy "La Mer"
in listening to Debussy,
not turbulent hours
of radical chic,
no more manifestos
or post- colonial inventions
or second rate Picasso's
for surreal imitations
rest no more
on a past provincial power,
let's try to catch a movie
with the Sixties directors
Truffaut or Clorizot
or explore the sea
with Jacques Cousteau
or read a memoir
by Renoir or Cocteau,
at least, in Paris time
let's's try to murder
a cheese or spinach croissant
put our feet up on the divan
and get a detective fiction
by Simenon or Indridason.

MOTTI MIZRACHI

Motti Mizrachi painted Jesus
on the Via Dela Rosa
others write lyrical music
in Hebrew in a chorus for us
as a Messianic composer.

ARCANGEL

Waves in the Volga
by the S.S. Pushkin
abandoned by geography
and the dark Gulag's history
in the Arcangel steppes
and sounds of Stalin's crimes
bubble up in the waves
of the Terror times
as I'm catching up
on Dostoyevsky's "Notes
of the Underground"
in the mystery and trouble
which will not disappear
nor found on love letters
saved in the Neva.

ALFRED JARRY'S ROAD

Eluding us
at the outrageous opening
of "Ubu Roi"
with the forbidden absinthe
hidden in your pocket
as a secretive spirit
wriggled under your breath
in blue wine skin cup
amid the capricious air
at this comic poet's new play
by reviewing
old conventions that will share
with Rabelais's "Gargantua"
or Fortinbras by Shakespeare
capturing a literary chapter
in a brief Paris rapture
from a flushed feverish feeling
for an artist who sincerely
is not embarrassed
by his words
for he will be a precursor
to Dada, the Surreal
and the theater of the Absurd,
though he experiences
high tension in his senses
in his solo mirage
of an original language
from powerful cultural tenses
in your own solo mirage
of an informal critical success
but not by the silence
of ingrates in the audience
in the least exception
only high praise from the Irish
play write and bard
W.E. B.Yeats
in the late embarrassing hour
as words filter out from
your early adolescence
raising you up
as you ride in a taxi
by the eldest boulevard trees
as leaves are captured
your hope is muzzled
by your worst literary enemies
as you reach the door
of the first floor
seeing your frazzled memoir
and a print of a Renoir
by your bedazzled mirror.

SINCE I KNOW

Since I also know
of your loneliness
reaching a life span
of griefs and unbelief
in black and blue
each stalking lilac
needs no back locks
on a doorway
by the first floor,
as we call on Whitman
in the Civil War
to walk by the sick bed
of a wounded veteran
with thick invitations
on the red hope chest
with poppies and carnations
it is as we suspected,
love will outlive the dead
now Whitman's poetry rested on
a literary perspective above
this wine and bread
at this miracle of December
when it starts to snow
yet there is a last geranium
seen in contrary shadows
we remember the passing sun
on the corner windowsill
for another new arrival
Walt reciting a jovial parable
from "Leaves of Grass"
without a brotherly fault
spilling out his hardy words
as a skillful bard
will outshout us
in an hourly span
as he watches to feed
a flock of sky birds
not thinking of
his own survival needs.

THE STREET POET

After being famished
and looking gaunt
before Christmas Day
Kant, the street poet
whom no one has seen
for weeks appears
in brand new gear
devouring a hot latte
from a blue plate special
of salmon fish cakes
down by the town cafe
on the dance floor
or by the bread and fruit stands
near a store of antiques
always ready on the corner
for a game of checkers
or chess
is given a cheese croissant
by my Spanish- American aunt
as he murders down a Danish
as a town celebrant
this always hand shaking
gallant soul empowering
every Beat poet lover
yet feeling lost
and not addressed
because some
have the opinion
that he is a recluse citizen,
an ex smoker
just a vanilla cake baker
trumpet player
in the town band
or a wild racing car driver,
emotional peace warrior
soap opera actor,
minstrel music maker
burly social critic,
a seasoned baseball star
or a goalie winning
hockey player
and soccer referee,
or a devotional bird admirer
philosopher, photographer
who wears a small cross
and Jewish star
outside his coat
of many colors
often called a dreamer
or a schemer
is almost crucified
that he can ill afford
to hear a span of public opinion
on his Audubon walk
by a lonely Evergreen tree
yet he sings out in every way
a chorus about his Jesus
on his guitar music strings
and will wonderfully cover us
with riffs of jazz
even as he ages
and manages to cleverly give
a shout out by our highway
as he rings in heavenly melodies
recorded from seven languages
searching for a girl friend
to make yearly amends
in the fearfully cold air
at the parking lot
he makes a reasonable Kantian
non sectarian wish
for his own commonweal
at the Church Street
Market Square
in Burlington, Vermont
he always has a reward
for us on this Christmas day.

IN BUDAPEST

On an avenue
in the heart of Budapest
at an intersection
hearing a city band
a motorcyclist
and cellist
with a bare chest
asks me (of all people)
for directions
to the local church steeple
of Mathias
where he will play Kodaly
and a piece by Massenet
based on the story of Thais
but as we get there
he tells me from his cell
his piano accompanist
cannot make it
and I offer to play
the parts
and Bel knows jazz as well
and gets me a sax gig
near the grand hotel.

ON CRANE'S BEACH

Reaching out
to three gulls
in a beach house
waiting
by a tiny manger
on Crane's beach
yet on a frozen December day
a hardy painter
is doing abstracts
asks to borrow my sunglasses
who asks me if he could
do my portrait.

A DOG NAMED RUDOLF

My Russian neighbor's dog
Sacha
a German Shepard
got the words of love
in a Chubby Checker
twist and has a tryst
in the corridors
of the alcove
now trying to play golf
takes down the picture
of the winning Chicago Cubs
after his hair is cut
at sunset
but now he wants
to drink vodka sauce
with lobster Newburg or tail,
Rudolf will not fail
to try rye bread and butter
or listen into my violin sonata
recital in the library
drawing room
as I'm performing
music by Hindemith
performing with my
accompanist Sally Carter
in spiky red heels
from next door
I do not want Rudolf
to be hurt for any reason
given it's his season and day
but what torture
to be a critic
of his every encounter
as the attic floorboards sway.

THE LIFE OF THE FRISCO KID

The buckshot life
leaves you out in the sun
as Thom Gunn
passes away,
but every day
of the year
we may in prick song rose
pluck his musical ear
still imagine with him
he is one year younger
in the town square
with lyrical songs
from his rhetoric
in poetry to hear
as he wants to pick up
the wronged waiter
who delivered croissants
vodka and juice to you
which spilled
on your new shirt
yet under the romantic stars
you are not petty or hurt
staring at him
in his Prussian blue blouse
and later at midnight
you will read to him
and others in English
of translated verse
from a German mood
with a few critics at City Lights
knowing he speaks French
too is tall and homeless
and hails from Montreal
they later sat
by lilacs, violets
and his Persian cat
on a park bench
then set sail on the Bay
in the darkness
and Thom, you
only had only to whisper "Yes"
from a poster loneliness
to spend the night.

A PASSING OF TWO

Sylvia Plath lead
a confessional path
and Ted Hughes,
poet and translator
also was a bruised woodcut
and shut out of a man
in a less than professional
manner
let's forsake
identity politics from our lips
for one Christmas holiday
assuring you it won't be
an apocalypse
of an agate banner night
needling the distance
of chance
at city lights
and exchange faith
not part company
of these two
and button hole
roses and carnations
on a lapel or pants suit
looking over the electric sign
on the highway's station
for a New Year's invitation
to the inaccessible words
of forgiveness
let us grieve and bless
as a great thorn
nestled in your toes
is removed
for Plath and Hughes
to celebrate the good news
on this proclamation
so take cover
and my invitation
of paper sheets on the bed
by a lover's metamorphosis
to write a new year's poetry
and be reborn instead.

FIRBANK

Firbank thanked
the running dog Che
and his cool cat
Nietzche
grabs a cup of red wine
near the divan bed
sups on breakfast
of frosty flakes
then suddenly awakes
to watch Divine
as Babs Johnson
following her on the T.V.
now she is up to go
and buy some gem items
of fashion taking with her :
Easter hats, gloves
mad evening gowns
poster school girl dresses
meeting her idiocentric
dramatic, eccentric friends:
Edith Massey
who played Edie
in her exhibitionist nudity
pissed off at their scatology
to make amends
in their classic frivolity
from her thinking span
when they tried to ban profanity
in midnight screenings
with Mary Vivian Pearse
as Cotton,
in 'The Dianne Linkletter Story"
"Hairspray"
apologizing to Pink Stole
now realizing how
marvelous was the movie actress
and gorgeous lover
in the "Baltimore aesthetic"
that some  critics
called gay agitprop
in their rough and ready politics
by the queen
of the screen classics editing
by taking cracks at
the lewd "Multiple Maniacs"
in a psychology of crime
against the cops
dropping on a dime
also in view of "Pink Flamingos"
whose crude sounds of wonder
inspired Kenneth Anger,
Andy Warhol, George Kuchar
in their five star
classic kitsch
of underground film antics
of a legendary clothing pageantry
meeting Divine on her way
from the Hadassah
thrift store
in once greater Baltimore
with ration cards
stolen from
ex mayor and governor
McKeldin
then read bz's one act play
about her.

RANT#2

Dismantled
by a New Year's Eve
who wishes you
to believe in her
and to take bite
of Satan's apple
tonight
dressing in her zebra
bra of sequins
she is delinquent
under the stars
of going to the bars
of feminine consequence
and in a mask
of masculine presence
with bare muscles and abs
you tussle in a persona's
awareness of moving you
in a loving preparedness
toward me,
such madness is analogous
in commensurate behavior
of a cab window's shadows
as we pay the tab
until we reach the river bed
you have fainted
made out
passed out
at the near finality
of Salome's beheading
of a john
when we deliver to loving
until dawn
dreading to have to prove
any drag out scene
of modernist obscenity
choosing a Greek chorus
whatever cause
for us we seek
in trouble without
a condom
in a double vision
of our lost humanity,
it's no loss you're missed at Mass
or hearing politicians
on the radio
not choosing to pass
as a Christian jazz player
for it's not to delay her
yet we have to get gas
in this fascinating time
we turn away from fascism
for a concrete poetry
and march on by the slab
in a charism of charity
and in romanticism of art
we all play our part
in my babble of a rant
for the ambiguous, the shy
that he/ she
will tie the knot
but will think of Jesus
even for a moment
as we awake
back on Christmas
not to forget
to take a piece
of pink marble  cake.

RANT#1

Maybe you already
once imagined
a woman was a poem
and man was prose
but like an ice sculptor
you froze
as you three took
a surreal taxi ride
from you room
to discover neither
was a prospective
bride or groom
taking off
in a denuded pressing
from a perspective
of quixotic sex
in the eccentric undressing
of a nonexistent cant
as the cab pulled up
in the snow
you were caught
in a hallucination
of this rant
with indulgence
to accept a threesome
invitation
yet you are no pretender
to any throne
for gender did not matter
as the leaves scatter
in a fickle finger and bone
of fate from a belief
in your mind set
that gives you relief
as of any religious high
that sexually, intellectually
(as Freud discovered)
by accepting in bed
not to be annoyed
that you are not straight
and your fate is to be bi
instead.

PERFECTIONIST

You wanted
in your life span

the perfect skin
the perfect lips
the perfect nose
the perfect woman
the perfect man

yet you lost
in your history
in the Gulag
Dachau
Hiroshima
Nagasaki

you lost
in the lottery
even in therapy
yet your soul
was not yet free

as your vetted goal
was to get out of poverty
for you met in the park
a  millionaire surgeon
who gave you everything

and offered you
even more perfect skin
the perfect hips
the perfect man
the perfect woman

but you died
from grief
for you believed
no one cared
in your brief life span
after all you shared
was crossed out
as it was to forget you
in your obituary.

EPSTEIN'S SHAPES
(1880-1959)

Epstein shapes
the rock
in the gangrene
milieu
in crystallized
recognition
in a cogent
subtrata recognition
beyond rhetoric
in all but stone
of a demographic
on a fingered
build up
from metronome's
clocks of imagination
of structure and sculpture
into lacquered black
and white quartered
dialectical brick part
in an orginality
from footprints
of an enigmatic century
in abandonment
and exile of disguise
from an all wise reputation
by a geometric genius
nicked on wood and metal
only by persuasion
in a natal eclectic fusion
of eternal art.

ANTHONY CARO'S TIME
(1924-2013)

Oblique hours
with blocks of paint
drifts from mirrors
clocks, curtains, cinemas
lifts in classic departures
of passages as petals
to confound the speechless
in out of focus space
on a blank canvas
in assemblages of metal.

BECKETT'S ECHO
(1909 -1989)

In the language
of snow
here in Paris
no one claims
the colossi
of your passport
in the windows
of your mind's
amphitheater
reducing vocals
in the sudden backdrop
from final moments
of an abandoned echo.

IONESCO'S NIGHT
(1909-1994)

Bucharest
in an arrested
evening mist by the snow
in a Paris dialect
bartering for words
in context
for his next play
into an anarchic city
where the kiosk is busy
near the frozen metro.

FIRST LIGHT

First light this day
in a sleep house
as two sparrows
are masked
devour bread
and drink
in liquid silence
for each hungers
and asks
in their own way.

RED DESERT

Watching "Red Desert"

remembering pamphlets

and tanks of revolution,

this Russian Decembrist

who devoured

his past of being

a duelist and cyclist

counting red and black

on the chessboard

and having a pink cake

thinks and thanks us

for a piece

murdered in adolescence.

ON BEING NOVEL

You dreamed of Balzac
demanding paper
in a panic attack
over writer's block
Honore drinking cognac
in a daily nightmare
checking his clocks
nibbling this hour
on foie de gras
offering his lover
a Christmas snuff box.

KLEE

A faint snapshot
of a climbing color
on the canvas
there is no noose
on art
all very electric
in jackstraws
of terra cotta
in a bare backed part
from a lava of paint.

PRAGUE SPRING

Watching Prague exiles
return in 1968
in the spring
captures freedom
in the matter
of scattering seed
to be planted later
when the sky admits rain
meeting a musician
in the Square
by sleep housed roads
full of stones
who asks me to play
violin if I could
spare the time
so he could bury
his grandmother
a Holocaust survivor
and a prisoner
of the regime
told me he had
a first good night of a dream
lost in symbols,signs,
ruins,shadows
orphaned as romanticism
and solitude
with plane trees taken down
below a childhood bridge
where Pavel played
and gained knowledge
known to the secret police
who showed up later
disguised with a valise
full of Pavel's data
with no explanation
for they have ways
to murder parables
in their arrival
without a provider
for our survival.

HOMING IN

Homing in
like raptor hawks
on a Wyoming night
having a Judy Garland
dream I was back
in Boston
at the Punch Bowl
trying to write
a new play on her
as my goal
with Tommy
whom Allegra
called her tiger
camping it up
as an avant-garde
revolutionary painter
who finally wakes up
with head aches
of Garland's terror
after pulling
an all night stir about her
taking pills
and painting a mural
on his high door
as he is thrilled
his art now has
his signature.

IN THE GYM

In the gym with Jim
putting on his Greek cap
returning from Athens
acting in my one act play
of a narrative modernity
based on Auden's early life
on off off Broadway
then we met up one day
to jam in my basement
he playing clarinet
and strings in a swirl
of arpeggios
with Allegra on drums
or piano
and we were a trio
as I sway
in my own tenor sax
from a back door corridor
in the grey December dawn
with a Christmas reunion.

MIKLOS RADNOTI'S FATE

Lifeless and covered
with twig, mud, and leaves
us on an earthen vessels
of Hungary's poet in blood
years after
with a memory
in a Budapest coffee house
recalling your deportation
in Bor I cannot speak
to this student any more
knowing what a betrayal
happened to you, Radnoti
in war you will survive
from your memory
in fascism's horror.

A DAY IN VENICE

The canals
are ready
Mann is mutable
the primitives
are suitable
on the canvas
thinking the futurist
like Marinetti
were advanced
but a bit crazy
and Pound
has a weird sound
on Italian radio
now I'm hearing
"The Bald Soprano"
by Ionesco
I'm receiving
photos and letters from
Jewish and Spanish pals
who are refugees escaping
for Paris
not wanting to be
post wartime collateral
here in the foggy air
as I'm directing and playing
in the "Merchant of Venice"
of Shakespeare.

IT WAS IN JANUARY

It was in January
that we met Zachary
who played woodwinds
likes what is contrary
and records from his tuba
at the A.M.
for the F..M.
tells me had a tattoo
he got in Cuba
of Che and Nietzche
as he ate a bag
of M. and M's.

BENJAMIN AT THE PYRANEES

With shaking knees
a philosopher
Walter Benjamin
escapes as far
from Nazi Germany
to the Pyrenees
with the threat
of a bet of benzedrine
as you decide
for suicide
not making it to a bar
for a whiskey
licorice or Turkish coffee
in Barcelona
remembering the auto-da-fes
hearing the Basque sky bird
who whispers to me
in seven last words
"All I want is to be free."

BASIL BUNTING'S WAY
(1900-1985)

Crazily surviving
a century
of poetry escapes
your human speech
is still alive
as your eccentric
language explores
within reach of a mystic
from the open night air
on a workout lexicon reading
discovering a music imagery
from a brushing away energy
looking out on your hallways
for a synapse of sunshine.

LOS ANGELES
(1998)

Rescued her
on my Harley
on route 66
as I met runaway Mary
the ex t.v star whose stage
name was Styx
told me had made love
with a Ram's football
stud in a L.A. motel
mud bath
after Heavy Metal player
had him/her
finding a revolver
she took out
of him/her cowboy pants,
taking another chance
at the last song and dance
telling me of her dream
in meeting Helen of Troy
wearing a cologne
from Cologne
handing her a thousand Trojans
in her bed
in an undeclared war
for the bum city street
holding onto a New Year
invitation to a low ball
blowing away her carnations
at the last Rose Bowl
under mirrors of shrapnel
from a john
of a love/hate encounter
in a uniform of disappointments
she hands me some
peppermint mushroom herbs
asks me on the curb
to drive her
to the Pasadena suburbs
as she straps herself in
on the motorcycle
telling me she dropped
a man off
with a mustache of thorns
died and was reborn
in echoes of four stories
on the tallest building
of Los Angeles
then reaches out her hand
and requests to go
Long Beach
and volunteer
as an ex junkie
at a soup kitchen
on New Year's day
meets an ex boyfriend
who use to do dope
and quotes Lermontov
is on a daily Soap
and played a harmonica
in his mouth organ
on this razor blade night.

FRANK O'HARA'S DAY

Frank O'Hara
is not here
but at the Cedar bar
having returned
with a bard
from the  muddy waves
of nights on Fire Island
burned up
with a bright stud joker
playing chess
with a pack of cards
and finding a joker
Manhattan wept for you
on the fire escape
and taxis
only dictators,
anti semites
racists despise you
the killers of Lorca
followers of
human S.S. beasts
of Nazi Germany
who hate the Beats.

KENNETH PATCHEN LIVES
(1911-1972)

Though the critics,
academics ignore you
yet the midnight lights
glow when jazz horns in
railing down
on your ignition lines
in the solo booze and blues
at the Beat of recognition
from your hardened energy
to free verse
and voice in scat
from a skeptical pen
on monster highways
built by men and women
who still stare because
Dorothy's rainbow is at Oz
we stand in awe
and grief
seeking Kenneth
in our disbelief
knowing recognition
will be  soon realized
after a lover's dream
in a poet's words
spans to cover your years
from laughter
and tears out of misfortune
as you gawk at the sky
on a sidewalk of crazy
hawks and other birds
a clever poet who lives
like Blake and Whitman
never dies.

THE BIG APPLE BITES

The big apple bites

Walt Whitman 

as he returns with a rose

from a rodeo

Lorca is made mad

in Manhattan's snow

Nathaniel West

escapes from Los Angeles

coughs and freezes

on the fire escape

as this night robs Man Ray

of lipstick for his last photo

as seven Hockney posters

go up in Harlem heaven
with Langston Hughes
reading as sons

and daughters wept by 

by Virgil Thompson's notes
from a comic in his schtick
at a club where music rocks
and murders French rolls
on an unorthodox bench
down at the waterfront docks
of thunder,grass, and dance
whiplash sustains the new rain
everything is neon green
sea lilac, indigo cobalt blue
away from Tiresias playing
a blind jazz tune
in riffs called "Oedipus"
as the headlines fizz
outside there are few brides
in Babylon
art still hangs out
its still life's
in black and white
sailing out to Ellis Island
newly vaccinated is offspring
of its citizens
outside windows
hearing chants
in lip sync blues
a Hart Crane appears
with Kenneth Patchen
over the Brooklyn Bridge
in a familiar pattern
on the welcome doors
of Manhattan.

THE LAST OF DECEMBER

On winter's burdocks
in this once daisy hinterland
small birds fade out of view
each nascent sky is grey
upon the beige meadows
as snow falls on the last
day of December
now on branches of snow
falling with white shadows,
and all our beliefs rise up
from childhood dreams
visions, prophecies
and a poet remembers
to pray on his knees.

ALFRED JARRY'S GIFTS
(1873-1907)

In your own dialect
and dialectics
you are caught
red nosed
and you direct your
joy in your French play
" Ubi Roi"
then after midnight
slicking back your hair
into the bed covers
under silk music sheets
left over from a past romance
of your last of lovers
with the last performance
in song and dance
when your Paris cafe
opens early with Chopin
concertos playing inside
offering your erased lips
and legs full of cold cream
not wasted on words
of your own apocalypse
by the snowy window
with the sulking cat
in dark shadows
waiting for a dish
of fresh milk
drawing back
silk curtains
of these window panes
tinting snow
in first light
though it now rains
Alfred in slender disguises
behind pink eyelids
your life in proximity
in the vicinity
of a male torso
and female busts out
of masked cartridge belts
and a mouth is a belly
as the titmouse of a big city
waiting to embarrass every
Freudian stalactite
carrying to sweep away
an annoying Marx plucks away
at a great reptile
anteater and smelts
in the theater aisle
of a blindfolded politician
as mechanical starfish
appear on a bright Jesus tree
or the darkness of a sight
on a lone Judas tree
Jarry's sad nightly pantomime
with a new paradigm
of a backslidden Christian
pleading to look back
refusing Vichy
peas and carrots
as foreign antibodies
to offer a death warrant
for another John the Baptist
not to man pleasing
or being embarrassed
on Salome's platters
when life or death matters.

AFTER THE STORM

After the storm
evades me
in the countryside
hiding to be warm
in a red brick dorm
as an academic
by the river docks
and deciding to enter
a new passage
in my diary
writing Thursday
on a page
when a dizzying
dusty spider
has fallen
in a single spot
near the anchor
of my kayak
shadowing my daybreak
behind my back
he's caught in the wood
here by harbor boats
floating in motion
by my neighborhood
on the Atlantic ocean
life seems to be at peace
as darkness disappears
near first light
and we increase asking
for our blessing by the sea
as birds are landing
on Evergreen branches
in the morning
rising from our eccentricities
scouting out rumors
like jokers in cards
fall beside me
near the new flakes
awakening
in a dawn of snow
near hayricks
there are oven birds
a dozen of them
we are speechless
reaching out in a language
of forgiving instead
hearing cursing
I'm wanting to pray
here at the river bed
by saying a blessing to God
on the Cape Cod beach
even for the living memory
for the dead.

PASSAGES

Passages on the sea
as we glide in my kayak
yet far back in my mind
I'm in a still life
staring at pages
of my drawing
in outlines of my art
and poetry
with a language
of jazz riffs departing
over human speech
which never ages
here on the beach.

EARLY MORNING

Early morning
hearing Grieg's
"Solveig Song"
on the radio
we're watching
the flakes from the sky
from my window
watching the soccer league
on the football field
near their locker room
shielded from the snow
and my cat's shadow
on the flagstones
as we awake
hoping nothing
will go wrong
as I'm atoning
at the Cape Cod point
playing riffs from my sax
trying to meditate
and relax
exercising my joints
and bones.

SOMETIMES

Sometimes
we do not get it
not forgetting
even at death
when our life
is set in knots
even from the wonders
of the undergound
admitting the birds
are flying South
in the December sky
emitting sounds
remembering
our poetry's words
from my mouth
as a span in thunder
of riffs from my sax
reaching out to the Bay
of a Cape Cod beach
as dawn breaks
and we relax
this morning hour
catching my breath
with human speech
awaking out to God.

WHATEVER HAPPENS

Whatever happens
a clever poet will turn
an embrace
into a love letter
discerned a grace
in every tenuous appeal
we will yet reveal
something better
not a pollyanna
to admit as an observer
a secret loneliness
but to bless and seal
a poet's speechlessness.

THE DAY

The day
pulls its stop
on the sled
feeling like Alyosha K
in the Russian woods
as a heavy snow drops
on twigs, trees, and leaves
its icy shadows
of his footprint visitation
heads toward the monastery
saying goodbye to Dimitri
from the neighborhood
carrying an invitation
to a quiet villa
and a way out to the country.

WE ARE SILENT

We are silent
as the seven returning stars
in radiance
from the third heaven
as the jazz poor
play riffs at the gates
of the everlasting door
asking for the bread
of heaven
and for the unsaid
saying a word of prayer
over the wine
among ashes
delaying a melody
of memory for the dead.

IN A SUNDAY SKY

Icy veteran names

on my Evergreen

flames by the glass ceiling

as frosty birds pass by

in a full length of life

revealing lost elements

that ran from my past words

of strength by the chimney

up the past smoke 

and crossed 

my poetry words

of memory

in the Sunday sky.

AT THE WALL

Playing kickball

even the snow

sticking along shadows
on the poster-glad wall

when taut geraniums

in the hot sun

will grow
wanting a second self
or a third
wishing every day
for a poet's word
to put on my shelf.

DE CHIRICO'S INFLUENCE
(1888-1978)

De Chirico influenced
the Neo Classical,
Baroque and Rococo
and in the metaphysical realm
of philosophy:
Schopenhaur
and Frederich Nietzche
in comedy and mystery
among the female torso
in honor or horror
of a bourgeois little man
in a male bowler hat,
learning to discern
that classical architecture
in Turin and Milan
painting domes, pyramids
or origami
and influencing five star movies
by Antonioni, and in Zurlini's
"Desert of the Tartars"
in visiting his friends
from Paris; from Magritte
who became a designer
after viewing a paper factory
in his evocative and poetic
"Song of Love"
or the relaxed painting
 "The Grail Metaphysical Interior"
after meeting Yves Tanguy
Max Ernst , Balthus,
or Salvador Dali
finding his "New Objectivity"
for prisms in his more orthodox
style by the rocks
of Greece or Italy
in his "Magic Realism"
as being enriched
by the"Futurists"
like Umberto Boccioni,
Giacomo Balla or Marinetti
with his "Manchini"
of faceless mannequins
dress making
or working with textiles
in new style for strings,
encompassing as a painter
while working on "The Seer,"
meeting Carlo Carrra,
Morandi, Max Klinger
doing enigmatic landscapes
and shapes of  contrary interiors,
enjoying Jean Cocteau's
indoor ballet designs,
knowing the innovative poets
as the literary path outlines
of Ashbery and Sylvia Plath.