THE NEW YORK SCHOOL

Cousin Sonny
the success of the family
while at the New School
before he would go out
to Hollywood
introduced me to the artists
of the abstract expressionist school
the good poets O'Hara,Schuyler
De Niro, father of the actor
where I met them after his classes
together with the German exile
Hans Hoffman, whom the Nazis
axed for his modernism,
there I was in the younger set with
Koch,Larry Rivers, Jane Freilicher
Barbara Guest,passing glasses
to Nell Blaine in a wheel chair
from Gloucester
it's only the best company
for Sonny,
at raucous night parties
in Manhattan in my youth
where with a child's glove
I boxed in my own footing
dancing away with models,
twenty years my senior,
where I met Norman Mailer
who took me up the roof
of the loft's penthouse
to heal me of my fear
of heights.