EXILED IN PARIS

The scattered waters
off coastal leaves
shiver on its river black ice
surrounded and notched
by windy murdered trees
as the smoke of a rising fog
rises under a deep lantern light
a December's Thursday dawn
moving a morning breeze
along a rocky Seine
as here in 1968
on a  park bench
playing my riffs
on a pawned alto sax
watching the underbrush
after a storm
removes many branches
as the daily dog watcher
named Jacques Pierre
by the river bed
with horned-rimmed glasses
is reading a French poem
from a Proust admirer
at noon delivering
a problematic love letter
far from the "red"suburbs
telling her
about his student film review
of Renoir's
"Diary of a Chambermaid"
bartering for warmth
as two cats unnerve him
near my latest paper memoir.

ERICA MORINI'S MELODY

Walking in a childhood sun
near Symphony Hall
in Boston
with a cheese croissant
from my aunt Sarah
in one hand
and my violin case
in another
to hear Erica Morini
play the Tartini sonata
number one in G
and speaking to her
after the recital
her voice still resonates
with me in a melody
greeting bz.

BENJAMIN'S GHOST

In a minefield of truths
Walter Benjamin's ghost
speaks in a rhetorical
footnote of a mirror's
darkness eating dust jackets
in a historical shelf
over a Berlin used bookstore
sign of the post war era
boasting of a first edition
which survived a bonfire
of stealth and confiscation
from a stranger's wealth
in corridors of knowledge
and their demolition
in no silent voice to digress
on Elysium's invitation
to peruse at a minimum verse
and to recite "Kaddish"
with a definition's "Yes"
on days still in mourning
on a sackcloth of phrases impaled
at assembled rail yards
among fresh breaths murmuring
from a comrade bard
scurrying about about
the hedge of spring mums
at an underbrush of words
to escape a timorous field
spotted by a meadow lights
without anything to gain,
gamble or lose at cards
in a prophetic refrain heard
by the sickly incarcerated
object d'art head tables
in pickpocket uniforms of death
shaped in many ephemeral
regrettable syllables
of your echoes
in a canticle to pass
over nature's miracle
near furrowed branches
you,Benjamin
ashen and selfishly lacerated
while being followed
in discovering a baited trap
crushed on a dog's path
once of snow
up the mountain road.

SEBALD'S LAMENT

The last wind called
over Germany
with Sebald's
lament facing
on mine
over the last window
in our journey
of x7604387
numbers written
on our wrist
with a middle aged
stigmata of branding,
as we have no vendetta
of stranding history's
invoice of a pendulum
crossing the garden
in a Bavarian boyhood
lost in the momentum
of stored up words
across a page
of our father's language
in a dead bolt of crime
from iron and steel works
at a crematorium's
neighborhood of time.

TIME SPENT

Time spent
on a park bench
composing a sonata
in B major
for clarinet and piano
in the French quarter
of an hour of my era
in New Orleans
without regret
hearing a refrain
in the riffs Coltrane
by a crooked street
it starts to rain
in the last days
of November
my dawn in knots
at a cabinet of memory
in forget-me-nots
of nostalgia.

DOWN IS NOT UP
(Encomium for e.e. Cummings)

Down with the collective
let us just live for
and adjust to
our creative circumstances
forgetting the stupor
in the long human story
that our prayer language
without any consistory
will engage to forgive us
for our twentieth century's
totalitarian history
as we sing out at the mike
an unlikely jazz chorus
with riffs on sax
with e.e. Cummings
as if to make us relax
when we madly squandered
our age in sectarian sedition
from a hundred bogus ways
in living and diving
like on a swan wings span
upon the ocean's torpor
as he motions his wings
for us to be free
as in a mirror seen
from our life's abyss
when we in our lethargy
with several chances
change from past strife
as in a metamorphosis
of everlasting energy
within a dawn of dances
knowing our down time
is not up
as we can drink
from our own can or cup
and not be sorry
to think individually
arising from our branches
in a sleepy hollow
of a fir or juniper tree.

JUAN SANCHEZ PELAEZ'S TIME
(Passed away Nov. 20,2003)

Juan Sanchez Pelaez's time
in the America's field
of nature and words
no longer
hidden among seminars
of younger poets
behind a mountain of stars
when poor angels sing
by twelve bells
of a deserted church steps
as a mandolin plays jazz
in the rain soaked wind
down winding streets
of favellas
as ten children are hiding
from the general's round-ups
on the roads of beggars
who locate their brides
in rustic villages
from an earth's heat wave
welcoming all brothers
and sisters to your wedding
greeting them
in their own languages
betrayed by the world
dying of thirst or hunger
when your mother arrives
in a pawned black shawl
fresh from her husband's
funeral in Caracas
brings her red apple seed scent
of life's unspoken promises
in a broken soup tureen
played as a torturer's
repaired tire wheel
in a revolutionary parade
from a painted red tambourine
in memory of the dead.

ABANDONMENT

Here but in the fever
and favor of God
hearing the abandonment
of the vanished cry
among vanquished and lost
in their banishment
amid the souls of the slain
calling from the heaven sent
hovering over rain
hidden from
the celestial inward fires
uncovered by
elemental spirits
and desirous
of the poet's consolation
in sighs of ephemeral lament.

NO LONGER

No longer a stranger
to the framed hour
in a ferment of words
from my painted language
at this gated
Cape Cod village
amid the indolence
of a snow shower
watching the sky
by the tall dune meadow
now playing tunes
on my soprano sax
in my once scorched mouth
on the back porch
trying to relax as I watch
a slow flight of blackbirds
as castaways range
in the hidden unnamed furrow
will migrate to the South.

HUBERT ROBERT:PAINTER

Sharing your ravishment
as a painter of landscape,
canals and ruins
you shape an age
of rape, banishment
amid bacchanals and revolution
in a language of demolition
among Royalty and prison
your loyalty was to art
in a versatile definition
of a bravura style
as a water colorist
and garden designer
among prisoners
in a conflation
as your nation's pundit
amid the mystic grays
with the poets
Andre Chernier
Antoine Roucher
and the princess of Monaco
in your capriccio
at last fallen to apoplexy
with your last brush in hand
such was your past discipline
once called by Diderot
"Robert of the Ruins."

SOME LIVE

Some learn to live
for their own self
for a discovery
to earn their wealth
or share
others surrender
their soul to chance
or to the state surveillance
and think to pretend
they have no control
in stealth
over their own fate
enjoying the body
covering up good meal
with food and drink
to marvel in a baking sun
with a hot toady
they think at carnival
in this neighborhood
to make a good deal,
some live for the Lord
to praise His pardon
yet hoping for a reward
others are mechanical
who build and grow
a botanical garden
among the Capistrano birds
who visit
Baldassare's mysterious
underground in Fresno
others reveal their words
to share a wondrous sound
of a poet composing
with lines of everlasting verse
that you will know
will immediately set to jazz
when you have found the notes
from a related soprano sax
blown in an understated universe
as you relax with hope
with Aries on your horoscope
says it's is a fire sign
in now well known
from a series of quotes
that you can tell
has its pagan origin
in a Picasso like design.

WHERE WERE YOU,NOV 22, 1963

A neighbor asked me
were you,bz
the day J.F.K.
was assassinated,
now remembering that day
Nov. 22, 1963 with Zane
an American science student
waiting for me at Orly
only to put on the T.V.
in Paris
hearing of J F.K's assassination
now your  new roommate
was being delivered
a dear John
and embarrassing note
on a dead letter head
believing his love life
was over
but not his anger
quoting Rimbaud
dropping his lover's quote
in the river bed
of the Seine
feeling like she was just
a mistress for a semester
or was Zane just
one of her clients.

FRAGMENTS
(for Edmund de Waal)

Dazzling fragments
in your parents time
seventy five years ago
since the Nazis
took over Vienna
your life stored
in memory
and archives inspection
you became
a porcelain maker
from a Japanese connection
soon your objects
will be on exhibition
in America
as you are searching
for your identity
remembering the looting
of your family's wealth
by exuberant fascist rants
of stealth and lies
as he writes
'' The Hare with Amber Eyes''
with all his tension
in his artistic invention
juxtaposed with Picasso,
Fontana and Miro
you also love
the German poet Paul Celan
as you go on in secret
watching the pendulum
of this age's passing clocks
without any regrets in part
by your interposing
anything even slightly unorthodox
in a runny metamorphosis
of liquid silence
forming reality and humanity
in a spotlight paradox
from the momentum of art.

YEATS' LEGACY

His theatrical
urban eyes redden
when he is bed ridden
for behind his Celtic
forbidden winding vision
opens a cyclic immortality
as this critic says
"a clever poet's hands breath
glows on his words
and will never fail
in a metamorphosis
to atone for human kind
nor will his Gaelic dream,''
Yeats cannot shed his wish
for an Irish republic
even as his cult of personality
still rises by the misty lake
reflected his humanity
as a bird awakes
over Innisfree's paradise
rising above nature's miracles
by a lone selfish Adamic tree
searching for Eve,
let love arise by his bones
and be Yeats' legacy
we who believe
there is no death
in the wise.

WITH MY TELESCOPE

Resting with my telescope
by my snowy window
hopeful of my lecture
at a colleagues seminar
on Thursday next noon
prepared at my studio attic,
sticking here
amid the cool woodsy air
hoping to view
a shadowy star
about the harvest moon
yet I'm thinking about
what Picasso said,
when discussing culture
for our art's colloquy
''You become what you are."

WE LIVE

We live by the waters
over Cape Cod
seeing the homeless
in the woods
some in squalor
today asking others
for change or a dollar
knowing an activist
unveils his spirit words
and change
like St. Francis
my comrade
who deposits his verse
for generations to come
for whom nothing
without love is strange
in his poet's consolation
as he feeds the birds
on harvest fields
where crimson leaves
fall from the birches
only to arrange his words
in thanksgiving
from his wish to rejoice
like my own heart
with one Beat voice
to impart and believe
in forgiving
as he washes the feet
of sisters and brothers
in a sacrifice to God.

HEARING BACH

Waking up
Sunday morning
hearing Bach's
"Coffee Cantata"
while partaking
from a bone China cup myself,
imagining I'm in Liepsig
thinking of all lyrical,
musical kegs of wealth
you have given me
drinking in
all the  bubbled hidden dregs,
extending the olive branch
reaching out from the table
with candid fabled quotes
of forbidden griefs
played under these piano legs
in miracle quarter notes
and made to beg and barter
from my boastful beliefs
to have been reviled
and defiled,
knowing the charter  of life
and language of the exiled
now reconciled
to the Lord's loving relief
once sown as wild oats
returning back to you,
yearning in repentance
as if a poet needs to atone
as children abandoned by sleep
in a deposited deep slumber
from a yawning metamorphosis
when in my kitchen
pantry's closet
making toast, cheese
eggs ,sausage and coffee
this dawn of a raw December.

LISTENING

Listening to Casals
play Bach on his cello
evening sheds its light
as songbirds cross the sky
in a throng going South
as if in a last lament
of our own heartbeat
in a murmur of love
from our own mouth
spoken in a language
with no written words
in a melody over
Venice's icy canals
and many convent's high bells
as the wind's breeze
motions the crimson leaves
to be sent off Oak trees.

STAN,THE MAN

Inside the perimeter

of the locker room
Stan, the man

with his quicker moves

of the basketball court

amazed at his moves

and all his shots

like Michael Jordan

secure in his spots
with his business fans
in the stands

grins with laughter

after his skin in the game
moves us and he reacts
as any character actor
with the camera on
in a colorful video
at this gambling den
in Reno, Nevada
always making bets
by the hallway's nets
not taking the losing blame
as any good killer star
and smooth operator would,

then we play checkers
though quieter
I'm taking it all in
as a poet on the chin

to see you win again.

DECEMBER DAYS

You've suspected

the wind of the pine trees

will soon be white

inspected in the morning air

awaking from an echo of snow
as flakes are falling
like the stars all night
over the covers of tree limbs 

yet a poet is here
on December days
painting words

by these meadow woods

along the ephemeral Cape's shore

my back to the wind

anchoring my orange kayak

in the narrow home harbor

circling the four sparrows

with my camera
often hanging out
for hours
by the birch branches
amid the gallow birds
who land on the leaves
of steep waters

my voice in deep memory
of trampled grassland
amid wild flowers
over these soft islands.

ANNOUNCEMENT:
WM. BLAKE

From an announcement
recalled out by narratives
of live romantic reality
by a tree of life
from a starred reputation
of a once literary sky spy
who has repented
from all human regulations
and sent out from angel wings
from repented refutations
on a supplement of critical matters
with poetic information
and a musical heart's descant
working to compliment
and take apart a rose guild
on soft white paper invitations
in a shout out by William Blake
whose poetry, art and prose
often scatter to depart
with lyrical hidden truths
wisely breaking out above
in a musical third heaven
admitting in blue dyes
from copper plates
of colorful deposits
that a practical lover
may awaken in a cover
for a prevalent innovation
in a whimsical state
of reformation before our eyes
among all library miracles
as your arbitrary language
of a waking paradise
waits on miracles
that the Word will disclose.

AT THE LORD JEFFREY INN

Waiting on my sleep to be over
to visit Emily Dickinson
here at this Amherst morning
with a rose or two to deliver
to you on your grave
in a sodden greensward field
knowing your spirit
assails and prevails on me
this assiduous season
as you gave me another
Autumn by watering leaves
falling from Elms
in a rain swept dawn
to hear your voice
inform me over soft verses
in a shepherd's field memory
of a brother poet's walk again
on the Common.

NIGHT BOUND

In the last drift
away from the islands
my orange kayak lands
to be anchored
on the Autumn sands
near the airy birch woods
by the crimson Evergreens
and alder trees
as two deer scatter
in a memory of arid earth
the new breeze
rises though the echoes
of the home harbor trees,
only your verse consoles
the children on the playground
by a once sunshine of a forest
over the river starred beds
amid the hidden cloudy mists
covering the darkness of waters
as fugitive storm clouds move
in a chaos of snow flakes
along an estuary
as silence falls for the night
near the meadow fields
by the greensward tall dunes
amidst shadows
of the next first light.

THE FALL

Praising ponds
with hard ice fishing nearby
as rivers and cedar trees
a melody
has been raised
in the mad wind
off the Coast
a visiting city bard
is blowing riffs
from his tenor sax
as leaves from
off the Cape's waters
has voiced its breeze
now the poet has relaxed
on a bench over the shore
reading a French novel
under a lunar sky
eating bon bons and almonds.

THE AUTEUR

The auteur can't stop
feeding his aching fever
and thirst for blueberries
popcorn and gum drops
as his amateur premier film
on Chopin
opens behind the curtain
and he watches it
practically from his knees
on the edge of his seat
at the front of the balcony
as the stage lights are out
yet we lift our critical eyes
on the first snow flakes
covering the fir trees
near our green and red hedges
a poet plays a poet's jazz riffs
by the river beds
as a few children awaken
to deliver Christmas gifts.

A MORDANT LEAF

As a young pioneer
stuck for a season
near an Autumn's nest of herons
in nana's old neighborhood
thrust into a crimson leave
of reverie under the sunshine
when the Neva is always new
drinking a dark kvas
and water dipped into wine
with a slice of peasant bread
as the breeze pardons
me by the rock garden
hearing a morning lark
under the first light trees
doing a zen puzzle
and chanting an aria
of Donizetti's
"Daughter of the Regiment."

AT FIVE

At five years old arriving
at the Boston music school
without a formal invitation
while outside
Commonwealth Avenue
other fellows and gals
are playing touch football
to keep
November's athletics alive
others are conducting
to prepare and survive
an audition
students are doing addition
and multiplication tables
I'm able to figure out
how to play this triangle
a tiny instrumental ploy
for the Haydn "Toy" Symphony,
and trying out
the lyrical cello
timpani and percussion,
helping get out a free edition
of an orchestral chapter
in an appreciation course
in the knowledge
at sight reading
amid solfeggio
and hidden harmony
of the piano
with my dispassionate
uncle and aunt
teaching us
amid the fashionable
school hallways
by overhearing
a critic's discussion
and always being au courant.

LEONARD COHEN'S PASSING

Sinking into a voice
of poetry, prose and song
embracing the earth's knoll
in London,Manhattan
all through Montreal
the world misses you
this Fall as you take
your leave but not your soul
in a time to remember
this November,2016
of an uneasy peace for all.

A MONDRIAN

Mondrian has splashed
in an unforeseen orange
and lemon color
with a wash and sponge
in a landscaped hand
with neon butterflies
fused in a luminous voice
from an organized mind
in touch with a choice nature
with some splashing
from wings
in a former Dutch painter.

IN A RAVINE

In a ravine
overwhelmed with rain
in the darkness and dirt
by rocks and stones
from Spain
all the way to Kiev
in the Ukraine
pushing out bones
of hurt bodies
from the earth
by the shield
of the endlessly slain
between tree spruces
of Herod's open spaces
in a dearth of evidence
trees need a monument
to those involved
sent to a firing squad
of annihilation
embedded in a breeze
out in a winding of faces
from a century's darkness
out of the ease of the nations
in these open spaces
out of fourteen stations
of God
who will not confess
any human deliberations.

WHITMAN'S DREAM

In greensward blades
cutting out
what our grey skies admit
facing civil war's casualties
amid horsefly fields
of lost humanity's shields
over Achilles' heels
time restores the wounded
under soldier's knees
from our dead brothers
all Union in the rain
in Whitman's dream
from Lincoln's Brigade
in a future free Spain,
Walt's eyes permit us
the forbidden faults
of hidden hatred
behind the defenses
to bare it in riddled bodies
in vaults of a poet's grit.

TIME
(for Hart Crane)

Time for a poet
to emerge
from the language conduit
in a veiled shore
from a language without limits
informing the sea's mirror
we are ready on Cape Cod
among broad- leaved vapors
still surfacing at the edge
for our anthology pod
into a faint corridor voice
gracing an echo floating
off the circular Encantadas
with an underground choice
of knowledge to fulfill
in Melville's logs
flowing and flowering
over Florida bogs rising
that towers of God.

WE KEEP THINKING

We keep thinking
in shock waves
along the wind cowed ocean
in my orange kayak
of underside blue
that today
everything can be new
and in wonder and trembling
as an enormous rainbow motions
to us on the sandy beach
of Cape Cod's shadows
when a red winged black bird
soars on the dewy branches
reaching out to children
in the home harbor
hiding in first light windows,
this bird sent out from God
is whistling in grey clouds
making us transparent
from the arbors of trees
in the storm lashed hours
from the wind's distraction
of a warm Southeast breeze
to give us a exhuberant
earthy satisfaction.

PUT ON

Put on
by this world
system
with its cold faces
by my mirror
in the hallway
as I put on
my butterfly tie
and German heavy metal
set aside
as I'm out the door
yet feeling unusually astute
as my mind races
before today's poetry slam,
wishing always
to be mute in the sun
overwhelmed by
a Beat's mutual slam
away from personal
and mortal self-destruction
with parental expectations
in today's present company
higher than the azure sky
in my mental day dreams
like the bard William Blake
together with the great "I Am"
and the Danish philosopher
Soren Kierkegaard,
yet it seems I am secretly
expecting to be a star
in great measure
of perpetual motion
on the movie set's big studio
of my Cousin Sonny,
a great publicity director,
taking easy walks
by the Pacific ocean
with actors in the arts
not forgotten
or verboten
vouching for me
on family couches
with stage managers
and a coach set to
watch me
on the hot seat
in my teenage years
with my actor's parts
in my hands
as I'm sledding
down the snowy hills
away from the badlands
to get to an audition
in "Hamlet."

STEPHEN CRANE'S BADGE

In a time of America
when longing for peace
exposed
as your red badge
worn today as poppies
on your own Joseph's
coat of courage
in an open boat
traveling over the sea
as all cloudy day stars
were deeply etched
all over the map
in innocence
from a language of liberty
but who could now grasp
Nagasaki,
Dachau
the Gulag.

MORE THAN WE REALIZE
(for Margaret Atwood)

You walk by strange hills
across the woods and lake
in a wide space
not abandoned
by the thrill of words
of what survivors expect
in a language
of a metamorphosis
knowing Margaret Atwood
was apart of this.

ALLEN TATE'S WORLD

Deserted by printed moments
by the dawn
flirting by shadowy winds
in an early homecoming
as spring sparrows
and small birds
who headed south
in the Fall
by river beds
Tate repented by mouth
with love of language
on a world for words
as someone has represented
that transform our earth
admitting the dawn sky.

LUCAN'S BIRTHDAY
Nov. 3

Lucan, a Roman poet
nephew of Seneca
wrote Medea
and Pharsalia
lived under Nero
in a ground zero game
for whatever
regime we live under
words make us alive
we clever poets go on
even in the worst of times
we survive the sounds
of red and brown
of all cursed human crimes
in our own undergrounds.

ODYSSEUS ELYTIS DAY

November third
Odysseus under a blank
verse blanket
above a tortured world
at war with itself
yet you refusing
the clenched fist
of the fascists
in censorship
or dictatorship
in your wrists
your words closing
as islands
in a peaceful Greek
neighborhood awake
a painter lifts his canvas
greets a poet
who aches with deep eyes.

TOWARDS DAWN

A blind highway light
towards dawn
all through a packed night
the winds of November move
on crimson leafy tree branches
though a jackknifed icy rain
against the glass
planning to visit another poet
in the city streets
who needs courage
to go on.

WHEN APPLES FALL

When apples fall
from the trees
now with luminous leaves
in crimson arrangements
my mind goes back
to many harvest of sheaves
where Walt  Whitman rests
near the big muddy river bed
finds a penny and a diary
as he notices
a  red winged blackbird
on the fir branches
in the forest back woods
visiting his many brothers
fresh- faced yet injured
in whom America believes
by the Civil War sounds
scattered over our landscape
watching letters delivered
from the railroad underground
as he exhibits good will
to shape our poetic colors
on an Autumn's first light
singing tunes
in the grey dawn chill
with the sun reflected here
in words of earthy love
expressed in thrilling passages
to another body.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES
(To HONOR THE MEMORY
OF THOSE SOULS IN GERMANY,
NOV. 9TH 1938)

In different degrees
of conspiracy theories
these ideas emerge
when the world is cold
and there is no sun
enfolded in new dark ages
where sparks of light fire up
and marks the ignorant
in language of the age
who choose the imbecilities
and phrases of simplicity
rather than confront reality
of a complex time
it's easier to have
the warring authorities
conduct an inquisition
from their position of power
or cower at an auto da fe
or at a Hun burning of books
by an arrest in the Black Forest
than to read between the lines
of a misunderstood crime of libel
toward a Christian Bible
for here on November the ninth
we remember the night of glass
and refuse to learn any lesson
from any politician
wielding a slogan and gun
but stand with the Jews
though we know the cost
for we remember what
the Nazis conspired to do
in the Holocaust.

VOICE AT THE NYC MARATHON

The voice
of Emerson,
Whitman
and Thoreau
in my mind's pattern
to reverberate in my spirit
with the trembling sun
over the marathon runners
as a poet greets a priest
from Boston
on November Sixth
in Manhattan.

A SOLITARY POET

A solitary poet
framed against
a solidarity wall
of flower children
from Manhattan
going to L.A.
for auditions
without preconditions
for a future
pattern of a star
on a walk of fame.

MONTALE'S ROAD

Verse which escapes
by the birches,
Eugenio stands
by the tall dunes
now at first light
with rain on the window
unlocking images
in a vision
of abandonment
from the fields
by the Milan cottages
in a camouflaged
shadow by
the skating rink.

UNGARETTI'S LEGACY

A savant
of culture
and servant
of literature
you spoke
of the Levant
Alexandria
and Italy
with Latin roots
you finally found
your own shadows
and underground sounds
in your poetry's picture
after cleaning  up
fascism's boots.

ANAIS NIN IN PARIS

Everything they taught
you on Naples St.
in Paris
to embarrass
or harass you on arrival
it at least made you think
beyond the voyeur romances
and alliances of your youth
the winks of the guys
in the skinny hallways
like shrinks in disguise
or about survival in analysis,
you were always under cover
Anais Nin,
for life was a killer
unmasking even a kiss
from your lover, Henry Miller.

FRENCH TALE

Anais Nin
enjoyed reading
her soul friend
Henry Miller
after a sunrise in Niece
now laughing together
and going to the opera
tonight to hear Thais
by Jules Massenet
with all her Paris bias
she offends and will embarrass
Anais still has a sensitive nature
to control her creativity
often with a bravura
for to console is her proclivity.

AN UNEASY SLEEP

An uneasy sleep
up in improper Vermont
with a deep dream
of ice fishing
hearing my aunt's
copper pans on the stove
making croissants
in her Bread and Breakfast
no one can stop her
chafing at the bit
to help her nephew poet
in her determined attitude
so fast in her tracks
as she gets out her food
also to the hungry multitude
who line up in her pantry
while all I want
is my poetry to get perfected
in adverb and noun
to reflect my sanguine nature
of a Beatitude
in town and city
to have God
crown us in shadows
of a country road
as I with calm ease
rake and take
my fallen leaves away
turned by now all crimson
on this Fall day
amid the wonders of sound
from birds ,squirrels and bees
who drink from the fountain
and all over the Maple trees
yet by the canyon
of the Green Mountains
I write out my verse
in an Autumn dawn
in my own language
by nature's colorful leafage
in the underground's universe.

THIS WALT

This Walt
wrote for newspapers
and was often unemployed
he did not care
what other people thought
and was not easily annoyed
visited the injured troops
who fought
during the Civil War
comforted the soldier boys
to share his poetry
a democratic man of the city
though without friends
except his humanity
stuck together
a partisan
with a great memory
of the Village to make amends
back in Manhattan
living with simplicity
and lack of luxury
out in the country often
by the riverbanks
rather than at the steeple
we give a pattern of thanks
as we shake hands
to Walt Whitman
a man of the people.

FRAGMENTS

Fragments
in the cross hairs
by blueprints
and ciphers
in a memory
of words
at scope
into a dictionary
from the masses
of solicitation
in identities
of languages
from a Beat.

AT THE BISTRO

Having a spinach croissant
and German rolls
my aunt prepared
within our coffee klatch
speaking up
at the microphone
near the Bistro bench
up in Vermont
reciting the French bards
Baudelaire,Verlaine
Valery and Eluard
then reading
my own quatrains
quoting my maxims
translated into Spanish
after feeding the birds
hiding from the snow
I'm feeling like Saint Francis
with an anointing
in the spirit of a jazz poet
sensing a metamorphosis
of sax riff notes
from vanishing the quotes
of my words.

AT THE VILLAGE GREEN


Between Concord
and Lexington we wander
in the country
with our flickering sunglasses
now we are hailing a taxi
to journey
over the sunny bridge railing
here over at the Hawthorne
Alcott, Emerson
and Thoreau estates
who once read
between their lines
in a divine proverbial
American language
as today's children
are being taught their words
after school
by muscular tutors
who outshout us
by playing as stars of soccer
back at the Village Green
after sharing  cups
of an Indian herbal tea
and bran muffin
now we taking selfies by
dark Evergreen branches
as red -winged blackbirds
and larks cover azure skies
here by my river bed kayak
wanting to catch the sun
rising up as first light drips
over the first icy branches.

AT THE WOODS

Mushrooms found
by campers in the woods
of Vermont
on the other side
in an inlet
of the Green Mountains
wanting for waters
in a fountain
with a hawk's footprints
leading us by the landscapes.

ELECTRIC CAR

We did not drive far
in the electric car
but it was fun
for an hour,
imagine when we
in a space capsule
will shoot to welcome
us to Mars.

SWIMMING SHADOWS


Swimming shadows
off the darkened Cape
as a silent weight
heightened
by weight under my sail
turned out to be a shape
out from porthole windows
it was a shark
and a humpback whale.

IN COUNTIES

In counties and towns
up and down the map
you must ask yourself
with defenseless faces
in your unruly masks
of darkness in a fashion
if you will go out tonight
after a nap and sleep
with a passionate costume
and quote Edgar Allen Poe
in a luminous task to lighten up
the secret language
that you will show.

THE LIVING

The living frog
needs a leg up on the pond
by the Louisiana swamp
near my friend's bayou ranch
as a hawk rises
near an avalanche of stars
in the darkness
by corridors
of alligators
who romp by
as this poet investigator
says to the frog,
I will write my poetry
about you in my blog.

ENCOUNTER

A Beat's encounter
in a counter clock-wise
blitzkrieg of slam verses
while listening
on my recording
to Grieg's piano concerto
at the gig backstage
while I manage
to play alto sax
in a storm of riffs
from my language
off stage.

SOME MISFORTUNE


When some misfortune
has begun to overpower us
when our lives
are like a sparrow rescued
between my hands
and knees
and I'm on all fours
in the sand's narrow garden
by a June' yellow crocus
and heavy wild red roses
in the Arden woodland
where I scurry
by the Charles river bed
for some of us seek pardon
others turn away
or hurry to flee in doors
instead,
yet I prefer no old wounds
to reappear
as my initials outlast on trees
or simply ignore any vanity
as in Shakespeare's fast wit
as a sore will vanish
in a night's jazzy bacchanal
after the laughter of a Jesuit,
yet I'm here to rescue and save
those of us who are hurt
by changing our better nature
and to behave
even in the dirt,
or simply to gently flirt
or read a lovely poetry
of the Spanish Moors
on a luminous sunny day.

THAT MEMORY

That memory
is not invisible
but spills out
in the spinning words
that traffic
in LANGUAGE POETRY
what languishes
in blank verse
and advantages us
in an evaporating voice
from the narcotic silence
in a panic of perpetual motion
when opening up our
our survival taps
of sprawling movements
from our fragmentary adverbs
uncovering a voluminous
array of contrary forms
drawing out our ten second
thoughts that branch out
like Autumnal falling leaves.

THROUGH

Through the dry woods
of Vermont
a bear sways
near the Autumn leaves
brushing against timber
in my telescopic sight
from a rough outline
snapping a picture
to share tonight
in my neighborhood.

A KAFKA'S SISTER NIGHTMARE

The trial light
switched off
the electric chair
pressed us
against the water boarded
filing by a sign of torture
at a Sing Sing's executioner
cellular phone
awakes a ten year old
sick daughter
in remembrance
of Kafka's sister
from her nightmare
across Prague
all the way
to the snows
of the Gulag
toward the party line
in Beijing.

BLACKBIRDS

Blackbirds near fields
of the Amherst harvest
rise where Emily Dickinson
is buried
in our daylight memory
of her
among the flickering rays
near the Common
where soccer players
by the ice pond hang out
in the early dusk
when sunshine is low
after school.

IN THE LANDSCAPE

In the landscape
by the pier of the sea
near the waterfront docks
an Orthodox rabbi
with his son
also with long ringlets
of black hair
and carrying a box
with a prayer shawl
talks to me
about the Western Wall.

TONIGHT

Tonight
we are up
in the first balcony
watching Swan Lake
it is a cool November scene
as the Russian language
returns deep within you
watching the scene
in perpetual motion
as in my childhood
seeing spotlights from the dark
in an encirclement
of the dancers leaping
on the gilded stage
in shadows of human fate.

EXPRESSIONISM

Through thin walls
of my studio
painting and writing
my jazz poetry
once in total darkness
of a November's
blue Wednesday
sounding out
at my windy back
the burgeoning breath
out of a melancholy mood
into a sanguine open sea
making sure
the anchor
of my orange kayak
is safe from any storm
as the first light
of Fall's brief labyrinth sun
keeps us warm.

OPEN UNDERGROUND

A Beat poet
open in the underground
goes down town
to relax in a jazz club
and play riffs
on his soprano sax
loudly in the city below
as a photo of him
overtaken in San Francisco
from a friendly atmosphere
by a fairy dust storm
he goes inside his gig
to warm up
with a cup
of Napa Valley wine.

IN ROME

In Rome
writing a sestina
by the yearning strings
of sonatas and cantatas
as I'm learning
about Palestrina
composing a cadenza
for Mendelsohn's
violin concerto in E
remembering the sun
at dusk's shadow
under the Golden Dome
by the Beacon Street
gas lanterns
by the light of windows
in a jazz club
tourists are moving forward
towards Boston Common
for a night out in the hub.

IN THE ORCHARD

A New England bard
in the crowded apple orchard
awaits the harvest
of a twilight Thanksgiving
near the plow on the farm
as voices of birds murmur
by the blank windows
writing his poetry
on a shadow of pumpkins
alongside the country road
of lost wings.

LATE

Late for my portrait
taken
behind my glasses
by a surrealist artist
on the Cape
who shapes me
in the figure
of my own nature
out in the country
by Woods Hole
near the floating sea
a boat passes by me
as a blue bird blew
its few songs
as I awake
feeling whole.

A LONG WAY

A long way
in want
up to the Green
Mountains
in Vermont
tramping,
camping it up
by the lifts
and lofts
by the soft snow
on outposts
you hardly know.

HERE I AM

Here I am
poet of memory
of the rabbis
and the saints
of the helpless
and the homeless
of the lost lamb,
of the regained
of the dreamers
and the slain
of the fellow on the cross
and the yellow star
of the mass grave
in the Ukraine
in the gravity of Poe
and gravitas of Neruda
among the blood
of Gulag snows
in the humanity
of Whitman
in Manhattan,
in the region
of Dickinson's soul
and by Melville's
encantadas of rivers
that Hart Crane's
white sail flows
by Florida and delivers.

IS THE EARTH

Is the earth,
my daughter
just a pit of slaughter
between wars,
the unreality of it
is how many souls
have forgotten the slain
in the story Abel by Cain
or honorable Joseph
betrayed by his brothers
in the whips of the wind
of those who in ignorance
go along with the politicians
forgetting the gospel
of good news
as some of the Christians
fail to tell the Jews
outside their church
who listen to the bell
tolling outside,
as the bride among ladies
is refused her groom
and left at the altar
for the gloom
of Hades or Hell.

YOU WAIT

You wait
at the bus stop
as starlets
flower children
and runaways
head
for Hollywood
in the Sixties
from a traffic light
of hollowed shadows
to become stars
on the boulevard.

ASKING

Asking the Beat poet
on a November night
by a back up singer
of the blues
if he would voice
the words
of the speechless.

AT GREENWICH VILLAGE

Sitar playing
Ginsberg reciting
his words in the light
of a raspy echoing voice
as I'm playing smooth jazz
on my tenor sax
by the sister and dancer
with her yellow blossoms
here for jubilee
from my Sixties memory
in the Big Apple corridors
as a Japanese actor
does kabuki.

AMERICAN SUNDAY NOON

A running back
watches a spaghetti Western
in black and white
the baby turtles escapes
from the golf fish bowl
the guy next door
named Guy
turns the adult channel
where eventually
an ex con becomes a pro
and concludes the hour
with a new age service.

NO ONE

No one expects
the wind
in the crimson flowers
or morning glory
to tell us on Sunday
by the church pavilion
to what search
is our life time story
as the breeze shines in the sun
from a vermilion garden.

THE INSPECTOR

The inspector general
generalizes
and surprises us
even recognizes minerals
in stones at the beach
reaches the seaweeds
by half open wild flowers
at the shore
where he locates
the dance of the hours.

INNOVATORS

Innovators
and creators
serve the earth
with an unknown
secret language
in a new birth
that opens a shroud
of words, critic's notes
composed in poetry, music,
plays on our heart- string
in a cloud of love letters
like in Georges Sands,
let's go to the Chopin concert.

THE WANDERER

Playing Schubert's
"the Wanderer sonata"
a Russian musician
waded in this fantasy
on the solo piano
at Symphony Hall
when I was eleven
on a November night
after I ran a marathon
on the esplanade
resting before the recital
over the blankets
yet under covers
of "The Possessed"
keeping away
as a guest from the  rain
eyeing flirts and lovers
a poet composes his quatrain.