BECKETT

I hear you in your plays
not fading away
like my music making
spilling its notes
by the piano legs
of human incantations
waning blue
under the strobe lights
of landscape's speech
like opening curtains
and the rising barometers
of applause.

AN UNBELIEVING AGE

You may think him,

a poet,lunatic or lover

under his music sheets

or a novel's critical cover

but he is like any Adam

cursing the ground

amid the birds

tilling his garden

hearing a pardoning sound

of many words

in a land of Nod

amid that Cain

who murdered godly Abel

in a dishonorable reign

when empires buried us

then David became king

and Moses in the wilderness
the enemies buried at the Red Sea

and then liberation, exile

as Josephus speaks of Cyrus

then of Messiah Jesus in Zion

his life and Crucifixion

and so in the lexicon

and each portion

we remember Ezra,the scribe

Nehemiah, 

Jeremiah of the tribe,

under the Juniper trees
all the stories in pastorals 

then the thunder of the Macabees

the glories and wonder miracles.

THOSE PEOPLE

It's always those people
who are to blame
or game the system
who give rise to deception
at every Party's reception
always manage
to harass and sue
in forbidden intemperate
city street zones,
and feel superior
to the anonymous Jew
yet secretly make love
with the interior minister
who is a reactionary
yet you appear alone
at street demonstrations
with the camera in view.

IN SPITE OF IT ALL


Your third face lift
unlocks the old T.V. spirit
from your last soap opera
even you with all
your fairy dust
falling over your sequin gown
which you pawn shopped
for the dress rehearsal
after your daily success
you turned down that script
of a grade b black and white
crime picture now a re run
with a one eyed embrace
lifting a retinue of press guys
those Hollywood manikins
who still walk behind you
with their mouths open
for some paparazzi gossip
carrying your a bronze statue
as an rubbed out idol
on the now faded red carpet
of a once golden age
as you try to make it on time
in spite of it all.

FIRST NIGHT

When a young stand up
comedian stumbles
at his last laugh
before the curtain folds
and first night lights up
on a past bowed occasion
of pumping up the crowd
cool as crossword puzzles
waiting for his impressions
of played out celebrities
in his velvet underground gold vest
is mobbed by his fans
after acting out schoolboy charades
with a new routine
of blushing humor
against all the free speech codes
that he was recently expelled for
from his freshman year.

DECEMBER'S 29TH

Grass still not buried
by a palpable snow
awakening to hear
the slosh shadows
as grackles snap
on the evergreen branches
in a sun's imponderable day
the cat drawn to landscapes
from the town painter
in the Square quiets down
a poet wraps his red scarf
by the riverbed
cannot live another life.

BY PARK DRIVE

A bird in hand
to feed with bread sticks
respectfully
on a silent avenue
intimate at dawn
at first light's lifting
over the dune's tall grass
through the elms
by marathon roads
along woodland paths
as if childhood
never ended coming home
on snow days
concealed in emerging words
from a new year's start.

W.H. AUDEN'S TIME

A fortuitous hour
of the self conscious
business of Freud has begun
with the courteous Auden
in a two continent run
over an industrious earth
of the once unemployed
giving a modern critic's nod
to Kierkegaard's rebirth
with regards to his God
with an unforgiving public
except for the innocent,
Catholic and Protestant
not repentant but annoyed.

TWENTIETH CENTURY

A time suppose to be
for reform turns creation
on every form and subject
predicated on immolation

Whether arbitrary politics
ethics, religion or sex
a library turns quickly
into their contrary text

The honorable ignored
or murdered in the war news
a third disabled or interred
in fabled words of the Jews

Such reward is progress
with the sword
few bless
or confess the Lord.

A SECOND GUESS
(In memory Simone Weil)

Taking a wafer
in a line
hoping to be safer
aching for the divine,

In a conceivable belief,
dangerous for a philosopher
what is believable in Jesus
is a relief to her.

CRY OUT

Cry out for your city
on faces you have known
covering its sloping lubricity
in its rags, skin and bone.

Walk over dead leaves
burning by graffiti walls
the odors and pictures
here in the smoking Fall.

Then pause with your eyes
on the blind gas lights
as sleepy shelters thaw
in the helter -skelter nights.

A shroud of birds flee
against the storm
birds cloud the sky
in a frenzy to keep warm.

An awed poet under cover
over his newly printed words
God's three in one lover
a trinity of wonderful bells heard.

WATCHING "NEBRASKA"

Melancholy dollars
of elderly loss
a lottery ticket
in a curiosity solace
of relief and folly.

NEW YEAR'S DAY

Scattering memory
without judging our past
rising in our love notes
falls from fearing reflection
at the first of the year.

HER/HIS

Her eyes dilated
though created
in fact
underrated her time
though not being
an unsure crime
was her self- pleasure
of being outdated.

His eyes
were fully mated
for her at age ten
he did not understand
the nature of his ken
were in leisure
but knew he waited
for her then.

AT HARVARD SQUARE (1974)

With a range of slights
in a literary conversation
language has its interlude
from an arbitrary relation

Here at table
the somewhat enlightened
jealous in contradiction
poke fun at Nixon

With poor pronunciation
for a dedication
the few patrons
in a nightfall of speculation

At Harvard Square
the menu is all set
for Yankee pot roast
and green tea

A young university man
has the latest news
of ancient archaeology
in a parchment of the Jews

Another critic dedicates
with a mind of curiosity
takes out sheet music
of his latest virtuosity

Delighted minds
wonder about politics
or what of our poet's
newest panegyrics.

JOHN MILTON

Born on Bread Street
Milton became a Puritan
was no Republican fool
submitted to Cromwell's rule
knew there was a reason to tell
and teach as a Christian poet
why a treasonable Satan
preferred to rebel
in hell and remain in it
rather than in an honorable heaven
Milton believed for us to dwell
in reasonable justice and freedom
of speech, we would be well
he is always a soul
within reach.

FRANCE AT NOONDAY

A vision of spring
of Carousel gardens,
the sun on San Tropez
by furtive waters
a poet in a cafe
retreats in absence.

FORD MADOX FORD'S LEGACY

Watching Parade's End
brought me back
to your friendships
to Conrad,Joyce, James
even Tate and Lowell
as years overflow
your reputation grows.

GORKY, THE PAINTER

On the edge
of an extended psyche
in gesture colors
the abstract canvas
in life's cut-outs covers
over its existential outlines
when our knowledge
of suffering changes.

BERGMAN'S "DREAMS"

To be the center
on location
where love implants
the pearls
of integrated memory.

DESNOS JOURNEY

Return to us
our eye of free France
has not forgotten you
awakening to May
hearing a train whistle
or by the Seine,
with love letters
after fascism's noose.

MAX JACOB

Teaching your friend
Picasso French
on Boulevard Voltaire
introducing him
to Modigiliani
and the bard Apollinaire
a visionary
of experiencing Christ
losing his life
during the Occupation
in the insensate air.

 CORNELL'S ASSEMBLAGE

Surrealistic into faint
boxes wrapped glasses
from transferred trinkets
into surprises of inky sparkled
unpredictable collectibles
hunted to adjoined parts
unlike Mondrian
his boxes
with unbalanced visibility.

IT HAPPENED LONG BEFORE

And before the round-ups
it was long before
and the marches
it was long before
the fires
it was long before
the burning of their houses
it was long before
and their falling in love
it was long before
and their turning  into ashes
their twin deaths recorded
it was long before,
but it happened,
we remembered,
it was long before.

SHOP ON MAIN STREET(the film)

In Prague
unfolding buttons
in the absent light
hands opened
for piece work
and soon
some of these poor citizens
now with yellow starred buttons
are taken away
and will be turned to ashes.

IDA, THE POLISH FILM

Only if you had been
an adolescent Marxist
in a post revolutionary era
or a later day Christian
after a religious age
has passed you by
at a May Day march of time,
when only children
inspire your absence
from the lost crowd
by the river's edge
alone with your notebook
holding onto a birch branch
with your carved initials
waiting for your lover
or in the silence of a monastery
from a retreat by iron doors
could you expect "Ida"
to surprise you.

 OSTROVSKY'S " THE FOREST"

Watching Ostrovsky
on the French screen
in a small art theater
brought me back
the Russian themes
of alienation, poverty
the comedy of lines
on a romantic's mouth
the desire for romance
familiar lips and faces
which passes memory
in a disappointed farce.

WATCHING JEAN GABIN

Watching Jean Gabin
in Crime and Punishment
a French adaptation
in the pleading voice
of nineteenth century
Russia, you call us back
from stolen impulses
in the hollow of tears
from shadowy forces
of inexhaustible drama
from a demonstration
of a nightmare's guilt
in lines facing
a mirror's madness.

PARIS OPERA

The cold lemon wallpaper
of the hotel room's crevice
collapses in time
to discover a pre war print
half finished of Chagall
behind a Berlioz work
now at the Paris opera
without an equal
in music or art
lifting my blushing memory
to again hear Romeo and Juliette
refusing all Vichy water
of invisible collaboration.

CHECKPOINT CHARLIE

Fire walls with recordings 

of two forgetful generations

burying each others memory

losing their absent lids for eyes

in the sunshine's contagion

with the Stasi nephew

like the Nazi father

informing on each other.

MEDITATION


Like Thais
commanded an opera
in offers of caresses
obliging a soul and body
of work, days and words
an eternal mistress
like Flaubert's desert saint
in immolation
of reaching out
for water in love's oasis
from a profane violation
and renouncement
of a captive daughter's world
born of romanticism
to a purple mirror's oblation
reaching in a hands-off
echo of hallucination.

INCARNATION

Discard your bouquet
of carnations, Lorca
your blood weddings
images, blood oranges,
flaws, in laws,
mediums, tedium
in the guise of time
over the crime of politics
La Pasionaria,
even your red cards
are overthrown
on the snows of the Gulag
over the revolutionary rags
of the latest news
(or have you not heard
the unspoken Word)
in the commentary
of the wise Jews
on the Titanic deck
the joker takes over
from Tarot
and there is no place
to go.

AGON

Against the seas
a ship batters
the glimmering rocks
as Ulysses
against all immobility
steers for home
not knowing
a blind poet
facing history
war and landscape
will tell his story
in flesh and transparency
for a thousand generations.

ASSEMBLAGE

Encrusted
disregarded days
pounding on the radio
from Rapallo
with all that noise
what of poetry 's pose
and poise,
the upturned red nose
the agon moment
as Tiresias,
gets the last obituary
off his chest
of he who died
in the Kultur war
at last in the parataxis
of fascism
like Metaxis
or the axis powers
that were and are no more.

ON CEZANNE'S FIELDS

The wheat is yellow
into the valley
through art's portico
on the rubbed out fields
and road to the mountain
under the earth's Alps
on a fire and flame.

INVOCATION

Across the pond
early in the century
goes H.D. and Frost
freely criss-crossed
to meet Eliot,
Yeats and Pound
hearing the sound
of voices in its lot
like dry leaves
the soul reprieves,
soon Spain will be
in the pictorial bane
with editorial adolescence
from its Escorial plain,
now does poetry
in our modern efflorescence
as Auden says,
make any difference.

LIBERATION
(in Memory
of my relation
Premier Mendes-France)


Seventy years ago
France's liberation
from her Vichy dance
a romance of collaboration,
shame on some parts
and partners of the nation
yet there was the stance
of those like my relation
Premier Mendes-France
of a heart's Resistance
in his stance.

JOHN BROWN

In brave light
not eaten by Hollywood's
portrayal or any holy grail
reaching out
from the ashes
of a slave society
not casing or cashing in
but crashing history
though white and hale
will not behave.

FASSBENDER

Filmed on location
with Gary Indiana
as inspiration
landmarks of post war
co-operation
from a Derry native
of New Hampshire
to a Bavarian overseer
inspired to dominate
the German cinema.

MALLARME'S  DAWN

Rest with me
in the retinue
of lost overcast clouds
in shrouds of a past century
nor be more than memory
covering your cornerstone
in this dawn's tranquility
when we race for time
in outer space
for a nuanced rhyme.

ANNUNCIATION

In a singing language
known by the ancients,
the chance of knowing
the resonance and silence
imparting to ourselves
holiness in its brightness
blesses the enlightening
of the thunderous awareness
that we are in His cry
as the raging winds
outside our doorways
a shadow shelters us
in the kindled night
over Zion's horizon
we cannot deny its brightness
as a spirit passes by.

ANNOTATION

After the debris
of the rain
by the doorway's wild roses
in the cool drafts
of the poem's seventh
revision, Anno Domino
the desolation of feeling
sings out of hyacinth
with nothing to speak of
but a mock- heroic couple
who are obviously in love
disclosing of trying to rent
a penthouse sublet
for the summer
and then I'm going back
to my couplets
in pentameter
from demotic failure
by the pepper tree
feeling for Hebraic roots
like Jeremiah
under the Juniper
for a linguistic prophesy
that makes sense
in heroic sequences
desiring of a catholic tercet
away from roped voices
from the dry bones sea
by vatic proposal
in nones stained glass
away from manic disposal
of the refrained intellect
and having rejected my past
which outlasts all laughter
and irony of mimesis
beginning in the genesis
of B.C.E.,eyeing
all the resources of pleasure
of the younger in white shirts
making money
on Wall Street and the bourse
within the skirts of time
taking Odysseus course
on a journey
without a catalog
even in Tagalog
from Forbes-Burney
in solid patrimony
and departed legal
tender parsimony
having resolved in oath
and deed to forsake my need
of a drone's analysis
for a ship to locate Tiresias
yet completing my elegy
from my mentors,
confessors and professors
with the knowledge
of the martyrs
unlike Uncle Sam's go- getters
by critics of Spinoza's clocks
walking slowly in New Amsterdam
by districts of the Orthodox
thinking of Robert Browning's
"Rabbi Ezra" and his black locks
promise to write letters
to my era's betters.

SPECULATION

An time of paparazzi
to spy on celebrity
where there is little
dignity only a spittle
of humanity
where all is cash
and getting ahead
with ponzi schemes
bashed egos
and going to bed
with a stash of dreams
and no remorse
now lost in reality
or on the bourse
of the Stasi revelations
and neo Nazi visitatations
Hollywood's readaptations
of a once Golden age
in crime creations
from high secret stations
and there are no regrets
only secret bets
of who will full next
when corruption
without interruptions
shouts from texts
on graffiti walls.

EREZ BITON'S FATE

Though blinded
by an accident
in early life
and wanting to do
cargo inspection
you became
a Sephardic poet
returning home
from Morocco
taking delight
in comforting words.

IDA WISSOTZKAYA LOVE

Pasternak, your love
in Marburg poem
her parents not thinking
you are worthy of her.

ANNA POLITKOVSKYA'S LIFE

Petitions were signed
but death came anyway
on the news.

LARISA SHEPITKO'S ASCENT
 (1938-1979)

Watching your film
you directed "The Ascent"
brought back the war,
the partisans,
peasants
the horror,
you are not forgotten.

COFFEE HOUSE

     Lisa settled in the middle of a sentence, put down her green bag from Columbia University, mumbled a few words, killed off the middle of a croissant, insisted on writing her diary, meets Andrei who,after reading a pirated Italian issued "Doctor Zhivago," suddenly found himself as a refuse-nik in New York City after a bout with the authorities.

    There was no doubt today they were meant for each other. Not The Neva or Brighton Beach or even Paris could separate or could keep them apart, regardless of Lisa's bi polarity or Andrei's playing sax at six in the morning.

   Everyone hears and captures a different high note in music, some picture landscapes,others
their last love affair.

     Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" fell out of her bag. Marlin Waters came here regularly and was a piano virtuoso,teaches at Julliard, smiled at the couple, his incisors poised for a battle of words but it was not to be for Lisa or Andrei who had to leave him empty of a purpose for his day.

Marlin had just copped a plea from the judge to show leniency for his non payed parking tickets. He stared out of a rainy side window reading in "the Times" about "the umbrella" protesters in Hong Kong as he and Leah Chang, his student and lover exchange momentary glance.

It would be a slow day writing in his diary, December 4, 2014.

Kyle makes his pilgrimage to Coffee House , feeling hard up while not doing his theology or watching his favorite gay German soap opera, being the son of Dr. Francis Rank who studied with Professor Van Doren, the quiz kid's father, and the late Father Thomas Merton. He has a latte and meets with his friend Lannie who appears on T.V. ads for peanut butter but wants to do more serious acting.

          "You're right on time, Lannie... for a change."
           "I had trouble sleeping. How about you?"
            "The same without encountering you. You do not like me as a peanut butter nutter and wrote               me a nasty note and sent it off to the press.You can be so brutal,Kyle, yet so sentimental."
            ''Chalk it up to my being German.
            "You could be a mensch.Where is the usual gang?"
            "Lisa must have been by with Andrei. Marlin, Leah also. I missed them all. I sometimes think                I'm missing out on life."
             A literary reviewer, young Marcus, joins Kyle and Lannie. His girlfriend Bettina has again
             left him.
            "I'm suppose to go to my shrink so I can't stay. Bettina is to model after receiving her Ph.D. in
             Asian Studies today. We all have to make a living in this economy."
             Marcus is planning to review "Suspended Sentences" by the French writer Patrick Modiano                who recently won a Nobel prize.
             Marcus takes it easy by taking a white pill.
             All of a sudden, the T.V. news anchor announces a future manned space launching to Mars.

   
 

NAPOLEAN

Who wants to play
the soldier
and emperor Napolean
in a re enactment
today of a dated battle
on the two hundredth
anniversary of Waterloo,
any candid candidates?