STARTING TO THINK


Starting to think
about a warm sun of spring
in the back of my mind
and for a time of peace,
yet war unwinds on a child
who longs to sing,
but wait,
a winter storm is still here
in the form of snow
and as for peace
I'm shutting off the radio.

PROUST AND VERMEER

In a precious enlightenment 

from the sun at Delft

our mind pulls us back

through a canal of time

brighter than at morning
with a Dutch master
and French novelist

drinking from a Chinese tea glass
with a fresh madeleine

meet with reflections
of a remembered still life

in a lemony sprinkled moment.

HAVE A NICE DAY

"Have a nice day,"
"God be with you,"
from neighbors
as the trains
are loaded
with the children
soon turning to ashes,
or the mountain of bombs go off
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
or cries fill Ruanda's streets
or on Cambodia's roads
as others we once knew
ransack the houses
trying to eliminate our memory
we cannot speak or reply.

GAZING

As your furniture
is being removed
and personal belongings,
photos of being by the sea
or up mountains on vacation
are still on the floor
your former neighbors
are gazing at now
after the war
telling the reporters
about the poet in memory
with the same dazed look.

THEY SMILE

They smile
as your neighbors
are sent away
or greet you
in the market place
without any fruits
or vegetables
in a time of war
but turn away
knowing you will
not see them again.

TURNER'S TIME

Pastel of landscape
in retrospective colors
embraces to new perceptions
opening his canvas
to view lively conceptions
here at a museum and in film
wandering over an industrial
and terrestrial revolution,
a living splendor.

WAJDA

Your Polish films
in black and white
in the human story
under fascism's history
gave us deep insight
knowing what a thunder of war
with hunger, tyranny and misery
gave to us pictorially
from our lack and poverty
that only in such dialogue
have we a brilliant diary
with a wish again to be in laughter
Andrei, you have our back
after the wonder to be free.

ARTHUR RIMBAUD
(1854-1891)

Touch me

with your ephemeral spirit
of an exiled acceptance,

jostle me, Arthur

with your travel passport

under Africa's blazing sun,
grant me words

that move me with wonder
to share your secret language,
gently forgive me

from your open shirtsleeves
with no self-doubt

between your hands,
Remember me, Rimbaud

when my words are printed

on city graffiti walls,

whisper to us
across rented rooms

in the rainbow underground,

heal me

from your wounds

in the house of a friend.

JUNKIES

News addicts
and those who live
for possibilities
of quick change
or withdrawal
all waiting for signs
of secretive arms
until waiting all night
to predict headlines
pushing overall life aside.

HOUELLEBECQ'S "SUBMISSION"

On "Submission"

the new French novel's

its leading character enjoyed

"A Rebours" by Huysmans

who read it in adolescence
for "Submission" does make sense

in conversions or perversions

with vive la difference.

ANITA EKBERG

The waters,
cannot contain you
our Anita
in the Trevi fountain
from La Dolce Vita.

BERLIOZ FILM(1942)

Watching the Berlioz film
in French
made under the watchful
eyes and bench marks
of the Third Reich
in open collaboration,
who knows
but you, Hector
what artists suffer
until they are known
for who they are
in music , the Word and art
when critics buffer against
a votive stone.

LOVE'S TURNING POINT

Harvest of hours
waiting on love
to manifest
from every brush off
in a desiring fingertip
resembling the pause
of inside night music
in a flame to move
these lyrical hands
towards your arms.

ANOTHER HAND

Another hand
dishing you away
over a half-moon
guiding the lovers
up to the stars
through the kitchen
underneath the napkin
a buried suicide note.

MOTHERWELL'S ELEGIES

Tributes to the Spanish
Republic
with its hopes
visible on canvas
will point unfolded toward
the light of other motionless
colors unveiling music
among once laughter of children
in the Madrid May Days.

JACKSON POLLOCK'S "CATHEDRAL"

Pure delineation
of line and form
draws us into
the vivid mood vibes
of linear relationships
of silent worship.

CENSORSHIP

Despite your will
censorship gave you
the green slip
and you lost
your job to a one time Job
who trusted
then got busted
for a liability,
yet with all his skill
and skull duggery
after main lining
then lining his pockets
filled up with the lust
of a robbed soul
he was lost in the dust.

HEARING COLTRANE

Hearing Coltrane
in the late A.M.
in my sound proof room
release my own riffs
and still believing in art
as a mistaken phone call
leads to a museum date,
finding a neighbors
break up note
in a diary
lying under the floorboard
by the fish tank's
own blue dimentia
and playing solo
of daring mortality
resting on a high note
of early optimism
until the daily news broadcast
spreads its headlines
where a few good stories
make my day.

HELPLESS ARE THE SKIES

Helpless are the skies
burning from fading blood
anywhere on the earth
expecting daily accomplices
tyrants who forget nothing
yet we are too jealous
for a free afternoon
to visit,make friends,laugh
to recount yesterday's diary
may not be rescued
or remembered
in times like these,
even footprints
on unmentionable graves
or names of villages
far from home
and too hard to pronounce
or death camps
not yet disappeared in war
as we sleepwalk on grassland
wishing only for a visible
springs's inevitability.

SIMONE WEIL'S EYES

Eyes of searching
in process of curiosity
a liquid quiet
of a hermetic silence
as a lamp light
for the truth.

DUCHAMP'S DAY

Day of chess plays
on idol intelligence
vibrates on a skin
of dismembered backbone
and vocabulary on board
of a hundred images
painting on a canvas
with fresh surprises
transforms and splits
over your snowy lips
ransacked in luminosity
as abandon
opening brushing in hand
of a city life's echoes
as patinas of open surfaces
draw us in
as your art moves us
hanging on a pawned culture.

DALI'S COMPLAINT

Knotting our lids
on ambit's light
colors your space
of laughter over canvas
in a cenotaph
clothing illusion.

BUNUEL'S FILMS

Life's bruising truths
screened before us
in a Spanish template
yet a telegraphic universe
humbling our laughter
that tears at dialogue
of subterranean speech
a miracle of reflections
in the skulls of a century
incinerating the ordinary
who walk away dazed
from the the rained-out
theater of spiteful humor
biting at an alternate humanity.

PHENOMENON

You sang revolutionary songs
in Spanish
by the muddy river
escaping shooting stars
here the Roma guy
a handsome fortune teller
predicted in a beggar's coat
the holy revolution
of the unjust.

POLISH WINTER
(in memory Stanislaw Baraczak
died December 27,2014)

Old walls of Warsaw
joined in your silence
shadows disappear
over voiceless hours
in the blood of snows
writing a diary
to friends back home
staring from fallen words
of ink from my desk
at my proof-read letter
wanting to be dispersed
from our own reflections
of my film and poetry
twentieth century reviews
now translated.

EAST AND WEST COAST POET

A Bostonian
who was a Californian
in his jeans and spirit
remembers his boiled dinners
toast and tea
with baked beans and Apple Betty
at lunch in Harvard Square
dressing in
a motor cycle jacket of James Dean
breathing in blood warm breaths
and a thousand year Evergreen
until his Hollywood host
of a dream took him
to the Coast
of which he made the most.

HENRY JAMES' NIGHT

Passed by Mount Vernon street
by Beacon Hill at dusk
ephemeral chrysanthemums
in a perfect night air
swept up by the darkness
the age exists as if it arranged
in patient red brick of harmony
yet late to a divided courtyard,
where you would witness
under dressed white curtains
the reluctance of pleasures
fears of inheritance
the minor pains and destinies
on days too serene for words
for this night too speechless
even for me to punctuate.

KENNETH REXROTH'S PASSING
(1982-1905)


Your language follows
all time pieces
the Beat of verses
you share in hollow cafes
of the age

Grief fills huge mugs
joined conversation
in the sublime
your notes like landscape
picture you by open seas
of correspondence

Offering my riffs
in your death
pools the same body
from a centuries dust
visionary flowers of earth
crowd more than candles.

PIGEON-HOLED

Not wanting to be mixed
like these others
in a cookie-cutter mold
nor resemble
what the world regards
as chard cheese
turned out in a factory
of hard slice and thickly dice
I thought twice
watching the cold birds
from their feeder,
turned from these words
in my old weekly reader
refusing to be pigeon-
holed.

SILENCE

Nodding off
in your armchair
with a cold breath
in first light
to embrace
a dead bird's wing
left in the bird feeder
only the snow blankets
cover your sad glances.

IN THE BIG APPLE

In the Big Apple
wanting to wrestle
with words
beneath the wind
at Central Park
two squirrels drag race
up the now ancient trees
remembered since childhood
to befriend
another foreign body
in exile now in Soho
a Beat poet discovers himself
in the absence of time
landscape and echo
when dawn opens
every gesture of solitude.