Saturday Poetry: Upon Seeing Fred in Bronze

It was the spring of year four

By then Fred was out of the luxury digs of Mt. Sinai.

We were back on Lorimer St.

He reclining

Me, as I was often during those years

Leaning in leaning over listening for news

From his body.

Aah, Fred, I said, as I counted the stitches down his torso

And brushed the medallion of skin made by his port.

Aah Fred, look at what the surgeons have gifted you

A way out, a way forward.

But not for his soul

for his waste.

Aah Fred and I leaned in closer

because now it was my turn to come to terms

with the positive and negative space of him.

Fred I said

You got you one hell of a crater.

And we laughed as we crossed that bridge.

Years later Bronze Fred stood before me:

I know you I said, how I know you.

Of course it made all the sense in the world to me that

Fred was decked out in saxophone keys

With good luck where the port used to be

Only partially clothed in splendor

Which was true during the days when wounds needed air.

The professorial specs

The eyes joined by his troublemaking grin.

I looked at Bronze Fred.

He looked at me.

We laughed.

Saturday Poetry: Noon

I was reading

on the teaching of poetry

and it galvanized me into

being consonant, too.

I believe in the word

and I love it as I do her.

Breaking the morning’s regimen

I stop reading and start writing these poems.

It has to be done:

Commemorate

life’s entropic beauty.

Saturday Poetry: This Is Where That Teacher Got Shot

Time?  I don't have any.  So, another poem from Turn Left At the Dead Dog.  It's based on the 1992 murder of a beloved Brooklyn principal, Patrick Daly, who got shot in crossfire in Red Hook.
  

This, she told me

pointing with an acrylic nail

her lucky charms colliding like teenagers in love

is where that teacher died.

Some hoodlums shooting at each other.

You know, sometimes I think I seen them

coming out of the projects

They’re the ones laughing cause they never get caught.

But God knows

God always knows.

Rest that poor man’s soul.

Annie’s wand swipes the humid air

and makes those hoodlums their bullets the projects

and that early autumn day disappear for

that poor man, rushing back to school

with treats to surprise his kids when

the crimson buzz of a lonesome mosquito

bit him like it was personal

and he went down.

Look.

Go away she means.

I wish --

oh I know it’s a sin, a mortal sin --

but, I wish that their mothers had gotten rid of them

the minute their red-headed aunt didn’t come.

Saturday Poetry: What Did Thou Do to Thy Master?

Old Dead Tunneler:

Look at thee

A young man, strong and black

A musket tore your back.

Three hundred guilders lost

Did Master rue the cost

of his African

so strong and black?

Old Dead Tunnelers (chorus):

It is true

that thee are with us now

Thy Master’s guilders gone

No doubt he mourns the loss

but killed you nonetheless.

One of his best.

What did thou do, my son

to thy Master?

Old Dead Tunneler:

Look at thee

Rings burned around thy neck

Eyes plucked from thy face

The Pearls of Africa

are missing from thy case.

Thy master stole thou eyes?

No others tell thou that

they still are used

to find your way, to this our home?

Young slave made blind.

Old Dead Tunnelers (chorus):

Thy Master’s guilders gone.

No doubt he mourns the loss

but killed you nonetheless.

One of his best.

What did thou do, my son

to thy Master?

Look at thee

Africans strong and black.

(Look at me

African strong and black.)

Thy Master’s loss our gain

Thy mutilation is their shame.

Three hundred guilders thrown away

is not the measure of

Two warriors in our midst.

Returned to the Mother’s land

because of what thee did

to thy Master.

Saturday Poetry: Annie

from Turn Left at the Dead Dog:

On the train

A woman prettier than pretty

hair a red not found in nature

black stilettos worn for stature

butt made to serve tea.

She gets out from the same door as I

follow her down the steps

through a steel shamrock.

I am curious how easily she walks

and knows where she’s going.

To the token clerk, a lift of her hot ‘n cold cup.

He in his booth like a banished pup.

She turns around.

Come on, she says,

go with me.

You’re a nice girl.

Nowhere else you could be

but at the Shipyard.

Come on.

Saturday Poetry: Mantra (excerpt)

to be read aloud in staccato con brio:

Words words words

I make my loving from the

words words words

For instance

these words

the beginning of

another story.

Let's call it

2 trench coats

(or a cure is discovered

for polio).

She comes to he

who is a stranger

she is wet

through and through

her hair is

curling all around her

he is dry

as a bone

he has been

being taken pictures

of

for the Fashions of the Times

layout.

A trenchcoat in July.

But no matter

he doesn't sweat

his pores are too fine

for that.

Scuse me she says to him

tapping him on the shoulder

which he whose profile cuts

the air like an

origami bird

doesn't like

scuse me she ways

again and again and again.

Your attention

I want your attention

please.

he turns to her

he looks at her

trench coat

a good coat

in good shape

she may be worth

listening to

at

for

have you seen him?

she asks

him he says

him who?

God, she says

have you seen him?

He pauses poses

thinks

(Beauty can think, too)

and replies,

no.

No, he says

again

no.

But if I do

(for he expects to see him

but without leaving this earth),

if I do, he says,

you got anything

you want me to tell him?

Oh yes

she says

tell him tell him

tell him this for

me will you?

You're hurting me

You're hurting me

You're hurting me

You're hurting me

(how many times I got to say)

You're hurting me

You're hurting me

You're hurting me

You're hurting me.

 

Saturday Poetry: The Big Blonde

from Turn Left at the Dead Dog:

There are dreams

that belong to you

long before you know what to do with them.

You are memory’s steward

so that when

a dream comes, it is

as the comics say

déja vu all over again.

It’s not the first time since childhood

she’s been on my mind

The big blonde, sheathed in black

singing into the studio microphone

back when

Jazz was a thing supreme.

Remote then, behind the glass

not to be touched, a porcelain doll

Inviolate.

Now she greets me at the Shipyard’s gate.

My head bows as sunlight bursts off her platinum hair.

I just know behind the tortoiseshell frames

there are sapphires glistening on her face.

Then she smiles at me

Teeth couched in fuchsia lips.

For me time stops.

I am awake.

Saturday Poetry: Venus (excerpt from East River Soliloquies)

Oh no.  I will never.

Ever.

Fall in love again.

My heart's weighted.

Hemp-tied in a thief knot

sinking in the East River

because once I saw a woman crawl

into that water

one liquid August night,

with her hair on fire.

I remember her braids:

one at a time, popping,

sizzling, filling her tracks

as she scuttled backwards

down the bank.

Maybe drunk, who knows?

Kerplunk! she clove the River

into an ovation.

And I watched as her arms

like blades scythed

the dirty River

yet, her face stayed

shuttered, above water.

Her eyes blinked, apertures

as the dissenting fire,

oblivious to its circumstance,

played on.

A homeless dog divined the water

to kiss her skin,

the head now a

blackness bubbling away.

The dog danced on her unshielded crown

until she pushed him under.

Get off, she brayed.

It was then I laughed:

She's going to live, I thought.

She swung her embered eyes on me

and I went blind.

By the time it took me to see again

I was hard,

waist-high in water,

reaching for her smoldering arms.

Saturday Poetry: Feet (an excerpt)

Next thing I know he said,

Girl, I need a break.

I called Mother right away:

You got to help me out.

What she sent me was a pumice stone

wrapped in a brown paper note:

                Scrub all ten of those toes.

                The shingled, smarting soles.

                Scrub them like I once cleaned your clothes

                In a washtub

                filled to the top with so much lye

                it was foolhardy to breath through

                my nose.

When I could slide pantyhose on

by the count of five

I called him to say

I want to talk.

I'll meet you wherever,

If you want, halfway.

When I got there I sat down

making sure that he saw me

slice off my shoes

giving him a nyloned glimpse

of my crimsoned toes

while they tickled my instep and

caressed perfectly rounded heels.

Gold heels, browned,

like freshly baked loaves

of bread for the starving man.

Saturday Poetry: The Circumcision (another excerpt)

She hit him with the lion's paw.

He punched her belly

then ran.

She left the cat running --

flopping, twisting

howling and hissing --

to chase my brother

down the hall.

Our head turned to follow the race.

There was nowhere to pass

only overtake.

At first he laughed.

He was 13 and fast.

She was his Mother!

His Mother!

For her, though

this was no game.

Desperate and cornered

he leaped through the plate glass door.

The glass and he screamed.

The crown imbedded in his skull

shone brilliantly

before he fell to the grass

his flesh and blood among the shafts.

He touched his brow in wonderment.

He turned to look at our Mother's face

her body framed in the pane's sunburst

the arm poised for murder,

and galloped from her rage.

She charged to sever him

and came to her senses

in the waning light.

She saw his teammates frozen

with mitts in hand.

The jagged glass.

(The money!  The money!)

My brother prostrate

His face bleeding

My father diminished

Our heart throbbing

The beast growling

Her chest heaving

The arm lowering.

Saturday Poetry: What She Saw

Her eyes are in a bored frenzy,

whirring cherries in a slot machine.

The question stalks her

and all her friends with their

advanced degrees

who decided to stay home:

what will I do?

They fasten onto

her daughter, so she can

watch and watch again

as Ruby goes

down

                the

                                slide

for an eternity.

She reminds herself

between trips, that it is her task

to be in this moment, then the next,

even though at first she

didn't want to stay home.

But childcare took too much

of her salary,

and now studies say that

it's better, it truly is better

for her to be here.

But, it was an old woman,

the Ah Ma, who woggled --

their word for Ruby's

bowlegged, sashaying walk --

over to the slide to

reprimand her satin-capped

grandson trying to pry

Ruby's fingers off the bar

and force her

                down

                                                now

before she was ready.

That's what she's screaming:

I'm not ready.

Not ready, not ready.

No.

And the woman, in that instant

of infinitesimal distraction,

framed the grandmother,

who she would very much

like to draw, if she

Could convince the old

woman that she means no harm.

She didn't hear Ruby's

cascading scream

in time to halt her jettisoning

from the banked chute

into the bitter dust

beneath.

What did arrest her gaze

was the nimbus of brown

radiating over to where she stood

as she realized

that her child needed

attention, despite her own grief.

Saturday Poetry: Famine (a pantoum)

I eye my Irish husband.

He sneers at me in derision.

It’s our tattooed 17 year-old son:

he who has gotten obese.

He sneers at me in derision.

The boy’s buttonholes fly across his chest.

He who has gotten obese.

My Irish husband pats his corduroy vest

the boy’s buttonholes fly across his chest.

Reminds me of the times, he tells me.

My Irish husband pats his corduroy vest

Do I want to hear it again?

Reminds me of the times, he tells me,

his father would heat the poker.

Do I want to hear it again?

I must close my eyes to my husband’s glee.

His father would heat the poker

swinging it round and round his head.

I must close my eyes to my husband’s glee:

His father staggering home singing bollix tiss and fookin tat

swinging it round and round his head,

his memory conjures a white-haired gabna

His father staggering home singing bollix tiss and fookin tat

sick to death of snotty beggars huddling in their corner.

His memory conjures a white-haired gabna

that sent the eldest running across his father’s acres

sick to death of snotty beggars huddling in their corner

his final sight of them, petrified,

that sent the eldest running across his father’s acres.

And in his telling he stowed away on the last boat leaving,

his final sight of them petrified.

He brooded over the moment when the crew found him.

And in his telling he stowed away on the last boat leaving.

Not one thought for his sisters and brothers

He brooded over the moment when the crew found him

he told them he was an only child, an orphan, prob’ly.

Not one thought for his sisters and brothers.

The year our son met his father’s siblings

he told them he was an only child, an orphan, prob’ly

and they my son, filling his hands full of shillings, pounds.

The year our son met his father’s siblings

they told each other how he was so like their brother

and they my son, filling his hands full of shillings, pounds.

But, the boy declined the morsels of their faith.

They told each other how he was so like their brother

A boy they never forgot.

But, the boy declined the morsels of their faith,

a sin the family never forgave.

A boy they never forgot

is the sullen boy before us now

a sin the family never forgave

shared with a father more agnostic than most.

Is the sullen boy before us now

aware of what he has

shared with a father more agnostic than most?

Hence the tattoos obscuring the fatty rings around his neck.

Aware of what he has

he genuflects before the refrigerator

hence the tattoos obscuring the fatty rings around his neck

I dare not come between my child and his God.

He genuflects before the refrigerator,

he sneers at me in derision.

I dare not come between my child and his God:

he who has gotten obese.