20
My father lost the store, we all went to
work when I was ten. Then he became a
ward heeler. My grandfather was dead before
I knew he spoke Gaelic. My father could
remember when they had mules instead of
automobiles and you had to remove your cap
and step to the curb to let the rich walk
by. My grandfather was glad to die in the
USA. He’d say if you can’t find a job within
thirty miles of New York City there aren’t
any jobs to be found. My father would say
You can write all the poetry you want to
when you’re a millionaire. Eddie would say
You got to try a shoe on before you buy it.
1960-69
DUES
(The Stone Wall Press 1975)
AMERICAN RENAISSANCE
For Emily Dickinson
She always reported to herself
first, then the world, then
nature or what the mythic poem
might someday become. The idea.
And it cost her: the butter-
flies she mistook for mari-
golds, the blank blackboards.
As Thoreau said to a friend,
‘One world at a time.’ Only
faster, she might have added.
And in the end, for radio, for
television, if it wasn’t, she
could not become ‘the purest
of poets,’ or even assume the
role. Genuine culture was an
unreasonable aspiration & poetry.
She left behind even the frissons.
RE
We are reminded of a new
gas station inserting the
million gallon storage tank
beneath its inviting apron
The sun continues to set and
the sounds of traffic
you call the auto harp
Why is it
we can get nothing on the radio
today but Johnny Ace singing of
his suicide and that tinselly
background piano
TWO POEMS WHILE SOMETHING CRUMBLED 1967
1
There’s no voice to my wife
the FBI took it away with them on the phone today
all she could get from them
was fear
our kid sits in her belly
waiting to grow fingernails to bite
hair to pull out
in the face of such subtle suppression
no goddamit
he waits to get even
which is worse
2
There is always the sound
of women
crying
(in the hallways of my head)
do I know them?
are they ‘mine’?
when the door is closed
I must feel my stomach for wounds
& continue to suck at dry eggs
why?
do they know me?
so I destroy the calendar (paint it blue)
take down Marlon Brando for Che Guevera
pretend it is the wind
and you?
ONCE
when I lived in a cemetery on a hill
played with a birch tree
called the wind lover
read sermons to Five Mile Valley
& taught lessons to the snow like:
The wooden clock was
invented by an American
Negro
there was a trenchcoated redhead.
So I wore brand new shirts & drank beer
leaving the headstones to weather
still
one day I came across some black sedan against my birch
from the back seat she smiled over his shoulder
snow
fell
my face went through the shattering glass laughing
my hair turned red, my eyes, my words, I said:
The traffic light was
invented by an American
Negro.
This had been my home.
AINT NO
for Boles
Never been sick
never been sick a day in my life
until today
Until this machine moved over me
couldn’t move over, couldn’t make room
Make room, they said
make time while the match still glows
make yourself presentable
I didn’t move, I couldn’t
move, I wouldn’t move if I could’ve
I didn’t even scream
or stroke your leg and purr
like they taught us to do in school
No legs, no sound, no way out
until they moved
until I could see the glow from the flames
until I could feel the fire
This machine felt like what is left
what couldn’t be moved
but burned
WATCHING YOU WALK AWAY
For Greg Millard
Today
your back, cocked hat, thick clothes for cold
the way you turned around to look again for
what? It wasn’t there last night
We were there, ‘it’ wasnt, why, why not
The world is all around us, even at night, in bed
in each others arms
distilled & injected into the odor we leave on each others
backs & thighs, between the knots & shields of all we lay
down in the dark to pick up in the morning
I like your brown eyes when you talk
you know who you are, I like your knowing this
maybe that’s not enough
Let’s talk, go to plays, see each other sometimes just to
see each other
If we lie down in each others bodies again
let it be for the music we hold
not the music we might make
REVOLUTION
When the back of my swan
divides your body with feathers
it doesn’t matter that they are
white or black
only that they are soft
COUNTERREVOLUTION
Sometimes early, the children
or maybe one child begins
to coo to herself or maybe
someone we cannot see
inventing sounds we
only remember while we hear them
like knowing the sea intimately
Like women children
sometimes see us saying: love
not saying anything
but moving the floor in time to
their vibrations from everything
and us. The incredible smallness
of their heads.
Living with us
they are constant reminders of
what we had hoped to be by now.
WEATHERMAN BLUES
I have a brother made of cockroaches.
Every morning I wake him and the bugs rustle
make noises like breakfast cereal until
he gets out of bed and starts shaving.
Then they’re all quiet watching him scrape off
the unlucky eggs of his chin roaches.
I have to help him start moving and
help him sit down and so on because
the roaches in his joints die from the heat
of his energy at the end of the day
but his heart roaches and lung roaches never die
and the roaches of his eyes and mouth are
always fucking so that everyday he sees
new things and tells me words
I never heard before
and never remember.
Someday the roaches in his throat will
choke him or the ones in h
is stomach will have
cancerous babies that will kill him as though
he’d starved but until then all I can do
is help him around the house
keep him covered when we go out
find women who don’t care who they embrace or
what enters them . . .
Why couldn’t I have had a brother
made of butterflies
like other people.
ROCKY DIES YELLOW
(Blue Wind Press 1975)
“NOW I’M ONLY THIRTY-TWO”
from 5 to 30 it was
only women, then
for almost one year
it was only men
now it’s like the first
5 years and back
to everyone again
YOU REMEMBER BELMAR NJ 1956
ethnic beaches, ethnic streets,
ethnic hangouts, jetties, kids
got sand & their first glimpse
of hair where it never was
you piled into nosed & decked Chevies & Mercs
carried baseball bats to Bradley Beach to
beat up on Jews—You knew, they had all the
money & no restrictions on their sex like
Christians
who said Hitler’s only mistake was
being born German but
your own Jews rode with you:
class warfare after all
Crazy Mixed Up kids with names like
Sleepy, Face, Skippy, Skootch, Me Too Morrisey
& Nutsy McConnell imitated themselves & Marlon
Brando, danced to *Frankie Lyman & The Teenagers*
or *Little Richard* & sometimes
holding their fathers’ guns
made women girls light their cigarettes trembling
letting them see just enough of it beneath their
pink or charcoal grey to make them happy or sick
always glad god made man out of dirt & not sand
you got drunk in your clubhouse or rented rooms
pretended you were really recording In The Still of The
Night or your own secret sleeper under
some name like The Shrapnels or The Inserts not
Spartans AC (Athletic Club) or The Archangels SC
(social . . .
the way we’re still lining up
SONG
Where we bend
the world bends
Where we join
the air joins
Where we lie
the land lies
Where we move
the sea moves
Where we break
where we break
the air breaks
the land breaks
the sea divides
Where we break
the world bends
KENT STATE MAY 4, 1970
1
This is the night they turn out the trees,
the rope we skipped, the sound of
asphalt cooling. This is the night they
left us. You used to say: This is
the night they are always leaving us.
2
In the puzzle there are four pieces:
the soap, the boat, the fish and the—
It’s green, we remember that much, very
far away and steep and has a place
for each of four parts which are the
boat with the sail and the bar of soap
and the fish from the bottom of this
puzzle, but what have you done with
3
Don’t even try to turn around
4
NEWARK POEM
I never made it to Morocco, Paris, Tangiers,
Tokyo, Madrid. I just live here, in Newark
& wait, for Morocco, Paris, Tangiers, Tokyo,
& Madrid to make it to me, here in Newark.
DREAMING OF THE POTATO
your grandfather being
alone lived in it loved
it & gave birth to another
felt his arms noticed the potato skin
he was hard & white & something to chew
inside
He had a dream called him-in-America
where potatoes were roses
He carried one gnarled & petrified
to keep away arthritis
Where he lived if you dug too deep
the earth was white wet & hard
“With people there has been trouble
With the potato we have been happy”
“WE WERE ALWAYS AFRAID OF”
the quiet ones
It was a myth we believed
we invented but
now we know while we were busy
watching the quiet ones
the others led us into the sea
* * * MARILYN MONROE * * *
Everybody
wanted her
to do
a trick
for them
but
she had a trick of her own
that she wanted to do for herself
only
she hated
tricks
POEM TO 1956
Can you hear the adolescent
laughter in the Jersey pines?
That sound of a gas station turning
over in its long nights sleep?
What is the meaning of summer
if the menthol of your fingernails
doesn’t touch me from the grave?
Anemone bones we whispered of
between trips to the car trunk
and quick changes behind towels
or the rest rooms of gasoline
stations whose owners were called:
Ma.
Can you hear that rustling
on the highway where the tires
trailed our innocence behind
like the intestines of the desire
we kept hanging on the rear view?
Ma, we said, where in those pine
woods, under the tender feet of
tourists, where in all that fur
is there a place to tie ones skates
and hang a key around your lovers neck?
POETRY 1969
The guy down the street just
“blew his brains out” They
carried him out on a stretcher
all bloody faced and torn and
the kid next door ran home
told his ma who told us, said
“Some guy down the street just
got stabbed in the nose & died”
but we found out, we found out
different “blew his brains out”
“Just back from Vietnam” the
kid said later “like my dad”
*
Last week across the street
some lady was raped by a tight
rope walker, now this is true
he lost his job in the circus
when he fell off and hurt his
neck so it would swing all day
like this, while he worked here
as a janitor and handy man and
told all the housewives tales
about the circus and his neck
until the other night he tapped
softly on this foreign womans
door and said “It’s the main-
tenance man, your power’s off”
She tried the lights and said
“What do I do?” “Let me in”
he said “and I’ll check your
fuse box” here the story gets
confused but it’s clear he had
a knife and somehow got naked
and raped the woman before she
got the knife away and screamed
My wife rolled over and said
“Did you hear that, sounded like
five quick shots” but I wasnt
saying a thing They caught him
The bullets were fired by the guy
across the hall from the woman
He said he just fired to make the
rapist halt, said he saw this man
running out of the building, naked
in the moonlight, but it turns out
this guy with the revolver had
been the best of buddies with the
tight rope walker who happened to
have already served time for rape
Now they got a new janitor who has
a neck like everybody else here
*
Today the guy next door told me
if it comes down to it and we all
find ourselves on the barricades
we’d probably be on opposite sides
but he promised me this “I’ll
only shoot at your legs, cause
youre my friend” which is better
than my brother-in-law the cop who
said “I’d shoot my own father if he
was breakin the law and tryin to
get away” he shook his head then said
softer “Ya gotta respect the law”
WEATHERMAN GOES OUT 1969
I strap on my holster
the one with the pine cone design
shove my automatic into it
slip a small book of famous quotations into
my pocket to offset the weight of the gun
take an ice pop out of the freezer
the paper sticks to the popsicle
sticks to my fingers sticks to my coat
I put the popsicle down on the sink
wash my hands and wipe off my coat
when I pick it up again it’s melting
I try to suck the moisture from it
I try to avoid dripping some on my coat
or pants or shirt or holster
with the pine cone design on it
or the automatic with the gas station design
on the handle
I fail and now the automatic is sticky
I try to take off my coat
without getting it sticky too
I fail to keep the coat clean
but succeed in removing it
I wash my hands while whats left of the
popsicle melts on the kitchen sink
I roll up my sleeves
I remove the sticky automatic from
the holster with the pine cone design