I could memorize my poems
and declaim them from stages
in avant-garde spaces and
coffee house traces of
somebody else’s ideas
and call it performance art,
but I already did that
before you were born.
I could put them on stages as a one-man show
or in the mouths of pros and blow you away
with the passion story of my life
and call it avant-garde post-modern
deconstructivist language theater,
but I did that too, when you
were still in grade school.
I could live on the streets
sleep in abandoned buildings
drink cheap rotgut
take whatever drugs are offered
and tell you to go fuck yourself
when you tell me to give up
the life of a poet and get a job,
but I already did that
before you were a gob of spit
hanging from the lip of
Charles Bukowski who had a
nice secure job at the post office back then.
I paid so many dues for the life of
the poet I lived, I once nailed all my shoes
to a board and called it art and then
tore it apart so I could wear them again.
I suffered, I starved, and so did my kids,
I did what I did for poetry I thought
and I never sold out, and even when I did
nobody bought.
I could memorize my poems
and declaim them from stages in
avant-garde spaces and coffee house
traces of somebody else’s ideas
and call it performance art,
but I already did that
before you were born.
c. 1980
| Here he is, | |
| emerging |
| from | ||
| his mother, | ||
| head first, |
| face down, | |
| neck | |
| strangled by | |
| umbilical cord, | |
| her holding him | |
| there, his body still |
| part of hers, | |||
| in her, | |||
| head and neck free | |||
| of natal confinement, | |||
| out now, | |||
| in the world, | |
| as the midwife |
struggles to remove the cord:
“Just hold him there, don’t push,
hold him hold him”
and damn
| his eyes open, | |
| wide. |
He lifts his
| head, takes | |
| a look around, |
cranes his enwrapped
| neck to see | |
| fur ther to the sides, |
lifts it
| to see | ||
| more of the ceiling and lights | ||
| and then | ||
| directly | ||
| into your own eyes | ||
| with | |||
| a profound | |||
| and deep | |||
| meaning | |||
| you understand instantly | |||
| and completely | |||
| but could never | |
| articulate. |
And then
the cord is free and
“Okay, push”
| and she emits a mashup of | ||
| grunt | ||
| and growl | ||
| and yowl— | ||
and whoosh
| he’s one of us, | |
| his eyes still open, | |
| just looking, | |
| seeing what there is |
| to see, | |
| a miracle embodied. |
| Our seats in the universe | |
| shift, |
| to make room | ||
| for him | ||
| at its |
| center, | ||
| rather than us, | ||
| or you, | ||
| or anyone other than | ||
| him, | ||
| for now, | ||
| and possibly | ||
| always, | ||
| or | ||
| the always we’re allowed. | ||
| Look at that river, | |
| those trees, |
| this way of | |
| moving information | |
| and ideas | |
| around, |
between,
among—
| How will it effect him? | |
| How does it? |
| Can he drink that water, | |
| swim in that |
| stream, | ||
| climb that tree | ||
| or cut it down? | ||
| Where is it all going? | ||
| Or are we? | ||
| He’s with us now, | ||
| and so is she, | ||
| and them and | ||
| all of us and | ||
| how |
| can we include that in | |
| our choices, |
| our ways of | |
| moving forward, |
| or not, | ||
| staying put, | ||
| going back | ||
| to where it all begins, | ||
| or doesn’t. | ||
| How big a spirit | |
| does the universe |
embody?
Embrace?
Project?
Be?
And we?
What are the
connections?
Interpretations?
Resolutions?
Mysteries?
Our eyes open,
or not,
hearts
| and minds | |
| more importantly, |
| as we | ||
| stand up | ||
| for what is possible, |
| the infinite, | ||
| the finite, | ||
| the real |
| and surreal, | |
| the answers posing | |
| as questions, | |
| as they always do. |
| More births, | |
| more universes, | |
| more shifting | |
| perspectives, |
| more undenying, | |
| more unlying, | |
| more retrospective | |
| understanding. |
| Oh, | |
| this is tomorrow, |
now,
and
| he is among us | |
| until he isn’t, |
as are we,
and she
and all who
| accept | ||
| the eternal delight | ||
| of |
| inevitable change, | |
| inevitable | |
| containment of every | |
| opposite, | |
| of compliance with | |
| the universal |
| laws of creation | |
| and destruction, | |
| up and down, | |
| good and bad, | |
| old and new, | |
| the future and |
| the past, | |
| all stranded, |
with us,
| and him, | |
| and her |
and them,
| here, | ||
| in the eternally | ||
| unfolding | ||
| now. |
Isn’t that God
I see in you? The sycamores
on my street? The sweetness
in the angel food cake I eat
every single day in my com-
pulsive God-like way? The
explanations in books that try
to teach us something we might
not know? The slowness I some-
times mistake for profundity?
The sea that is the mother of
us all? The dying I recall from
childhood that stood my world
on scarred terrain I couldn’t
wait to vacate?
Isn’t that God in you?
When you are true to
the darkness that
excites you—entices
you to abandon
all caution—all
fear—for what is nearest
your heart’s delight
is gratitude for the
night you despise
when she is in it
without you—
But isn’t God there too?
In her desperation
and passion for thrills
of unmeasurable joy
that never last because
God is the sun that dispels
the shadows of guiltlessness
—is the sleep that overtakes
her—the sleep she
subsides in when
all else fails—
Isn’t God the
failure too?
The broken line?
The useless thought?
The way upstairs that
causes hesitation in
the air she breathes
with you no longer?
She’s gone—
He’s not—
Their little boy bounces between
Is seen by God as God’s own
Heart—a little boy—hurt
and trying not to be—See!
says God—my
Heart!
You are my heart, God.
You are my blood.
You are the nerve endings
in my tongue,
my scalp, the soles
of my feet, my
penis, my thighs—
You are my eyes.
You corrupt me
with your love
as I have my
sons and daughter.
You are the water
in which I choose
to drown—you
pull me down—
I can’t resist.
He could be pushed he could go faster
he could stay still. After he could pump
himself up I’d get scared when he’d go
so high the chains would go slack and
I’d expect the seat to plummet straight
down to the ground and I’d yell but
he’d be laughing too loud to hear me
as the seat would jolt back into place
coming back the other way and then
when he reached the apogee of swing-
ing he’d let go and jump and land fur-
ther away than the bigger kids could,
who were the only ones who’d even try
that maneuver, and I’d be proud of him.
The geese don’t fly South
in Winter any more.
Only Latvia is worse than the U. S.
in rates of infant mortality
among the so-called industrial nations.
Where have all the
protestors gone?
I’ve tried to be a
birder but
they never conform
to the photos and
drawings in the guides
I’ve bought, including
Sibley’s. That
hasn’t stopped me
from loving them.
I have often fallen
hardest in love
with those whose
names I never knew.
My Jersey Irish relatives
all live in the South now,
where homes are cheaper
and taxes almost nonexistent.
The red state is where all
our tax money goes,
to prop up cheaper lifestyles.
It’s where all the divorces
seem to be too, liberal
Massachusetts having
the lowest rate of divorce.
Or did I mean blue?
I always get confused about
who’s who. I don’t
mean the book, I’ve
been in that for years.
But so has Bush.
All the Bushes I suppose.
Let’s face it, you can
get away with murder
if you’re family always
has. Has yours?
No, I didn’t think so.
Or maybe I mean if
your family always
has because of its
position, power and
money, and maybe
couldn’t anymore if
those things were removed.
There’s cranes and egrets,
swans and mallards, as well
as the various blackbirds
sprinkled all through the
Jersey meadowlands that
once stunk so strongly
my father swore breathing
the air there was a known cure
for asthma, of which
there is so much more now
than when I was a boy and
he was still around. The ground
on which we stand is shifting,
as perhaps it always was, but
now we can’t deny it.
The South did rise again.
Trees are more common
in the Northeast now than
they were when I was a boy,
despite the blights and infectious
insects invading from the South.
The tundra is melting so drastically,
houses in Alaska have begun to tilt
like mini-towers of Pisa.
Pizza was an American invention
I heard. Although when I was a boy
there was a kind of loaf of bread
you could buy from the local
Italian immigrants, round and
flatter than most loaves of bread,
that the Italians called Pisa bread.
Two guys who grew up across
the street from me were nicknamed
Loaf and Half-a-Loaf.
When I returned to live in Jersey
after forty years away,
before the last of my siblings still here,
Robert, an ex-cop, moved to Georgia,
he asked me after we left the local A&P
if I’d noticed the rotund old Italian man
who nodded to him at the checkout line,
and when I said I had, he said,
“Know who that was?”
I didn’t, so he told me: “Half-a-Loaf.”
Bluebirds have come back to New England.
I wonder about the white cliffs of Dover.
Thank God for Turner Classic Movies.
Where have all the heroes gone?
I know the servicemen and women
and firemen and women and other
public servants have done heroic deeds,
I meant in the movies. And politics.
The Bogies and the Robert Kennedys,
the Jimmy Cagneys and the Roosevelts,
the Waynes and the Washingtons,
despite their politics,
and Coopers, Jeffersons Stewarts and
Doctor Kings—Rosa Parks,
Barbara Stanwyks and Joans of Arc,
Queen Maeves and Jean Arthurs
and Mother Joneses.
The Bush family tree, the Walker and
Bush ancestry, have always been
expert at exploiting the systems
of American politics and business
to their advantage and especially
the disadvantage of others,
coming out ahead even when
the rest of us are begging
for a scrap of bread from
the tables they control.
How whole can you be
when you can’t see anything
other than your own perspective?
How wrong were we as kids
to think our romantic nostalgia
for revolutions past could
pass the test of our time.
Will it matter when the climate
changes so severely, everyone
we know might end up
destitute like those Katrina
victims who missed the boat,
literally. And what has
literature wrought? Remember
the heroes of Sir Walter Scott?
But that was boyhood heroics.
As a young man it was the
heroes and heroines of
Joyce or Toomer or Rhys.
Certainly no heroes
or heroines in the conventional
sense. Like my
current taste for
the war journalism of
Martha Gellhorn. What
could be more courageous
than her writing? Her life,
I’d say. With all her war
reporting from the front
or near enough to bear
the brunt of bombs and
manmade disaster. And
all her exes,
yet alone in the end.
Or Lee Miller’s
commitment to her life as
her true masterpiece. Or
should that be mistresspiece?
The language fails us now. Orwell
was right, about some things.
“Oh well” is what they wrote
under my high school yearbook
photo as my favorite expression.
Oh well infuckingdeed.
To sell this thing
To tell my story
To straighten it out
To see her again
To calm him down
To explain to them
To fix that thing
To turn it off
To answer the question
To find the solution
To look it up
To explain myself
To win or lose
To get it right
To let it go
To say goodbye
To say hello
To tell him why
To ask for permission
To show them the way
To pick it up
To put it down
To make them laugh
To calm them down
To shift to neutral
To put it in park
To stand on my head
To remain in the dark
To split the infinitive
To reunite the movement
To fight for the right
To make the improvement
To settle for less
To look for proof
To expose the lies
To check the roof
To fill the cracks
To seal our fate
To kiss the girl
To close the gate
To master the technique
To plug the leak
To acknowledge the geek
To protect the weak
To discover their worth
To inherit the earth
To explode in mirth
To quench this thirst
To quiet that moan
To dig up the bone
To get off the phone
To find a home
To rewrite this poem
Thank you for your example.
And for eating pesky insects,
and making incessant music
everywhere, like the crow
that woke me my first morning
in Tokyo, with a caw that
sounded strange, as though
in another language than
the ones I knew back home.
I mean the ducks of you, how
do you float on wet feathers?!
The genius of your oily ducts
and webbed feet! And geese,
despite the mess you make
especially now that flying South
is no longer necessary,
you still appear majestic
in your realm, and cranes
and egrets and swans in
dirty polluted pools of
Jersey wasteland. The miracle
of you, and pigeons, so
despised, I still admire
for your tenacity and survival
skills and unique beauty,
the ways you snap your heads
from side to side as if by
some other rhythm than the
ones I know, but most of all you
little ones, sparrows and
finches and wrens and the rest,
and those big among the
small, you Robin Red Breasts,
so proud and independent,
and astonishing Cardinals
and admonishing Blue Jays.
(I just learned from my fourth-
grade son’s science project
hummingbirds are actually
aggressive too, like you!) You
constantly amaze and surprise
me with new facts, oh birds,
which never contradict the in-
spiration of your ability to float
on breezes and make the wind
your world. Ah birds, don’t
let us diminish your variety
with our greed and lack of
a united will. Keep using the
sky for your canvas, making
art that never ceases to
engage the child in us.
John Adams is still missed by some—
others miss Thomas Jefferson. Jon-
athan Williams, endless campaigns,
how debased the word has become.
The loss of my brother Robert,
the quirks of our clan, the culture we
come from, or what I haven’t
figured out yet and maybe never will.
I’m grateful my adolescent dis-
appointment and anger over their
foibles and mistakes, even wrongs,
has given way to an acceptance
that transcends expectations of a
perfection we’re all incapable of.
I don’t know about you but beauty
still thrills me—as I pass a small tree
with low hanging branches filled
with extraordinarily bright, white,
blossoms, I have the urge to kiss
one, or all of them, in gratitude.
My day feels more satisfying, my life
more vital, my heart more light and
light filled than before I spied them.
Jason Shinder suffered his illness for
so long, yet, in his presence, you got
the impression his only concern was
your well being despite, given the
odds, his presence being—miraculous.
Robert Rauschenberg—who is Rachel
Schutz? Can these frightened people who
think their religion’s being suppressed in
this country name one atheist in government
in any prominent position? What is it with
the women in Asian martial arts movies
that makes them so lovely? The lighting?
The make up? Their natural good looks? Like
the young Elizabeth Taylor or Ava Gardner
or Halle Berry. There’s all kinds of beauty,
and beauty in all kinds, but the kind that
lights up movie screens through the star
of a face—Johnny Depp’s, Keri Russell’s,
Takechi Kaneshiro’s—its own delight.
The food was delicious and ridiculously
cheap. I thanked her for it, and she thanked
me, genuinely, almost teary-eyed grateful
for my patronage. I asked if the new police
station was helping her business. She shrugged
and said, “little bit” and then “no good now,
everything” then threw up her hands and
ended with “this country broken”—the air
we breathe, generation kill, the terrorist bump,
The New Yorker diversion, Thomas M. Disch,
the gist he killed himself, the book about the
toaster, new wave sci-fi, but I knew him as
a poet, a mischievous glint in his eye, more
deaths of troops in Afghanistan forgotten.
The oil companies that control the Republican
hierarchy, or are it. She’s big into drilling
everywhere and anywhere and making our
economy, like Alaska’s, completely dependent
on oil and oil companies, the governor of
a population one quarter that of Brooklyn.
They care more about Smith Barney than
Barney Smith. Obama’s family members
crowded the stage, this wonderful array of
supposed categories of us, from what’s called
“white” to “black” to Asian to Latino, but
is just the face of this country not as it
should be but as it is sweet moment.
Biden a single father of two—like I once was.
Paul Newman carried his beauty lightly, with
grace and generosity the older he got and the
softer yet more striking his looks became. His
life exemplary to me. Not just the charity but
the clarity of knowing how lucky he was. I can’t
think of another poet outside of Emily Dickinson
as cryptic and yet totally revealing of her inner
life as Joanne Kyger. Obama calmer, taller,
younger, made his points clearly and connected
them more logically, McCain, whiter, more smart
ass, simpler, more repetitive, and meaner, which,
obviously, some like. Think Obama would
even get this far? Why not just loan them the
money at high interest rates like they do to us?
Doggone it, she sure is a regular joe sixpack hockey
mom kinda gal next door who’s gonna get that darn
fed’ral government to help out folks at Saturday’s
soccer game and’ll just have to not be too specific how
(wink wink) ‘cause doggone it who wants to hear about
her ol’ end times beliefs (what the heck, the world’s comin’
to an end soon anyway an’ Alaska, according to her pastor,
is gonna be the refuge state for all those believers in the
lower 48 who’ll need a place to run to when the anti-Christ
shows up—and we know who that might be (wink wink)
—and the Rapture sends all the Jews and Catholics and
atheists to hell and even some of those darn Protestants
who just don’t get it that there’s only one way to be saved)
with a gotcha satisfied smile behind every rehearsed lie.
It should be a no brainer, voting in the church
around the corner, walked to from my apartment
over sidewalks covered in such amazing
colors from the fallen leaves I feel incapable
of describing this scene, so vividly Autumnal,
such a range of hues, like us, thrilled and
overwhelmed with gratitude, there’s nothing
to compare it to, and yes, I did cry—“think
of the children” they constantly cried back
when I wanted a “black girl” for my bride,
now it looks like that argument was as
backward as I labeled it as a kid, ‘cause here
that theoretical child is—proving yes we can
—create a new world again. Knock on wood.
Can you
believe
this shit?
I know
it’s all
mostly
contrived
but man
alive.
Or not
if the
“socialist”
“facist”
“foreign-
born”
“terrorist”
gets his
way with
us old
white men.
And women.
Like that one
collapsing in
tears sobbing
“I want my
America back . . .”
And yes some
of us see the
implied racism
in all that. But
it’s so
much
more.
A door
is closing
in their
universe
and they’re
afraid they’ll
be locked
inside forever.
They, and
even some
of us, can’t
see there’s
a window
still wide
open on the
other side.
The window
that’s letting
all that fresh
air in. Let
the future
begin.
The mood swings unpredictable but
reliable, from affectionate to hostile,
from I want you to I hope you have
a heart attack and drop dead now.
From get the fuck out of my house
to please please don’t go, from don’t
ever talk to me again to unable to stop
talking, from let’s play to don’t touch
me, from you retard lazy liar to you’re
so handsome stylish and cool. From
cruel to caring. Then react to insulting
jokes with anything but total accept-
ance or dare joke back in a similar
vein and: You’ll never see me again.
for John Godfrey
My Irish peasant
immigrant grandfather
the first policeman
ever in our Jersey town
—badge number one
—carried an old,
shriveled up, petrified
potato in his pants
pocket to ward off
the pain of arthritis and
fermented dandelion
juice he’d make in
his bathtub from
the yellow blossoms he
picked in the high
school playing field
across the street
from his little house.
Sometimes, when
he was even more drunk
than usual, we kids
would see him bent over
the grass with his
old, dark stained fedora
on his silver haired head,
a collarless shirt
no longer quite
white drooping down
over what we’d
all be giggling at but
secretly embarrassed
by, his underpants,
having forgotten to
put on the slacks in
the pocket of which
would be the old,
shriveled up, petrified
potato to ward off
the pain of his arthritis,
which obviously
he didn’t need on
these days, so intent
on harvesting the
dandelions, his square
unshaven silver speckled
jaw jutting forward
displaying the resolve
and fortitude necessary
for the only job he
seemed to have once
he retired from the force.
I never heard him
complain of any kind
of pain. Maybe that’s
why they called
him “Iron Mike.”
His seventh-grade
drop out son, my father
one of eight kids who
lived a while, though
one sister died in the
influenza pandemic of
1918, and one brother
in what my father always
felt was a phony
suicide attempt that went awry,
didn’t believe in
the old superstitions (though
his wife, my mother,
the high school graduate
of the family certainly
did, as she seemed
to also believe in
“the little people” she blamed
for household mishaps
that couldn’t be laid
at the feet of her six
children who lived
beyond infancy out
of the seven she had
that I was the youngest
of) so dad didn’t
carry an old petrified
potato around in his pants
pocket, but wore a
copper bracelet instead,
insisting it worked wonders
for his arthritic joints,
and maybe it did. I never
heard him complain
about any pain either,
except the kind he felt
I caused to his
heart and head.
Ma died from heart
failure after an operation
to remove cancerous
growths from her colon
and more, so my
father mo
ved in with my
oldest sister who
was always ailing from
surviving childhood
diabetes, suffering much
pain from various
disorders as a result of it,
or the medications
used to fight it, and when
that war seemed finally
lost, daddy took to
his bed to beat her
to the other side, and did,
though she eventually
joined him there,
from her kidneys
giving out, after several
bouts with her own
cancers and heart failures
and enough pain to
go around for our whole
clan, if it was needed.
The last of my brothers
to join them passed
last year just as Spring
was about to arrive
and miss him, the only
cop among our siblings
and the only one to have
a bout of arthritis himself,
or so the awful pain in his
wrists was diagnosed
as for a while, after Lyme
Disease and several
other guesses. He kept them
wrapped in those
soft casts for several months,
doctors orders,
while they fed him various
medicines including
the antibiotics we’re all too
familiar with,
and then one day the pain
was gone, not that
he ever complained when
it was still there.
I remember one time visiting
him in a childless
old people’s enclave outside
of Atlanta, Georgia,
where he and his wife had
moved to be closer
to their gr own children and
their families who’d
left New Jersey for the newer
and bigger yet somehow
cheaper houses there with
one tenth the taxes they
faced here. When he bragged
about these facts,
I said, “Yeah, but you live in
Georgia” as he and I
took a walk around the complex
he seemed to be
the unelected mayor of, greeting
fellow retirees
with the same gruff brevity
he addressed the
rest of us with, until I had
to stop to catch
my breath and let the pain
in my chest that
still plagued me then subside,
as we paused
in our stroll around his domain
I asked him
if he ever had pain that kept
him from doing things
like mine was now, and his
abrupt reply I
should have foreseen after
a lifetime of
similar responses “And if I did,
what would be
the point of talking about it?”
which made me
smile at how reliable he’d
always been. He died
of a rare cancer they only
discovered when it
caused him to erupt in spots
and sores all over
his freckled Irish skin,
“stage four” they said
having missed the first
three and ordered up
heavy chemo sessions that
turned him from a
vital seventy-nine-year old
who could throw
heavy furniture into the back
of a truck by
himself that would take you
and me both to
lift a few inches off the ground,
he went from
that kind of older brother
(remember the scene
in Godfather Two where
the mob informant
is about to squeal to a
platform full of Senators
until he sees his aging
older brother, just
flown in from Italy,
sitting silently in the gallery
and clams up, accepting
prison or even death
before exposing himself
to his big brother’s
approbation, that’s the way
I felt about my brother
the ex-cop) who’d just driven
from Georgia to Jersey
and back again like a teenager
on a lark, but
after only two sessions of
this chemo supposed
solution, he was transformed
into a frail, old man
who couldn’t stand on his
own, or walk without
a cane at first, then walker,
then one of those
electric carts. He resisted
the final passage for
my sister-in-law’s sake,
not complaining of
the obvious pain let alone
discomfort, but
looking more sour with
every hour until
I told her to let him go,
bring him home
from the hospital for hospice
care and tell him
she’d fare okay on her own,
that he could go
home to where our sister
and other brothers
and parents had gone, and
as soon as she said it,
he did.
The only encounters
I’ve had with arthritis,
outside the above,
were when I made my first
movie with a Holly
wood star, whose hands
were so gnarled they
looked like mushrooms grew
wild under his pale skin.
John Carradine played
my character’s grand
father and still had the force
of all the roles I’d
seen him play since I was a boy,
as he stared at me from
behind the camera while
I prepared for my close up
at his supposed deathbed
and the director leaned in
to whisper in my ear
he’d like to see some tears
on my face then yelled
“Action!” and I panicked
thinking I’m not good enough
to cry on cue but John
Carradine stared into my eyes
with the intensity of his
and as I looked away in
search of an alternative
I saw his hands, those
knuckles erupting under
his skin with fierce
independence like an
alternative artwork of
organic confusion
blossoming into fingers that
extended in every direction,
uncontrollably bent and
stiffened and askew and
the tears flew from my eyes,
much to my surprise and
the rest of the cast and crew
who after “Cut!” was
shouted erupted in spontaneous
applause but none from
John Carradine who couldn’t
have clapped if he’d
wanted to, he just kept looking
into my eyes as he
nodded his head in approval
and smiled slyly.
As for me, knock
on wood, so far so good
when it comes to
the arthritis of my male
progenitors, though
not so good for other
ailments, like heart
problems I take more
medication for than
they even had back then,
or the cancer that
rendered me useless in
some departments
for awhile and kept me in
a hospital bed and
pain I didn’t mind complaining
of, though not as
much as I’d have liked to. It
gave me insight
into what these men and women
in my family en
dured so silently, an intensity
that only those who
have gone through it can
describe but so few
ever do. The best I could
come up with in
response to the priest who
stopped by my room
to ask how I was doing
one day, and as he
spoke I suffered a wave of
“discomfort” (in
quotes) as close to a ten on
the pain scale they
were always asking me to rate
as you can get, I
told him that before this experience
I always thought
God was Love, but now I
understood that
God is Pain, and he nodded as
though he under
stood as I do now, they are
the same.
On Halloween afternoon the town
closed off the main street in the village
center plus part of the street the old
house our apartment was in was on
so the kids in their costumes could
wander the streets on their way to
getting candy from store owners. My
boy and some of his friends took a
break to throw a football around and
one kid left in a huff over something,
coming back with his parents, a gor-
geous young “black” woman and her
Waspy-styled “white,” though now
red-faced, husband looking angry.
Earlier sitting on the top step of the
stoop, noticing her in the street I felt
flattered that she looked at me with
seeming interest, but now she glared
behind her husband who was accusing
my little boy of harming his, because
of the color of his child’s skin! I was
calm at first pointing out I’d been there
all along and no one deliberately hurt
anyone, but that made him madder.
He was in my face, taller and heftier
than my skinny frame. I felt my own
rage start, then my heart screaming
with the angina I take medication for.
I tried to reason with this man calling
me and my boy prejudiced against his
because we were so-called “white”
Irish-looking males. I pointed out the
two best friends my son was standing
watching this with were brown, both
mixed race, one Asian and “white” the
other “black” and “white” like this man’s
son, but he didn’t seem to hear. I didn’t
want my son and his friends to see me
“chicken out” but as the chest pain in-
creased I thought what’s worse, to see
me back down or drop dead on the spot?
So I stopped arguing and stepped back.
The man, almost spitting by now let his
wife pull him away, and as they backed
down the street he kept yelling for every-
one to hear that I was racist scum and so
on, me wanting, and maybe even trying
to yell back that I walked these streets
fifty years ago with my black love and
got beat up and spit on and run out of
town for it and now smiled every time I
saw a racially mixed couple stroll by as
though without a care because now they
could in this town, and I felt I’d been
a part of what caused that change but
now was being blamed for the opposite.
I wasn’t good at a lot of it—
but there were things—
strings connecting me to
music—jazz & r&b mostly—
I could play piano—I had a feel—
soul some said—(like poet
Ralph Dickey who had more
keyboard technique but lacked a
certain swinging intuitive
rhythm)—and words—mine—
not maybe most original—
but originally mine in ways
that favored reverence for
a truth I never found any-
where else—and movies—
or those serial movies that
are TV—in my time I
made a contribution—whether
anyone noticed or not—
I tried to step back, like
Lao Tsu says, but found it
complicated—more complicated
than I knew how—simplicity
being my mission—my love
for the boy I couldn’t protect
in me back then but vowed
to stay connected to—do you
hear those one-syllable words?—
they’re the ones that trip me
up since they removed that
foreign object from my brain
that explains my poetry now—
though it always did—
jasmine—Tunisia
—how evocative
like ’40s films
black & white
yet fragrant &
bursting with life—
vital in a way
that’s filled with
the more subtle
colors light
and shadow
provide through
skills no longer
needed or applied
—extent—is that
what I meant?
[ . . . ]
I know I haven’t done
enough—oh sure I’ve
stood by my core beliefs,
thank God, most of the time,
haven’t you? and often
paid the price for telling
the truth, even if it was
inconvenient or impolitic
at times, or made myself
look not so good—even
genuine heroics I’ve had
my part in, as I’m sure
we all have at least once
more or less—but I confess
I didn’t fly to Liberty
Square in Cairo to take
my place among the heroes
of this season, like I hitched
to places all across this
nation in the ‘sixties &
beyond to stand up for
the truth of our common
humanity in the face of
racism and war—more
bullying confronted and
sometimes the victim of
—love, I thought then
was the answer—as so
many of us did and I
still do—not just like
anyone who wakes up
in an operating room or
just before they go in
feels all that matters is
their loved ones—but
too the love of all our
commonality even when
wired differently so that
simplified slogans can
sway one wiring this way,
the other that, to see the
spirit of love in all things
not just creatures like us
and those apes over there
staring into our eyes
with a look that is so
tired of the lies about
our differences, their
“inferiority” they
know intuitively isn’t
real beyond the deal we’ve
made to behave like it is—
I still talk to rocks, let alone
trees, and they always talk back,
mountains and clouds and
meadows and shadows
and the glories winged
cousins bring to any view—
the choice we always
have to get as close as
we ever will to the truth
in the heart of all things,
even the despicable bullies
holding Weiwei hostage
as we meet here tonight
to celebrate our love of
all creative attempts
to fulfill our humanity . . .
I wanted to write
a special poem for
this night like I
sometimes have before
to tell what I know
as well as I know
my heart’s scars
but my brain’s scarred
now too and it doesn’t
work as well as it once
did, nor do the connections
between my thoughts
and the fingers typing this
(I know I should move to
voice activated programs
so I don’t have to go through
the hassle of retyping
and retyping and retyping
until the word I meant
to write is finally on the
screen—but I’ve been
using my fingers to
express myself in so
many ways, on the
keys of the old portable
typewrites of my tough
(I meant to write “type-
writers” of my “youth”
and would normally
make the correction
but both words make sense
for that period of my life:
“typewrites” and “tough”)
and electric typewriters
of my thirties and early
forties and computer key-
boards ever since, or
the keys of pianos, upright,
grand, electric and acoustic,
or organs or Rolands or
Rhodes or whatever was
available, but I can no
longer do with the same
facility I once had—I know
a lot of folks have the same
problems who didn’t have
brain surgery—but the way
it happened for me was sudden—
before the growth affected me
I typed and played piano as
fast and as accurately as always
—and then one day I didn’t
anymore, and that’s still the
way it is tonight—I can never
get it right the first time, but
have to try and try again until
I do, like a child just learning,
again, but now who understands
so much he never did before
because too much came too easily,
and what didn’t I usually ignored—
but that door—the “easily”—is
closed, if I want to enjoy the
pleasures writing and playing
piano always gifted me—
I know musicians much younger
whose injured wrists or elbows or
arms or vocal chords or other
physical restraints have caused
them to face the same crisis of
inability, I’m not comparing
myself or complaining, even
if it may sound that way to
you, I’m explaining because
that’s what I do, I say “this
is the way I’m experiencing the
truth of my life right now and
what I see around me, and you?”
the bright bursts of yellow
announce a spring still
struggling to arrive—forsythia
and daffodils followed by
the eye-opening white blossoms
of the dogwood tree in our yard
or neon pinks of the cherry
blossoms in the nearby park—
the more exotic blossoms on
the screen or page when I
try to write, here’s some
uncorrected typing:
and oc cour se it’s all\si
fucking meningliess oh
what thrtwa thy asportiaons
ame upont this whatever
\
yes, we all noticed how
the force of “fucking”
somehow survived intact—
but that’s not all
that’s moved on
[ . . . ]
what happened
was I went
but I came back
I did it but
then I stopped
I knew but
then I forgot
I was but
now I’m not
now it’s old news
the blues I play
never come out
right ‘cause
that connection
between the keys and
fingers and brain
ain’t, like I said,
the same anymore,
but when a door closes
for now or ever as always
a window opens and
new synapses replace
the old flashes with
bold distinctions—
like how I always found
Meryl Streep and Anette Beining
unattractive, no matter how much
I admired their talent, or
Mitzi Gaynor’s girl-next-door looks
so abrasive—
I liked the darker
beauties and
their darker arts—
then they removed
that part of my brain that
wasn’t supposed to be there
and where once having been
born in the Swing Era
made it always about
rhythm & tone, now those
old ideas were gone and
whenever Meryl or Annette
or Mitzi’s image shines
from old movies on TV
I feel actual glee at
their presence in my
living room, overflowing
with desires I never knew
I had because I hadn’t
until now & this rewiring—
the Meryl-Annette-Mitzi-
attraction and affection
connection—so that when
they aren’t beaming from
the small screen I swear
I feel no attraction or
affection for them at all
but when they are—the
mysteries of what I always
believed was me
but now know as merely
electric impulses in
the thought battery
that’s the hybrid
of my brain . . .
the smell of
rain here—
or the way
here smells
when it rains
don’t fight
the goodness
in you or
anyone else—
Hubert Selby Jr.
taught me that
you know how
long it took me
to type
and retype
and retype and re-
type until all
the words were
actually the
ones I intended?
of course a lot
of what comes out
is more “poetic”
in some sense—
like “tough” for “youth”
or “angels” for “angles”
and “tripe” for “type”
“sea age” for “message”
“meadow” for “Meryl”
and line break for
apostrophe and
frustration for
accuracy and bottomless
self-pity for stamina and
perseverance—timidity
was never an option
although it ruled
so much of what
appeared as bravado
—am I making sense
and why do I feel I
should—do I repeat
myself and in so less
exiting ways than
Weiwei does—man
I admire that guy,
his presence even
just in photographs,
and then in films,
you can see his spirit
and its generosity and
acceptance of what is,
then using it for what
can be—
I’ve never been
humble enough—
I wasn’t tough
or noble or good
enough to shine
at sports—but
I was smarter
about most
stuff than anyone
I grew up around—
and I had a pro-
found respect
for originality,
of which I thought
I had my share—
when it didn’t
seem to get me
where I thought
I should be—I
made it known
in ways that put
the onus on you
for not doing
enough to bring
justice to my
cause—my due—
my getting through
the obstacles I
knew were there—
where others
seemed spared
from the reper-
cussions I drew
fire from—come,
let’s kiss and
make up, like
Nina Simone
always wanted
then refused
to do—original?
she was—as is
Ai Weiwei
who surprisingly
looks up to
Andy Warhol
who risked so
little, although
maybe not—
he got shot
by a woman I
knew, that’s right,
Valerie Salinas,
when she got out of
the hospital for the
criminally insane
someone dropped her
on the steps of my
“commune” as we
called them in those
days—the women who
till then had been big
admirers became afraid
once she moved in—
they feared her constant
pacing and muttering and
rage at those she thought
had taken advantage of
her—like the time I came
home to find the upstairs
toilet plugged because
she’d ripped up the house
copy of her S.C.U.M.
Manifesto and tried to
flush it—then left it,
as they all did, for me
to plunge until the
pages all came out
and the toilet worked
again and my kids could
use it and when I went
away for a reading in
Boston with some friends—
Ed Cox, Tim Dlugos,
Terence Winch—the
women in this radical
lesbian-feminist “commune”
—don’t ask—told Valerie
I didn’t want her there
so she moved out and
when I got back and they
told me I was dismayed—
I got along fine with her
and kind of enjoyed the
way she made all visitors
so nervous with her smoke
filled pacing and muttering
in our communal living room—
I liked a lot of her ideas too—
she was the first person I knew
to explain the differences between
men and women by the nerve
endings in their genitals and
taste buds on their tongues
and olfactory absorbers in
their sense of smell, and color
recognition facets of their eyes—
men are simpler, she’d explain,
they have so much less of all
of that they just miss a lot—
it was one of the reasons she
said she didn’t mind having sex
with them for money (she
became a hooker for a living
after she left the house we all
rented and I moved out of not
long after this) because they
were so easy to satisfy, so
simpleminded and biologically
formed, but she only loved
women and preferred their
bodies and complexities,
though she found the ones
in our supposedly revolutionary
commune chickenshit—
you don’t know
what you’re missing,
people I love
get ignored or
forgotten, poets
artists, actors
musicians
I don’t always
know what I’m
missing
the trees always
talk back—
Valerie thought the solution
was electricity, to somehow
make men more sensitive,
like the women she loved,
they needed to be wired
with more electricity—
I understood in those first few months
after the operation, when I couldn’t
read and then only out loud and then
finally could, well enough to pass—
what it felt like to be a child with
learning disabilities or an adult with
rightwing simplicities or—and this
was maybe the most difficult to
accept—blissfully contented with
only the capacity to eat and drink
and hold conversations with one
person at a time, sublime satisfaction
sometimes I’m still overwhelmed
by too much stimuli, a crowd, a TV
on and phone ringing and someone
talking, at first I couldn’t see the way
things are parts of a bigger picture,
as a single blossom blends into
a landscape, not anymore, as
each item popped out, individualized
and so distinct it was like a nightmare—
no grasping of the whole picture
just its individual parts shouting
at me through my eyes to realize
each tiny aspect of the scene as
equally important and demanding
of attention, oh it hurt my head
just to open my eyes, and hearing
was even more of a surprise because
I couldn’t close my ears but had
to hear each note distinctly in
even the most complicated music
so that this horn and that one were
distinct and each voice in harmony
to others was isolated in my ear
overwhelmed with all the disso-
nance no one else could hear . . .
my children know what
they mean to me, because
I always tell them and
hope my actions do too—
forgive me friends
for being so untrue—
I always mean to tell you
how much you mean to me,
the prominence you have
in my heart, but things
happen, I never start
that sentence until
you’re gone or
I am, so let me
be clear and
say it here—
I love you all
in my own way
which is to say
I think of you often
and it always invites
a smile to the ongoing
project of time’s
that is this face . . .
as George Oppen wrote
in that collection of authors’
self-portraits Burt Britton
once collected, under
Opppen’s curved line of
an old man’s back
he wrote: “which is
a very odd thing to happen
to a child” and it is—
jasmine—Tunisia
—how evocative
[ . . . ]
Fall 2011
At a party for Lawrence Ferlinghetti at
Barbara Guest’s New York apartment in
1975, Jimmy approached me and asked:
Are you Michael Lally? I confessed I
was. Then he asked: May I kiss you?
Not something I particularly wanted,
but because he was James Schuyler I
said: Sure. So he did. I wasn’t into it,
but he was. It was brief. He seemed
pleased. I figured he asked for the kiss
because he was attracted to me, so I
wanted to know why he first asked if
I was me. He said: To make sure you
were the man who writes those poems.
As he was leaving the party a man asked
Jimmy if he would write down his address
for him. He had a book he wanted to send
him. Jimmy took the pen and paper the
man provided and wrote in an elegant
cursive style: James Schuyler. Then under-
neath that in the same old-style cursive,
but smaller, he wrote: James Schuyler.
Underneath that he wrote in even smaller
script: James Schuyler. I no longer recall
how many times he did this, but the last
had diminished to unreadable size. He gave
the paper and pen back to the man and
left him to read it and look up, mystified.
Over dinner at Darragh Park’s 22nd Street
home with Darragh, Jimmy and Ana, the
Costa Rican woman I lived with at the
time, Jimmy was mostly silent. So she and
Darragh did a lot of the talking. I loved all
of them and was content to just be in their
company. Jimmy felt the same way about
us, as he revealed later to Darragh. He
especially liked that Ana and I looked him
in the eye and talked to him the way we
would anyone. Not everyone did that with
Jimmy when he was having a bad day,
unable or unwilling to talk, the meds taking
their toll on his capacity for communicating.
In his room at The Chelsea Hotel, Jimmy
was telling me of his love for Tom Carey
as Helena reentered, back from an errand.
Jimmy loved them both, as did many of us.
Helena not just for the help she was to him
daily but for her delightful beauty and dis-
arming honesty and insight, and Tom for
his beauty as well, and sardonic wit despite
his serious troubles then. I was often arro-
gantly self important around my peers in
those years, and even some of my elders,
but never around Jimmy because of his
poems I loved so much and aspects of the
strategies in them I felt we had in common.
Jimmy’s peers at times expressed frustration
with the childlike aspect of his need to be
cared for, not believing it was entirely
from his mental health struggles. I might
have some small insight into that now.
Not because I suffer as Jimmy did, but
because I worry some of my peers may
be exasperated with my childish need to
be forgiven or excused or tolerated or
indulged when I forget to respond or seem
to ignore or avoid so much and blame it
on the brain operation some may think I
use as a license to only do what I want, the
way some thought Jimmy sometimes did.
I’ve been copying lines from books
I read into a bound journal since 1962.
A few here and there, not a lot, but
several from James Schuyler poems.
Here are two: “Californians need to
do a thing to enjoy it./A smile in the
street may be loads! you don’t have
to undress everybody.” And the other:
“Did Beowulf call the sea ‘the penis-
shrinker’?” I can pick up any book of
his and read any random lines and find
gems. I just did: “From the next room
the friendly clatter of an electric type-
writer.” Jimmy knew what mattered.
On a perfectly clear Fall day, heading back to
Fort Monmouth, I watched as other cars on
The Garden State Parkway veered onto the
shoulder and stopped, the drivers not getting
out, just sitting there. At the toll booth the man
said The president’s been shot. As I drove on,
more cars pulled off the road. I could see their
drivers weeping. Back in the barracks we stayed
in the rec room watching the black and white
TV, tension in the room like static. When they
named Lee Harvey Oswald, I watched the
black guys hold their breath, hoping that meant
redneck, not spade, and every muscle in their
faces relax when he turned out to be white.
In a San Francisco Chinatown hotel, Bucks
slept off all his driving alone while I roamed
North Beach in my slept-in skinny suit with
action back jacket and pipe cleaner pants plus
my junkie sky piece and pointy-toed boots.
In Jimmy Valentine’s Hot Dog Palace where
Columbus and Broadway met, with only a
quarter left I eyed the jazz-filled box and a
slice of chocolate cake in a glass case, chose
the box, dropped my coin in the slot and put-
ting my ear to the speaker felt a hand on my
left shoulder. Turning to my right as I rose
to avoid getting suckered I saw Andre, who
said Got a car? There’s a party in Berkeley.
I woke Bucks to drive us to BOP CITY a funky jazz
joint where Andre scored, then to a small druggie
party in Berkley in a little white bungalow where
another Michael, a crazy Jewish jazz sax player,
lived with a heartbreakingly crazy young blonde
who loved books we deeply discussed after we all
moved in. When he discovered Bucks was from
Darien, Andre spoke of rich families he knew there.
Bucks turned whiter than he already was. Andre
had been the only spade at a private school, he said,
his English becoming as polished as an old-style
movie star’s, making mine sound like a spade Bowery
Boy’s. Bucks sold his car for a motorcycle to split
for Colorado and the first commune I ever heard of.
Crazy Michael got jealous of me and the blonde
so Andre took me back to North Beach to hang
at Mister Otis, a jazz club that let me sit in for
free drinks and Andre’s lady, a French illegal,
hook wealthy johns. She said if I read Herman
Hesse’s Steppenwolf it would change my life. But
it didn’t. Later Andre snuck the three of us into a
hotel across from Valentine’s thanks to the night
clerk he knew, then left to get me a pint to stop
my constant cough from my four or more packs
of Pall Malls a day, but we knew it was to score.
She tried to soothe me with sex but I said my
preference was darker chicks. I missed Bambi.
When Andre returned with the pint I emptied it.
In the morning, the floor littered with sleepers,
an old lady burst in yelling Out! Out! Everyone
split except me and Andre. He spoke to the lady
like a prince to a peon and she left us alone to get
dressed. First he took a piss in the sink, did a few
ballet turns, then bought me another pint and got
me to call Dolores to propose. By then I didn’t know
what I was doing. She said Yes. Andre disappeared.
I slept after that in a half constructed high rise with
other vagabonds like Gaylord, a large white cat I
knew from The Village who wore a blanket with
a hole for his head, looking like Jesus or an apostle.
He was the first person I knew who gave the V
sign palm out and said Peace when greeting you.
I ran into Eileen Kaufman panhandling North
Beach tourists with Parker. Like Irish peasant
mothers of my Irish grandmother’s time wand’-
ring the streets of Galway begging with their kids.
Paddy O’Sullivan tramped the streets of North
Beach dressed like Puss’n’Boots, wide brimmed
hat with feathery plume, cape and high fancy
boots, declaiming his poems to strangers. We
shared bottles while sitting against the wall of
Vesuvio in the alley next to City Lights Books.
After a few weeks I had my oldest sister, Joan,
wire me fifty dollars to fly back to base to face
a court martial where I was fined, busted to
no rank and given thirty days in the stockade.
Every time I moved as a young man and
my now middle-aged older kids were
little, when we took the art and posters
from the walls there’d be fist-size holes
behind them made by me. Now it’s the
same in his room and beyond as he re-
sponds to others’ mood swings by taking
a swing at whatever’s in front of him.
He wasn’t around when I was doing the
same, so I wonder how that expression
of frustration came to him, if it’s in the
angry genes inherited from my side and
—when coupled with the mood swings
from the other side—might be irresistible.
Thelonious Monk said It’s
always night or we wouldn’t
need light. Saint John of The
Cross wrote The Dark Night
Of The Soul which I always
used to justify my research
into darkness with the idea
that the deeper I got into it
the higher I would climb to
the light when I came out
of it. If I came out of it. Now
I know how big that if was
and how lucky I am to have
found the light before it was
too late—the light of love, the
unconditional kind that we
usually only find in kids and
dogs and saints. What a quaint
concept the latter is, and yet
I bet you’ve known a few. I
have too, and have aspired to
be my own kind of one. Only
what’s done is done and can’t
be taken back. Though it can
be taken with, as a reminder
of all I have to make up for.
But the easiest way is just to
open that door and walk
through it to the light, even
when, like Monk says, it’s
always night.
There was a time
When I was a boy,
Eight or nine, and
Afraid of the dark.
Even in a tiny house
With tons of people
So small it took only
A few steps to walk
From one side to the
Other, and not too
Many more to walk
From front to back.
In a kitchen with my
Grandmother’s room
Right next to it and
On the other side our
Little combination
Dining/living room
With people listen-
Ing to the radio or
Watching the black
And white thirteen-
Inch TV, siblings, or
The boarder, upstairs
Getting ready for
Bed, light and sound
Everywhere, even
Then, if the light was
Off in the kitchen
I’d refuse to go in to
Get something out
Of the refrigerator
Without a sister or
Brother or someone
Coming with me.
When I got older
So many women
Would get upset
That I left lights on
When we went out
At night. Every light
In the house they
Would say and
Almost be right.
But even though
There were times
In my life when I
Loved the dark,
Relished the dark,
Immersed myself
In the dark, I was
Always so happy
To come home
To the light.
Lots of shit dies
Love doesn’t
Parts of me are
Already dead
But love isn’t . . .
My appendix
Dead and buried
My prostate and
A disc from my back
Dead and gone too
And parts of my brain
Cut out with the
Dime size foreign body
That got in there somehow
To cause so much trouble . . .
The twin towers died
And all those lost with them
Like a woman who was
Kind to me when
She didn’t have to be
Gone on one of those
Two planes, but
My love for her isn’t . . .
Five of my siblings and
Our old man and ma
Passed on now for awhile
But not the love we shared
When we were honest . . .
The mother
Of my oldest kids, my
First wife, gone, but the love
She and I shared never
Died, though maybe the
Like did . . . my first true
Love, too, the love of my
Life, gone now for almost
A decade, but my love for
Her, and hers for me,
Never died even thru
All of our husbands and
Wives and lovers over
The years when we
Were out of touch with
Each other, none
Of that stopped the
Love we both felt
And affirmed whenever
We spoke again like
The week before she
Passed still working
To help troubled kids
Find families, those
Kids still grateful for
The love she showed them
That’s still alive even if
She’s with the ancestors now . . .
Or other women I’ve lived
With who have passed on
Or lovers long gone
Like Joan B or Joe B
Her face so sweet and tough
Voice still admonishing me to
Just be myself and not
Worry what others think
His voice so quiet and
Stuttering in my ear as I
Write this, his image on
My bookshelves with his books
His art on my walls, I only wish
He’d lived long enough
To see it didn’t matter
How famous he did or
Didn’t become, his work
Living on among us
Who love it, exhibited
Often since he passed
Or Tony gone so recently
A young man who went from
Ripping doors off their
Hinges when he was
Upset with his wife and
Kids to the gentlest giant
Of many I’ve known
His ex-skinhead rages
Transformed as he turned
The pages of his life from
Anger to compassion
His punk Buddhist
Practice enabling him
To live with the rare
Brain disease that
Took his physical
Presence from us
But not the love we
Who knew him shared . . .
I think of him every day
As I do a lot who live
Now only in our hearts
. . . oh
Lots of shit dies, like
Almost everything that was
New when I was a boy
Including the people . . .
If you live long enough
So much passes it feels
Like another world . . .
But it’s the same one
Where love never dies . . .
Poetry saved my life.
There is no life without poetry.
What life isn’t a poem?
Open my brain, poems fly out.
How do I get the poems back?
That’s not a poem, that’s my life.
“My Life” was my most famous poem.
What life isn’t a poem?
Poetry literally saved my life.
It made me feel not so alone.
It’s not so easy now to write a poem
since the operation on my brain.
But I’d do it again, and again,
because in the end, what isn’t a poem?
When I first read about string theory I thought
What about swing theory? The ways the uni-
verse is secretly governed by the same laws
that sparked The Big Band Swing Era, park
swings and taking a swing at something or
someone. I thought of “Swinging On a Star”
or Swing Time I mean the ways reality swings
not just in the Hegelian sense but in the re-
galing sense and sensitivity to the ego swings
and mood swings of The Creator or whatever
force initiated this swinging cosmic vibe we
call Being Here Now, always, where every
sound’s a note in the song of everything, ev-
ery moment a scene in the movie of our lives.