ann was a high-collared baglady
double negatives
don't mean
nothing,
my dearest,
sweetheart.
lover.
sexual twin of flesh.
fuck. no fuck.
did you just put
nat king cole love songs
on cassette? yep,
& we're drunk,
& tired,
& oh,
oh,
that specific
clitoris
i so
love.
Re: jack kerouac is the devil
buddha blabs
bulbs off blissful light of heaven
upon feathery tundra-cloud
thin glass shards speckle starry terrain,
whereby monks collect moments
priests sip sins
holy hell
bloodless & gone
this gooey ghost
& his gooey words
*blood stains the bottom of a burlap bag hanging from a branch
in the woods*
Johnny Mason's brother Ed devours a big bowl of soggy sponge-like toast
filled up with milky sugary coffee in a sloppy dog-like manner although
he uses a large spoon. It's breakfast in the kitchen in the cellar of the
Mason home. The house is built on the arc of a hill dropping down into
the Conequennessing Creek. The old 3-story dwelling slants with the curve
of the land like a fallen triangle, so the kitchen is in the cellar at
ground-level.
It's a dirty house. Onions, skunk-cabbage, dog & dog shit, chickens,
pigeons, fish-guts, & human stink odor the rooms.
Johnny calls Ed a fat pig. Ed grunts. If Johnny calls him a fat pig
one too many times, he might jump from his chair & head-lock his little
skinny brother. Their mother wld most certainly blame Ed, slap him
like some mule, for beating up on Johnny. Ed burps a loud one. A few ants
scamper from sugar granule to sugar granule across the table. Fat pig.
Johnny's my catcher on the Juniors. He's a fearless, though reckless,
catcher. Sometimes it feels like I'm pitching at a rolling pillow, a
jumpy chimpanzee, a leaping bullfrog. The blue chest-protector easily
covers his young body, & the mask is so massive. But we have our signals.
One is a fastball, a straight-ball. Two is a curve. Three is a drop. Four
is a change-up. Five is a submarine curve. I throw a good submarine
curve.
I pound into my glove. "C'mon, let's go practice outside."
Ed slurps up soupy slithery bread-crusts.
Johnny spins to a chair & grabs his mitt & an old ball. The
field's below the Mason house thru some oak trees, some may-apple patches,
& a stretch of swamp where salamanders surprise us with orange &
red suddenness on slick shale. Frogs croak & locusts buzz loudly, a
chicken-hawk circles over the old walnuts behind the left-field fence.
We kick dust along the third-base line.
*
My mother fixes us peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for lunch. We
eat them on my picnic-table in the backyard. Both of us will make the Majors.
I think Johnny looks a little like Roberto Clemente. Clemente as a 12
year old with a runny nose, dusty face, & milk-smile in the noon sun
of summer. Baseball glove folded beside a paper-plate & drained
glass of milk. Our hands reach for our gloves simultaneously, &
we run thru yards for the top of the hill to throw the ball some more down
at the field.
Just as the yards become woods we see the three Whitecabbage brothers
huddled at the tree-line about double a homerun away. Other kids surface
too. There's Regis & Packy, Burr, Tritt.
"They have something. They have something in that burlap bag," Johnny
notes.
"Yeah, let's go see."
As we approach them I hear cat-hissing & snarling. They've bagged
a cat.
"The Filipi's cat! Did you see Donna Filipi eating her boogers in
school? We hate the Filipi's. We got their stupid cat." Many voices speak
at once.
Tony Whitecabbage is the oldest & ties the bag with a rope to a
low branch, the terrified cat snarls & pushes all around the
bottom of the
burlap, the bag swings a growing pendulum weighted circle, & everybody
picks up sticks & rocks & some of us punch with fists, & kick,
& laugh.
3rd shift life
i watch delbert rolling a farmer finger
into one of his large nostrils. dale bly
has constructed a sign on cardboard:
AIDS CURES FAGS
& he swears it's the truth,
the skinny weasel fuck
with nightly bombardments of anal sex
jokes. delbert wipes along dusty brown
work-pants, shifts his balls, the little
right-wing fanatic anus who resembles a
dirty billy-goat leprechun bleats: i agree.
he chuckles. bly again points out
what truth exists in his sign.
i'm so far fucking removed from these
lunatics, tho after 6 years i fit right in ok,
i call myself "shultz" as in hogan's heroes,
i know fucking nothing!
i don't know how i've managed this:
30 years of underground writing
the past 20 in erie's 3rd shift factories.
a certain rearrangement of poet & poetry,
but at such an expensive price. take for
example my first-hand experience of hate.
mounting hateful intensity in a terrible
marriage with a demon. farmer foremen
with half a brain. ignorant hateful companies
creating absolute amerikan worker
slavery.
more & more they want of you, always.
well, i've been a resident of the dungeons
a long time. do i have factory stories
galore, tho i don't write many. i was a very
heavy drinker in my younger days, young &
somewhat strong, strong enough & my
shoulders
are indeed muscular from years of factory
work. what wimpy kind of
faggot poet are you, by the way?
e: our place
i've eaten the rigatoni pasta,
meatless, but still very good,
plus bean-salad. i sat in our
livingroom in afternoon fall light
watching movies on the windows
while captain beefheart stomped
around. before i ate, my love,
i finished washing the dishes,
pots, & pans, mainly because i
love you & our life
together, tho please don't expect
me to do a 50-50 sharing of dishes.
i'd start tossing things.
we'd run out of pans
& neither of us wld eat. let
my actions be gentle shows of
absolute affection
without alterior motive nor
balance. how wonderfully
we balance
now. face pressed to face
& kiss to kiss,
poem to
poem.
jennifer is an angel
jennifer, my sweet italian lesbian friend, gave me
her old stereo one year ago. her dad, tom,
is union president. she worked the
summer
in the hell-hole 3rd-shift & i think
we fell in love
as far as a hip, nose-studded lesbian
& a heterosexual factory poet can fall in love,
20-some years age difference too. she pillowed
the horror of the initial stages
of divorce & separation from my family.
it was evening in my house on raspberry street, saturday. snowing hard.
she drove
over
with the stereo. later she phoned tom
to tell him the roads were too bad, she was
staying with me for the night.
i opened the sofa-bed. "don't worry,"
i told her when she looked a little nervous
frozen on her back. we didn't touch & in
the
morning i cooked her eggs & coffee,
brushed & scraped & shoveled snow outside
in the driveway. we kissed there as her
wet car warmed -- a full kiss of friendship.
neighbors peeked.
i felt happiness bud somewhere in the
gloom.
i played that stereo LOUD,
LOUD, all that music my ex-wife hated. lou
reed. dan bern. coltrane. hendrix. liszt.
ani defranco. monk. diane liked
country-western pop crap.
another thing she used to drag me down
into worthlessness &
isolation in that idiotic 19-year marriage.
jesus, i'm still bitter, but
now my ann is here: it's an honest miracle
of
love
& was prompted, in part, by jennifer
& the generous stereo. "marilyn monroe /
didn't marry henry miller" -- man did i
turn that song up! 23 years later
ann's voice from virginia
on the phone, out of the blue!
this summer i sat in this livingroom
in this apartment
with ann,
jennifer, & holly, jennifer's
lover. my misogynist
tendencies have certainly slipped
away,
& lately ann & i have been listening
to nat
king cole.
friday night beer
discussing our past
20-some years ago,
who hurt whom
when, & why, both
of us realize
how silly, how absolutely
inane any thought-processes
ultimately mattered
for our wide physical split,
& i don't care now. you are
here, with me. the past is
a mess, it doesn't even
exist.
silly beat song
spacious sunday evening
walls well with october
jellyfish wishes in dark
green sea, see green
goats & all
grass glimmered now glimmering
upon earth's black dirt flesh
face-flesh & breath while dreaming
*
there aren't elephants spinning tonight
those opals spilling from my love's nipples
so circumstantially lovely
but i pick my blue bag
up from low chair,
loop wrist
clueless
what orifice will suffer
first or last
& then the moon whacks me awake
*
betting on buddha
over jesus
over allah
over under-dogs, those see-thru guys
with empty hands i bet
my smile
all blue
vied
black sky
perfect mind
blue like bottom
pond cement
paint
feeling spidery?
oh little octopus, she's
doing dishes
drunk last night
& happy, there are
poems curving
around our voices in the livingroom,
around loud acoustic & bongo cassette,
rippling & splashing from pouring liquids,
echoing thru laughter memories,
christ, bart,
you & tara drank 16
bottles of rolling rock
in 3 hours,
then drove 120 miles south
at 9 at night,
& i hugged you,
i hugged tara,
in the parkinglot,
i knew you were
absolutely fine
in the world,
this world
where this
moment
we exist
with all
there is.
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