AKIRA KURASOWA DIED TODAY
IN TWO PARTS
Part one
Akira-
-ran-
-today
carrying with him his-shadow.
They said; he was a-worrier
Caused him to stroke
they said, it was
with the slash of light
he wrote.
Don’t rush-a-man
it takes time
to speak.
Part two
Akira died today while,
I sat,
fat assed in my kitchen.
Stuffing my face with
a French pastry.
Reading the local paper on how
yoga was becoming main stream
because of Madonna.
When I heard it.
Droning out of the blue Japanese TV
Akira Kurasowa died today
of heart failure.
Today ?
Before I finished my swallow?
Before our paths crossed
in a world of shadows.
Before, I could drink my
Italian Cappuccino
tears rolled down.
My new friend Tom Woglom
Was star struck by
Madonna who recently sent flowers to
Les Pauls hospital room
while Tom laid in the next bed after
open heart surgery.
Soaking up the tears
and the news that Yoga
was becoming main stream.
I considered;
How would
America respond
to Akira’s passing?
With seven flowers,
or yoga?
It was a tough
decision for us after all.
We’re Americans.
Lets have some more Crème’ Brule
and think about it.
HALE BOP SHOO BOP
“Hey man, did ya see it?”
“What?”
“Haley Bop?”
“You mean Bill Haley”
“No, man, the comet!”
“Yeah! Bill Haley and the Comets.
Dig the millennium dude.”
Hale Bop--Shoo-Bop!
“Come on! I’m serious man, they believed an alien space ship come
to take them was trailing in the tail of the comet.”
“Yeah, but did they believe a guy who died and came back to life
and now lives in the sky?”
“Huh?”
Bop shoohaley bop bop
“In the tail, man the tail of the comet
I read somewhere that it’s 287 million miles long, datsa
lotta tail man, ahuh and those wacko’s actually put their
faith in getting on board a space ship after death.”
“You mean they had faith?
Bop shoo bop!
“Whadja mean, About the guy comin back after death, Hanh?
Did those weirdoes they believe in a guy dyin
and coming back to life.
Woah Like an alien man, no maybe like a zombie.”
“No the zombies were busy watching TV”
Bop shoo bop hale
Do waaa do waaa
“Do you really think anyone actually buys it?”
“Whadaya mean? the Heavens Gate cult the pearly gate to heaven
cult or what ever it was called?”
“No man, the self inflicted delusions, the self flagellating set of boundaries that deny the truth of existence.I mean... do the hard assed followers of the word, the rules, that refuse to see living life and sex are the true gifts and there’s no bullshit prize in the end, ones that fear there own death and actually take myths that defy everyone’s real life experience and accept them as hard historical facts, while denying the power of thought that we are all of the same divine energy and can’t love. The ones who so
easily kill off any who would deny them of control.”
“Huh?”
Do waaa do waaa do ya?
Bop shoo bop!
EVERLAST
Mr. Andrews pulled on the dark red
ten ounce Everlasts.
set against a slash of white
in a blue world.
Overlooking the Brook Sloate Projects
in Paterson, New Jersey.
He spoke sportsmanship
Prayers, we figured for the corrupt fathers
who spoke them into the July 1965 swelter.
The fight about to begin
I considered: We’re on the same baseball team,
even though the black players
huddle together on the far end of the dugout.
We were mates.
Yet under their boxed brim hats
lurked a stalking knowledge that even
at the bottom white rung
I could access places they only watched sliding by on the disturbed surface of the murky blood brown
Passaic river passing the ball field.
Their young baseball lives
spiked with loud sounds
Like "Go getem Satchel."
Painfully plied, nearly
out of ear shot sounds like "Coon"
As I stared into Barry’s eyes my hands sweating,
burning for the first blow to be thrown.
I remembered someone at the ball game
callin Barry, Satchel Page
Barry’s head leaned forward
to the crowd
who’s bared arms danced over a hot chain link fence as vicious, euphemisms slithered
out of their mouths like dorsal fins through
the dark undercurrent in a red
sea of separation.
Mouthing inaudible curses,
through tight teeth at thirteen.
Barry spat, what looked to me,
like blood lost in the red dirt.
Mr. Andrews blew a spit spattering whistle
leaving small dark blue stains in the dust.
As I slid my best Paterson shuffle up
diddy bopped around half draggin my right foot behind hands held low and cool
as Barry's.
Toe to toe, I shouted.
"Yeah! I know how to Shotgun--
Jr. Wells and the All-stars was on my
Victrola too!"
We weave
a Barry Gordie slow dance round.
Shattered by;
"Get your Goddammed hands up
this ain't no block party dance!"
"Yes Mr. A n d r e w s,"
we sang in two part harmony.
Mowtown choreographed by a
A jab,
a tentative jab.
"Kill the honky!" taunted Barry's older brothers
while boxing blue shadows.
Barry's left arm shot out--
smokin with--I ain't no thief mother fucker!
streaming off of it!
Stabbing out a red Everlast
bigger than his head.
Man, I can wiggle wobble
dance a ching a ling
so I slipped under that jab
and all it's rage.
Unlike Barry who couldn't
dodge his father's drunken slaps,
nor duck Antonio the grocer who was always
following him around the deli
next to School Five's callin' him a thief.
“God-dammed uncolo--melanzana!”
"petty thief--eggplant!"
Barry's twisted face--screaming--
"Fuck you--you--Fat dago pimp!
While I slipped under and
snatched all I could
off the hostess shelf
and bolted out unsuspected.
I ducked again
under Barry’s left arm
exploding with the legacy of his angry father
who at thirteen saw his grandfather
William Fulbright Jackson hanging
K
K
K
limp from a tree.
leaving a spit spattered
dark spot on the sun
of a sweltering
July day in Alabama.
Barry’s jab snubbed against my shoulder.
I hooked my left hand, burning up in that Everlast,
to his mid-section.
With the knowledge of
my rock hard-- Irish famine surviving--
great grandfather--James Nina Gorman
Who beat Jack Levy bare fisted
in New Orleans in 1865.
Before Barry could
recover, I stunned him
with a combination rising up--
catching chin--
clamping
his
teeth
tighter still.
like a
slip knotted
hemp
rope
of memories.
My right hand now lay in wait
in the purple shadows.
Like my Neopolitan grandfather Joseph Casperino
Smelling of Dinobli stogies and grappa did
for that loan shark, come to collect
my uncle Butch’s unpaid debt.
Grandpa
a giant with white slicked down hair
had paws like Antonino Rocca.
He hit that shark in the head
with Rocca’s hands
I thought...
they couldn’t be his hands.
The ones;
that caressed my face softly,
and held me high and firm
to see the bocci players argue.
The ones;
that so deftly pinched the edges of ravioli,
and picked the fine silk threads
passing them to the George Street silk mill bobbins
My Grandfather Joseph
unleashed his right
then left--
First the shark’s legs
then his life!
Fell from him,
like the brown flush of a toilet
onto the South Paterson sidewalk
in front of me.
Grandpa
left me there
ran down the block,
ran,
ran to Naples.
Returning to Paterson
years later as Francis Nicholoro
Second hand family in tow.
How my mother cried.
How my mother cried.
Small spirals of dirt memories
rose at our feet, set against a slash of white
in a blue world.
As my right hand launched from it’s lair
Barry was filling up with
a brutish, purple festering,
puss filled rage!
He swore to kill me!
Barry’s right hand
panther sprung in a swift arc
Coming with Nat Turner’s faith
in the righteousness of it’s bloody purpose.
Exactly at the same instant we made contact
with each others faces.
Both our heads thrown back
by the shear force of our will’s.
Streams of the same rich ancestral crimson
poured out of our noses in a salty clear mix
from our eyes
fell to the dust.
Both of us stunned
back into ourselves
Barry and I became aware
of the laughter around us.
Mr. Andrews stepped in
hands on our shoulders
grinning a huge grin asking us to shake hands,
commending us on a good fight,
echoed by the hooting crowd.
We looked far too tired and battered
for thirteen
Smiling at each
we came together over the divide
of being other.
Embraced, at last as bloodied teammates
in the game of life.
The only thing between us
from then on,
was a friendship which would,
everlast, everlast, everlast...
GRANDPA’S KITCHEN TRICKS
(Second place Winner of the 1998 Allen Ginsberg awards)
A drying Turkey wishbone dangled.
casting a gray shadow on the cracked blue walls.
Tied to the lights drop string,
along with a small grease stained
yellow and white plastic pagoda,
that glowed in the dark
Like an Ed Wood prop.
“Come on-a my only grandson
make-a wish for papa to make-a-lottamoney
Pull the bone.” He laughed.
Those long red peppers
strung together by a clot of brown string
hung over the chipped porcelain basin
made me sneeze.
Or I thought; it was becauseI had to rise up
on my toes to reach the handles that triggered it
He never pulled.
Holding onto his part of the Y shaped bone
with Pall Mall stained index and thumb.
His nail turning as red as my face
after a ritual rub with a coarse three day beard.
Although he pushed
roasted garlic onto hard, burnt bread.
He never pulled.
I’m not sure when it was I realized this.
The fat end of the Y
always ended up on his end of the bone.
Maybe it was when he fought
with that brain tumor.
Trumpeted me in to watch my father shave him
in Saint Joseph’s Hospital.
My father pulled
the razor over Grandpa’s three day old beard
before
he rubbed me with it.
By then I knew;
just hold onto your end,
Just hold on.
Let all the others pull.
“Are they all here yet?”
“Yes pa” my father choked out.
“Tell my boys to come in first, my grandson.”
One by one they came
soaked, somber.
All the brothers
then my mother and all of her sisters.
Each having their say
stood in a Y at the foot of his bed.
“I go now.” he said.
The fat end of the bone
in
his
hand.
STIGMATA
Yeah,
you think;
love,
it's like driving down the highway at sixty
one hand on the wheel.
In your right hand is a heart shaped pin cushion
pierced through with hat pins you've collected
in your traveling years.
You toss it up in the air
just short of the roof liner.
It begins to descend toward your hand
seemingly
to you
straight up and
down.
But, to an x-wife
who was an ex -grade school English teacher
turned ex-bartender
and eventually ex-Erotic dancer
standing on the side of the highway
with a cardboard sign reading:
Anywhere but here!
For her, the bloody red
heart shaped form
rises in a slow arc moving passed.
Covering nearly one hundred feet
before it begins it's decent
at sixty miles an hour
stabbed through
with pins
she doesn't recognize as yours.
Gone from her sight
before it falls into your hand again.
She imagines it
impaled in you
blood trickling out from the punctures.
Leaving
a permanent mark there
in the palm of your right hand.
She thinks
yeah,
that's love for you.
Even with the stigmata
you need imagination
and faith
to get
hold of it.
ABSOLUTION FOR THE TEXAS TUMBLER
(this poem is the source of the book title)
He recognized me.
The way you’d spot an old war buddy.
Across a slab of time
across the country
to across the colossal
foyer of the Hilton Hotel in Houston.
“I saw you on the tube!
I came down here figuring to see you.”
He said.
I felt him before I knew he was there.
Eyeing me from 100 feet away.
He had it.
A sign
hovering huge over him
written in bright unresolved emotions
it read:
I LIVED IT TOO!
I saw the sign first this time
Long before I saw his eyes
aching for someone
to help close the bloody rip
in his family circle.
Long before his warm hand
slipped into mine.
“Do you know who I am ?” He said.
“Sure Jack, , I know you.
How could I forget
you and your brother tumbling and flipping
around in white tights
showing off acrobatic skills.”
“Yeah ! I guess we did show off some.
It’s so great to see someone from the projects!”
he spurted.
Looking passed me
to see if there was any response
to that admission.
Then
he fired the next volley.
“Good old Paterson.
Remember those days!”
Underneath the exuberant words
swirled the scaled amphibians of our dark past
slithering into place.
Slipping through the reeds of time and defenses.
Gyrating in an emotional dead pile dance
to the beat
of father’s fist’s
forming a distant hypnotic
pounding
sound.
Perhaps Jack’s acrobatic skills
were far greater than was demonstrated.
Could they have kept him
on the high wire
all this time?
Maybe
he didn’t have a fall
that broke him.
Could it be,
that he wasn’t a needy
humpty dumpty
latch onto ya kinda sap?
Then again maybe,
he never stopped
tumbling.
Never stilled
long enough
to hear wolves of
unfulfilled needs howl.
Moonlit phantoms
bearing feral teeth
of lost loves, failed pursuits
bruised and bloodied drunken knuckles,
drug induced vacancies or
betrayal by false friends
and gods!
“How
could
I forget
Jack.”
Later Jack’s reptile trinity
of anger, guilt, and fear showed up
Relentlessly pissing them out after
too many beers.
Telling anyone nearby
between flips and tumblers
who would listen,
but only war buddies
really knew.
The story had his heart pounding
again.
The words squirting out of him
something like projectile vomit.
Recounting the smell of fear and the
metal taste in his mouth.
As his
drunken
raging father
struck his mother
with his
failed husband,
absent father,
poor provider fists!
Jack’s mother and he
were stunned
by the blows
and again stunned
until,
to Jack’s surprise it was
his father
who tumbeld to the floor
in front of him.
Purple twisted gin soaked face
pressed to the green linoleum.
Grasping his chest
kicking his feet against
the washing machine
leaving
black heel scrapes
on it’s white face.
Leaving black
heel
scrapes.
Jack was slipped into his room
door closed.
Right outside
his father lay dead.
He had his hand on the door knob
many times in that
endless
few hours.
Just a boy!
You were just a boy Jack!
You could not have your father
in life
nor in death!
Flipping
through a box of tissues
with tears tumbling down
his 45 year old face and
conjuring up a half smile.
Grasping a tumbler of gin
Jack rolled out to me.
“ Ya know it’s funny, in all this time.
All I could think about
were
the black
marks
he made.”