Poets always bleed

(for David Shapiro)

He was the undergrad in the photograph

The New York Times printed,

The boy, seated behind the president’s desk

With cigar firmly planted in his mouth,

Who I would have met had I let

My best friend talk me into going to the protest

That cool April in 68 when I chickened out

Before the storm troopers came

Beating up protestors on national TV,

The truly famous poet I got to know

Many years later when William Paterson

Was still a college and he hid out in the art

Building, and I, a late-comer street kid

Tried as campus literary editor to lure

A few poems I could publish

He, later, sneaking me poems after I

Started by own underground newspaper,

Providing me with legitimacy

My friendship with Ginsberg could,

And  no High school drop out

Like me deserved,

He and I meeting all these years later

In that East Village café, mysterious

Survivors of a generational change,

He admiring me for being what I was

Almost as much as I admired him,

Both of us coming to art from different places

Me from the street, he from Columbia’s ivory tower,

Both of us coming to understand

That in the end, poets always bleed.

Swinging

The water is purer now than it was

When me and Ralph, Dave and Puck

Came here to do what every kid does

Tying rope to tree to test our luck

Willows decorated the water side

Dripping tears where we could hide

Dave was all with long slim arms

Puck was short, but his life was charmed

Ralph was skittish and feared to fall

And I would do anything at all.

We swung in summer dawn to dusk

Dragging home when told me must

In winter we craved for summer to come again

To sail through the air with our clutter of friends

The city cut the tree and sealed the brook

Quoted as admiring the much better look

Bleachers for ball fields filled up the space

No one came here to cheer on the games

Remembered the time when other kids came

Or how we managed to sail through the air

Testing our hearts, taking on dares

No old tires to dart through

No water to wade

No visions of grandeur

Over success we made

No reckless kids learning about life

Only the ball fields and echoes of night

It’s not cold inside

It’s not cold

Inside, I say

And laugh

And lead the way

Up the snowy steps

Over the rough wood porch

Banisters covered

In inch thick white

While the porch roof

Drips clear daggers.

We stamp our feet

To the blink of

The Xmas lights

That look like

Colored insects

It’s not cold

Inside, I say

As I clap my gloves

The vestibule

Filled with cloth coats

Of practical men

Who have preceded us

It’s not cold

Inside, I say,

Though I sometimes

Know it is,

Stomping my feet

To rid the of snow

I know won’t come

Off inside of me,

The daggers of ice

Poking me

From inside out

It’s not cold

Inside, I say

And hang my coat

And pray this time

It’s true.

White hat' stained black

I’m always doing the wrong thing,

Hanks always told me

Like the time I gave the finger

To that asshole with Florida plates

For cutting me off as I changed lanes

And he pulled a gun

Or the time I cut off

That Paterson mobster by accident

And had to drive the wrong way

Down a one way street

To keep him from killing me.

Or worse that time I walked

Down Hollywood Boulevard

With my hippie chick girl friend

And told a pack of bikers to buzz off

When they tried to take her,

My back bleeding for a week

From the chains they hit me with

Hank said I never think about what I’m doing

Before I actually do it,

But sometimes I actually do,

Seeing myself as doing the right thing

When time proves I was wrong.

Painting myself as the cowboy in the white hat

Riding to someone’s rescue when often

The only person I manage to rescue is myself

Like that time the sixth street prostitute

Robbed her own pusher to get the drugs

To bring me down from my bad trip,

I still love her for that even though

I couldn’t save her when she flipped out

And threw scalding water in her pusher’s face

When he refused to give her a fix,

He burning down her apartment building

With her in it for revenge.

Or that aging go go dance in Passaic

Who used to buy me drinks

Because I laughed at her comedy act

When nobody else would,

A lone laugh track in a bar full of raging hormone

Or the barmaid with terminal cancer

I would sit up with after hours

Because we both loved Thurmond Munson

And she needed someone to see her off

Someone who meant more than a big tip

When she knew nobody else but me

Someone to cry over her at her funeral

But could not stand watching her put into the grave

Or the host of other lost causes who have

Left their indelible finger prints on my once white hat

Staining it so thoroughly that it becomes difficult

To tell if I am a good guy or a bad guy

Or just one more lonely rider from some cheap spaghetti western

Riding off into some Arizona sunset hoping for the best.

Illogic

Sometimes

The only thing you can do

Is follow your heart,

Letting reason fall aside,

Letting logic, fairness, even justice

Litter the path behind you,

Letting instinct be your guide

When all else fails,

Not because it will lead

To right or wrong

Good or bad,

Up or down

Inside or out,

But because it might,

In some off chance,

In some miracle of faith

Some illogical,

Unreasonable,

Unimaginable

Gift from the gods

Lead to love

When in this world

Where there is always

Too much and too little

Of everything,

Love is all that really

Ever matters,

And all that

Always will

The girl I knew

Child,

You grow wild with the wind

And remote with passing of days

You form now a stranger

At the coffee counter

Breasts more full

The face of a woman

I dared never believe,

Me still seeing you

As that one year old,

Rocking to old Beatles records

Me hating the idea

That this transformation

Has shaped my soul

Etching lines to my face

Fat to my bones

Me crying over what

A surprise you are

Wishing constantly

For that little girl

I knew when

I was young

Success

“Virtue is its own success,”

My fortune cookie tells me

On this rainy day in January,

The chill making me ache

So deep I don’t know

Where it ends and I begin,

“Success,” another cookie

Tells me “Is living your life

Your own, way,”

Which is all I have ever done,

Walking home in with the wet

Against my face,

As “today is the tomorrow,

We worried about yesterday,”

And in the mists and midst

Of these latest storms

“The greatest pleasure in life

Is doing what other people say

I cannot do,”

An amazing prediction

For what I have done

All my life,

But never so much

As today.

City

Oh Spartan!

What weary wears these hands have weaved

These walls of stone that wears so worn,

You sit and fade, old man, yet you are the light,

The pride that burns beneath these brandished towers,

Oh how you rot, you decay with the setting day,

Your caverns of rusting steel, aging wheels

 Brushed to dust and then devoured

Still your fire glows

You shuffle from the sanitary market with lightened

Heart, with both pockets and packages empty

And with your arthritic fingers clutch upon your

Car fare home, clutched upon your ticket to salvation.

Oh Spartan! Is it noble,

These crabbed and crooked streets speak

Sorrow, and how your weary limbs grow weak

And your eyes grow blind.

How long can you test despair,

Stepping from curb to curb with unstained feet?
Out from the ghetto you walk

Proud below the darkened towers

Of bestial mills and forged factories,

Out from the shadows of red painted buildings

Upon which the business of banks has placed their

Curse – you rise, Oh Spartan,

A staggering giant, clutching the railing

For support, eyeing the tiled walls with doubtful eyes,

The cracks are there to see

And so are the promises. 

Fetal dreams

  

The men on third street stuff their ears

With thin paper bar tabs and wax paper bags,

Their loser lovers sleeping in rusted cars

Like markers of bad gambling debts

And through the amber evenings they drink

To health, wealth and happiness,

Cursing the joggers, stoning the limousines

Mocking with crooked elbows the walking lovers

And after midnight, the jig, a cross between

Panhandling and keeping warm

Thinking up lines like actors

As to how to squeeze another coin

From passing pockets

But when the bars close, when each neon light

Winks out, they turn forlorn to the empty

Doorways and byways and rusted cars

Covering themselves with newspaper financial reports

By dawn, they are the sleeping, dull dead bodies

Curled up in their fetal dreams

Knees pressed against their chests

Waiting for life to start again

No uncertain terms

  

Simon & Garfunkel’s song Old Friends

Runs in my head as I listen

To the familiar voice of my childhood

Buddy on the phone,

Each of us touching bases

After a year apart (when

In former days we could not

Be parted for more than days)

Each of us full of the litany

Of age and life

The heart ache and the belly ache

And the pathetic politics

Of labor relations,

Catching up on the year’s news

Of what makes the world turn
the soap opera of people’s lives

That aren’t really ours

We mostly immune to the petty

Stuff that other people

Seem to feed on,

His voice like a the hefty beers

We used to get each Friday

After a hard day’s labor

Talking the pain out

Over the foam,

And even now,

After a year of mutual

Suffering apart

The liquor of his voice

Still works its magic

Telling me in no uncertain terms

We survived.

It only takes three to love

“It only takes three to love,”
she told me that dark night

Long ago, aching to love

Herself as much

As we did each other,

Not quite able to believe it

When she does, or to

Convince anybody else

It might be real,

Love like gusts of wind

Rising and falling

Never touching

The same place

Or the same way twice

But always leaving

A little chill

When it kisses you

always making you think

love is often

a dinner plate

meant for one

Before the iceberg hits

The only thing

Anybody can really do

Is start over

Feeding the infernal

Machine that runs

Inside of us,

Fueling all our needs

Before we feed

Our desires

The way
coal stokers feed
the insatiable mouths

of vast ships

Sailing over dangerous seas

Hoping we don’t run into

Any more icebergs

Along the way,

When we almost

Always do