Stanley Pacion A BIG BOOK OF MY OWN: May 2012

Thursday, May 31, 2012

KISS ME ONCE, Kiss Me Twice...

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KISS ME ONCE,

Kiss Me Twice…

I sing tonight. It's the ol' babalu.

Though tired and drawn, I am called.

I hear the knock at the door.

The prophecy takes hold.

The school lessons progress.

The command of language strengthens.

The student seems eager.

Dimension gains hold.

Dreams of tomorrow grow.

Wishes come true.

New life looms on the horizon.

Fantasy becomes reality.

The promises burgeon.

There is pregnancy of parts,

Ocean of delight lies before us!

Hello! Darling, hello!

'Kiss me once, kiss me twice.

Then kiss me once again.’

I want your lips on mine.

‘It's been a long, long time.'

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

BREAKFAST TREAT, An Original Love Poem Written after the Style of Catullus

BREAKFAST TREAT,

An Original Love Poem Written after the Style of Catullus

When we spoke earlier today over the telephone,

I purposely diverted our conversating

From what I really had in mind,

To topics which you truly enjoy, work and business.

But all the while I wanted to say,

I love you, muffin, you blueberry thing, you;

I love you. I want to eat you alive.

UCC 1-103 1-308 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

A LOVER'S DILEMMA

A LOVER’S DILEMMA

Too much, or too little wine,

Either way that woman proves a problem!

Give her none,

She can not find the truth,

Give her too much, the same.

Monday, May 28, 2012

PUBLIC AFFECTION, Love in a Busy Place

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PUBLIC AFFECTION,
Love in a Busy Place

Seven years ago, we started as friends,
Acquaintances, commercially. Later,
You worked with me, sorting jewelry.
Jarek thought us well suited, maybe a steady couple,
Figured we might enjoy, complement each other.

He said he saw you eyeing me.
I feared disaster, but he said, “Blame me, Stanley!
You can always blame me for everything!”

Last Saturday at the Pizzeria,
Ten AM in a very busy place,
Despite our aversion to public affection,
We lost ourselves in caress.
It was prolonged and remarkably tender.
We were standing up,
Up from our table and chairs for all to see.

God! I love to kiss you!

Later, a counterman asked, were we dating?
I heard him think, “Not bad!”
His eyes declared your beauty!
I wanted to agree, but answered, “No.”

2.

Passion strong, I want you.

Yet our love went awry.
You abandoned each, every solemn promise,
Pulled up stakes, and left me home alone, miserable.

Still wisdom counsels me to patience.

A psychiatrist reminded me that breaking bonds,
The ties between lovers, not inconsequential,
"It's not a change of shoes," she said.

I followed her order, made an inventory.
I listed the virtues, the good qualities about us.
I put them to paper twice.
I started with our business acumen, noted, first,
Our mutual attention to detail, (We never misplaced,
Or lost a thing) then our discipline, we operated
Like clockwork, yet we always had fun,
Scouring tables and racks for hidden treasure,
We loved to play games of show and tell.

We were a team, and business profited.

Next, continuing the doctor’s precept, I wrote, how
We had worked out personal protocols,
Settled on behaviors, and aimed daily
To create well being and household harmony,
I marked our mutual hope, the promise, that
Carnal and spiritual fat, years of it, we felt
The dream of proverbial bounty, fantastic, was ours.

We were being brought unto a good land and a large,
Not unlike fulfillment of the Biblical foretelling,
When up from earth flowed milk and honey.

3.

And now, darling, I ask, might you
Reconsider the plus and the minus, love’s ledger?
Your skill at cost accounting, good,
You must surmise how tiny the downside is,
And know the total burden amounts to no great sum.

Frugal, you never needlessly cast away a thing,
Yet waste time. Squander the crafted continuum,
The more than a year and a half, our life to date,
Discard, wantonly, though you profess love,

And write of your ardor for me still.

Deaf to your own beating bosom,
Refusing when you already knew,
You knew right from the start!

Ach du Lieber Herr Gott!
You deny your soul, your very passion for a man,
Who would sacrifice his life for yours!

4.

In early youth I learned love,
I caught its lyric while I listened to music on the radio.

When I lived in Germany, half a life ago,
American soldiers played it on the jukebox.
And I heard it from Sweden on the web today,
The youth channel, clear and loud,
Singer and song, similar or the same,
The moon, big and bright, in the Milky Way tonight,
Oh, Yes! Its lyric hollers. Time’s a wasting,
There are kisses not tasted, and the hook repeats
Whole lot of living, whole lot of loving to do,
The life, the love and kisses! No one
Would I rather do it with than you.

You, that moon of song and yore,
Your reflected image, I had it in my net.
But when I went to pull it up, it sank,
Not like a fish, but as a large, awesome, golden coin.

A fisherman, I set to sea and trawled above
Muck and seaweed, and the debris of sunken vessels,
I sought to snare splendid satellite consort.

5.

You ruin it, me being alone!

Overcome by yearning,
Believing I can no longer go on,
Or face my life without you, I turn to this ritual.
I try to make matters worse.

(Audience, might you imagine the procedure here.)

I play a mental trick upon my own mind’s eye,
I resort to a maneuver, whereby
I actually practice the increase of my anguish.
To accomplish this feat, to feel worse than ever,
I command my memory to refresh the scenes,
Picture the wonders of our life together so far.

I recall the times I waited for you,
When I sat on the bench under the gazebo
In early sun at the Amish fairground in Columbus,
My delight, carrying your purchases to our van,
Hurrying off to the next market stall;
There we chose fruit to last the week.

And then I hark back to the highway near Princeton,
The late sunlight dappled through trees,
And touched, fell upon my arm through the window
In such a magic way, that, I told you the moment,

This present instant was the happiest in my life.

Oh, how good! How good! I, wide-awake,
Within eidetic dream, glimpsed the New Jerusalem,
Gott im Himmel. Alles geht gut mit der Welt!
When these among, some my fondest day dreams,
Have utterly knocked my spirits flat,
I practice the discipline, and return, again,
I recall one instance more, one more,
Still another rapture and replay it.

The awful pain, how the agony increases
When once I force myself to review.

Say, I consider, one of our nights at Red Roof Inn,
Where we stretched out under the blankets, slept,
Although we set the air conditioner full-blast,
We awoke warm, and ready for the day,
We brimmed with affection, I believe it was apparent,
Our love, it showed from morning at breakfast
Throughout day until we sat
To enjoy our evening repast.

6.

That I write in this manner,
For me it seems remarkable, it really does!
A generation removed from Burroughs and Ginsberg,
My own howl is very different
From all last century's distress and dismal focus.

Frankly, dear, I do not give a damn for the anguish.
I add not one note to the noisey dread,
All that talk about the eve of destruction.
I do not care about the revolutions and the tribal wars
Which had engulfed Europe over the last ten decades.

Or that America held captive to the appetite of Moloch,
Enslaved to the chicanery of mass media,
Those minions who served it, who wore
The conformity, the costume of the gray flannel suit,
These sentiments do not move me.
I feel no poetry in them.

I do not care a wit about dope or sexual fashion,
I have no verse for junkies.
The adventures of alcoholics during lost weekends,
No, no, mean nothing to me.

From the start of this millennium it has been you,
All woe betide, all suffering set aside, my road,
My broad highway, you, only you, my love for you.

And when once I manage to travel the great space,
Go back and forth between the current circumstance,
The sad bottom, the deep, deep miles,
The coal-black tunnels of my subterranean despair,
How lonely I am without you,
The sorrow which now separates me
From the dizzy rise, the heights of my reveries,
The awesome memories of us, we being together,

Anytime I am able to traverse, successfully run
Those polar points in time and mood, back and forth,
Between what I had felt yesterday and what I feel today,
When I survive traveling
The long distance between then and now,
I recognize that I have attained a true, tough spirit,
A mental frame able to withstand anything.

I am a man, glorious, a warrior of distinction,
A holy, holy, holy, a brave heart, and Knight,
Whose renown and distinction matches
The rank of any noble who sat at round table in Camelot.

7.

I am not weeping, just weary with you in my mind.
I weep when angry, and then I weep.
Were I not completely drained, I would weep more.

I, I saw the situation was wrong right from the start,
Though I thought things might be different between us.
Over and over, again and again, every day a rerun,
Countless slights, indignities, lack of common courtesy,

Little or no gratitude,
Without faith in God’s abiding love.

I wrote you letters. I said your bad behavior hurt me.
At the breaking point and wanting out,
I was desperate, fearing I would lose you forever,
I believed your plea and vow.

“Take me back and I’ll change. I’ll be good, I swear!”

I made you put it in writing,
And for a short while things improved,
Though, ultimately, what you wrote meant nothing.

You lead me on.
Your rearing has not allowed veracity.
About our relationship, you told no one, not even you.

The more you revealed to me,
Once I learned how dark your history,
How you had been terribly abuse,
And when I became privy to your secret habit,
The more, the more distant love grew.

The truth, your personal truth sundered us.

8.

Help me, be my friend and
Come back home and sleep with me again.

Take the key and open the door,
See the beckoning path,
It lies right there before you,
Learn what countless generations know,
Willingness to change brings us life that works.
A small step prepares the leap.

Remember the sweet, sweet caresses.
Do not tarry! Soon all opportunity vanishes!
Consider the moment, the public affection,
If not for you, please, do it for me.

The hurry-burly of time overwhelms us.
No significance remains, boundless and bare,
Darling, the lone and level sands stretch far away.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

A DREAM OF YOU, Desert Vision

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A DREAM OF YOU,
Desert Vision, A Poem in Five Parts

Sweetheart, I know you love me.

I know you appreciate the poetry.

For three years now I have struggled,
I have wanted to write an epic,
A great, big, love poem about us,

I sought to post the way this thing of ours went,
How it went right from the start,
All banners unfurled,
How time marshals forces
Though we go about our daily business,
And children are born, and, as they grow up, think,
Believe fervently that they are meant for one thing
Later to discover, underneath it all,
A new world order sweeps away the old.
I want to announce that I have learned
That the verity of prophecy remains unknown,
Until the actual event transpires.

The Word takes on meaning after the fact.

Headlines acclaim events;
Yet history proves otherwise,
Often something other than bold type might suggest.
Although the finite first meet the eye,
Spirit alights, it writes the script,
The real storyline often lies well beyond
First-glance tales of human endeavor …

We intend to do one thing, but, many times, later,
Discover, unwittingly we do another.

2.

Today I write, declare the moment
Yes, I say that is the way,
The way, it had actually had happened.

Now consider! I dedicate this verse to you;
Yet allow, if you please, that it records events,
Prior to our acquaintance,
Circumstance which had occurred years before we met,
Years before either of us heard each others' name.

Where do I get the nerve?
-- The actual gall of me, hey! --
I affirm that this poem tells a part of our story,
Which antecedes your birth.
The folly of it! I include you in a physical geography,
In a place on this planet you had not experienced,
An earth, whereupon your feet had never trod.

Yet, darling, I have seen you before, yes,
Once upon a time and so long ago.
This narrative propels me, no choice,
I do what destiny would have me do.

I found these words;
I had inked them once,
On lined, yellow, perforated sheet,

‘I sit at the desk, night after night,
And sometimes, it's even day and night,
Often I write on topics, quotidian and small,
On matters of no special interest,
Issues, which critics in essays declare,
Lack propriety and moment,
And do not belong to sphere of poetic ambition.

'Now years have passed,
And choice less still, I write.’

Earlier today, I had packed up your mail,
Readied the address to Coral Gables,
And when you later called and asked
How I was doing, me, under compulsion’s demand,
Lonely, slave to love and ardent desire,
I answered 'pathetic.'

No one else will have me.

It as though I have some terrible pox;
Other women see it and shun me.

My mirror image, however, it reminds me of you,
I cram my schedule, always insufficient time,
The day wants the hours,
I have endless lists ‘To Do’.

I isolate terribly, talk to no one for the week,
When friends reach out and telephone, I rush them off!
Honest! No time for idle talk, or chat.
                                  .
No choice! I return to my desk.

I dread any date for lunch.

I pass on evening engagements.
Sorry! I want only you.

I just want to be with you.

Yet I have that other side,
More than everyday necessity and much more
Than simple expression of my love for you.
It is a confidence I wish to share with you and world,
About how I always knew that you were the girl for me,
Though I came to comprehend it, my great love,
This startling fact, only after the event;
You, only you, once you had entered my life.

I believe I might say it right,
Watch me now, and let’s see if I say it right!

3.

I remember Central Avenue, Phoenix, Arizona,
Danny’s store packed with Native American silver,
Bracelets, necklaces and rings, properly displayed
On racks, in trays, locked within showcases,
And on clear shelves, velvet pads, the array of colors,
Turquoise, coral, black onyx and mother of pearl,
Abalone, agates mined and cut to display their fire,
And Alexander, my son, maybe eight, no more than ten,
His years of age, playing behind the counters,
Next to the shotguns, diagonally propped,
On the floor twelve-gauge shells in open boxes,
Ready, should there be an extended engagement.

I share with you the times when, flying in
From Dallas, the grand noise, engines’ reversal
To land at Sky Harbor, the ground crew,
How they scrambled, and then,
Wheeled up the staircase,
The platform for debarkation, and me, I would descend
The steps full-tilt straight onto the tarmac,
Fahrenheit, ninety-five degrees in early morning,
A rental car awaited me, and I was off over to Dog Track,
To the swap meet that was unfolding and I sought
The cowboy named, Roadrunner, who always had
Tons of loot, the goods, every Sunday he brought a haul.

Though at his point, it, more dream than reality,
I recall the very special meeting, when traders
Lined up, raised hands, and one after the other,
Volunteered to say that jewelry great here and
Proclaimed that whosoever is welcomed into
The lounge camper, who greets the Navajo,
Both the man and wife and acts with propriety,
Slights his eyes and diverts his gaze,

And the traders at the meeting said that
The person who watches the children playing,
Their running across the white gravel parking lot,
Left and right, up and down, then unto the asphalt sidewalk,
Who enjoys those moments
When the children stop
And form a line to refresh themselves from
The water-cooled, stainless steel, floor-pedal fountain,
(It stood next to the right side of the pari-mutuel windows)
Who knows that the bright sparkling, that eye of the desert,
Quenches every human thirst and brings joy to the moment,

Upon that person, who has witnessed design,
Who has abstracted anagram from within
All the children’s scurry, who traces,
Out upon the open parking space, meaning,
Who divines new vision,
Who is able to see within the minds’ eye, the dance,
The dance holy ones once danced in godly regalia,
That person, who hears within the youngsters' feet
The drums, the rhythms ancestors had orchestrated,
So to let go, leave this material world,
And find entrance to separate reality,
The traders at the meeting, in-order, one-by-one,
Both arms raised up on high, heads flung back,
Palms stretched and fingers spread wide apart,
As if they reached and pressed upon the sky,
Called upon Great Talking God to sanctify their wish.

It was at that moment, the glory of it all,
They stopped and asked if one such person was present,
There at assembly of Sunday traders at the swap meet
The question became would there be any one to step forward,
Would anyone acknowledge the gift?
And when I answered, yeah
They bestowed their most precious title upon me,
And between the ghosts and the human beings
The word rang and cemented the union, ‘Friend’.

4.

Later that Sunday morning, I felt good magic
When a child ran up behind me,
He quickly, then, touched the back of my hand.

At noon, I met a Mexican friend up on South Mountain.
His house was painted a bright, distinctive blue.
I bought more jewelry and got into my car,
I took the Express Way North, exited at Bell Road,
And headed to way out west of the city.

At one point, I passed the shopping mall,
I thought about Monday’s appointments,
How a salesman's lot means he sits,
Marks time to wait his turn with buyers.

Late that afternoon on the concrete patio,
The one surrounding
The big swimming pool at the Community Center,
I buck-danced to the beat, which played
On the rock an’ roll, radio station.

Although it was already that Sunday’s dusk,
And the day’s high temperature had receded,
It still was ninety, over ninety degrees while I sat back
On the lounge chairs and watched Alexander,
Time and again, practice dives off the high board.

5.

Even then, it was long ago, and in Phoenix,
It was you! Darling, I had been waiting for you;
The desert air brought dream of you,
The shimmering, the uplifts, the vertical lines,
Up, upward, shafts of heat rising
Out across the desert vista,
Now I recognize it was a dream of you,
And this, my verse was racing,
I flashed on a fast and mighty steed,
I road atop a beast, it galloped through my mind,
Yet I had command
I managed to pull in the reins,
Halted its furious run, tied the horse up to the rail at the tip,
I hitched the reins to the post at the tip of my tongue.

As I watched the colors of the sunset, as I heard
The splash of the practiced head-first dives,
I was reciting poetry, not out loud, but to myself,
Though I knew not its power, no idea the prophecy,
I knew not the meaning of that woman,
Who I glimpsed,
Whose image I caught from from the corner of my eye,
Who walked out among the columns of earth fever,
And stood next to the Saguaros in the twilight,
Who appeared in an instant out on the horizon,
Seemingly, over and against the floor of the desert,
Yet before she disappeared, she nodded,
It was as if she had sanctioned the voice,
The true heart of these lines,
The cadences and syntax I repeat from once upon a time
And now so long ago, as if she bless me
Today at key board, and grants me
These words I use to describe a dream of you.

Long before I had ever made your actual acquaintance,
A figure in landscape,
I saw you, your form, at a time prior to when you were born.

At the airport, when security stopped me, I stood
In a booth whose sliding curtains dropped to the floor,
The jewelry I carried in my on-board luggage,
X ray showed a concentrated jumble of metal,
And as I awaited the woos and ahs of personnel,
When they opened my bags for inspection,
It was then that I began to wonder, and it remains
Fresh today, as if I describe events from only yesterday,
It was then I began to wonder, when you,
When your love might saunter in, make life complete.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

CHICAGO THEME

JUNIOR SAYS, He loves You

Monday, May 21, 2012

POOR SHELL OF EARTH

POOR SHELL OF EARTH

Within a day the whole matter sours,

We are left with nothing,

All that remains is what we wish to be rid of,

The thing to bury or burn from sight.

Oh, unsearchable way and counsel of God!

Oh, blindness of hope and expectation!

Monday, May 14, 2012

HER GRANDMOTHER, Early Morning Refrain

HER GRANDMOTHER,

Early Morning Refrain

Was not handsome, or was she particularly wise,

No one ever claimed that she was brilliant,

But she painted well, an artist.

Today her family treasures and enjoys,

Landscapes and still lifes,

Wonderful evidence of her output and gift.

She applied the oils heavily, used both trowel and brush,

And captured wood and river, and rural architecture

All around her north New Jersey home;

She also rendered, remarkably, the wonder,

The special furl and spray of Atlantic waves

Which lapped upon her state’s southern shore.

And following the common adage,

Different time and place, who knows the fame,

The renown she might have attained?

She dressed her grandchild, a girl, in pricey sets,

And family and neighbors seem to appreciate it,

“Oh isn’t Elsie wonderful!” They often said.

For all intents and purposes,

The infant miss was orphaned.

Her Mother was sick,

And was to spend a long-time in sanatorium,

Dad was gone.

He had run off and then started another family.

Two other girls, her older sisters, likewise deserted,

They stayed with paternal grandparents.

She, the baby girl, was separated,

And went to her mother’s mother and father.

Dad wandered off, then started another family.

Jealousy reigned; the new wife kept their father away,

He never went to see their mother,

And rarely visited the three girls he had left behind.

Grandma's girl was tall with curly blonde hair,

And cheek bones high enough to make for real beauty.

Possessing natural, happy disposition,

Her eyes beamed, and when all-dressed-up,

She looked as though,

She might catalog-model for children’s magazines.

But Elsie, she did have her ways.

(I am told to put it nicely!)

She paid no heed to the child's underwear,

Only interested in outward appearance,

Think on this a moment, for who could see it?

Though it might be tattered and dirty,

And Lord knows should have been replaced,

Especially when one considers the small expense,

She cared not the dollar amount of any outfit’s cost.

She was a master seamstress,

Favoring subtle, flower prints, nothing garish.

Grandmother used her talent to dress the girl like a doll.

A healthy woman, who loved her cats,

Fed those both inside and outside the house,

And took in every kind of stray, animal and human.

A former dancer who partook of chorus,

Had her training at LUNA PARK,

And, all who knew her swear,

She practiced kicks, over head, when

She had already celebrated birthdays past seventy.

Did she swap a place for her star on the walk,

Take lead role in gilded cage instead?

No way, she was tough and worked hard,

Created a wonderful home and with natural talent,

She cultivated a big garden, a green-thumb delight.

And guess what? To top it off,

She married well, a union man, a good provider,

A leader, he was respected and adored by all.

Sure he was a hard-nosed guy.

He had his trouble with the Schuberts and the mob,

No easy matter getting a salary for men,

Who changed the bulbs on marquee boards,

Who hauled wire, and painted the sets,

And whose days involved many other chores,

Which meant going up and down ladders.

Her grandpa made sure there was a decent wage

For the man whose job it was

To clean and bag after circus elephants.

Over the years, testimony holds,

-- Here we have no mean feat --

They fostered twenty-five kids, adopted four,

And then wound up having a girl of their own.

But something went amiss;

Grandpa went upstairs to bed,

Grandma slathered in wintergreen and liniment

Slept on living-room couch at night,

Hard to believe,

How long a time they spent their lives that way.

And after her Mom was finally released from hospital,

Grandmother balked when time came to return

The girl to whom she had grown attached,

The girl she helped to educate and rear.

She pretended the child were her own.

She used every kind of conceivable excuse;

Grandma tied to keep the mother and daughter away.

It was very late; sun had begun to signal new day.

Four decades had passed,

Separating the adult from events of her early tale,

I heard the woman, the granddaughter said,

We sat at the kitchen table, we had been up all night.

I heard her wax on the refrain,

Though she said it quiet and was ashamed,

“I can not wish she were here.

“I do not wish she were here today.'

BY LOVE BEGUILED

Don't get me wrong.

If I appear distracted,
Look knocked out by the light,

You make a very strong performance,
A singularity into whose axis my mind spins.

I remember once, years ago,
When I landed in New York,
After living a year and half in Europe,
How the neon of America,
It appeared so awesomely garish, and bright.
Yet, when I close my eyes and picture it,

All seems pale before the radiance of your face.

That two people would meet for morning breakfast,
Look out the café's window at the steady rain,
Walk here and there along avenues of
Inviting store fronts, and before the day is over
Fall into grand attachment one for the other,

As though there were something in the air,
Perhaps some electromagnetic charge,
So the occasional electricity might overwhelm us.

Or perhaps it was cupid who stole

Behind fixtures of the thoroughfares?
I thought I had spied him crouched near a mailbox,
At start of our walk on Main Street in Point Pleasant!

The winged child pulled from his quiver, arrows,
Their heads were dipped in love potion,

I was thinking along the lines of the ancient story,

That once he aimed and shot them,

Grievously would they tear mortal flesh
To make for a ruckus extraordinaire.

I felt that expectations were suddenly turning great.

This romance presses hard upon me.
It is a love I am compelled to profess.

To gain your confidence,
To prove my mind sound, not at loss to reason,
I couch my verse

In a mood commonly called the subjunctive.

Though the posing of this frame of mind

Has little usage in today's English,

I try its grammar, or, is it, pretend to use it, so to temper

My over-wrought affection and to quiet,
Soften my immodest and elevated parlance.

Were I not to employ this principle of language,
One might believe my love for you be shameless.

The mood, also, provides proper relief
For the all, too-far-out attitude, the conceit,
Whose command animates my senses,
That I have come to possess a gift, as it were,

That Higher Power had granted me prophetic mantle.

Understand. I solely express my own wish and desire,
That all I say remain contingent --
Of mind still hypothetical and dependent.
I do not use the imperative, I make no demand.
I have no special outcome in mind.
I dwell in fortress called Zion,
And come from it in the Pilgrims' coat and hat.
I look in the mirror and see their collar and tie.
And, like those passengers on board the Mayflower,
I know the Lord to be my helper. I fear not.

Who among your former friends has ever said it better?

And were you to live a long and hearty life
As all actuaries predict, what future friend

Might ever phrase it near as well as I have put it?

And if you ask the source of this lyric

That it arrive, transcending the usual,

Everyday phrase and common syntax, I must rejoin

That Sentiment Supreme, Him, the real pilot,

That when we drove in the white, Ford van and crossed
Jersey's North shore highways, while the soft brown,

Oh that magic, dream-like, living, pale, ethereal,

And somewhat golden light accented the downpours,
Whose constant unleashed falling, more
Like rain the Lord had promised Noah,
Than any explicable, temporary phenomenon of weather.

Wie es eigentlich gewesen.

“The carriage held but just us -- and immortality.”

That when we traveled our first day together,
Though it is months ago, and now becomes the years,
All the time which has passed, I suggest

That it would feel shorter than the day, that day
I first surmised the engine's mounts
Were tied to point, and that we, too, were belted,
Hurled straight ahead in solemn league with Eternity.

Mercy, let it be known, Mercy freely bestowed,

Not for this, the one earthly moment,

But for our children’s children,

Drawn and signed, delivered,

A grant for us and them, settled in this verse,

Sure as Word once promised Abraham.

I hear the text my grandmother spoke.

I see her at work while she ironed and folded,

Stoop to lay the laundry

Into the oval wicker basket at her feet,

And I, the child, I watch her nod the affirmative nod,

Repeat to you what she said to me,

“And I will bless them that bless you,

And curse him that curses you...”

And then the line which revealed for me

How the stanza means,

That in you, I mean in you my darling, “... in you

“Shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

LOVE, LOVELY, LOVE

LOVE, LOVELY, LOVE

When it comes to love
We are all in the dark.
No scientist
Has ever been able to measure its quality,

Figure affection using a calculus.
No high-powered lens,
Though we see the architecture,
The starry clouds which make the heavens,
And, what if, electronics power our sight
So to reckon the slightest parts of elemental makeup,
Still no common tool exists whereby
The transit or deep-spin of my heart and soul
Becomes explicable to vision or mathematics.

I know it would be no easy task.

Yet now how I wish we could be together,
Go back to the farm-land fields
And pick strawberries from the rows,

Return to the way things were last summer.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

BEAT IT! Canal Street Lessons

Canal Street Lessons.

Let me comment on our Western tradition;

Money talks, all else, why it walks!

Now, in this, mine, particular scene,

Sam is key. He’s the boss;

Get it, the king of the thing.

But conduct, also, counts.

Say “Hello! Good morning, ma’am!”

Do not forget, “Hey babe, how you doing?”

And behind this deportment, be doctrinaire.

Remember, keep matters simple.

Talk three topics in one person:

Pussy, the weather and always include

A word or two about sports,

Otherwise masculinity might open to question.

And let us say what things soever the law says,

Get an invoice,

And make sure to write it all in carbon.

Fair and square, it’s hard to trick in duplicate.

I believe, was it not, Saint Simon, who teaches?

“To each according to his need, and

From each get a copy, every transaction.”

Careful with Leo; he is hooked up,

High as a kite and looking for trouble,

He may not remember

Or how he spoke one day or the other.

And Bernie, he’s the intellectual type.

Figure, a perverse will,

Which easily collects oddball systems,

All kinds schemes and fast notions,

A knavery prone to ruse,

And comfortable when others feel a moral obliquity.

Don't be surprised if he pulls a scan,

Runs your torso with some sort of electromagnetic wand,
Checks and sees, whether you're wearing a wire.

With him, it's best to show that you are thinking,

Try to offer a course of action,

Good for today and having potential for tomorrow.

Bernie values clever

Far more the than actual accrual of dollars.

That basement desk with the single light bulb above it,

A hanging one-switch receptacle on a wire,

No shade, what reason to adorn it?

Send the lawsuits down the wooden, threadbare steps,

Another time's forgotten space,

To the bottom, the barely paved, beaten concrete floor.

Let them see the worn out cushion,

The damaged seat of the metal chair,

The desk at a tilt, one leg broken,

And, then, let them contemplate,

If even for a moment,

The awful empty, the cement,

The unadorned cellar's walls.

Have a laugh at process servers’ expense,

What a nasty drollery Bernie had authored!

And should you go out for a drink,

Keep an eye on Bob whose favored fun,

Slip you a Mickey and laugh while you fall,

Knock your head on the barroom floor.

And Georgie, why he carries a box blade,

He might act to settle a score,

Good Lawd, what a whore!

Sell! Sell! Keep ends tight! And sell!

Today we have diamonds, tomorrow the world!

Say hey, Willie Mays, you’re the greatest,

And now the world knows it!

Stanley Pacion A BIG BOOK OF MY OWN