A hammer upon the landscape.
Thunder like a toppling mountain.

Flashes like x-ray explosions.
Supernova surprise.

Sheets of rain.
Glistening-rebar javelins
Pierce the asphalt
Shatter the concrete.

Long shards of glass
From the grey
Steel-wool clouds.

PROLOGUE:

“’We must stop this brain working for twenty years.’” So said Mussolini’s Grand Inquisitor, his official Fascist prosecutor addressing the judge in Antonio Gramsci’s 1928 trial; so said the Il Duce’s Torquemada, ending his peroration with this infamous demand.’”  Gramsci, Antonio: Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Introduction, translation from Italian and publishing by Quintin ***** & Geoffrey Nowell Smith, International Publishers, New York, 1971.

BE IT RESOLVED: Whereas, I introduce this book with a nod of deep respect to Antonio Gramsci--an obscure but increasingly pertinent political scientist it would behoove us all to read and study today, I dedicate the book itself to my great grandfather and key family patriarch, Pietro Buonaiuto (1865-1940) of Moschiano, in the province of Avellino, in the region of Campania, southern Italy.

Let it be recognized that Pete Buonaiuto may not have had Tony Gramsci’s brain, but he certainly exhibited an extreme case of what his son--my paternal grandfather, Francesco Buonaiuto--termed: Testaduro. Literally, it means Hardhead, but connotes something far beyond the merely stubborn. We’re talking way out there in the unknown, beyond that inexplicable void where hotheaded hardheads regurgitate their next move, more a function of indigestion than thought. Given any situation, a Testaduro would rather bring acid reflux and bile to the mix than exercise even a skosh of gray muscle matter.  But there’s more. It gets worse.

To truly comprehend the densely-packed granite that is the Testaduro mind, we must now sub-focus our attention on the truly obdurate, extreme examples of what my paternal grandmother—Vicenza di Maria Buonaiuto—they called her Jennie--would describe as reflexive cutta-dey-noze-a-offa-to-spite-a-dey-face-a types. I reference the truly defiant, or T.D.—obviously short for both truly defiant and Testaduro. T.D.’s—a breed apart--smiling and sneering, laughing and, finally, begging their regime-appointed torture apparatchik (a career-choice getting a great deal of attention from the certificate mills--the junior colleges and vocational specialty institutes) mocking their Guantanamo-trained torturer: “Is that what you call punishment?  Is that all you ******* got?”

If, to assist comprehension, you require a literary frame of context, might I suggest you compare the Buonaiuto mind to Paul Lazzaro, Vonnegut’s superbly drawn Italian-American WWII soldier-lunatic with a passion for revenge, who kept a list of people who ****** with him, people he would have killed someday for a thousand dollars.

Go with me, Reader, go back with me to Vonnegut’s Slaughter-House-Five: “Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time . . .”
It is long past the Tralfamadorian abduction and his friendship with Stony Stevenson. Billy is back in Germany, one of three dingbat American G.I.s roaming around beyond enemy lines.  Another of the three is Private Lazzaro, a former car thief and undeniable psychopath from Cicero, Illinois.

Paul Lazzaro:  “Anybody touches me, he better **** me, or I’m gonna have him killed. Revenge is the sweetest thing there is. People **** with me, and Jesus Christ are they ever ******* sorry. I laugh like hell. I don’t care if it’s a guy or a dame. If the President of the United States ****** around with me, I’d fix him good. Revenge is the sweetest thing in life. And nobody ever got it from Lazzaro who didn’t have it coming.  Anybody who ***** with me? I’m gonna have him shot after the war, after he gets home, a big ******* hero with dames climbing all over him. He’ll settle down. A couple of years ‘ll go by, and then one day a knock at the door. He’ll answer the door and there’ll be a stranger out there. The stranger’ll ask him if he’s so and so. When he says he is, the stranger’ll say, ‘Paul Lazzaro sent me.’ And then he’ll pull out a gun and shoot his pecker off. The stranger’ll let him think a couple seconds about who Paul Lazzaro is and what life’s gonna be like without a pecker. Then he’ll shoot him once in the gut and walk away. Nobody ***** with Paul Lazzaro!”

(ENTER AUTHOR. HE SPEAKS: “Hey, Numb-nuts! Yes, you, my Reader. Do you want to get ****** into reading that Vonnegut blurb over and over again for the rest of the afternoon, or can I get you back into my manuscript?  That Paul Lazzaro thing was just my way of trying to give you a frame of reference, not to have you ******* drift off, walking away from me, your hand held tightly in nicotine-stained fingers. So it goes, you Ja-Bone. It was for comparison purposes.  Get it?  But, if you insist, go ahead and compare a Buonaiuto—any Buonaiuto--with the character, Paul Lazzaro. No comparison, but if you want a need a number—you quantitative ****--multiply the seating capacity of the Roman Coliseum by the gross tonnage of sheet pane glass that crystalized into small fixed puddles of glazed smoke, falling with the steel, toppling down into rubble on 9/11/2001. That’s right: multiply the number of Coliseum seats times a big, double mound of rubble, that double-smoking pile of concrete and rebar and human cadavers, formerly known as “The Twin Towers, World Trade Center, Lower Manhattan, NYC.  It’s a big number, Numb-nuts! And it illustrates the adamantine resistance demonstrated by the Buonaiuto strain of the Testaduro virus. Shall we return to my book?)

The truth is Italian-Americans were never overzealous about WWII in the first place. Italians in America, and other places like Argentina, Canada, and Australia were never quite sure whom they were supposed to be rooting for. But that’s another story. It was during that war in 1944, however, that my father--John Felix Buonaiuto, a U.S. Army sergeant and recent Anzio combat vet decided to visit Moschiano, courtesy of a weekend pass from 5th Army Command, Naples.  In a rough-hewn, one-room hut, my father sat before a lukewarm stone fireplace with the white-haired Carmine Buonaiuto, listening to that ancient one, spouting straight **** about his grandfather—Pietro Buonaiuto--my great-grandfather’s past. Ironically, I myself, thirty yeas later, while also serving in the United States Army, found out in the same way, in the same rough-hewn, one-room hut, in front of the same lukewarm fireplace, listening to the same Carmine Buonaiuto, by now the old man and the sea all by himself. That’s how I discovered the family secret in Moschiano. It was 1972 and I was assigned to a NATO Cold War stay-behind operation. The operation, code-named GLADIO—had a really cool shield with a sword, the fasces and other symbols of its legacy and purpose. GLADIO was a clandestine anti-communist agency in Italy in the 1970s, with one specific target:  Il Brigate Rosso, the Red Brigades.  This was in my early 20s. I was back from Vietnam, and after a short stint as an FBI confidential informant targeting campus radicals at the University of Miami, I was back in uniform again. By the way, my FBI gig had a really cool codename also: COINTELPRO, which I thought at the time had something to do with tapping coin operated telephones. Years later, I found out COINTELPRO stood for counter-intelligence program.  I must have had a weakness for insignias, shields and codenames, because there I was, back in uniform, assigned to Army Intelligence, NATO, Italy, “OPERATION GLADIO.“

By the way, Buonaiuto is pronounced:

Bwone-eye-you-toe . . . you ignorant ****!

Oh yes, prepare yourself for insult, Kemosabe! I refuse to soft soap what ensues.  After all, you’re the one on trial here this time, not Gramsci and certainly not me. Capeesh?

Let’s also take a moment, to pay linguistic reverence to the language of Seneca, Ovid & Virgil. I refer, of course, to Latin. Latin is called: THE MOTHER TONGUE. Which is also what we used to call both Mary Delvecchio--kneeling down in the weeds off Atlantic Avenue--& Esther Talayumptewa --another budding, Hopi Corn Maiden like my mother—pulling trains behind the creosote bush up on Black Mesa.  But those are other stories.

LATIN: Attention must be paid!

Take the English word obdurate, for example—used in my opening paragraph, the phrase truly obdurate: {obdurate, ME, fr. L. obduratus, pp. of obdurare to harden, fr. Ob-against + durus hard –More at DURING}.

Getting hard? Of course you are. Our favorite characters are the intransigent: those who refuse to bend. Who, therefore, must be broken: Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke comes to mind. Or Paul Newman again as Fast Eddie, that cocky kid who needed his wings clipped and his thumbs broken. Or Paul Newman once more, playing Eddie Felson again; Fast Eddie now slower, a shark grown old, deliberative now, no longer cute, dimples replaced with an insidious sneer, still fighting and hustling but in shrewder, more subtle ways. (Credit: Scorsese’s brilliant homage The Color of Money.)

The Color of Money (1986) - IMDb www.imdb.com/title/tt0090863 Internet MovieDatabase Rating: 7/10 - ‎47,702 votes. Paul Newman and Helen Shaver; still photo: Tom Cruise in The Color of Money (1986) Still of Paul Newman in The Color of Money (1986). Full Cast & Crew - ‎Awards - ‎Trivia - ‎Plot Summary

Perhaps it was the Roman Catholic Church I rebelled against.  The Catholic Church: certainly a key factor for any Italian-American, a stinger, a real burr under the saddle, biting, setting off insurrection again and again. No. Worse: prompting Revolt! And who could blame us? Catholicism had that spooky Latin & Incense going for it, but who wouldn’t rise up and face that Kraken? The Pope and his College of Cardinals? A Vatican freak show—a red shoe, twinkle-toe, institutional anachronism; the Curia, ferreting out the good, targeting anything that felt even half-way good, classifying, pronouncing verboten, even what by any stretch of the imagination, would be deemed to be merely kind of pleasant, slamming down that peccadillo rubber-stamp. Sin: was there ever a better drug? Sin? Revolution, **** yeah!  Anyone with an ounce of self-respect would have gone to the barricades.

But I digress.

O*ne-thirty in the morning, I'm creeping, ever-so-swiftly, to the entrance to my favorite public sculpture park. I don't like the sculptures, but I like their shadows. There's so much hidden meaning in what you see when you look at a shadow.... Thousands of years ago, the sun was worshiped as a life-giver - the ultimate source of everything man needs to survive: food, water, shelter, companionship.

     Shadows are the only thing that light will never reach.

     I don’t have an MP3 player, but I have music. Tonight, my playlist starts with Yellowcard’s *Lights and Sounds…I sing it lowly to myself as I approach the darkened rebar fence that acts as sentry, guard, arbiter, and jailer to the inanimate zoo they contain. Rebar is always rusty. My hands wrap themselves around two of the bars as I ready myself for the heave overboard.

     I’m over the motor gate, now, and I’m free. The police don’t patrol the park, and there are other cars populating the lot I parked in. Too many people work too late. A girl I know told me that the quality of one’s life is multiplied by two for every three hours of sleep one gets – she told me this at three a.m. after we’d painted the town red. Someone else told me that for every eight hours of sleep one loses in a week subtracts, roughly, a week from one’s life expectancy. If that’s true, and I was supposed to die at seventy, I’ll be dead at sixty. But, honestly? I don’t care how long I live. I’m ready to die now. I mean, I don’t want to die now – it isn’t my preference of events – but, I’m at peace with how I’ve lived my life; so if I do die, I’ll die happy…. What was I talking about? Right, “Too many people…” So, why, if they’re going to die (because even if we distract ourselves, like Mr. Ivan Ilyich, we will die), do they seek these self destructive courses through life? Staying up to finish the quarterly report; dying of hunger to lose some weight; falling asleep at work, and getting assigned more late-night work as punishment; buying things no one will see; dressing up to impress those that don’t matter; dying for that promotion; dying for that car; dying for that girl; dying for that guy….dying.

     I look at my hands as I walk into the shadows of trees and gazebos. Rebar is always rusty…and rust is always red. Now I look as though I’ve killed. My hands are the evidence that I’ve wrung the life out of an innocent metal gate-post. I’d like to plead insanity. I’ll take the ten years in solitary confinement, please.

     I pull a left, then a right, then a left, then a right, then a left, then a right…actually, I’m wandering – no, meandering – through the park, with Hans Zimmer’s Davey Jones Movement roaring in my head; I meander in time with the music. My feet take me to the places I like best. Places where the night looks back at you; where you have to force yourself to set your gaze. Try staring into pitch blackness sometime. It’s not a comfortable feeling. I’ve heard that darkness is where evil resides. I think darkness is misunderstood…like the nature of “evil.” Sit opposite a weird, 20th-century abstract three-dimensional art piece, and stare, hard, into the darkness at its heart. There are stories there. So many unanswered questions can be answered when you ask those things that can’t give you a tangible answer.

     I’ve counseled with the shadows; now for therapy: interpretive dance accompanied by a healthy dose of therapeutic screaming. I sing a lot. You never notice how quietly you have to sing in public until you really need to sing. That’s why there are shadows. They listen very intently, don’t think you’re strange, and soak all pain, pleasure, anger and fear you might sing to release. Something by Vampire Weekend is jamming in my head, and this time, I’m singing along….

     To the shadows.

     Snippets of opera pieces start fluttering through my head. Accompanied by Ugandan chants, and Pawnee ritual songs. And I’m dancing around the shadow of a fire.

     If you never felt pain, how would you know what pleasure felt like? So I celebrate it; by exhaling it in a chorus meant only for the stars, and shadows, and ghosts. I celebrate, dancing in the darkness, waving my arms at the veil of clouds and the stars behind them; I hop to one foot, and wobble in step with the music in my head, and the words on my lips. I hop to the other, and jump at the crescendo of sounds in my mind, those sounds flushing me clean of the hurt, and pain, and grief that plague every creature that may consider why he’s been hurt. In mid flight, I feel the brief weightlessness of flight, hovering in the heavens. Caught between the clouds and the shadows, I close my eyes, and leave my time of arrival a mystery to myself; the last of my cares escapes me, and as I touch the soft, dewed earth, I am delivered.

     Now I can commune, freely, with these dark places. Don’t Let Me Down, by the Stereophonics comes to mind. Have you ever been let down? Of course you have. You are every day. Every hour. I am. Every day, every hour. It’s life. I think we expect too much of ourselves…of others. That animal desire to improve ourselves and our conditions drives us to expect the impossible. And the animal desire to improve our chances of success in life tell us we’ve failed when we, well…fail. The pits of our souls know better, though. They see the whole instead of those precious few real failures. They’re as dark as night, herself. She’s listened to our hearts tear themselves apart. The weight of failure is overwhelming, but the shadows lend shoulders to bear the weight with us…to lighten the load. I’ve told them how it feels to be human, now they show me how it feels to not care.

      “Don’t Let Me Down”, they plead. The bluesy, wailing lyrics fit the moment: all of the emotion of celebration and sorrow wrapped into one tangled poem. My arms climb above my head, wrapping around themselves, snaking through the air, as I dance with the absence of light…as I embrace the objectivity that knows how to evade the sun.

      Wisdom, is wisdom, is wisdom; truth on the lips of the devil is still truth. And I’ve listened.

     Now those great, and wise shadows bear my weight effortlessly, and I can relax. I find myself exhausted, and legs give way to putty; I find myself flat on my back. Now I lie upon the grass, touched by the places where light never will.

      The color black is said to be so because it absorbs all the colors of the spectrum. That it takes, and never gives. Like Salt Lake. It’s said that anything that never gives, dies. Like Salt Lake. But can death die twice? How much more can shadows absorb than colors? What else can shadows absorb? I think black is a wonderful color. Like shadows. And they both give. To give by taking; what a wonderful idea…. They’ve filled a very hard niche to fill in this world.

      My legs and lungs compete in me, burning, exhausted, and happy. I let the veil slip from my face, and the shadows watch me smile; my big, goofy, elated grin thanking them for listening. There’s no fear in my gut, no depression crushing my chest. The doubt and loneliness and helplessness cannot touch me.

     I am the shadow of pain. The shadow of fear. The shadow of the pull and push of life.

     They will never reach me.

     The world would be a better place if we sung to the shadows instead of running from them. You can’t touch one, like you can people; but they can’t hurt you, either – like people can. Someone told me that you can’t depend on people, because they will always let you down. I think I’ll keep trusting, and sing when they do.

.
Even after visits to apartments in self-named cities to see soccer stars swathed in orange tuxes,
Swerving off country roads in berating fits of tenderness,
Sputtering 'i love yous' in ditches and river canals;
Even after chais with Ye Ye Elders,
Messenger powwows with ancestors, and
holding the hands of comforting Harmonies, I

Never got it right.
.
It was a pathetic attempt to join a traveling circus; a passive means for an escape. Who were the Elephant Man, the sword swallower, or the contorting twins?
****** if I know.
Buddy had his hands wrapped around my neck in a nihilist noose so tight that it bubbled up amaurotic visions within my retina.
I couldn't see or feel a ******* thing.
Lost consciousness on his cold bathroom tiles, sprinkled with ***** confetti, **** all up on my cheek.idonthavetimeforthis!sleeponthecouch!
Watching 'Teach Yourself Circus!' videos at circus camp, I learned to juggle,
albeit groggy and disoriented. Only brightly coloured ***** at this point but I was up to seven tosses! While the freaks and geeks headed to carousels in the big top tent, I headed back to my dilapidated den leased on a broken Concord.
getoutbitchgetoutbitch
Back at camp ( hazy lazy crazy ) rivets affixed so I could only stare forward at the wall.
An e.ch-o-y sound in my
left  ear
voice reverberating down thru
t
h
e

w
e
l
l  
past
   t
   h
   e

   b  u  c
   k  e  t

I turned my head,
slo-mo tracers flashed in warp speed,
glacial stares softened into slushy moss.
A buttery soft cashmere reply,
                                      i'm sorry? what did you say?
                                                           ­  you seem nice...
.
Infrastructure collapsed.
    ****
Gone.
Crumbled in a heap of rubble.
Impaled by rebar and rebar erections.
Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab.
Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab.
in a black plastic sack
And....then....
Who's to say about the linear sequence of events, anyway?
.

Maryam
turned,
moving
away
from the
caravans of
bulldozers
entering
Homs.

She
could
not bear
to look
upon the
the teeth
of steel
tracks
sloshing
through
puddles
of blood,
plowing
the rubble,
burying the
mush,
coolly
covering the
fingerprints of
criminals.

Maryam
beheld the
conquering
soldiers
standing
atop piles
of shrapnel
marked and
launched by
Syria’s finest
artillery officers.

She
remained
within ear shot
to hear the
victor’s
orator,
recite the
history of
the conquest,
carefully
spinning
suspicion,
and casting
blame
for the
devastation
onto the
vanquished.

The speaker
lauded the
efforts of
esteemed
comrades
commanding
black regiments
chasing the
last rats still
lapping at
the edges
of the red
pools;
hieing to
the dead
catacombs
as sanctuaries
of salvation.

The barker
goads other gangs
to commence a
surgical search
of hospitals to
root out wounded
insurgents. He
suggests they be
removed from
their recovery
beds and thrown
atop the piles of refuse
where the busy tractors
will push the rubble
into the far corners
of the mind where
obfuscation and
forgetfulness
blissfully anoints
unsettled memory.

Alarmed,
Maryam breaks
for the hospital,
to nurse the
injured.

She moves with
tealth through
the broken city’s
debris strewn streets.

Maryam eyes the
inert concrete,
blasted into
ghastly shapes,
burying secrets,
concealing terrible
stories of what
transpired
during the
pacification of
Baba Amr.

These
grotesque
gargoyles,
sculpted by the
mangled hand
of a deranged
sociopath
will hold their
silence for
only so long.

Dark secrets
never live
forever.

The distended heaps
of jangled rebar
pokes through
broken chunks
of concrete
like rib cages
picked clean by
the jackals
of war.

The pulverized
concrete forms
telling Mandalas
giving voice to
the stained
stones crying
the secrets of
terrible truths that
unmarked graves
never keep
silent.

Maryam
is desperate
to find the
lost children.

She knows
the ungodly
conquerors
eagerly
hunt them.

The subjugators
are drunk from the
draughts of blood
they profanely quaff.

They thirst
for more and
have set
their sight on
the children.

The crucifiers
kiss the sword
to cleanse
the insurgent
city of its
youngest
citizens.

Bashar has
condemned
a generation
to death.

He desires
to purge Syria
of a heinous
memory stored in
the ripening minds
of Homs’ children.

They stand in  
witness to
the ******
of their
childhood.

Righteous
indignation
breeds a
long  memory
nursed by the
vanquished as
a cherished gift;
bestowed to
successive
generations
like a valuable
family heirloom;
but
resentment
makes for
a monstrous
coat of arms
vanquishers
bequeath to
the defeated.

Maryam
crosses over
the scattered
stones
incapable
of bleeding
one more
drop of blood.

She hears
the howling
spirits calling
from the broken
ruins.

She glimpses
the dark silhouettes
of fleeting apparitions
moving through
the upper floors
of flame stained
buildings.

The ghostly
shadows of
lost children
wander, seeking
the rest of an
expired future
sired by their
state sanctioned
execution.

Maryam
grows anxious
as she
approaches
the hospital.

She arranges
her silk scarf.
She examines
her calloused
hands. The lines
of her palms
are soiled,
cakes of dirt
have settled
under her
fingernails;
yet sufficient
strength remains
in her arms
to roll away
the large stones
entombing
revelations
of love and
miracles of
deliverance.

The pock
marked
hospital now
in sight,
Maryam
enters the gate
of a ancient
graveyard;
clambering
over burial
mounds
of her dead
ancestors.

She remembered
a placard hanging
in the hospital’s
waiting room.

“Art is long; life is short;
opportunity is fleeting;
judgment is difficult;
experience is deceitful.”
Hippocrates.

As Maryam
neared the
graveyard exit
she was
overtaken by
Syrian soldiers
brandishing AK’s.

One stuck a
dusty barrel
into Maryam’s
face while
the other tapped
the back of her
head from behind.

A weeping
Maryam
knelt before
her captors.

She
washed
the dust
from their
boots with
flowing tears
and wiped
them clean
with her hair;
praying for
the power
of love
to once
again
overcome
the stalk
of death.

Prostrate
and prone
Maryam
waited to
accept the
shaft of
recrimination
through her
bleating gums.

If recollection is long
in the living,
memory is eternal
in the dead generations.

The only known cure
for the disease of acrimony
is the strong balm of love.

Maryam would
never again nurse
the wounded
children of
Homs.

Music Selection:
Chanticleer & Yvette Flunder
There is a Balm in Gilead

Oakland
3/12/12
jbm

the train whistles lull me to a dusty sleep
     an ancient sleep
primitive and timeless as the sage
          it tastes like rain
          and reads like a folk song

and when the engine songs are gone
the interstate strikes up it's serenade
     flooding my heart valves with gasoline
     and valvoline
     and the smile of what i can only hope to imagine are young lovers
with a fiesty case of wanderlust
and a puppy in the back seat
with a wagging tail

"happy trails" i whisper
and the stars flicker
and i smile

the walls let their secrets slide while they sleep
     all those restless memories they keep for themselves
floating around
and settling in the parlor dust

they trust me just enough
to let me cradle them in my chest
woven between my rebar ribs
and my flat-tire heart
     thud thud thudding as it speeds off into the distance

the dogs rustle the sheets as they rise
     just long enough to sigh
          dance a sleepy circle and a half
and put themselves back to bed

i finally crawl out from inside my noisy head
as the boy nestles up to my neck
and traces my clavical with his humid breath
and ropes me in closer to his chest
     with his big bear arms

his heart sings like a fire alarm
stirring the brave to save me from the shadows
     and chase the ghosts from my gallows
          and he even lets out puppy snores in his sleep
the tune that finally pirouettes me towards my dreams

where the birds sing like drunken sailors in the mango groves
and the rows and rows of lime trees
     my heart and mind innertwined to paint me a scene i've never even seen
          not with my own eyes

it's so nice to think it's within me
and not without me

yes
     for every sound, a source

Yeah I am young once more morn late,
Call it the year of somebody's lord,
Call it nineteen sixty eight,
Hair to my shoulders
Makes me see better,
Parted down the middle,
The older black ladies,
On the new.york city subway,
One and all, bless me cause this Jew,
Looks just like Our Lord
In them Renaissance picture-books.

Ironically, that winter time,
I wear a white sheepskin jacket,
Purchased in the Old City of
Jerusalem, but don't tell'm that,
Cause they would have marched up to Harlem,
No telling what might've happened next...

Next summer reality intruded,
Money in pocket aid and ain't not enough,
Riding the bus on Euclid Ave.
To go downtown Cleveland, the Flats,
Drag racing and watching,
The river Cuyahoga burn,
Kinda of a bus drag, but very very, kinda cool.


Summer next,
Worked in a Republic Steel mill,
They called me the Macaroni Kid,
Cause stoopidly I told them that is
What I et,, with ketchup Heinz sauce,
Desert, a heath bar!
Cause I was saving my pennies,
This college kid they loved to hate,
Caused he bicycled to work and
Wasn't one of them.


Put me, little ole wiry me,
In the boxcars,
Loading and loafing the
Rebar, twisted and straight,
Came it, sent it all over,
Me, black as a
Pennsylvania coal miner,
A San Fran homeless man.
To this day, can't get my
Fingernails really clean.

At night, me and the boys on the porch,
Gettin ******, ****, music and a view of
Cleveland East, the sirens rushing around,
To the houses on fire, the next ******.

First freaked us out,
Coming to get us,
Then it became the best, finest ***
"That was so stony cool" light show.
The girls looked like Joan Baez,
And if they didn't,
We still took 'em to bed,
Pretending it was Janis,
If Joan was busy
In the dorm room next store.

Hey babe,
Wanna come back to my dorm room,
And drink wine, listen to Blood Sweat and Tears,
Make some of our own,
Cause my roomie gone down to Canton,
To visit his cleaning lady mom.

I loved that guy liked he was the first
Real person I'd ever met.
On my first day, without asking,
Ran his hands both all over my head,
Looking for the horns on the Jews head,
According his parish priest, we all had'em,
God's official representative on the consecrated earth of
Ohio.

In those days, I applied to schools
Farthest away from home,
That the student discounted airfare was no more than
59bucks which I could afford so I could go back to
NYC, and find out what was really
"Happening" man.

The summer next, worked in the East Village,
Summer Office Boy for a big corporation
In a part of town where you could buy
Leather fringed vests and the headshops sold
The paraphernalia to get hookah high,
And if you hookah lookah right,
That wasn't the thing they sold for cash money.

Took my steel mill blues money,
Bot me a '65 red mustang car,
That needed to be jumped to get started,
Courtesy of the Cleveland special hell called
Midwest winter.

That car, the floor was made of cardboard,
The four cylinders were bolted to the car,
So when u opened the hood, you saw mostly
The pavement of the parking lot,
Some tiny engine,
In between holding on for dear life.
Always kept extra brake fluid in the trunk,
In case the leak got bad on the Heights.

Needed to do what I needed to do,
So I wrote a resume of whom I was,
And whom I ain't, so I could get me a
Real big time job.

More on that someday,
When the resume is resumed,
Getting updated, that will be kinda funny,
Cause it will run about 500 pages long.

Right now, strange,
I am hard by hard by the Frisco bay,
The Ferry Building and the tripartite
Disposal systems of three garbage cans,
And who should appear, but
Otis and Sara B., (live from the Fillmore)
Singing to me about a dock on this bay.

Got me those 'high flying blues,'
The kind that say;

"Lord, look at me here,
I'm rooted like a tree here,
Got those sit-down, can't cry,
Oh, Lord, gonna die blues."

Missing that dock of mine,
In the picture next to my invisible head.
You want to know my face?
Maybe when back east,
I'll find that photo of that long haired college boy,
Leaning in on, so proud against that red Mustang.

Right now all I got these here old vignettes,
True stories one and all,
Making me miss my dock, my shelter,
On that old adirondack chair,
Where my **** aches, and my mind fevered
With poems of love children and a life that
Tho dim recalled, I see it all so well.

The rebar skeleton of a hymn
Celestial rust sifting in
Skin and its architecture
Oh, the tectonics of Sin
Thrush lashed to husks
Lungs dipped with resin
Wine with gall, the Synoptic gospels
Recolored lithographs and
Rhymes of tinsel cord
Lost palaces of Tangiers
The Late Cretaceous fossils
Vibrate with fear.

A blur that breathes, growing and abating,
tides of people, entombed in steel,
flowing and fading on riverbeds of tar.
A place of nomads,
all draped in cloth.
A place of symbols,
of concrete and rebar

Sheets of cold, ice grey
Falling spindles, cold rain
A graceful procession
With a bellyful of tears
A dreadful cortège
A heralder of fears

A young forest paved with ancient crushed stones
Nothing left but the inheritance of a thousand unknowns
Nothing left, but old fossilised bones

All that has happened is what I know
And all I know is what will happen.
All that remains is what I know
And all I know is ruin.

I built it
Brick by brick
Slathering mortar
Rebar pierced
Lines off center
Foundation firm
Concrete faults
Cemented sadness
Tall as it is wide

I built it
Contracted of stupidity
Designed in self-absorption
Blue prints of folded sorrow
Erected by a fool
No cranes needed
Drawn in teardrops
Fallen from your eyes
Collected puddles of my deceit

I built it…this wall
That keeps you from me

'Tis the season for
deconstruction
and rebirth with rebar
'Tis the time for me
to create the word
chauvimaniacal
To drink
more than my doctor wants
but less than my audience deserves
'Tis a passing, flashing
immolating infatuation
toward progress
through denial and other forms
of self medication
It's summer
and I not-so-secretly
******* hate it.

I want all the songs that give you goosebumps
to live on one single piece of wax, a low rumble
that spans acres, that stretches for miles in each
direction, that raises the skin of all who can see
and feel its grooves and pushes each of us to swim
in sound.

I want you to find all of the noises that pull you
and hold them in your heart as tightly as you gripped
the note I passed you in class complaining about
our professor's tenuous grasp of English grammar, the
ink sweating through the notebook paper and staining
your fingertips. Hold these noises in your heart and allow
the tones to imprint themselves inside your chest, next to
all your other organs.

I want you to sprawl yourself inside of all of this
calamitous cacophony such that you don't know
where your breath begins or if it's part of the melody
or the harmony or another part entirely that you've
never experienced or thought possible, like alto clef or
diminuendo or a vibration in your stomach that
snaps you back to exactly where you are, exactly
where you are.

I want you inside of all of the waves, inside all
of the resonating structures, like unreinforced
masonry and rebar after a larger earthquake
than any of us anticipated, like a tuning fork
standing tall in the middle of the city, like a
memory you can't get out of your head, like a
cold beachfront property sitting high atop
eroding ground.

I want you to reach over to the stereo and
pause before lowering the volume, thinking of
my face listening and falling in love with the
crashing of instruments and electronic tones
and I want you to know that when I was with
you I was inside of all of it, feeling the rough
edges and all the parts of it and dulling the pain
from your sharp angles jutting out in my direction
and I want you to put yourself in my head and think
what it would be like to have to avoid eye daggers and
unspoken thoughts.

I want you to fall inside of the music and allow
yourself to be pierced by its high treble and
shoved by its low bass and I want you to think of me
and how all the sounds are mine and how you will
never catch me sharing my records with you again
and how the needle pokes your fingertips when you
try to drop it and how that feels, bleeding on the
vinyl, alone.

(note~ This is a rather lengthy story about trauma and brokenness..)

I have a patch of skin on the back of my left hand, indiscernible to the
human eye as being any different than any other part of my skin.
It is my heart of hearts.

Five days a week I am not with my little ones.. there is a place I go.
A broken one awaits me there; Unknowingly. On 'day one' of my
non daddy-time, I go where the longing of my heart leads me.
When I am not with them.

There is a vertical shaft-- hidden in the tumbleweeds at the base of the
mountain's foothills that leads down beneath the surface. There are
rusted rebar steps in the shape of hoops, embedded into the hardened dirt
and rock of the shaft that gives me access to what lies down below.
With each ten steps, the shaft becomes noticeably darker. After thirty
steps, there becomes a pungent smell in the air that begins to cover my
skin, and a dank mist that enters my lungs and begins to coat the
inside of my skin. As I continue to descend down-- all becomes covered--
everything.. but the 4 inch square patch on my left hand.

There is a foul 'burning' in the permeating mist that wants to place a
film over my eyes and cause them to water, but as I descend I grow a
new pair of eyes over the top of my old ones, and though it is nearly
pitch black now and the pungency completely fills the air;
I can see.
Faintly, but I can see.

Directly at the bottom of the shaft is a room barely lit by what little
light has made it down the shaft through the mold and musty mist.
I get a strong sense that this room is the antechamber. Dirt and rock
line the walls as if they had been there since the ancient days. There is
also a black mold and an unavoidable saturation of the wall. There are
two doors in the wall, but I sense that both lead to the same room, so I
take the door on the right and slowly enter into a windowless and
nearly pitch black room-- old and partially torn up asbestos-tar tiled
floor-- filthy ***** with strewn about rags and used up things. The
pungent mist would be completely overwhelming had I not already
been fully permeated in it and received the new set of eyes in order to
be protected from its permeation and also to be able to see through the
darkness and wet, fine dust that floats throughout the air.

On the walls, there is a saturation to such a degree that it almost moves,
and there is a permeation of mold throughout. Mold on the walls, floor,
ceiling-- everything permeated in the mold.. and whatever it is that has
saturated everything. I have now entered so far into the room that all I
can see is shadows.  It has become that dark.
There is a sense of movement.
It is large-- behemoth even, methodically slow in it's self caught-up world.
It is perpetrator. Abuser-- And it only knows one thing--
destruction of anything of life for its own gain.  It cannot see me
because I am permeated in the foulness of its own perpetual emission--
The walls.. they are *** soaked. The air is filled with an ever-evaporating
mist of pungency. The only life form attached to it is mold, a fungus
which covers every square inch of floor, wall and ceiling.
I am not afraid, because I know that what I want is in the room also--
and I know that the only thing perpetrator can see is what hasn't been
permeated by the filth-- and so as I move.. remembering to place my
right hand over the back side of my left--
covering the only part of me that is not his.

Protected by the fact that I have become permeated in and with the
outcome of his abusing ways, I am hidden from all that he is,
as long as I keep that part of me covered.
I begin to move slowly around the room knowing that I cannot be seen,
but needing also to make not an ounce of sound. I am looking-- searching.
In the corner is a small discarded pile of ***** rags, and there my
eyes focus as I slowly move towards it. Perpetrator has begun to
shuffle off towards another smaller room that I have just begun to
become aware of. I head towards the small pile of rags.
I can feel him-- someone else in the room. The one I came for.

I move towards the rags on the floor there in the corner of the room
and I can see him-- just a part of his hand sticking out from underneath
the pile of rags; he is face down. All my focus is on him now, as I kneel
down next to him and sit alongside him-- pulling the rags off of his
head, revealing the side of his face. He is face down with eyes closed,
barely breathing-- barely a pulse.. only kept alive by the perpetrator to
serve his purpose. I am with him now and his brokenness takes over
me. I cannot touch him with any part of the permeated filth.

I reach out with the unaffected four inches of skin on the back side of my
hand, and touch it to his face. There's a slight movement, but he
remains face down. He's just a little boy, but because of the horrors
he was subjected to, I knew not to try to move him--
the trauma of just the slightest movement would **** him.
And if I were to look directly into his eyes, the light I had brought into
his broken, dark world, would have burned the back of his retinas and
ended what little pulse and breathing he had remaining. This is where I
want to be, even if the only thing that I can do just let him feel the
warmth and cleanness of my skin through the back of my hand against
his face.

I feel him quietly breathing it in.
He never opens his eyes-
face down still-- pain.
It takes all the energy he has;
just to survive.. to breathe.

And outside of the warmth of my hand, I know
that he may never again have the chance
to see the light of day--
he is broken, abandoned.

This is where I want to be.. but to be near the broken-one of my heart, I
have had to wear the 'full outcome' of perpetrator, and know full well
through what I have learned when young that I'm putting myself at risk--
of forever being banished to hell for what I have 'chosen to wear'.
I will stay with the broken one wherever that may be. This is where
my heart is most at home (the times I'm not with my little ones).
If heaven doesn't want to let me.. or the broken one in,
then I don't want to be there.
I will stay here with him, and if hell is his final resting place..
then it will be mine also--
perpetrator cannot see me here-- destructor will not see me there,
and I will sit with broken-one forever.

But for now I must return at the end of the five days-- climbing once
again back up the shaft and receiving the washing that happens once
daily life sees the four inch patch-- I am clean again in order to play
with and love my little ones.. holding them and protecting them from
the daylight-perpetrators as best as I can.. and as I love them and look into
them, I look into the broken one also. He is with me in my heart even
then. I will be with him again soon and also once again with my little ones.
    I am both.
They will grow up and become responsible loving adults with children
of their own. Broken one will always remain young and broken.
I will remain with him forever--come hell or high water.
He is me.. and every broken-one who has ever had to suffer alone.
It is with the broken ones that I will always want to be.

I live within the four square inches of my skin.

<>
"I am learning a little—never to be sure—
To be positive only with what is past,
And to peer sometimes at the things to come
As a wanderer treading the night
When the mazy stars neither point nor beckon,
And of all the roads, no road is sure"

Experience by Carl Sandburg

<>

summarizes my life, the fits and starts,
at every fork, the wrong road taken

and I lean back,
pensive from my shame,
knowingly confessing
that I would make the
wrong choices again

maybe, sadly, most likely...

the maps they provided early on,
were ok, but I never lived
on their edge,
never went far enough,
warned off,
all bordered in the red of
"go no farther,"
so stuck to the worn and grooved paths,
ventured out,
but retreated to safe center court
covered with the wounding cuts of
self-castigating tears,
for my lack of courage
and the waste and burdens
engendered permanent

maps for me,
are now no longer necessary,
for any road of mine is
closer my god to thee,
and my notice that
"the-show-is closing"warning
is a nearing destination,
slips quietly into my back pocket

now, I permission routine
to drive my simpler life,
where easy, gentling kindness
of the usual, the regularizing
steady as she goes,
are my comfy shoes upon
to tread the familiar road of surety...

that sates but doesn't fully satisfy

for the harsh hanging judge,
my resident permanent
on the top floor of my brain,
sentenced me as a young man
me to life imprisonment
in my very own self-built
asylum insane,
where all the tempting ladders were
maps that led to
This Way Out

was so fearful
to grasp and vault
from the top rung to
the uncertain pleasures
of the unknown of the other side

only here,
in the paths of my poetic words
do I venture across boundaries
and back over lines
that dare and
dare not
be refused

the great exposition
the great expiation
the great explication
of one man

words are my living will,
my testament,
my behests, my bequests,
my medals of discourage and
urges not followed,
tarnished but worn proudly

left to my
children's children
as a lesson plan
of one man

of a life poorly well and almost lived
these words are the rebar to build,
to cartograph,
to illustrate
new maps,
better ways,
signed posts
to take the risk of writing,
go gadget go abroad,
create new poems, new styles,
better than those
I that live~leave-left rightly
behind for
fellow travelers,
grandchildren,
who will - who must!
use them
to unmake the errors
I herein freely confess

12:07 Sunday July 10th of his sixty fifth year

Cracks in the foundation -
They don't make 'em like they used to. Chipped concrete, rusted rebar
Fading facade

I make facile arguments
Excuse myself

Blame mental illness
Blame the drugs, the molly years
Blame ****** (I don't choose life)

*******,
Ian McGregor

Blame the ****** February weather
Blame the itchy sweater
That is life

If that truly is life then,
Become I conscientious objector?
Already live in Canada

Blame the city
Blame the *****
Blame yourself

They say we have agency
I grasp, I reach
But the fruits
Are bitter sweet
**** the bed honey
Like Spud lovely

Which lines do I keep?
And who to throw away?

It takes nine weeks for cement to cure
in good weather,  and in bad weather,
years. It needs to be covered lightly
like a sheet over the face with a rebar
skeleton buried inside, the steel ribs
of wings cast into the settling stone.        

The dust is the glue, it creates itself
and wonders how birth canals can
expand, and in nine months give way
to moving parts, to the sponge of organs
and cries so thick cicadas won’t
burrow there.  Skin is merely

rice paper, not contained by concrete
but leaf etchings—delicate, illegible
scriptures buried in the archives.
Bars of light from the window push
around the floor there, as if they were    
substantial, as if they had weight.

i remember the ruins
concrete and rebar
rain-slick and strewn
in the dark front yard
the hounds
they poured from the woods
and melted the ground
where the crowned one stood
my clothes were drenched
in chalky cinder
my hands were wedged
against the door

Foxfire you burn holes in my heart and fill them just the same,
covering my veins with glitter-dust and Ashes,
These ashes rebirth into something bigger,
Warming quilt of feather, Phoenix rising
Rising storm,
This thunder fills my lungs and fills my throat I want to sing. Bring.
I want to sing out the tar from my lungs
I want to paint this concrete with my love.

My lungs love
Doves to red and dug in deeper, Gold.

Accomplishing nothing just minor goals.
This coal can be painted with gold.

Coral reef, alveoli
These cables fill holes in me.

Rebar, concrete.
These fables fill my holes with gold.

Doves fill my heart's holes.
**Love
     Is
          Gold.

A lick of the loon which
Boons in a frolic
All to soon

Dashes of the slower flower petals
All shining metal
A sign in between

These rocks that bash together
Cause small sparks
Amongst the stars

Are lights not of hope
But glimpses
Into a bleak mote

Rebar happenstance
Get your battle on
Lets dance

Past the windowsill babies weep
By their mothers feet
For the water has all dried up

Corn husk history parade
All the confetti has been burnt
To make

Ask the mirror what you can do for it
See what they'll say
Right back

Maybe nothing
Maybe something
Maybe
Everything

late, darkness falls not lightly
                                   but nightly,
moon gathers up the fog,
to let a new damp cloak go again,
in the morning when,
the sun drags up and out,
from the grasses,
from the brush,
from the tallest reaching
arms that trees have to
dance with,
the veil,
before it returns to where the
stars applaud,
as meteors weave,
warp and weft
that make the next
days misty
morning drape
to soften the
harsh glare
       and stare,
of the unkind,
of the concrete
blockheads,
who have rebar for brains,
of the makers of pain,
of the committed sharp cutters
who want
no softness, as that is where love
takes hold
while waiting late and lightly.


©DWE012014

Revel in the night, the smoke and liquid
The sound waves washing over your limber electric body
The wild lights spinning, tilting, bursting in and out of musky darkness
Trickling with sweat and industrial poison,
                    Dripping with loneliness and longing
         Inhale the voices, howls and whispers brushing against   your      earlobes
Tingling your spine, swaying your future of marble, concrete      and rebar
                            The night is organic. It grows in you.
                      Its fragrance blooms. You can taste its
Sweet vapid fingers on your tongue.  
              Its rhythm surging in your chest.
 Swelling. Your blood cells rush it to the most desolate lighthouse
      Of your soul. Even that last one, out beyond the craggy shores
  Its light orbiting an ethereal void shrouded in icy fog
       Let this floating torch warm even those derelict  spiraling steps
                Let it illuminate forgotten chambers cobwebbed and dank
                Your life can wait. Your envelopes impregnated with bills
                                  Your appointments, treadmill and alarms itch
                    Death will curate you through your museum of horrors
                    Your monochromatic 50 year yawn can resume at dawn
                                                      But not tonight. Tonight
                               Revel in the music, laughter, curves, leather, lips!
        Abstracted desires - embodied, enraptured, erupting
                                      Reincarnate like a drunken god
                           Dancing on a graveyard of dreams

Cars, Diesel trucks Motor bikes and Transit Buses, rebar and structural steel beams, sounds like fading sirens in the distance. Freeways and black topped school yards, city streets without enough tress, jails without enough beds.

Tents blocking sidewalks, cardboard castles where the forgotten go to smoke their prize.

You got millionares next to transients all waiting to be served. 6th and San Julian on another friday that happend to land on the 1st of the month.

Cops killing everybody, not even the innocent stand a chance, courtrooms sit silent as judges all retire to go play golf in the desert. Another innocent man awaits his execution, it'll be a grey day in hell when the blood of the wrong man soaks its entry way.
Beautiful girls and I mean Beautiful girls, start dancing as soon as they learn to walk in heels.

They know what works those filthy ******* who own everything and don't mind if you know it.
They want it this way.
They want her that way and her and her and even him.

City full of *** shops and not a dam thing left to smoke.
Cops still bust down doors like looters in a riot.
No ones has told them Nancy and her War is dead.

Leave where you left off right where you left it.
Lies don't deserve another chance.
I got a new way for you, I got to take some time to fill you in while pulling you out.

We are'nt going anywhere, this place wasn't built to explore.
See the mountain, see that tree stump, giants once ruled our world.

Coals burn out in the city of ruin -
all rebar skeleton and ash
and running on fumes

No fire tonight
No spark to coax a flame
The wind set it all ablaze,
but left as soon as it came

Empty gas cans 
and soggy matchsticks
litter an abandoned camp

All that's left to do
is to hit the road
Off to find a new home
and hope it explodes

though with due reverence
i kiss the graves of dead poets-

the breathing kind must disassemble an atom to gain a fleck of praise.

no i don’t like it when they say
“i let you hurt me”

try:

please
treat me to porridge filled with kerosene
and rebar,

i’ll let you
drag a razor across my gums

if you kiss those fickle carmine streaks
that dribble from my tongue every time
i find the audacity to speak to you,

tint me,
tint me with spit and break me into cannon fodder,
princess

i know that mirrors
and **** pipes are real,
cobwebs too.

John Denver is my guest on the porch,
Gently playing off to my right,
As we take in the morning before us.

Sky a spectrum of pastel blues and gentle oranges,
Clouds upon the horizon a regal purple,
Water rippling gently forward,
To lap upon the pebbled shore.

Bald eagle perched up in his nest,
Surveying this beautiful land,
An avian king of the lake,
His stance is one of grace and imperious splendor.

Drive hard through the night we did,
To arrive at our perfect morning scene,
To leave behind the abject horror of the concrete and rebar forests,
To this place where God would go to fish.

Gently swaying on this bench,
Listening to Denver's crowning tune,
Everything feels just right,
In the land of lakes so blue.

Walk on babe, the night will find you soon enough. But, do not give in so kindly- it seeks to play with you for 100 hours, or 100 years; perhaps 100 years and 100 hours, I don’t know…. my glasses fell off. The best way to say it: if the day is temporary, so are you, and the night will swallow everything, from common skin to rare hues.
Don’t pull your punches with nature! Don’t let that primeval smell defeat you or good God- get a kick out of you. Nature is the piece of furniture that you bought, not the other way ‘round. So, how do you feel? Icicle fingers, sap bearing veins, rebar arms, tenderloin body, washboard neck, prison gate mouth, airstrip nose, typhoon eyes, telephone ears, coniferous hair, freedom’s mind. You owe it to nature, she coddles you.
A funny thing, then: the lifetime of a dream. Where love, bliss, sorrow, *** are not unknown, but as uncanny as they can be. Old friends may sleep it off and give you a cheque and a kick out the front door, but don’t you know what you were in their beds for? It was something true, and if you were the only one to find it in that pile of quick/messy lovers, it is truer still. So walk on babe, the technicolour night has left you, but in its hazy laboured breath, it promised to return. It swore to explode all over you- what can you do in return?