South Florida
if you were a body part,
you’d be an armpit.

You’d be a bulged vein
on the side of a forehead
forever locked in a scowl
behind sunglasses.

You speak the language of horns
middle name, finger
blood type, combustible

You're a melting ***
that's boiled over the lid
sweating salt water at the brows
eyes red as the brake lights
in the maddening brightness,
you’re torrential daylight
heating nerves like greenhouse gasses
waiting for a reason to explode.

You’re a tropical motilov cocktail
no one can afford
2 parts anger, 1 part stupidity
full of yourself in a souvenir glass with a toothpick umbrella
You're all image

You’re all talk: the curse words
breaking out the mouths
of the angry line mob at Starbucks in the morning
You’re the indifferent silence
in the arena at the Heat games leaving early,
showing up late
due to the distance
from Brickell to Hialeah,
West Palm to Pompano
the gap between the entitled and the under-paid
a skyline of condos in a third world country
You’ve always been foreign to me.

You’re winterless, no chill
you attract only hurricanes
and tourists,
shoving anything that isn’t profitable
out of the way like post-storm debris
into the backyards of the Liberty City projects,
onto a landfill off the side of the Turnpike
Hide it beneath Bermuda grass,
line it with palm trees
if only conceal your cold blooded nature:
I see you.
You are overrun with iguanas,
blood-******* mosquitos
hot-headed New York drivers
not afraid to get hit

You get yours, Soflo
and you'll go as low
as the flat roofs of your duplexes
and the wages that can barely pay the rent to get it
latitude as attitude
temper as temperature
if you were a body part
I swear you’re an *******

south of the brain, one hour
in all directions,
I’d find you.
You’d impose your way
onto my flight to the Philippines,
to Seattle, to Raleigh
You’d follow me like excess baggage,
like gravity,
bringing me back when asked where I'm from:

That area north of Miami, I’d say
(the suburbs, but whatever, we are hard in our own way)
I'd show you off on their map
like some badge of grit,
certificate of aggression
I know how to break a sweat
walk brisk, drive evasive
ride storms in my sleep
I know you, I’d say,
“He’s a friend of mine.”
and I’d watch them light up
and remember
the postcards you've sent them
of the sunrise,
welcoming brown immigrants
onto white sand beaches
You were foreign to us
yet raised us as your own
in the furnace of your summers
iron on iron, the forger striking
softness into swords
built for survival
I'm made of you

my South Floridian temper
cools down
in your ocean breeze

if you were a body part,
you'd be a part of me
a socked foot in an And1 sandal
pressed to the gas pedal
as my drive takes me north
of your borders, far from home

I see you
in the rear view mirror,
tail-gating
like a sports car on the exit ramp
the color of the sun.

There’s a film by John Schlesinger called the Go-Between in which the main character, a boy on the cusp of adolescence staying with a school friend on his family’s Norfolk estate, discovers how passion and *** become intertwined with love and desire. As an elderly man he revisits the location of this discovery and the woman, who we learn changed his emotional world forever. At the start of the film we see him on a day of grey cloud and wild wind walking towards the estate cottage where this woman now lives. He glimpses her face at a window – and the film flashes back fifty years to a summer before the First War.
 
It’s a little like that for me. Only, I’m sitting at a desk early on a spring morning about to step back nearly forty years.*
 
It was a two-hour trip from Boston to Booth Bay. We’d flown from New York on the shuttle and met Larry’s dad at St Vincent’s. We waited in his office as he put away the week with his secretary. He’d been in theatre all afternoon. He kept up a two-sided conversation.
 
‘You boys have a good week? Did you get to hear Barenboim at the Tully? I heard him as 14-year old play in Paris. He played the Tempest -  Mary, let’s fit Mrs K in for Tuesday at 5.0 - I was learning that very Beethoven sonata right then. I couldn’t believe it - that one so young could sound –there’s that myocardial infarction to review early Wednesday. I want Jim and Susan there please -  and look so  . . . old, not just mature, but old. And now – Gloria and I went to his last Carnegie – he just looks so **** young.’
 
Down in the basement garage Larry took his dad’s keys and we roared out on to Storow drive heading for the Massachusetts Turnpike. I slept. Too many early mornings copying my teacher’s latest – a concerto for two pianos – all those notes to be placed under the fingers. There was even a third piano in the orchestra. Larry and his Dad talked incessantly. I woke as Dr Benson said ‘The sea at last’. And there we were, the sea a glazed blue shimmering in the July distance. It might be lobster on the beach tonight, Gloria’s clam chowder, the coldest apple juice I’d ever tasted (never tasted apple juice until I came to Maine), settling down to a pile of art books in my bedroom, listening to the bell buoy rocking too and fro in the bay, the beach just below the house, a house over 150 years old, very old they said, in the family all that time.
 
It was a house full that weekend,  4th of July weekend and there would be fireworks over Booth Bay and lots of what Gloria called necessary visiting. I was in love with Gloria from the moment she shook my hand after that first concert when my little cummings setting got a mention in the NYT. It was called forever is now and God knows where it is – scored for tenor and small ensemble (there was certainly a vibraphone and a double bass – I was in love from afar with a bassist at J.). Oh, this being in love at seventeen. It was so difficult not to be. No English reserve here. People talked to you, were interested in you and what you thought, had heard, had read. You only had to say you’d been looking at a book of Andrew Wyeth’s paintings and you’d be whisked off to some uptown gallery to see his early watercolours. And on the way you’d hear a life story or some intimate details of friend’s affair, or a great slice of family history. Lots of eye contact. Just keep the talk going. But Gloria, well, we would meet in the hallway and she’d grasp my hand and say – ‘You know, Larry says that you work too hard. I want you to do nothing this weekend except get some sun and swim. We can go to Johnson’s for tennis you know. I haven’t forgotten you beat me last time we played!’ I suppose she was mid-thirties, a shirt, shorts and sandals woman, not Larry’s mother but Dr Benson’s third. This was all very new to me.
 
Tim was Larry’s elder brother, an intern at Felix-Med in NYC. He had a new girl with him that weekend. Anne-Marie was tall, bespectacled, and supposed to be ferociously clever. Gloria said ‘She models herself on Susan Sontag’. I remember asking who Sontag was and was told she was a feminist writer into politics. I wondered if Anne-Marie was a feminist into politics. She certainly did not dress like anyone else I’d seen as part of the Benson circle. It was July yet she wore a long-sleeved shift buttoned up to the collar and a long linen skirt down to her ankles. She was pretty but shapeless, a long straight person with long straight hair, a clip on one side she fiddled with endlessly, purposefully sometimes. She ignored me but for an introductory ‘Good evening’, when everyone else said ‘Hi’.
 
The next day it was hot. I was about the house very early. The apple juice in the refrigerator came into its own at 6.0 am. The bay was in mist. It was so still the bell buoy stirred only occasionally. I sat on the step with this icy glass of fragrant apple watching the pearls of condensation form and dissolve. I walked the shore, discovering years later that Rachel Carson had walked these paths, combed these beaches. I remember being shocked then at the concern about the environment surfacing in the late sixties. This was a huge country: so much space. The Maine woods – when I first drove up to Quebec – seemed to go on forever.
 
It was later in the day, after tennis, after trying to lie on the beach, I sought my room and took out my latest score, or what little of it there currently was. It was a piano piece, a still piece, the kind of piece I haven’t written in years, but possibly should. Now it’s all movement and complication. Then, I used to write exactly what I heard, and I’d heard Feldman’s ‘still pieces’ in his Greenwich loft with the white Rauschenbergs on the wall. I had admired his writing desk and thought one day I’ll have a desk like that in an apartment like this with very large empty paintings on the wall. But, I went elsewhere . . .
 
I lay on the bed and listened to the buoy out in the bay. I thought of a book of my childhood, We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea by Arthur Ransome. There’s a drawing of a Beach End Buoy in that book, and as the buoy I was listening to was too far out to see (sea?) I imagined it as the one Ransome drew from Lowestoft harbour. I dozed I suppose, to be woken suddenly by voices in the room next door. It was Tim and Anne-Marie. I had thought the house empty but for me. They were in Tim’s room next door. There was movement, whispering, almost speech, more movement.
 
I was curious suddenly. Anne-Marie was an enigma. Tim was a nice guy. Quiet, dedicated (Larry had said), worked hard, read a lot, came to Larry’s concerts, played the cello when he could, Bach was always on his record player. He and Anne-Marie seemed so close, just a wooden wall away. I stood by this wall to listen.
 
‘Why are we whispering’, said Anne-Marie firmly, ‘For goodness sake no one’s here. Look, you’re a doctor, you know what to do surely.’
 
‘Not yet.’
 
‘But people call you Doctor, I’ve heard them.’
 
‘Oh sure. But I’m not, I’m just a lousy intern.’
 
‘A lousy intern who doesn’t want to make love to me.’
 
Then, there was rustling, some heavy movement and Tim saying ‘Oh Anne, you mustn’t. You don’t need to do this.’
 
‘Yes I do. You’re hard and I’m wet between my legs. I want you all over me and inside me.  I wanted you last night so badly I lay on my bed quite naked and masturbated hoping you come to me. But you didn’t. I looked in on you and you were just fast asleep.’
 
‘You forget I did a 22-hour call on Thursday’.
 
“And the rest. Don’t you want me? Maybe your brother or that nice English boy next door?’
 
‘Is he next door? ‘
 
‘If he is, I don’t care. He looks at me you know. He can’t work me out. I’ve been ignoring him. But maybe I shouldn’t. He’s got beautiful eyes and lovely hands’.
 
There was almost silence for what seemed a long time. I could hear my own breathing and became very aware of my own body. I was shaking and suddenly cold. I could hear more breathing next door. There was a shaft of intense white sunlight burning across my bed. I imagined Anne-Marie sitting cross-legged on the floor next door, her hand cupping her right breast fingers touching the ******, waiting. There was a rustle of movement. And the door next door slammed.
 
Thirty seconds later Tim was striding across the garden and on to the beach and into the sea . . .
 
There was probably a naked young woman sitting on the floor next door I thought. Reading perhaps. I stayed quite still imagining she would get up, open her door and peek into my room. So I moved away from the wall and sat on the bed trying hard to look like a composer working on a score. And she did . . . but she had clothes on, though not her glasses or her hair clip, and she wore a bright smile – lovely teeth I recall.
 
‘Good afternoon’, she said. ‘You heard all that I suppose.’
 
I smiled my nicest English smile and said nothing.
 
‘Tell me about your girlfriend in England.’
 
She sat on the bed, cross-legged. I was suddenly overcome by her scent, something complex and earthy.
 
‘My girlfriend in England is called Anne’.
 
‘Really! Is she pretty? ‘
 
I didn’t answer, but looked at my hands, and her feet, her uncovered calves and knees. I could see the shape of her slight ******* beneath her shirt, now partly unbuttoned. I felt very uncomfortable.
 
‘Tell me. Have you been with this Anne in England?’
 
‘No.’ I said, ‘I ‘d like to, but she’s very shy.’
 
‘OK. I’m an Anne who’s not shy.’
 
‘I’ve yet to meet a shy American.’
 
‘They exist. I could find you a nice shy girl you could get to know.’
 
‘I’d quite like to know you, but you’re a good bit older than me.’
 
‘Oh that doesn’t matter. You’re quite a mature guy I think. I’d go out with you.’
 
‘Oh I doubt that.’
 
‘Would you go out with me?’
 
‘You’re interesting.  Gloria says you’re a bit like Susan Sontag. Yes, I would.’
 
‘Wow! did she really? Ok then, that’s a deal. You better read some Simone de Beauvoir pretty quick,’  and she bounced off the bed.
 
After supper  - lobster on the beach - Gloria cornered me and said. ‘I gather you heard all this afternoon.’
 
I remembered mumbling a ‘yes’.
 
‘It’s OK,’ she said, ‘Anne-Marie told me all. Girls do this you know – talk about what goes on in other people’s bedrooms. What could you do? I would have done the same. Tim’s not ready for an Anne-Marie just yet, and I’m not sure you are either. Not my business of course, but gentle advice from one who’s been there. ‘
 
‘Been where?’
 
‘Been with someone older and supposedly wiser. And remembering that wondering-what-to-do-about-those-feelings-around-*** and all that. There’s a right time and you’ll know it when it comes. ‘
 
She kissed me very lightly on my right ear, then got up and walked across the beach back to the house.

It was a sunny afternoon
A good day for a bus ride
I was on a Former Biss Tours on a leased bus from Suburban Trails being a division of Coach USA
We were coming from a trip in Pennsylvania returning back to New York City
We were interlocking from the I-95 Pennsylvania Turnpike onto the New Jersey Turnpike
We were met by a Peter Pan Bus Lines bus with their destination sign for New York City
Apparently, a bus race had started and we were the challengers with Peter Pan Bus
I was surprised and startled
I guess the Peter Pan Motor Coach Operator wanted to see if our driver had game
Everything in thought will remain
It was like a race feeling like a getaway chase Turnpike style
Our Biss Tours Driver went along with the challenge
It was all driving go
Speed being the flow
My thought, there were passengers on the buses, so safety had to be number priority
Also hoping no New Jersey Turnpike Authority was watching
Remember I said safety priority
It is reality
Who won the bus race?
Drum roll please
My bus, Biss Tours won
The Peter Pan Bus was totally outdone
Bus venture intrigue
Yes indeed

It's ironic,
Considering the language
Of those most threatening to us,
That the only public spaces
where we can take care of
our most basic of human needs
in complete safety
Are labeled "Family."

1

Ever musing I delight to tread
The Paths of honour and the Myrtle Grove
Whilst the pale Moon her beams doth shed
On disappointed Love.
While Philomel on airy hawthorn Bush
Sings sweet and Melancholy, And the thrush
Converses with the Dove.
2

Gently brawling down the turnpike road,
Sweetly noisy falls the Silent Stream —
The Moon emerges from behind a Cloud
And darts upon the Myrtle Grove her beam.
Ah! then what Lovely Scenes appear,
The hut, the Cot, the Grot, and Chapel queer,
And eke the Abbey too a mouldering heap,
Cnceal'd by aged pines her head doth rear
And quite invisible doth take a peep.

The story opens surrounding a Greyhound bus
But the dialog illustrating must
It was a normal day at the Greyhound lot
But somewhere not far away some thieves were planning a plot
The thieves were planning to rob the Shining Light Jewelry Shop on Solid Hands Blvd
But they were going to use a Greyhound bus being there getaway
No one would suspect a Hound bus going astray
So the Robbers entered the Jewelry store with masks over their face
It was a matter of precaution so no one could trace

The Thieves quickly and moved swiftly out of the Jewelry store and onto the Hound bus
It was a perfect crime with the bus being the thieves plus
However, the Greyhound Company notified the Police that one of there
Buses was stolen from the lot
The Hound bus was now cruising on I-95 of the New Jersey Turnpike heading for Philly
That might sound silly, but the heat was on in New York and New Jersey

The Police were in hot pursue
The Hound Bus was maneuvering in and out of the Turnpike lanes
Yet, the bus was speeding at 80 miles per hour
The chase was on and it was long
The Hound bus being the fastest dog on wheels, but became the subject of ordeal
But the ordeal was for real

A chase that went on for hour after hour
A Road block was at a stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike
But the Hound bus barreled through
However, the Hound Bus had to be stopped before it reaches Pennsylvania lines
The chase was still on, and Helicopters were flying high and being on alert
Suddenly, Gunshots rang out
There was plenty of commotion on the highway being out and about
But somewhere this Hound Bus chase had to end
However, it wasn’t until when
The Thieves had been driving so fast
The Hound Bus was now running out of gas
The Police were able to move in
The Thieves were arrested and out done
The Hound bus was returned and another one of my stories being among.

1
Who will honor the city without a name
If so many are dead and others pan gold
Or sell arms in faraway countries?


What shepherd's horn swathed in the bark of birch
Will sound in the Ponary Hills the memory of the absent—
Vagabonds, Pathfinders, brethren of a dissolved lodge?


This spring, in a desert, beyond a campsite flagpole,
—In silence that stretched to the solid rock of yellow and red mountains—
I heard in a gray bush the buzzing of wild bees.


The current carried an echo and the timber of rafts.
A man in a visored cap and a woman in a kerchief
Pushed hard with their four hands at a heavy steering oar.


In the library, below a tower painted with the signs of the zodiac,
Kontrym would take a whiff from his snuffbox and smile
For despite Metternich all was not yet lost.


And on crooked lanes down the middle of a sandy highway
Jewish carts went their way while a black grouse hooted
Standing on a cuirassier's helmet, a relict of La Grande Armée.


2
In Death Valley I thought about styles of hairdo,
About a hand that shifted spotlights at the Student's Ball
In the city from which no voice could reach me.
Minerals did not sound the last trumpet.
There was only the rustle of a loosened grain of lava.


In Death Valley salt gleams from a dried-up lake bed.
Defend, defend yourself, says the tick-tock of the blood.
From the futility of solid rock, no wisdom.


In Death Valley no hawk or eagle against the sky.
The prediction of a Gypsy woman has come true.
In a lane under an arcade, then, I was reading a poem
Of someone who had lived next door, entitled 'An Hour of Thought.'


I looked long at the rearview mirror: there, the one man
Within three miles, an Indian, was walking a bicycle uphill.


3
With flutes, with torches
And a drum, boom, boom,
Look, the one who died in Istanbul, there, in the first row.
He walks arm in arm with his young lady,
And over them swallows fly.


They carry oars or staffs garlanded with leaves
And bunches of flowers from the shores of the Green Lakes,
As they came closer and closer, down Castle Street.
And then suddenly nothing, only a white puff of cloud
Over the Humanities Student Club,
Division of Creative Writing.


4
Books, we have written a whole library of them.
Lands, we have visited a great many of them.
Battles, we have lost a number of them.
Till we are no more, we and our Maryla.


5
Understanding and pity,
We value them highly.
What else?


Beauty and kisses,
Fame and its prizes,
Who cares?


Doctors and lawyers,
Well-turned-out majors,
Six feet of earth.


Rings, furs, and lashes,
Glances at Masses,
Rest in peace.


Sweet twin *******, good night.
Sleep through to the light,
Without spiders.


6
The sun goes down above the Zealous Lithuanian Lodge
And kindles fire on landscapes 'made from nature':
The Wilia winding among pines; black honey of the Żejmiana;
The Mereczanka washes berries near the Żegaryno village.
The valets had already brought in Theban candelabra
And pulled curtains, one after the other, slowly,
While, thinking I entered first, taking off my gloves,
I saw that all the eyes were fixed on me.


7
When I got rid of grieving
And the glory I was seeking,
Which I had no business doing,


I was carried by dragons
Over countries, bays, and mountains,
By fate, or by what happens.


Oh yes, I wanted to be me.
I toasted mirrors weepily
And learned my own stupidity.


From nails, mucous membrane,
Lungs, liver, bowels, and spleen
Whose house is made? Mine.


So what else is new?
I am not my own friend.
Time cuts me in two.


Monuments covered with snow,
Accept my gift. I wandered;
And where, I don't know.


8
Absent, burning, acrid, salty, sharp.
Thus the feast of Insubstantiality.
Under a gathering of clouds anywhere.
In a bay, on a plateau, in a dry arroyo.
No density. No harness of stone.
Even the Summa thins into straw and smoke.
And the angelic choirs fly over in a pomegranate seed
Sounding every few instants, not for us, their trumpets.


9
Light, universal, and yet it keeps changing.
For I love the light too, perhaps the light only.
Yet what is too dazzling and too high is not for me.
So when the clouds turn rosy, I think of light that is level
In the lands of birch and pine coated with crispy lichen,
Late in autumn, under the hoarfrost when the last milk caps
Rot under the firs and the hounds' barking echoes,
And jackdaws wheel over the tower of a Basilian church.


10
Unexpressed, untold.
But how?
The shortness of life,
the years quicker and quicker,
not remembering whether it happened in this or that autumn.
Retinues of homespun velveteen skirts,
giggles above a railing, pigtails askew,
sittings on chamberpots upstairs
when the sledge jingles under the columns of the porch
just before the moustachioed ones in wolf fur enter.
Female humanity,
children's snots, legs spread apart,
snarled hair, the milk boiling over,
stench, **** frozen into clods.
And those centuries,
conceiving in the herring smell of the middle of the night
instead of playing something like a game of chess
or dancing an intellectual ballet.
And palisades,
and pregnant sheep,
and pigs, fast eaters and poor eaters,
and cows cured by incantations.


11
Not the Last Judgment, just a kermess by a river.
Small whistles, clay chickens, candied hearts.
So we trudged through the slush of melting snow
To buy bagels from the district of Smorgonie.


A fortune-teller hawking: 'Your destiny, your planets.'
And a toy devil bobbing in a tube of crimson brine.
Another, a rubber one, expired in the air squeaking,
By the stand where you bought stories of King Otto and Melusine.


12
Why should that city, defenseless and pure as the wedding necklace of
a forgotten tribe, keep offering itself to me?
Like blue and red-brown seeds beaded in Tuzigoot in the copper desert
seven centuries ago.


Where ocher rubbed into stone still waits for the brow and cheekbone
it would adorn, though for all that time there has been no one.


What evil in me, what pity has made me deserve this offering?


It stands before me, ready, not even the smoke from one chimney is
lacking, not one echo, when I step across the rivers that separate us.


Perhaps Anna and Dora Drużyno have called to me, three hundred miles
inside Arizona, because except fo me no one else knows that they ever
lived.


They trot before me on Embankment Street, two hently born parakeets
from Samogitia, and at night they unravel their spinster tresses of gray
hair.


Here there is no earlier and no later; the seasons of the year and of the
day are simultaneous.


At dawn ****-wagons leave town in long rows and municipal employees
at the gate collect the turnpike toll in leather bags.


Rattling their wheels, 'Courier' and 'Speedy' move against the current
to Werki, and an oarsman shot down over England skiffs past, spread-
eagled by his oars.


At St. Peter and Paul's the angels lower their thick eyelids in a smile
over a nun who has indecent thoughts.


Bearded, in a wig, Mrs. Sora Klok sits at the ocunter, instructing her
twelve shopgirls.


And all of German Street tosses into the air unfurled bolts of fabric,
preparing itself for death and the conquest of Jerusalem.


Black and princely, an underground river knocks at cellars of the
cathedral under the tomb of St. Casimir the Young and under the
half-charred oak logs in the hearth.


Carrying her servant's-basket on her shoulder, Barbara, dressed in
mourning, returns from the Lithuanian Mass at St. Nicholas to the
Romers' house in Bakszta Street.


How it glitters! the snow on Three Crosses Hill and Bekiesz Hill, not
to be melted by the breath of these brief lives.


And what do I know now, when I turn into Arsenal Street and open
my eyes once more on a useless end of the world?


I was running, as the silks rustled, through room after room without
stopping, for I believed in the existence of a last door.


But the shape of lips and an apple and a flower pinned to a dress were
all that one was permitted to know and take away.


The Earth, neither compassionate nor evil, neither beautiful nor atro-
cious, persisted, innocent, open to pain and desire.


And the gift was useless, if, later on, in the flarings of distant nights,
there was not less bitterness but more.


If I cannot so exhaust my life and their life that the bygone crying is
transformed, at last, into harmony.


Like a Noble Jan Dęboróg in the Straszun's secondhand-book shop, I am
put to rest forever between tow familiar names.


The castle tower above the leafy tumulus grows small and there is still
a hardly audible—is it Mozart's Requiem?—music.


In the immobile light I move my lips and perhaps I am even glad not
to find the desired word.

The highway thru bus to love, and as the curtain has arisen, so is the story.  It’s a hot day in the midst of summer when two musicians are about to find each other, and the analysis of Chemistry 101. The story takes place in Downtown Pittsburgh at the Pittsburgh Transportation Center on Greyhound for a journey to New York City. You see, Judy Smith, an accomplished Pianist is about to venture at Carnegie Hall for a concert. Because Judy hit all the right notes of melody, it was University of Pittsburgh in their amateur night sponsored by the Music department under the guidance of Professor Geoffrey Tuner. Now John Minichiello, an accomplished Violist from the Pittsburgh music arrangement society sponsored by the creator, John Carey. Back in his day, he was an extraordinary Orchestra Leader. Joseph was also going to play at Carnegie Hall.

Before the bus even arrives in New York City, there will be a music harmony of its own having a love tone and tranquility in a relationship in the making while at a Rest Stop. At Gate 18, a Greyhound Prevost with the destination in bold letters, NEW YORK, NY was ready for boarding for a 10:00 am departure. It the trip would take 7 hours. The Greyhound Driver was busy exchanging passenger Tickets at the gate, and the Baggage Handler was loading the bus. Judy Smith was in front of Joseph Minichiello, which he accidentally bumped into Judy Smith, which Joseph apologized, and Judy stated no problem. One begins to wonder, was the bump really an accident or a way of getting Judy Smith’s attention. The bus was backing out of the departure gate on time precisely at 10:00 am. The bus was going through the downtown streets of Pittsburgh heading for the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Finally, the bus was moving swiftly on the turnpike passing cars and trucks. At about 2:00 pm, a rest stop was made at Breezewood, PA. The Greyhound Driver announced that the rest stop would be for 30 minutes. Oh good, here’s my chance too stretch my legs stated Joseph Minichiello. As all the passengers had gotten off, Joseph Minichiello and Judy Smith seemed too settle for another area of the rest stop, where Judy Smith was reading her music that she was going to play at the concert. Mind you now, none of them knew each other, but that is about to change. Judy looked over her shoulder, and asked Joseph, “What instrument do you play?” and Joseph replied, “The Violin”. Judy responded that she is a Pianist heading for Carnegie Hall. What a coincidence Joseph responded, he told Judy he was heading to Carnegie Hall as well to perform. They talked and talked, and almost missed the bus at the rest stop. They boarded the bus and proceeded onward to New York City. The bus was now on the New Jersey Turnpike. In the distance looking close was too far was New York City. It is now 5:00 pm, and the bus has entered rush hour traffic going into the Lincoln Tunnel. Finally, the Hound bus enters the Lincoln Tunnel heading for the final destination of New York City within the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The bus pulls into Gate 64, which the arrivals are Gates 62 through 66. When everyone is disembarking, Judy Smith asks where Joseph Minichiello is staying, and he said, “He will check into a hotel, but Judy suggested, why don’t you stay with me at the Carnegie Hall Tower complex as her University supplied everything, and Joseph said yes, why not.

It was a subway ride to West 57th Street on the R train. Up they went in the elevator to their room, which had a panoramic view of numerous New York City Skyscrapers, which the Big Apple is known for. Joseph stated he wanted to take a shower. So he showered then later came out of the bathroom in just a towel wrapped around his body. It was wrecking Judy’s senses of curiosity as to what size was under that towel. The ripped abs didn’t help either. Out of the blue, Joseph began to kiss Judy, and she became weak under his spell, and wanted more. Joseph then picked her up, and escorted her to the bedroom for unstoppable loving action, which added the tones of sequence with the playing of her ivories of melody.

The concert is tonight, and the music accompaniment is about to begin. Judy smith on the Piano with soothing sounds of peace and comfort, and on the Violin was Joseph Minichiello call of the wild and embracing the soul into taming the beast from within. Then the entire orchestra joined in for a musical night that for the entire audience that they would never forget. Loud applause and standing ovations rang out. This was a night Judy Smith and Joseph Minichiello will always remember. They played musical notes of their own, but not for the audience. They kissed behind the curtain, and it was music of the skies that brought them together, and the intermittent Hound bus for bringing people together.

It was, as the New York Times all but sniffed
(Even then, a haughty mix of bluenose and black ink)
Further proof the poor, misguided Upstate rubes
Were no more than ample fodder
For any tinhorn, two-bit confidence man to take for a ride.
Fair enough—it was, to the careful eye and unheated psyche
Clear as the azure blue sky that,
Despite the best efforts of acid wash and a year underground,
So obviously a statue as to be absolutely laughable,
And yet the vox populi came in waves,
Not only one-gallus farmers from the fields nearby,
But from the great cities near and far
(Chicago, Philadelphia, and, yes, even New York itself
To throw Hannum a quarter to view his gargantuan grotesquery
Just as described in Genesis itself, he noted solemnly
So many, indeed, that Barnum himself was divinely inspired
Not only to purloin the giant, but its prior owner’s epigram
As to the frequency of the manufacture
Of his too-credible customer base.
While there was (briefly, at least) some mystery surrounding
The origins of the brobdingnagian mass of stone,
It remained (to some, anyway) equally unfathomable
Why scores of folks would careen in unsteady coaches
The full length of the Catskill Turnpike,
With its questionable lodging and uneven roadworthiness,
Or patiently suffer the mosquito-laden flatboats of Clinton’s Ditch
All to spend the cash equivalent of two trips to the county fair
To see a perfectly good hootchie-kootchie show
Simply to gawk at an unevenly carved rock of questionable authenticity,
But that explained quite simply,
As the public always gets what the public wants.

The bush that has most briers and bitter fruit,
Wait till the frost has turned its green leaves red,
Its sweetened berries will thy palate suit,
And thou may'st find e'en there a homely bread.
Upon the hills of Salem scattered wide,
Their yellow blossoms gain the eye in Spring;
And straggling e'en upon the turnpike's side,
Their ripened branches to your hand they bring,
I 've plucked them oft in boyhood's early hour,
That then I gave such name, and thought it true;
But now I know that other fruit as sour
Grows on what now thou callest Me and You;
Yet, wilt thou wait the autumn that I see,
Will sweeter taste than these red berries be.

I was driving on Interstate 95 of the New Jersey Turnpike
Newark, New Jersey could be seen in plain sight
I was on my way to Baltimore, Maryland
As I was driving, I noticed the car was swerving in the front from side to side
I was wondering if I would have an accident, and where would I reside
So I slowed down, and the realized I had a tire flat in the back
Now the tire needed to be changed
However, this was a new car
So that means the car should had gone far
So here I was stuck on the New Jersey Turnpike near Bordentown
There was immediate traffic moving at night
Yet no New Jersey Patrol in plain sight
Suddenly without notice, a New Jersey Turnpike arrived swiftly on the scene
The Patrol Officer was kind, and Thank God not mean
He asked what make was my car, I responded a Mercury Marquis
The seconds became hours
Much later, a Mechanic arrived, he said the reason he was late, and he was given the wrong make and direction
Once the Mechanic was complete, I was finally on my way to my Baltimore
Destination
I arrived there safe
I had no accident
Thank God the flat tire was the only incident

I.

something within me,
maybe its my amigdala,
misses the oven-turned-gentrified clot,
that great collection of want,
of transient soles-souls.

I miss how we’re piled three stories high,
so close to each others’ mouths that we must
burrow in criss crossed, colliding tunnels
to our point b’s, our job sites,
our lovers’ houses.

maybe it is indeed part of our un-nature to do this,
to cling to one another even
as our unforgiving sungod bakes us whole,
cornish game hens on the el train,
hurdling 40 mph, to and from
our personal hovels, heavens
and bedsheets,
tethered to this place, possibly indentured,
definitely flawed,
where we revel under roofs to prove incredibleness
an virility.

II.

our eyes are not closed today.
they may not blink in unison
as mannequin lids do,
so effortlessly, plastic and mechanical,
but those, we are thankfully not.
for we are flesh,
and air, and miles of gastrointestinal turnpike, if unpinned,
would stretch from here to panama.

we are each of us
a viscous mound called
Sally, Bertram and Queen Mary.

We are the collision of milk flowing, divine,
a whirling dervish
in scalding darjeeling.
we are air,
gliding over enamel into the collective breath
to be devoured so sweetly by others,
as saintly man-scripted gelato,
dribbling down our chins in piazzas.
la dolce ******* vita.

III.

that’s the funny thing about living
in this size 2 world,
the ability to appear anywhere upon its face at a moment’s notice,
to be in front of any face when desired,
to live sans toll booth or customs desk,
to simply dust off our ability to fly
and tumble icarus-adolescent into the collision
between the two blue planes called sea and sky

i always knew
there was more beneath,
but you hid behind
your mask, indifferent,
laughing sarcastically.
but in the car that night,
your facade slipped.

you were quite drunk,
but so honest i almost
did not know how to react;
you revealed to me a
part of yourself,
that dark, terrified part of
you, and you held it in
shivering hands, extended
over the emergency brake
like an olive branch.

it was this night i first
realized you are much
smarter than you let on,
and that this man you
pretend to be is a disguise.
if you never open yourself
again, you will never be hurt
again; but you will never know
true friendship, true love,
trust.

so i took this part of you
and i locked it away in
my soul, and there it will
forever remain.
our secret,
our understanding.

A hound bus in the maintenance garage
But it was the thief thinking in his own barrage
When the workers weren’t around
The Thief stole the bus without making any sound
The Hound’s slogan, “Leave the Driving to us”
The Thief’s slogan, “Steal the Hound Bus being a must”
That is just what happened
Hound bus 7888 was driven from the yard onto New Jersey Turnpike
I-95 bound for anywhere
The Thief’s thought, I-95 was my escape route with no jive
Yet Helicopter Newscast were reporting high above I-95
The Hound bus was chased entire length of the turnpike
But if the NJ Turnpike Police don’t act quick, the Hound Bus could cross the Pennsylvania state line
The Thief knew how to drive that Hound bus, I guess in his prior life, the Thief was part of the company’s us
Yet the chase continued to go on, but not until the Hound bus ran out of gas
The Thief’s driving fast that didn’t last
Well the Thief forgot the gas tank up
The Thief became his own Maxwell house to a finished cup
A Hound bus having its own bite in crime
But justice was served with the Thief doing time.

556

The Brain, within its Groove
Runs evenly—and true—
But let a Splinter swerve—
’Twere easier for You—

To put a Current back—
When Floods have slit the Hills—
And scooped a Turnpike for Themselves—
And trodden out the Mills—

When second sight is on me
I can see your future history
some things distorted
lost are we
when second sight
drops in on me.

An ocular refinery is
visionary gold to me.

Drift into the consciousness,
the universal ballroom,
press
up close and dance real slow.

The sun is setting
The cars are still comatose
******* New Jersey

I burnt a bridge that didn't have any water under it.
No numbing temperature to shock you.
No tormenting waves to annhilate you.
No angry current to pull you under.
The bridge let across all the danger that I wanted to avoid.
But now that I burnt it down to the ground all that danger
came crashing down into the safe haven
that was protected by my bridge.
I was told to never look down when you feel inferior.
There was grass under that bridge but I was too blind to see it.
I was too busy looking up at the speeding cars crossing this turnpike.
I was suffocated and transfixed by the high beams of my problems.
I was so busy facing my problems head on
That I never bothered to look down and find the strength in giving in.
I didn't realize the bridge was what was directing the negativity away from me.
I listened to them. Society, that is.
And what a stupid idea that was.
Because they told me to burn my bridges.
They told me to strike a match to them
And watch it settle into an unforgiving blaze
Before walking away without looking back.
But they never told me some bridges were meant to save me.
They never said the real danger could be what was beneath the bridge.
They never warned me about the dam underneath that was ready to burst.
Karma is crashing down onto me like baseball-sized hail.
It's not the boomerang effect coming back around to hit me in the face
But instead the avalanche I created from throwing it too far.
And hitting a wall that was too fragile to be played with.
The worst part is I have no bridge to take cover under in a hailstorm anymore.
And no bridge to cross to get away from the incoming avalanche.
All I have are the ashes of what I thought was hurting me.
But it was actually what was saving me.

I won't travel to the city
There is nothing for me there
I won't travel to the city
Not even on a dare
I won't travel to the city
I'm fine right where I am
I won't travel to the city
And I don't give a ****

Years have passed
I won't forget
Where I stood that fateful day
I was shopping
In the city
God Bless The USA

I won't get on an airplane
I'm much safer on the ground
I won't go back to the city
And I won't forget the sound
I've driven on the turnpike
And I just turned around
I won't go back to the city
I watched them tumble down

Each time I try to leave here
the taste of concrete dust
fills my throat with acid
and jet fuel fumes and rust
I won't go to the city
And though it may seem strange
I was there when horror happened
With a cop...and now I'm changed

Years have passed
I won't forget
Where I stood that fateful day
I was shopping
In the city
God Bless The USA

Come follow me in the Turnpike trail
The story will unfold in more detail
It was a getaway to Pennsylvania on Thanksgiving Day
It was a group bus trip being underway
The group was conversing
We made a New Jersey Rest stop
It would be 15 minutes tops
Later when we reboarded
A Female passenger’s announcement, “ I am missing my purse”
All the passenger’s amazement of “What on earth”
The Female passengers checked overhead and under her seat on the bus
Now it seems this situation eventually involved us
But there was no vision of the female purse
The Female passenger wanted to go back and trace her steps at the Rest stop
However the Tour Escort stated that if she goes back, the bus will leave  her and continue on
But mine you this is a rest stop in the middle of nowhere
Then all the passengers responded in orchestral voice outburst, “Let the woman go and find her purse and we shall wait”
Being the Tour Escort was out numbered, the Female passenger did in fact go back to the rest stop while we waited
We all prayed that the passenger would find her purse
The Female passenger stated earlier that her house keys and money was in her purse
However when the Female passenger returned she was able to retrieve what she thought she had loss
Her purse was found safe and sound
I later told the Female passenger, “You are really have a lot to give thanks and you have a testimony to tell”
But for argument sake, what if the female passenger didn’t find her purse?
How would she get home being in reverse?
Especially not having any money to be transported back
Well thank God we don’t have to think on that
The Tour Escort got a lesson in truly think and what if you were in this bind
“When a passenger you seem to ignore it’s the passengers chant it becomes a word of explore”
This day was definitely a give thanks in every way
The play we saw was “A Wonderful Life”
Now relate that to the purse
A situation that was at hand, but with a good ending being the caravan
But notice how everything seems to flow
The almost loss purse fits in the go
A Happy Thanksgiving indeed
The Female passenger was able to proceed
Her testimony being her voice
All the feast trimmings being our choice.

me and cuz are gettin stove-piped
by three ripe, early-eyed airborne minds
me and cuz are flappin just right.

sharp turn on that slippy turnpike.
I spy twisted steel, cuz musta lied-
bottle kneck, open backpack, plastic bag.

guess cuz was 'fraid of a gun fight,
wid a seatbelt stained red on both sides.
me and cuz got us stove-piped.

I bet you thought I didn't have anything left in the tank.  Bet you thought that I was done giving mind blowing advice on how to approach this crazy thing we call life.  Well...you were wrong.


1.  Often cases, how good a story you end up with is inversely proportional to how good a decision it was that led to it.  Don't be afraid to make some bad decisions every once in awhile, because those are the stories you're gonna be telling for years to come.  Even when you know it's a bad decision.  Sure, you might wake up naked in a ditch on the New Jersey turnpike with a some blurry memories, a hangover, a tattoo of some girl named Francesca on your chest, and an ounce of black-tar ****** shoved up your ***...but you know what?  You started this little adventure at a black-tie dinner party in Santa Monica, so I'm willing to bet some interesting **** happened between here and then.

2.  Don't be someone who never breaks the mold.  When you're lying on your death bed and someone asks you to tell them about your life, do you want to lean over and whisper to them that you always did exactly what people expected?  That you carefully listened for society's cues on how to represent yourself at every point in your life?  **** no.  You want to tell them you broke off the road and went searching for the oddities that this world has to offer. You want to tell them that you gave the ******* to society and did what you wanted because, you know what?  It's your ******' life and you only get one shot at it, so you might as well make it memorable.  Being normal is boring as hell.

3.  Talk to everyone.  Talk to them about uncomfortable things.  Talk to them about their hopes and dreams.  Talk to them about their fears.  Just ****** talk to them.  Real conversations always leave you with something you didn't had before.  Real conversations make you think about your positions.  Get passionate when you talk.  Challenge their views and allow yours to be challenged as well.  Do you think you know everything?  Yeah, I bet you do.  Why aren't you out solving everyone's problems then, you selfish *******.

4.  Whoever you are, be proud of that.  If you're not proud of who you are, chances are you arent happy with yourself.  If you're not happy with who you are, change something.  If you're still not happy, change something else.  Still not happy?  Guess what.  Change another ******' thing. Are you happy?  Good.  Now change something else anyway, because an interesting life isn't built on stagnation.

I hope you've all learned something today.

Also, I'd like to remind you to never take advice from strangers on the Internet.  That's just stupid.

You felt like paper
Flimsy and unsure
I was afraid to take
A picture with my
Mind. You might
Float away when
the flashbulb shines
Losing control of
Everything
all I can
Remember
Is kissing you in the summer
Sliding my hand up the back of your skirt

When I knew nothing else
But the skin on your face
Glowing green in the dashboard light

Another morning off the turnpike
She fills coffee cups for old men
I have memorized the color of your iris
And I play with knives


I have three boxes of matches
Up all night
Coping with addiction
What if in the mind
I could rhyme a bullet through it
I will act as if you arent
And you will be harder to get

I like the variable of your fingertips
And when you hold my eyes
Just a moment too long
If I
Were
To die
Would you throw away my poetry?
Who will sit with you at church?
Let's play a game called: forget it

Justin: Born On Wheels
@2012 Linda Barrett

You always lived on wheels:
a newborn infant
perched in a car seat
beside your mother
when she drove
Her 1973 Green Impala
The toy Knight Rider car
was your first one
It cursed at you
from its imaginary dashboard
You hummed your open road song
while holding onto
the sides of the Red
Wheel barrow
as I bumped you along
our back yard’s stone walkway
Out in Chester County,
you roller bladed
and skate boarded into adolescence
Every Spring Break,
You traveled in
your grandparent’s  station wagon
down to Florida
One winter,
you drove to Colorado by van
to snow board the mountains
Other guys chose college,
you took your mechanic grandfather’s cue
studied up in Boston
learned how to fix cars
inside and out
then put them back together again
You inherited the 1973 Green Impala
with its torn off vinyl top
let it go to rust and to the junkyard
then bought Red 1968 Ford pick-up
Your mother gave you a motorcycle
so you could scream down the Turnpike
with your Independence Day spirit
Nothing out on the road
can stop you
as if you were born
on wheels

Maybe I am my own happening.
Maybe I am the beginning of the story,
before you walk in with your bad jokes
and your three years of silence
scattered across the turnpike.
I am trying to think about the moment
that I started crying, and I think it
was when I realized that all of my poems
were about you.
But maybe they weren’t.
Maybe I was just drawing you in between
the line breaks because I was lonely
and didn’t know how else to fill in the moments.
Maybe I am my own poem.
Maybe I am the reason my hands shake,
why I can’t say no to you even when
you aren’t asking me for anything.
Maybe I am the bad days.
Maybe I am my own sun.
Maybe I am in charge of my own undoing, of my own healing.
Who taught me to thank the ones
who didn’t want to stay?
Who taught me that you were something
to hurt about?
Maybe it was me.
I think it was.
Maybe I want to rest my tongue in
my own mouth and maybe I don’t
actually need anything from you.
I could be the moment it all started.
I could be responsible for the violins
in my throat, for the piano in
my teeth.
Maybe you were never the music in me.
Maybe I have always been singing.

He was definitely the wrong one in the situation.
After all that's why I'm here now, isnt it?
Now, I know he left when I was only 5,
but **** pops... You couldn't have called?
No, I understand you had a second family.
Though that witch left you shortly after
receiving her green card, its completely okay.
It makes no sense to take care of your own blood.
No, not when you have other people in your life.
For years, I denied your existence, even though
you were only 45 minutes up the turnpike.
I think its because I was embarrassed of you.
Or maybe because I thought you were ashamed of me...

Wasn't I worth it dad? Didn't you want a son?
If so, then why didn't you act like it?
And if not, why the **** would you do that to mom?
She raised me and Katie blind, alone, and jobless.
Meanwhile you have a pension check just shy of a million.
I have dreams sometimes of us at lunch,
but when I wake up I realize they are just dreams,
and nothing close to what reality is, but distorted memories perhaps.
I can't understand why, but I miss you...
All the best cowboys have daddy issues.

Ayr ye scurvy turnpike,
turn yer eyes from me!
The beauty of yer blizzard blue
tears me flannel heart.

Ye bake me mind into applesauce
that hotly drools on down,
me stomache is dissolvin-
all me courage ye have drowned.

Ayre ye wretched rogue of lies,
no one could be so fair.
Must be an imagination demon
with soft an tender hair.

When yer tongue tangs sharply on me lips
me life is drained and dying.
shut that song of love ye sing
that sets me soul a flyin.

Ayre ye **** banshee
Don't never let me go,
Grip me with yer slender claws
so closely we can gro.

This world can't stop yer fire
were gonna burn it down,
with nights of satin passion
were gonna paint the town.

Ayre me ***** of wonders,
ye know I keep ye dear.
I thank ye for yer nightmares
that ye give me every year.

Playing songs to empty chairs
Taking bows when no ones there
We're on the road to famous town
But, no one really cares

House parties, and the legions
Around town and the region
We're on the road to famous town
But, no one knows we're there

One day we'll make it to the top of the mountain
They'll know our name and all will know our songs
It takes a while but we all have the vision
To be the best, so we will sing our songs
Our fans all scream for us to sing them for 'em
We'll reach our hall of fame one day
We'll play Ryman Auditorium
And when we do ....just listen to us play

Years of clubs and small time tours
Opening for kids half our age
We've walked a million miles
Just walking out on stage

A chance comes down the turnpike
Get recorded at a show
The Nashville people hear it
We're on the radio

Requests to sing our single
Come so fast, we take them all
We're no longer the shows opener
We're the top bill at the hall

More music and more albums
Larger tours and tv shows
We don't sing to empty bars no more
We're the name everyone knows

One day we'll make it to the top of the mountain
They'll know our name and all will know our songs
It takes a while but we all have the vision
To be the best, so we will sing our songs
Our fans all scream for us to sing them for 'em
We'll reach our hall of fame one day
We'll play Ryman Auditorium
And when we do ....just listen to us play




It's been twenty years in coming
We're an overnight success
We've climbed on up the mountain
You know where we go next...

An invitation to the Ryman
The Country Music Hall of Fame
A show where greats are thought of
And everybody knows your name

But, now...we still are playing
To our fans in bars, saloons
But, one day we will be famous
The Ryman...we'll be there soon

A congenial aura
elated trekking
Intoning treasured verse
attention beckoning
Diligence provided
continual checking

Confirming with gauges
complying with code
Merged flawlessly towards
turnpike- cautious mode
Along breezed a rig
with a copious load

Heedless of rush hour
he rumbled on by
Remained in his route
to switch didn't try
Hurled on the brakes
swerved- she let out a cry

The fish tail and slide
left black in its track
Furled over in excess
too dazed for fact
Copper tang on lips
beginning to act

Sinew taut
cerebral flailing
Knuckles clenched
composure failing
Ticker raging
pent up wailing

Red and blue strobes
redundant sound
Screeching and wrenching
the pros abound
Flame vaulting acrid scent
soot around

One outstretched mitt
cloudy hood right behind
Echoing directives
"you will be fine"
Such screaming
not even sure if it's mine

Hours? Minutes?
seconds ticking away
WHOOOMF!!!
explosion that seized it today
Claimed these lives
on the earth they did lay

What's happening?
ascending brilliant light
Are eyes sealed exposed
perceiving what's right?
Sense soaring heavenward
a tranquil flight

Radiance entices
no need to resist
While buoyant wafting
in a cool opaque mist
At last home free
beseeching those that I missed
Brushed against His Grace
her brows lightly been kissed

Maybe it's the obsidian spirit within that wishes to be in her axis spin
A topsy-turvy tango on the turnpike
My heart tries keeping pace
Embarrassment of riches, her smile never saves face
I'm spoiled to witness a heavenly Rorschach test walking
Olympic views sparkling on high
A natural one
Holy smokes
I've seen the evergreens blush red
When she brushstrokes
Her paintbrush-lush hair amidst the background of the Puget Sound
So refreshing
Trapped in her net
Outside the network of jerks
Fishing for lust
Refresh the pages
Reload the look of ages
My type of hype
She's keying in on my keen instincts
Putting wings on my desires
So heights can be admired
So fright can be delayed
In flight, I've fallen.


- Ifeanyi Okoro II