I will not weep, will not shed tears

I will not weep, will not shed tears

For the rats in the walls who will be homeless

When that place is finally shut down.

For the yellow and black mold, waiting

In the cracks and crevices of the broken cement

And the buried century old pipe-fittings, leaking

Into the landfill we call Manhattan.

So much liquor spilled, so much smoke

So much sweat and amphetamine rush

Music so loud, so loud careening

Down the shotgun room lined w/ logs,

Set on planks, down the long mirrored rail

Across from the Cattle Trailer, that was, of course, a bar.

I will not tear my hair, raise my fists

Clash and bear my teeth – some fool

Surprised by the rising of the tide

Some sand crab scurrying

West of Bellvue, East of insane

I will not fret and wonder

So many promises made, threats

Declarations of love

So turns the world, and Last Call

Will come. We were listening to those songs,

Weren’t we? Those lyrics? Those words?

We saw the writing on the wall, back then

Knew it, each of us

lived like we meant it, messy and flawed

I will not weep for that.

I will not call out names, listing

Homeric and starboard

I will not grieve those bands

Gypsy, anarchist, honky-tonking, rock guitar playing, swing, monster, musicians

Road weary and epiphianic, lilting

This way and that.

Rome was built on the bones of Trojan refugees

Manhattan on the bones and broken hearts

Of Last Call. 

Stolen Knife

It was a big deal. Carbon Steel.

It would rust if not treated right

Red and Orange flakes similar in color

To both my brothers' Beatles hair.

The blade would poch and scar

If not totally dried, left damp.

It was a big deal. Not that stainless shit.

That’s for suckers. Can’t hold an edge for a damn.

Steel, real Carbon, can get filed down

Ground to such a fine point

That the tomato cleaves and divides

The garlic wisps, transparent film

The knife sits even in the palm

Weighted more appropriately for her

Small, cramped fists. Her Virginian gardening hands.

The weight of the blade is light

Short and thin, 25 years old

If a day. More than likely a gift

We gave her, when Holidays were tolerated

Yorkshire puddings baked, crested, and fallen

Handel’s Messiah, and only his,

Coming through the Old Man’s Hi-Fi

It would have been the oldest of us

Who found it, picked it out, knew

The quality of the blade, could pronounce

All the stacked vowels and repetitive consonants

From the French Factory where it was made.

He and the elder would discuss metallurgy

Bushido and Samurai, cribbing things learned

Watching Kirosawa, aping Mifune

“You can trust steel”, one would say.

“You can trust steel”, the other would confirm.

I was told how to hold it

How to walk from here to there

How to drag it across the fat of my thumb

To check the bite of the blade, its intergrity.

I was warned about the rust

Lectured about the whet stone

Shown where the bandages and iodine

Could be found once I cut myself proper.

I was small when this knife came into the house

So long ago, before the remodel, before

So much came to pass, before this knife

Came into my possession.  I was small.

When I took it, not so long ago,

When she was still in that kitchen

When the light was still good, when

She was still in that kitchen

I took the knife, wrapped up in short kitchen towels

Shrouded in yellow flower prints.

I tucked it into my bag, next to my journal

And took it back to my kitchen, some miles away

Beyond any measure of time.

I don’t think anyone noticed it gone.

It was the books from the library that we took

That were noticed missing – gaping holes in the face

Of the wall opposite the picture window in the alcove.

I had stopped stealing books years before.

But I took the knife because it reminds me of her

Small cramped hands, her quick and messy chopping

Her listless quality as she would stare out the window

Through the purple blossoms on the clinging vine

Out into the even slope of suburbia

So far, so distant, from the holler and dale of the river valley

Back there in Virginia, from whence my Mother came.

There is no hole in a bagel

There is no hole in the bagel.

There is only the bagel, and not bagel.

The space around does not define

Only delineates and separates matter

The bagel biga bubbles, giddy

1 part water warm enough

To recall how we all came from the ocean

How rainstorms in the summer time

Steam Brooklyn pavement

One Half That Again in the Form of Maple Syrup

Slow in its roll, so polite and Canadian

Six Ounces of Helen Mirren

The sourdough starter, some 18 months old

Born in a cold Fall, leading into a hard Winter.

Helen Mirren grew long legs in that 18 months

She embraced the sorrow of the Spring

And turned those bitter tears into sweet love

Of fermentation, that poetry of deconstruction

On an atomic level. This is the power

Of Helen Mirren

It must sit, must acclimate. It cannot be rushed

Cannot be forced. The sugar in the Maple

Will drive Helen wild, Twenty minutes

Is not to long to wait, time is

A fucking shell game, anyway.

There was the stopwatch I lost

inside of my body cast, the year I turned three

When my leg was broken above the knee

in the family drive way, outside the kitchen door

They had given me the stopwatch

So shiny, with a perfect glass eye

Cool metal piston buttons clicka clak

They had given me the stopwatch

To help me understand when

I would not be in this cast, this shell

immobilized with no concept  of when

This would not be the case

Forever is the natural state of the two year old

They assured me that I would be 

Out of the cast, free

It was only a matter of time.

They gave me the stopwatch

So I could master time in witness

Watch the dials spin, the arms flail

Clockwise, indeed.

But I lost the stopwatch

to the cast, it slipped down

And sat like a gem on Smaug's belly

for the next month. Twenty minutes

Is not a long time to wait. 

Hand mixing. 

The machine does a great job,

It's magnificent in its ingenuity

Sexy in its strong horse-power

vibrating bits and stamina

The machine does a great job.

Hand mixing in an indulgence, really.

Geared towards album sides 

stacked on the turn-table's spire

8 oz of flour and a wooden spoon.

(This is my orb, this my scepter)

And the bowl of bubbling starter

The flour disappears quickly into the bog

Celestial and Infinite, I drag the spoon

Clockwise round the curve of the bowl

The smell rising fast, wet and lusty

Of wheat fields and good dirt

Of Rain and Seasons

And the light of the moon

8 oz of flour and a wooden spoon

Half strokes, slow and dragging the sides

While I spin the bowl the other 180°

With my left and forgotten hand.

The biga starts to turn into a kind of porridge

A thing lumpy and not quite right

It must have looked this

When God was thrashing about

Some years past, with Creation

At least, when baking, sometimes

It is necessary to have faith

A plank, a sideboard, a sturdy piece

A well lit place to handle this dough

Surface dusted w/ flour, a handful fallen

Remove the dough from the bowl

With your hands, man! With your hands.

And put it there on that table, that plank

Firm in your intent to get to know it better.

An album side is what it will take.

Not more. Not less.

To massage 8 oz of flour

Into the body of the dough

Squeezing with flexed fingers

Stretching the palm away from the heel

Working the thumb, rolling knuckles

An ounce at a time.

Folding. Pressing.Stretching. Folding.

Tap out a tap dance w/ your fingertips

Tease the dough.

No one likes it all rough and tumble.

Bagels, more than any baked good,

Has a great sense of humor.

It is no mistake that it looks

like a globe

                  A planet, a world

When you cut it into 8 parts

(4.5oz each) rolled into 8 perfect balls

Roll each ball into and in between

Your hands, across the crevices

The dips and valleys of your palm

Rolling the dough into itself

Each move as soft and unending

As butterfly kisses

There is no hole in the bagel.

There is only the bagel, and not bagel.

The space around does not define

Only delineates and separates matter

Poke your thumb through the center

A Dutch Boy & a Dike

The dough does not break

But moves around your thumb

Join your forefinger w/ you thumb

Nothing is as sweet as the ring imagined

The spyglass of all children

The ring made with thumb and forefinger

Each bagel is born in this way,

With not a hole, but a completion.

Sestina for an Italian Assorted Sub

I

I will tell you true, fellow pilgrim, this road’s been hard before me.

These cobblestones turn my ankle, stub my toe.

And it’s miles to go before Rome, before shade

Under the cedar trees on the Seven Hills

I am tired, fellow traveller, of this dusk, this sky

I am weary, bone tired and worn

This is the sandwich that will change all that.

II

This Italian Bread, constellations of sesame seeds that

Stud the crisp brown crust before me

That moves me head to toe

That gleams like the mid day sun without shade

The arc of the roll, supple as the hills

Palatine, the Tiber River reflected in the sky

In the heavens worn.

III

Cheese is an indulgence worn

With impunity, with irreverence and that

Kind of lust that both you and me

Cannot resist, a line we can not toe

Cheese from the North of Italy, in the Alps’ shade

Where the milkmaids roam the hills

And the moon is made of cheese, there in the sky.

IV

The storms will break; can split in half this sky

The rivers may run to the ocean, leaving shores worn

Cut into smooth banks, sea grass listing this way and that

Salami is the cure, so good for what ails me

Capicola and Ham, toe to toe

And Sweet Genoa, a card, wears a lamp shade

There in the North, away from Tuscan Hills

V

Fellow traveller, fellow pilgrim, these are Mountains not hills

Passable still, as long as the earth remains below the sky

A compass is faith worn

True North. A straight line on a curved globe that

Bugs the shit out of me.

Perspective is the thumb, the toe

It is not, after all, light that defines shade.

VI

When I worked on that farm, there was shade

Away from the fields, across the lake, around the hills

Where we thought the giants might have lifted the sky

Held it in place, like a mantle worn

We rode bikes around that lake, to that

Sandwich shop: there was you, and there was me

And the cat who had one extra toe

VII

That cat was crazy. We thought the toe

Was some kind of gypsy witchcraft, some shade

Or spirit. This is what she told us, there in the hills

Beneath the Strawberry Moon of the Solstice sky

The gypsy woman, with her cook’s apron worn

Tied low on her wide hips that swayed, that

Brought this sandwich to me.