too much fondue

the cigar-puffing wife
hid her knife
grabbed a drink from a passing tray
and was overheard to say
she really liked Danish Ballet
watching men dance
wearing pants
as they climbed the Matterhorn
no longer forlorn
nor an object of scorn:
simply too much fondue
and not enough to do
in 1952!

The mirada fuerte

Roy Rogers and hat

riding a horse named trigger

both made a pass at me

but i couldn't fall for that.

i watched them fix their gaze

a voracious stare it was

and regardless of age or sex

it could last for several days!

an unsuspecting gent

or a woman with two girls

and a quiver in their step

straight-backed or bent:

still the eye came around

with a sly rapacious grin

and never failed to work its magic

silently or with sound

ascending the mountain

"This is how it should be done!"
i heard her say
as she sat up defiantly straight
and meant to get her way
with a modern touch in mind:
a bit of colored hair, perhaps.
where once i felt a burning desire,
she since has helped it lapse.
there is a simple distortion
in the potting of her plant,
and if it would grow perfectly,
she'd be heard to say "It can't!"
i imagine pointing out to her,
climbing as we are
roped together by the waist:
we've really come too far.
but the lamp in her studio
was her only source of light;
she kept reading protective words
completely through the night.

wall of Intensity

the old bone
in my closet
like a virgin gathering dust
or like an inflated body part
developing rust,
never walked naked in the winter.

but it saw an artist develop the blues
on a hot sunny day
when he couldn't choose,
his dagger tongue jabbing in and out,
injecting a cannibal kiss
and a monumental shout.

he could be seen sitting on a cold cliff all alone
holding in his hands a life-engendering stone:
it served as a counterweight to keep him in balance
when the winds came up
like the front paws of an overly-excited pup.

below the cliff, at the dawn of another sweet day,
a wall of Intensity blocked his way
when he elevated his arm,
trying to throw the stone away.

the old bone
in my closet
as reflective as a Puritan on a rock,
even though that door has a formidable lock,
can sometimes be seen smiling under an old sock.

New Found Land

if you want an 8 bar phrase:
cancel all my Fridays
head banging nursery rhyme licks?
well, i don't have time for those stupid tricks!
i'm off to Newfoundland for their part time eastern shore
and not coming back until i can get some more:

went down to the river side
found a new place to hide
saw the poet with her child
well, they looked at me with their eyes still wild
so i'm off to France for a lesson in song and dance
not coming back until i get some romance

poured myself a whiskey tall
tossed it back glass and all
wrote a message just for you
well, you remind me of the color blue
so i'm off to the crossroads for a rock & roll scene
and not coming back until i know what you mean

if you want an 8 bar phrase:
cancel all my Fridays
head banging nursery rhyme licks?
well, i don't have time for those stupid tricks!

Chester

the man made people laugh
when he put himself into sharp focus,
cracking open his head for all to see
the eerie serenity of which he's so proud.

but he much preferred to cook,
visiting the Tuesday Farmer's Market
where the local Amish came in their horse-drawn
buggies and plain clothing with their produce:
shoo-fly pies, fruit pies, candied yams, fresh hams,
donuts, popcorn, chicken, cheese, steak, vegetables,and so much more.

and with a little money and a smiling please,
all the ingredients for a great meal could easily be carried
to his car in just one bag, or two.  No one would wave as he drove away,
but he always drove off, urging his own secret horses to run.

and he liked the road to Golgotha, where a campfire was always ready
for his evening meal, and the plates were always clean.

There, the black dog he bought from a farmer in Brownstown recently died
of old age and even stranger tumors and he was cradling the dog when Doctor
Delaney injected that thirsty liquid which stopped the beating heart, relieving any
suffering for the dog, for Chester the dog.
Chester didn't like Amish food, that much was certain,
and he couldn't speak a word of Dutch, but he might have had a vision of the Virgin.

There is a market tomorrow and the man will go to shop, putting himself
into sharp focus, with his head cracked open,
looking for another dog.

Bones

the monstrous head
coming alive
and it felt justified
enjoying time in bed
before coffee or tea
with a piece of small toast
this i find i like the most
i hadn't had a bite since mid-June
around noon
or was it closer to four
hard to see from the floor
when you said
"I think I'm dead!"
and i had to agree
it wasn't me.
the monstrous head
came round and round
finding no up side or down
in the padded bed
i was hoping to be taught
not caught
patiently cooked a stew
pointing a finger at you
so full of bones
fingerprints without moans.

Brian Wilson

Brian Wilson
full of an acid enthusiasm
little surfer girls playing inside his head
singing songs better left unsaid
stoning the living and the grateful dead
his beach boy band washing up on shore
ah, the black raven quoting nevermore
for the slooping John B
would he find you there or would he find me?
endless horizons far out of reach
sleeping on a remote Pacific beach
a short throw from his latest solo
the saintly singer, his voice of gold
could we keep him or is he already sold?
ah, just wondering but i don't know
where did Brian Wilson really go?
from the top of the pop charts
stealing lonely lady hearts
he had no need for an afternoon show
so where did Brian Wilson really go?
ah, that east coast girl was hip
kissed him on his harmonic lip
drove his board to San Francisco bay
he knew that wasn't the safest way
but it was a coupe de ville and had its' fill
of good vibrations on North Beach
where nothing seemed totally out of reach
Barbara Ann and Rhonda dance for two
fooling around while i was with you
and it always seemed such a pretty scene
and that's exactly what i mean
Brian Wilson
i feel so broke up i wanna go home
why don't you come on home?
i feel so broke up i wanna go home

The First Book: 2nd Poem

there was a woman in my garden
she held a blue ball aloft
and when she placed it in her mouth
she coughed
discreetly, just a little wheeze
she smiled like Minnie Mouse
such an athletic tease!
and i felt the morning breeze
and intrinsically knew
which way this new wind blew
then across the street i saw ahead
a private place where balls are red
planted in the forest soil
near the laurel bush by a thin-barked tree
a promising facility
but how expensive would it be?
i gave chase and tried my best;
she was hiding somewhere near, i guessed,
far from the definite
and elusive, yet
for want of that woman i still tried
when a heavy numbness gripped my side.
exhausted, pale, and terrified
she vanished in the changing night,
shot like an arrow taking flight.

Sergei Diaghilev (died: August 19, 1929)

he died in Venice
before the floods swept away the chairs,
but the perfume princess brought her broom
to sweep away his cares.
she was on a yacht
cruising the Adriatic with a friend
when his telegram arrived from across the sea
to suggest this was the end.
he had eaten too well,
with rich food and sugary dessert,
and diabetic pain exhausted him,
yet he claimed it didn't hurt!
on the Isola de San Michele,
his grave site sadly
had only four mourners by the muddy hole:
two were Misia Sert and Coco Chanel;
then Lifar the clown and Kochno the troll,
while Massine was hastily trying
to persuade Beaumont to keep the company afloat.
but he said no,
and Picasso refused to gloat.

Salvador and Gala Dali

a razor sliced into an eyeball
and

blood came rushing out:
his boyfriend was the target
& several neighbors' heard him shout!

into the celebrated darkness,
a unique woman appeared:
her pleasure, a Spanish nightmare,
much crazier than he feared.

while painting on a canvas,
hands melting over time,
they wrapped their arms in questions,
answering sublime.

& dancing with surrealists
inventing magic air,
climbing toward delirium
they found a future there.

Friendship 7

early in 1962,
John Glenn jockeyed
his Marine Corps flesh
into the Friendship 7 capsule
for five hours of speedy sub-space flight,
capturing the attention of an anxious nation
while talking to his girl friend about the moon's
lack of gravity and  listening to mission controllers
reminding him that there was a danger the sturdy heat shield
could be in danger of tearing apart and burning his wooden balls
during re-entry and there wasn't anything anyone could do about it.
so for precious seconds before his parachute deployed for a successful
ocean landing, Glenn didn't know whether to expect the angular arm of death
suddenly clasping him in an intentionally fatal grip or if he'd get to screw the pretty girl
again after he landed and went through his physicals and debriefings, but he tried to be hopeful.
he never did get the opportunity to hump over the surface of the moon, like Neil Armstrong did,
but he got the girl.

Apes and the Plastic Bottle

once upon a time the apes lapped their water from a river,
a small lake, a pond, or a stream;
no predatory tenderness or self-indulgent dream.
or maybe from a leaf collecting early morning moisture,
but never from the turning on of a tap
like a modern feckless business sap
who receives a one thousand mile Caesar's salad
and clothing from Bangladesh
which are daily flown-in fresh
like an avocado shipped all the way from China!
once upon a time the apes did everything by hand:
love and communication they could easily understand.
once upon a time the apes joined in evening campfires
without using Skype or the Internet:
at slower tribal speeds there simply was no disconnect.
there was nothing illusory or remote or overly complex:
no derivatives or obsession with balances and checks.
once upon a time there was life on the plains of Africa,
before the revolutions in agriculture and industry
made it ever more difficult to contain modern human history.
and once upon a time the planet Earth was spinning freely
without an urban landscape, before the flinging of the spears,
there were no technicians for millions and millions of years.

Buried on a Mountain

the elephant with its trunk in the waves
and a cliff with a leg of vertical hardness
both trumpeted
as i watched the Red Tail hawks catapult
together into overhead thermals, heading toward distant smoke
before disappearing
into the flooding sound of a nearby river.
a friend's torso and tiny head blocked my view of this shore,
but from where i sat in my left-bank hideaway,
i could hear her laughter
when she suddenly slid down a slippery slope,
taking snapshots of fallen leaves as she passed,
grabbing for anything that might help to slow her descent
toward the parallel steel tracks
once part of a transportation system which included slow canal barges and fast-burning coal.
she spent less time on her feet than other well-off Swedish ladies,
none of whom she cared much for,
nor paid any attention to.
and when we walked together, our favorite destinations were our quest for
privacy, spending time, counting change, searching for different lights by which
to read and write,
sometimes even studying if it would be possible to fly on the weekends,
looking for bluer than blue and truer than true.
the cliff, meanwhile, pointed its sharp finger at the sky and we went there, leaving a
dead raccoon at the foot of a distraught tree, off the trail where the
elephants would never come to visit.
and a glass of wine or a cold beer, but never a cigarette.

The Sea is an Artist

holding you under my thumb
like a pebble on the shore
smoothed by the sea
still struggling to be free

beautiful bones turning white
your hair drifting over waves
the ocean blue
i could not swim out for you

and it was midnight at noon
the clouds hanging low and black
another day
fading as you slip away

irony holding a drink
one i don't dare try to touch
a perfect stone
sinking in the sea alone

Effigy in three Pieces

when the scene painter packed his small tool kit
prior to leaving my studio, under my tall easel
he found a twentieth-century paper window
hung with shades of grim and gray.
it was part of a sketch i made of
the modern movement, which showed some understanding
of the temper of the times, and it was open to a question.
and peeking through,
he caught a glimpse of a woman's pubic hair
just as she was pulling on her blue jeans,
fixing them low on her hips.
and approaching her was a bearded man with menacing
black eyes who appeared to be very angry, and the painter
wanted to shout a warning when he saw the man raise
an arm as if to strike, but he could not speak.
after a blink, he saw pieces of buttocks and breasts and
genitalia covered the floor where the woman had been standing,
and cruel black eyes were cavorting on her grave.
the significance of this find was not realized
until  the scene painter was much older, and by then it was too late.

The Zone by the Fire

i watched as she inserted a tiny key into my heart
and gave it a sharp twist,
and asked me to lay down on her couch for a quick
therapy session by the fire,
during which she would once again shrink my head
to the size of a pea.
and i became ever more obsessed
as i visualized vegetables sitting on my bedside table
by the lamp which held a shade
shaped like ballooning breasts, when she told me it was normal to
covet carrots in the morning with my coffee, as she often did.
if she was to become the root of my eventual recovery,
i wondered why she trailed a beach towel
to the flapping garden door of a black and blue cabana
and giggled uncontrollably
when i said there was room inside for two.
i saw her chair before she sat and it reminded me of an engorged penis,
and she told me it was her favorite place to sit, but she couldn't share it
with just anyone,
although i had the most poetic eyes, nose, and ears
from which she could create a sculpture of the perfect human,
if i would only undress slowly by her side.

Marie -Therese Walter (1927)

Picasso was legend!
he held a dove in his hand
before releasing an orgasm
on the Mediterranean sand.
the only real problem
with a wife and a son
was how to kill marriage
without employing a gun.
the dove was his mistress,
very sexually blond;
he painted her nipples
for which he grew fond.
they went rubbing together,
a little suffering in bed;
two bodies entangled,
he drew her in red.
predictably erotic,
her sleepy head fell.
her mouth full of hunger,
she ate him as well.

watching the moon with mom

in the asylum
when the dark room grew close,
hallucinating and confined,
the legend of your ghost
out of the corner of my eye
like a vivid memory floating in air
revisiting a childhood
near my little town square,
came playing into my mind.
a ball bouncing against the far wall,
catching a cold,
letting it fall,
trying to pick it up again,
seemed uninterested in the evening news.
dressing for the circus like a clown
in amusement park shoes,
and passionately shopping for toys,
swimming near the bank of a secret river
with other naive girls and boys
watching the moon,
my paddle like arms suffer as i stroke,
preferring the water's current
to the familiar joke:
your faint smile and strange eyes
falling from the sky like luminous pride
light up my solitary cell
many years before i died.
had you loved me then, i might not have cried.

Guitar with Missing Pillows

an eye at the end of my penis
saw your hips clench convulsively together
at three o'clock in the afternoon.
a sharp noise had diverted our attention and i went limp
with exhaustion while you began to pray.
your knuckles looked hammered onto each other
when i rose to check the door.
3 carpenter's nails were wedged into the jamb,
and from each nail hung a loose piece of small paper and i
dared to read the writing.
secrecy having always been a game you misunderstood,  i wouldn't
tell you what i saw,
but when i returned to your room, you were gone.
the guitar you had been playing was on the bed,
strings still loosely wrapped around a neck,
impressively out of tune.
in the shadows of the late day, i saw the fruit bowl without fruit
left in place after your departure.
the old wall paper embellished with the flight of a bird continued to
cover up the fading paint.
a rising wind blew outside the window.
you must have cleared away my clothes, since i couldn't find them,
and all the pillows were gone.

by your side

You are in Heaven
where the angels sing,
while I am on land
still wearing your ring,
and walking with Max
watching him chase
his little red bird
when i see your face
smiling at me
from Heaven above:
my dream is to be there
by your side, my love.

Brockport, PA

Near Brockport, PA
Along the Route 219 highway
When the sun was just starting to go down
I met you heading into town
Driving your dad's van,
And you stopped and up I ran.
And the engine roared when it was floored
Shifting gears far into the night
Tuning our radio by star light
Pink Floyd and the Division Bell
We had nothing to buy, nothing to sell
And nothing to hide, nothing to lose
Nothing to offer, no need to choose
The headlights showing us the way
It seems like it was just yesterday.
What more is there for me to say?
My coffee grounds still muffle the sound
Of another one-stop prairie town,
And your eyes shining red:
It was probably time for bed
When your motor died,
and I went to sleep alone and cried.

Michael L. Marchiori (Dec. 8, 1950 - Nov. 7, 2007)

You have left me

without the embrace of your arms.

5 years have passed and I'm searching for your smile

and simple charms,

 finding only empty air.

I look everywhere and you're not there.

My wound is raw and also the pain;

while friends say "Move on!"

I can't and remain

thinking about you as I did before,

whispering your name at night and more.

It's been a hard 5 years without your touch,

the touch I miss so very much.

And your voice and gentle laughter:

when the last supper is over and after

I retire for the day,

I can still hear you say

"I love you, JoAnn!"

and I love you more,

Mike.

In Turin

In Turin,
i first noticed the tiny skin mole
relaxing circumspect near your left breast
and it became a fascination for me.
the mole, however, was initially not so disarmed.
i offered it a taste of my wine, and after our
first few glasses together, the mole became confident that i meant
it no harm.  i then handed the mole a full bottle.
without distraction, i continued my inspection of your breast,
but the mole said i had an interesting face and wanted to do a portrait of me,
so i moved to your other breast, and the fact that i could no longer
hear the mole clearly comforted me, as though a great stress had been lifted.
i'm relying on memory and i think it's accurate, that the mole began to tease me
in a louder voice for having an ugly nose, a Greek nose instead of a little Italian button one,
and that made it difficult for me to exploit my new found position as curator of your
lovely breasts, both of which i would soon want to marry.
as soon as the mole fell asleep, fumbling the glass, spilling a few drops of wine, yet
nothing too serious, i picked up a pencil and paper, first to exploit
the literary possibilities of a talking mole, and second,
to record how kind you are to me in my hunger.