For Pete

Sing Out!

This morning to mark his passing

I accompanied the coffee maker

in a song about dawn, that shimmering

moment between cup and lip,

sting of intoxication like hammered

banjo strings, sun leaning in to lay on

high buttery harmonies. 

We drowned out the tepid choir

droning radio news, me and my greasy

trio, frying up a cooking little number

about eggs over easy, hash browns,

bacon and toast. Skillet, knife and chopping

block taking a new swipe at a sly

old tune with more than one meaning. 

Later on we sang a round that circled

back so often we all got carried away;

a glass, some paper, the pencil I cling to

like a trapeze, set free to watch the world as it

turn, turn, turns below, a hootenanny  

of voices that worry the hairline cracks

in the tone deaf walls of Jericho.    

  

Final Reader

Marginalia

I’m here from the future to say you don’t

make it in the end.  At least it looked

that way as I slipped the hacksawed shackles

of linear time and cracked the spine

on this dog-eared remainder, droning on,

page after page, dusty chapters sifting

down, narrative arc in a lazy slope,

a Great Plains of exposition

extending out in all directions

relieved only by the scrawniest trees

of character development, plot

a trammeled fence row, lyrical

passages snagged on barbs, snapping white

pennants in a windy onslaught of words.

The prayers you launched degrade in low orbit

winking out in turn on the rotating

sanding drum of the mesosphere, conquests

sit forlorn at the far end of the groaning

board, knee to knee under sagging bunting. 

Denouement is assured, tidy or

otherwise; already I’ve said too much.

The black and white jacket photo, when was

that taken?, the dedication the truest

part, but the margins crammed with smudgy

doodles and profane retorts, your defaced  

gap toothed smile, were by far my favorite bits.

Gospel Noir

Sacrifice

Jesus loved us and gave himself up for us

caught my eye on my way home from the bank,

trailer marquee in front of a church canted 
like a ship on a wedge of snow.

My grandparents had a picture of Him 
on their wall, WASPY, aquiline nose 
framed by wavy brown hair, earnest beard 
of the singer-songwriter, cornered,

desperate in this telling, a version 
I made up at the long light at Main
and Rochester, parting torn curtains 
with a snub nosed pistol on the second 

floor of an abandoned building, maybe 
a defunct sheet music publisher or 
actuary decamped to Boca Raton.   
Search light beams casting shadows on exposed 

lathe, bullet stopping properties of a 
four drawer file a matter of faith. “Amscray", 
he says, jabs a thumb toward the back stairs, 
"steer clear of the train depot", flips us a stack 
 

of double sawbucks, blames tear gas for his 
waterworks.  We melt into the night, 
“don’t shoot, don't shoot, I’m coming out!”
trailing us like a high hosanna.  

Hold It By The Edges, Man!

Ten Records I Want On A Desert Island

There are no outlets for one thing, walls

if there were any, little more than gaps

between reeds, a fifty foot extension

cord useless except perhaps as an orange

SOS paid out across the beach, too

elegantly understated to draw

attention from the air, the phonograph

and other components I remembered

to pack curiosities for cargo

cults, rectilinear gods with dangling

cords sitting in silent judgment atop

stacked coconuts while I hold a gospel

record by its thin edge madly angling

toward the noonday sun.  Sacrificially

minded faithful nod politely to my  

best rendition of Pop Staples, closing

the ring a little tighter with every

verse, the most discriminating among

them barely stifling their laughter, passing

my nine other selections hand to hand. 

Out in the sticks

Stick

Clutching at straw is undignified

at best, madly snatching at phantom

butterflies on the wing, fatal 
at worst for a man headed over 
the shaggy eaves of a storied thatch 
roof house, a lazy stutter of chaff 
cross-hatching his lifeless, mangled form, 
cooling hands closed around the memory 
of stout sticks, exquisitely suited 
through natural selection to 
grip and hold, grab and wield. 

Draw a line in the sand with a sharp stick,
dare all those pencil neck chumps, hands 
shoved in their pockets to take a giant

step and join the rest of us beavering 
away in the batter’s box or carving 
a morning wake, stabbing paint on canvas 
or snaring themselves in the soft shoe 
brushwork of an old jazz standard.

Tell them they can find me if they follow

the trail left behind by Peter, the boy  

in Ezra Jack Keat’s The Snowy Day,  
an old guy leaning on a shovel 
with a worn handle, hands yearning 
with desire for a stick; oak but ash 
would do, with which to bar the door 
to the incessant tapping of time.