Last Confession This priest, how can he possibly believe? he's the same one, isn't he? yes it's he who shut my father's eyes--how can he this fatherly non-Father, having seen having been my father's last sight how can he still believe? This hitchcock profile behind a screen (I've seen him so many times cut the air with rigid palms, gesture crosses and bow to book with holy kisses) waits and wonders why I don't start my whisper, mumbles 'go ahead' Bless me Father for I have masturbated even on the night he died coaxing myself to sleep the only way I knew how, and what you must say now for me to believe you're more than shadow on screen is That was no sin, my son. But your program is another response exhorting me to penance, absolving me assuring me forgiveness will be mine-- I go out among the others mumbling humbly at the altar rail, a whispering penance-cloud rising like incense smoke, I kneel and conjure Dad casting for bass. |
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Poem of My Names Needing to be seen as American my Calabrian Grandpa changed his name from Andriano to Andrews, although in his shop he sold capacolla, prosciutto. So I was born Joseph Andrews, no problem for me until I changed my college major to English and learned of a novel entitled with my name. In literature classes I endured the laughs from literati who asked Are you still chaste? Are you even real? For years I avoided that book and friends were disappointed I never took revenge writing Henry Fielding by Joseph Andrews. Instead I changed the name back: "I refuse to be the figment of another man's muse!" Actually it was Dad's dying wish: we sons must undo what Grandpa had done. And now in my more paranoid dreams the dark suits begin the interrogation Joe Andriano? alias Joseph Andrews? |
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Manic Hyena Women often say we men are somehow wired to control the remote so we may still be hunters, hunting now for shows. I find a pride of lounging lions sated from a recent kill. I put the remote down and delight in their contented grunts but soon they're roaring as they up and pace and suddenly they're surrounded by manic hyenas. Sharks with legs they overpower the pride by sheer numbers, winning the remains of the prey. I reach for the remote but stop-- a change of scene, a lioness carrying cubs away from carnage, finding a nook she thinks is safe but unaware she's carried her cubs to a cobra's lair. The snake kills them all, one by one, and strikes the mother too. Hyenas come and eat her dead babies, surround her too as she lies in agony of venom and loss. I can't take it anymore, switch it now to some innocuous video, but can't resist the lure, switch it back. She endures for seven days, lumbering alone, hyenas biding their time. But she recovers, seeks her cubs, and roaring maternal woe at the deep blue sky, rejoins her pride. |
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Pledge (with apologies to Walt Whitman) I pledge
allegiance to the world, I pledge allegiance to the flag of my own disposition: |
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War Fervor (1992)
Unaware as ducks crossing the road, in a line, oblivious of braking cars we walk straight across the concrete street of conviction toward the safe park. I got a whiff of teargas in 1969 but I've lost the will to march against or for I listen to my students argue back & forth no blood for oil but troops need our support I watch my neighbor put up his flag I want a flag, its background black its sign, blue-white Earth, full phase. |
Written in 1991, appearing in a now radically defunct periodical-- is this poem dated now, irrelevant? I wish . . . . Gulf War Villanelle Mr. Bush must speak our truth. We take his word (into our mouth) But is our mood old doom of youth? Camouflage is not uncouth: Earthy colors fit for death. I dare them all to speak the truth: Fragile flesh beneath the cloth
Patriots fly up from the south
Today our masks are not of cloth.
The Gulf is black, as are sky & earth
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Don't Bury Me in a Suit
I don't wear a suit I am not a suit Nothing suits me worse than a suit. I've worn one at all the funerals all the weddings I've ever seen I wore one (against my will) at my own wedding I will not at my own funeral. I will never know, of course, but please, dearest, bury me in what I've worn out-- jeans older than a decade faded whiter than my beard Bury me in my old blue blazer it matches the jeans and I will pit my aesthetic sense of matching colors down where no light can reach. Thinking further on the matter I request that you just have me cremated, recreated as ashes you send to scatter in the wind. |
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cat-sonnet this impish tabby thinks the desk is hers, sits (imperial) on my blotter to look out the window (we call her Cinders for all her ashy grays) sleek though spayed she stares fixed on approaching Tom (a yellow wailing ball of muscle and obnoxious spray (almost as confused as the moose who went for that farmer's cow)) who makes this visit every day though Cinders can be of no service to his urgent need. I stroke her then, she lifts her rear |
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Dream-Sonnet more easily than the nightmare: Have you felt your brain become a fist clenched about your loveliest sweetest dreams, squeezing them into crumpled images, dissolving, as you get out of bed, into drops dripping down the sinkhole? it's not that i recall the nightmare's whole plot fabricated by my film-making brain it's an image that won't go down the drain that stays and haunts me, hunts me down, pops up like a spider, not overgrown unsubtle, but tiny, reclusive, just there the skull i saw as a child in the mirror. |