greenmountaineer's thread

[greenmountaineer]

Remix

For What Shall It Profit a Man?

Maybe this is it after all:
not Monday morning's profit or loss,
rather you were a good camper
on a weekend in the forest,

dousing the fire before you left
your trash in a big plastic bag,
like the one the bum is dragging
who stops to ask for some of your silver

when starting your day in Manhattan
is as dark as the dark roast you clutch
in your Starbucks styrofoam cup,
the other hand in your pocket,

hiding the change from your latte,
and later you wonder what the hell for
when suddenly your lights go out
at your desk on the 45th floor.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Wordless Love

Luke thought about words,
how absent they were when one is born,
which is why the poet once said
as close to the One Word the soul had been
the child is father to man,

and so it is with Sean,
who at the breast of Margaret
will soon be laid to rest in his crib
that Margaret and Luke on their marriage bed
enter their own wordless holy land.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Clancy's Wake

He said to have a parade,
but, Lads, we're staring at his face
laid out on the coffin table
as Mary serves us herbal tea.

The wives put cinnamon in it,
but their fine China tea cups grow cold
while they keen around the table
until one praises Mary's doilies.

It's enough for me to take my cup
into the kitchen where Jesus, Mary,
and Josephat! What in hell do I see?
Rabinowitz smoking a clay pipe,

and although I swore to God
I'd never eat potatoes again,
I didn't mean your vodka, Ben,
so pour me a cup for Tim Clancy.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Valentino

Her mother fainted when he died
because of those Arabian nights
they spent together in her dreams.
Revived, she held her sheik pillow tight.

Marjorie bided her time
with greasy meat and boiled potatoes
next to Father in the kitchen
watching Mother pour his beer

for supper served at 6:15,
fifteen minutes before The News,
the game shows, sit-coms, dramas,
and get up again at 5:00 a.m.,

the same as her Hank does every day,
except for a clean shirt, shower, and shave
while Margie tucks the kids to sleep
after she opens a bottle of wine,

a fine Shiraz to let it breathe,
paired with a tray of Medjool dates
they'll savor later with Gibran
before they get on their magic carpet.

 

[legerdemer]

Valentino

Her mother fainted when he died
because of those Arabian nights
they spent together in her dreams.
Revived, she held her sheik pillow tight.

Marjorie bided her time
with greasy meat and boiled potatoes
next to Father in the kitchen
watching Mother pour his beer

for supper served at 6:15,
fifteen minutes before The News,
game shows, and dramas on TV
with two more beers to help him sleep
until he got up at 5:00 a.m.,

the same as her Hank does every day,
except for a clean shirt, shower, and shave
while Margie tucks the kids to sleep
after she opens a bottle of wine,

a fine Shiraz to let it breathe,
paired with a tray of Medjool dates
they'll savor later with Gibran
before they get on their magic carpet.

A vignette if there ever was one - so vivid I can taste the dates and the wine. It's so vivid it should come with a calorie count.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Winter's Fast Approaching, My Dear

Why, it seems like yesterday at Colgate
we ate Cortland apples on the green
while two mutts frolicked, one in heat,
and you laughed in your Calvin Klein jeans.

Soon there came baccalaureate masses,
sharkskin suits, silk ties, silk purses,
the sheen and currency of our ambition.
They matter very little now, my Dear.

You look so fine in your dungarees,
scissoring in the flower garden
to bring the last of the marigolds in
whose fragrance will fill these autumn nights.

Come. The quilt's as light as a feather
on your nakedness to have and to hold
as long as there's heat, whatever the weather,
while the dim sun sets and the nights grow cold.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Little Haiti

Les p'tits gens suck on nipples
that taste like salty pumpkin soup
steam from the stovetop in the kitchen

as gathered mothers pray Mambo Leah's
third eye will stop the cholera
for boubou Mirlande in Port au Prince,

and all of the boubous who play in the mud,
and, of course, the soul of Simone
who calls herself My Sin, point of purchase,

when "Boogie Nights" plays on her phone,
and it's Harvey I'm sorry I just want to talk
or the one with white powder up his nose.

Meanwhile later by Indian River
that smells like Coppertone the closer
it flows to the causeway beaches,

"Chop. Chop! Toot Sweet! Ándelé, ándelé,"
forgetting what language to use today,
the boss's red-faced lackey shouts,

"or, sure as hell, the oranges freeze"
as he pulls from one of his pockets
what's left of his spiral of Tums

while Jean Paul sprays for boubou Marie.
still stuck in the mud of Haiti,
darker than he on a frigid night,

working to save an orange's life
to live as if his boubou Marie
someday could be almost white.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Second Chances

Neither wanted the album prints
of holidays on the beach in Marseiile.
We fought for the Bentley; I got the Vauxhall
with one hundred thousand miles between

you, the party of the first part,
and me the second, eating canned tuna
in a one room studio where oral sex
was a pint of stout on a sofa bed.

That never was Sir Galahad, Dear,
sweeping you up on his stallion,
and the wasp waist whose name I forgot
was but my imagination

that now sees the ghost of Uncle Fred
reflected in our bottle of port,
pouring a glass for his Tilly again
out on the settee in their garden.

I can almost smell the blossoms,
although it's going to snow tonight.
So I'll start the fire with court petitions
and other filings from the attic

in the fireplace where once the heat
went up in flames too quickly
when naked we laid before it
and tried to ignore the growing cold.

Tonight, we dressed in our finest clothes.
May I pour another glass for you?
May I read you Yeats and hold you close
as the both of us grow old?

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Shirtwaist Factory

Maryann at half past ten
will feckin' oirish pushcart men
after mass for hot cross buns.

Now as for me, I eat my oats
like all the milk cart horses do
before I clean their stalls and manes

but Da he cleans heddles and reeds
and got a job for Maryann
at the shirtwaist factory.

Staying warm Chrissakes till March
would make me dream of girls again,
although I would not tell the priest

whose pew this morning warms my feet
Sweet Jesus! ten degrees at least
and Mother gets to sing again

and Maryann she winks at me
because she's starting work next week
at the shirtwaist factory.


From Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac:"

New York's Triangle Shirtwaist Factory burned down on this date in 1911. One hundred and forty-six workers - most of them immigrant women and girls - died in the fire or shortly afterward. It remained the deadliest workplace disaster in New York City until the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

The owners of the factory were Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, known as New York's "Shirtwaist Kings." They employed seamstresses to work 13 hours a day, seven days a week, at a rate of 13 cents per hour. Blanck and Harris already had a history of suspicious factory fires, because they would torch their buildings in the middle of the night to collect the insurance money. This isn't what happened in the Triangle fire, but they had never installed fire sprinklers in the building in case they decided to burn it down as well. The building was horribly unsafe: the factory floors were cramped and overcrowded, the hallways and fire escape were extremely narrow, and only one of the four elevators worked. Of the two stairways that led to the street, one was locked to prevent the workers from sneaking out with stolen goods. The other opened inward, making it almost impossible to open when a panicked mob was trying to escape. The fire hose was rotted and the valve was rusted so badly it couldn't be opened.

Six hundred workers were in the shop when the fire broke out in a rag bin on the eighth floor. Workers rushed to the elevator, but it only held 12 people at a time, and broke down after only a few trips. The lone fire escape collapsed. Some of the girls, desperate to escape the blaze, jumped down the elevator shaft or out the windows to their deaths. Blanck and Harris happened to be on a floor above the fire; they were able to make it to the roof, where they escaped to the building next door. They were later brought before a grand jury on manslaughter charges, but not indicted. Frances Perkins, who would later go on to be named Labor Secretary under FDR, witnessed the fire. She knew something had to be done about workplace conditions. "We've got to turn this into some kind of victory, some kind of constructive action," she said. Perkins and New York governor Al Smith did finally bring about some safety reforms in New York City, including the Sullivan-Hoey Fire Prevention Law.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Cabbie

Boss said I didn't have to speak Spanish,
corner of Grote and Seventeenth Street,
just had to drive them to Allentown
in Maggie, my checkered lady,
who helps me drag drunks out of bars
when the wife calls the boss at 2:00 a.m.

I can smell welfare a mile away,
"No tip, no shit" says to myself,
boarded up storefronts, heaps on the street
no laugh lines in the brown eyes I meet,
a limp sixty pounds I'm guessing, at best,
without the shirt, the pants and the Keds.

So I go to pick up the lady's kid
who's a dead weight with arms and legs.
She knows enough to say "José,"
and me I says "no sweat, Lady"
as I strap him into Maggie's lap
to drive them up the Interstate

on the way to Allentown
among the slag heaps that span these hills
of Pennsy a scat dirty brown
like diapers they're gonna put José in:
"He's sleeping. Don't wake him.
He's shitting. Go change him,"
two guys with a gurney standing outside
lighting up their cigarettes.

She doesn't speak English but knows the sound
of a meter running; "no sweat, Lady,"
I says and turn the cab around,
figuring the boss owes me the time
for burgers, two cokes, a shake for the kid
before Mom and me leave Allentown.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Carpet Stains

Semen was but a lick and a promise
swallowed by the vacuum cleaner
happily every morning after,

not so the smear of a purple grape juice
white lie she still tells Jennie who visits
when the both of them know it's Merlot.

Mascara laden tears fell too
that night when Larry wasn't home,
having pretended the car broke down,

and though their bills were overdue,
he bought her flowers every week
until she took him in again.

Tears fell as well at the blackest hour
a week ago when the ambulance man
said it was time for Father Mike.

As she scrubs the brown stain up,
she thinks of love as sometimes thick
sometimes sticky, mostly white,

and, yes, traces of lipstick as red
as his passion was that leaped from the bed
onto a colored magic carpet.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Sin Eater

Gwyneth was his goat from Leviticus
whenever she changed her father's sheets
who wanted no peace at that stage of grief.

"Why have you forsaken me?"
he would scream each night in his sleep,
more to a dead wife than God who had died
or a daughter who baked bara brith
for his friends to whom he said his spirit
won't rest until they had their fill
of his ale and a piece of his bread.

At her assisted with living,
the name of which she always forgets,
she whispers to the priest who visits
as if she was hiding under the stairs
when she airs her dirty little linen

that she fell asleep drunk in the kitchen
the night after her father died,
the same sin she tells the priest each week
who offers a little something to eat,
but she tells him she doesn't like bread.

 

[greenmountaineer]

April Fool

The seed was bad, ergo the blossom
I knew how to say in Lungworm or Latin
as if to the manner born.

A pound is a pound, Bloke, the rent was due
I paid with a love song, absent love,
and they named me a gastromancer,

but how I wish my stomach had purred,
and fur balls had twisted my tongue
for now there's a frog that lives in my throat.

So bless me, Father, before I croak.
I'm as hollow as any man.
Bleistein never had slime in his eye.

I don't really know beginning from end.
Something is cruel, but April is kind.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Play Ball!

Today is the opening day for Major League Baseball. Although a Red Sox fan now, my first favorite team was the Brooklyn Dodgers. My father and I never forgave them when they moved to L.A. in the fifties.

"Da Brooklyn Bums," denoting their working class roots, were perennial losers to the "pinstriped uptown" Yankees until 1955 when they beat them in 7 games for their first world championship. I was 8 years old at the time.

Johnny Podres was the winning pitcher and my hero. I learned at the time of his death that Johnny went back home to Port Henry, NY across from Lake Champlain from Vermont. I understand he was very approachable in town. How I wish I had known he lived there. I would have found a way to shake his hand and tell him how happy he made a 8 year old boy in 1955.

My little ditty, celebrating the start of Major League Baseball:

Boys of Summer Sonnet

"Get outta my way, Duke" Furillo said
to his center fielder chasing the ball
that flew between them and rolled to the wall
while Micky Mantle, thinking triple sped
where Jackie and Pee Wee as backup stood
ready for cleats when the Rifleman threw
a bullet that every Dodger fan knew
would get there before The Mick ever would.

"That's all very good, Timothy, but were
you to have followed instructions, you would
have mastered iambic pentameter"
said Mrs. Benson who misunderstood
poems that come from the roar of the crowd
in the top of the ninth with two men out.

 

[RosyStrife]

For What Shall It Profit a Man?

Maybe this is it after all:
not Monday morning's profit or loss,
rather you were a good camper
on a weekend in the forest,

dousing the fire before you left
your trash in a big plastic bag,
like the one the bum is dragging
who stops to ask for some of your silver

when starting your day in Manhattan
is as dark as the dark roast you clutch
in your Starbucks styrofoam cup,
the other hand in your pocket,

hiding the change from your latte,
and later you wonder what the hell for
when suddenly your lights go out
at your desk on the 45th floor.

This is dark, even chilling, in an understated way. Very strong imagery.

 

[greenmountaineer]

For What Shall It Profit a Man?

Maybe this is it after all:
not Monday morning's profit or loss,
rather you were a good camper
on a weekend in the forest,

dousing the fire before you left
your trash in a big plastic bag,
like the one the bum is dragging
who stops to ask for some of your silver

when starting your day in Manhattan
is as dark as the dark roast you clutch
in your Starbucks styrofoam cup,
the other hand in your pocket,

hiding the change from your latte,
and later you wonder what the hell for
when suddenly your lights go out
at your desk on the 45th floor.

This is dark, even chilling, in an understated way. Very strong imagery.

Thanks for taking the time to comment, Rosy. It is a bit dark. I had hoped the reader would see some effort at redemption, but I don't think the inference is strong enough, so I'll probably re-work it at some future time.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Peggyann and Popeye

"How do I love Thee? Let me count the ways"
I scribble by your bed. Soon after dawn
you used to change my diaper;
before lawn and garden work
or tennis on a Saturday
you counted little piggies;
Sunday's "Hey!
Wake up there, Sweetie,
while I pray a song"
and sang "You Are My Sunshine"
as my yawn became a smile,

but here tonight dismayed,
you rummage through the paper
for Dondi, Popeye, Life with Father
in the Sunday comics. Then you tell me
"Peggyann, I can't find Popeye.
I think he's dying."

To stop myself from crying
Monday morning an hour from dawn
I pick up Popeye from the floor
and read to you the comics.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Irish Reel

1887

On a Sunday, their one day of rest
from a factory of heddles and reeds,
red headed girls reel dance in the street
while clay pipe faces play craps
on sidewalks where, if you want to see trees,
you walk uptown to Central Park
or recall the few you've seen too much of
on Hart Island out in the Sound

by trenches that take in forty-eight each
unlike those in the hills of Kentucky,
next to a row of ramshackle houses
whose graves are two hundred cubic feet
underneath the cypress trees
and feel as deep as a mine that's caved in.

But forget about that. It's Sunday
when barefoot red headed Irish girls
pretend to clog on company porches,
the only wood they feel on their feet,
while coal face boys almost as black as
minstrels fingerpick catgut string,
and younger ones come to watch and listen
where faith and hope want to dance and sing.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Irish Reel

1887

On a Sunday, their one day of rest
from a factory of heddles and reeds,
red headed girls reel dance in the street
while clay pipe faces play craps
on sidewalks where, if you want to see trees,
you walk uptown to Central Park
or recall the few you've seen too much of
on Hart Island out in the Sound

by trenches that take in forty-eight each
unlike those in the hills of Kentucky,
next to a row of ramshackle houses
whose graves are two hundred cubic feet
underneath the cypress trees
and feel as deep as a mine that's caved in.

But forget about that. It's Sunday
when barefoot red headed Irish girls
pretend to clog on company porches,
the only wood they feel on their feet,
and coal face boys almost as black as
minstrels fingerpick catgut string
while younger ones come to watch and listen
where faith and hope want to dance and sing.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Georgie, Having Fallen From Grace

Jail was a skin head that didn't like won't
whose cock fight left a ghastly sight,
but with a dab of olive oil
as salve on two black eyes

in the jailhouse kitchen at 6:00 a.m.
Georgie made the pot and pans shine
before the bad boys lined up
for omelets their mothers never fried

because he once upon a time
wore the finest double-breasted
whites at "Le Cirque" among the seersucker
suits and taffeta dresses,

waiting in line for his signature,
known as "Eggs George Benedict,"
when the G's in George were as smooth as
two flutes of Dom Perignon.

“Two weeks dry," mission man said
at the closest thing to a home he had
where after a warm shower and shave,
and checking for lice on his head

Georgie will will wake up to pots and pans
music in his double-breasted
missing two buttons but those that remain
shine like his eyes at 6 a.m.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Alpha and Omega in America

I. Jimmy's New Home

A.D. 1907

You got to fly on the ferris wheel
to feel as if you could reach the stars
at Coney Island on a Saturday,
Katherine in the bucket seat beside you
while Mrs.Delaney waved from the boardwalk
before the train ride home to pick beetles
from Aunt Maeve's vegetable garden.

All the green in the vacant lot
came from what you shoveled
in Mr. Stone's barn the mayor wants
who has no interest in cabbage,
seen from the second floor bedroom window
you share with your cousin, Mikey,
who says he wants to go to college
because Father Murphy said he writes
a lot like William Butler Yeats.

And you thought, go ahead and say it,
"butler?"while up on the roof the streets
smell like mackerel after mass
where pennies for heaven go in a basket
to someday have a chicken
in every pot as Mother promised
when Da in his own way left one day
and went to the Promised Land.


II. WW I Book of the Dead

A.D. 1983

On a stone cold hilltop November night
in the year of our Lord and Katherine
beneath a natty blue patchwork quilt
Katherine saw the ghost of St. James.

"Eleanor said you were battlefield dead,
but here you are in all your splendor,
tapping your wing-tipped soul
to the sound of my metromoaning breath,
wanting to play billiards in Paris, no doubt,
with its dance hall yes I can can ladies."

Eleanor's entrance cat pauses silence
to empty another brass bed day
while dear sweet Katherine whispers good-bye
to stroll with James down the Champs Élysées.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Azadah Used to Live in the Bronx

Last summer she baked like a Hindu,
but the snow and ice in Paktikā
are as cold as the bullet casings
swept into cracks on the concrete

from the latest empty celebration,
though not as empty as Delaram was
who jumped head first in the Gomal
after she stripped her burqa off.

Baitullah just sat there, drinking his tea,
and swore "we'll kill them, Brother,
if God wills it," flicking a horsefly
that died on his pantaloons.

Entering-quote-the powder room,
Azadah says she's going to puke
just like Auntie Rizzo would say it
who made gelato for the neighborhood

last year on the Fourth of July
when she told her fireman son
"Anthony, open the fire hydrant
so the kids can put their swimsuits on!"

The best she can say of her burqua
is that it covers her feet
on the coldest day in Paktikā
as she squats where there isn't a seat.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Angelus

The bells announce it's nine am.
ó Briain prays the trash won't smell
and royal cohort dogs won't bite
an Irishman in Kensington

while scullery maids would like to pluck
the jewelry of High Anglicans
attending matins rather than
dead chickens for their coq au vin.

"Too meager pay for daily bread
of dustbin men," ó Briain says
at noon when bells ring once again.

He thinks about a sacred heart
beneath some burlap bags in bed
his naked Aoife* on whose bum
he could bounce a bob upon

and prays there has to be saint
when bells last ring at three p.m.,
a patron for all garbage men
to help O'Briain stay awake
when Aoife puts their Sean to bed.



*Pronunciation: ee-fa
A very old Irish name meaning ‘beautiful or radiant’. May be related to the English name Eve.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Inishmór

Just as her mother did before,
Mary on a quay in Inishmór
knits a sweater for Brian at dawn,
three days gone she's praying for

who never bothered to learn to swim,
nor did his father who fished before him,
"For in the deep, Lad, when there's a storm,
it's only the Lord keeps the sail trimmed."

Mary on a quay in Inishmór
sees a dead fish washed ashore
inside Kate Brennan's diamond stitch
who doesn't eat fish anymore

Mary will dicker with the tinker for
as much as she can of his stinging nettle
she'll drink as a tea while knitting a sweater
at dawn tomorrow in Inishmór.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Mikveh

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
Yet again Sysiphus slips.
Time is a heavy second hand clock.

It grows as if it's grass on a rock
in the mikveh where Sophie strips.
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.

Thinking of Zvi, she slips off her frock.
Her joy overflows; it drips.
Time is a heavy second hand clock.

"Yearning on my monthly widow's walk
is finally over," she quips.
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.

She dreams Zvi's at their door knock knock
with mellow red wine they'll sip.
Time is a heavy second hand clock

until again she takes off her frock
for Zvi's song of songs on her lips.
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
Time is a heavy second hand clock.