Month: May 2015

Peyote

/ Salvatore Ala / Leave a comment

On peyote you cross the Devil’s Highway
To the mystical oasis of Quito Baquito,
Where the roots of cottonwood, mistletoe and tule
Tug at the springs of the chemical desert.

Before the colors of night blaze like the colors of day
You hear the drums of the sun’s rising—
The spirit voices in desert winds,
The desert winds in spirit voices.

Your senses are the things they perceive.
Like a desert you are everything around you.
In the arid spaces of saguaro, mesquite and Joshua tree,
You are pierced by the plumed arrow of peyote.

Bambocciade

/ Salvatore Ala / Leave a comment

for Joe Cote 1931-1994

He burned down his brown leather arm chair
Where he was the smoker of fat cigars, strumming a blue guitar.
When Joe was king, a shrine of fulgent bottles
Were voodoo candelabra, the drinker’s dawn shrine.
He slept drunk, woke thirsty, visited each bottle
For the dregs, spirit of Labrusca, vint of wild forest morning,
Inebriate of the word, celebrating the spirant rhyme.

When Joe was standing he was falling,
Tottering , atilt, between balance and ambulation,
Between articulation and gibberish,
Falling amid improprieties of diction and dance,
Reeling when he came down hard,
Disgusted by some too sober bard.

Chaos was his maid and muse, books were strewn,
Words lost in the rug, his bottle library
For the lonely voyages of the reader, weeks on end
His drunken boat, his liturgy, his spring, verb sap…

Alleged Grandfather

/ Salvatore Ala / Leave a comment

All we know about our grandfather,
He may or may not have been in Detroit
Some time during The Great Depression
And that he might have been called Harry.
It’s purported he liked to play the horses.
It is alleged police alleged he did favors
For someone who did favors
For someone who did favors for Black Bill.
My grandfather may or may not have heard
Duke Ellington at the Paradise Theater.
He may or may not have met Joe Misery
Or shook the hand of Charles Lucky…
All we can say about our grandfather,
He was suspected on the grounds
Suspicion incriminates presumption.
All we can say about our grandfather,
He survived among thieves—it is alleged.

Intrinsic Worth

/ Salvatore Ala / Leave a comment

A poem is unsalable.
It can’t perform a single task.
Don’t ask it to tell a story
It will lead you on an odyssey.
Don’t ask it to light a fire,
It might just start an inferno.
Don’t ask it to build a birdhouse,
It’ll sing like the head of a nail.
Don’t ask it to seal a sundeck,
It would rather rot in the rain
And leap from the sun.

The Idea of Ancestry

/ Salvatore Ala / 1 Comment

Everything changes in Iceland,
Sons walk into the valley of their bones,
Daughters reappear from the hidden land
Wearing necklaces of rain,
Wives run off with giant Icelanders
Who are the world’s strongest men.
You wake in some living dream,
See ghosts in abandoned farmhouses,
See your hair fall, forget place of birth,
Pour over Icelandic atlases
For maps of energy and remote names
That seem familiar from another life.
One more endless night of light.
One more axe blow cracks the ice.
How is it you find yourself
On a Viking ship? Why is it burning?
Who were you? Where are you going?

Paradox

/ Salvatore Ala / 1 Comment

Having known this dock since childhood
I know the first section is nearly infinite;
Fish after fish after star were born there
And my shadow grew out over the water.
I know the second section is truly infinite
Because we fished in the eye of the sun.
I know the oldest, infinitely infinite section,
Mid dock after the second oldest
Broke free in a storm and was re-attached,
Was like fishing in another dimension,
Existing between two places that can’t exist.

Your Move

/ Salvatore Ala / Leave a comment

At a party a disgruntled poet lashed out at me. A month earlier he asked me to read his voluminous collection of chess poems. All chess poems. I was polite. I praised. I suggested he start sharing his poems, self-publish, get them out there– sharing your poems is a good way of growing as an artist. That didn’t prove to be praise enough. At the party he went on the attack. “And what do you do? Share poems with crazy people on Facebook!” I had never thought of my friends as such. Maybe I was crazy. I looked at him and thought— “how crazy are you.”   

Love in the Catacombs

/ Salvatore Ala / Leave a comment

Alone with her among mummies
Pegged to walls in period clothes,
Gruesome as their living counterparts
Must have seemed to lovers then,
Soon enough each other we touch,
Among skull and bone mosaics
And friars spying round corners
With devils riding their backs,
We nick a moment of passion
From damned eternity in this crypt.
At the start of voices we must stop.
At the possibility of prosecution
We heed a prudency of practical sense.
The monks can have memento mori,
Their truth has vulgar demands.
We climb out of the underworld
And wash our feet in an ancient river,
Forgetting darkness and silence
For the light and traffic of life,
For our bed and room
With its wide windows on the sea.
When we wake we discover
Love shining into darkness like the sun.

Santa Rosalia

/ Salvatore Ala / 1 Comment

Monte Pellegrino in sea fog.
The streets of the city in shrouds.
Fierce grief and black wings
From hidden balconies.

Santa Rosalia! Santuzza!

A village girl has died!
Santa Rosalia! A girl like you!
She dreamt of black grapes.
She heard the howl of a sick dog.

Santa Rosalia! Santuzza!

Giuseppina has died!
They are washing her feet.
She wears a coral necklace
And a red ribbon in her hair.

Santa Rosalia! Santuzza!

The guests are throwing corn
And carrying trays of food.
Giuseppina! Who is waiting
For you in the casa nuova?
Candles by the bed,
Serenading from the street.

Santa Rosalia! Santuzza!

The almonds are bitter
In the mouth of the groom.
He heard the bell and the clock
Of the church chime together
And a voice whispered: “It is she.”

Santa Rosalia! Santuzza!

The groom has gone to the mountains
With a torch of orange blossoms.
He cannot mourn.
He has gone to the mountain.

Santa Rosalia! Santuzza!

The mother of the bride
Is tearing out her hair.
Giuseppina is sleeping.
They have fed her honey
But she will not awaken.
They have brought her lilies;
She will not awaken.

Santa Rosalia! Santuzza!
A girl from the village has died!