At last I have a window on the world,
A window for the window inside me.
Natural light carves out my living space
Like a white cat in a dim, familiar room.
My window is forest glass, silhouette glass,
A canvas of red leaves and deer in fog.
Every morning, a likeness changing reasons.
Every night, obsidian inlaid with moon motif.
At last I have a window on the world,
A window through which to see
The changes of inner space we try to hold
Blowing beyond the clarity of what is lost.
Last night my friend’s twin girls sang in my house, with my daughter on piano and two of her friends from orchestra on cello and violin. They were rehearsing for a wedding– everything from Bach to Bocelli. All I can say is what lovely music the guests will enjoy. All I can say is what a fine house we have built out of poetry, music and art.
Shuffling steps and sick cough
A heart murmur in the cards
Cards changing hands and faces
Palms on the table levitate hope
Fingers open empty hands
Letters to the dead never end
Shoe boxes and photo albums
And closets full of clothes
End of life affairs papers and chairs
An oxygen machine shuffles air
My deal your card this spade
This force my blood God’s clubs
Love at face value wins the hand
Count winnings count losses
Mix in the dust of names
Mix in the suits of lunar phases
Cut the deck and the sums
Have a probability density
Half the distance to the sun
Deal a magnetic north and go
Wild cards are the gift of the void
The white boats glide out beyond the reeds
Nudging the black boats of their shadows
For one moment of brilliance before it is night
Famous Poet
My first public reading with a famous poet was a disaster. I admired him. I was excited about the reading, but at the event he is aloof. He keeps his distance. When I’m introduced he moves to the far corner and stares out a window. He can’t be bothered. Since the university is hosting the famous poet, the professors follow his lead and look bored. For him they clap enthusiastically. After the reading I try to introduce my wife to the famous poet, but he creeps away without a word. We found that strangest of all. We joked that my poetry was so bad it made those around me look bad.
Bukowski
When we pick him up he’s already lit. He drinks beer after beer as we cruise down the coast. “Don’t throw up in my car,” I warn him. He says “take me wherever you Sicilian criminals are going,” so we laugh and end up at my cousin’s restaurant and social club. My friend helps Bukowski from the car. He stumbles and then lurches forward, almost falling. “Poon and tang. Poon and tang,” he chants like some private perverse mantra. Everything for this guy is about shit. We remind him to lower his voice; the regulars are not impressed. My cousin suggests the patio. I know I’ll hear about this later. Bukowski shouts for more “wop wine.” Paparazzi take photos. Someone at a nearby table says “what an asshole.”
I buy those scratch lotteries for my mother
They license the hope of prizewinning
Every next moment means cash for life
Every next moment doubles the bonus
Find three of the same and you’re saved
Uncover your symbol and win the jackpot
Scratch a gold crossword and find all the words
Under the sun live the same astrology
It doesn’t matter to me that I am in the hole
All the tickets in the world could run out
Before I’d let her gamble on hope alone
Booming so loudly you are startled,
A blast of air and then silence,
Wind followed by an image of wind:
The bittern rippling to a breathless wave,
Its head adrift in the drifting reeds…
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.
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…
Salvatore Ala 