Totem & Teatime by Michele Lamberti

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TOTEM & TEATIME

I can no longer shop happily
–Lost in the supermarket, Strummer/Jones

1.
I trick the squirrel. My brother
and his girlfriend did the same.
On my knees, upon the concrete,
(like them besides the meadow),
I show him my left fist,
as if it isn´t empty,
but full of first-class Spanish nuts.
I know: he will not resist. The brown
blitz descends from a scots pine.
I open my fist
and it´s him.
Two spirits.
As I weigh his claws in my hand,
he sees exactly, that I have nothing.
Then he stares straight into my filthy face.
For a very long squirrel-time.

2.
Who am I to mess with
the ruler of this park?
Don´t you know: the white swan
is busy fighting naked children;
the big-headed black swan sells
dull feathers on a seedy TV show.
All the others do not count. Now:
Do you know who I am?

3.
That night,
naked in front of my mirror,
I wrote: “You shall not
eat a squirrel” on my chest
and loved the living
colour of each letter.

–Michele Lamberti

Naples, passer-by by Michele Lamberti

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NAPLES, PASSER-BY

But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm–T.S. Eliot, Whispers of Immortality

I..

Tribal music from a department-store,
ice cream children, prams and fathers.
On neck and forehead, some faint blue
water from a bronze, public fountain.
I will bear alone the red sirocco.

II..

The vesuvius (bitter about
his constipations), speaks:
“Ask the peasants of Nola and the goat
cheese in their charred, broken stomachs,
ask the grey-haired nobles of Pompei and
display their ruined, ash-filled skulls,
once cracked by their own cooked brains,
when hit by my frisky mighty outflow,
that arrived quickly at the shore and dripped
quietly into the reluctant, raging sea”
Look at him and take a pill

.III.

Amidships with the fishermen, the bouncing
fenders, tanned hands grasping, we stop & float
above a swarm of fishes, almost still,
frozen, then shivers, awakes and flees, like
quicksilver-tears fleeing
the heat of silly hands

IV.

The pigeons slip on wet patio stones.
We hide in the cream-coloured chapel
and your eyes turn black; single, puny
prayers, unable to argue with the waterfall,
running over thumb-thick ancient moss.

–Michele Lamberti

Lili Boulanger and See You Later, Pal by Hugh Fox

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Dear Stephen,

Let me send you my two most recent poems. I’m writing in French now, translating into English, having the French corrected by my Parisian son-in-law at MIT, taking advantage of having the guy as a son-in-law.

What I WISH you’d do is publish them in both versions.
Maybe need a little note about Lili Boulanger, something like”Lili Boulanger was an early twentieth century French composer who produced a large, mature body of work before her premature death at age 25.” See what you think.

–Hugh Fox

Dear Hugh,

Wish granted. I think it is formidable.

–Stephen Morse

LILI BOULANGER

Je suis dans un Paris de
reves d’eternite de beaute,
la riviere, les plus vieux batiments,
Le sacre Coeur qui saigne sur la ville
qui hier a mang’ les elephants
dans le parc zoologique,
les rois et les rebellions toutes
terminees, pas de pauvres et de riches,
ceux qui ont et ceux qui n’ont pas,
seulemente Les Louvres revees
restent, coupoles et toits,
colonees qui se souviennent
des grecs et des romains,
tout qui coule comme la Seine,
la precisement pourquoi
presque rien
disparait comme Lili,
a
vignt-cinq
ans.

–Hugh Fox

LILI BOULANGER

I’m in a Paris of dreams of
eternal beauty, the river,
the old buildings, the church of
the Sacred Heart that bleeds
over a city where yesterday
the revolutionaries
ate the elephants in the city zoo,
all the kings and revolutions over,
no more poor and rich, haves and
have-nots, only the dream Louvres
left, cupolas and roofs, columns that
remember the Greeks and Romans,
everything that flows like the Seine,
there precisely because almost nothing
disappears like Lili
at
twenty-five.

–Hugh Fox

BIENTOT, MON PETIT

Petit, soixante-dix ans,
Autrichien juif, ses premieres annees
a Auschwitz, mais sa famille (mystere)
y rechappant, autre mystere comment il est arrive’
au Michigan et s’est mari avec une Irlandaise convertie
au judaisme, toujours drole comme un petit
chimpanz, mais en meme temps toute l’histoire du
monde un millimetre sous la surface de son crane,
mort aujourdhui, je ne peux pas aller a l’enterrement
lundi pour voir une grand partie de moi-meme
enterr’e.

–Hugh Fox

SEE YOU LATER, PAL.

Tiny, seventy years old,
Austrian Jew, his first years
in Auschwitz, but his family (mystery)
escaped, another mystery how he got
to Michigan and married and Irish woman
converted to Judaism, always funny like
a little chimp, but at the same time the whole
history of the world one millimeter under the
surface of his skull, dead today, and I can’t
go to the buriel Monday to see a great part of
myself
buried.

–Hugh Fox

Conference of The Birds by Gene Fowler

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CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS

Find the rebirthing
love? – personal renaissance?

The only way
is to nudge into being
a whole damned Renaissance.

No other way.
All the hunting grounds
are used up, worked
out.

Inspired thoughts come.
The design for a hunting preserve.
Pull those I might wave
my Poet at, pull
‘em into a room.
Then wave it in long, slow
wavings, deep, encircling moves,
wreathes of voice and word, winds
from moving hands, lips, eyes.

Make it double barreled:

a conference, place
where secrets
are divulged.

A reading, a place
where egos, theirs, may unfurl.

Be subtle: not just women
invited. Everybody. Poets,
publishers, patrons, those tickled by
muses . . .

Then, slick down the heavy wool
on my bent leg, tune
my three note whistle.
Attend.

–Gene Fowler

Nothing Becomes Her As The Leaving by Douglas Holder

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NOTHING BECOMES HER AS THE LEAVING

It is not her place to stay.
It is her’s to exit–
When the fat lady
drops her last
sonorous note
it is then
when she leaves us
with only our applause
perhaps her scent
behind the empty
flapping of a scrim
the hollow swing
of a back stage door.
And this is
when she is most beautiful
when she is
no more.

–Douglas Holder

I will make a confession… by Barbara Hilal

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I WILL MAKE A CONFESSION…

Some time ago I went to a private club
with a girlfriend who was a member..
a male friend there had drank too much.

(He was married)
he had come alone;
she asked if he could stay
at my house..
well he was drunk so I let him
have my bed and slept what
hours were left on the sofa and then
saw he was shaking and frightened
when I got up for work

I had to call his friend to
come get him as he was
having palpatations
He didnt know me or
where he was.

He wasn’t an old man I think
he woke up
saw a skull sculpture on my bookcase,
a deck of Tarot cards and numerous
books on the occult and got a scare..I
used to read cards.

I was terrified at work ..
Of course that my fellow
workers would think he had the attack from
passionate lovemaking..
so I couldnt have the comfort of my peers.

I heard he never drank again.

–Barbara Hilal

Suicide by Barbara Hilal

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SUICIDE

A fetal form as yet unborn
vague and dark and gray
When I close my eyes and think of her
the phantom figures form
As if in my body she lodged
and waited for a brighter day.
She’s gone but lingers like a song
a ghostly spirit……… fey
Asleep, ethereal dreamless sleep
she waits a birthing time or place
A fetal form, as yet unborn
vague and dark and gray
As if in my body she lodged
and waited for a brighter day
Banishing fear and living aware
of love and joy and life
To be reborn without the scorn
she suffered along the way
They cannot die who were never alive
limping ,balking through their way
Aping desires and thoughts of the masses
seeing the world with an alien eye
A fetal form , as yet unborn
vague and dark and gray
As if in my body she lodged
and waited for a brighter day
Remembering when they they found her there
just ash and bone and teeth
A gasoline can and papers near
She killed herself, they say
Stillborn spirit, unborn soul
Her life story left untold
A fetal form as yet unborn
vague and dark and gray
As if in my body she lodged
and waited for a brighter day.

–Barbara Hilal

I ran into an old friend by Ben L. Hiatt

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I RAN INTO AN OLD FRIEND

I ran into an old friend
At the grocery store today

His beard is white now
The years heavy on him

But his grin was real
Behind his solid handshake
His happiness
At seeing me
Was evident

We leaned on our
carts
Two old men
remembering better days

“I live in another town now”
He said
“But I kept my bank account here
So on payday
I have to come here”

“This is why”
He said
“Because I run into old friends”

& we both slid into the past
letting the memories work

& he asked me about
a bartender
who has been dead
for five years
who worked in a bar
I have not entered for a decade

& when I set him straight
on that
it got really quiet
in that big grocery store

In the old days
I was often at his house
Always welcome
But he never came to mine

I paid cash
At the checkout

I didn’t see him
When I left

–Ben L. Hiatt