UNINTENTIONAL LACK OF COMPOSURE
As all the Heavens were a Bell…
Emily Dickinson
340
Alzheimer’s Disease
there was a dent in my father’s head
placed there in some forgotten life
maybe even worse than Emily’s terror
bleaker than her
parade of mourners
my mother on the other hand
crawled inside
the bittersweet security
of “insanity”
litany —
here is the tear that hangs inside us forever
here is the love supreme of fall leaves
here the trusted lust for summer
imbedded in the brittle artifacts of childhood
here the broken signs that made you call out
“I am home!
I must be so fortunate!”
of course, there was grief
the chief artificer of loneliness
dark length of solitude
self-inflicted sanctity
sacrament of the Eucharist-
reviver of creativity
foggy mystic trickster
driving a pre-owned blue Cadillac
his compilation of denominations
secured with a rubber band
and tossed on the passenger’s seat
strung across the bell of the universe
churches lurch for your throat
your lungs fill with leaves
your mind all busted up
is flung over there
by the curb somewhere
what can I tell you?
that’s just how it goes.
THE SAD MAGICIAN
-for Philip Bannock
1
With empty sleeves
and no extravagant top hat
you slip into the bottle.
Inside there is a
ship with two bows
riddled with holes.
A dark storm screeches
around you
filling you with green water.
2
Yellow light
turns up the corners
of your mouth
in a ghastly grin.
That is certainly not
why children run to you.
Secondhand stars
settle in your eyes,
enough glow left
to illuminate a dark, thin
path unfurling before you.
3
A narrow crack ripples
down the length of your bottle
wide enough
for one of your wings
to escape and flutter.
The rest of you
curls up inside –
a dark flame
crying from your
onion-skin tongue.
4
You peer down the tunnel
of your ear
only to discover
that you’ve been sleeping
in a casket-
or so it seems-
it could also be
entirely fabricated.
Your hair is turning to leaves.
_
Imitating an infant thrown to the floor
you explain
that you’ve been balanced on one toe
all night.
The children are puzzled
when the neighbors
give you an ovation.
Crisp locks of hair
drift to the floor.
_
6
Your father is broken.
He speaks to you through his silence.
_
7
Clutching your model
of the Titanic
you exit the room
speaking a foreign language.
I see you in the morning –
a tiny globe in one hand
and nothing in the other
You tell me the empty hand
is paralyzed
Its finger uncurl
and the skin falls away
like sand in the wind
searching for the ocean.
–
8
Your bones only appear to be smiling.
–
9
The globe is a tear.
WAITING ON NATURE-
WHICH TAKES ITS SWEET TIME
(For Michelle Messina Reale)
All the goods are stolen, all the blisters are in the cup.
-“Milk” by Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
We are all born mad. Some remain so.
-“Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett (1953)
the maps of the holy land in full color made as easy to follow as tree branches poor black and white jokes bog tree all the same someone give credit for the rake of sun forcing its way let’s hang ourselves a fine jamboree here there’s not enough room that sound snapping branches someone calling out in pain! I told you was there something you were searching to know are they opposites or essential either way let’s return we’ll put our bags down here and then…you’ve interrupted me now I’ve misplaced my train we’ll bag our thoughts here under these branches quickly night is stampeding the way it does we should turn with great resolution and face nature insidious crab-apple see the tree see tree tree the tree yesterday’s absence of hillsides and valleys and scenery help me! which I had hoped to say why worry have you been robbed he hid in the tree with your boot you’re ridiculous as foolish as a brightly flavored eggplant calisthenics make one bottom heavy then you grasp all over the sky low to high taking a room that is not yours shouldn’t be yours yes yes fine is yours my inability to see does that to me what is the time give or take no no allow me to guess it is exactly the time to do nothing just like HIM ahhhhhh no leaves not a single one everyone leaves quick get the bags look inside yes now I’m going to go a great distance only to return on the morrow stop that! this is no time for travesty
THE PROBLEM WITH BOTTLE CLUBS
bones are crawling against the wind
into and through the sky’s
dark cavern-storm
created for creatures
with a lust for tiny dim spaces –
they will only relinquish to you
the illusion that they have
inhabited your benevolence
and that you have gained
a “friend”
-a 33 and a third punk
who runs his lip at 78–
true – you getting’ old –
but you still know how to roll-
remain alert and confident-
-give off the vibe
that ain’t nobody can fuck with you-
also be very wary
catastrophizing about
the prospect of bouncing –
remain static remember that
stand in the stark light
of this derelict peeler club
and don’t move – feel me?
the air smells like beer from some other century
dead cigarettes
land that smells of pernicious humans-
but only vaguely like a hot summer night
twilit and tawdry
your eyes have become
the texture of glass
the glass of a dreamed-through window
that’s it-
that’s just the way it is –
things fall apart
up in this ginmill-
-like us
I dream persistently
of holding the world gently
in my upturned palms
and imagining it’s a butterfly
that lifts off into the black night
when I push my palms upward just a little
then I stand there and watch
until I can’t see it anymore
I’ve always thought this way-
and it’s gotten me into
more than enough jams
when I get outside
I’m alone
there’s an old Caddy
parked by the curb
it’s back door
is being held open by Griff
the radio is scorching
and I am blind
and pretty sure I’m lost
Griff says, Hop in, Johnnie Boy.
APOSTROPHE
Wandering…
is a chance destination of the heart’s rugged topography
whose season is all too brief.
–Pathways
–David K. Leff – April 9, 1955 – May 29, 2022
An elegy for a dear friend.
Flocks of the grief-addled tied up the phones;
email inboxes congested with grief.
One cannot ease the mourning of these souls;
a scrim of tears cannot deter this thief.
Keats might remind us of life’s contraries,
tell us, Speak to the dead as if they’re here.
David would speak of the light – it varies.
We navigate moiling darkness this year.
I wondered as I wrote, what good prayer is.
I blessed myself, bowed my head to inquire.
🙚
Time disperses; the echoes from Walden
travel deep, the depth of field more precise.
I’ve only known one man who’d feel walled in
with one gazeteer; only three suffice –
alphabetical, encyclopedic,
and dictionary; this is where regions
like campanile sound out, aesthetic,
countries calling mirrored selves in legions,
David in the midst, at times hermetic,
in the breach that surges between seasons.
🙚
At other times he’d just appear, like love,
like the time I did a reading, never
imagining that, for his friend, he’d come
so far – but David’s mates were forever.
I looked up from the podium and there
he was; we smiled, the heart’s submission
stowing away that brief glance like a prayer,
brothers born in a bright supplication,
stitching together water, earth and air –
David lived with this as his foundation.
🙚
Rain on my pre-dawn window like stuck stars,
the only light this fall morning; I swear
they emit tiny, imagined fires,
‘til the real heat rises and clears the air.
Just one terra nexus amid them all,
wonders of nature right before our eyes.
Gorgeous – places used hard – beyond the pall;
flotsam, jetsam – rust tractor, profound prize,
swaddled in bittersweet’s copious sprawl;
the forest-claimed Dodge – in deep woods it lies.
🙚
Winter encroaches, and David would speak
of skeletal limbs that arc in darkness;
against the backdrop of the sky they creak
in freezing wind; he smiles at the sharpness.
Let’s join together and embrace our gifts.
Instead of Good-bye, Whitman loved, So-long!
So let’s say So-long! into autumn’s mist,
and seek paths hidden in plain view like songs.
Two red-tails above the canopy drift,
flying a trail for you to follow along.
John L. Stanizzi’s books are Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After The Bell, Hallelujah Time!, HighTide-Ebb Tide, Four Bits, Chants, Sundowning, POND, The Tree That Lights The Way Home, and Feathers and Bones. His new book, Viper Brain, will be out in the fall.
Besides Ovunque Siamo, John’s poetry has appeared in American Life in Poetry, New York Quarterly, Tar River, Paterson Review, The Cortland Review, and others. His work has been translated into Italian and appears widely in Italy.
His nonfiction has been published in Literature and Belief, Ovunque Siamo, Potato Soup Journal, and others. His story, “Pants,” was chosen by Potato Soup Journal as the best of 2021. His memoir, Bless Me, Father, For I Have Sinned, has a release date TBD. A former Wesleyan University Etherington Scholar, an adjunct Professor of English for 26 years, a former New England Poet of the Year, and in 2021, he received a grant in Creative Writing-Non-Fiction from the State of Connecticut Commission on Arts and Culture.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 