Lion Heart, Eleventh Hour

I

Great Uncle Pinderhughes
lay in his great
clawed-foot bathtub
trusty Rosalita
kneeling on the
freshly pressed
bath mat
by his side

Grasping his
knee's crook
she struggled mightily
to wrench it uncrooked

With a loud pop:
it's release:
endorphin shot,
starting gun

Sent him careening back
a half-century;
memories:
oak pipe
turns Lucky Strike;
Peeling scalp
sprouts lion's mane

Rosa leaned close
to clean
the ear wax
normally caked
to his ear canal

But the sandalwood
jumping from
the pulse in her neck

was just enough
to restart
Great Uncle's
sagging heart

II

Knocking her hand away
He stood
and sloughed
wrinkled skin
from his shoulders

Rosa gasped
and
it took only that instant
before
withering
he crumpled
back to dirty suds

Deep pocks
marking cheeks
that just before
had been smooth
as a swaddled babe's
ass

Cast Wide for Third Eye

It’s got to be

real early

before cab brakes

whistle like clarinets

and the corner bum

snores Sam Cooke

The darkness

of these early hours

used to draw the eye downward

wary of cracked pavement,

looking for the sure step

but there’s less of that these days,

the sidewalk is smoother—

maybe not so many broken windows

I’m not sure it speaks to progress

because, well—

The school kids will soon start

their morning march

And I know for a fact

that their classrooms

are split still:

cleaved wide open

Hey, Ms. Johnson,

what do you have to say

to tri-lingual kids

who used to slalom

open manholes

in their strollers

like stock car racers?

I don’t know if this is progress,

or that we’re just more

eager to apply

lipsticks to pigs’ lips

Listen: can’t we just dispense

with cosmetics?

We’re a lot less eager

for the gastroenterologist,

optometrist;

stay away from the guts

don’t need to correct vision

where can I look for collective wisdom?

Workshop Result: Magnetic North (updated)

Magnetic North

All my books have missing pages
now fastened to the plaster,
or grafted onto my skin:
mile markers and compass needles both—
the snapped branch
that can put you on my trail
if you care to follow me
through the brush
and the thicket

Don’t worry:

I’ve cleared the thorn bushes,

laid planks across streams,

and built bridges over

roaring rivers

You’ll need to be running

at full bore
to leap frog

super-highways
that stretch serpentine—
mountains high,
valley's low

Pick your way through the decades,

I’ve a route mapped for you:

I know it intimately,

been there and back too many times!

Yeah, I'm living whole lifetimes over here

three or four at a go!

Even so,

when you tell me—sometimes—
that you'd like to take a look, sometime

I have to steady my breath

like it was my very first time

So I need you to hurry, just this once

and I don't care if it's only curiosity

that finally wins out.
I don't need to see your calculus:

You are here!

Unbutton my shirt and travel overland

the length of my spine—
Seine to Seville

Woodstock to these city streets

You are right here
and I bet you stay all night.

---

My good friend Megan S., herself a really engaging writer and phenomenal poet, offered a constructive critique. Here's some of what she sent:

[referring to the poem's beginning] ...the words link up and do something nice, but i feel like they need more anchoring.

...there [are] so many great phrases like "stretch serpentine" and "pick your way" even though i wish the pick your way part were more visceral. yeah, maybe that's it. the poem starts laying itself down like [particular] train tracks and then around the middle it seems to become these [other, though similar] train tracks you are aware of having imagined and you start going, well this is what else is in my head...and i just want more train tracks to lead to the calculus part which is for sure more steel and bolts. and the end is the last bang of that hammer, which is great, i love that couplet.

Do you think I addressed these concerns without fundamentally altering the original piece (posted below)? Also, any other perspectives out there? I would very much appreciate the commentary!
  

Workshop #1

Let me pitch an idea:

I need spaces where I can gather with other writers and glean some sound criticism of what I offer here. Propinquity of space is unnecessary; perhaps, internet anonymity will even facilitate more honesty. What do you all think?*

I wrote this on the train today. It has a way to go, but I'm pleased with the start.

Magnetic North

All my books have missing pages
now fastened to the plaster,
or grafted onto my skin:
mile markers and compass need both--
the snapped branch
that can put you on my trail
 if you care to follow
through the brush
and the thicket

Leap frog super-highways
that stretch serpentine--
mountains high,
valley's low;

pick your way through the decades,
yeah, I'm living whole lifetimes over here
three or four at a go!

You tell me--sometimes--
that you'd like to take a look,
sometime.

But I don't care if it's only curiosity
I don't need to see your calculus:

You are here:
unbutton my shirt and travel overland,
the length of my spine
Seine to Seville

You are right here
and I bet you stay all night.

*[note: I am fully aware there are very few of "you" at out present juncture. That's okay; I'm coming for you.]

Brooklyn Dervish

 Around and around, a thousand revolutions

             Around and around, with ever increasing speed

                        Around and around, won't you join her?

                                   Around and around, all through the night

This night--
I saw a woman spinning
on the street corner
like a Brooklyn dervish,
holey sneakers
smoothing the concrete,
kicking up gravel
and old candy wrappers                                        

This, the story
of her life:
ecstatic visions
born of mean streets,
muttering mantras
that will likely go
unheard & unheeded—
always have been
why expect
different this evening?                                       

I try to listen,
I want to see
what I might learn
but quickly find
I lack the vocabulary;

my palms
are too soft--
my shirt cuffs
unfrayed                                       

I have nothing to offer
but cold change
culled from couch cushions

I wouldn’t dare interrupt.

There and Back Again

Did a Hoboken stumble
as pretext to see family,
wanted to exchange secrets;
we bartered,
and tried to puzzle out a generation's
skeletons and revelations
through crowds of teens
being cited by the badge--
Just look at 'em strut and preen!


Back across the water
I want to forget the others
Want to pull a splinter from my own eye
So I:
Knocked twice, again, once more
Had to see friends
with whom revolution is a given,
where the question is not "why"
but "how?"


And even they tell me
that nagging melancholy is best forgotten
I say: "Sorry, if I need help, 3/2 time is my psychotherapy."


But they might be right,
and later tonight
I'll take
Brooklyn high-life
under my knife--
Blunted.
Night-time boomline
has my eyes wet with moonshine


Dance a little.


Meet Stacey,
who took my lips
and told me she was married
in the same breath!


And in the night-time
she looked mighty fine
but daytime sunshine
showed me her years
and her tears:
fine wrinkles at eyelid's crease
looking for some one
so she could speak her piece


Still I wondered
why she was here
why she choked talking 9-5
and kept smoothing out her skirt
and squirming in her skin


Then, my answer:


Jersey girl
with lipstick
an inch thick
grabbed a great handful
of nappy dreads
and said:


              "Oh my God. Your hair is just too pretty!"

I say:
              "Just when the fuck did white folks decide that shit
                was okay?"
Anyway,
It's 8:30 am
Sunlight pouring in
on me--last man standing, come undone
Parted ways with the fray
got lost in Israel as only Brooklyn does it


Tried to find some cigarettes
but people
"Don't smoke here! A very good thing!"
Exclaimed the store manager to me
as I pressed him
on where I could find some smokes


Asked for some
water, aspirin
to beat away the billy club
battering my brain


He forced a grin
Asked me,
told me,
you haven't slept yet my friend.

Today's Prophets?

Where are those unwitting,
who see angels in the furrows of waking life?

Are they quiet and pious
and simply adorned?

Are they tempered by their vision?

See,
I imagine them distant:
glowering on mountain top
or drawing shallow breath
standing filthy in the city street
shouting themselves hoarse--
ragged and unkempt

Forget the angels!
They're only wispy apparitions,
more memory than mediator:
Gabriel's no magpie,
not anymore

Otherwise, you wouldn't
see a people paralyzed 
by somber account of heavenly whim,
leather bound and prim,
looming from bed side and mantel top

No more words!
let's see some action!

I'll start worrying about the horsemen
after I can feed my family