November Overcame Novocaine 3.0

November 2014-    These Beats just punched your Wolf Ticket-  Need to leave these Samples of work from our quests in Western NY @ BJs Fredonia NY last Saturday 11/15 up here for awhile longer. What do you say when poets leave the room speechless ?

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Phillip Giambri

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Johnny Cashback

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George Wallace

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Vincent Quatroche

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All Souls Day
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November shrugged at the time the masks slipped
Stripped away in the face of high wind warnings as if in this season begged advisements cautions

Still mild that morning fooling few to believe
That this day would pass swaddled in gray soft gauze
While the light diffused diminishing increments

Was that encroaching mist unraveling like a ball of yarn
To cascade down a slope of cotton
Falling needle pinpoints liquefied

There was this puncturing of scattered shallow puddles
Reverberating in sound wave concrete circles
Auditory auditions sharpening a deaf set of eyes

In these stains of ink
Lurk faceless memories I think
Past Persona gone non-grata

November shrugged at the time the masks slipped away
To reveal the naked face of high wind awnings
As if this season begged advisement cautions

Stripped away now in alibis and warnings

Uncollected 11/13.

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One Night in York

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A few years back there was
this tough old heavy set
Amtrak cop who found himself
in a snotty literary in-bred
coffee house in the middle
of nowhere one November
Saturday night.

The cop liked to write
about some of the things he
had seen in his life and had
a few of his books with him
and put them on a table
in the back of the room for sale.

Some scrawny weathered looking
stranger approached him and asked if
he could put some of his poetry
on the table and share the space.

Cop eyed him warily.
Shrugged.
Sure.
Why not.

During the reading he turned
to this woman next to him
while the guy was up in front of the room
and remarked,

He’s pretty funny isn’t he?

And she smiled back at him in a raven whisper.

Outside that mild Fall night
leaves descended like midnight feathers
in the street lamp shrouded avenue.

Later he looked out the big glass window
and saw the guy who was reading before
and the woman he had spoken to.

They stood inches apart
smoking face to face
in embrace
cascading leaves tucking themselves
into the folds of their garments.

And he thought what music are those two hearing?

Certainly some composition
secret and profane
a very, very old song.
They looked like they belonged
in each others arms
and been there
for a very long time.

There was this autumn
midnight halo surrounding
them standing on the sidewalk.

Nothing or anyone else out there
touched the stranger and that
woman in his arms.

Now the tough old Amtrak cop
had seen enough wrong combinations
in his line of work.

Observation
in his line of work
was what it was all about.

What looked right.
What didn’t fit.

Nobody could appear to be so happy
with each other.
Something didn’t add up here.
These two just appear
out of the thin night air
and hover out there
like apparitions
unashamedly
publicly
in love.

And they weren’t kids either.
They both looked like
they had both been around
but not from here
and not always with each other….
either…

That’s the part that puzzled him somewhat.
And he shaking his head and despite
himself allowing slight grin thought,
“I just know there
is one hell of a train wreck
in somewhere in there…

But as for that moment of impact
between them right now was
a slow motion derailment
a bum in the yards
with a hard luck story
a glimmer of moon
on the silent empty rails
teenagers drinking
wine in a box car
A lost drunk
praying for salvation and ten bucks
a row of green eyed
open yard signals
while on a siding
a yard goat pulled
a long heavy freight
somewhere else
wordlessly.

The old tough Amtrak cop
had witnessed endless
arresting images
of lost souls in
the 2 AM limbo of the switch yard.

But these two ?

All he could do right now
was file it under advisement
and figure they probably
would turn up again
somehow in his life
as in the distance
a long lost Diesel Horn spoke
telling him there was a story there.

-Sometimes Grief 2012

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Maybe Some Novocain?

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Chock Full of Nuts
is no longer
a heavenly anything
anymore
Transparent as black coffee
understood at last;
He was now merely
half a pound of chopped chuck
handed over by Bruno Kisski
Who spoke fluent tracheotomy
to an over the counter fool
wrapped in stiff white common paper
with the price
penciled in on the top.

All I had to do back then was pocket the change
and deliver it back around the corner.
Once it ticked upon your face
and the sound escaped upon your ears.
The price
The time.
All that you never conceive being true
Merely justify the overhead
and defined the bottom line.

So now you try to force the black hands forward
Faster than they are supposed to go.
While a single slim red finger
that sweeps so sure and fine
that seconds soundlessly slide
in an inkling of eviscerated hope

The movement imperceptible impression
toward an inevitable destination.
Maybe some
Novocain in November
Maybe not.

This would then plug your ears
To hear any further
Than just you what
You didn’t want to hear
To believe this;
the texture in this request
to embrace the selfish din
and when put to the question
to the naked test,
“Where is it have I been?”

Smile and nod and start with, “Listen….”

I would pull the fingers from deep your ears
and lick the wax
that accumulated in there
to harden, numb and deafen

Next I whisper now,
“Watch”
You just watch
Then tune the tongue out
in time to match
the mute with the deaf
over a bottomless cup of
freshly brewed
numbness.

– Sometimes Grief 2012