If you Fool with April 2.0
April 2020- Additional new work pending –
Christ Climbed Down
For Lawrence Ferlinghetti 1958
A Crucified Christ
Hidden in the cellar
Behind the oil burner
For 57 years-
He might have remained back there
Indefinitely if not
For the oil tank that sprung a leak
And needed replacement.
Like a mummy he was wrapped
In swaddling ancient newspaper
The N.Y Times from February 23 1958
Sunday edition
Mostly in the sports and fashion section
Including the race results from Hialeah
Surprisingly he was heavier than you’d think
Even sans cross-
As I gingerly carried him up the steep cold war stairs
From the cellar and propped him up against a tree
In the backyard in the shade of a late Sunday august afternoon.
He hadn’t been out since the Winter of 1958
Moved from the apartment over Van’s Hardware
Next to the shipyard.
To 12 Sutton Place
He was molded sculptured out of plaster of Paris
Slim limbs w/ the Pax Fish symbol in his arms
And legs like holy tattoos
The nail holes in the center of both his outstretched
Hands and crossed feet for mounting and hanging
I sat in a lawn chair regarding my father’s creation
And contemplated blasphemy by wondering if
I should offer him a beer-
After all I was having one.
And it’s time to come down off the cross boss
your last supper is getting cold
I don’t have any wine unfortunately
So Christ-
Have a beer
Uncollected 8/2019
Advice for Aspiring Alcoholics
Listen
if after beer number three
you don’t feel
at least mildly optimistic ?
And after number dozen
you’re sobbing in your pillow-
Quit.
Collected circa 2014
*
Why is April the Cruelest Month ?
Hard to put a handle
on this label.
So I asked my students
who originally wrote
this line.
They “peered” up at me
with such a deep bewilderment.
All except for that one girl who sits off on the left hand side of the room
who rolled her eyes and let out a sigh while huffing indignantly ,
“I don’t even see what that’s even supposed to mean.”
I guess now wasn’t the time to introduce the line,
“I see myself dead in the rain”
Maybe it was the bookend of chilled dawn memory
sandwiched between the evening dusk desire frost.
Sniffing the smell of the shit hitting fan
tends to make you a “little thirsty”
by the end of the day.
OK.
How about
“a lot….. of “little thirsty”
Perhaps it is the terrible now taking hold
like one real “stick it to um” bastard of planet
The distance of the years gone by realized numb
is a growing, gnawing squeezing in your chest.
But really it’s that stranger’s hand in your pocket
You know that one you discover
upon putting your own in there
to fish something out.
And it looks like somebody already beat you too it
In some other April
where somebody else’s memory
picked that pocket clean
of all you ever desired. Collected 4/2004
*
One for ears from Mr. Cedric- Stop him if you’ve heard this one
*
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