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

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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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