Short Poems, Long Poems

Back in the last decade Eric Marciano, Stephen Facedroph, and I sat in Eric's basement East Village apartment, drinking and snorting blow. HIs wife and children were up in New England. Safe passing midnight we decided to read short poems.

Eric read O Hara's THE DAY THE LADY DIED

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days

I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

I thought it long and went for Hart Crane's At Melville's Tomb

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death’s bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent wound in corridors of shells.

Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars.

Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive
No farther tides ... High in the azure steeps
Monody shall not wake the mariner.
This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

I hd not idea what a calyx meant. I asked myself. A guess. In context. A basket.

Steven the thespian went long with TS Eliot THE LOVESONG OF J ALFRED PRUFROCK. He began with the second stanza. English instead of the opening Italian. I have always been inpressed by his memory.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

On and on and one ad finitum

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

It was an impressive performance.

Drinks all around and more blow of course.

Until my landlord calls screaming that the furnace is broken and get back to the building.

Buzzkill.

ps Frank O'Hara died after a beach buggy stuck him on a Fire Island beach, Hart Crane jumped or was thrown over board in the Gulf of Mexico from the USS Orizaba April 27, 1932, and TS Eliot passed peacefully short of breath at his home in Kensington in London, on 4 January 1965.

"In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning."

Short or long and in-between poetry knows no time. - James Steele

Almost a haiku

Alex
Young
Beautiful
I ask
Do I smell old
Sniff
No
She has a cold___

ps - calyx - the sepals of a flower, typically forming a whorl that encloses the petals and forms a protective layer around a flower in bud.

Mango Season for Yai

Throughout the first decade of this century I lived in Pattaya in a lovely house off Soi Bong Koch. The neighborhood had once been a mango farm. The last tree rose survived my front yard. Nothing grew beneath the tree. The sap killed grass and any flowers, yet during the hot season February to April hundreds of mangos sprouted from the branches. My neighbors admired the small green fruit, as they grew into maturity. My wife and daughter harvested the early ones. Tart and hard perfect sliced and smeared with chili sauce. Perfect for Sum Tam salad, the famed spicy green mango salad belover by Thai women.

Every evening an older elephant or chang from the nearby elephant tourist park lumbered down the soi to enjoy the night air. , His mahout sold sugar cane to feed the neighborhood. My wife and daughter stood in the yard behind the fence. They were rightfully scared of changs. In the late 1950s I had ridden atop an elephant at Simpson’s Animal Park in York, Maine. I had been probably the same age was my daughter, Angie, and just as small. I still recalled the smell; dusty. I later learned that the elephants have no sweat glands and cover their cracked skin with dirt or mud to protect their flesh from the heat and sun.

The massive male chang was over sixty years old. Yai eyed the mangos. The mahout gently restrained his snout from snagging at the fruit. He surrendered without resistance, as if there was a reason he hadn’t ravage the fruit. I lifted a bag of mangos for Yai as reward. He stared in my eyes, squinted, then allowed me to feed him by hand the mangoes one by one. When done he extended his trunk as a friendly gesture and I held it with both hands, feeling the strength and his gratitude. He smiled his thanks and the mahout tugged on his ear. Yai silently shambled down to Soi Bong Koch. I realized elephants for all their size were extremely quiet as long as they had a clear path. I smiled, thinking I had a new friend.

The next morning I went to the tree, intending to pick off mangos from the higher branches for Yai.

Climbing trees isn’t advisable for men in their fifties, but I easily scaled the tree. My wife came out and shouted something about red ants. I looked around and saw there were thousands of them living off the sap. Hundreds were on my skin. The second I saw them they bit in unison. I dropped from the tree and wheeled crazily in the driveway, swiping off the ants and realized why Yai hadn’t attempted to seize the mangos off the branches.

“Mot daeng,” my wife laughed. Thais love seeing farangs or westerners do something stupid.

Red ants indeed. I never climbed the tree again.

Throughout that hot season and those to come Yai turned up every year and every day along with my neighbors to feast on the sweet ripened fruits. The tree produced mangos much sweeter than offered at the ta-lat or market on Pattaya Klang. Yai always wore a smile for me and scared the shit out of Angie every time he embraced me with his trunk.

Sadly I moved away from that house off Soi Bongkot in 2008. My business selling bootleg F1.shopping.net clothing has been closed by the Thai Cyber-Police. I returned to New York to earn money. Enough to take care of both my expanding family. Three to four times a year I returned to Thailand to spend time with my clan who lived in Chai-Nat and Sri Racha.

During these visits I traveled to Pattaya for a night or two at the Last Babylon on Earth. Drinking with friends at the Buffalo Bar and wandering Walking Street drinking more. One night I walked along Beach Road with Sam Royalle, my friend from London days and a refugee from a Rasta Brixton yardie gang. He loved go-go bars. I loved drinking. He was English and loved drinking too.

We weaved though Walking Street packed with farangs, Thais, Chinese, Indians, every nationalities on Earth, then the crowd parted and everyone looked over my head. Sam and I turned expecting the Brixton Yardies. Yai stood behind us. A smile on his face. I shone one too. I hugged his trunk and he hugged me. I laughed with joy. The mahout too. Released I bought two watermelons from a fruit stand. They weren’t mangos, but Yai happily popped them in his mouth. We strolled down the street together to the Tuna Bar. Yai and I bid farewell. I handed the mahout five hundred baht.

“Chai yo.” I shouted and Yai bellowed his answer.

Loudly.

I haven’t seen him again, but maybe this hot season in 2026.

After all elephants live a long time and so do I.

Tanked Tiger

Tigers are native to Asia. Deforestation and farming have diminished their hunting grounds. Indonesia boasts some 400 tigers on Sumatra and Russia’s Siberian tigers are estimated to number over 300. The feline predator hasn’t so lucky in other lands. Cambodia is down to thirty with poachers.

Thailand’s tiger population has been bolstered by the Tiger Zoo in Sri Racha, although this small reserve has allegedly sold animal parts to the Chinese, who are mad for the medicinal properties of the great cat’s bones and organs. Most notably as bone wine or tiger penis parts to improve sexual performance. Their lives in captivity are a pale shadow of their existence in the jungles. Experts have estimated that 250-300 tigers live in the wild forests of Thailand.

My wife and daughter Angie lives in Thailand on the edge of the Western Forest. At night the old men drink lao whiskey around a fire. The women watch Thai soap operas. We tell stories. I asked, if any of them had seen a tiger. They pointed to the distant mountains on the Burma border.

“Tigers gone here. Mountain have tiger.” My fifty-year old brother-in-law had hunted for mushrooms in the jungles in the last century.

“You see one?”

“No one see tiger. Tiger see man. Eat man.” Noy shivered with fear. The only paths in the jungle are those made by wild elephants and no trails lead to the top of mountains.

“I hear tiger once. In Indonesia.” I had been staying in a small village on the West Coast south of Banda Aceh. “I heard a roar.”

I mimicked the low echoing growl.

The pi dogs in the yard started barking with alarm.

My daughter ran into the house.

“Good tiger.” My brother-in-law loved my act.

“The tiger scared me too and it was loud. I heard it in my bones.”

“Tiger big spirit.”

“The people in the village were frightened white. They wore masks on the back of their heads.”

“Tiger like to attack from behind.”

“Same as people.”

“Not same Thai.”

“That’s because you smile before a fight.”

“Land of Smiles. Chai yo”

We downed the rice whiskey. It burned our throats. The dogs stopped barking and the insects resumed their buzzing. The only growl was my stomach grumbling from the bootleg liquor. It was much more dangerous than a tiger. The Big Cats only ate your body. Lao Khao ate your soul.

The foto is from Noong Mooch Gardens in Pattaya. The tiger is drugged with morphine. He only gets angry when he’s waiting for his man.

Same as any junkie.

Wicasset Ghost Ships

The old bridge at Wiscassett spanned the Sheepscot River for decades and I loved the hum of tires over the narrow steel girder bridge. A new bridge replaced the old in 1983. New. No charm. Wicasset's primary attractions were its Maine coastal charms and the pair of rotting hulks wallowing in the mud flats. The state of ruin of the Hesper and Luther Little bespoke shipwreck to my boyish mind. These two timber schooners once transported pine trees from Maine to the world along with hundreds of other wind-powered Casco Bay schooners.

The Hesper and the Luther Little were the last two ships of their kind. The owner finally stranded them on the mudflats of the Sheepscot River. Each winter ravaged the ships rising and falling with the tides without ever floating free of the muck, yet they withstood the harsh treatment of Nature for decades. Finally two teenage boys set fire to the relics, damaging them to such a state that the town had them dismantled as a safety hazard.

Of course they could have remained in their final berth for another half-century, if it were not for the threat of legal suits and the town dismantld the wrecks. The Hesper and the Luther Little joined the hum of car tires over the Wicassett Bridge. Something gone, but not forgotten

I See Seagulls - 6/24/24

Sea gulls
I see seagulls
Seagulls o'er the sea
Gliding on the updraft
O'er the Montauk bluff__

Seagulls In The Air

Written Jan. 1, 1920

When six
My best friend Chaney and I walked
To the end of the McKinley Road on Falmouth Foresides
Portland lay across the harbor
The color of the water a Maine blue
Seagulls skated through the cloudless sky__
Chaney pulled out darts taken from his father's den
He gave me one
I threw it without aim
The dart struck a seagull in the neck
Its wings quivered and the bird fluttered down to the mud flat
Blood seeped from the wound
Chaney and I watched the bird die
A wave lapped over the gull
Another washed the corpse into the harbor__
Chaney put away the darts
We walked back home
Neither of us said anything to anyone
Not even to Cathy Burns
We both loved her__
Chaney drowned in Sebago Lake in 1960
Age eight
Always will be eight
I will never forget him
Or the seagull__

Seagulls Adrift - Staten Island Ferry

Sea gulls drafting behind the Staten Island Out of St. George Manhattan bound The Samuel L Newhouse An old ferry from 1982 Big enough for over 5000 passengers Paint flaking from overhead Top speed 16 knots Churning up the harbor Sea gulls Diving into the wake To feast on the propellers' chum Not the Atlantic Ah, the harbor The inner harbor of the great city of New York___ >Nothing like the Staten Island Ferry connecting St. George to Battery Park. Free still despite the billionaires__