Poetry and Grief

Something sinister is creeping just behind your eyes,
that can never be extracted with the sharpness of words.

Poetry scaffolds the crumbling facade.
Bowling alley bumpers-
Poetry plastic straw to suck the soup of the mind.

Once there is a voice for verse and flair - tricks and little flips of speech, the
mind gets busy building
toy-block towers.

So after I read Jack's poem about the cleverness of breezes,
my Mind got to work recalling his sallow cheeks,
his shallow eyes moments before
the final drop of air tumbled over the chap of his lips in an egoless croak.
I could see it.
The sunken ribs, distended, the belly,
the final swells,
the chest.
I feel the uncharacteristic
stubble scratch as I cradle him indefinitely and I think,
"He writhes for release from the ills of embodiment, but rest,
Arrives when you're least" -

                                  And just then
                     As if to smooth it all over,
my mind presented me with the image of Marvin Martian leaping from a child's bedsheet billowing out of a Bronx tenement window-





-JV

The Glitch Betrays The Mechanism

Waking up some winter morning after two clock-time snoozes,

There is a collapse, 

relapse?

or maybe, prolapse -

When after pulling the towel from my window,

I witness a soft downy bright and silent pattering which does not immediately read

as the word, signified by the crisp, times-new-roman letters S-N-O-W. Period (.)

Meanwhile, the concept is lost among

piles and piles of signifier files, like to the rafters.

And at the foot of each manilla mountain, is the personification of an axon-

A business-casual-clad default person is dwarfed by their respective stack,

shuffling their lot madly

in the office building of the mind.

Meanwhile, someone is shouting into a red rotary phone that

someone else had better, [quote] “file the damned missing concept report, like yesterday, asshole!” [end quote] And someone in HR is worrying a paperclip before their meeting with Conscious Thought who, as a rule are best paid and least busy,

and whose suits are invariably smarter than their deliberations.

And while the concept-in-question is being frantically sought by the underlings,

the Board of Conscious Thought are placidly looking through the window- and

heedless of the bureaucratic nightmare outside the room,

the oldest and most dignified of them is smiling his cracked face into ridges.

-JV

Stopping Spontaneously On a Busy Street

Just show me this street where I'm standing, please, Life.
Just show me this street - which never tires of itself -
Show me this street
novel, without a single atom taken for granted.

Here folks come at intervals
passersby
bystanders  -
always regulars arriving
always arrival
always experience & rarely recognition.

Trajectories disguised as people pass
waiting for something to shine -an argument, a bauble, a curse word, or a fat-ass-
but shining is a shallow game played by disco-balls and Maseratis.
This street, however, humbly bursts with the spontaneous impulse of being, everyday.
Would that I could set aside the self and learn to too.

"Today I'm a vantage without a point" I demand - but I'm just pretending.
Trying this hard to see my nose leaves me with a headache, and
ultimately I know I'm trapped in my skull -
But the streets don't mourn like people or elephants, instead,
they sing that unhurried tune that my mind is too fast to process.

And its a shame I've stopped here, only to find that my mind keeps careening -
And I am all but given up on learning the language of learning the language of the street, when
suddenly,
there he is,
         and his eyes - a human being moving among vectors -all magnitude and no direction-
somewhere come, somewhere going, and yet, perfectly here
                                                    Smiling his poem right at me.

And in a moment he'll be swallowed up by the clock that says that tomorrow is always on its way,
and just as it is today, the next day is bound to be stardust arranged, particularly sexy with subtle significance, always waiting,
but not weary.
Suffice it to say, today I saw you
and you saw me.

Spider Dream

A woman lie dead
In a cheap twin bed
with no box-spring on the ground

And beside the bed
Her journal of red
right next to her body they found

And in it, a pen
with which had been
written a dream which she expound.

"A spider..." it said,
"...had entered my head,
with a spindly kick
it passed through my lips.
I woke in the night
and threw on the light
before a coughing and sneezy fit."

The spider, it seemed
had entered her dream
though nobody would believe it.

And on its way down
whatever it found
it stung with a poison bite.


-JV

In This Old Photo You Took of Me In 1993

I’m reaching out for you from my high chair in the kitchen and 

All I want is your warm neck to nestle my head in. 

Yesterday you turned 75.

And now, your neck, has gnarled thin and pessimistic, 

Chemicals meant to help.

The scheduled weekly injection.

Bruised arm. Radioactive, thinning, wrinkling your loosened skin, scaling you back, 

Slowing you to the final stop.

Stopping you in your masculine track.

I see you now, 

Slipping away, and yet 

You won't say, anything, about it.

I'm reaching out for you, and 

All I want is to dance you around in the kitchen on top of my feet.

-Yes, I know we're adults, Papi, but

I still want to give it a shot. 

Come on, lets 3- step, Papito - I'll teach you bachata.  

Meanwhile, the mirror tells me that this Newyorican shock of hair

Is your dark mane, and that these hands are scarcely mine

My dopey ears, yours,
The grovel of this voice is your rhasp and

These hang-ups are yours too.

I’m reaching out 

But the TV’s turned to westerns, and so,

You can’t see me. 

I’m reaching out for you and though you never came to see me in a show, 

I’m an actor too, Pa, you know? 
That’s my job. 
Like James Arness, but with your eyes. 

Like James Garner with momma's thighs.
Like Michael Landon with a clown-nose.
Like brown Marlon Brando. Yes.

Like Brando, Papi,
Like Brando,

Who, as we both know, 

Is a dusty, rugged, greyscale, bullet-riddled tree out west, who, 
like you, never ran from a fight. 

And never says a word.

-JV

Somewhere in America

A mother, dripping
In her night-black funeral gown, is holding
A brick
Over an American history textbook that has not been banned in Texas.
Her child's face is on the cover.
Only he's white.
And smiling.

She's fixin' to pour the brick right in.
Into its pages; through the spine,
Shattering the thin lessons into shards to show
How sharp they are.

She wishes she could tell the president on page 786
That his white hair and cock-face make her sick.

But somewhere in America
A secret agency has her name on file and
A maximum-security security guard
Is being payed minimum wage.



-JV

Old-Heads

Keep ready
on your way
to listen to the universe sway,
this way
then that.


-JV