I Bet This Would Sound So Much Better Translated Into Italian

Did my grandmother know

The reason they called America the promised land?

When she came to this land of opportunity

As a mail order bride did she think

She would be partaking in white privilege?

That the history of plantations and reservations

That made the fat of the land could trump

all the anti-Italian comments

she’d get from second generation Irish

Getting their chance to dish it out

As once they had taken it?

I sincerely doubt it

I don’t think they sold it that way

Just like today Apple doesn’t brag

“Laptops made by authentic Chinese Slave Labor!”

But here she was

In the land of the free & the home of the slave

Just in time for the great depression

And that mythic time of working class togetherness

85 years later, at least one of her grandchildren

believes it might be better back in Italia

not cursing her for ever leaving

still loving much about American culture

and being a product of it, but feeling cut off

not just from Napoli but from the Eritrean blood

clearly evident in our nose and build

despite it being airbrushed from the family tree

that only goes as low as the trunk. White/European.

One of her daughters married a black man named Ting

And they called her a black sheep.

I dream of the Mediterranean. If the Roman Empire

Ever had a soul, it was she. No mere middle passage

But straddling continents as if they could be equal

Bubbling beneath the official imperial reality

I crave that blues cruise more than Crete.

On maps, at least, is seems more cozy than

The Pacific or even the Atlantic, and warmer

And all this before a concept of Europe

                                   Gerrymandered us

But Italy was never as close to Norway or England

As it was to Egypt or Tunisia

Especially when Alps were much harder to cross

Than the sea was….

And I think of Hannibal and his elephants

Deep within our blood, not some imperialist

Aenied screwing over Dido

And that, dear judge, is why I say “other”

When you ask me about my people

Or better leave it blank, given your options

But my blue eyes betray me.

I do not entirely hate Europe.

It seems less Eurocentric today than the USA

But every time I see a map with Europe on top

I turn it around so South Africa is

And we haven’t even gotten into Asia yet

(unless of course you notice

Europe is just part of Asia in drag

Whatever that means)

And I wonder how long I could live near

Vesuvius or Carthage only speaking English.

A Pretty Instrumental, or an Abrasive Piece of Avant Noise?

1.
The ideas are more physical

Than what he calls the heart

And the soul of sleep is deeper

Than the heart of sex

I need to sleep with you more than fuck you

But you can wake me and I’ll fuck you if you feel insomniac.

Beyond the horse of lust and the carriage of marriage
is the surrounding between,
the metaphor of love
in and out of words

Where our love can be

And tend as we began pretending.

Oh, I tried a little pre-tenderness.

I tried it out for sighs

(he met a girl by moaning

you know how that can happen).

But you soothe me with your power

And your ideas send shivers through my spine

Way better than any highway he calls the heart.

I love the heart,

The anthropomorphic heart named “thumpy”

You drew for me on envelopes

Back in my daze,

The heart with a smiling mouth and legs

Three dimensional meaning 4 and 5

Transcendent and achingly cute.

Yes, it always stirs longing

And why not call it visionary

And touching, rhythm

And blues. Why not call it

Soul (with the temptation

To get caught up in John Donne’s

Famous metaphoric conceit?)

2.++++++

But one can also call it dope

Afraid of how extremes can meet

Like heartbreaking optimism

(if not optimistic heartbreak, good grief)

and not confined by a Self,

a person, a corporate person….

If the corporations want the word person so bad,

Let them have it.

We don’t have to judge ourselves by their standards

As, say, three/fifths of one, barely passing

Slaves or consumers.

The word person is so 20^th century.

We’re still debating on a new one.

I like the word “lovers” or even luvvers

(if not to pass for process-oriented

with no body but a talking face

(without even a head or shoulder

to lean it on)

3. ++++++++

Oh grandma, grandma,

Hear my cry, hear your plea.

It’s okay to close your eyes now

Or open them to death

But I hope we get to talk

at least one more

last time,

And I’m too embarrassed or afraid

To tell you this

Like I almost forgot to end a conversation

With “I love you”

When talking to your daughter my mother

On mother’s day in 1992

The last tine we spoke

But that don’t mean I have to be a person

To have this talk

And we don’t have to be coffee

To be money, in love

4.++++

Free radicals are scary

Opposites attract

The story of the outsider and the insider

Is just the clothes, the middleman we crave

Between thinker and doer

Introvert and extrovert

Informing the one off band or movement

Inside the loving intimate married couple

And yes she could soothe me

By letting me soothe her

And calm me so I’m quiet

Without being clammed up, blocked up

Before the music lets us

Loosen up, and tighten up

At the block party

And the only reason the host

Scolds us for lacking personal grounding

Is because she thinks the music’s foundation

Is more like quicksand if it’s not decorations

In contrast to the Great Books

That are supposed to be

Our off-stage soul…

Ah, your absence springs a leak?

Should I drown, or should I sip?

Between Nostalgias

Between Nostalgias

Oh, metal, metal, do you really need metal

Yes, it’s still there, just a little more hidden

Like the people who make it,

invisible in other countries slave labor camps

But yes there can be enough of a future

For there to be a present.

The guy who runs the little shop

Selling $350 jeans (low-end)

and some that brag about being made in US prisons

is no joke, but he’s a nice guy

and little shops are one of your causes

and you know he’d prefer to sell cheaper

to regular folk if there were any left.

Oh money, money. It’s still there, not really hidden.

You could straddle rich and poor and navigate mood swings

Reverting to a dirty warehouse to save money

and convince yourself it could be a community

But so glad you had her clean apartment

In the neighborhood you could no longer afford access to

And that Ashbery line comes back,

“business was punk at the opera”

But the sun is slowly shining

And you’re passing for normal, trying on pants.

You can do this. Baby steps to Normandy,

I mean normalcy. But the cops

Shoot in the back of surrendering heads. “Despite”

Their training. “Oh, it’s just a coincidence,

A few bad apples” one says

While imported anarchists throw rocks

At a great black owned coffee shop with $5 tuna sandwiches

And a piano they sometimes let me play

But today it turns into conversation

“What kind of bread do you have?”

“Just wheat……the good kind.”

“Yeah, much better than white, just like Malcolm said.”

“Yeah, same with sugar….rice….and coffee…”

“….what’s supposed to wake you up….ends up putting you to sleep”

“that’s pre Mecca Malcolm X”

“Yeah, he was really growing before he died…”

“that’s why they killed him”…

“same with Martin Luther King….”

“Yeah, everything on the tuna?

“…what’s your name?”

“Dustin…”

“I’m Chris, are you here every day?”

“Until I start at Laney….”

“I teach at Laney….”

“I’d love to take your class….”

“I probably learn more from my students than they learn from me.”

We might love you enough to let you say the truth,

But we’ll edit it out coz we love what you say just after it better.

In the classroom, the spirit of the students

Is enough to check, to tell it slant, to quote Caliban

On the fine art of cursing. Love. This is. Love. A Job

I cheated on my girlfriend with. Staring in her eyes

Trying to shut my mind off from thinking about Gregory

Who had just been shot and was worried I’d flunk him.

But so was music. In love, to divide is not to take away

But it takes a fast bike, baby, to live a double life

I used to go up and down College a lot

Back when I had a life among the people of the light

And it wasn’t back in the days the busses were ten cents

Before inflation was just a sneaky way to give you a pay cut

By making you think you got a pay raise.

And I almost see a city again

From the point of view of a bike….          

Shower Song

---to be read over a cool, funky, beat…(with melismatic soulful vocals weaving in and out)

Have you ever had a cold, sore throat, and congestion

And someone tells you to drink tea or chicken soup?

Well, I sure have….

But the best advice a doctor

ever gave me was to stand beneath a hot shower

and drink, and take big gargles and gulps!

Turn the shower temperature as high as you can

(if it’s too hot for your skin, you can step out of the way

so the water just meets your mouth)

Don’t worry about the pipes being dirty…

The flowing hot water is clean

The force of the flow is more powerful

Than any tea in the most pristine cup.

The hot flowing water is the active healing ingredient.

It can clear the excess mucus, which is the source of many ailments.

Of course, the media will not say this very much—

Nor will most doctors (or licensed health care practitioners,

or “wellness coaches” working for Kaiser Permanente).

They got bottled water, and pills and sugary cough syrup to sell.

And most doctors may fear losing their jobs if they dare say it

But Dr. Matsumura is old school; he spoke to me in my sickness….

A shower’s strength to cleanse is not skin deep.

We can open our mouth to drink the flowing heat, the hot flow

In ways that go beyond the tea and bathtub!

800 years ago, an Asian poet named Rumi wrote:

“A story is like the water/you heat for your bath.

It takes messages between the fire and your skin

It lets them meet, and it cleans you!”

The shower does all this, and more.

The shower’s more like music, more like soul music especially.

It makes the fire and water a friend.

You feel it in your body first.

It puts words in their proper place.

It lets you stand, and even dance

And be both passive and active

And stretch your entire body

And loosen your limping lips, and sing

Like with a congregation in the church

Where many amateurs make a more powerful sound together

Than the proper music pros and their gadgets….

A Moratorium (For Claire Donato and Jeff Johnson)

There is not enough poetry.

There is too much poetry

Both statements are true in America today.

This is partially because of distribution and mediation

(not because of the quality of the work).

I’ve seen avocadoes drop from trees

And rot on the lawns of the rich

While the poor must pay $1.50 on sale at the store.

A little can go a long way…

Poetry is not reaching the people who need it

& many who need it, don’t know, or like,

what they’re told is poetry.

It starts with a name, the “P” word.

The loudest speakers have a narrow definition.

That does not dare include

At least some pop songs (not mere lyrics)

Or stand up comedy and sermons

Some see such inclusiveness

As a watering down of standards.

Some fear it could threaten the contemplative mode,

The necessary solitude---but tweets and texts

And “social media” is more a threat to that

Than the fine art of the song is.

Some fear it can threaten the “safe space” of the coterie,

Especially one that is socially based on the poetry reading.

I seriously entertain

The proposal that poetry readings

That are not also organizational meetings

And do not get people dancing and communicating

Should be banned (for at least 6 months).

This “standard” has done more harm to the power of poetry

Than any creative writing workshop.

I sing the creative writing workshop more than the poetry reading.

I sing the dialogic collaboration as a meeting place

In which the living word of conversation

Can meet the beautiful—or even ugly—artifact

Just as a 45RPM record comes alive 50 years later

In the young and old people dancing to its MP3.

Yes, Robert Creeley and James Brown

Emily Dickinson and the Queen of Soul

Form a necessary coalition

that can put Hollywood back in its little place

Of course, writing is a compromise

I embrace that knowledge with a question:

But what are we compromising with?

Who are we reaching, and why?

Are we even reaching each other?

And I embrace poets in the schools programs.

Kenneth Koch’s work makes me happy

And the performances of Le Roi Jones’

Spirit House Movers makes me even happier.

You may scoff when I tell you

The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back”

Was the first poem I cradled and was cradled by

Even before I knew the word.

But yes I won my Ashbery cred, and burden

And I can speak your Shakespeare and Beatles too…

We need more teaching gigs—

More collaborative creation!

Oh poets, you can hate my writing,

Scorn my art, my prepared speeches

And texts. Feel free. I do not “mind.”

I’ll pay that price

Because I know I’ve been seen

scorning yours,

but that’s just because more is less

and we need to put the space back in

to face book, or at the poetry reading

stopping after one intense poem

and giving a few words time to sink in

and saying let’s talk now

if you need more prepared texts

you got the solitude

where the book and recording

can come alive---

but we’re together now,

what can we build?