My posts have been anything but
lighthearted lately, so I thought I’d give you a break with what I hope will
provide a few minutes of enjoyment. Through the 1970s, and into the mid-1980s,
I wrote a lot of poetry, much of it not very good. But you know how it is with
writing: I kept at it and kept at it and managed to finally write some poetry
that was half-way decent. I’ve been working on a project over the last year
that led me to dig up those poems. Here are six. I’ll provide some context.
I enjoyed writing small, comical
vignettes, a fanciful riff on something I read or heard. “Cognitive Science”
sprang from a New Yorker profile of Marvin Minsky, a major figure in the
last generation’s research in artificial intelligence and robotics. I was taken
by Minsky’s purchase of a big jukebox for his wife and wondered what the result
would be if he turned that whimsical streak to his scientific work.
COGNITIVE
SCIENCE
“…in
the Minsky house…there [is] a huge jukebox—a present from Minsky to his wife.”*
So
this wizard of robotics
builds
a big, grinning neon ox—
a
thinking machine that flubs checkers
but
carries a tune.
The
maid palms its blue dome
and
taps the keys for “Hound Dog.”
Graduate
students take pictures
with
their arms around it.
Minsky
brings it to conferences.
It
rocks and flashes
and
breaks out a case of beer.
The
chess machines are envious.
They
always roll home alone.
____________
*From
Jeremy Bernstein’s New Yorker profile of MIT computer scientist Marvin
Minsky, December 14, 1981
I was looking for a Valentine’s card
in a Hallmark shop and, after being there for too long, began to imagine
romantic life inside the world of those cards.
BELATED
When we met,
I was temping at
Condolences and
you were
piercing arrows through lacy Hearts.
Your note came
with the afternoon crates of Grief,
so, at the 5
o’clock whistle, I pushed through Bereavement
and hurried to
find you drying tears
at the corner of
5th and Love You Dearly.
I fumbled for a
hanky.
Sorry For Your
Loss, I said.
Get Well Soon.
H-Happy
Graduation!
You turned away
and I felt Blank
Inside.
So I Passed On
to my night job
at the
Sympathies mill,
leaving you
looking for Someone Dear.
Later, I heard
that Tender Regard
swept you away
in his Heartfelt 88.
And now I’m
staying till midnight in Sorrow,
rhyming the
Gospel,
gaining
overtime,
and Thinking of
You.
Finally, there I was creeping up on
forty and still seeing a dermatologist, so what else was I to do but write a
poem about it?
TO ACNE
“As you age, it
will disappear,”
soothed Dr.
Glop.
But tiny buds
defy gray beard
and Glop’s
wisdom.
The Medical
Encyclopedia recommends
tetracycline,
radiation, dermabrasion.
The Psychiatric
Handbook opines
“hormone
imbalance well past the prime.”
I say, rage
little oils,
you’re my last
stay against time.
Women will say,
“How his hair is growing thin.
But, look, the
rosy eruption of his skin!”
***
I also wrote poems—less goofy
ones—about my forebears and my early life in Altoona, Pennsylvania. My mother
and her parents settled in Altoona after immigrating from the region of
Calabria in southern Italy. About one hour’s drive east of Pittsburgh, Altoona
was a bustling railroad town that suffered gradual economic collapse as the
railroad industry began its decline in the decade after World War II. I lived
there until I was 7, and then we moved to Los Angeles. My mother and I visited
Altoona regularly for family reunions until the late 1980s when the trip became
too difficult for her.
HOME MOVIES
Cut to Grandma
vigorously stirring.
The daisies on
her dress rise and fall.
She turns to the
camera. Smiles.
Scoops endive
from a colander
and raises it to
the lens.
This is a lesson
on preparing greens.
Other lessons
follow:
The shredding of
cabbage.
The pounding of
meat.
Grandma
understood the limits of film.
She knew it
would miss the spices,
the fine
dicing.
BEIGE
The ceiling bulb has tanned the
shade
as has the dust of hapless moths.
The phlox and hydrangeas on the wall
are caught in the half-life of
paper bloom.
Bedspreads and rugs lie
monochromatically—
their Persian arabesques gone to
beige
in this rented room in
Altoona.
A mother and her son play
dominoes
on a table beneath the
light.
The rectangles shine against
their fingers.
A fly buzzes into a Pepsi bottle.
Silence. One move.
Another.
Then click click and the boy
hits his dots.
The mother claps.
The boy laughs.
Nothing fades.
OFFICE VISIT
Cabot’s Differential Diagnosis,
Browne on Diseases of the Throat,
lace curtains,
handwritten hours,
a soft voice
explaining the inner ear.
Dr. DeSantis
still sees patients.
A dumbwaiter
locked into place
holds a cutaway
of the vestibular canals.
His voice
carries my mother
through the
curves and delicate bones.
Vertigo.
The dizziness of
old age.
Fear of the open
street.
She stands on
one foot.
DeSantis catches
her.
Again. His arm snaps up.
The curtains
rustle.
The doctor
explains the winds
beginning on the
street.
How the bones
are like sails.
How she can
leave her fear
in his arms.
How the wind
heals
with its own
risky balance.
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