....Collected Poems...of Wayne Noone
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_______________________________________________________ Conrad Conrad, I never knew you so there's no use in asking, is there about the time I gently shook your shoulder to wake you lest you miss our stop and I noticed as you slumped in your seat the way your ruddy hair curlicued at your nape, wonder when the last time was a woman cupped her hand across and drew your face to hers, the last time your son laced his fingers round to be lifted for a kiss, too late now to ask how it was, not that you would ever tell me, and cannot tell me now, you are lost in insignificance like the marble plaque on Smithfield marking the limit of the Great Fire of 45 that no one remembers, recessed into the wall of the Landmark Building, coated in the grime of generations, coal and coke and fumes and walked past each day unobserved, you are lost. I remember waiting with you in the darkness for the 38C, watching the snow whirlpool on the asphalt, you with your cheap tan jacket drawn up around your neck, listening to your walkman, nodding your head to the music, no use in asking if the song is the same I hear as I stand today in August in front of George Aiken's smelling the broasted chicken and looking across Fifth at the old woman shaded in the doorway of the gutted Murphy's, her brown hang dog at her feet, playing Twilight Time on her flute. Our Lady of August It is good to be here between battles with the damned near harvest moon reflecting in the stones of the Russian cemetery and the rabbits jostling the cyclone fence while the water drips from the rusted gray window units, remembering Mary bending over me as I sleep with her turtle eyes and flowery breath, her blue veil surrounding my face as with her tiny pink tongue like a cat she licks the blood from my lips. If it were not so The women carry their babies nervously in their wombs or indifferently in blankets. Their men are disinterested, talking diffidently among themselves, small talk, furtive grins over muddy jokes, eyes shifting. The world too is indifferent, notching down imperceptibly, burnt wax and ozone, no late summer peaches. Richard worries about the state of his health, his children, drinks gin on weekends. I ask him over lunch will it hurt. Only for a second. I stand in the kitchen at the backdoor drinking instant coffee black. My nails are long and yellow. Sound of a shotgun on the hill behind the house. Fall approaches, only for a second. Saw a Fig Tree Son of man, you no longer discern the consubstantiation of the stars and grasses and myriad things, you see no pattern in the swelling and tenderness in a small toe widening to a loss of limb and yet you watch your sister crawl the stairs hobbled by amputation, and your brother, drink in hand, on the couch in the family room you do not see his heart splay out like Christ’s, bound in thorns, and the old woman barren like Sarah, belly still swollen as her liver burns and yellows, you do not believe, do not see that the young deer crippled on the interstate demands an exact number of cars stop along the roadside in commemoration of its dying, four, neither more nor less, including the woman in the blue Honda watching with tears like the spring snow finding its way from the rooftop through the fascia when the water runs down your bedroom walls in March while you read by the bedlamp and flows again like the tears from the Bishop’s marble statue of the Blessed Virgin in the Chancery Office where Father Brucie makes her cry and you do not know that the lightning that cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west at the end of time has already lighted the skies and the bell that sounds the essence of all commingling is now an echo signifying a dismissal, so ye will roam hiding your nakedness, not even wounded, not even alone, forever among the traffic. This Much Though Old Buddha tells us otherwise, that the world will blink with us, disappearing when we do, I think there will be this much left: Blue vinegar pines and their jackdaws screeching, nails of quick squirrels caked with black resin, and one tree fallen, upon which you carved our initials, immutable through every dim and bright eternity. Labor Day (for August Capiola) He knew the world as Canonsburg, each line upon his sad Polish face a map beneath the surface. Remembered when Philip Murray took the trains from Brookline to sit on his parents' porch in Belle Vernon, drink beer and listen to the miners hawk lung and speak of shadows. Prayed another John L. would come like some Isaiah, mouth filled with burning bituminate to hold the line. Knew the creeks ran brown not with sulphur but the blood of working men and all of it, all of it returned pristine to the source. Stone Rolled Back Mike is not here, he has flown away to Ecuador where he sits in a cantina in Cuenca watching walnut girls in flowered wraparounds lug chiles in wicker baskets. Drinks milky tequila from a clay jar, sees old mujeres waddle up the steps of the Immaculate Concepción. He does not attend. Despite what they say, and the ringing of a gran timbre, he finds as substantial a presence in this white liquor as in the Host lifted from the paten by the sacerdote with his pale and paper hands. In the Desert Feel your tongue in your mouth as you say the words of absolution, tongue thick like a worm, sound of creaking in the pews outside beyond the curtain, blond wood maybe lacquered pine, green slate floors, heels clicking outside don't let them come in father of mercies reconcile can't remember the words now of absolution still know the act of contrition but the words of absolution have left me, maybe he takes those away when you're not allowed to use them, teenage girl in shorts comes in face to face don't look at her legs just sit there because of your just punishments but most of all because they offend you who are all good, the baptistery is to your left two confessionals down where they make you hold Dr. Brown's daughter's baby while they take a picture, you looking stiff like you want to cry and Dr. Brown is there in the front row at 6:00 mass when it gets so bad you can't lift the Host from the paten, just stand there shaking unable to move or speak, dripping sweat upon the altarcloth, think he's a doctor he'll see and come into the sanctuary and lead me away, but he just sits there rapt like the others, all of them thinking you St Theresa in her ecstasy, but St Theresa never rose at 5 AM hungover to open the church doors with an allen wrench, a Colt Python in her belt. Men of Honor Uncle Theodore enlisted in the Army like all the boys, too late for Korea but nonetheless. He only lasted two days before he was discharged under a cloud of familial mystery. Aunt Rose hinted it had something to do with him not being right and by that she didn't mean in his head, hell, all the boys were teched in one way or another. Mom for some reason took this to mean that Ted must have been insufficiently endowed, or, as she put it something wrong down there. Uncle Joe, who served a full tour in Germany in the early sixties, used to sit holding court in granddad's kitchen, work boots splashed with paint from Sipes Paint Company planted firmly on the newspaper they used to lay out across the linoleum. One time after too many Silver Tops he told dad he could beat me in a road race, unfazed by my father's contention that he hadn't a chance against a thirteen year old boy. At 12:30 am on the road in front of the house we ran three false starts till Joe stumbled and rolled across the red dog tearing his pants and embedding a shitload of cinders in his palm. After he returned to the kitchen and sat sipping beer, refusing to allow dad to doctor his swollen hand, both mom and I noticed his trousers had come undone at the zipper, revealing, although flaccid, a member that must have made up for the stigma that sent Teddy fleeing home. hanke his name was hanke and even though he lived just a few units down from us in the terrace dad didn't get to know him till he had his heart attack and was laid up three weeks at St. Clair Hospital they kept you in a lot longer then and hanke shared a room with him brought in with appendicitis or some such and they got to know each other real well with nothing much to do in there but talk and mom and dad knew hankes from heidelburg and i even went to school with his nephew allen decent people all and they talked a lot about gardening both of them tilling the free garden plots they used to give out up by the county home then one day my buddy roger who lived in the unit across from him called me over to see this big crowd of people gathered around his yard them saying hanke was playing with some little boys and the crowd which was more like a mob was all set to run him out of the terrace which they did they were gone after that hanke and his wife and kids all gone the next day and i remember telling mom what happened and she was just shocked how could a man do such a thing but dad he didn't say anything about it just turned his head away and got that hard look on his face like he would do especially when i told them about how the crowd had carried over a big pot of boiling water to hanke's yard and poured it over his little brick lined flower bed scalding the flowers as if to erase whatever good was in that man along with the bad. _______________________________________________________ On To Page 11 .............. 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