....Collected Poems...of Wayne Noone
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_______________________________________________________ Poem for Karen in July Here's my fantasy: you, loathing the heat like you do, holed up at Larson's in icy splendor, reading, writing poems, sleeping throughout the day, while I roam the field and sweat through the Ranger Walks, returning to shower at dusk and to gather you up for feasts and late night explorations, you emerging lemur-like, blinking your great brown eyes. At Talotta's Bar Remember how the bar was a square In the center of the room how There was this kind of brown light Throughout how You could get those homemade raviolis That Jimmy's wife made In the little dining room in back How the bar felt cool and damp with Those cardboard Steelers coasters sticking To its skin and the Iron City and Rolling Rock on tap, and that time you saw This guy from 1936, just finished his shift At Superior Steel, lunchbox on the bar, Grimy from the bricks in the furnace, Leaning the bones Of his body to the bar he Looked like a ghost looked, And that old craneman Named Longo was usually there too He worked with your dad at Superior, Always a snappy dresser, Slacks from Hill's, sports coat from Joseph Horne's, Sweating all the time, even in winter, Sweating out the booze dad used to say, He liked to sing old songs, used to Sing em to Mark's wife when She was there, and one time you saw Those guys in 1943, their gray overcoats Stained with salt and rain and maybe they Were ghosts too but you know they weren't They were staring at you real hard and It had something to do With their war and the loneliness Applicable to us all and The jukebox had the old songs too Green Eyes and stuff from the Platters And the occasional woman left lipstick Stains on her cigarette, she Would look up at you From under her lashes how Jimmy Talotta played golf with your Brother-in-law Paul and they were always Standing by the bar Paul making Bad jokes and how the whiskey tasted And felt How they renovated the place in the seventies Yet that isn't so they never renovated Same place It always was Remember how Mark used to like to smoke Marsh Wheelings, they always had a box Behind the bar Remember how you would keep A Slim Jim at your elbow so you Could take a little bite right after a shot To keep it from shooting back up you Should have known something was wrong Even then but even so it's not gone, I want you to know that. No such thing as gone. Like Rainwater Today my heart is light. Yesterday you came into my house Strolling from room to room Trailing cigar smoke Like a Haitian priestess, Pissed in my toilet, And cleansed. Musical Chairs I must have been about seven, Foxcroft Elementary, we were playing musical chairs. Music stopped as I, chubby boy, clumsily cut the corner slipped into the last chair on the row. Suzie, all blonde and babyfat, right behind me, plops giggling on my lap and starts wiggling side to side as if she can grind her way through me to the chair beneath. I red faced wrap my arms round hers pin her to herself, bury my face in her shoulder squeeze like I'm squeezing the life from her and feel the most miraculous warmth in my guts as my bladder fails and I just want to squeeze her, till Mrs. Braun yells at me to stop, and I jump up with a stain like a map of Florida on my corduroys run to the restroom followed forever by that giggling in my ears. Upon This Rock The Pope looks bad. In Toronto for World Youth Day in this Year of our Lord 2002 he was all bent over like a gnarled tree, crooked and decayed with that pinched Polish face collapsed upon itself, a wrinkled deflated football, far from his glory days in the eighties when he struck deals with Reagan, broke the backs of the Latin Liberationists and drove men of good conscience to the Reds. Word is that his handlers maintain in him a semblance of life and reason by pumping him up with a near toxic combination of pharmaceutical grade speed, Viagra, and some of that bull testicle elixir the Nazis concocted for Hitler, Curial access to which was gained courtesy of a deal struck between George Marshall and Ratzinger, (who's older than we know) giving the Vatican dibs on the choicest cuts of the Reich's secret stash, including their strange apothecary moved by truck caravan in the night from Berlin and now kept in a subterranean stronghold beneath the nave of Saint John Lateran. Here's the truth: Its his lack of cynicism that terrifies, his absolute conviction that he speaks for God. But I'd like to think that sometimes ensconced in his bed in the Castello Gandolfo he dreams he's hunkering in the bunker with cyanide and a pearl handled Walther as the bombs rain down, or back in Kalwaria hiding in the straw as the Kalmucks slam their rifles 'gainst the door. New Bathroom Mantra White milk vinyl tub surround stainless steel shower head plastic curtain rod pink roses on a shower curtain bought at the dollar store for one dollar small faux marble vanity smooth white toilet bowl loop like a swan dove and white con golium, laminate, formica I paint you peach I scrub you with Fantastik, Form u la four o nine I scour you with Scrubbing Bub bles do not test me with myths of purity just make me clean Stan Gray haired old bird caught up in a layoff then started with Allied Security, at the front desk in the building where I work. Stacombed his hair in a little wave in front like we all used to do. Sometimes I'd pick him up coffee when he couldn't get away, two creams, two sugars. He liked to eat at the Lantern, always knew the Specials. He still used the expression "nicotine fit" when he wanted a cigarette and kept smoking even after his heart surgery. Used to tell me each morning it was going to be a great day: "Wayne, today's going to be a great day!" Stan I just saw you yesterday. I never knew your last name. You didn't show up for work this morning, and when you didn't come in they sent the police to your apartment where you lived alone. They say everyone dies alone but I think some more than others. I hope yours wasn't so much so. Mother Said Well sure it hurts, after all he was banging around in there trying to get that filling out, but its not like you had an abcess or a root canal or anything of that nature. Think of your Uncle Teddy. Remember how he used to sit at the kitchen table with his legs crossed smoking his Kools and drinking Silver Top Beer, think about how long he must have waited with that lump in his jaw fingering it with his tongue and worrying till it got too much and they put him in the VA and took away half his jaw. Your Uncle Ed seen him, said he wasn't worth seeing, didn't know anybody, his face all black. Think of the pain he had then, pain that would go on in waves forever. Yours ain't nothing compared to him. On The Road On the surface this is for those who don't understand how we can go to the same place year after year, a way to roll it all up into a little ball and toss it at you, but really it's because I know these trips are coming to an end like everything else so this is more than anything an expression of gratitude. About this time, about a week before, I'll start looking at the TV for some initial projections on the weather. It's good when it's cool and rainy, with the mist and the damp among the leaves of early fall, but it's best when it's crisp and dry. I'll pack next Saturday, but I'll be laying out things throughout the week, books I want to bring, maps, a favorite sweatshirt. Kay'll wait till the last minute, till Sunday of the trip, so I always remind her did she bring the coffee? We always stop at Dietz's before we leave, crowded with the late breakfast crowd from First Methodist across the street. Bacon and eggs; Kay'll get a little juice. Then we're on the road - PA Turnpike at Monroeville to the Blue Mountain Exit, between the Army Depot and the Holiness Camp an occasional Amish buggy, make a right at Black Gap Road, at the Sandpile, which is Route 30 East, and we're almost there. Now Kay'll open it up if the traffic lets her, and we fly past Miss Lindsay's Adult Toys, Manor of Masque, the Land of Little Horses, but its not till we cross the railroad cuts and Willoughby Run, see the Now Entering Gettysburg National Military Park sign with the Peace Light Memorial, lit first by Roosevelt, burning on the hill that we know we are here. Check in at Larson's, where Robt. E. Lee stayed, and unpack. Just so you know: We don't do this for something different, but it's never the same - this year I read about a back way up Big Round Top and we'll try that, though Kay'll probably be cursing me between breaths during the climb, and a fellow named Jorgensen has a new tour of the Wheatfield out - 28 stops - I'm sure we know them all but there's always something new to learn and something new to remember, and Kay'll pick up a book or two at the Visitor's Center or Greystone's that'll lead to something else. Oh, and I forgot to tell you, we sent away for a book, a tour of the field hospitals around the field, seventeen Union, eighteen Confederate sites, so the trip'll be a busy one and you know we really have to get it all in, cause for wayfarers like us, walking the field hand in hand these years, there's just never enough time. This Morning at the Bus Stop in the Dark I'll tell you a small mystery: Approaching my bus stop in the dark this morning where I always wait alone, was met with a cadaver, an old woman taller than me and thin, with gray hair strange and frozen. when I said good morning she creaked like a door, tone that told me it was not, nor would it ever be. Then behind me I hear the crinkling of grass and out pops a fat gray field mouse, scurries a close diagonal across the road, the sound of his tiny paws audible on the concrete. He crosses easy as Israel but stops at the far lip, hesitates, and bolts back onto the road just as traffic resumes. I watch four cars fly over him - still he survives, running full bore down the middle of the highway, till a mighty SUV obliterates. Hair on end I look to the old lady but see no skeleton smile, only oblivion, as she cranes her neck anxiously for the bus. On To Page 8 .............. Return To Other Poets This site sponsered by 
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