Or Coppola made the first film,

We’d often eat with Don Corlene,

Or someone who did a heckuva good

Imitation of him, at Mary’s

On Bleeker Street in The Village.

He’d be there Sundays at a table by himself

In a dark corner, two lookout guys

Alert at a table near the front door

When my wife and I walked in.

The bodyguards did a fast frisk of us

With their beady eyes, then nodded

To wide-eyed, grandmotherly Mary

That it was okay for us to come in, sit.

The Don rarely looked up from his plate

Of sizzling shrimp swimming in garlic butter

Or steaming pasta with vongole sauce

Or pan-fried steak that Patsy,

Mary’s husband, pan seared in the kitchen

Just off the dining area with seven tables.

The thought of dining with a Mafioso

Did something to heighten our appetite.

After we read the book and saw the films,

It dawned on us that we could be

Wearing cement shoes and swimming

With the fishes in some river

Instead of calling Domino’s for a pizza

Out here in the boonies where we now live.

(This poem, or one like it, was published in some hard-print magazine but I’ve lost track of when and where)

Note:  Mary’s delightful Italian restaurant was two and a half blocks around the corner from where we lived in 1961 in The Village in a brownstone, 65 Perry Street.  Mary’s was in a walk-up brownstone, very small but fabulous eatery, the building perhaps the one where Coppola filmed his second Godfather epic, when DeNiro played the Don as a young man struggling to exist, feed his family.  Some of the finest Italian meals in memory at Mary’s.  Alas, we went back, many years later after moving to Colorado, found Mary and Patsy gone, the restaurant becoming a much larger (two floors), upscale eatery, not nearly as good – nor as atmospheric – as we remembered it.  And no, the Don, was no longer seated in a dark corner (no dark corners!), protected by his two goons.   Ah, so it goes…

Most men and women have it, live it -

respect for all living things.

Some of course don’t, which reveals itself

in wanton killings of people,

innocent animals, plants, the environment.

The American Indian in general believed

in respect for all living things – the belief

nurtured him – until the white man

appeared and practiced his

destructive, menacing, killing ways.

The Indian, try as he might, lost respect

for the living, at least the living,

breathing, thieving, conniving and

murderously unscrupulous white man.

But we see who won that contest

of wills, the Indian now consigned

to tiny parcels of property fit only for

the proliferation of mind-numbing casinos.

Still he dies by age forty-nine, on average,

eased into a final stupor by white man’s

sneaky-pete fire water – straight, uncut joy.

There is much to be learned from the Indian.

Simple study of who he was, who he has

become, where he’ll be in the future

could reveal a lot about mankind’s survival.

(Published online in the 1/17/10 issue of The Saturday Diner)

Note:  Does this poem result from the drops of Indian (Cherokee) blood that courses my veins?  Perhaps, but after so many years of watching the denigration of the former owners of the land we now inhabit – oh, those awful/wonderful cowboy and Indian movies of youth! – one does tire of the excrement from the bull.  We watch as the American Indian fades slowly away, someday extinct so those once mighty tribes can be spoken of as myths and white man’s actions as unparalleled acts of kindness.  Excuse me while I retch.

features in the low light of the mirror

to witness the return of my father,

each day coming back more surely -

the clouded eyes, flaring nostrils,

parched lips damp at corners, lazy

man’s stubble, knotted throat apple

bobbing through trebled chins -

a sight I was certain I’d never see again,

but here he is, back once more to follow

my slow progress of transformation

to becoming what I’d feared:  him.

I could turn up the lights, perhaps

rediscover me, but too many years

have passed and my inclination is to follow

his lead, begin dimming them instead.

(Published online in Issue #10 of Chantarelle’s Notebook, November 2007)

Note:  Why this dark poem today?  Maybe because it’s dark and dismal outside, snow threatening.  But probably not.  Maybe because we saw the movie “Precious” yesterday, tossed and turned all night – an important film that makes me thank lucky stars we have such a great welfare system in this country, at least in Harlem and throughout New York State, I presume.  But probably that’s not the reason either.  The reason is:  with age, I’m coming to look more and more like my father.  Am I becoming him?  That’s an answer that will have to wait….but possibly so, very possibly.

to see movies

that weren’t worth

sneaking in to see.

The usher wouldn’t bother

to turn his head

because his eyes were closed,

having seen the movie before.

Those dull strips of celluloid

were turned out overnight

by industrious people

in far-off Hollywood.

They depicted the lives

of those of us

with so little sense

we’d sneak in to see ourselves.

Note:  We’re talking 1940′s here.  We’d pay to see the cowboy double-feature Friday nights at The Savoy on 14th Street near Columbia Road, often packing our six-shooters.  When the cowboys started firing at the bad guys, we’d unholster, fire our cap guns along with them, creating such a din inside the moviehouse, we’d have to scramble along the sticky floors to another seat, with the huffing, puffing ushers in futile pursuit.  Those episodes usually eclipsed the predictable events in the movies starring old-time favorites, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, Roy and Dale, the Cisco Kid, the Durango Kid, Bob Steele, and especially all the good guys who didn’t sing those yippy-ki-yoo-ki-yea tunes.  But all those B movies – so dreadful.  Why pay to go see ourselves?  But the movies….a release from boredom, and so very important in my early life.

I saw in a movie not long ago.

She visits me frequently in sleep, seeking

my protection.  It was an amateur movie,

made by professional killers during a war,

depicting life, or the moments before

the end of life, at one of their camps

of concentration outside Germany.

This lovely woman was completely

naked, visibly terrified, attempting pitiably

to cover her breasts and black pubis.

I was mesmerized by the jumpy scenes,

stunned by the basic cruelty one people

could inflict on another, represented by

this lovely lady, beautiful even in her silent

horror, though scream she must have -

no sound accompanied the jittery footage.

The theater where this and similar films

play wasn’t a modern plex of theaters but

the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

I confronted many horrors that sweltering day:

a ghastly-blue cattle car in which Jews

were transported, piles of old shoes,

rumpled clothing, broken eyeglasses,

and a haystack of multicolored hair,

handwritten letters questioning why

such horrors were happening, so much else

incriminating the perpetrators of so many

vile and indescribably savage acts.

I’m not sure if you’d care to visit this sacred

place that commemorates mankind’s atrocities.

Certainly the movie of that lone lady would

haunt you as it does me so many nights.

Yes, I love her, though we never met.

I miss her terribly, weep at her loss.

(Published in the Spring 2005 issue of Main Street Rag)

Note:  Our visit to the Holocaust Museum in the summer of 2003 was a deja vu event much like our first sight of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem in summer 1993 – staggering in its emotional impact.  Permitted the time now in retirement to sit and think back, it’s still hard to imagine how people – mainly the Germans but also their collaborators and supporters (many hidden behind masks of innocence) – could muster so much hatred to wantonly kill people so horribly as they did.  You have to pause and reflect:  those villains were human, highly cultured, advanced thinkers, yet they practiced a mass murder tirade the likes of which defy any reason whatsoever.  And today, we find those who, likemindedly, say it, the Holocaus, never happened.  Oh, my.  To those I say, visit the Museum in D.C., see for yourselves….if you dare.  The woman I describe in the poem was very real, still visits me on occasion.  Try as I might, alas, I can offer no protection.  It’s too late.  Best I can do is remember, as all good people must.

I’m usually the last to leave

a movie theater, hesitantly

walking down the steps

from the uppermost row.

My mother passed along this gift

of crying at the slightest

provocation, the reaction

to abuse, misuse or tragedy -

even sudden upbeat endings.

Is it weakness for a man to cry?

I used to think so, so I formed

the habit of reading final credits

to their end, wiping my eyes,

donning my pilot’s sunglasses.

What makes it worse is that

my wife has the same affliction,

considerably more noticeable

than mine, causing us often to stay

seated till the floorsweepers come.

“Juno” was the last tearjerker we saw

together, along with dozens of kids

in their teens enjoying Sex Ed 101,

none of them crying, just laughing

as they left.  Lucky dumbbells.

(Published online in a Fall 2008 issue of Long Story Short)

Note:  To say that Irene and I get caught up in the moment of a drama, so to speak, is understatement.  I try my hardest to believe what I’m seeing (or hearing or reading), to gain greater impact from movie, play, opera, book or whatever.  Of course, a price has to be paid for such emotion – a two-hour movie usually lasts 2-1/2 hours for us.  The great American poet, Shoshauna Shy, e-mailed me after reading this poem and said the last two words, “Lucky dumbbells,” knocked her out.  It is a heartfelt statement:  those kids were lucky, but dumbbells certainly.