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On St. Patrick’s Day morning you would not have found me knee deep in green beer like some of New York no doubt was doing, especially the revelers I passed near Grand Central that morning. Instead I decided to get up early for some sunshine and vicambulation. It was rather sunny and I remember feeling like a dog being led by his nose around a city I didn’t know — I don’t usually frequent that part of town — and I found myself in a library. I picked up some Gertrude Stein, Emile Zola, and Sylvia Plath. I have enjoyed the words of Sylvia Plath ever since Ariel and The Bell Jar, her mind and heart seem to find words that play harmoniously with my heartstrings, and I was excited to read what she had to say in Letters Home, an extensive record of her correspondence from 1950 to 1963. I spent much of the time just opening it up wherever and pouring through letters like opening a little pocket of time, being a flea on the post office hound, sneaking into each letter at night when the day sorters were gone for the evening and the delivery trucks had yet to arrive. She does include plenty of “snatches of verse” especially when writing her mother, at one point saying, “tell me what you think of these poems . . . any resemblance to Emily Dickinson is purely intentional.”

Within this set of the Dickinson-esque she included on April 30, 1953 there was one entitled “Verbal Calisthenics”; I was hooked by its first line:

My love for you is more
Athletic than a verb,
Agile as a star
The tents of sun absorb.

Treading circus tightropes
Of each syllable,
The brazen jackanapes
Would fracture if he fell.

Acrobat of space
The daring adjective
Plunges for a phrase
Describing arcs of love.

Nimble as a noun,
He catapults in air;
A planetary swoon
Could climax his career.

But adroit conjunction
Eloquently shall
Link to his lyric action
A periodic goal.

 

 

 

 

I wrote a song to it. I included a little chorus from a young man who misses someone he loves. The chorus I made up is a simple riff any cowboy with a guitar would make up around a campfire, I sort of imagined a young poet writing about the beauty of words and their prolific power, and during his song getting carried away in his reverie of “Love, sweet love”…

Words can take you a world away and right face to face with beauty unimaginable. And for every poet, I think it is our “periodic goal” to lay down words on paper as adroitly or eloquently as we can, as we see fit. Aside from all the Romantic aspects I’ve wrung from it, the words themselves fall out so freely but not without some doing, Sylvia Plath combines some mouthfuls. And her repetition of sounds, alliteration and internal similarities to other words, moving from dental labial fricatives unvoiced then voiced, plosives hard and soft…. try it! Read it out loud and really focus on the internal movements in your mouth. Your tongue does cartwheels!

Anyway, it’s with great respect that I submit these songs inspired by her writing.

The first three being reincarnations of: Verbal Calisthenics starting with the most recent. The final is a Facundo Cabral treatment on one of her poems called “Doom of Exiles”.

http://soundcloud.com/michael-vitaly/verbal-calisthenics-by

http://soundcloud.com/michael-vitaly/verbal-calisthenics-by-1

http://soundcloud.com/michael-vitaly/verbal-calisthenics-by-sylvia

http://soundcloud.com/michael-vitaly/sylvia-plath-doom-of-exiles

Dark is the night that falls around me as shoes new in borrowed time walk the streets in search of rhyme. Feet that take me further than my heart dares to go, leave me stay till this storm passes. Spitting lightly, spraying soft. Far from tracks and grinding metal, save the fears inside my head, again I call to lands of wisdom as to crimes in the heat of nightless passion. Take off my weary head and smilest at me from the mount, cover my heart with ashes and dirt, and call not my name again. Wash it all with midnight rain. Before the summer there is spring and winter too must end ‘fore that, but near this time we fell in love and so I wonder all again. I’ve done this once before so I know what’s all around the bend. New water does pass over scattered stones though and moss nearby gathers like electromagnetic dust gaining in the sands of time. Mountains are formed when we fall in love.

Peaks so high and clear the skies are right that nothing sweeter does exist. And valleys too so deep and hard that all the woes make up a list.. Like songs to sing or things to do. Last night’s regrets or tomorrow’s excitement. It’s all within the grasp of love. It’s all without blame or madness. It’s simply all that binds and breaks the world, love and life as they coexist.

I called your name when in no blame the fire did within me burn, I called to you in search of truth and in my chest did you warm me so. Your hand against my stomach, our fingers intertwined. Where does time go when matter moves all around. And things that matter most don’t move at all but do breathe lightly like pitter-patter morse code on a sleek and windy night. Like the pulse inside me racing for simple thoughts of you.

Locked inside this terrible sadness lies a grinning tender boy at the thought of recess on the hill when you’d be running with your friends. Up there on the hill beneath breathing oak trees lined with humid streaming white hot sun. Afternoon delight. Seeing you in night. After all it’s true, what am I to do? When I can’t see you every night. Chalk it up to things don’t work? Or fight against the kid that picks on me first. Around the brick wall, we fought. All of three minutes. I’m not sure I punched anything. But we both were red with exhaustion. Breathing hard you barely noticed my childish display of chivalrous valor. Boys will be men and men will be boys.

But climbing mountains and slaying dragons are far from what I do. Canyons be glass windows and rivers be paved black tar. Amongst the trees neatly planted I still could see God’s true design. You simple here as true waiting for my hand your cue, and together we would have walked throughout the years together. Until we reached green pastures and buildings were only homes, when all the people became stalks of singing grass and nothing would scrape the sky but blue.

Here’s to that for there is no end to these rhymes and lines so easy. I cheers to you who never drinks and call to you beyond methinks what is a reasonable doubt. I should stop these worried thoughts but they don’t worry me anymore. For they are my friends and bedfellows, together we will be. If not you and me forever. Then just memories and thoughts will do, and what will be will be.

This pillow is soft and fine
but it’s so cold at night
when I move across it
restlessly.

This pillow is soft and fine
but white lacquered walls
not exposed brick anymore
hold it ‘gainst the outside world.

This pillow is soft and fine
but my head used to rest
much easier many blocks south
from a hundred and fifty-sixth street.

This pillow is soft and fine
but it’s just a place to pass the time
and not a happy restful place
as a pillow always should be.

This pillow is soft and fine
but it’s not the pillow next to yours.

 

There’s a plastic bag flying over Trinity Cemetery.  Just west of the moon, and amid a stretch of cirrus clouds.  Just across from Orion in the western sky it caught my eye on my way home.

Just like a flag, it whips in the wind – a wind that’s now turned cold at long last after a day too unseasonably warm, and with this I’m reminded of winter once more.

Stuck on the tiniest branch of a bare young oak, like a stubborn youngster playing “astronaut,” against all odds, it’s determined to fly among the stars amidst all the naysayers of gravity and realism.  Still it slaps against the vicious air determined to be free.

Like a single semaphore that’s lost all its color there’s no telling what it means, like an unmarked grave without a single flower there’s no telling who it’s for, like every blade of grass, like all of us I guess, the clues are overwhelming when you take the time to really look.  Though I can’t quite understand what it says to me. But like that little astronaut out for “just five more minutes,” I stay and stare passed wrought iron and concrete, passed the dull grey silhouettes along the ground and I pray for the souls long forgotten and those newly departed to let me in on what they know.  Am I to fly? Am I to wait? Am I to run? Am I to go?

I wait for it to drop, to fly off, for an answer or a clue or anything really, I suppose.

And then suddenly the moon grows for me,
Just a sliver a few days ago,
And tonight I saw the moment,
When she became more full,
For that’s what she does,
Consumes the sleeping sun
While he’s off across the world.
So she brightens for me,
And in the once-black sky cirrus clouds glow.
The sky seems filled with feathers now,
Or like ivy laced up high poised to grab and dash any hopes of escape into the ether.

Sure as the moon will grow,
And sure as she will fall,
There lies deep within us all the yearn to heed the call.
To cherish the moments in between those of exalted grandeur,
Those moments of grey
And in between.
The quotidian. The intricate.
The distinct.
Till then this astronaut be grounded,
This soul of mine still tied to this hard earth,
Till then that I do see, let me hang upon this bow.

I thought the bag was long gone, for I wrote these lines a couple moons ago, but last night there was a plastic bag flying over Trinity Cemetery.  On that same branch, just west of the moon, and amid a stretch of heavy clouds.  I couldn’t see Orion last night on my way home but I’m hoping it was still there.

Just like a flag photographed, it seemed to hang limply in spite of the wind that whipped up Amsterdam.  A wind now turned cold at long last after a day too unseasonably warm, and with this I’m reminded of winter once more, perhaps it’s here to stay.

Stuck on the tiniest branch of that bare young oak, I walked by this time without stopping at all.  Let the astronaut play, and let the flag lay, but let me not look to the sky once more and bask in irresponsibility.  As I did pass that place I once stood against the wrought iron fence in gentle wonder, the wind caught up to the bag and now it slaps against the vicious air determined to be free.  Perhaps calling to me, but I’m across 155^th before I can make out what it has to say.

Like a single semaphore,
like an unmarked grave,
like every blade of grass,
like all of us along the ground
and those that fly above,
restless, dead, long forgotten,
or those that call to you,
Call to me now,
Take me away
I will go and I will listen,
I wait no more for signs to drop.

For what do restless souls have that other souls do lack?
A constant searching yearning learning
and a beating in the chest
so hard and loud
the trains don’t dare interrupt.
But blind at times and uneasy at others
I’m a stranger here that doesn’t quite belong.
I see the world so differently it pains me sometimes quick
to know the beauty of it all to see it loud and true,
and yet be overwhelmed and powerless
to capture and hold on.

Like a bag upon a tree
Flying high, but stuck
Like a bag caught in a tree
Full of air, but empty.

Talking on the phone
is like trying to open a door with a frisbee.
you wanna get through to someone,
come across to somebody,
but you just don’t have the right tools.
you can’t even see the person you’re talking to!

talk!  face to face.

 

talking on the phone
is like that first walk around the block
with the doggie in the morning,
everything hits so hard and so fast
boom, you’re there,
new york is you and you are new york.
talk that hard and that fast.

talk! to me.

 

talking on the phone
is like getting mustard instead of ice cream.
it’s just not as good without your face
in front of me.  without you.
talking on the phone
is something we don’t hardly do anymore.

 

The funny thing is,

i talk all day.

 

While I Was Painting In The Kitchen

A gentleman’s voice from a floor or two below
rang out like my grandfather’s voice.

And I was a little kid,
laughing at the tricks he liked to do with his cane,
and he was my abuelito.

I stopped and stared out the window,
but I didn’t allow my eyes to adjust from their
old vantage point,
No longer on the drying titanium white,
nor on the beige brick below,
but on something in between,
and nothing at all.

I was of some quiet age,
when my Mother still combed my hair,
parted down the left side,
a clean part that made me look like
a 1940’s movie star.
I loved life,
and I loved everything.

And then my eyes caught the bricks in front of me.
I thought back to those days of youth –
though I am still quite young right now –
Where have they gone?

He loved hot black coffee,
with sugar stirred right in,
by a tiny tinkling teaspoon,
that would drive everybody crazy.

He loved his orange marmalade,
over slightly blackened bread.

And he wore a three piece suit during the dead of summer.

He was my abuelito.
And I needed a smaller brush
if I wanted to paint these trees right.
The voice is gone now.
And I paint with my fingers.

and as i open my eyes again
i think of the mgm lion.

i’m tired but I drove myself to this conclusion.

i saw her tonight.
those eyes that hair
those lips that mouth.
I saw her tonight.

and what can i say but
I love the woman
still.

 

though I miss her deeply
and want her near
here

now,

I know that it’s the best thing for us right now.

 

I still without cause or reservation
do enter what I tagged as such:
my

BLUE PERIOD   …