The Horses: New & Selected Poems

A Song for the Piano Player

15 A song For The PiAno PlAyer Sleazing in a basement in Northern California I hear the black kids hoot from Harlem horn fisted graceful as scary sugar My Daddy comes to me moping a pack rat torn sheet and rubber mat in my teen-age thirties a writer living in bare places Daddy be my juju be my African black sceptre give me courage Daddy that I be strong when I face the lion Down in the black ocean streets I fought psychopathic cross-wise Sanford and when his fist exploded in my head it was my mother’s rage that rose in me and won 16 Was that the lion the dragon of my passage? or is he here in this damp winter basement spiders weaving on the walls breathing here in this gray scuzzy flow of places and faces without roots or flowers the dragon of failure of middle age and death? I hated you then, Daddy I was ashamed when I needed someone to show me how to be a man We played games instead you and I together like two little boys travelling on the lit up nerves of Manhattan to Hopalong Cassidy movies on Saturdays in Times Square to the Museum of Natural History the Bronx Zoo 17 You told me stories shaving in the mornings about Oscar Schmulewitz and his Daddy their wondrous adventures travelling by helicopter to Africa being swallowed by whales My slight funny Daddy cared for by women A juju for the hollowness the concrete and the strangers a chieftain’s amulet and scars to brave this shapeless river of our lives where we struggle like little fishes It’s all different now an undreamt land of strange golden hills swelling like breasts mountains to the north ocean to the west No collapsing black star of New York island fabulous auras of show business greats 18 you booked in the Catskills when they were little of ex-champs blinking in the Broadway lights who called you ‘Commodore’ and taught me how to hold my dukes no strutting shadows only bland healthy faces the wild popcorn boys I fought in the schoolyard are junkies or night porters squashed candy wrappers that flutter on other streets A charm Daddy a magician’s light to unclench my fists so the sap can flow to the middle of my life so I can stand in wide horizontal spaces and listen to the earth before my birth you were a young man piano player on the road I hear you playing BOOM-CHICK BOOM-CHICK 19 funny Al slick in lonely towns Dallas, Rio de Janeiro making up songs for the waitresses Who you are a basic party harlequin only your sensitivity your nervousness slight clever build quick a woman’s man runner and a lover not a fighter The nervous center that you couldn’t share with anyone not with Mother or with me sealed off in punchlines and babytalk golf TV laughter hard timeless nut of you dangling inside your seventy years moustachio moon face and jowls round belly skinny legs gleaming soul nut unravelling to drop so soon 20 I’ll store it for my winter the juju of my father sunlight before birth the channel juju of the nervous funny talking man Who I am conjuring here in the basement A nervous funny talking man with courage from my mother a golden oval juju to let my Daddy go to feel the cats the rhythm flow the black girls dancing in a row Marilyn and Sonya molasses and honey And when the whale comes to swallow me in the ocean, Daddy to know who I am ...