Yesterday, I made my debut as a "featured poet" at the invitation of Paterson, NJ, poet laureate Talena Lachelle Queen.
The event was tied to an exhibit for local photographer Fred Levine, at a coffee shop in Little Falls. Proceeds from photo sales benefited Word Seed, a Paterson-based nonprofit whose mission is to give voice and support to writers of every age and skill level across diverse communities.
I shared 10 poems.
To start -- inspired by Andrea Bocelli singing "Nessun Dorma" to open the Winter Olympics in Milan -- I read "Roman Holiday." Milan is my paternal grandmother's hometown. Well, in truth, her hometown was a suburb of Milan named Ferno, which is the Italian word for "Hell."
Roman Holiday
When I was a teen,
my uncle, the priest, led me up stone steps of a forbidden tower
to a parapet, with a panoramic view of St. Peter’s Square.
We were trespassing, and I was afraid of heights.
I told him I preferred to see the world with my feet on the ground:
looking up at the Sistine Chapel ceiling,
watching my grandmother feed pigeons in the piazza,
seeing the cool smooth marble of the Pieta inches from my eyes.
When I was a boy, I had seen this Virgin Mary’s face from afar,
behind bullet-proof, ceiling-to-floor plexiglass
on a dimly lit moving sidewalk,
jostled by tourists at the World’s Fair.
But then, as a teen, free from my Roman chaperones,
I was Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.
I was the only person in the world viewing, in a stolen moment,
what Michelangelo had carved from a single stone.
In such dizzying proximity to perfection,
I understood the desire to destroy it.
And yet I have lived my life as an innocent man,
never seeking to avenge my younger self.
I am Zacchaeus, and this page is where I hide.
This piece of paper.
This poem.
I love photography as much as I love poetry. On my Instagram page -- @bvarphotos -- I post an original image and haiku every Monday. Haikus are fun, three-line poems -- 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables. For example, here's one of Fred's black-and-white photos:
Here's my haiku for that:
The sincerest prayers
Come from the back of the church,
Not from the altar.
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Recently, I read a man say about his wife: "If I had met her sooner, I would have loved her longer. That's certainly a beautiful sentiment. But I have to confess, my first thought about these lines was, "Those clauses have seven syllables each!" Which meant I could use them in a tanka -- a poetic form that's simply a haiku followed by two lines of seven syllables.
Here's another of Fred's images:
Here's my tanka for that:
I drove aimlessly,
With color draining from the sky
Until I found you.
If I had met you sooner,
I would have loved you longer.
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My wife and I have two daughters. when they were little, I used to recite favorite poems to them as lullabies. They especially liked Edgar Allan Poe and, surprisingly, "Sailing to Byzantium" by Yeats. My next poem takes the opening lines from Yeats and continues with lines of my own in the same meter and rhyme scheme... to honor my grandfather, in line with the theme of Fred's photography.
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| My grandparents, Budd Lake, NJ, 1969 |
Byzantium in Jersey
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect…
(—W.B. Yeats)
This, my grandfather, in his Sunday best:
a cigarette dangling from its holder,
a tattered suit, a worn Italian vest.
Watch me at his side, decades less older.
He does not hold my hand. There is no rest.
He lectures as we walk, points my shoulders
to Monarch butterflies in flight toward me
along the shores of Budd Lake, New Jersey.
This, a back country road, is my classroom:
milkweed, honeysuckle, red columbine,
hummingbirds, spotted touch-me-nots in bloom,
blue robins’ eggs, goldenrod, dandelions.
My grandfather names them for me, assumes
I will remember that sparrow, that vine,
the chicory, those edible lilies,
the mew of mimicking catbirds we see.
Like the sage I loved, these vanished from me.
I live in the suburbs, reminisce now
about ancestors. In autumn, I walk
the Hackensack riverbank in a drought.
A murder of crows chase a gyring hawk
then pause to roost on sun-kissed golden boughs.
I freeze, stalked, beneath their menacing caws.
This, I know, is my father’s father’s song
of what is past, or passing, or to come.
I enjoy writing poems based on prompts. One New Jersey poet I admire, Dimitri Reyes, once gave me this prompt: "Think about being a grandparent one day, and what this idea manifests." This short poem is called...
A Grandparent’s Lullaby
I am close to death,
while you are new.
So I clutch you to my heart,
imprint on you the rhythm of its beat,
keeping me alive.
Then I whisper in your ear
about the cruelty of time:
“Cherish every moment.”
No one will remember
the last one who survives.
I'm feeling nostalgic lately, like a Super Bowl ad. But I also feel very blessed and realized I am very privileged. From that point of view, it's difficult to authentically compose the type of activist, or "activist," poetry that I admire. So, in this set of poems, I'm focusing on my immigrant grandparents to celebrate their memory. I hope to inspire love and respect for all immigrants. As a writer, I at least aspire to be an insurrectionist of the heart.
This is a photo of my maternal, Polish grandmother in a wheelchair outside her home in Garfield, NJ. She didn't speak English.
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| Babci, Garfield, NJ, circa 1972 |
My haiku for her is this:
I know no Polish
except for “Ja cei kocham.”
It means “I love you.”
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A recent poem is about standing in my paternal grandmother's long-unattended garden. Yes, I'm referring again to Nonna, the "grandmother from Hell." I real life, she was a saint, and she died just before her 100th birthday.
Vanishing Garden
I stand in this garden
where everything vanishes.
Dad in his Navy blues,
an arm around his first and only love:
Mom, with Ava-Gardner-red lips,
under a canopy of vines plump with grapes.
Lips... redder than the nesting cardinals,
or the roses woven into the chain-link fence
where my daughter posed with a bouquet
in her First Communion dress.
A dress... whiter than the worn milking stool
where Nonna shucked corn
and split pea pods with her penknife,
while humming Rogers and Hammerstein.
I stand in this garden
where everything vanishes.
Crows descend. Bees disappear, then roses.
Rust erodes the fence. The well runs dry.
Only the music never dies.
The night wind echoes in an a cappella
of haunting ancient words
whose meaning I don't understand.
What's the use of wondering?
This ghostly ballad comforts me.
Although everything has vanished,
I am not alone.
I stand in this garden
surrounded by angels.
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Fred's photography captures the beauty of nature, like the photo he autographed of fallen leaves in a stream. This image, on Valentine's Day weekend, reminded me of this traditional sonnet I wrote years ago, with regret:
Adam was a madman; and paradise,
a fraud. In only this do I believe:
the rhythm of your constancy. Oh Christ,
your eyes alone could prove infinity.
It is our love that has unraveled all.
You haunt my sleep. One moment, I balance,
with stars beneath my feet. The next, I fall
from you toward earth -- my dream, a graceless dance.
Before I land, my senses gain control.
Alone in bed, I fear the rustling sound
of insubstantial leaves, like wind-swept souls.
My heart (alive or dead?) seems strangely bound.
This is the slow, uneven beat of Hell:
I have loved you always, but never well.
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My next-to-last poem is a combination of art and photography, about my favorite artist, Van Gogh. These are...
My Last Words to Vincent
In a wheat field in my mind,
I recognize the flowerless countryside.
This must be Arles.
I’ve never been to France in real life,
but I know what I know.
Cue the murder of crows.
Through a lens darkly, I see Vincent
reimagining the scene on canvas,
ensuring his sadness will last forever.
He works as if possessed.
I try to warn him,
he will indeed commit suicide.
But in the descending darkness,
the thunder of hundreds of wings
muffles my cry.
"It's not too late!" I scream.
The artist turns his head,
curiously lifting his eyes to mine.
In just that moment,
I take a photo,
that doesn't exist,
forever capturing
the long view of both of us:
imaginary proof of all our useless dreams.
Yes, I mentioned crows in three of my poems last night. As my grandfather would remind me, crows are harbingers of death. But this is what a word nerd I am: I chose three poems to deliberately mention crows three times because I wanted to magically negate any curse. I wasn't taking any chances.
Except maybe for this, my final poem. I certainly thank Word Seed for inviting me to read. I admire what the organization does, with Fred Levine's support, for writers young and old throughout northern New Jersey. This final poem is set in my hometown in Bergen County.
Things to Do When You’re Invisible
I nurse a shaved ice in a booth at Kailani’s,
Which is, according to its website,
“Nestled in the heart of New Milford, NJ.”
Bill Nash used to run
A store called Big Variety here.
I look for his ghost.
Bill is long gone… shrouded, like me,
Behind a cloak of invisibility.
The Korean girl in her summer clothes
Stole the attention of the high school boy behind the counter
After he dutifully took my order, shaped it, imbued it in red,
Preparing the first shaved ice I will ever try.
He doesn’t care.
I grow old, while the world around me spawns anime and new.
I am an NPC in this game of boy meets girl.
When I was a newbie, like the boss behind the counter,
I thought invisibility, the ability to be willful without consequence,
Was the greatest superpower.
I know better now.
I tip my iPhone toward my bowl of unfreezing, bleeding ice.
I capture its image, ensuring a focus
On the melting of memory, the mining of the sublime.
This is the superpower I have come to possess:
Ensnaring evanescence.
When I take a photo...
Or write a poem...
I activate God Mode.
Not only invisible;
I am invincible.
I can stop time.
