Best Rochester Poems

It was an early fall day, some decades ago, 
When three of my boys were still young.
Looking forward that year to the Rochester Fair,
An event that was always good fun.

A promise from me I would transport them forth 
And attend this yearly event,
Where the food...

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Wind, word, sail
The helm is turned
On the oar of the tongue
Against the tide of laws
The righteous cause
Will its litany and prevail
O could the dock
Materialize again
Out of the euphoria of the brain
O could not relay of metered sound
Measure out spoon by empty spoon
The empty wait
And the...

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From here I see again - not property
Men mangled and maimed by history
Not the shadows in chains
Chipping and hauling wooden flesh
Creation with more license
Than God on the silver skin
Carried its cargo before the wind
Of meaninglessness -
Here looks across the shining city
The muted mist of history
And...

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A small stretch of bar to call my own:
I cover it with my paper and a thin book of poems - 
Most I don't understand at all
Some, unfortunately, I understand too well.
A TV in the corner
tut tuts 20 thousand screaming Yankee fans
into a shushing murmur...

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March 17 in eighteen sixty three
Will spin and pivot 
Ancestry
As the fulcrum of this country
It is the unholy fire
Baal's tongue licking at the bones
Defied by desire
O but the ash is better balm
Then endless years
Where freedom wilts
A seedling watered by the salt of tears...

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When the freedom fighter
Leaves the forest
The tongue
Is not the greatest glitter
In sun hope or moon desire
For now the land that hid the shadows
Carried comrades in its arms
Laughed in the brain
Like an alien treasure
Must be plowed and torn 
Must open its belly to take 
The seed...

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You in the white cathedrals of joy
Do you ever stop 
To be the bouquet in the morgue of morning
A Christmas wreath you lay
At inn where the door is bolted
Where crawls the maggot
In the living flesh
And balm the heart in selfishness
I tell you the baby you...

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