These are great. - Kathy

Peter Leon

In The Afternoon Infinity Machine You Go Insane

Sitting On The Stoop of The Drugstore I Smoke A Cigarette.
A Pencil In My Mouth I Study My Drawings For My Infinity Machine.
Using Photos of The Universe I Make Giant Mathematical Calculations.
I Try To Go Back In Time To The 19th Century.
Through Certain Degrees of The Spectrum of God.
I Climb Into The Infinity Machine I Constructed of Mirrors In The Old Garage.
The Milkman's Horse Drawn Truck Clopples Down The New York City Road.
I Open Up A Newspaper As I Sit On the Stoop of The Drugstore.
I Check the Calculations And Tighten Up My Belt And Climb Into The Reflective Light Transmitter.
Everything Goes Dark In A Sudden Eclipse of The Sun.
I Finish Smoking That Cigarette.
Lights Out And I Tumble Through The Gardens of Time.
I Ascend In A Whirl Wind of Ashes.
Landing Feet First On The Cobble Stone.

This Was New York.
This Was The 19th Century On The Lower Eastside.
Peasants Buying Fresh Produce At The Vegetable Stalls.
I Open Up The Local Newspaper And Flip Through The Obituaries.
I Discover I'm An Immigrant In Strapped Leather Boots.
I'm A Young Rabbi With A Long Beard.
I Take An Apple In Exchange For A Piece of Copper.
My Feet Clinging To The Hand Laid Stone Roads of The New World.
I Have Transported Through Centuries In My High Energy Infinity Machine.
I Am An Old Country Litvak.
A Tourist of Time.
I Bite Into The Fresh Apple Perfect...So Crisp.
I Study The Torah While Sitting On A Vegetable Crate As The Horse Clops By.
This Is The Lower Eastside.
The 19th Century Sun Blinds The Foreign Immigrant.
I Have A Smile On My Face.
The Black Coal Is Delivered By A Horse And Wagon.
The Ice Man And His Steel Tongs.
Children Play In The Noisy Street.
Loose Pages of A Newspaper Blow By.
A Young Woman In A Long Black Skirt And A White Blouse Holding A Basket That Carries The Sweet Losses of Mid-Day Shadows Lower Than Her Nation.
The Fresh Fruit Wagons In The Labors of The Strong Horses.

In My Travails I Have Crossed The Time Barrier.
I'm Not Certain If My Infinity Box Still Functions In The Rising Smoke of The Mathematical Calculations From An Immigrants Journey.
The Young Woman Is My Lover.
Her Hand Sewn Cloth Beneath Her Lost Mirror Eyes.
Her Daily Shopping In The Old Planet of Creation.
I Walk Through The Slow Traffic of Strong Horses And When I Reach Through The Dust And The Smoke I, For The First Time, Kiss Her.
And The Sound of The Subterranean Construction of Dark Tunnels And Iron Rails Make For A Young Man's Railroad of An Immigration Psychosis.
I Take My Handkerchief Out of My Back Pocket And Blow My Nose.
In A Whirl Wind of Time I Embrace Her Resting Upon These Young Woman's Warm Breasts of Another New York City Time.

And When I Awaken I Am Sitting On The Stoop of The Drugstore With An Old Immigrant's Cigarette In My Aging Hand.
The Dogs Are Playin...The Children Laugh...A Newspaper Blows Across The Road.
And My Infinity Box Is Displayed In The Store Front Window of The Saint Vincent DePaul...Forever.

 

A 1952 Jar of Lamb Preserves

A Hand Full of Morning Swan.
A Jar of Jam For The Immigrant Child's Hand And A Cloth Pouch Full of Roasted Lamb.
A Jar of Subtle Raven Light.
A Psychotic Son In The Literary High Tide of A Beachfront Hospital Ward.
A Stained Cloth Strapped To The Lamb.
A Swan Spreads Her Evening Wings.
A Young Shephard With His Laundry List.
I Sit With An Afternoon Planetary Radio Job.
Staring At An Iron Sandwich In The Midnight Light of Grandmother's Burial Grounds Where I Am Dressed In A Coat Made By Peasant Hands In A Dark Morning Hospital Bed Where No One Will Ever Sleep.
And Then I Stop To Do A Magical Dance At The Nurses Station.
Father's Hand Holds A Briefcase Carefully Packed With Mayan Calendars Purchased In An Old Subway From The Subterranean Pawnshop Owned By A Survivor With A Tattoo Beside The Earthen Pits Full of Burning Bodies Upon The Sunlit Memories of A Saturday Afternoon.
He Sits There With A Flashlight, Talking Foreign Languages And Eating A Deli Lunch.
He Stands Beside Me With A Bleeding Hand Full of Crumpled Prayers.
I Am Being Ripped Through The Midnight Hospital Hallway.
I Am Comforted By The Hand of A Telephone Operator Priest.
I Grab Hold of The Mercury Wings of An Old Goose.
I Hear The Chanting of A Hospital Janitor.
I Keep A Photograph of Great-Grandfather Eating A Peanut Butter Sandwich In The Burning Libraries of Alexandria.
I Stand Stuffing The Luminous Wings With Handwritten Prescriptions For Morning Light.
In The Darkness The Paperboy Writes The Tightly Bandaged Song of The Morning Child.
In The Sunlit Language of A Quiet Breast.
My Father Comes Throught The Radio Sunlight One Day To Visit Me In My Old Electric Chair.
The Old Raven Smokes A Horse Track Cigar.
The Quiet Man In The Work Apron Fixes Archival Radios Upon The Work Bench of A Memorable Afternoon.
The Retired Janitor Writes Love Notes In The Unswept Galleries of My Old Grandfather's Heart.
And The Wing-ed Dog Forever Sits In Front of The Television.


The Memories of The Child's Wings

Quietly Sitting In The Bath Tub Stuffed And Over Flowing With Hand Painted Wings of Chinese Birds.
Reading A Newspaper Dated 1963.
Whistling A Happy Song.
An Electric Radio Brings Me To My Knees.
I Hear Children Playing In The Backyard.
All of My Family Took That Old Train South.
Quietly I Entertain My Thoughts of The Missing Generations.
Dogs Bark.
Laughter Arises From The Summer Grasses.
Soon My Thoughts Return To Every Memory I Ever Counterfeited.

That Evening I Stand Outside The Drugstore.
A Pack of Cigarettes In My Shirt Pocket.
The Portrait of The Sun Is A Prescription of Slow Evening Light.
An Old Automobile Is Parked On The Busy Thorough Fare.
Think It's A Chevy But I Can't Remember.
An Old Man Sits Upon A Park Bench Spitting Phlegm And Holding A Magazine.
The Children From The Neighborhood Form A Circle And Sing As They Dance.
I Am The California Priest......Or At Least I Think I Am.

I Stand In The Evening Sun Smoking A Fresh Cigarette.
Inhaling The Energies of My Private Universe.
The Telephone In The Booth Rings Several Times But Nobody Picks It Up.
A Dog Sits By My Side All Evening Long.
The Newspaper Tells The Story of A 16 Year Old Girl Being Murdered.
Day After Day It Sold Newspapers.
I Know.
I Used To Deliver The Afternoon News.
But Today I Stand Outside The Pharmacy As The Old Man Sleeps Upon The Park Bench.
I Light A Cigarette And Inhale Deeply.
The Moon Rises Over My Village.
Ohhhh That Tobacco Was Sooo Good!
But Soon I Stamp Out The Butt And Head Home Upon My Feet.
If I Listen Carefully, Years Later, I Can Hear The Old Man Snoring.
And The Children.....I Can Still Hear Them Sing As They Run Home For Dinner.
And I Can Hear Them Dance As The Last Light of The Sky Melts Into The Early Hours of Night.


I Stand Naked
Nonchalantly Holding The Last Remaining
Mirror of The Universe

The Portrait of A Locked Hospital Rises Up In Smoke.
The Hallways Are a Rushing Bubbling Current of The Crumbling Insane.
I'm Strapped Into The Electric Chair With A Common Cold.
My Childhood Memories Must Complete The Chart.
So I'm Alone In An Abandoned Hospital Room Sitting On My Hospital Bed Looking Into The Peddler's Mirror.
And I Can See my Great-Grandfather In The Night Skies of Mars Counting Down The Complete Minute Aspects of My Helpless Silent Infinity of Exploded Insanity.
And The Ice Cream Man Comes Driving The Hellfire Truck, Church Bells Ringing Through The Frightful Timelessness of Psychosis.
And A Young Boy Is Left Standing In The Exhaust Fumes of Childhood.
The Minutes Remaining of The Chemicals Like A Web of Railroad Tracks That Tightly Circumvent The Thousands of Heavily Populated Graveyards In The Thousands of Busy Villages of My Brain.

And I Sit Upon The Made Bed Swinging My Legs In Late, Late Hours of My Drugstore Universe.
All The Neighborhood Children Decorate Their Bicycles For Memorial Day.
For The Complex Passage Way To A Lake of Iron Swans Where Mother And I Feed The Birds Stale Pieces of Bread.
For The Anesthetic Hours of An Orthodox Prescribed Maturation.
A Young Stomach Full of A Poorly Lit Universe.
I Am Alone Now Upon My Bed.

Blindfolded, I Try To Look Out The Window At 3:30 In The Morning.
I Shall Have Tales To Tell My Great-Grandchildren.
Quickly Mars, In Its Final Revolution, Makes An Orbit Around Those Gravitational Records of The Hospital Bed.
I Am Swallowing Galaxies In Lieu of The Tragic Fact That There Is No Silent Medicine To Fill My Needs For Sleep From The Crabapple Tree Midnight Nurse.
I Lie About My Existence In The Final Hours of The Card Catalog In The Millions of Words For My All-Night Diner.
Where I Sit At The Counter With A Cigarette Beside The Last Moment of Napoleon As He Sits Blowing His Nose Into His Grandmother's Handkerchief By A Corner Drugstore.

I Sit Amongst Smoke Rising, Slowly Feeding The Flames With The Individual Hand Torn Pages From The Sanctuary of My Failed Notebook.
I Sit Alone, Protected By The Armies of Isolation, Inside The Desolate Moments of Psychosis.
Unwrapping A Candy Bar I Watch Out Front of The Home of My Youth As The Old Iron Mail Truck Stops Amongst The Flames of The Countless Hand Painted Bluebird Wings of My Childhood.
Mother Is Putting Up The Linens Upon The Line In Our Backyard Which Is Crawling With Subtle Threats of Lifelong Mental Illness.
Where I Ride So Very High Upon The Metal Swing Set In The Backyard From The Billowing Sheets of Aberdeen.

It Is My Life, And Though Some May Disagree, I Know That I Had Chosen It Upon An Eternal Summer Afternoon Before I Would Finally Taste The Omnipresent Red Popsicle That Melts Not...Not For You And Certainly Not For The Low Cost Rabbi Who Sleeps Like Sampson Chained To The Pillars of The Great Temple.
I Run Through The Neighborhood Amongst The Young Dogs And I Wait By The Telephones.

But Now I Am Fifty.
The Popsicle Leaves Archival Memories of A Chewed Popsicle Stick.
I Sti Upon The Stoop With Nothing Left But Memories of Grandmother's Garden.
I Sit Upon The Stoop With My Curly Haired Dog Beside Me.
I Sit To Comfort Napoleon In His Troubles.
So Together We Sit Looking Out At The Midnight Skies.
Oh The Billowing Linens of Waterloo!
And Napoleon, Alas, Unwraps The Medicine Man's Chocolate Bar.
Beside The Dog.
Deep Within The Last Moments of The Hospital.
And I Listen, Like A Child, To The Old Footsteps In My Father's Backyard.

The Hospital Is Closed Now...Forever.
And Scattered Upon The Hospital Room Floors Are The Hand Drawn Memories of Tomorrow And The Evening Maps of Forgotten Battle Plans.
Just Me And The Old Emperor.
Just Me And The Emperor And A Couple of Promised Bottles That Come With The Complete Consolation of Fresh Icy Cokes.
I Stand There And Urinate Like A Blindfolded Sailor With A Lack of Anything Else To Do.

More to come in the next issue... Kathy

Pete can be reached at Priest_53@msn.com. His poetry has been published in many prestigious magazines. In '99, Pete placed 1st in CSU's Whisky Island Magazine competition.