of Rimbaud?
I’ll carry my Plebeian fire
in a pick-up truck, fancy myself
kin to Prometheus,
delight every bar from here to Kentucky.
I’ll seek out Magdalene to guide me,
tell her the wizard resides in Louisville.
First I must orient her to my trade,
visit every driveway and road I’ve paved.
Reciting poems of shovel and rake,
I’ll woo her wild under a broken moon,
convince her asphalt’s a mating place.
Art, my dear! Imagine I’m an artist
like Cezanne. Love me once
on my canvas and it’s bluegrass forever.
(I hear Rimbaud has a mount in the Classic.)
If we’re discovered we’ll say we’re testing
driveways for Consumer Reports.
It’s going to be a hell of a Derby.
Prometheus says the poet is blessed.
I’ll take the role of the flame
swiping Titan, but Magdalene,
don’t be a vulture, ale is a better way
to waste a liver. Act like a gentle swallow
at play and I’ll be renewed
like the Tinman, Lion and Scarecrow.
Dear Magdalene, your heat
has melted the black masterpiece.
I’m calm enough for death but skip the stone
just apply a healthy blacktop square,
mail dance invitations to the folks
I’ve offended. Dearest Magdalene be
Little Egypt on the yellow brick road.
Then Rimbaud and Dorothy will grind away:
a Derby rose between her teeth.
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Important as Weather
Herbie is in the woods
splitting logs
to get into shape
to ride again.
A string of horses
ready for Brockton Fair
his to ride
if he got sober,
kept his damned trap shut.
The trainer made the offer
in the Bobbin Lounge
tossing a handful
of clippings in a puddle
of Herbie’s spilt scotch.
The trainer read off results
of races Herb had won
but didn’t recall:
Hawthorne and Golden Gate.
The trainer said a month
of axe work upstate
would get him fit
to ride nine a day.
Did right by Abe Lincoln he joked.
Herb squeezed the scotch
out of his history,
gazed at the corner table
where some fool was kissing
his ex-wife’s foot.
He wondered what kind of derelict
was minding the kids
then borrowed the bartender’s reading glasses.
Herbie perked up as he remembered
being as important
as weather and obituaries.
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The Clocker, Narragansett Park
He rarely smiled,
never held a stopwatch
yet he called himself a clocker.
His tipsheets were canary yellow
like his lucky sportcoat
30 years ago at Hialeah
when he’d picked 7 longshots.
He printed his selections quickly
in a rundown trailer
not far from Narragansett
as soon as he got the scratches.
The ink was always smudged,
his hand press was so ancient.
After a decent afternoon,
two or three winners,
maybe the double,
he’d circle the horses’ names
on the tipsheets that remained
with a laundry marker so strong
the odor made him high.
He’d pay Project kids who hung around
the track instead of school a buck or so
for distribution.
He knew his help tossed his advertising
down sewers but luck’s so rare
even an old man not on a laundry marker
high might cherish sharing good fortune
with rats, teeth yellow as a seven
winner sportcoat.
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Clocker Sarge
Any morning you could find
the clocker snug at the rail
eyeing his watch and recalling
war and hand grenades.
Pin released, he times horses
whose clopping fills his head
with his favorite music,
“The Grand Canyon Suite.”
After the explosion
rocked his head,
his jockey pal visited
the hospital
and tried with no luck
to get at least a war
story out of him.
Sarge used to stop
his trusty timepiece
as precisely as a conductor
halts his philharmonic.
In the nursing home
he stares at the wall
as if it’s full of five
a.m. workout
thoroughbreds.
The jockey brings in
the watch that survived
hitting asphalt
when Sarge collapse
and places it
against his stroked
friend’s ear
and he does the same
with a tape deck
playing his “Suite”
but nothing penetrates
the new world walls.
There’s a turn schedule
designed to fight bed sores
taped on the wall behind
Sarge’s bed:
eight o’clock left
ten o’clock right
twelve o’clock left
two o’clock right
and so on.
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Three Talents
The last time I saw him I shut up
about the knack that was his big brag –
breaking line bare-handed
when he was in the merchant marine.
Many doubters had kissed cash
goodbye quicker than your average
fool when he’d snapped a hank
of sturdy manila very first try.
I kept quiet about his barroom pinball
mastery that had disappeared
by the time I’d gotten drunk
enough to bet on him.
He’d sworn to recoup my losses
and more employing
his third talent at a bookie –
six furlong horse races at
Louisiana tracks.
No point rubbing in that his picks
ran as if their reins reminded
riders of heaving lines
and they were getting even
for paychecks fathers lost at sea.
Last time I saw him he was nursing
a draught beer and he took up my offer
to buy him another by switching
to top-shelf whisky.
We laughed like hell about his drinking
advancement which was easy since there
was no pinball machine and bookies
were tucked in.
He was the one who broached
the line snapping.
We staggered around a few
back yards groping for clotheslines
but it was futile considering
how many likes of me he might
have succeeded or failed to
furnish proof.
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Paradoxica
l Thirst
There are times my laugh or tone
of voice is so much like my father’s
I feel I am becoming him.
The sensation is strongest
when I’m in a bar
where we’d drank
and played horses.
Almost without choice
I use his system: parlay
the third consensus picks in
the last two races at Aqueduct.
It’s the lot of the son to
extend the life of his father—
at least his betting style
and his drinking methods
We imbibe a bit too much.
Who knows how we get home?
Mid-stretch in a dream I’m startled
awake, aware when he was my age
only my brother was born.
In the bathroom, quenching
my paradoxical thirst, I see
my father in the mirror
as he looked in his wedding picture.
Like a sly old tout with all
the inside information,
I advise in his raspy whisper
“Skip the next kid,
like you would a bad race.”
In the morning paper when
I find his system worked
I tell the mirror to forget
last night and slick back my hair
the same way he did his.
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Systems
Nineteen-thirty-four
my old man could
have been
at Narragansett Park
for the first
'Gansett Special.
Hell, stood right smack
next to Jack Kerouac
and his father
and exchanged words
about the horses passing
on the way to post.
My dad might have
asked eight-year-old Jack
what he was writing
in the notebook prompting
a detailed explanation
of the personal thoroughbred
racing world he'd created.
This is all conjecture
and wishful thinking
of course but I do know
my father employed
a betting strategy
that consisted of religiously
betting the third favorite
in a race alone or in win
and place parlays
not to mention daily
doubles and bird cages.
Neal Cassady used
the same method I learned
in a Kerouac biography.
Add my father to form
a trio that’s been known
to whisper over my shoulder
as I’m heading off
to wager on a race.
But that Great Depression day
the longshot Time Supply
was the victor and third
choice Omar Khayyam placed.
For a while I thought I came close
to meeting Jack but I heard later
the guy who said he’d arrange it
was as dependable as
a country fair tout.
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Belated Respects
Red was the one
who picked the horse
we split a bet on.
Class Hero
romped at 35-1.
Red always looked
for sprinters
stretching out,
routers
turning back
and he often
mentioned the only
sick week
in his life.
A nephew gave him
a carton on Winstons
for Christmas
that nearly killed him.
No straying
from cowboy smokes
after that.
He never married
but kept a cat.
I’ve lost what
he called it.
Hadn’t seen Red in ages
when I learned a stroke got him.
The longshot’s name returned
after a few months,
an event