I
omega of my swampdusk block
caress of
   dandelions and cardoons
at the deadend of
callused refractions, b-
      light of grand-
father's last autumn--

sharecrop
before he winter-croaked in Hell'
         s Kitchen
lofting his last cups against
pneu-
   maniac
deepfreeze
to expiate Sacco and Vanzetti myths
with minestrone, phlegm, and
       (perhaps
carepacked for all padroni)
parcelpost bombs
toward a spring to never gush
like Vesuvian lava he dreamed
as figs and honey
dropping
   (naturally?)
into millennial gorges
of the fleeced and stumbled
ruminating terrible justice

II
ubi est?
   the ethni-
cendiary eucharist
of our vagrant Noah
covenanting paschal
nitro-glycerine
sacrifices?

III
shopping-mauled sunsets
consume my radicles
yet there is a-
      theistic grace
for the patriarch
I never mocked:
requiescat in bellum
contra omnes imperum

may he never have swallowed
halloweanerized paradysiacs
of christoghoulized limbs
freèzunctifèking
sermons on account

IV
Alfonso Vitiello died forever
six years before I blinked
under Midtown haze
one blood-yellow eve
we sack-o-profi-
lactize caritas

V
scugnizz' to be sub-
urban lonewolf
prickling it snout
on thistles he milked
for rankling, undefiled
potions to express
Neapolitan pungencies
volcanic americas...

VI
.... I howl serenading
the igni fati
(agrodolce far niente)
grafting sfumature
to barbs and fuses

VII
cowhorn aurae glowering
from chthonic glands
and embers of clipped feathers
are mines of 'o sole mio
flocculating in purple shadows cast
by Cumaean jaws
       (ev-
viva Napoli
     disgorging
our dignified hell)

as molten    turbid    pristine
all our incubi transhume:

vortices of shrapnel
magma peace
feast--
    and I e-
rupt    hunt    whelp
to disinter
from craters and marrow
macadam and pits
Alfonso's alpha anarchist humus

jangles and jagged
icecream stics
in Sunday El silence--

      no host
I stirred up dead
alley cats
bebopped to manhole rattles
scattered when no chicks
dug my boundless numbers
        and
scaled drainpipes
improvised my creases
obbligatowed through sky-
          lights ex-
cavating
     in-
finite variations
on neon zeroes

no where my
death-
defying
cacophony
was effluvia of up and
      down beat
divine rage
and dry-
ice jazz

at the service someone
might hold for my oblivion

as the kidneys stew
in emergency buckets
the heart craves follies
in another breast
and disposable parts serve
as mulch for acorns

let no one speak
unless to conspire:

'he burned for a love
a bite better than nothing--

now it's our turn to
nourish the oak'