Poem Bale Three Regarding Horseplayer Luck & Lack
Page 3
I call the wake.
What the cat answered to
will be the funeral.
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Someone who’d drank
himself into a contender
did not attack me
after I’d failed to argue
at the Middle Street bar
that I’d never been in the ring
at the old North Main Arena.
No gambler who’d lost a bundle
on a phantom nag I’d saddled
knifed me at the Indian Lounge
when I offered an old-timer
who’d testified I’d trained horses
at Narragansett no denial.
And after many years
it’s still these two jobs
I find highlighting the resume
in my white collar eyes
doing their damnedest to
turn my every conversation
into an interview.
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Late Post
Rock’s Bar
established 1907,
faces a stone wall low
enough to keep
cemetery
headstones
in the corners
of drinking eyes.
The bookie who owned
the Indian Lounge,
established in ‘36,
stares back.
Some Rock’s
patrons owed him,
others had cash
coming when he died.
Occasionally a mug
is lifted at a window,
gratefully or cursing.
Eternal deprivation
would be more peaceful
were it not for noisy
Triple Crown crowds
and a walking bookie
stationed at a corner
table at Rock’s
those Classic afternoons.
He sips flat ginger ale,
records flash paper bets
and senses ghosts
of win, place and show
jumping the wall --
all the bones in Sunday suits
planning post time
at midnight or so.
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The Dancer
Bobby used get tossed out
of diners back in ‘63
for dancing on tables
and counters
whenever the Orlons
sang "South Street"
on the jukebox.
You'd think it were the only
song in the world spinning
the very last time!
I lost track of him until ‘68
when I was hitchhiking
to Lincoln Downs and he stopped.
“Hey Jude" was blasting on the radio.
Dancing as best as
someone driving could
he hugged the steering wheel
moaning the name
of a blonde he used to date.
He didn't care about people
sitting on their horns.
Calming down at a news break
he gave me a hot horse
he'd gotten from J.J. Kelly.
It won but I never got to thank him.
I've heard drugs laid him low
but all the same he dances
in my thoughts now and then.
I sing "Hey Jude, don't make it bad"
like it's the only prayer in the world
and no one is left to say it but me.
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Poor Blood
I was never wild or tough
enough to fit with Bobby’s crowd
but sometimes he let me pretend.
We sold blood at an
alley clinic in Providence
to finance cheap wine
and horse bets at Narragansett.
I nickeled jukeboxes
at the Gem and Tracey’s
and applauded as he
danced on tables
until the cops came.
We shared a woman
but not the beauty whose name
on his arm got eagled over
when she ditched him.
Or the one whose death
fueled the rumors about her
disease killing him soon.
I helped him extort some
money and he cut me in,
let me fire his .38
into the Ten Mile River.
The last time I saw Bobby
he had a fancy car and new tattoos.
He seemed happy,
had a place in Jersey
with a fine woman
from Oregon and Monmouth
Racetrack was at his mercy.
He’d found a fish & chip
joint as good as the Gem.
When I saw the obit,
dead at 53 in Perth Amboy,
I muttered a crack
about poor blood not
worth a bet or a buzz before
dropping my wild and tough
guy pose to pray he’d scored
big at Monmouth every day
until the last.
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Saturn
I’ve visited every
race track
in the nation,
the old man brags.
Those ovals
ring my mind
like the hoops
sprucing up Saturn
and that’s one
of his handles.
My best day
was at a bookie
joint in Providence,
when I missed just
the sixth on a muddy
Pimlico card.
Drink to that memory,
he shouts and buys
for everyone.
Then he recalls
the eight glory races,
gate to wire
for young folks
at the bar.
He hopes they will
have many babies
and use the winners’ names
and maybe his
in lullabies
and thrilling night yarns.
His friends roar,
shout bravos and raise
their mugs in toast
to all his lucky horses
and Saturn’s lively gift
for ringing up a tale
and quenching
the thirst of his universe.
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Buster’s Full-Service Gulf
There was a shelf
of paperback westerns
regular customers could
borrow free: Max Brand,
Louis L’Amour, and Zane Grey.
When a gas tab was settled
Buster would pull
out a bottle
of Four Roses
and you could pour
your own like in TV
and movie saloons.
Terminally ill patients
at Wallum Lake
would bet by mail
any racetrack in the nation.
Buster called this
Pony Express.
When a new doctor
tried to stop their action
they went on a hunger strike.
Buster was so moved
he stopped worrying
about bets
with fraudulent postmarks
mailed after races
were official also
offered book rate
access to
his wild west.
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Richard Hugo, April 6th, 1978
The reading was in the Oak Room
where I’d worked hanging art
exh
ibits during college.
I knew exactly where six years
earlier I’d placed a Norman Rockwell:
Arcaro weighing in after a race.
And a combat series by an artist,
a chopper pilot in Vietnam.
Between poems Hugo spoke
of his bombardier days in WWII,
never once hitting a target.
Working for Boeing in Seattle
he’d found a poet doesn’t make
a good employee, always somewhere else.
I hadn’t had a job in months.
He smoked cigarettes lodged deeply
in the V of his fingers as if they had
to be secure for a magic trick.
I folded a sheet of paper three times
and he autographed it.
Did he think I was just being polite
with that scrap and would toss it soon?
He’d covered poetry, war and work,
I included horses for him.
Held up to the light, the “g” in his name
pointed directly at the four
in the feature race at Aqueduct.
He wished me well with my writing,
voice gentle and sincere.
I did the right thing with his signature,
wedged it in one of his collections
on words he’d read that April night
and I must admit I bet horses
with that saddlecloth number.
But it wasn’t slamming the book
against walls when those nags
lost that ruined its binding.
It was sneak reading at work,
stuffing it into drawers and wastepaper
baskets; that volume often hitting the floor
like an errant bomb.
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Ivy League Bookie
Larry drank Ouzo all day
which customers said was sacrilege
for an Irishman.
There was a pool table
with red felt instead of green
which was always amazing
drunk or sober
as if all the grass on earth
had turned scarlet too.
Old men watched MTV
with the same sense of wonder.
Larry had a Princeton degree
but his old man told him
bookmaking was more secure
than Wall Street,
besides he was the only son left.
There was a picture of the true heir
Larry’s brother above
the Kennedys and William Butler Yeats.
Marty was killed in the Second War
at the Battle of Anzio.
There was a curvy blonde
with a fondness for iron pumping men.
Sometimes when the TV music grabbed
her she’d kick off her shoes, jump up
on the pool table and dance
never upsetting a ball.
There were wagers on how long
before her damp footprints
would evaporate.
Larry would down two Ouzos quickly
and sadly lament, he’d be on
the other side of the bar
had Marty moved like her.
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Ice Cream
In addition to the vice squad
Barney had to watch
for schemers betting races
already run as well
as those less crafty
who favored extortion.
If he called the cops
he’d just be admitting
bookmaking they thought
but once he had a couple
of guys arrested and he remained
free as he had through years
of court tangles that were fine with me,
liked working for an outlaw
when I was a paperboy delivering
72 papers Barney dropped off corner
of Kenmore and Beverage Hill
each day but the Sabbath.
At the end of the week
I’d bike to his variety store
pay up and he’d tip me a half
gallon of ice cream usually
the three-in-one kind.
A big radio in a dark cranny
crackled sometimes
race results or live calls
that I imagined secretly
taped and played in court,
exhibit A and so on melting
down until judge,
D.A. and jury could
no longer tell the chocolate
from the strawberry and vanilla
in that puddle of proof
and Barney acquitted
left me and other
paperboys and girls
measuring the effect
of legal expenses
on ice cream futures
as if it were The Wall
Street Journal
we delivered.
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The Well-Cleaned Room
Mornings at seven Mary
would start cleaning
just for spite
in the sixteen dollar room
where the young man
collecting unemployment
who stayed up all hours
bothering other tenants
with his typing
should not be sleeping in
especially when he never
bothered looking
for work anyway.
She suspects he’s a gambler.
Newspapers in the trash
are folded to pages
with photos
of racing horses.
But then he helped her up
when she fell off a chair
changing light
bulbs across the hall.
He seemed to care
more than her family
and she granted him
extra shut-eye
cleaned his room well
after noon.
Now that his benefits
have run out
and he’s joining the Navy,
Mary offered a room
with a better view
but his mind’s set.
She picks poems
out of the trash –
the ones with words
X-ed out like her mark
a son witnesses.
She imagines the sailor
boy cherishing her
rent receipts.
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Wishin’ Mission
Gun for sale! Testing – one, two, POW —
no blanks, reality on a bank of the Blackstone.
The pops don’t match a pin ciphering a row
of balloons named for lousy love affairs.
Water doesn’t die that way in broad
daylight, can’t even wound it unless lead
poisoning counts.
A car for sale too, wild Olds test ride on I-95
is no big deal no matter how fast
except it is high noon.
No siren like a thousand tots extracting shrill
voices from the lips of party balloons.
The speedometer needle bounces
as if wanting to escape to puncture
a sphere a billion miles from speed’s prism –
a low or high flying Goodyear blimp
or a cloud would do.
Firearm and auto deals turn to stone,
no, sand, at the China Star on the same
level as a waitress’s saucy apron destined
to parachute off a bent brass safety pin.
The spotted fabric shares the fuchsia
of a kid’s Memorial Day Parade balloon
slapped silly by heathen rain.
Money change
s hoodlum hands.
Hell no, will never land in racetrack coffers.
Well, not a risky win wager anyway, Wishin’
Mission, to place sir.
When he does at big odds it’s all heaven
bent helium.
Finishing second is a slow burning cigar
capable of igniting hand grenades.
Balloons are slang for dollars and Mission
is just a flat donkey
target of a birthday tail some say
who bet him just to win.
A day to exterminate the frantic and flunked
twenty-fours of wall-to-wall inflated decoys,
skin and innards that were cannonballs
conning mosquitoes, bees, wasps, hornets
and pin and needle-minded folks.
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Sandalwood
Aussie segues from the story
about pulling a gun
and holding up a bandit
in Sacramento
who was trying to steal
his night’s cab receipts
to one about his Navy
parachute rigging days
and how he should
have gotten G.I. Bill cash
regardless of college as deftly
as he performs card tricks
he says he learned
from an old swami cabbie
whose taxi smelled
of hexes and curses
and sandalwood.
Drinkers
at the Indian Lounge
wishing Aussie would
get drunk enough
to tell what’s behind
his slight of hand
have just about given up hope.
He’s nuts about a redhead
20 years younger
who has a bratty child.
Now it’s one nervous trick
without stickup or ripcord.
A draught beer, a wager
on Real Note at Suffolk,
Leroy Moyers up
and Aussie’s out the door
as quickly as a man
who’s traded card wizardry
with the kid for an hour
alone with the mama
and can’t escape
the smell of sandalwood.
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