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Oscar Pelta

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Oakland, CA, US

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Portcullis, Cur, & Pariah

by

Oscar Pelta

Hell of a word, Portcullis.
One of the miracles to be found
in the sanctus sanctorum of language:
The Dictionary.
Portcullis is a grate that can be let down
to prevent entry to a fortified place.
Cur is in there too.
Either a dog of mixed breed,
or a contemptible person.
You might want to drop your Portcullis
to prvent the Cur from gaining entry
to your home.
Pariah appears also
with a one word meaning:
Outcast. Yeah.
Since my kid killed himself in January,
I've become something of a Pariah.
You can't blame folks
for being touchy
about associating with me,
blighted by this close suicide,
I'm not so delightful to hang with anymore.
Still, The Dictionary is always there,
giving meaning to the words.

Periodontal Igloo

by

Oscar Pelta

My bony death
has built a dome
beneath my gums
behind my teeth

He ventures out
to spear bacterial seals
in the lingual fissures
of my geographic tongue

And then returns, triumphant
to a tiny feast
in his little igloo,
his bony little family rejoices.

He is very patient.
He knows he will have me.
All he has to do, is wait.
He is very good, at waiting.

Oakland Ode

by

Oscar Pelta

The felon cloaked
in shadow lurks
in pools of urban dark
he slinks along the littered streets
and pauses in the park,
to make a beacon in the night
with glowing cigarette
winking like an earthbound star
in half-lit silhouette.

The heavens were
star-strewn that night
in th Oakland evenings cool
as the felon spy hopped
down the street
past his old high school
where a game of night hoop
street lamp lit
was thumping on the court
the felon took no note of this
his thought on other sport.

The cool of evenings mantle
wrapped around him like a shawl
whipped in the wind behind him
as he made his nightly call
to his favorite club on Franklin
where an eastbay pedigree
was waiting in the wings for him
with the Hindu Chattergee.

Oakland Starling swarm

by

Oscar Pelta

Aloft, above Kaiser Center,
at the cloud-gathering dusk,
a swarm can be seen.
Obeying the dictum
of its own wild heart,
funnel-tunneling, spilling into itself
and billowing out again
above the rigid monoliths
against the sky,
in the fading light.

Dark and whirring wing'd fluid,
a corkscrewing mobius band of birds
breakdancing buoyantly
in a brownian beguine
of feral avian jazz,
Blowing birds above the buildings
the be-bop of the litle urban aerialists.

My Father, the Kabbalist

by

Oscar Pelta

The number 29
appeared to my Father
in a dream.
On the summit
of the mountain
a great 29
passed over him
and the beauty radiance
of the number
bathed him
in its light.

In the third sephiroth/frame
of the same dream
on the periphery
of the pool
of 29 light
in which my Father stood,
he saw the back of his Grandson, Max,
who stood at a small table
holding a 2 millimeter screwdriver
telling the other kids that were there
that he could fix anything
for 29 cents.
They lined up, the kids did
and he fixed everything.
My Father woke up
with 36 cents in his pocket
a penny, nickle, dime & quarter
a holy number,
lamed chi vovnyick
the number of the (secret) saints,
the 36 hidden holy ones
on whom creation
is pinioned and mounted.

In the hospital,
my Father became a Kabbalist,
observing telemetry
in his own body
like a homunculus
moving along the major arcana;
the paths between the worlds
in the tree of life,
invoking and practicing gematria
the permutations
of Hebrew alphanumerics.

Forbidden

by

Oscar Pelta

This
is
a forbidden
poem,
and so,
like it's swarthy sisters,
other dark daughters of Kalliope
it is imbued
with peculiar power:
the restless energy
of possible betrayal
ever seeking elusive resolve.
The breasts that I remember
were sleeping,
soft fat twins,
nestled in warmth,
smiling brown nipples,
swollen from sucking
winking seductively
in big round brown aureolas
spreading softly
across the side-slung
soft bosom
fluting against the sheets
O sweet simple youth
hard cocked and avid
cock like a hook,
make you wanna hang some meat on it
one eyed heat seeking moisture missile
on the cruise
O sweet fucking of youth.

Blissfully sad,
the love of my life,
came and went,
with soft eyes
and I saw her not,
for 20 years,
I saw her not,
but upon the wedding
of our son,
the sight of her stunned me,
and my heart flew
out of the Ethical Society,
and went careening,
a drunken avaitor,
above Rittenhouse square.

Unhappy Birthday #54

by

Oscar Pelta

I sit,
in the sacred space,
consigned to my son,
in front of his extinguished candle,
and ask,
Why now?
Why do I suddenly appear
on the horizon of you bittersweet life
to trouble you, once again?
Old Jewish ghost from your past,
coarse featured and vulgar dybbuk,
muttering Yiddishisms at you from afar
in a long forgotten venal voice.
You are compelled to return sympathetic noises
out of a natural kindness
and generosity, native to your sweet self,
despite your enormous grief;
the grief of a loving and devoted Mother
who bore the bouncing big eyed baby boy,
and raised him,
to miraculous manhood,
without his prodigal father,
who wandered aimlessly in the west,
a barely thinking thing of clay,
with shard and spark of star,
in blood red heart and head.

O soft hearted you,
Why now?
Because we have lost our child, that's why.
Miracle child that grew into meteoric man,
who blazed in and out of our lives
in a brilliant 35 year tragic trajectory,
Why now?
Because we have the residue of a life lost between us,
that's why.

My friend, David G., Olev Shalom,
with whom I was in a band for 10 years (Django Marx)
(Really a Thursday night drug co-op,
I came in & weaned them off coke,
made them smoke instead,
& reduced the personnel to a quartet)
in a poem David wrote
on the eve of his own death,
called violins and guitars machines of grief,
and on the Friday evening
before my 54th birthday,
the first birthday in 36 years without M.
C. took me to see the Mark O' Connor trio,
where machines of grief channeled Paganini
Stephan Grapelli, and Django Rheinhardt.
I wept at the delicate and ephemeral beauty,
so transitory, the beauty here, and then gone, instantly,
only an afterglow left in its wake.
I thought and thought of you, and wept some more,
and poetry began to well up inside me, unbidden,
so that chorus after chorus,
of lyric poetry of love arose in my heart
to the melodies that the musicians
were magicking out of their machines of grief,
then I stopped,
and realized,
I must release you from this geas'
this oath and burden.

Philly Mythic Song

by

Oscar Pelta

This is the song
of mythic Philadelphia
of the bricked and gray,
the old & smelly steel,
the ozone sparked air
in the Broad street subway,
squealing steel wheels squeaking
sweeping into the turn,
shuttling shuddering
into the tunnel
beneath the earth,
in the sharp smelling dark subterranean cool
then up, into the damp Delaware valley summer
and out, into the hot pre-autumnal light

I'm gon' stroke my cock on Fern Rock,
wear my truss on the "Y" bus
Gonna play some funk on Passyunk
Steal some socks at Margaret & Orthodox
get real fat at Bridge & Pratt
see a Jew on Bustleton Avenue
lift my toga on Tioga
tell a tale at Erie-Torresdale
Eat a sweet on Chestnut Street.

Susquehanna Ave. Kids Song

by

Oscar Pelta

Sing a song of childhood
standing in the street
Susquehanna wildwood
with a ghetto jungle beat,
Here's a song we used to sing
when we were very young,
in dingy Filth-a-delphia
in the 1950's sun;

"My name is Godzilla
my dick is a killa
my balls weigh 45 pounds,
if there is a lady
who wants a fat baby
Jes' tell her Godzilla's in town"

O we were young and innocent
when this song we sang,
we champions of language
that adults reduce to slang.

Naughty black guitar

by

Oscar Pelta

The guitar sours in my hand,
talks down to me
in an alien idiom,
chastises,
arch and coy,
bends, then snaps
at me, its master.
I try to walk it around the block,
but it refuses and resists,
bucking and whining
beneath my lead left hand
pushing against my fingers,
resistant oppositional stringy guitar
Who are you, to treat me like this?
Have I not practiced upon you enough?
I've taken you out for a run
we've gone around the block a few times
C'mon, why aintcha my friend no more?
Am I picking on you or are you picking on me?
That's what I'd like to know.

Solar transit #46

by

Oscar Pelta

The house is silent with sleep.
He woke before 2, restless, all awake
the air is charged with the impending storm
swarming ions swirling in the storm blown air
paradiddle tattoo drips off the eves
speeds its tunk tank tink as the clouds sail swiftly,
sky horses stampeding across heaven.
The black guitar is in his hand, singing
to him, private and coy, stinging and striking
popping and spitting,
such behavior in the dead of night,
naughty guitar, calling him
from his workman's sleep to come and play.
46 solar transits has he seen
across the broad face of the sun,
ever another one coming ever another.
Before he arose, an eternity of solar transits,
after he passes, an eternity of solar transits,
What privilege to stand alive, blinking in the sun,
miraculous moving thing of clay and waters,
spark of sun at its center.

Elegy and Kaddish

by

Oscar Pelta

All is revealed
to those who have eyes to see.
Above the blue lighthouse,
a miracle has occurred.
The snow cloud clad Jersey shore sky
has lifted its heavy gray skirts
and exposed the surprised sun,
bright and strong in winters heaven.

Below the blue lighthouse,
upon the tumbled rocks of the jetty,
beyond the cement pier,
each one stands alone with their grief,
the mother's lovely face,
bereft beneath a soft and daffy hat,
a mask of mother's grief eternal.
Each one, in turn,
pours the startling yellow-white-gray ashes
of our beloved son,
returned to a universe of particles and light,
into the watery waste of the weak salt surf
that slaps against the scattered sea stones
that litter the foot of the pier,
where my father,
Grandfather of our beloved son,
old and grizzled Polish soldier,
stands up straight, hooded in a parka,
buffeted by the Atlantic wind,
and recites the mourners Kaddish
in a strong voice, at break-neck speed,
none of us can keep up.
When finished he intones, "it is complete".

We return to my sister's Portuguese house,
and share the meal of the bereaved,
talking, laughing, and weeping in the wake
of the wonder that was in our lives for 35 years,
the one who has suddenly gone to return
to the universe of particles and light.
I gaze at his mother,
and ache for all that is lost.

Brothersburg Ballade

by

Oscar Pelta

I am a dark and swarthy man,
reeking of garlic and onions
a cumin being,
brown as beans
with epaulettes of pubic hair,
dark and coarse,
orbiting my shoulders.

I dallied with an Angel of the light,
who liberated me from labyrinths
beneath beloved Brothersburg,
and set me on the bright lit earth
blinking in the sun,
a barely thinking thing of clay
with shard and spark of star
in blood red heart and head
and hope of someday
wish of somehow
upon a fools crusade;
a jokers journey,
the gelical to find.

And when before the glowing gelical
I stand, transfixed and paralyzed,
and IF before the gleaming gelical I stand,
mute and still with awe,
a simple being frozen in the light,
the transactional drama
unfolds before me,
I feel her holy boredom,
her longing for more, and more again.
Her wish for elixir,
the drink to drown desire,
locked in faded love's lackluster utility,
with nowhere to go, but forgetfulness.
This hopeless dalliance
betwixt Angel and low mortal,
while fading flower falls from grace
I am the butt of rough reprisal,
Her punishment for an immoderate middle youth,
my genetic rhinoplasty
my Shiksa Shekinah,
always in exile,
from the Absolute at LARGE.

Pelta the Phoenix

by

Oscar Pelta

Circumstance of birth,
I arose from ashes
of cremated Polish Jews,
my Mother formed my body
from ash-mortared potato skins,
beet greens,
and these self-same sad ashes
peppered upon this paltry produce
in Bergen Belsen.

My Father collected specimens
of shattered shards
from the war torn ground
and constructed my soul,
which is populated
by the collective writhing wraiths
and spinning spectres
that were visible
in the black and greasy smoke
that belched from the crooked chimneys
of the crematoria,
twisting in the soot-darkened wind
of middle Europe,
holes where eyes, noses, and mouths,
once were.

My spirit
is the vacuum trace
of breaths
halted in funeral pyres.

My parents pinned their post-war hope
upon my poor plumage,
featherless and dun-pale,
and brought me to America,
where I flapped weak wings,
and rose briefly,
above Martin's bakery on Susquehanna Avenue,
only to fall back to the gray pavement,
and ruin a son, launch a daughter,
and ruin another son
in my earthbound trajectory.
Six big black boys
found me in the schoolyard
of James L. Claghorn elementary, established 1865,
and 1-2-free swung me up and over the Senate movie theater
where I took ephemeral flight,
a jewish missile fired into proximate bakery airspace,
and sailed above the sad and white washed rowhouses
of Colorado Street,
where Riley Freeman taught me the rhymes
that made me love the rough and robust rhythyms
of street song speech which I taught to my boys
who, like me, value its vulgar vigor.

Belling the Cat

by

Oscar Pelta

Grey Poland,
flat as a picture in a shoebox,
sepia brown fading photo
of jews, like me,
tempting the sleeping Polish fireman,
Kielbasa nose, snoring in drunken sleep,
as Shimek bells the cat,
ties his long bakery string
to the clapper of the fireman's silent black bell;
and biting back on boyish giggles,
shimmies down the drainpipe
to the courtyard,
trailing his string across the court,
as he runs, to join his brothers,
Meier, Lova, and Shmulek,
at the hall window,
looking out at the fire tower,
string at the ready for a pull.
The brothers all look at each others jewish faces,
and bite their lips, supressing laughter,
the held-in laughter,
of those that are really about to bust-up,
jewish style, boy prank hard laughter,
in Lodz, in 1928,
under the Polish sky of soot, and premonitions.

Kasha, King of leftovers

by

Oscar Pelta

I'm the guy
who brings odd food to work.
An onion, a jar of herring, or sauerkraut,
or geflte fish.
Smelly stuff, verboten at home.
A cauliflower or radish sandwich, open face on rye.
Cottage cheese and scallions,
you know, the stinky stuff
that causes co-workers to split,
leave the breakroom,
holding their noses while raising eyebrows
and waving hands in the air to disperse the soulful smells.
It's all soul food to me.

My favorite leftover to bring is Kasha,
the noble berry we think of as the grain
Buckwheat, for whom the darling plaited Black Boy
in the Little Rascals was named.

How savory the smell, how warm and consoling.
When cooked in proper chicken broth, ambrosia
fit for the Old Guard of ancient gods, angry
and very hard to please and appease.

But Kasha, Kasha would calm the angry Mars,
riding red abve the minarets, Thunder jets.

Prodigal Golem ransomed

by

Oscar Pelta

My favorite Golem, is gone
the one whose essence we brought with us,
from ravaged Europe,
over whom I spoke the sacred name
into whom I breathed the breath of life
on whose furrowed forehead I enscribed,
the terrible and holy script, Kielbasa.

My Golem has been spirited away, it has fled
among fugitive electrons,
in some foreign field,
enslaved, in Owings Mills,
endentured, mined out of millions of submissions,
and found, a rough gem, deemed to be worthy,
of being ransomed.

A picture of it, stunted and distorted,
returned to me in a box,
its neck compressed and crunched,
its trunk truncated, made thick and short,
My poor sweet Golem is gone, but alive
and about to generate profits, for its captors.

Ragman's Reel

by

Oscar Pelta

I am a jolly wiperman
Rags are my stock and trade,
Where you see old discarded clothes
Sweet profits will be made.

For I take the threadbare and the worn
and spin them into gold,
the stained, the dirty and the torn
and cut them to be sold.

You may well give your hand-me-downs
to poor old charity,
but rest assured mynoble friend,
that they'll wind up with me.

For I'm the ragman that you've seen
a-roaming in your streets
asking for your throw-aways,
your old linens and old sheets.

Sunrise/Horizonfall

by

Oscar Pelta

Hesperus in eastern face
heralds the dropping horizon

Relinquishes her lesser light,
as Phosphorus contends,

Climbs up, on the descending shoulder
of Atlas, shedding darkness for brilliance.

Worlds in spin, wristwatch
of the Gods, self-winding, magnetic.

A perfect timepiece,
Momma Poppa Zeiger

So says the madman in the street at dawn
Momma Poppa Zeiger

Perhaps he knows things
We cannot even dream.

Endoplasm

by

Oscar Pelta

Exile from our birthplace
produces curious results in the mind,
given sufficient time.

Thinking of this in part
because of our last conversation
and a series of phone calls
from that unique man,
Cousin Bernie B.

Bernie called last week
in a Philly state of mind,
talking about wanting a Ham-a-Hoagie
and a Coke-a-ma-Cola,
and then digressing into talk
about various neighborhoods,
street names, food unique to Philly,
and stops on the El and Broad Street subway.

My train of thought got off at York-Dauphin station
and was interrupted by a few days at this point
as I was abducted by some diminishing youth,
but as I was being held,
I reflected on the effects of exile
on some great Masters of literature,
notably James Joyce, whose productive exile
from Dublin while he was in Paris
resulted in Portrait of the Artist as a young man,
and Ulysses.

Ballad of the broken man

by

Oscar Pelta

Sing the song of pain and loss,
of sorrow, never ending.
Sing with smile brave and contrived
but the wise know who's pretending.

For this, the ballad broken down
is played for your dark pleasure
so blue it's close to black my love
please hearken to this measure,

Hear this heart song wailed and wild
and sung to muse a-banished
song that's sung for loss of life
and love that's long since vanished

I sing for you my long lost loves
of life when time was young
to innocence abandoned
this broken song is sung.

Freestyle champion

by

Oscar Pelta

Deep down by the salt marsh
where the brackens grow
see that white egret, flyin' real low
down by the water with his head tuck back
'bove the mallard duck
can't you hear him quack?

San Lorenzo estuary down by the bay
windin' easy through the wetlands
on a sunny spring day,
with the birds a-frolic
'bove the whisperin' grass
sittin' here playin'
stoned on my ass

During work hours
Lord ain't it a shame
in the month of March
I start to declaim
times been so tough
I just gots to take
a Friday lazy afternoon well deserved break

I smoke the horizon, I smoke the bay
I smoke for Marcus on this halcyon day
Play my funky slide and sang some blues
hella times lately, done paid some dues

Reluctant Bluesman

by

Oscar Pelta

Now I'm a poet bluesman
but I don't wanna be
it's just that life turned sour,
yeah, life just turned on me,
So now I sing the blues
'most every day and night
and every word I sing
is invested with my plight
'Cause you see I know,
I done somebody wrong
and now it's just that payback time
has come, and so this song,
Is sung with true blue feeling
but man, it doesn't help
guess I've had the blues
since when I was a whelp
My old folks before me,
yeah they had 'em too
so now I s'pose it's my turn
damn I'm really blue.

Adventures Beyond

by

Oscar Pelta

In the higher harmonic series
orders of magnitude beyond the 12th fret
on the super strings
that are the substrate
of manifest creation,
you cavort,
and frolic with intervals
that cannot be imagined,
leaping up into major thirds
that thunder overhead,
cascading down diminished scales
and across augmented arpeggios.
I get glimpses of you
in this Ur-world
that we mere mortals
have no hope
of ever understanding.
Your vast musical mind
has passed outside the reach
of pedestrian life,
and now you vamp,
with the gods,
now you harmonize
with the Lyre of Orpheus.
We miss your presence here among us,
in this shadowed and sad world at war.
But as you ring the bells of Saturn,
and compose the music of the spheres,
please remember how we love you.

Sad Song for my Son

by

Oscar Pelta

Whoa it was on the 13th day
of the first month of the year
I woke with such a trembling
and a heart so filled with fear
I felt snaring hounds of tragedy
a-snappin' at my feet
for I just did not know then
the fate I was to meet,

For you see
Old Death came that day
and took my first born son,
took his life away from us
took it with a gun,

And when his poor dear mother called me
on the next day's afternoon,
when I heard her gentle voice
yes my heart began to swoon,
before she spoke those fateful words
that struck me to my soul,
I knew my darling boy was gone,
my world no longer whole
Yes I knew my darling boy was gone,
God rest his soul.

Public Transit Pavanne

by

Oscar Pelta

A Poem
on a purple piece of paper
describes the incident
at the Shell Station
when the tanks were dug up,
and 20 feet down
a boat, moored to a little dock
was found,
floating quietly
in the dark,
on a black pool
of oily water.
An old Oakland fossil,
from Antediluvian Lake Merritt
when Earl "Fatha" Hines
used to play ball
on Trestle Glen
and go home
to practice his piano
on Longridge.

Now I ride on BART
looking at the exalted sun
above the bay
after months of rain
and next to me,
a Hindu man
finds a hair
long and blonde
and stretches it delicately
between his hands
testing its tensile strength
running a finger along it
as though it was a musical string,
pulling it once more,
and then releasing it
above the aisle,
where it falls
amongst the West Cost dust
of many feet.
I remember the stops
on the subway of my childhood
Tioga, Margaret-Orthodox,
Hunting Park and Fairmount,
all these places mixing
with Fruitvale and Coliseum
Oh the great anti-privilege
of Public Transit,
where the demographics mix.

Luftmensch

by

Oscar Pelta

Poet, bluesman, green-eyed boy,
harmonica in hand, speaks in tones
severe and low, and tells us of his band;
the Luftmensch play upon the air
every fortnight moon, to hear them play
you must ascend by basketed balloon,
to stratospheric heights where they,
ensconced upon a cloud,
play with great intensity,
hard and fast and loud.

Mitch with tousled chestnut hair
leads them with his harp,
hihs Hohner "A" Marine Band,
playing fierce and sharp;
in thunderstorms you'll hear them play
between the crash and boom
of lightning drums and thunder bass,
above the fortnight moon.

six string summons

by

Oscar Pelta

The guitar drives me nuts at night
it calls to me from its cases
mandolin-like, it rings
(quietly inside its closed case)
muffled string-bell through cardboard
my name is being stringly spoken
and my hand is being beckoned
to race along the track
the fretted neck, so smooth and worn
the thumb groove at its back
Oh small guitar
with back so red
I love you, How can I say that?
A thing you are
my first guitar
mute before you're played
but when we play in harmony
it's just like getting laid
you have a hole,
you have a neck,
and hips so nice and round
and instead of words
you sing with wood
and brilliant bronze string sound
you sing to me
so quietly
you ring upon the night
and when I touch
your steel taut strings
they brrrring out ringing bright
I push the strings
they whine and whang snap pop and hum
and then I can remember
when I was a guitar bum.

Six String Shrink or Fretted Freud

by

Oscar Pelta

My guitar
is a Rogerian therapist,
and so, does not say much,
mostly just listens,
with its chin
in my hand
hemming and hawing
and saying uh-huh
as I blather endlessly
on and on
supremely self-indulgent
about how B flat my life is.
Oh it lets me know
when my time is up
lifting its glasses,(up)
and clearing its long and fretted throat
then back into its case it goes,
case closed,
at the ready
for the next session,
it's a Kaiser guitar
so it's a low co-pay
with a very circumscribed number of visits
and a sort of round robin approach
to seeing me, I'll explain,
this morning, it was Dr. Fender
who is black
and has this very long appendage
that he jokingly refers to
as his whammy bar.
Usually,
it's Dr. Gibson
who, you'll pardon the expression,
has 2 "F" holes,
You get kind of used to it after a while.
For years,
it was Dr. Ibanez, also black,
but with a Japanese accent,
and 24 frets,
fretting about this
fretting about that,
tough to get a lick in
edgewise.
Then there's 2 very strange acoustic doctors,
Dr. Oahu and Dr. Old Lady of the Waves,
who is a beach doctor,
very beat up
with a snarky cheap tone
that my wife hates.
But, Dr. Old Lady of the Waves
is teaching me how to use brass
instead of glass
and that's worth something.

The reading

by

Oscar Pelta

I enter the room
accompanied by flies
and speak foolish words
before my enemies
all of whom, like myself
descend from a long line
of peculiar idiots
with ancestors
that stumbled
through the streets
on bleeding feet.
This is verse taboo
and so, shall be spoken
only at night
you may speak it
in light of day, no harm,
but its true form appears only at night.
A night blooming poem,
a black flower of the soul
growing in the shadowed garden
glinting faintly, in the starlight.

Riley's Street Song

by

Oscar Pelta

Pat got dirty drawers
sent 'em up to Santy Claus

Santy Claus sent 'em back
'cause they was very black

Then we put 'em in the can
up jump Superman

Then we put 'em in the sink
the water turn to ink

Then we put 'em in the tub
the water turn to mud

Pat got dirty drawers
Yes Pat got dirty drawers

Questions

by

Oscar Pelta

What is this need to versify
that steals our sleep at night?

If in your heart you need to cry
perhaps this sheds some light

On why we make these soul songs sing
in quite reverie

When we should be productive
and shake the money tree

For dry green fruit to fall and flake
and float to nearby ground

So we can scramble just to get some
greenbacks by the pound

Enough of money, that's the rub
that gets us every time

We waste some precious moments
composing a new rhyme

My dear departed friend,
the master Art Levine

Used to say these witty words
in voice so deep and keen

"The need
for greed
is overwhelming"

He, profundo, would intone
Oh how right he really was
I feel in flesh and bone.

Jokers Journey

by

Oscar Pelta

It's the telling that's the important thing.
Jokes, the vulgar remnant
of the oral tradition,
are all we have left
of a time when we used to tell stories
to each other
to pass the time
or to pass the wisdom
from old to young to old.
When some one asks me
to stop them if I've heard the joke before,
I tell them to go ahead and tell the joke,
it's the act of telling that's important,
that has human significance,
that is a moment of ancient magic
in which we must show respect
for the storyteller, who wields
that peculiar power of the telling
of the tale.

Programmatic threats

by

Oscar Pelta

As kids
we used to say;
"The day you hit me is the day you die
is the day you eat my boogie pie"
This was a programmatic threat,
often coupled with Yo Momma insults
of varying degrees of magnitude.

The girls, and this one kid, William Lazenbee,
used to jump rope, Double Dutch,
and there were these rhymes that went
with this, one was a programmatic threat,
it went; "My Motha and your Motha
were hanging up clothes,
my Motha punched your Motha
right dead in the nose
what color was the blood?"
and so on, spelling out the color of the blood
if the girl, or the William, was still jumping
at this point in the rhyme.
All this childhood foolishness stuck with me,
and I remember many of these rhymes and street poems
from what soon will be 50 years ago.
I am pleased to remember these foolish things,
I hallucinate that I directly experienced
a living poetic tradition, there on the dingy streets
of Filthadelphia PA, in the 1950's.
I live in imagination, but I know for a fact that
I heard these street songs
which forever changed my aesthetic resonance
and if you don't believe me
you will eat my boogie pie.

Beastwalk with the dead

by

Oscar Pelta

Ride astride the burdened beast
who roots and snuffles loud
and be not shamed, not in the least
but neither be so proud,
for this creature, wild beneath you
goes about its way
blind and in its prison-path
from which it will not stray.

Walk this massive mammal won't you?
down by waters edge,
where you will find the shore birds
cavorting in the sedge
and there in quiet moments,
while beast is occupied,
perhaps a thought transcendent
into your mind will glide
on wings as white as Egrets
in flight with lazy ease
while beast remains so busy
you may do as you please
and have a moments respite
from the worlds disease.

Blunder bus

by

Oscar Pelta

The thunder of my blunder
reverberates through time,
down to this very day,
appearing in this rhyme.
Mistakes were made
along the way
that still have resonance
and as they amplify themselves
we try to make some sense
of sensless acts
that we all did
at some time in the past
As I ride this blunder bus
fleeing from my past.

Master Class

by

Oscar Pelta

In olden times
the poet, called ollamh, pronounced olaf,
was seated to the right of the Celtic Kings,
and was required, by gravitas of office,
to have the ability to extemporize verse
that could blister a mans face.

It was David, who slew Goliath,
that sang the Psalms that are still recited
to this very day, such was the power
of his poems, that he sang as a brown and wiry boy
before he slung the 5 smooth stones
that forever changed the balance of power
in the old dry desert world
that we revere and worship.

Privilege, to be taught by an Oracle,
who hunted by the light of the same moon
that the white she wolf, Loba,
that runs and kills and runs
hunted by in the near and distant.

Johnny Lunchbox

by

Oscar Pelta

Good old Johnny Lunchbox,
oil rag in his hand,
works his job with pride
with skills at his command,
drinks his beer on weekends
has his sub-routine
it comes as no surprise,
he loves his blue machine.
He's a real big sports fan
you'll see him at the games
standing in the bleachers
yelling players names.
Gets a hat from vendors
with pig snout at the front
you can bet on April first
he'll pull a funny stunt.
Someday he'll retire
with pension on the dole
but here's a subtle secret,
he has a poet's soul.

Escapist

by

Oscar Pelta

Down down the black hole
the White Maned Spaniard escapes,
to subspace,
astride the blue horse,
Caballo Azul,
His cape flaps in the ether,
silently.
He leaves an enharmonic trail
of ascending scales, but goes down down
past the event horizon,
Below the sight of the devil-faced jew
who observes him in the corner
of a breathless desperate dream.
It is Garcia, bemused guitar hero,
He makes an appearance,
the full moon is aloft,
and once again, he disappears,
grateful to be dead, away away from adoring crowds,
wrapped in a black cape,
looking out only into the abyss,
spoken of in a cafe,
he is once again,
invisible.

David's Elegy

by

Oscar Pelta

I have friend
gone from this world
he is very quiet now
but present
in dreams
and always at hand
when the guitar
is lifted from the case
and touched with feeling fingers
on steel strings taut and tight
that snap and speak and slap
When the pipe is lit and sizzles
it is his toast, the smoke
that nebulizes blue abroad the air
He is here, looking young and handsome
in my dream
with curling black semitic hair
aware eyes awake and piercing dark
I keep his picture
smiling beatific bodhisattva
above the broad brown Gibson
thin, intense, beaming conciousness
the Poet Minstrel Troubador
That is my friend, in this immensity
a friendship ensconced in eternity
His fearless little daughter took my hand
and asked -Do you wanna see David?-
and led me, scared and unwilling,
into his bedroom where his body lay
his saintly head inclined, eyes opened
gazing sightless, at the abyss,
stopped, in time.

Face

by

Oscar Pelta

Devil-faced Jews
Eyes like flies
trapped in a white glass ball
Was Satan given a pointy Jewish face
by powder wigged British historians?
The Satan of the Book of Revelations
the many faced Monolithic Man
with Hamitic, Japhitic, and Shemitic faces
orbiting his head,
the faces of the sons of Noah,
Shem, Ham, and Japheth
Devil faced Jews
Eyes like flies trapped,
in white glass balls
Spin their discs
marvel at a hero's excursions
his staccato strikes with plectrum
fencing with the strings, thrust and parry,
he outlines the horsehead nebula
and teaches the ciruitous directions of space
in time he shows the timeless expanse
The twin drummers, Chaos and Peril
Thunder in his wake
The crowd is left exhausted and amazed
Where is their Hero?
He has escaped (See Escapist)

Widow's Shanty

by

Oscar Pelta

Up upon the widow's walk
listen to the seagulls squawk
while they wheel so gracefully
above the great grey snotgreen sea

There waits a whaler's wife once young
in whose heart a stone is hung
that gains its mass in time each day
her whaler man has been away

She gazes seaward from her perch
and Sunday says a prayer in church
She lights a candle every night
and sends her husband wishes bright

For safe return to hearth and home
she asked me to please write this poem
that all may know her sorry tale
Her husband lost, chasing a whale

Succubus

by

Oscar Pelta

Terry had a Succubus
visit him at night,
make the sheets cold,
drag the phone cord, coiled and white,
across the nightstand.

I got him white sage to burn,
and kosher salt
and Psychic Self Defense.

She, this Succubus,
was the restless neshumah
of a young girl,
found a sympathetic soul in Terry,
who was at troubled ease with death,
having just lost his Father,
to a Succubus,
His Mother, already with Jesus.

He felt her in the room, alone
in the hot Contra Costa evening,
and offered her peace and empathy
She visited him less after that,
and not soon, but after time,
was but a faded memory,
character in a poem.

Fadograph (as in James Joyce)

by

Oscar Pelta

As though we were old friends,
(which we are not, we are old divorcee's, 2 ex'-s,
2/3rds of a tic tac toe win),
We helped each other
through the first few weeks
of Marcus' violent and sudden departure
to the objective universe
of particles and light, waves and vacuum.

But now, merciless time,
after but 129 days
has already dulled the pain,
gossamer new skin, delicate and sun-shy,
grows over this enormous wound, drum-like,
and so, we can retreat again to the hinterlands
of each others consciousness,
where we remain, as we have for 36 years,
reciprocal fading memories of each other,
dim and distant images in the tarnished mirror
of recollection.

If, in some impossible parallel place,
this had never happened,
we wouldn't have given each other a thought
for decades, as was our habit.

But this was not to be,
and so, dreadful though the context was,
an unexpected sweetness
in the midst of this abject misery,
was for me,
to be
in your presence once again,
for one more moment,
to taste the nectar of your sweet company,
there in Danny's yellow house,
among strangers, drunk from no longer wishing to accept
condolences from Philadelphians I didn't know,
drunk in Reni's chill room, listening to his hip-hop mixes,
you came in, with a beer in your hand, and sat with us,
with Reni, your son by Danny,
and me, old estranged father of your newly dead dear son
Marcus, our first-born,
How your beauty stunned me speechless,
I left the room to check on my parents and sister
My father, always brusque and abrupt,-Come on Oskar,
it's time to go, we need to make bumpy rolls for Max-
and so we prepared to leave,
your big-eyed friend grabbed me and held my arms,
and searched my face for signs of Marcus and wept
when she found him, there, in my face, a trace of him.

You were at the door, flanked by Paul at your side,
I shook his hand and called him a good man,
and shed tears, and turned to you,
and saw again your spectacular beauty,
forever lost to me, your skin, identical to Marcus's skin,
you opened your arms to me
we embraced,
I felt the swell of your breasts beneath your blouse,
I felt your silken hair against my cheek,
I turned my head a bit,
and stole a kiss, upon your cheek,
and lingered there,
this instant to extend eternally,
to sustain this poignant sweet sorrow,
borrowed from the Bard,
inhaled your clean good smell,
and said goodbye, forever, goodbye
O Mother of my first born son.

Laid in Lodz/Synagogue screw

by

Oscar Pelta

Yuzzek the cobbler,
limbs still stiff with sleep,
shuffles down to 57 Gluvna street
in the early autumn dawn,
steps up the stone stairs to the 2nd floor
and upon entering the building,
is surprised to find the door to the little synagogue
shut tight.

Stands by the door for a moment,
mystified by muffled sounds
he hears coming from within the synagogue,
sounds like two people, a woman quietly moaning,
a man shushing her, hiss of fabric sliding over fabric
beneath clothed bodies,

Yuzzek, short and stocky, stands on his tip toes
and peers through the orange frosted glass,
squints as he tries to make out what the rhythmically
moving vague shapes could be,
A womans voice moans -JesusMaryJoseph- blurts from behind
the door, audible slap and then a mans voice,
deep and familiar says in heavily accented Polish
-Stasha, be quiet! Someone will hear us!-

Yuzzek steps back from the door
stares blankly ahead, slaps his own face
and whispers -Oy Gevalt Oy veys mir Oy Gotteneu it's
Rosen the Beadle!-

Yuzzek steps up to the door again
pulls himself up on the window frame
Instantly hears the woman call out again
-Holy Mother of God!-
Loud slap, protest of pain, more fabric noises
Yuzzek bolts and bounds away.

Shine, Susquehanna Ave. Epic

by

Oscar Pelta

Like Homer's Odyssey,
account of Ulysses travails and travels,
here is an epic poem, heard on the streets,
of North Philadelphia, in the '50's,
the first such work I remember
from the oral tradition of Susquehanna Avenue:

The 9th of May
was a hell of a day
up pop Shine
when he heard a woman cryin
"Shine Shine, save my husband's soul
an I give you my weight in gold"
Shine say no
Woman say "Shine Shine jump into the sea,
an I'll give you more pussy than you ever did see!"
Splish Splish Shine jump into the water
he met up with a shark,
the shark say
"Shine Shine cain't you see?
Your black behind belong to me!"

Shine say,
"You may be the King of the Ocean
and the Queen of the mothafuckin Sea,
You gonna have to swim fuckin fast
to catch up with me!"

Splish Splish, Shine got away
he swim to island with 50 nekkid women
He fuck 48 till his balls were purple
and his dick was blue
He say "Gimme some ice water,
I fuck the other 2!"

We recited this as little kids on corners
or in the schoolyard, along with other such rhymes
and to me, these poems constitute a legimate body of work
and my lucky exposure, as a child,
to a living poetic tradition.

Strontium 90

by

Oscar Pelta

1955 North Philly, Susquehanna Ave.
Senate Movie Theatre,
between James L. Claghorn elementary
and Martin's Bakery, was showing
The Incredible Shrinking Man
we sat and watched the black and white Pacific
as the slender blonde man
inhales the dust
and detritus
of the hydrogen bomb
while dozing on the deck
of his little bobbing boat.
Awakens then, this depicted victim
of modernity, covered with sparkles,
manages to putt-putt to the marina,
only to find his pants,
suddenly several sizes too big,
Meanwhile, back in the present, June 2003,
my son has run away again
this time to Portland,
we called him on his cellphone
he was out at midnight,
bombing the zoo on bikes
at midnight with new friends,
he is in love,
victim, of modernity.

Little boy lost

by

Oscar Pelta

Little boy lost
in the far Northwest
where once the Orca hunted
in a black and white vest
these cold and gloomy waters
you are trying to test
what will they yield?
my hazel eyed boy
slender as a reed
filled with rampant need
all you really want to do
is smoke your weed
Just like your dad before you
a viper in his time
you want to wile away the day
with a nice guitar to play
and rhyme the angry things you say
but hey, you need to go to school
just because your dad did not
doesn't mean you smoke your pot
and rip off all your friends you snot
its time for a new stratagem
you need to clear your throat of phlegm
but please don't spit, right on the kitchen floor
one more time and I'll toss you out the door
you've been quite a handful
since before your birth
and somehow never realized all that you were worth
to all of us you dummy
you spacey stoner boy
you will be a hard case for someone to employ
Call us sometime will you?
when your sense returns
maybe then we'll take you back
and help you heal these burns
upon your brain and body
that these drugs have wrought
plus I have these instruments
that, for you, I bought
come on home and play them
lets just have a jam
and maybe we can both go
to a poetry slam?

Epistedigitation and Ledgerdemain

by

Oscar Pelta

Step right up and see the Oriental girls copping the joint
Here, have a free lighter, We'll get you later for a sewing
machine sans innards, that's right a free gift my friends
today and today only right here at Auction
see the mystery of the back of my neck
see the translucent flutes of my ears
see me fleece you mooches and give ya the oakie doakie
thats right reach into my pants and play with it
thats right I'm the FlimFlam man just 'cause I can
an' it's wham bam thank ya Mam out of this burg
by the microgramme that's right I'm flying before your dull
dreary bleary eyes and you 25 marks will be out of 2 grand
before you can say tavis 210 that gee he's stealing from me
I'm rolling yes on a roll me oh my how I wanna piecea pie
Benny Stone's first wife useta call his penis Oscar thats right Marvin Wolf stuttered and taught and was surpassed
by the big black panther from the Bronx the Karate Jew
the one the only the inimitable himself Artie Levine sunglasses at midnight and moustache like Ceaser Romero
handsome devil like Gilbert Roland voice like a set of breaking jewish dishes friends like Tommy Drespl and Jerry Gelb running buddies from the Bronx who stayed in the same 30 block radius from cradle to grave not Artie no not Artie
who became Longbeach man redwood Lagunitas man desert man italy man sponsor man actor man husband to dear Morgan
my childhood friend who was whisked away to the circus at the tender age of 15 and appeared at my door before 6 AM wildeyed from acid with Artie and Nick Mura, blackbelt extraordinaire, Aileen pregnant with Marcus, who 35 years later decorated the drivers seat of the dry cleaning delivery van in Naples Florida with his precious brains and blood. This was a rememberance of my dear friend Artie Levine may he rest in Peace. Olev Shalom.

Long Beach 1969

by

Oscar Pelta

Captive fish
caught gleaming in the sun
wish you woulda run
The hook looked as good to you
as a tasty hot bun does to
a poor fat man
standing looking in a bakery window

Big Black Brother in the sea
do you ever take the time to think of me?
If I fail
to be a Whale
will my soul prevail?

If I fail
to be a Whale
will my soul prevail?

Alone
in the field
don't know what I'm tryin to do
seek some relief
from the city
and you.

My vision's impaled
on horizons far too near
this world is a cataract
how I wish things were clear.

A moment of clarity
would be such a rarity
in my life
why I'm pursuing
this feeling
in an empty lot
I can't say
Usually I'd have my head bad
this late in the day

Where a building once stood
made of metal and wood
I stand in shadow of my flesh
for just one moment
I'm not regarding
the darkness
in which I am enmeshed
what can a man do?
what can a man be?
we struggle with fate
it's hard to be free.

The proceeding lines were written
when I was but a child
in 1969 when I was running wild
I'd left old Philadelphia
of black and white and gray
and fled to California
with soul-mate friends to stay
where we stood upon the tide pools
at the Palos Verdes coast
and observed within a storm
the ocean's very ghost
not 20 feet from us
a breaching whale of gray
it's endless back subducting
below the salt and spray
and there we stood dumbfounded
at this vision so sublime
Our privilege to witness this
In our youthful prime.

Reversal of terms

by

Oscar Pelta

First song I remember learning as a kid
was taught to me by black Daniel,
who was covered with white feathers,
who worked at the chicken store
on Susquehanna Avenue
a block up from Martin's Bakery
and Topper Cleaners, one hour martinizing on the blue sign,
with the top hat and cane,
he said -go home an sang dis song to yo momma,
she gone like it, goes
MuthaFuckah dingdong
a dingdong Muthfuckah hey
MuthaFuckah Sistasuckah
blueball bitch
go on and sang it to her
she gone like it- said Daniel snickering
as he told me to go sing it to my Mom,
little Lola of the Lodz ghetto
little Lola who had seen the horrors of the holocaust,
Turned out she didn't like it much
and I had the first spanking of my young life of 5 years,
I learned then, not to sing the street songs I was learning
from my playmates there on Susquehanna Avenue
but I was undaunted, I learned the nasty songs
and loved them.
Turns out there was a curious terminological reversal
going on in the streets of North Philadelphia,
the kids called pussy's, cocks, for real, they did,
it's proven in a poem, a street song of the '50's
that I learned there in the dingy streets,
went like this:
Put your feet on the rock
Ssss ah Ssss ah
Let the boys feel your cock
Ssss ah Ssss ah
Don't be ashame
Ssss ah Ssss ah
'cause yo momma
did the same
Ssss ah Ssss ah
If the blood is blue
Ssss ah Sssss ah
the baby is too
Ssss ah Ssss ah
If the blood is green
Ssss ah Ssss ah
the baby be a King
Ssss ah Ssss ah
If the blood be red
Ssss ah Ssss ah
the baby is dead
Ssss ah Ssss ah
put your feet on the rock
Ssss ah Sssss ah
So this was it
proven in a poem
I learned on the street
ther in Philly in the '50's

Poetry.Contest (to Howard Ely)

by

Oscar Pelta

10,000 is a number most attractive
to anyone, a sum that's most reactive
since poets often have trouble money
in some sense, the offer is quite funny
because, my on-line publisher, you see
for me, poetry, is but a human capacity
native to most people who are reflective
& have a knack for extemporized invective
So a chance to make cash on some verse
is chimera foolish fancy or maybe worse
for hope springs eternal in hearts of fools
and many of us poets, without schools,
learned to ply the words we love as tools
to convey a delicate internal state
or a precious memory to relate,
we appreciate this forum that you've made
and how our work is like a colonade,
poetic columns supporting Howards roof
there in Owings Mills the living proof
that poems can make money that's the troof!

Jump rope rhymes

by

Oscar Pelta

Double dutch in the schoolyard
the girls sing -My Mother and your Mother were hanging up
clothes, My Mother punched your Mother right dead in the
nose, what color was he blood? R-E-D- and so on.
To have witnessed this as a boy,
while trying to get a glimpse of panties,
was subtle privilege, viewing a secret female rite.
We boys had rhymes too, of a different sort,
instructional heroic sexual epic poems,
one about a hero named Shine
who vanquished whales and sharks and swam to an island
where he serviced the entire (naked) female population
and was ready for more, if only he'd had access to ice water
Hard to get ice water on an island.
The girls sing -Apple on a stick, make me sick, make my
stomach go 246, just because its dirty, just because its clean, just because you kiss the boy behind the magazine
hey girl, don't start a fight, here come the teacher with
her dress on tight, she can wiggle, she can waddle, she can
do the splits, but I bet you can't do this, Johnny on one foot one foot one foot, Johnny on one foot...-
These were some of the songs of ghetto innocence that we
heard and we sang as kids in the '50's in North Philadelphia
where in Spooky Alley a black dog chased us frothing at the
mouth and a lady, who used to observe our play from her open window in summer, lady who once called me a white cow,
died at her window, sitting there, undiscovered and immobile
for days.

New Poem, lost poem

by

Oscar Pelta

Old friend,
Brian the Pirate,
has an old poem of mine,
lost in an old sketch book
from the '70's,
smudged with pipe dross
from those halcyon dreamy days
days of the sizzling pipe.
It's an account
of being able to fly
in my fathers little bakery
by sitting on the drums of flour
and manipulating my legs
in a particular way.
What delight
to unexpectedly stumble
upon your own lost and forgotten words
to marvel at your own lost musey genius,
rediscovered.
Marie of Washington DC,
has a killer poem of mine
from the mid '80's
that she read me once
when she called,
years later,
and I was stunned
by it's raw power
and ghetto-wise music.
I've tried to call her,
no luck,
that poem
is really gone.
However,
it may be the foreword
to a novel of hers,
called Pointy bones
and the Secret Love
of Lost Children.

Pimple on Gods ass

by

Oscar Pelta

This presents
some interesting
philosophical problems:
1. God having an ass, pimple or not,
implies that he might shit
2. If God shits
he might not be perfect
i.e. he doesn't digest everything he EATS
3. God eating is a problem
guess it means he gets hungry, this implies need
which could be construed to mean incompleteness
4. The pimple itself is a problem, the imperfection
issue writ large, sunspot-world swallowing size
So if the universe itself is a pimple
on Gods ass, what do we do?
Same shit as always, right?
Guess it's more likely
that this wonderous creation
we're so enamoured of
is itself Godshit
swirling in the blackhole ridden
galactic commode/bidet/outhouse.

Peach Speech

by

Oscar Pelta

Bitter almond
at the core
of the sweet peach,

soft fruit of summer,

tells eloquently,
wordless and juicy in the mouth,
of the true nature
of life.

Dig deep
into the seed of things
and find
at the very center
aching bitterness
that holds a quiet secret.

This bitter almond
has healing potency
laetrile, possible panacea.
Perhaps the peach itself
is medicine for melancholy?

Nacelles, bombers to valises

by

Oscar Pelta

In an aluminum suitcase,
made from the nacelles
of the bombers that destroyed Europe,
my parents brought me from Germany
Over the ancient sea
on the General Hershey,
Atlantic ship of rag-a-tag refugees,
sustained by Polish mushrooms,
breathing spores,
secret, sharp and keen,
to the Port of Boston,
where my dry-breasted Mother
wept over spaghetti and pepper spilled
upon my baby face.
The train took us then
to K.C. Mo',
where Charlie Parker gave me a plastic saxophone
and whispered Noam Chomsky
in my baby ear
and blew me then to Philadelphia
where I learned to speak English
from Littleman, black and skinny
on Berks street, Strawberry Mansion,
near Fairmount Park.

Yo soy Pelicano a.k.a. Troll

by

Oscar Pelta

I wait beneath the footbridge
in the reeds,

I steal the milk of goats
from passing herds,

I hunt the shimmering carcass
of the moon, in the busy noisy water
'neath my bridge,

I smell the sour stink of my own musk,
and chew the raw and wriggling shiny fish,

I moan the song of solitude alone,
and gnaw the legbone of my humble prey.

Viking Song

by

Oscar Pelta

So let us go a-viking then
my friends young brave and strong
let us sail upon the sea
and sing our reckless song
and plunder all the fair green coasts
and turn men into shameful ghosts
and reign terror down upon our hosts
and father children blonde and red
and laugh as we defile the dead
Come join us, join our merry band
we'll rape and pillage town and village
we'll thunder through the coastal land
like Thor with mighty hammer hand
we'll strike and spill blood on the sand
and make a bonfire on the shore
and sing the songs of ancient lore
and tell the tales of gods and men
of times long past from way back when
gods walked among us in disguise
we'll sing the skalds and share the prize
of booty gained by our suprise
so raise a horn of mead my boys
and let us make a raucous noise
and give our gods their bloody joys.

Exit Wound

by

Oscar Pelta

We burn candles
at both ends
of this wide wound
that stretches from Philadelphia
through Boston, Oakland, through Amsterdam
and Eugene,
tapering to its bruised tail
at Barnagate light in Brigantine New Jersey
and Marco Island Florida
We examine the extent
of this elliptical lesion, ellipse and elesion,
and locate the locus of points
along its lurid length
of 36 years in time
and breadth
and feel its black gravity.
The wound was there before he died
(in all of us) we spoke of it
for I smote him
when he was but a babe
and struck him such a blow
that 35 years later
his hand, still reeling from the strike,
grabbed a gun
and spent his precious brains and blood
on the back of the drivers seat
in the dry cleaning van he drove
in Naples Florida,
Where was I then?
When he took his sweet life
that was dear
and awesome to me
his prodigal father
dumb as stone
stumbling bumbling
through the west
clutching guitars and mandolins,
fool, hawking rags for a living,
Nudnyick
never there for him,
never,
Now he's gone from all of us,
gone,
having shown us
his yellow ashes
gray with white burnt bone
sinking in the salt surf
in front of Sonia,
his wife of Brazil,
who's mother had no thumbs,
we spoke of the wound,
and worried,
about how to heal it.

Tit Patrol

by

Oscar Pelta

My eyes
are on Tit Patrol
of their own accord,
I have nothing to do with it,
maybe it's a physics thing,
orbs seeking orbs
a kind of morphological magnetism, tittytropism
it's been that way for a long time,
a lifetime really,
when my Mom took me at 3 into the ladies room
at Sunset beach New Jersey
when we were at the Dixie Manor in 1953
right then and there,
my eyes were on duty,
checking out those big brown nippled Eastern European Jugs
I was hooked, or at least my eyes were,
and ever since then,
I've had to wear sunglasses when haltertop weather
sheds its layers and it's skin time summerspring
makes my randy dandy sing its song of longing in my pants
o how my trouser snake raves and rants and wants to dance
and wants to worship in moist sepulcher
breastly beauty, I concur
for to me, breasts are it;
the essence of beauty itself
the Byzantine dome, with ornament on top
is icon to the titty, the architects tribute
to the udder beauty of concentric rings
o how I love those hanging things.

Standup Shtick/ PreBop Soundbite

by

Oscar Pelta

Getting todays news
from Ben Websters solo
from a monster session
recorded in 1958
is dicey.
You may miss the details.
For instance,
there is a chance,
that the Sermon on the Mount
was a bit of Piscean divine shtick
ala George Carlin
in robe and sandals
delivering,
with tongue in cheek,
the wisdom,
for those who had ears to hear
doing the standup righteous routine
for those who had bellies to laugh.

Anti-happy

by

Oscar Pelta

Wailings and lamentations
protestations and complaints
echo in a self-created wilderness
in the midst of the hard city
in which such cries
are not heard,
but are subsumed
into the siren song scream
of everybodys general anxiety.

The distorted son
is shouting in the street,
calling his mother a whore,
weeping for want of more drugs
with which to soothe
his torment wracked soul.

Where is simple joy?

All anyone wants in life
is to love
and be loved.

Dybbuk

by

Oscar Pelta

I am the living ghost
my son left behind
when he put the gun
in his mouth
sitting in the dry cleaning delivery van
there, in Naples Florida,
his demons, back at him in full force
with armoured divisions, pillaging,
rampaging his troubled sweet soul.
He believed the demons had been created
by his own nocturnal pollutions.
He fathered them himself
with Succubi Lilith, FireWoman of old
come to plague men, pilfer, steal their chi
at night, and then to bring back
the shady issue of her smoke-womb,
mischievous gremlins, poltergeists
to trouble restless unwitting fathers,
to hobble the innocent sleep,
of men and boys.

MicroMan-PicoPerson

by

Oscar Pelta

Small life
brief and hurried
beneath heaven
with its cyphers and symbols,
semaphore of fog and stars,
moon and meteors.
Alien city
against the gray nimbus.
Small life
brief and hurried
in the coastal city
with its fog
and stern streets.
At the foot of the bed,
knealing before the blank page,
the supplicant bows before Morpheus
with closed eyes
cloudy mind
sees the strange city
against the gray nimbus,
alien and stark,
oaks in the foreground
decorate the view.
The little brown bird
is on the ground,
the broken man
runs to the pipe,
listens to Freddie King
on a lonely Saturday morning.
Freddie King holds forth and fifth
audible patience
allowing each note
space in time
for its impact.
Under the opalescent fog
a tale is told
of Flamenco debauchery
beneath a pirate poster
with mariners hands
folded, clasped, on a round oak table.
Simple pleasure,
sitting in the sun
with an old friend,
talking,
in the limpid languid afternoon,
venal laughter
and looking at the lovely young girls.
Still,
quiet afternoon,
soft heat
early summer in Marin,
cloistered in the hills,
the easy people
glide & smile.

Clarion Call

by

Oscar Pelta

O heed my call
my distant sons
my bonnie boys
my favored ones
The Fathers are calling you
calling you home
come back my boys
no more to roam
it's time for you
to move you see
to the world of the Fathers
to be with me
to smoke the pipe of peace and ease
to walk among the rustling trees
and talk of things
of thoughts with wings
that fly so free
above the bluff
along the sea
t'would be enough
for me to be
at peace and ease
to walk and talk
among the trees
with you
my darling bonnie boys
away from all the city noise
with just the rush of wind and sea
Come back my boys, come be with me.
For I am old and it is time
for me to give the Master Rhyme
to you, my fine boy poet sons
for you will be the lucky ones
that learn the licks and phrases fine
so you will sing the song sublime
for all to hear, their hearts will race
and we will teach you how to pace
yourselves in such a measured way
that you will rule the poets day.

Strangers refrain

by

Oscar Pelta

I am the stranger
that sired your son,
returned to you in ashes,
strong son that shared
your bittersweet youth,

I am the stranger
that you called,
you of generous heart,
to tell me
he had taken his own life

I am the stranger
that took slow steps
behind you
as you walked on the pier
with his Brazilian wife Sonia
who bore the box
that contained his burnt bones

I am the stranger
that stood apart from you,
but with you,
upon the rocks of the jetty
as you wept,
and fell into the arms
of your man, your face bereft
beneath a soft and daffy hat

I am the stranger
that poured his ashes
into the weak salt surf
that slapped and lapped
the tumbled stones
at the foot of the pier

I am the stranger
that stood and watched you
at his wake,
and asked to take
a winters walk with you
in the bitter Philadelphia cold

I am the stranger
that sat with your younger son
by Danny, in his yellow house
and listened to his hip hop mixes
and watched you
as you came to sit with him
with a beer in your hand

I am the stranger
that stood at the door
with you when we embraced
to say goodbye forever
and then, later the same night
saw you come into my parents house
for a moment with Sonia,
and was stunned by seeing you again

I am the stranger
who spoke to Marcus
the week before he died
and was introduced on the phone
to the black widow,
Cerise,
whom he met
but 10 days
before he departed
this sorry world,

I am the stranger
whom Sonia called to tell
that you wanted to speak to me
about Cerise

I am the stranger
that started furtive communications
with you, because we had no one else
to share the bleak black grief with

I am the stranger
that imagined falling in love
with you, again
after having been apart from you
for a lifetime

I am the stranger
that wishes you well
that wants no harm or pain
to come to you
that would give you a million dollars
for pain and suffering
and ask nothing for it,
save a kind thought
if you ever remember
this stranger

Dreamers dream

by

Oscar Pelta

The dreamer dreams
of a dear and distant lover
from a lifetime ago,
he strokes the silken hair
above her ear as she reclines
and whispers witless words
of attempted consolation
that leave her wanting,
for they have lost their firstborn son.
For her, the child of her youth,
her companion in harsh young years
of bleak adversity
that were brightened
by her sons winsome ways.
For she raised him to be a wonder
that sang the songs
of wounded souls,
that won the hearts
of all who heard him,
hers as well,
and when his life
he threw away,
her heart was truly broken,
as only a loving and devoted mothers heart can be broken.
For the dreamer, who sired the baby boy,
but never fathered him,
the child of his foolish late boyhood,
he bore the shame of abandonment poorly,
and wandered aimlessly in the west,
lost and confused,
and grew to know and love his son in later years
so that the boy who became the man
became the dreamers hero,
and when the hero boy-man threw his life away,
the dreamer was briefly awakened
to the utter horror of his grown childs suicide,
and so he went back to sleep,
to dream of his lost childs mother.

Radioactive Rock'n Roll debris

by

Oscar Pelta

Cinders of the vaporized lovers
drift high above the torched city,
black commas against the smokey sky
borne on the exhausted wind,

Ash, all that remains of them
and their fair citadel,
heaps up in dunes, where once buildings stood,
a breeze blows a fine gray spray off the dune tops,

The tired wind is moaning the lovers names
recounting their heroic tryst
singing the song of their thermonuclear genital heat
bawling the ballad of their fire borne bond,

They were young,
now they are gone,
undetectable in the dross
of their mutual alchemy.

Hypercubic Fantasy

by

Oscar Pelta

The Spanish Surrealists
are constructing a Tesseract
in my wife's dream.
On one spatio-temporal aspect
of this scaffold-girded hypercube,
a scene is depicted
in which we are on our way
to Tierra del Fuego, via Buenos Aires
to see the young mathematician
who is married to a bird.
My wife tries to clean a bit of fuzz
off of the poor bird-wife's neck
with Luis Bunuels bent spoon
and accidently decapitates the bird-wife!
The young mathematician, ever resourceful,
places his headless bird-wifes little body
and its severed head inside his bright shirt
next to his heart, and in a moment, pulls
her out of his shirt with a flourish,
she flies off into the cloud dappled blue.

MoonMilk

by

Oscar Pelta

How strange
the miners lot must be
to toil beneath the ground,
in the total darkness,
where minerals abound.
Perhaps magic
has its roots
beneath the earth and soil
in that self-same blackless dark
where the miners toil,
where moonmilk cheesey white accretes
as lunar droplets white
that run down the evening sky
leaving streaks so bright
that we call them falling stars
when we see their trace
upon the dome of heaven
like tears on gods great face
that run on down beneath the ground
and pool upon the stone
forming pods of moonmilk
white as human bone.
Perhaps it was in Platos cave
that the secret lurked
the template archetype for all forms
slaved away and worked
creating every shape that was
and will ever be
including your own lovely form
even including me.

Sadolescent/Prodigal Puer

by

Oscar Pelta

The lost son returns
from elusive nocturnal excursions
eyes eclipsed, rolled back
to stare at the inner moon
aloft in the skull dome,
always crazy full.
The lost son leaves again
to saunter beneath night,
hunched with a dissipate limp,
under a dim street lamp
in a piss yellow pool of light,
looking out over his skinny shoulder,
his boxer shorts billowed
above his beltless pants,
skinny ass in flannel,
sixteen shifty, always somewhat wifty,
doesn't think that something good
should be described as nifty
asking for a cigarette
and to bum a ride,
left behind his boyish shame,
and his foolish pride.

NaCl

by

Oscar Pelta

Men have killed
for want of salt
when salt was scarce,
rare and edible fine crystal,
vast marine saline solution
in all 7 seas,
now the world is filled with wounds
and abundant salt
to rub into them
flows through all the houses
in little packages,
round boxes,
shakers of pewter and glass.
In Krakow Poland,
a salt cathedral
in a cavern, stands cool and white
in the subterranean darkness,
glittering only when light shines upon it.
There is a fissure
in plutonic Poland,
where this white cathedral waits,
Polands own national wound,
in its very ground,
where men have killed
for want of bread,
bread that contains,
in yeasted suspension,
this self-same coveted salt.

Lunar salts

by

Oscar Pelta

Salt lick moon,
aloft and white,
above the sighing city trees.
Half moon lit
afloat on night
bobbing in the god appeasing breeze.
Where do you go
upon your path,
across the plane ecliptic skies?
Where you encounter
ancient angry gods,
the Titans, and their simpering spies
that observe your modest phases
as you wax and wane
and in your presence sing your praises
then spy on you again
so you become...
Renegade moon,
abandoning your stately and predictable orbit,
running retrograde,
gliding into the dim tavern
with your baleful borrowed light,
ordering a white Russian
and telling a dark joke,
poorly.

Orlonsky @ 30th Street GPO

by

Oscar Pelta

In the post office
at 30th & Market,
West Philadelphia,
across form the old Bulletin building,
there was Orlonsky
who, every week, without fail,
invented a new schmear
to restore the hair
to the skin smooth planet of his pate.
Orlonsky would come up VERY CLOSE,
in a dirty khaki trenchcoat,
wall-eyed, like Marty Feldman,
or Sartre',
or Gurdjieff,
and ask you
if you could see the fuzz
beginning to sprout upon his matzoh ball
dumpling of a knaidel white head,
pointing to it,
and asking "See?, the fuzz
is starting to grow!"

Silibant Reverie at dawn

by

Oscar Pelta

The black guitar of mourning
is quiet in my hand
its strings, are old
and ring softly with muted silibance
when struck into life,
ignited by the white plectrum
in the pre-dawn post-crepuscular dark.
Many losses this long and quickly attenuating year,
big losses,
such that any gains
are invisible.
Yet still this compliant black guitar
sits patiently in its skinny black case
anticipating my daily dawn advances,
always at the ready for a joust and parry
with a pick.
How odd
to have this intimate inanimate friend,
this shy black lover
that does my digital bidding.

Benedict Guitarnold

by

Oscar Pelta

Sedition & betrayal
in a garage band,
most petty, paltry, & grievous,
unhappy in this nano-autocracy
a frustrated second guitarist
plots his traitorous exit.
For the potentate of the garage
would not deign to let
his fiery fiddler
of a daughter
upon the dais,
stage in front
of the little kingdom,
where she would have played,
sorceress she is,
upon her magic violin
for to wow a sleepy & complacent public
from their comfortable community doze,
so concerned was the little king
that he appear competent
upon his steed,
black fender stratocaster,
before his subjects.

Portland Ponder

by

Oscar Pelta

Billy Grippo,
Top Producer,
Real Estate name on a bench
displayed at the great circle,
with its chintz gilded Joan of Arc
lance armed upon her great gold steed,
at the ready for a joust,
on N.E. 39th
where Glisan flows around into Hassalo,
Great river town
with its cool modesty
resplendent with tall pines.
Ah to be indolent in Portland,
clutching guitars and mandolins,
to drink strong coffee
in the late morning
on Division,
come back
and practice
all the live-long day,
Ah to flee from Halihornia
with its skinny millionaires
with their youth & tech bravado
& their multi-many money shares,
comes time for mean old farts
to fade from Alphatown
& move to beta
there to practice
the Art of Loss.

The Art of Loss

by

Oscar Pelta

When the fires
of youthful passion,
have dampened down,
have become the embers
of publicly unwelcome
middle age,
it is then
we must begin
to practice
the Art of Loss,
grace in the face
of constant unbalance
and the flowing away
of all we love
and hold dear.
Perhaps peculiar
to the few,
that late in life
had the children
of their own irresolute youth,
is this troubled middle ground
between aged parents
and most troublesome children?
This is the nexus
between the red and blue eternities
that doppler-laden loom on either side
of this apparent life.
It is now we must breathe the breath
as the stars coalesce and explode,
nova and supernova,
and pause to reflect
on what we have loved
and lost,
to be sure
we have gained much,
but the adding is easy;
it is the taking away
that requires special attention
and care as befits the calmness
of that wisdom
which is gained
only by the experience
of loss.

Elegy for David George Vogenitz

by

Oscar Pelta

Just post-past
the red eternity
that preceded
the existended space-time body
of the life
of David George Vogenitz
were the sturdy dimpled baby legs
in Milwaukee Wisconsin
that carried him
into strong middle manhood
in his beloved Cordova Spain
where he practiced and played
Kiplings Great Game
with Flamenco brittle vigor,
and was a double agent for surrealism
and the dark powers of the cold war,
and ate Mahjoun, figs and hashish
pelligorso confection, in Morocco
with blue faced tribesmen
that told him of a special
infusion made from tiger spine.
In Sacramento his time-body
had the legs of an old poet
that sat up evenings
when the numinous pleroma
is less populated,
and night-magic is afoot.
How I regret
never having met him
in the flesh,
He who told me
to honor the inner Moishe,
the old kabbalist
resident in my psyche.
Yet he still teaches
and gently instructs
and today taught me the value
of acting on intuition
and ur-poetic impulse.

Jazz Gods

by

Oscar Pelta

The Jazz Gods are angry,
so they have sent the jam bands
to confound us with endless tangled grooves
where the chord, never changes,
the bassline relentlessly repetitive
with intermittent pops, whangs, and spits;
the drums, ceaslessly repeating interminable funk,
having replaced the taah-ta-ta-taah
with 16th note disco derived
James Browns famous flames distilled paradiddles,
rimshots, to confuse us and blur the distinction
between bebop, rebop, and venerable prebop.
Where have all the changes gone?
Have they been subsumed
in the clamor dinphony
that listeners have consumed?
Perhaps the Europeans,
who feel that jazz is dead,
have something to teach us,
at least they play the head,
for you see it's money
that has the death knell rung
and from the shadowed hanging tree
classic jazz is hung
swinging in an ill wind
swaying in the breeze
seen by Billie Holiday
strange fruit too strange to squeeze
to see if it is ripe enough
to take down from that tree
and then to chop and prep it
for a fricassee,
but enough of this morbidity,
we know what we have wrought,
a world in which a thing that's made
must perish or be bought
if that thing is somehow to survive
beyond its nascent birth
it must clearly demonstrate
some inherent worth
which for music is a challenge
because my friend you see,
once its played it's come and gone
that's reality
so despite the vinyl, CD's & MP3's
what we're really dealing with
is just whistling in the breeze.
Just one more thing
I wish to say
then must I take my leave,
only that I wish
there were a sound reprieve
from too many guitars and players of them too
and so as spokesman for the Jazz Gods,
I bid you all adieu.

Battle hardened warrior woman

by

Oscar Pelta

Back to the war in the east
armed with the goddess of mirth
to vanquish the demon of the house
and plant its scowling face
upon the bottom of the bowl
in which she stands,
surfing on waves of gallows laughter,
happy grimace of concentration beaming.
The demon will darken the door
of the house no more,
for the huntress stalks
her wounded prey
the mirth goddess laughs,
the demon is despondent
and howls for reinforcements,
twisted torso telling tortured tales,
"Cast not your shadow over me"
the demon, hoarse, intones,
"or I will forever flee you see,
you'll feel me in your bones,
always away from you
yet somehow always near,
I am made from you it's true
you have much to fear,
for I know the parts of you that hide,
and I'll make it so,
I'll threaten you with suicide
such as you have never seen
so spare me all your spleen, you're mean,
and you always come between
the devil and the details
to obfuscate and blur
always there to estimate
with your dummy to concur,
ventriloquist
how you make my spiney twist
why do you never hesitate?
yet never early always late"
The huntress sets her traps
and lets her arrows fly
the demon howls.

Tunguska tetrachord

by

Oscar Pelta

Tunguska is burning.
Now, in the EverPresent,
June 30th 1908, 2 years after Relativity
was published and further hobbled
common human undertanding
of the chaos that is Cosmos,
the radial-tree fall pattern,
pinwheel emboss upon the Tungus wilderness,
Roars with forest-high flames fueled
by the vaporized remains of 800 reindeer
that witnessed the incendiary Thunder
of His passage, a God was then in our midst,
His proto-planet head EXPLODED in the stratosphere
above the desolate Siberian tundra,
the final meditation of this God,
that we would call Asteroid,
or Comet-head, lefts its igneous imprint
on the unspoiled face of North Central Asia,
largest portion left of holy Panagaea,
Eden of all continents, touched by a God.

Tunguska tetrachord

by

Oscar Pelta

Tunguska is burning.
Now, in the EverPresent,
June 30th 1908, 2 years after Relativity
was published and further hobbled
common human undertanding
of the chaos that is Cosmos,
the radial-tree fall pattern,
pinwheel emboss upon the Tungus wilderness,
Roars with forest-high flames fueled
by the vaporized remains of 800 reindeer
that witnessed the incendiary Thunder
of His passage, a God was then in our midst,
His proto-planet head EXPLODED in the stratosphere
above the desolate Siberian tundra,
the final meditation of this God,
that we would call Asteroid,
or Comet-head, lefts its igneous imprint
on the unspoiled face of North Central Asia,
largest portion left of holy Panagaea,
Eden of all continents, touched by a God.

Voice from the past

by

Oscar Pelta

Unspeakably sad,
a message
left on the kitchen phone
by a lonely Abercrombie
in Wellington Florida,
asks for the whereabouts
of my dead son.
How I hesitate,
to return the call,
and instead,
pick up the Old Lady of the waves,
scarred and beaten beach guitar,
upon which I slide the bolt of brass
to make the strings sing their soft sad song.
Plangent cries issue forth
from this old guitar,
matching the strident but plaintive character
of the lonely voiced Abercrombie,
with whom my son stayed
when he first arrived in Florida,
Florida, which was to be his future sarcophagus,
state-sized stone coffin
for half of his future ashes.
Abercrombie keeps a shop
where he sells western art.
My son came in one day
and bought a print
and came in again
and struck up a conversation
which meandered to music.
That shopkeeper
and my lonely Philly transplant wayward son
had the piano as a common bond
and so my son taught him
and complimented him, this shopkeeper
on his autodidact accomplishments upon the keys.
Gave him a 5 hour lesson
and refused payment,
staying with him instead for a time
and sharing human pain and music.
How was it,
one town away from
the accursed spot
in Naples Florida
where my firstborn boy threw his life away
in a dry cleaning delivery van,
that this nameless Abercrombie of a caller,
message leaver of unwitting unintended pain,
How could he not know, not have heard
of my sons suicide?
So I called him
and he thanked me for returning the call
and launched into the brief shared history he'd had
with Marcus, I stopped him, and asked
-You really haven't heard?
-You really don't know?
And he didn't know,
So I told him,
perhaps a bit brusquely,
and he was stunned and wept, as we all wept,
the people of Marcus,
and I broke for moment
and wept for a moment with him
and abruptly ended the call
to return to the guitar
and play out the revived sadness.

Day of Atonement

by

Oscar Pelta

Sadness
in the afternoon.
October sun
through leaves
and curtains
dappled on the white tablecloth.
Yom Kippur
in the little house
on Leonard street.
My old Polish parents
and my sister
host the bittersweet Mother
of my dead son.
All eyes moist
around the table.
Another year begins
as the past one ends
without Marcus, lamp that lit the lives of many,
flame that burnt
so bright and hot,
we were blessed to have him with us
for 35 years.
We all hope
he is at peace.

Physics list

by

Oscar Pelta

Ice tray
Door jam
Pur filter
new faucet screen

A list
atop the paper stack
negentropic relic
of past planning
strand in a superstring
of counter causal chaos
collapsing catagories
in its worried wake.
World-line
laid plumb
to the gravity well
that draws down to center
all mass (non-magnetically)
and shows its multiple
in the increase of force
necessary
to ascend,
plantigrade,
an inclined plane.
Fancy reference
to simple gravity.
As we ascend the stairs,
here, is physics.
Since, wool-socked,
we dragged our feet
across the carpet,
spark to set
for proximal future ignition,
then to touch
our cowering cousin
with charged extended
index finger,
and then having Tante Bronka
separate us
as we laughed behind our hands.

Tetragrammaton TV

by

Oscar Pelta

I intone the names of power
and invent variations in the placement
of the secret hidden vowels,
in front of the television set,
flickering bluish black and white light,
and place my hands atop the rabbit ears.
Johnny Carson has Zigismund Freud on
as a guest, when I touch the antennae
and utter the terrible name, Zigismunds eyes
roll up into his head, to stare at the inner moon,
always crazy full, in the skulldome sky
bequeathed to him by Freudened genetics,
he begins to recite the holy names
of the organs in the anatomy of the Divine,
the crowd titters, Johnny Carson looks nervously around
and at the camera with a questioning anthropoid face,
I have conjured the Inner Moishe, ancestral resident
Kabbalist that resides in my insides,
and speaks the names of POWER.
A year later, on a big numbered street in PhillyTown,
I sit with Joelle, hot scorpio chick, sharp faced fox
and relate the tale of my crazy collision with the Kabbala
Turns out she saw that very show
and noted Zigismunds intermittent trace states
and so was at a nodal point in the causal nexus
that included Freuds nephew, Johnny Carson, me
and the Inner Moishe, who waits patiently
for his next opportunity to invoke the minor arcana
and connect the Sephiroth for his incomprehensible work.

Onions

by

Oscar Pelta

Onions, Sconions,
Bagels & Lox,
a pickle for a nickle
with Mr. Mustard on top,
wasabi, horseradish,
chives & kimchee,
these foolish stanky things
bring joy to me,
a big fat radish & a daikon too
man o man, how 'bout a turnip in the stew?
Or some Savoy cabbage, Napa's nice as well
and some brussel sprouts
if you digs a fonky smell,
how's about shitake fried in some knubble,
yes indeed that'll get you in some trouble.
Knubble is garlic in case you didn't know
and that my famished friend
is the star of the show
noble member
of the family Lily,
Allium Satvium, put some starch in your willy.

Remembered Street Songs

by

Oscar Pelta

I know a girl from Kansas City
she gotta meatball on her titty
she got ham 'n eggs
between her legs
yum yum
yum yum

Listen Mothafucka lemme set you straight
your momma gotta pussy like a 2 forty 8
daddy gotta dickie like a 2 forty 9
lissen mothafucka don't be fuckin with mine

Abraham Lincoln was the king of the jews
wiped his butt with the daily news
walk downstairs with his dick in his hand
pee'd out the window on a bald head man

If you like cheese
you a bald head japanese

Up jumped the monkey from the coconut grove
he was a mean mothafucka by the name of jove
father was downstairs playing ping pong
mother was upstairs a-fuckin King Kong
hi ho mothafucka said the cat name joe

Day you hit me
is the day you die
is the day you eat
my boogie pie

Tarzan swings
Tarzan falls
Tarzan breaks
his mighty balls

Mothafucka
Sistasucka
blueball bitch

Mothafucka dingdong
a dingdong Mothafucka hey
Mothafucka dingdong
a dingdong Mothafucka hey

I'm a groundhog
I'm a groundhog

I fuck your momma
from roof to roof
she thought her pussy
was bulletproof

I fuck your momma
from block to block
she thought her pussy
was a timeclock

I fuck your momma
from door to door
she thought her pussy
was the killin floor

I fuck your momma
from place to place
she thought her pussy
was your goddam face

I'm a groundhog
I'm a groundhog

Guitar marriage continues

by

Oscar Pelta

The second amp
I ever bought
was a white elephant
in a black cabinet
that I picked up
at the 5th string
in Berkeley,
Banjo Bluegrass fretted string shop, acoustic only.
It was 150.00,
a shitty little Peavey BackStage, no reverb,
the guys in Ganchers band,
Django Marx,
ribbed me mercilessly
about how lousy it sounded,
so I inherited, from Brian the Pirate,
through the name-changing director of Cowboy Mouth,
a Yamaha GB112, and was very happy with it,
but my wife hated the sound,
and when we refinanced
threatened me with buying something frivolous
for the house if I didn't buy a new amp,
the guys in my current band, KnuckleWalk,
went ape-shit, and yessireed me along
in this amp aquisitive quest,
so I went to MusicWorks in El Cerrito,
and bought a Peavey Classic 30 tube amp
for just shy of 500 bux.
My wife of course bought something frivolous
for the house anyway,
Thomas Jeffersons dad's maps of Virginia and environs
so my kid would ever remember
the 16 months he spent up in the Virginia woods
at bad boy school in Dillwyn VA.
Then she had the audacity to get these fuckin maps framed
for another 300.00. So much for my tryst with the new amp,
which I must admit makes me more audible in KnuckleWalk.
But I discovered last year
a 3 way marriage made in Hell/Heaven(?)
between that lousy old Peavey Backstage
an Ibanez tubescreamer,
and the slide I inadvertently stole/(traded for a cello)
from my old music buddy Gerry Lovelace
in '88, when Brian the Pirate and I
were the incidental music for a North Beach
basement production of Sam Sheperds Cowboy Mouth,
a very bad duo the SF Chronicle dubbed Lack&Luster.
Blind Duane Bowie of Salt Lake City via Evanston WY,
cajoled me into trading 2 Harley Davison T-shirts
from Dudley Perkins in SF for the tube screamer.
I promised Duane I'd make him a slide teaching tape
so I set my stuff up in the kitchen
and when I fired up the old Peavey with the tubescreamer GODDAM
the sound was monstrous
fat saturated endless sustain
similar to Claptons sound on Outside Woman blues
or Sunshine of your Love.
I made the tape and still send it once in a while
to fellow slaves of the six string merciless master
of us all in the callus brotherhood.

10th & Spruce

by

Oscar Pelta

Jaime Castro, light skinned and fast,
small rapido Puerto Rican guy,
lived on the 4th floor
of the building
on the northeast corner
of 10th & Spruce.
He had an alto sax,
and congas,
when we used to sit up,
way late at night,
where night begins to become morning,
I heard Jaime drum out a call
over night-stilly Philly,
and get a reply,
also by drum,
thunking in the distance on the edge of audibility,
above the whisper-shout of city night-noise.
On the first floor of Jaime's building
Sue R. lived, brown eyed big-lipped
and big-hipped,
fine looking wife of South Philly Ritchie,
good South Philly Italian guitar player
with some jazz chops.
Sue played cello, very wellow
and we used to jam, the three of us
stoned to the tits.
The three of us went to Jaime's wedding together
at the Bingo Church
where Jaime worked with Ukranian Thor
from across the street, top floor
of the building where Aileen and little Marcus lived.
I played a little piano blues
and sang a bluesy little wedding song
at Jaimes wedding.
I think Sue liked it,
because when we stumbled back
to Rich & Sues apartment,
Lord have mercy,
while Rich was fumbling for the keys,
Sue grabbed me, kissed me hard, full on the mouth
with those big sexy lips of hers,
and thrust her tongue
down my throat.
Somehow,
I managed to keep my cool
and hang with them for a few more hours,
observing occasional sly glances from Sue,
sneaking my way.
When I got to Louise's around the corner
on Manning street,
I went to bed
with a Reltne,
hard-on you could drive nails with,
and jerked off
way into the night-morning.
In the next few days
I wound up at Sues
with some kind of sniffing powder,
which we partook of together,
Rich was working graves,
so we sat there together,
my dick leaking cum
and Sues sweet pussy
open warm and wet,
goddam
we didn't do shit.
I said to Sue
-I guess I better go now-
She said -OK-
and I went on my merry way
back to Louise's
to jerkoff again
and dream of Sweet Sue.

Insomnia

by

Oscar Pelta

Eyes dry
wide well beyond
the hazel circle
of the flecked iris.
Sitting slouched
atop the bunk
blue lighter
on the black knit knee
mouth agape
clinical scent
in the 3AM stale still air.
What have I done
to my son?
Made him run
to the fun
that the Hoi Polloi shun,
Already lost one,
a son
by a gun,
boy did that stun
I was spun.
Recognized
the back of your head,
its mystery,
in a dream,
You walked before me
dressed like a man,
hair short,
your walk,
so like your sons',
my son too,
the shape of your head,
so like his,
I awoke
with a groan,
sad,
realizing, once again,
for the 300th time,
he is gone

Untitled

by

Oscar Pelta

My darling dimpled daughters band,
Taarka,
has an orange flyer,
their tour schedule
for Fall.
I am writing
this pre-dawn
poetic push-up
on the back of it.
Taarka plays (self-described)
seismic hypno gypsy jazz
which I guess means
earth shaking
sleep causing
nomadic