Joe Dolce: Two Poems

 

Tucker’s Caravan

We were out in the Morris one day, and we passed one of those trailers, you know … a box-like trailer, and all of a sudden it hit me: if we could get that trailer, take it back to the hotel, I could build some sort of a camping arrangement on top of it. Because I had the Australian bent wire mentality. You could do anything with a bit of bent wire. 

—Albert Tucker

 

In Left Bank Paris, in bedbug Paris,

the Paris of Beats and sailors,

for an American radio and a thousand francs,

Albert Tucker bought a trailer.

 

Sick of rent, sick of squalor,

sick of Turkish Johns,

on that box-like trailer frame,

he saw a caravan.

 

He hitched it to his Morris Minor,

(the idea was absurd),

and parked down below his room,

against the hotel curb.

 

Right on the Rue de Verneuil,

with planks and two-by-fours,

he lengthened out the steel beard

and built a wooden floor.

 

The hotel owner helped him haul

materials up the flights,

inside his room, he cut the sides,

from sheets of Masonite.

 

Then, out the hotel window,

he lowered down each section,

down to the curbside, to complete

and finish the erection.

 

Of course, it was illegal.

It broke all regulations,

but gendarmes swinging their batons

refused to write citations.

 

Instead, they laughed, encouraging

the mad entrepreneur:

You’re making gold there, Mr Tucker.

Merveillieux! L’oro, monsieur!

 

Al screwed it all together,

and hooked it to his Morris,

then drove it past the old clochards,

all through the streets of Paris.

 

Past the old clochards he drove.

He parked it near the Seine,

and lived a rent-free painter’s life,

amongst the fishermen.

 

Joe Dolce

 

 

J Effen K

Time upon a once

an ago time along

when America was so grand-

stand free of the home-

less and a brave land

 

and reporters exploded flashguns

before schoolguns flashed,

when priests were lit with God

and Superman said please

and politicians held little Johnnies

and doctors killed disease,

 

a boy was a once

sat at a schooldesk gazing

and the principal’s voice

like a loud god amazing

on the class intercom

could stop Chemistry.

 

When tvs looked like fishbowls

and mom ironed shirts,

sewed holes

and cooked dinners

secretaries ran the switchboard poles

and dad shoveled snow in winters

 

before doctors were in newspapers

and priests touched little Johnnies

there above the knees

and politicians talked to God

and reporters spread contagious disease,

 

a boy was a once

in a far land aways

ever happily after

catching a ball

once

(before replays)

and journalists cried

when dreams died.

 

Before Marilyns were breathless—

gangsters were just Cagney

or Edward G

and Oswald was a flying owl

and Superman flew on TV,

 

before television was a fishbowl

and dad fucked the secretaries

(he had to work late, see?)

and mom stopped eating

and snow buried memories,

 

a boy was a once,

fell asleep at a book,

flew out of the schoolroom,

hit the ground, bounced,

scraping a knee,

and up for better look,

got caught in a tree.

 

When doctors gave shots

for scrapes

and measles and mumps

and out of a window

Superman jumped

but could no longer fly,

before Clark Kent died,

 

before Elvis was shot,

needles

played records,

before Sinatra got fat

and mom and dad fought

and sparrows sang flat

 

and journalists wrote

like birds

and men

 

like Walter Cronkite cried

when he heard

J Effen K had died.

 

Joe Dolce