after Frank O’Hara
The day began
with some Bukowski
from the library
posthumous stuff
published by his wife
Linda Lee
the name of my friend’s wife
from decades ago -
high maintenance
moody
eventually left with
some guy
who worked with her
at the hospital.
I don’t remember
the name
of the Bukowski doc
I saw a few weeks ago
on IFC
but he struck me
as raw and rough
but then
what would you expect
from a guy whose old man
beat the crap out of him
every day
with a belt?
I got up for coffee
and Sunday Morning
whose segment
on celebrity chef
Anthony Bourdain
led me to Google
and Salon
and I exited
with pretty much
the same writeup
of Bourdain
as for Bukowski
though I’ve read somewhere
that Bukowski
unlike Bourdain
had a bluebird
in his heart.
The sites I visited
got me
thinking about
serif and sans-serif fonts.
I browsed Wikipedia
for a crash course
and found that
serif fonts
have little thingees
that supposedly
help the eye
move along
a string of words
though sans serif faces
are the font of choice
for blogs and websites
worldwide.
Google brought up
MoMA’s celebration
of 50 years of Helvetica
which is not what
I’m using here.
I decided to run
quick brown fox
past all my fonts
to come up with a list
of favorites.
Into the whole
typography thing
I found a 2005 article
in The New Yorker
about Matthew Carter
acknowledged as
the most significant
designer of type
in America.
Tall, lanky, seventy,
he lives in Cambridge
with the artist
Arlene Chung
and designs fonts
on his computer
out of a room
in his apartment
which reminded me
of the time I got lost
looking for a bike shop
in Harvard Square.
We ate at one of Boston’s
oldest eateries
plank floors
low ceiling
the whole bit.
I thought I heard
Ben Franklin
in the cramped
men’s room
and made a mental note
to reread
his Dream essay
with its well-known
suggestion to fart proudly.
My daughter
a freshman at Hunter
called to say
she was homesick
and to complain about
her media prof
who comes to class
without books or notes
and talks nonstop
about things at random
for two hours at a pop.
We’ve all had
at least one of those.
Mine would come
into class with a can
of Pepsi and a cigarette
and carry on about
so-called
Theories of Learning
for three hours.
Tenured
with textbooks
he was more interested
in the Arabian horses
he bred.
Years later
his mother and mine
ended up in the same room
at a nursing home.
His mother told me
he never visited.
My mother
spent six years there
after my father’s death.
I visited her every few days.
I kind of enjoyed
the respite
from the outside world,
sitting there
among the residents
who at various speeds
were on their way out.
One of the last things
she said to me
was someone
should take a stick to you.
I attributed that
to dementia
preferring not to drill down
any deeper.
I miss her frankness,
her stamina,
her ethnic dishes
and regret not jotting down
their ingredients
along with her secrets -
a right regret
I guess
à la Arthur Miller.
My daughter asked
if she could come home
for the weekend.
Sure, why not.
I hung up, brewed tea
and opened
Mark Strand’s
latest book
New Selected Poems.
Paging through
I was disappointed
to find no new poems
only newly selected
old poems.
And this from a poet!
He too was probably
beaten bloody
daily
by his old man.
I have little interest
in sports, so,
with temperatures
in the unseasonable 70s
I headed out
for a walk
along the country roads
that border
my apartment.
When I moved in
after my ex and I split
I asked the landlady
if she allowed
six-month leases.
That was nine years ago.
I guess Andy Rooney’s
right about life
being like
a roll of toilet paper.
Outside,
as expected,
I found bird shit
on my blue SUV.
I’ve decided that birds
target blue vehicles
more than others
thinking them
bodies of water
to better carry away
their waste.
Maybe I’ll Wikipedia
that later today.
