Vonnegut/Young Coletti in Paris/Lost Painting Series/Davis Wright-"Colored" Boy/

Always fun and exciting to find a painting "lost" forever in the Great Tubbs Fire of October 9th, 2017

My Earliest Significant Poem

I was traveling the world.  In this specific case, I was in Paris riding the subway, the Paris Metro.  I was 24-years-old.  At each stop (the subheadings in this poem, I jotted impressions in a notebook. I'm embarrassed to say that, since I recently put this out into cyberspace,  numerous people, and at least one, have regarded this as being among my best.  Perhaps I have not grown an inch since 1968 (in fact, non-poetically, I have lost two-and-a half inches in height, and this is only one aspect of linear loss).

PARIS METRO

 

EN RAISON DE TRAVEAUX

EFFECTUES SUR LES DEUX VOIES

il y a DANGER DE MORT à ouvrir

les portières pendant la marche

du train entre GAMBETTA et

MARTIN-NADAUD et entre BOURSE et

SAINT LAZARE

         

 

           GARE OPERA

 

Fear gulp rippled under chin

Of horse shaped odyssey

Begins and ends with guilty eyes

In brown and orange emptiness

Burning higher ever knees

Unmassaged again and more,

 

          4 SEPTEMBRE

 

Footstool to my vacant angel

Tripping ankle pointing at

Solitary newsprint lady

Free but for Lilas-bound

 

              BOURSE

 

World of pen upsetting

Mustached women, I’m

In love with grandma

Standing near the empty seat

Of hard faced peasant

Green Lautrec chick,

 

           SENTIER

 

Sit and meditate, grandma

On other worldly vision flashes

Dubo, two fromage, machine

Washed, tobacco, Gillette, then

 

     REAMUR-SEBASTOPOL

 

Frozen in mid yawn by pop

Lock here are we in

Long corrida’s white tile twinkle

Heels of boots flamenco

Sounds of change in life.

 

PORTILLON AUTOMATIQUE

il est interdit d’empêcher

son fonctionnement ne pas tenter

de passer pendant la fermeture.

 

Quiet afro smile a roar

Amidst the Merry Christmas

Dead eyes, murdered softly

 

    ÉTTIENE MARCEL

 

By our missile gliding

Head to back transversal

Nothing new save Islam’s birth.

 

        LES HALLES

 

Rembrandt’s mother red with

Knitting for the cubs of shrew

And leopard wailing on their

Final day when quietly destroy.

 

  CHATÉLET

 

Gallic marshal U.S. gothic

Tired pointed greasy eyes.

Hair and nose of utter

Classic correspondence.

Automatic terminating

Roadway kneading feet, and

Civil servants get us back on time.   (

 

  PONT MARIE

 

Forward vector youngster turning

Arm’s length round a stanchion pole.

Warted face of lonely victim

Reviews the diamond red brigade.

 

        SULLY-MORLAND

 

Boyish revolution’s ended,

But purge of time continues.

Straw thatched roofs of pink barns

Burning stoked by futile babble.

 

     JUSSIEU

 

Mocking girders remain to watch

Doors like jaws on yellow

Raised circle cues —

“Ready on the right, left, firing

Line” — ZAP — snap shut.

 

     CARDINAL LEMOINE

 

I recall untouched red

Hair fragile over my shoulder —

 

    MAUBERT-MUTUALITÉ

 

All began with the empty

Ticket omen taker’s booth.

 

    STRASBOURG- ST DENIS

 

A new beginning, try at least

 

      BONNE NOUVELLE

 

British chap in gray tweed

Will not reveal the secret

Of his plastic mystery sack.

 

    RICHELIEU-DROUOT

 

Forewarned, forewarned, and

The little hunched woman exits

with unspoken accusations.

 

    ST MICHEL

 

Rivet eyes, there’s no escaping

Inside an oil storage tank.

Eyes yellow blue knitting

Braid my bloody finger.

 

        CITÉ

 

Awakening screams of leopard

And cub trapped by a

Chinese ten-year girl forgotten

Behind steel spectacles.

 

   CHATÉLET/PONT NEUF

 

The barnyard empties,

And I am left with ice

Throated urge to warm

My hands between her

Shockable legs

 

         PALAIS-ROYAL

 

Before the maple glassy doors

And cuckolded businessman

Opened by old killer lady

Next to me in the gray glass.

 

  PYRAMIDES

 

Bereted father time with

Fetal head and useless hands

And teenaged baby new dawn

Watched by rouge and blonde on off

White fur and pot - a –

-                pot - a – pot - a – pot - a –

Waaaarrroooommm                    

 

 

          ATTENTION

      LES BANQUETTES

sont reserves par priorite

1º  AUX MUTILES DE GUERRE

2º  Aux Aveugles Civils.  Aux

invalides du travail et aux

infirmes civils.

3º  Aux Femmes Enceintes

et Aux Personnes Accompagnées

D’Enfants agés de moins de quatre ans.

 

 Published in  coldnoon August 2016

                                                                    

A Colored Boy by Ed Coletti

Apparently born enslaved

in the border state

Nebraska he was

Owned           by

Simon Wright

whose own death

freed Davey

transported at 8 years to

Santa Rosa

California

where the boy

died at 12

 

Don’t know much about

those 4 intervening years

romping freely

                       about my town

 

while men elsewhere were

falling on the fields of Shiloh

Antietam Bull Run and Gettysburg

 

                                    but

what we can read

on his tombstone

merely

 

                                    Colored boy

       Davis Wright Colored Boy Continued

Approximately two years ago, the Three Colettis  Joyce, Chirara and Ed went over to the Santa Rosa Graveyard in my neighborhood off Franklin Street and placed this statue next to the grave of 12-year old Davis Wright.  Then on November 2, 2020, I visited the grave once again and noticed first that the angel had been turned to face onlookers rather than toward the stone.  I liked the new orientation.  It now had a bit more flare.  Additionally, the stone had been cleaned making it much easier to read.