Retread Rubbereden 2020

By Vincent Quatroche

“Quatroche is primarily an oral poet, influenced by and working in the tradition of Whitman, Sandburg, Ginsberg, Frelinghetti, Ken Nordine, Tom Waits, Charles Bukowski and similar experimenters in the American oral tradition. His work expresses a strong element of social criticism–sometimes angry, sometimes ironic or absurd, with the element of the highly personal and lyrical. One of his greatest strengths is the effective use of telling details and powerful images and metaphors to bring us face to face with our foibles, our failures and our loves- David Lunde Professor Emeritus SUNY Fredonia. Internationally published and recognized poet/translator. 1992 Rhysling Award recipient Five time Nebula Award nominee. Additional info Cyber Vanity mirror @ www.rubbereden.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781984585295

Vincent Quatroche

Coughed up somewhere in the Terrible Now the public at large and critics agree that probably Vincent Quatroche doesnt really exist other than a rather speculative wild fiction were limited attention spans stare into electronic 3.2 inch plastic rectangles. Embracing both encroaching age and perpetual obscurity is every beat poets dream without either the benefit of reasonable perspective or rationale behavior. Career Educator and Poet Vincent Quatroche refuses to just get lost. A truly disturbing afterthought he insists in sticking around like duct tape. While insolence as persistence is hardly a virtue, he will seldom read you the same poem twice, unless you are asking for it. Originally from Long island he is currently languishing in over-State NY teaching at regional colleges. He is a published author of numerous creative projects, including Books, CDs & Videos. His poetry has been distributed and pulverized into the Cyber Void throughout the United States and abroad.

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 by Vincent Quatroche.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 06/25/2020

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

814780

Ora fermeremo l’assurdità e parleremo con quattro Occhi

Quattrochii Family motto

Abruzzo Italy

*   *   *

I don’t operate often. When I do,

persons take note.

Nurses look amazed. They pale.

The patient is brought back to life, or so.

The reason I don’t do this more (I quote)

is: I have a living to fail —

because of my wife & son/daughter — to keep from earning.

— Mr Bones, I sees that.

They for these operations thanks you, what?

not pays you. — Right.

You have seldom been so understanding.

Now there is further a difficulty with the light:

I am obliged to perform in complete darkness

operations of great delicacy

on myself.

— Mr Bones, you terrifies me.

No wonder they didn’t pay you. Will you die?

— My

friend, I succeeded. Later.

—John Berryman

Dream Songs No 67: (1964)

*   *   *

"Insufficient talent is nature’s cruelest gift.

—Jerzy Kosi 47941.png ski

*   *   *

The biology of purpose keeps my nose above the surface

—Brain Eno

Kings Lead Hat

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Previous Works

Foreword

Instructions for Understanding this Poem

Of Oral and Visual

Her Roll Of Lost Pictures

The Rain On The Train Falls Mostly On The Poor

Here Are The Blue Prints

Whispering Weeks

Dream Fatigue

V.J.Q. the 1st

Poems Written While Waiting For A Daughter

May 6 Tuesday

Making You

Untitled #1

Your Slow Green Sheets

The Barney Song

Remembering Lucy

Here’s Your Dusty Ticket

A Couple of Times

Aw Pin Balls

The Childhood of Errol Flynn

Written on the Last Page of October

Saturday in Schenectady

Further Instructions Concerning Frying May

Do you have any identification ?

Sketches

Welcome to Nor’easter Sunday at Shea Stadium

Wish

Summer Colors

Your Last Letter

We Will Be Running Out Of Numbers Soon

The Dybbuk Dreams

Mall Set

The Map on the Desk

Tuesday and Thursday Evenings

Lost 1990 Song

End of October

Rumpus Room

Flubber Gas and the End of the Word

Road Kill

Memory Kit

Idea for an Usher

In October When The Price Was Right

All Outta Orange

Report From The Dysfunctional World

Fragment Of A Forgotten Letter

Vapor Map

Pliers

Sunday Night Of The Heart

Dreambeers

What a Hot Horse Remembers

The Dentist of Time

The Poet Line

Coming Along the Hudson

Small Time Press

April Morn

Bellingham Remembered

Years End

Song of April

Supper Time

Slapping the id

Untitled #2

Did she do it on purpose ?

Outta Town

Big Silence

Oh Bright Beery Mirage

Roses for Thorns

Dream 27

Overheard Song

Of Chances & Poison

Hello Blue Monday

After the Nap

Take Old 5

Memory Boat Morn

Things That Were.....

Jeanie

List Odd Poems

Knocking Yourself Out

Untitled #3

Screwing me through Schenectady

Rain Date

Long Island Sound

Chinese New Year

Five Lifestyles

Nothing Constructive

County Fair

The Icy Blue Drive

My Mirage Mistress

Untitled #4

So Where Were You?

Two Terse Pieces of Correspondence from California

Leaving Lauren

Skip The Gutter

My Kind Of Morning After

Ordinary Roar

Appliance Mode

The Year The Earth Spoke Back

Up On Holly Avenue

The South Fork Of Somewhere

New Suffolk

Untitled #5

Air Slang

The Book Scout

What Passes Between

Recipe for Forgotten Spring

Date with Never

Kill The Poet

You Be The Audience

How to Find An Afternoon Bar

Haven for Hayes

July 90

A Good Story

The Drift

March Assessment

Drowning The Fin

Lost Dreamsong # ?

Drown

Tribute

List of the End of January

Vanishing Breed

Here in the Rubber Eden

PREVIOUSLY UNCOLLECTED

Narcissus and Echo

Two Cycles

The Art of the Wink

Academic Smirk Alert

Lost Reels of Film

October Nocturne

Summer/Fall Shorts 2019

Ode to Slip Mahoney

Short Dog Sport Shorts 2019

Christ Climbed Down

October Fragments 2019

The Girl from Podunk

What you need to do

Phenakistoscope

2020 Shorts

Special Occasion Designation Nation

Reoccurring Rain Dream on a station platform

Behind your Mask 2020

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

front%20cover.jpg

Vincent Quatroche Sr.

Original title

Washington DC 5 AM

1999

Author%20Photo%20.jpg

Photograph by Michael Frey

Circa 1980s

PREVIOUS WORKS

Print

Q-Bop City 2018

Got Abstract? 2014

Sometimes Grief- barks up the wrong tree 2012

21 Short Dog Stories 2011 (Collected Short Fiction)

The Terrible Now 2009

CyberStein 2007

Greetings from Gridville 2006

Attitude House 2002

Another Rubber Eden 1998

*   *   *

Audio

Vanishing Breed Vol. 2 /Revised CD format 2018

Seeing Eye Ear Digital edition 2017

Quattro-Vox 2013

Singing Mr. Cedric 2010

Vanishing Breed (Collected 90s cassette series recordings Vol. 1) 2008

In Dreamthink 2006

Matador from Another Planet 2002

For more information regarding the availability these works

Please visit www.rubbereden.com

FOREWORD

In the winter of 1996 I sat in the back room on Seel Street on particularly cold night drinking beer with my colleague Dave Lunde complaining about my lack of success getting anyone to publish my poetry, prose and short stories I had been writing my entire adult life. In those days I would sit in bar filling out notebook after notebook of whatever would escape out my head onto the page. I was knocking myself out submitting my work to presses of all manner; both renowned and obscure trying to get myself in print.

No dice- the rejection notes mounted (with rare exceptions) and I was beginning to think I’d never see my stuff widely published anywhere. Dave listened patiently and suggested, Vince- have you ever considered publishing them yourself ? He proceeded to tell me about the growing print on demand industry. You mean a vanity press ? I replied skeptically- isn’t that for those who can’t cut the mustard with the recognized professional literary world ? He said I suppose you could look at it that way- But I ask you- you want to see your stuff in print or not ? Why wait around for somebody to pass a verdict on your legitimacy or talent ? I’ve read your stuff- you’re as good as anybody I’ve read at doing the style you do. Besides years from now do you want end up with boxes of notes books abandoned in an attic ? Then he encouraged me to follow a few leads he provided for authors in my position to explore this as an option.

I took his advice to heart and within a year I published a collection of work entitled Another Rubber Eden with Xlibris (the initial Rubber Eden was a collection of recorded works produced by Dan Berggren on his Sleeping Giant Record label in The late 1980s).

I still recall the marvel of actually holding in my hands my book the next year in the Summer of 1998. I had learned a valuable lesson. When no one believes in you (other than guys Like Dave and Dan) believe in yourself. Sure- it might be so much small potatoes – what the hell after all their your GD potatoes.

Twenty years and ten books later I never stop believing that. In what? The power of persistence in the act of creation. I can use my own father as a example- he was an artist who produced an extensive collection of creative works his entire life with very little commercial success.

Since his passing in 2012 he has been recognized in some circles as a vibrant unique voice on canvas that truly represents a specific area in the history of the post modern art world. The majority of my books and CDs proudly presents on the front covers his art. I believe I keep him alive in this way and we collaborate creating our separate paths of expressive passions as one.

For myself ? That’s worth the price of admission.

As of this writing the Rubbereden is bouncing near the edge. There is a profound uncertainty about what the future holds. But this much is certain- fear and change are leaving the bar at 3 AM blind drunk holding each other up trying not to stumble on that raised slab of sidewalk and do a face plant into the concrete. The situation that Gridville is currently enduring may be merely a preliminary dress rehearsal for some unknown future pending main event.

Why do we need a retread Rubbereden ? Well the answer is we probably don’t. So much has changed since the late 90s. All the gatekeepers are long gone. Books have become some archaic obscurity. We live on line. Cyber stooges waiting for the screen to go black- and it will-sooner or later. It was my intention to attempt to temporarily preserve the world of the other Rubbereden in digital format. Content has been edited and other selections have ended up on the cutting room floor. I’ve included a modest collection of unpublished works since the last Book Q-Bop City in 2018.

The observation of saying I told you so is useless and unsatisfying either in the past or the Terrible Now. The rants foreshadowing dark predictions about the future are long gone. The traditional end game scenarios seem quaint now. There’s a new cosmic sucker punch born every minute. What remains here is poetry reflecting what was then and Terrible Now.

And as for those boxes of abandoned and forgotten little brown notebooks?

They escaped that fate and not only live on in these pages, many of the poems from the original edition have been recorded on my numerous CD projects.

The following was the original dedication from the 1st edition.

I still endorse those sentiments:

Outside of my immediate family (wife, kids, folks, and sisters) and

A few dozen close and loyal colleagues, lifelong friends, bartenders and

old time used to be ghosts- the rest of you smart ass bastards

can go straight to hell.

Vincent Quatroche

June 2020

Instructions for Understanding this Poem

Take line A and misread it.

The green tractor cast a shadow on the black top.

Insert the colors B & C into line D.

She was a blue swimming pool in the winter’s morning sun.

Fold the imagery in lines F& G into a paper airplane

and sail into the waste basket.

You know, He snarled, "Your daily intent’s could fit into

a small cities Sunday Leisure Time Section."

Lines L & M contain sarcasm adjust attitude accordingly,

to fit the defeatism in lines J & K.

Now your green tractor should be interlocked in the swimming

pool, along with that woman in the winter’s morning sun.

Go back to the waste basket in line J. Fish out the imagery

and see if it flies any better. Then refer back to line A.

Now burn the basketball players’ hands, while deep frying

french fries at four in the morning, bench him for a month.

Take the cryptic reference of lines EE & FF and lineup with

The following irony: Reverend who advocates use of condoms

Has fathered four illegitimate children .

Put him on the green tractor with that woman in the pool.

Now insert the basketball player’s hands on the small cities

Leisure Time Sunday section in lines L & M.

Repeat lines H & I & J. Refer back to line A.

Time for the modern pedagogy gone array.

Day Care teacher dressed as Care Bear beaten,

by Sixth Graders on Valentine’s Day in West Virginia.

Now you should have the Reverend, Day Care Teacher and

the blue swimming pool in the winter’s morning sun. (line F)

Make the green tractor red. (line B).

All personification, metaphor and meaning should be clear.

If not, refer back to line A.

Fall 1991

Of Oral and Visual

I wish I had been alive

when Pollock was slinging paint

swinging colors

in a hot dusty barn

August afternoons in Springs near East Hampton

Landscape steaming heat waves melting pigment

blazing marshes cat-tail explanation points.

Ripple current salt blue pools sending the sky

into a jealous furious rage of envy over tincture

exclusivity. Heat stroking a wild furnace of chaos

when nature crawls off the palette, to rage, seethe

hissing summer. To puncture the vision’s depth of

field, split the infinitives and just spit it out:

WHITE COCKATOO with EYES IN THE HEAT

drunk on SCENT riding A GREYED RAINBOW.

That’s what I must do with words now.

But you’ve got to get the picture.

See the shattered dancing picture.

If you don’t see it.

If you don’t see it.

Then I didn’t do it.

Write in color.

If I could throw the verbal heat like a Koufax fastball.

Who could catch it?

Who would be able to tell the difference from a distance

between Sandy and Serling?

Who wrote in a twilight prose of black and white.

From memory. From incident.

In the PURPLE TESTAMENT with the 11th Airborne Division

Sky trooper Serling shot a Japanese soldier leading off third

base bottom half of World War, inning 2, 1945

at Rizal Stadium during street-to-street combat for Manila.

Years later in glacial Upstate New York winter afternoon.

I have one hallucination of him out the side door of

the garage in the neighbor’s back yard.

He gestures in the driving snow to me.

Then a shuttering wink white-out wind gust

-I’m standing on the sidewalk of the Upper East Side

1955 city blizzard just outside of a bar.

I walk in the door from the blinding frozen light.

And there he’s sitting at the bar in a thin black tie and

charcoal hounds tooth sports jacket with Edwardian collars

another freshly lit cigarette and parting the

veil of smoke he turns to regard me.

He grimaces slightly

beckoning me to interior shadows

titling his head on an angle says,

"Sit down, I’ve just had this idea for a story and

I need someone to tell it to."

2/97

Her Roll Of Lost Pictures

So then his thunder was exposed as an endangered species.

Your brief downpour of words soaked the situation to everyone’s

dissatisfaction. They have this sure fleeting flash of

momentary light. Illumination to La Carte.

Sure shows everything up. You can count on it.

But only so far for tonight. (and of course there are

expressly no substitutions.)

Move this night like a set of negatives never exposed

within aperture. Seems the film just