Poetry: Selections From Peter Mladinic

Choice of Colors

If you had a choice of colors 

which one would you choose, my brothers

                             —Curtis Mayfield

 

You know that rhythm

at the beginning of “Superfly”

Dum de dum dum de dum

dum—that’s Curtis Mayfield

Curtis Mayfield sang with Jerry 

Butler and the Impressions

then it was just the Impressions

then just Curtis Mayfield

Curtis Mayfield looked up

at the stars in the city 

where you practically 

had to break your neck 

to see a star, Curtis Mayfield 

in “Gypsy Woman” sang

“Her eyes were like those 

of a cat in the dark”

Curtis Mayfield looked out

into the night from a window

on a bridge looked out 

over the river, on a street

looked down an alley

Curtis was a teller of fortunes

but not a palm reader 

his feet on ground, his mind 

flew up to the people behind 

the window in the brick wall 

five stories high

to what they had, each other 

to what they didn’t have 

justice when they walked 

out their door, downstairs 

out to the street

Curtis Mayfield felt the dark

unfold on the street 

a junkie’s nod on a corner 

a wino curled in a store front 

a girl in a tight skirt flagged 

a passing car, the dark unfolded

like a blade coming out

of a long knife

like the long arm of the law

grabbing a collar 

a club cracking a skull 

a flame heating the spoon 

of a dealer, a needle in an arm 

in a gas station restroom 

a needle in the heart 

of the city, Curtis Mayfield 

rose from a table 

and walked out the door

in a park he climbed steps 

that led to a stage

and in his climbing 

his striving was struck down

by a globe that was tethered 

to a wire and came loose 

in a windstorm

call it bad luck, fate 

kept Curtis Mayfield 

from taking the stage 

to play music, sing songs

to ones gathered to hear him

hear him with the Impressions

sing “Prettier than all the world”

listen to "Superfly” as you 

drive in the morning to work

in the warehouse, the office

the hospital, the school

listen through headphones 

as you ride the subway 

at evening rush hour 

from the city toward home 

or wherever you stay

Superfly the album shines 

through the dark sky, Curtis’s

single “Choice of Colors”

“If there were no day or night 

which would you prefer 

to be right?” gives a body

pause for thought.

I Saw Billy Graham on a Box of Arm 

and Hammer Baking Soda

 

on a shelf in Albertsons as I was coming out of 

the pharmacy with my vial of viagra. 

“I can look at you right now and tell you

sex isn’t your problem, it’s forgiveness.

Forgiving others, you forgive yourself,”

he said. I said, “l’ll think on it, Dr. Graham.”

 

He’s an evangelist. In the forgiveness 

department, I’m not an executive. 

I empty wastebaskets, sweep, and mop

listening through earbuds to Frank Zappa’s 

Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Talk about forgiveness. I see and hear things.

Paul Dattari hears Marilyn Monroe 

in the wind across a pond. Loretta Ward 

 

sees Nico, of the Velvet Underground, 

in a glass shield at the Motor Vehicles.

I put my pants on same as Paul and Loretta, 

and the three children on a hillside 

in Portugal to whom Our Lady of Fatima

appeared out of a cloud. One child, 

Lucia is canonized a saint. Why only her?  

Some are more forgiving than others.

 

Paul’s brother, Bernie is good with numbers. 

Loretta’s hair is black. Her youthful glow

lives in my thumbnail. I see things:

Duke Ellington’s image on the train window, 

Billy Graham in a supermarket, 

on a box dyed yellow, blue and red.

Role Model

 

My dental implant the day after tomorrow,

time to whip out the brochure of do’s and don’t’s: 

no nothing for at least six hours.

Then there’s the money part. 

A brochure, a hefty pamphlet,

uncertainty with dread thrown in. 

I think of his knee replacement, triple by-pass, 

 

hepatitis, mostly, earlier on his life’s path, 

treks to Bergen Pines with Helen because, 

when wearing a spouse’s ring, you stay; 

don’t leave them to the wolves of solitude, 

comatose in an institutional bed, five years. 

You go to the bedside, again and again, 

and take with you your son to see his father. 

 

So there was that for five years, for Helen 

and Lee. I remember a black coat with a fur collar, 

how handsome he looked in it; 

his green eyes. I’d walk into the living room 

(Ralph in a chair would nod from behind his paper), 

walk to the room Lee and Leslie shared, 

the apartment on Faller.

 

Helen had someone watch Leslie 

when they went to Bergen Pines. 

Mentally challenged, his looking after 

fell to Lee after Helen died, also, long before, 

back when they all lived on Faller Drive. 

Leslie, in a home thousands of miles from Lee, 

is Lee’s brother;

 

that to add to why Lee’s my role model.

I have to do this, but then Lee had to do that; 

he didn’t hem and haw. 

He did what needed to be done,

all those treks to Bergen Pines.

Lee had Helen’s cat when she was in a home.

They died within the same hour.

 

 

 

 

 

Peter Mladinic's most recent book of poems, Maiden Rock is available from UnCollected Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.