Monthly Archives: July 2015

Elegy for Claude

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We did take the world
Didn’t we, Niño?
Took all the dim bar light
And made it sing
Didn’t we, Niño?
Made the girls call our name
At least some of time
Didn’t we, Niño?

And even dared take the city lights
And bend them into dreams
Didn’t we, Niño?
And in the end
Knew for sure
How the gleam in your eyes
Would simply go on forever
We did know that
Didn’t we, Niño?

Claude Haton

Claude Haton


R.I.P. Claude Haton
My little brother
November 1, 1955 to July 19, 2014

Note: A benefit concert in Claude’s honor will be held August 1 in Cairo, N.Y. (proceeds go to scholarship fund for local high school students).

The Red Apple Rest

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Took a wrong turn and ran smack into my past: The Red Apple Rest, a way station for city travelers on their way to the Catskills, abandoned now for nearly 30 years. Had no idea she still existed.

The Red Apple Rest

The Red Apple Rest

Beautiful in her ghostly repose, she inspired this poem:

THE RED APPLE REST

Came upon her by accident
and as surprised as when
she loomed up at us
as we breached that far hill
in the Studebaker

The Red Apple Rest
that boyhood vision
ship-like
in all her sweeping glory
magic oasis for urban escapees

Snack bar windows yawning
for the idling Fords, Mercs and Greyhounds
engines hotter than Venus
dogs, malts, pastrami
loudspeakers and mothers’ calls

Free to roam and exult for a time
gape at the oddities
men with beards
girls with midriffs
until back in the oven car
stuffed with pillows and dishes
and dreams of an endless summer

 

Ode to the Lost Motels of the Jersey Shore

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Exploring Seaside Heights, N.J., for the first time, and, sadly, I find no treasure-trove of midcentury motels like there are in Wildwood. Here, as testament, is an image of a Jeffrey L. Neumann painting of the Seashell Motel in Wildwood and my poem on the same subject (total coincidence, but not surprising, since Jeffrey and I cover the same beat: lost America).

 

"Sea Shell," a painting by Jeffrey Neumann

“Sea Shell,” a painting by Jeffrey Neumann

CHECKOUT AT THE SEA SHELL MOTEL

the caramel room
at the Sea Shell Motel
dollar store palm prints
and nicotine sills

cheap rum hangs in the shaft of sun dust
hula lamps hold the afternoon

dealings have come and gone —
Greek families, pimps, divorcees,
schmuck runaways, suicide watches

music plays no more
only murmurings and distant trucks
the scent of the bulldozer