I stood there in my Easter suit
My hair slicked back, She used Wildroot.
My hands are clasped in simple prayer
The 56 Pontiac is there.
My eyes are big. So are my ears. 
My grandmother waits and sighs "My dears.
We have to go. We will be late."
My old dog stands barking at the gate.
Perhaps at my Grandma's mink
Which is really weasel is what I think
And she stands smoking a long Pall Mall
And then we hear my father call.
"Where the hell are my goddamn ties?"
And I seem to hear my mother's sighs
As she sits waiting in the car.
"I don't know where the fuck they are"
One minute more. He's still not there.
Darkness falling in the air.
My mother leaves. Won't look back!
Goodbye 56 Pontiac.

I remember Johnny Wasko's white coffin.
I used to think of it often
The funeral home dim
The mourners quite grim
And enough holy incense to get lost in.

And I remember his Dad
Who was ever since then so damn sad
He fixed our TV
And once said to me
"You remind me of the boy I once had."

Ah, Christ and then came the end
He didn't know I was Johnny's friend
On some snowy street
His final defeat
And nothing at all to transcend.

Old Father

Baby Belly Butter Little Face
I had a terrible childhood.
I had a problem with Pope Pius XII.
His picture hung in my fourth grade classroom,
St. Sebastian's Catholic School, Warrensville, Pa, 1958.
I beat him drag racing.
He drove his 600 ft. long gold and white Popemobile
Synchromesh transmission, etc.
I had my bicycle.
And a little luck.
I still remember his face in racing goggles,
the sneer, the Redman tobacco drool at the corner of his mouth.
He called me Kid.
However, there was no doubt who won.
You can't read about it.
The church bought all the newspapers.
The next day nuns descended on sports desks all over the world.
What you can read is: Pope Beats Smart-Ass Kid."
Don't believe what you read.
They had World Youth day and I wasn't invited.
My father chased me with a belt.
"Why weren't you invited to World Youth Day?"
My mother wept.
Those were terrible days.
The nuns made me write religious poetry.
"The collies/at the funeral home/barked at my grandmother."
Kids fainted nightly from airplane glue.
We lined up to see the movie, "The Man With The Atomic Brain."
My father talked to a cough for twenty years.
We bought Remco telegraph kits
Strung wires from house to house.
Sent secret messages:
"You will be killed in a war."
We all wanted Ted Williams to be our father.
We all wanted our father to take us out and show us the stars,
Hand on shoulder, pipe in hand pointing to a
constellation.
In a field. On a hill.
But our fathers worked for guys who looked like Eisenhower.
They worked the night shift.
They were too tired.
They cried in basements.
They fell one by one into rolling mills.
They left $2500 in insurance.
They were driven to Fairview cemetery by big-knuckled drivers
wearing Masonic rings.
Our mothers were also tired.
Hands caught in mangles at the laundry
They had problems stirring the Kool Aid
They had problems hauling us to church on sleds when it snowed.
You will waste your life.
Someday you will open a book
that will not be the color of the sky.
You will blame the book.
We won't be there.
We will be wailing in coffins.
Wailing for the world to end.
Wailing with all the poor poor dead
For this shitstorm, this storm of shit, to end.
Baby. Belly. Butter. Little Face.
("Whoa," said Little Face. "Hand me down my walking cane!")

The Musings of Cardinal Martini 

Will I Be Pope?

Black smoke. White smoke. No smoke.
What's the difference?
Every day's a good day.

Above St. Peter's Square

Waving at the faithful
From the balcony.
For God's sake. Hold me up!

Should Women Be Priests?

Yeah, right.
Next they'll want to be bartenders!

Midnight Mass

The Pope is missing!

Easter Morning: Wrong Sermon

What's the problem?
The Diamond Sutra is way cool.

Explaining the Virgin Birth

No vermouth.
Still a Martini.