Unauthorized Autobiography

 

Unauthorized Autobiography

 

 

my autobiography began in a Sedgewick Avenue tenement

five stories start the book, Harlem tones flowing

nearby

 

an expressway of keys

busy typewriter banging away on pavement incisions

 

the cuts in cement skin

the blood coagulating at a Catholic grade school

3 blocks away

learning something about nothing of immediate consequence

a finger caught in the heavy door of an old Plymouth

both of us racing down the street screaming

of patterns in a life of trafficking thoughts

 

poetry born by single trees 

living on patches of grass

imagining poets dreaming they were 

writing Leaves of Grass and 

becoming mid-nineteenth century Walt Whitmans

 

free verse child 

unaware that in a few years

he would be moving to a new Country 

called the Midwest---

where the novel would take twists and turns

and Bronx would seem a small prologue

 

to a screenplay

written from a story

written from a chapter

of a New York boy

living out his days by his typewriter

 

still hoping those incisions might be sewn

into a new dawn,

 

but a backlog of dreams

and a rear ended Plymouth

always reject the stitches

 

and the autobiography

will never heal the scars

of life that flew by so fast

like a body jumping from the roof

 

of a 5 story apartment building

past

windows of reckoning

as he reckoned his life

might be worth two short sentences

 

in a prison of flashback film.

 

 

erin-cilberto

8/4/17

Reviews

[m.s.early]

Been away for a while. You're the first to read. Always a pleasure. Never disappointing.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

thank you for your kind words, m.s.
j.

[Julie McCarthy (juliesp..]

Beautiful
Awe inspiring
Interesting
In a nutshell brilliant

[jacob erin-cilberto]

thank you for your kind words, Julie.
j.

[barleygirl]

This is brilliant & revealing & fun to know about you, after all that I've read of you! I'm totally green with envy at the way you stitched together those bright spots & dark spots into the most delicately adorned tapestry. I'm in awe . . . (((HUGS)))

[jacob erin-cilberto]

thank you for your very kind review, barleygirl...

mostly truth here, partly fiction...

or maybe it is just how i remember it all.

j.

[barleygirl]

I've written it the way I remember it, in many cases, & this ends up being a number of different poems over time, saying different things! Gotta love that nebulosity of the memory banks! *wink! wink!*

[Annette Pisano-Higley]

"Poetry born by single trees..living on patches of grass". Sedgewick Avenue by the reservoir- i know this... Incisive, eloquent, spectacular autobiographical chronicle of your roots and influences as a poet. With a Bronx prologue- respect. Love this and certainly identify!

[jacob erin-cilberto]

yes, we were fight next to the Harlem and Major Deegan---a block away and 2 miles from THe Stadium...thank you for your words...and as i was posting, i thought you might identify....
j.

[Annette Pisano-Higley]

I actually live about twenty minutes away from where you lived as a boy! Serendipity!:)

[John Alexander McFadyen]

A graphically detailed pen picture of the protagonists life. Full of black regrets as memories remind him of the hopes once held but never realised. Deeply sad this one Jacob.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

partly true and partly fiction--as Kris Kristofferson wrote....i like where and how my life has come...but i am that NY Boy...
thank you for your words, John...
j.