<div class="line2">it was a marathon,</div>
<div class="line">and we did it right off</div>
<div class="line">Broadway in New York, back</div>
<div class="line">when apples were sold on</div>
<div class="line">street corners by haggard</div>
<div class="line">looking men who never shaved</div>
<div class="line">anymore, standing on street</div>
<div class="line">corners, the lines were long</div>
<div class="line">back then, waitin for a free</div>
<div class="line">turkey from the salvation army</div>
<div class="line">for thanksgiving,</div>
<div class="line2">people were</div>
<div class="line">flyin upside down from airplanes,</div>
<div class="line">and there was a guy called Shipwreck</div>
<div class="line">Kelley sittin on a flagpole, way</div>
<div class="line">up, for weeks, rain or shine,</div>
<div class="line">just to see how long he could</div>
<div class="line">stay up there, hopin to make a</div>
<div class="line">buck that way,</div>
<div class="line2">my girl and I got into the</div>
<div class="line">dance marathon …</div>
<div class="line2">picture a rickety hall, with</div>
<div class="line">fifty young people like us,</div>
<div class="line">dancing day and night, holdin on to</div>
<div class="line">each other till we dropped, hell,</div>
<div class="line">this went on day and night, and</div>
<div class="line">the winner would get a few hundred</div>
<div class="line">bucks, while the sister promoters</div>
<div class="line">made the most of it, and the</div>
<div class="line">loud music comin from a jukebox,</div>
<div class="line">day and night, around and around we</div>
<div class="line">went, and pathe news showed us on</div>
<div class="line">the screen, and walter winchell</div>
<div class="line">wrote us up, and nobody really</div>
<div class="line">gave a shit about any of this,</div>
<div class="line">seeing how everybody was crazy in</div>
<div class="line">them days anyway,</div>
<div class="line2">on the fifth day of dancing</div>
<div class="line">most of the contestants had dropped</div>
<div class="line">out, the meat wagon took em away,</div>
<div class="line">imagin women hangin on to their</div>
<div class="line">boyfriends, around the neck, while</div>
<div class="line">the boyfriend dragged his partner</div>
<div class="line">around and around like a bunch of</div>
<div class="line">damn zombies.</div>
<div class="line">there was a fifteen minute break</div>
<div class="line">so we could do what we had to do,</div>
<div class="line">goin around the room, foxtrot,</div>
<div class="line">waltz, mostly, and we all had</div>
<div class="line">these big damn numbers on our</div>
<div class="line">backs,</div>
<div class="line2">near the end, before my girl</div>
<div class="line">and I dropped out, my feet were</div>
<div class="line">swollen the size of an elephant’s,</div>
<div class="line">and my partner looked like she</div>
<div class="line">was gonna faint any minute,</div>
<div class="line2">like she was gonna die right</div>
<div class="line">then and there, hell, i was draggin</div>
<div class="line">her around like a dust mop,</div>
<div class="line2">at the end of this dance</div>
<div class="line">marathon the cops finally came</div>
<div class="line">around and closed the whole damn</div>
<div class="line">thing up … the mayor said it was</div>
<div class="line">inhuman for people to dance like</div>
<div class="line">this, just to see who could last</div>
<div class="line">longer,</div>
<div class="line2">we got nuthin for our dancing</div>
<div class="line">and it wasn’t very pretty,</div>
<div class="line">we broke up after that,</div>
<div class="line">and I joined the navy, figurin</div>
<div class="line">let the government take care of</div>
<div class="line">me, and I would look good in a</div>
<div class="line">sailor suit,</div>
<div class="line2">and last I heard, my partner</div>
<div class="line">was workin in a night club somewhere,</div>
<div class="line">tryin to make out as a singer</div>
<div class="line2">and the place where we danced</div>
<div class="line">was sold at an auction and it’s bare</div>
<div class="line">and quiet now there, and the world</div>
<div class="line">keeps on goin around and around.</div>
<div class="line2">and this is where I get off.</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/GalingDancing.mp3"></audio></figure>

My Body Is Antifa

What I Remember of World War II

Dancing

<p style="padding-left: 0px;">the one thing i<br />
always hated about<br />
standing inspection</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">when i was in the<br />
navy</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">was the way we all<br />
had to stand so<br />
erect and immobile</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">in our dress blues while<br />
the whole squadron stood<br />
at attention in that<br />
main hanger</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">not to say we didn’t<br />
look good, the way<br />
we were all lined up.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">like a bunch of puppets<br />
staring straight ahead,</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">resplendent in our shined<br />
black shoes,</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">our neckerchiefs dangling<br />
from our blue tops,</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">medals, (if any) in<br />
perfect order, like<br />
showing off to the<br />
war lords, but sometimes<br />
i just hated it</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">especially the cold in<br />
the hanger, the vastness<br />
of the place, the way the<br />
pigeons up in the rafters<br />
made their presence known,<br />
and the admiral and his<br />
entourage walked the line,</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">with critical eye and a<br />
serious frown, while the<br />
rest of cadre followed behind<br />
as they went row by row<br />
up and down<br />
up and down<br />
and the pigeons shit<br />
down on all of us, from</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">time to time.</p>


Christmas Canner

ED GALING: A POET OF THE GREATEST GENERATION

Navy Blues

<p><em>(1917 – 2013)</em></p>
<p>I&#8217;ve written more than a few poems for my friend Ed Galing, after getting the many letters he has sent me over the years. Ed&#8217;s letters are probably as good as his poems. They are alive and spirited, like the scrappy street urchin that Ed was in his early years. Ed can be needy, infuriating, and hilarious, but most of all loveable. And that&#8217;s the way I characterize his poetry. Like Ed, it shoots from the hip, giving it straight with no chaser. I find that, in contrast, a lot of the poetry I read today has a calculated ironic distance, almost as if the poet is afraid to display some honest sentiment or emotion. Ed Galing, at 89, is a poet who knows his allotted time is too short for posturing, for cool detachment, or obtuse and inaccessible verse. After long years of writing and submitting his work, Galing has joined the ranks of the major small press poets that includes: A.D. Winans, Hugh Fox, Lyn Lifshin, Alan Catlin, Lynne Savitt, and others. Like the poets just mentioned Galing&#8217;s poetry, stories, and essays have appeared in the most obscure and the most well-known journals across the country. Whenever I pick up a little magazine like the <em>Chiron Review, Rattle, Lummox Journal, Poesy, Brevities, The Small Press Review, Pegasus </em>and hundreds of others, I am not surprised to find Ed Galing&#8217;s name there.</p>
<p>I first encountered Ed Galing&#8217;s poetry in a defunct magazine founded by the late Ralph Haselmann Jr., <em>Lucid Moon</em>. Ed Galing was described as the “harmonica-playing poet-laureate of Hatboro, PA” (his hometown). I later found out that Galing&#8217;s work was liberally spread out over a wide swath of small press magazines, journals, newspapers, and the whole spectrum of publications. What came through in Ed&#8217;s poetry was his no-bullshit, call a spade-a-spade style. He reminded me a lot of my wisecracking Jewish uncles from boyhood, always busting chops and spinning stories. He is what they would call a <em>mensch</em>. A Yiddish word, it means someone of consequence, someone to emulate. That&#8217;s Ed.</p>
<p>In a number of interviews that I conducted with Ed, I became aware of his hardscrabble life, as it was reflected in his poetry. Ed told me that he started to write poetry as a young person during the Depression era. Galing&#8217;s family was on general relief, and they lived in very Spartan conditions on the Lower East Side of New York City and in the gone-to-seed environs of South Philadelphia.</p>
<p>Galing remembered his high school English teacher, Dr. Ginsberg, who was supportive of his work and pushed him to read the classics. Galing told me he took to poetry early on. As to why, he related: “Poetry could say something in a few words that prose could only do in the thousands. Poetry allowed me to pour out my heart and soul …” Later Galing mined his early years as fodder for his large body of work. In his most recent collection, <em>Buying a Suit on Essex Street</em> (Iniquity Press), Galing writes about his boyhood urban retreat—the fires cape on his tenement building over the bustling immigrant-filled streets of the Lower East Side.</p>
<blockquote>
<p align="left"><strong>Fire Escape</strong></p>
<p>Mine was on the<br />
fifth floor<br />
A small iron<br />
Cage<br />
Outside the front<br />
window<br />
Looking down on<br />
Essex Street<br />
Lower East Side:<br />
Down below I<br />
could see pushcarts:<br />
Crowded streets,<br />
people pushing and<br />
shoving,<br />
Screams and mutterings:<br />
shouts of despair:<br />
Up here, when I sat<br />
outside the window<br />
in my fire escape<br />
refuge<br />
I was six years old:<br />
and already I knew<br />
what it felt like<br />
To be caged in<br />
like<br />
some wild animal.</p></blockquote>
<p align="left">Ed remembers vividly the cornucopia of sights and sounds the Lower east Side had to offer: “There were the cries of the merchants and the hundred of people pushing and shoving. There was a flavor to those streets I won&#8217;t forget. I think it shaped my life. There were the rooftops, the wash on the lines, the garbage on the streets, and the gang fights.”</p>
<p>Galing also felt the bitter taste of in-your-face antisemitism. He learned from the predominately Christian world that the Jews killed Christ, and that Santa Claus wanted no part of him. All this left an indelible impression on the man.</p>
<p>Galing has written many poems concerning antisemitism, as he experienced it. As an occupation solider in Europe shortly after World War II, he was a witness to the death camps at Dachau. Galing told me: “All of these events shaped my sensibility and my poetry. I found antisemitism everywhere … the Army, the Navy.” Galing saw the horrific ovens of the camps, and was enraged at the denial of the atrocities by many Germans he encountered. Galing, through the Lucid Moon Press, published a small book of his war time experiences, complete with photos. In spite of these experiences he did not become misanthropic. Galing told me, “This affected me as a man. I wanted to use my words to benefit mankind. I wanted to show that love is important to life.”</p>
<p>To this day Ed Galing visits Jack&#8217;s Deli in his old stomping grounds of South Phillie and entertains the patrons with his harmonica. Now that his wife is a resident in a nursing home, he visits her daily, and shares his poetry and music with the other residents, as well. Ed makes no concessions to the computer age and still corresponds with fellow poets by hand-written letter. He types his poems out on an old typewriter. Ed and I talk on the phone regularly, and he expresses his frustration with the infirmities of old age, his wife&#8217;s declining health, the capriciousness of editors, you name it. Yet, overall, Galing keeps a positive attitude, and still has eagle eye out for the next poem.</p>
<p>Galing has experienced a lot, but like many of his rapidly diminishing peers he is able to separate what is important from what is not. Ed has no time to worry about the latest trend, engage in navel gazing, or morbid introspection. What matters to Galing are the people in his life that he touched and who touched him. Ed reflected: “I have two grandsons, three grandchildren, and I am married to a wonderful woman. What is there to know about Ed Galing? Just a simple man, trying to write poetry, and perhaps trying to hear a good word about my work.”</p>
<blockquote>
<p align="left"><strong>Day&#8217;s Work</strong></p>
<p>if my father taught<br />
me anything,<br />
it was how to exist<br />
where existence<br />
was hard to do.<br />
and where every<br />
breath of air<br />
in our lower<br />
east side building<br />
was filled with<br />
the acrid order<br />
of rotten vegetables<br />
that most of us<br />
tenants ate, when<br />
we could afford<br />
to buy the left-<br />
overs, from the<br />
pushcarts on orchard<br />
street<br />
oh, the rabble, oh<br />
the stench<br />
oh, the jostling<br />
and pushing of<br />
so many of us<br />
as we walked along<br />
pavements so crowded<br />
that we had to almost<br />
walk out into the middle<br />
of the street …<br />
my father made life<br />
as endurable as possible,<br />
by wearing the same clothes<br />
all year round, and when they<br />
tore,<br />
his needle and thread would mend them,<br />
he ate little, mostly potatoes,<br />
which gave him that round little<br />
belly, and portly gait,<br />
and he busied himself around<br />
the apartment we had,<br />
my mother in the kitchen,<br />
making food on the coal stove,<br />
learning how to squeeze beets<br />
to make borscht,<br />
and me in my six year old wisdom,<br />
learning how to steal an<br />
occasional apple from the<br />
pushcart outside …<br />
all in a day&#8217;s work in<br />
those days.</p></blockquote>
<p align="left">And, just like his old man before him, Ed keeps working at his craft, a craft which has been his life.</p>
<p style="text-align: right;" align="left">
<p style="text-align: center;" align="left"><em>Editors Note: Ed Galing died December 18, 2013, at his home in Hatboro, PA. He was 96.</em></p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;" align="right">
</blockquote>


Tell Me When It Starts to Hurt

<div class="line">i finally got up the courage to do</div>
<div class="line">what i should have done four</div>
<div class="line">years ago</div>
<div class="line">when she died after so many</div>
<div class="line">years of living together;</div>
<div class="line">there comes a time</div>
<div class="line">when you find yourself</div>
<div class="line">living what seems to</div>
<div class="line">be way too long;</div>
<div class="line">early years when you both couldn’t</div>
<div class="line">get enough of each other</div>
<div class="line">and dated and went to</div>
<div class="line">the quarter movie house to</div>
<div class="line">see fred astaire and ginger</div>
<div class="line">rogers, and held</div>
<div class="line">hands in the movie house,</div>
<div class="line">and i always tried to put my hand down</div>
<div class="line">her ample bosom to</div>
<div class="line">grab a breast in the</div>
<div class="line">dark, but</div>
<div class="line">never quite made it;</div>
<div class="line">and she always knew</div>
<div class="line">i was aiming for</div>
<div class="line">it, but made</div>
<div class="line">believe it wasn’t</div>
<div class="line">happening, and gently</div>
<div class="line">pushed my hand away;</div>
<div class="line">the times when after</div>
<div class="line">we married the</div>
<div class="line">kid woke up in</div>
<div class="line">the middle of the</div>
<div class="line">night, and</div>
<div class="line">i got so damn tired</div>
<div class="line">and angry at him screaming</div>
<div class="line">that i smacked his ass;</div>
<div class="line">and she left me after</div>
<div class="line">that, but came back</div>
<div class="line">later, she had only</div>
<div class="line">gone to her</div>
<div class="line">parents’ house</div>
<div class="line">around the corner,</div>
<div class="line">and i knew it, and the next</div>
<div class="line">day went over there,</div>
<div class="line">and brought her home,</div>
<div class="line">and we both cried, and i</div>
<div class="line">asked her to forgive</div>
<div class="line">me;</div>
<div class="line">things like that;</div>
<div class="line">so when she died</div>
<div class="line">i was too overcome to</div>
<div class="line">listen to condolences</div>
<div class="line">i just wanted to die</div>
<div class="line">myself</div>
<div class="line">and i moved my</div>
<div class="line">bedroom down</div>
<div class="line">to the ground floor</div>
<div class="line">and didn’t ever want</div>
<div class="line">to go upstairs again</div>
<div class="line">where we had made</div>
<div class="line">love in that bed so</div>
<div class="line">long ago</div>
<div class="line">and where all her clothes</div>
<div class="line">were still hanging in</div>
<div class="line">the closet as if never</div>
<div class="line">used,</div>
<div class="line">all this time,</div>
<div class="line">but now i have done</div>
<div class="line">it,</div>
<div class="line">the goodwill people</div>
<div class="line">called me and asked</div>
<div class="line">if i had any clothes</div>
<div class="line">to give away</div>
<div class="line">so many people</div>
<div class="line">all over the world</div>
<div class="line">needing things</div>
<div class="line">a pair of shoes</div>
<div class="line">a dress</div>
<div class="line">a blanket</div>
<div class="line">overcoat</div>
<div class="line">suit</div>
<div class="line">anything</div>
<div class="line">overseas the tsunamis</div>
<div class="line">and people homeless</div>
<div class="line">and tornados and</div>
<div class="line">towns wiped out</div>
<div class="line">they all were living</div>
<div class="line">and needed help</div>
<div class="line">so i told goodwill</div>
<div class="line">i would leave a large</div>
<div class="line">pack of clothes outside</div>
<div class="line">the front door</div>
<div class="line">and i went upstairs</div>
<div class="line">and it was dark there</div>
<div class="line">and it had an odor</div>
<div class="line">like in a funeral parlor</div>
<div class="line">and i felt as if i was</div>
<div class="line">in some kind of</div>
<div class="line">supernatural place</div>
<div class="line">as if clouds were</div>
<div class="line">hanging</div>
<div class="line">as if she was still</div>
<div class="line">alive</div>
<div class="line">and opened the closet</div>
<div class="line">and for the first time</div>
<div class="line">in four years</div>
<div class="line">saw her red dress</div>
<div class="line">she had worn on our</div>
<div class="line">grandson’s wedding</div>
<div class="line">the white suit</div>
<div class="line">she wore down at</div>
<div class="line">atlantic city</div>
<div class="line">all hanging in neat</div>
<div class="line">order</div>
<div class="line">waiting to be worn</div>
<div class="line">again</div>
<div class="line">and so many pairs of slacks</div>
<div class="line">and sweaters</div>
<div class="line">and handbags</div>
<div class="line">and i began to cry as i</div>
<div class="line">stuffed them into</div>
<div class="line">the plastic bag</div>
<div class="line">stuffed them in angrily</div>
<div class="line">because i hated</div>
<div class="line">giving them away</div>
<div class="line">our old times</div>
<div class="line">our happy times</div>
<div class="line">the clothes like</div>
<div class="line">a hot fire burning</div>
<div class="line">into my trembling</div>
<div class="line">hands</div>
<div class="line">stuffed the damn</div>
<div class="line">stuff in there</div>
<div class="line">and took them</div>
<div class="line">outside on the</div>
<div class="line">steps</div>
<div class="line">for goodwill</div>
<div class="line">i kept thinking</div>
<div class="line">she wouldn’t mind</div>
<div class="line">me giving away her</div>
<div class="line">clothes now</div>
<div class="line">so others could live</div>
<div class="line">but it didn’t help</div>
<div class="line">much</div>
<div class="line">as i sat in my</div>
<div class="line">recliner downstairs</div>
<div class="line">all alone</div>
<div class="line">rocking up</div>
<div class="line">and back</div>
<div class="line">trying to forget</div>


CRYPTIC ENDEARMENTS

Sex Education

Cleaning House

<p style="padding-left: 0px;">they’re up there<br />
on my roof<br />
against the hot<br />
summer sun;<br />
seven of ’em,<br />
tearing down the<br />
old shingles,<br />
a motley crew<br />
if ever i saw<br />
one;<br />
as i look up from<br />
down below they remind<br />
me of steel workers,<br />
as they build a scaffold,<br />
inch by inch,<br />
climbing up to the<br />
chimney,<br />
down come the old<br />
shingles,<br />
softly they thud<br />
among the bushes below,<br />
they’re efficient,<br />
short, brownskinned,<br />
hard workers, bare in the<br />
blaze.<br />
i pull out my harmonica<br />
on impulse, grin, and begin<br />
to play a favorite tune,<br />
<em>LA KUKURACHA&#8230;LA<br />
KUKURACHA&#8230;</em><br />
they stop in mid air,<br />
almost startled, they grin<br />
down at me and begin to do<br />
their dance,<br />
up on the roof,<br />
all seven of ’em, keeping<br />
time with my song,<br />
bringing down the<br />
roof.</p>


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October 27, 2012Raising the RoofEd Galing

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October 27, 2012Raising the RoofEd Galing

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