Tom's cars

Tom Intondi and I were friends since first year of high school. Last Sunday was the 14th anniversary of his death. We went to the same high school and college. After college, we wound up in different parts of the country, but we stayed in close contact due to a songwriting partnership we started about a year after graduation. Tom was a singer/songwriter, who was very active in the Greenwich Village music scene, starting in the 70's and continuing till his death in the 90's. We collaborated on a fair number of songs. I wrote the lyrics, and he composed the music and performed. In fact, if you go to itunes and search his name, you'll find two of our songs (only 99 cents per).  A few weeks ago, I was looking through the first b/w negatives I shot in 1968. I found them in a file in the back of a closet while I was looking for some letters from my father.  I took them to the darkroom and wound up printing a few. One was a photo of Tom from one of our various roadtrips. I've been working on a related poem. Here's an early version. This may be it, or it may cook for a while and turn into something else.

                                              roadtrip    a found photo

                                                                           for Tom

you never had much luck

with cars the little Alfa

you owned for a week till your father woke you early

Sunday to move it he had to drive 

your mother and sisters to Mass    it wouldn't start

you rolled it to the street to park 

it kept rolling you running

arms stretched through the driver's window

to hold the wheel    it left you

jumped the curb smacked

into a tree

or the Valiant you flipped on the New York 

State Thruway    five teenage boys 

a roadtrip    a week  

camping drinking swimming

naked parsing the star-

lit harmonies of heaven

& Earth     a sudden

shout a swerve heels 

over heads we crawled

out unhurt the Valiant not

so lucky

& here you are

hood up

arms stretched finger-

tips printed with grease wide

smile  

across your boyish face     your Falcon's

grille                                                            grinning