looking up briefly from the
murk
and I know that she has several
doctorates,
what went wrong?
And the blonde two inches
behind
has no sense and is not only free
to come and go
but free to drive a car and
I see the tattered shambling man wind his way
mumbling
past the cart lady
almost clipped by the blonde’s red racer
and into Red's Bar for his first of the day
at eight-oh-five in the morning.
So sharp.
So arrogant
Those two items
Throughout all eternity for
A curse on you and all your descendants
How dare you!
A curse on you and all your
How dare you
A curse
The fury of the howling storm
Whisper more like hiss with all
Pass
And I will tell you as you
Items in my twelve item lane
Fourteen
Fourteen
Counts fourteen
Of boxes bags cartons cans jars
The latest rainbow fall
Two Items Over The Limit
*****
Memoriam
Cloud’s in the sky
Like a snowy treetop
Pruned off and left to rise
Up up up.
Sky’s around cloud
Like a dim window shade,
Pulling down slow-motion
Over blue
Over blue ozone
Over blue ozone leaving only pinprick holes.
Maple’s under sky,
Crinkled dry and orange brown black
Like candycorn trickortreat
Bobbingapples mellowcreme,
And random colors splashed on
Like a Monet.
We offer our condolences
To shortsleeveshirts and friendsandfamily
Of backyards, picnics, and barbeques.
May they
May they rest
May they rest in the Southern Hemisphere.
*****
Idyll On A Lake
In the reaches of a memory,
One perfect moment:
A sky, bright sapphire,
A lake of crinkled turquoise,
Friends on a bobbing craft.
A restive orb reclining in the sky,
Warm, low and drowsy with July-ness,
Bathes everything in lazy, golden rays.
A foamy wake folds across the prow,
Sending up a fine, cool spray;
Glittering water moves under-boat,
As tree-thatched banks swim slowly by the sides;
Everything is silent,
Only lapping waves and an outboard motor
And what birds may wheel overhead.
The world is a distant rumor;
All that is or ever should be
Is here,
In the golden, tranquil haze
Of this single perfect day.
*****
Niagara
Such power,
Hurtling in sheer blue sheets
To the stones below.
Could there be this much water
In the world?
It rushes to the lip
And dives,
Executing a perfect double gainer
With an infinite half twist.
Water roars like a huge crowd,
Yaaaaaaaaaahhhh,
Like a hundred thousand people
Leaping off a cliff,
All arms and legs,
Four hundred thousand,
Fingers and toes,
Two million strong,
Writhing in a vast fleshy tide
Might equal the force of Niagara.
Could this be heaven and hell?
Could all the world’s souls
Race here when they die,
To pour down into the mist
And spend eternity
In cold white foam?
*****
Lighthouse
A porcelain spire scratches the Maine sunset,
A sole gleaming tower
Jutting from the coast of broken stone;
One side blushes lilac,
Kissed by the rose and violet
Which are melting into the horizon.
Gulls shout and yap,
Careening about the structure's peak,
Cries forming a chord
With the FOOM
sssshhh
FOOM
sssshhh
Of the waves which slap the rocks.
The lighthouse stands,
Vigilant and solid,
Tall and alone,
Ivory pillar in a sky-domed temple of nature.
*****
Sea Night Smile
Deep blue in darkness,
Midnight blue,
Each crest rises
From sparkling plains
And rolls sleepily,
Spreading a crease,
Catching first moonlight
Along the fold
And then white foam
Still spreading
Showing more white
Unrolling
So one joins another joins another
Joins another
Into one long
White smile
Of the sea
Which rises gently,
Just a quick
Mysterious
Wise
All white
And then it falls upon the sand
And spreads again,
A fleeting one-time lacy
Blossom.
*****
Mad Sea
The ocean is rabid,
Foaming with toothy, white crests
That leap
And gnash at the shore.
Breakers snarl and snap
At cowering coast,
Trying to tear it off
And drag it away
And grind the sandy stuff
For its supper.
The sea is a huge, dark beast
That growls and foams
And lunges,
Again and again,
Held at bay barely
By some unseen, straining chain.
*****
Shifting
Remove
All those
And this
And every...
Scatter and erupt into
Waters and rocks and blue
Upness,
Clapping rather than
Ticking, yawning --
And there!
An arrow smiling and
Ultra-holographic,
Pointing in all directions at
Once,
As one...
Shift!
Return!
Shift!
And you type
A mirror of grass.
You are
The slippery layer.
*****
Punctuation
Toss your head and bay
At blue skies
Or dark,
Just bay...
And no crackhead whinny
Or doctorlawyerboss golf fret
Or overworked possession-jealous peasant
Or any other variant peering upward
For anxious purpose tied to job performance
Or Point-A-to-Point-B-osis.
Sky’s the limit.
Now is the time for all good men
To know nothing of truth
Or tolerance.
Subtlety is a lost art
And we are sheep
And wampum is king
And we are sheep
And the noblest mark to which we can aspire
Is the body of Arnold
Or Madonna.
M
eanwhile,
Sky’s the limit.
Toss your head and bay
At skies
For time is not money
And wool is not dresscode
And numbness
O numbness is not joy
And we are all
We are all
We are all
Just commas
In the Big Bright Book.
*****
Equation
Left to their own devices
Monkey see, monkey do do do
And here’s the end result
Or should that be by-product
Assigning values X and Y
To certain variables
Certain coexisting phenomena
Aka killer instinct
Or to put it another way self
And of course reproductive imperatives
Aka species preservation
And Z the Z-Factor
Which allows commission of any act
Again in the name of self or species
Any act imaginable.
Any.
And Q is Qualm
Or counterforce,
Maybe conscience if such a force
Exists,
Then X+Y+Z=N
In which N represents
Capacity for nonsense
Meaning disregard
And disinfect
And carrot-stick
Giving way to
Extraordinary heights of
Accumulation and atrocity
Justified but unsustainable
And Q or Qualm doesn’t really
Figure into it
At all
So
Funny thing is,
There’s a bloodless subjugation
An enforced incarceration
Home to work to home to work
Or work at home
And give the people what they want
They say
The monkeys what they want
But bloody murder they would scream
And take up arms if they were
Told
Instead of tricked
To do the same.
*****
The Unpopped Kernel
Call down the righteous thunder,
Ignite the Jiffy Pop in a burst of
Light,
Make us all blink and fidget and back away,
But whatever you think of your place
Upon this ragged Earth, whatever you
Envision for tomorrow
Or the implacability of deep time,
Know that your own lightning crackles
In your head,
Fizzing from brain cell to brain cell,
Creating this reality as you perceive it
Which is after all reality
And causing you to exalt as the
Popcorn kernels
Crunch between your teeth,
Butter melting in the corners of your mouth,
Yesterday only the charred black pieces
Left in the foil tray
That you will not remember
A year from now.
*****
The Children’s Table
Five hundred years from now
When someone sucks the last
tender
flesh from the last frog’s leg,
and the last tiger’s balls and rhino’s horn
are auctioned off and devoured
in a media circus,
the new trend in fusion cuisine will be
Babies staring out from misty Heaven,
Wearing masks of their faces at ten or twelve or
Twenty
had they lived,
Eyes like frosted pearls peer out through eyeholes
and from there through peepholes punched in
the white picket fence
Behind which their parents and everyone
they ever would have loved and hated in the
world
had they lived
Smash their way through minutes
Swat aside days and years like
Pan-seared Sino Tex Mex Cajun celebrity,
raised in climate-controlled pesticide-free
only the best of everything
Tinseltown farms,
kept lean and juicy and pampered and
soft,
billed “the other veal”
and shipped to market at the height of popularity
and no one
can resist a bite of the ass or breast or thigh or
Face
It’s what they’ve been hungry for all along,
They can’t get enough
Flies,
Like a faceful of smoke,
And they whisper one to another
in a language more like the whirring of
crickets
than babytalk,
not about the people they watch
or the lives they could have lived
or the warm red seas of
Mother
but about
Pain,
The brightest color
Sharpest flavor
Loudest sound,
A firework that always exceeds your
Expectations.
*****
Shadow of a Shadow
Cool drifting
Smoooothness
Sliding out from heels
Like a drawer and just as
Full,
Full of dark things silent
You cannot see,
Shad
ows of broken hearts and twisted minds and
souls encased in ice
Encased in flame
Vibrating motionless gyrating deadstop
souls
All there foreshortened or stretched
On pavement snow carpet dirt floorboards
And we whisper
One to another
To ourselves our dark dark selves
The secret jokes
That only we find funny
Only we,
And the punchlines always have to do
With pain
And death
For we are opposite the light depend upon it too
And for that
The curses we greet each other with our form of
Good morning hello good night
When we cross and
kiss
Beneath you
Damn the sun
As you damn your
Maker.
*****
Why Kassie Loves Sharks
The guy tailgating me in traffic
Cursing me out,
Mouthing each
OBSCENITY
Overemphatically
So I can’t miss it in my rear-view mirror.
The triplecrossing backstabbing fourfaced
FATASSED
Bitch at the office
Who never misses a chance
To get in a shot
Or get me in trouble for some piddlyshit bullshit
And then comes to me for help
Every
Five
Minutes.
The ex-boyfriend who gave me goosebumps
At first
And still uses
PET NAMES
In cell phone booty calls
That may or may not be veiled threats
Which makes my skin crawl in a whole different way.
Do you know
Sharks have multiple rows of teeth
And for each tooth that is lost
Another rotates in to take its place?
Do you know
Sharks have no legal system,
Office politics,
Organized religion,
Concept of time,
Ulterior motives,
Envy,
Layoffs,
Or sexism
That we know of?
Do you know
If a shark stops swimming,
She will die?
*****
Shutterbug
After she was gone
We realized we had no photos of the photographer,
Always out of the frame
Behind the lens at holiday get-togethers,
Steering us by the shoulders into staggered rows
Telling us to bunch together and angle in
And say Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
Instead of cheese
And everyone laughing for the zillionth time
And she caught that moment like a Here I am
I’m right here
That moment like a dove and pressed it
into the camera Blow up the photos big enough
and you’ll see me
Into the camera like a magician
with steady hands and knowhow If you blow them up to
wall-size you’ll see my
reflection waving back at you
from eyeglasses
Counting down
from three taking a deep breath
and squeezing the shutter gently Waggling fingers at you
from teeth and glassware
And the last
one she took was as good
as the first, or maybe we only
think that because My image is here forever
in buttons and brooches and ribbons
Because it’s
us in the picture
the stars of our sock drawer turkey leg
prayer meeting
safety pin lives Forever in windows and
curio doors
obscured by the camera stretched reversed upended
We’ve recast the part you once played
And honestly we’re pretty deep-down pissed off
Here I am
You had to go and hurt us like this by
Leaving
Forgotten
But not quite gone
Never forgiven.
*****
Transfusion
You, usurper,
Subtle thief,
Your very existence