Notes From a Wavering Planet

Where’s the Goose?

2012-01-15T19:02:00.001-08:00

To question the free market, lookno further than the Reagan era, when the air controller’s union got busted andthe workers began getting cross-eyed looking at the screens. Junk bonds promised cures, insurance companiessold or lost their base and the game became suck the cash out of Paradise and tossthe human refuse we “dearly care for” in the trash.

Add Global Economy, NAFTA Folly,endless warfare and this Alaskan Transparency, mimed perfectly on SaturdayNight Live, with America’s children prepping “Whatever” bips their ears,crotches, ears and snoots, while John Wayne’s Washington, with lung cancer onthe horizon, buys it off with, “So What” and a smirk.

To paraphrase John Nichol'scharacter in, The Magic Journey, all you do is create a whole bunch of issuesthat don’t exist and get everybody running around not knowing their butt from ahole in the ground and then you do what you want.

When companies buy each other out like overthe counter elixers, when mortgages sell like popcorn during intermission andbanks smell like loan sharks in Bailout Alley, or one drives a Hummer with a$28,000 a year salary, could there possibly be a shark in the tank?

TheDow drops 500 points? My niece says her friends are not concerned about the waror the economy. As long as they have a credit card, there is no need forconcern. Such gracious fodder for therip-off geniuses who plan privatization and genuflection of free market enterprisewhile they take off the condoms and cook grandchildren for the next slaughter, fiascoand Dubai suite they can park in, writtenoff and charged to the tax-friendly hordes we have turned out to be.

Investor,Phillip Wilber Ross, who recently “fixed” the problem at ISG. stated he wasonce a would-be writer. When asked if hewould ever return to writing he replied,” I have trouble enough with the facts,let alone trying to deal with fiction.”

Obviouslyhe is not alone. America has spun into sucha far-fetched tale, even the fairy godmother, who knows the carriage turns intoa pumpkin at midnight, won’t tell Cinderella that the shoe won’t fit forever,unless she gets the facts straight and her house in order.

Awoman told me she bought a goose down pillow at Macy’s. That night she dreamed blood appeared on thepillow. The goose was alive. It frightened her so that she took the pillowback to the store for a refund. Whileshe was bargaining with the sales clerk, the pillow began honking and runningamong the bedding, knocking over displays and finally disappearing in the dream,in which she got her refund, but the next night, just before she fell asleep,she thought of the goose and she wondered where it went.

Whatstrange characters we have become in this plot of loss, this miscue, this slow descent,this hero’s truth, smitten with no sacrifice, no commitment and no allegiance. In the film, Return of the Jedi,the hero asserts that he is not afraid to descend into the unknown. The Jedi replies, “You will be.”

One might add to this tale, “Welcome to America and if you see a live goose amidst thebedding, please let Americaknow.

2012-01-03T18:03:00.001-08:00

Who Sold the Rabbit in the Hat to Uncle Sam?

2012-01-03T10:24:00.001-08:00

Place your hand over you heart. Remember the stern-faced Uncle Sam pointingright at you? “Uncle Sam Wants You.” Hewanted you to join the armed forces. Hetold you that Americaneeded you. He had a thousand parades to march in and a red white and blue suitto flap in the ever-search for clients who needed guns, and an army to shootthem a country to use them in. Needlessto say, he hasn’t t run out of clients

Ole Sam began pointing in more fruitful times, when theworld spun wars that cooked kids for din din, experimented with their organsand fried 600,000 with a single bomb. But folks don’t just sign up for every invasion, rocket lobbing contestor semi-war anymore. As Jimmy Cartersaid, 95.5 % of the American population isn’t sacrificing. Yes, Sam certainly is pointing, but the flagsuit loses face these days, especially when we see it draped over coffins. It makes one wonder what Sam really had inmind.

To be a fair, a few patriotic survivors stand along Main Street infront of the empty storefronts, the blank theater marquees, the silent mills,the Mom and Pops stores with the outdated pinball machines tucked outback. The adults give Sam a littlecredence and the children seem fidgety The bands stride by, maybe three bands thisyear from the usual high schools, the baton twirlers, fresh and ready, toss clips of innocence and ecstasy at thesky; let’s say Troy, New York, a clutchof rototillers spin down Sixth Avenue. Why’s there’s old Elmer. Still atit. Shaved the mustache. You’d think he’d retire. Worked there how many years?. Got hooked up with that woman who works forthe government over in Albany. Helluva guy. Down the block he walks, with the rest of the tough guys and gals of thetime, the time now running out toward the Hudson Rivera block away.

Why here comes Uncle Sam,because Troy is Uncle Sam’s home, so this must be the real Uncle Sam lumberingby, waving to the thin crowd, bringing perhaps a momentary silence betweendistant drum beats, which as the poet Bob Kaufman said, is the must because, toparaphrase, without the silence there is no drum, there is no beat.

Uncle Sam marches on amidst this fantastic orgy beyond theparade, where these days, fingers point to selves. “I am me” cries everywhere. Uncle Sam’s finger seems stiff, an arthritis,or a thrombosis with odds that the heart of America may stop, or at least beatirregularly through the body we so dearly love.

The Grief Man

2011-12-30T11:13:00.000-08:00

He had an idea for the New Year and he knew he could make money on it. He rented a sky blue pickup truck and stuck signs on the doors that read:

THE GRIEF MAN
Pick Up and Hauling, Day or Night
No Grief Refused.
Reasonable Rates
Telephone 1-800 NO-GRIEF

He drove around the neighborhoods for weeks. At first people peered through their curtains or went in the house when he slowed down, but one day a small woman in her seventies waddled down her front walk and asked him if he could take the memory of her dead husband. After six years, not only did she not miss him, but he was haunting her house to the point where she couldn't find anybody else, and she had to admit he wasn't, if you asked her ninety-six year old mother, a very nice man to begin with.

The Grief Man smiled and she wrote a check. He put the dead husband memory in the truck and drove off slowly, partly out of a sense of honor and hopefully, so the rest of the neighborhood would see that he really was serious and write down his phone number.
Of course the woman got on the phone and the word spread. Within days his phone was ringing off the hook. He could barely fill his orders. A man wanted to get rid of his son's drug addiction, another man wanted to be relieved of the embarrassment of wearing a hairpiece, not the hair piece mind you, the embarrassment thereof. A child called. It seems the kid down the block got a tan cowboy hat and he got a red hat when all he really wanted was AUTO THEFT. He couldn't throw his red hat away because everyone would know. Parents called in droves to rid themselves of the worry of what to do about leaving their children alone. Alcoholics called at all hours of the day and night. The back of his truck reeked with alcoholic grief going into withdrawal without people. Then there were the sick, the elderly and the fleeced who had lost their entire savings to Illness or inscrutability. The Grief Man left them at the curb with cherubic smiles. A single mother wanted traffic removed. A fish cutter said he never wanted to see another fish; a fast food worker wanted the smell of French fries removed forever. A set of twin women in their forties wanted to rid themselves of their likeness.

The Grief Man took credit cards. The Grief Man bought two cell phones. He didn't need to advertise. The Grief Man could barely fill his orders. The Grief Man had to rent a warehouse. A woman from Pembroke Pines, Florida said she was too hot. A man from Pulaski, New York said he was too cold. The Grief Man agreed to take heat and cold via overnight express. A Chicago banker wanted the entire New Year removed and the Grief Man devised a way to do it on the installment plan with balloon payments. Best he could do given such short notice. The banker agreed. A Las Cruces, New Mexico woman, wanted slipperiness taken out of satin sheets. Children with dead pets called from all over the world. A little girl from Adams, Massachusetts wanted a sun fish she caught, cleaned and buried in the back yard the summer before, to be put back in the lake. A therapist from Los Altos, California wanted to know if the Grief Man could remove the need, "To talk it all out." A man who said he represented a large government agency he refused to identify, called regarding the elimination of war and poverty, but left no return phone number.

The Grief Man got rich. He picked up a too-late Eminem record collection, sixteen truckloads of Brittney Spears supermarket Musak and one volume of poetry by Robert Service, four hundred thousand truckloads of used Harry Potter videos, a four by eight mini-storage unit full of 1950s memories and stadium-size tonnage of books about the uselessness of the sixties. The Grief man couldn't fill the number of orders for the removal of grief over the Martin Luther King and Kennedy assassinations, but he managed to put a dent in it.
So it was, on New Years Eve at 11.57 PM. that he drove his truck up to the side of his house, full of last minute pickups. Exhausted, but happy, he gazed wearily at the Christmas tree aglow by the fireplace in the adjoining living room. He sat down at the kitchen table and opened a beer. He watched the smoky gas escape from the top. He picked up the bottle and brought it to his lips. The phone rang. He promised himself he would not answer. He listened to the phone. One, two, three, four, rings; he wanted to drink his beer. He picked up the phone.

It was the little boy of the red cowboy hat. The Grief Man wanted to know what he was doing up at that hour and the boy said he'd been to church and the minister told him to be grateful for what he had instead of always wanting what somebody else had and could the Grief Man return his red hat? The Grief Man hesitated for a second. He sighed deeply. Yes, it was the New Year and this was a little boy. Little boys don't always understand what, or why they do what they do.
The Grief Man looked at the nice cold beer he hadn't even sipped. Now he had to go out and get the red hat, but before he could get his coat on, the other phone rang again. The kitchen clock read 12.09 AM. It was the New Year. The woman on the phone was crying. She said she was Susan of the Susan and Sylvia twins. She said no one recognized her without Sylvia and would he please, please return her to, at least, a shadow of her former self.

By 12.20 AM. the phones never stopped. The fast food worker said she needed the smell of French fries on her skin to feel alive, the alcoholics wanted their drinks, parents wanted their children to go somewhere, anywhere, so they could be alone, the cold man from Pulaski couldn't stand sweat, the hot woman from Pembroke Pines couldn't stop shivering, the banker called to say the balloon payments on the removal of New Year had given him no place to begin, nor end, and the widow called to say she discovered the Grief Man's phone number on the refrigerator door and it reminded her that she needed to cry, but she couldn't remember what for, so would it be possible, to return what it was she had forgot to remember, immediately.

Thereafter the Grief Man's phone never stopped ringing as he drove frantically and forever into the night of nights, the forwarding of calls jamming his truck phone, his ears, his very life; the calls to the Grief Man waxing in the dawn of hope.

Palomar

2011-12-15T06:41:00.001-08:00

In the early days Palomar the Duck roamed the earth in an innocent light walk that couldn’t hurt the land because the land couldn’t be hurt. Palomar was a small duck with red feathers, red legs and feet and yellow eyes. A fine orange beak trimmed his smooth face. He ate what was available and bothered no one. He swam in the great blue lakes.

When the land began to weaken, it hurt under the light walk and Palomar became conscious of stepping on things. He tried to avoid them and looked in mystery at WHY, and seeing what it was, seeing that its insulation didn’t work, he began trying to walk where he could, but by that time other animals had lost their light walk and they began stepping not only on the hurt land but on each other.

Palomar grew. His feathers turned bronze. In the distance, he looked like a mountainous slick statue. If Palomar chose, he could square his beak into a vacuum sucking up foliage and animals at will. He didn’t do this often, because there was enough to go around. He just took small bites here and there, but Something was in control.

Palomar’s brain became a gold nuclear reactor with round doors on the top and bottom of one end. The doors opened in great rushes of light and capsules of steel balls and silver space ships passed into the dark interior where red and yellow lasers beamed streaks and multimillion of a second pulse beat endlessly.

Palomar sorted what he ate. He had a penchant for banana slugs that sometimes swept in with a couple of ruffled owls, or squirrels or occasionally a howling ape. He filtered out the other animals and left them unharmed in soft grass, a little wet perhaps, but the banana slugs washed down with ceremony and leaves.

As the land began to hurt more and more, Palomar found less and less space to walk the light walk and began swimming more, but this disturbed his insatiable lust for banana slugs. He ‘d waddle ashore in a strange country scaring the inhabitants because of his size, which measured just the height of a five story building at the base of the neck and careened up another four to the head. When the Lacandons saw the nine story duck for the first time, they ran into Chiapas and never came out.

Palomar seemed to disappear at the end of the sixteenth century. He swam to a remote part of the land where it didn’t hurt so much, where there were still plenty of banana slugs and where he could build more confidence in his light walk so nothing would be hurt. He was reported at the opening of the Suez Canal by two shepherds who caught him making off with a goat and six camels. Rumors prevailed. He was swimming thirty kilometers down the Canal when Verdi began conducting Aida. Someone commented that was the only reason such a magnificent bird would come so close.

He was reportedly at Rudyard Kipling’s funeral and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Someone dug-up a document that said he ‘d been seen lurking around Genghis Kahn’s camp, at the tail end of the Holy Wars and there is reason to believe he sat in the mountains outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1939, when the Alligator boy married the Monkey girl. The marriage made Life Magazine, but no one could get Palomar to come out for a picture, nor could anyone prove he was really there.

Thoughts from the Rooster Breath Theater

2011-12-12T11:50:00.000-08:00

Who put the dip stick in the egg plant?

What rat fed coconut oil to the hamster?

Better yet, how did the goose snot get in your cheese sandwich?

Not all iguanas suffer post partum depression.

There is no underwear for American Eagles that compound interest in the war effort.

Never mind how the worms found the lettuce.

Rubin Schnickle eats blue berry pancakes with horseradish.

Keeping in mind the myth of the cross-eyed seamstress and her mother, Olga Crumbuckle.

Ever since Mirabel got caught sucking graham crackers in the attic.

So what if Charlie eats hot dogs in his nightgown?

No tax addendums for sugar ants.

You can’t blame the war on disenchanted walnuts.

Sam won’t buy apples from the bird vendor.

If and when Hercules gets a breast implant.

Needless to say, the rabbit population doesn’t suffer from black holes.

Every so often Genghis Khan stops at the river for some KFC.

Why is the price of a gas pump less 8 cents tax, worth your child as ransom?

Just because someone asks for your Social Security Number doesn’t mean you have to buy them a Happy Meal.

If a man calls a President by his last name you might think he is grown up.

Who ate the community goat?

Chicken breath may be sold as hallucinogenic fowl.

This is the second course based on rattlesnake egg whites designed for two-timing politicians.

Who put the adhesive in the chocolate cookies?

Androids are now on sale at Wal Mart.

The case of the asymmetrical sphinx.

The case of the mindless canary advertising Tide Liquid.

Small lapses in the future of ironing boards based on faulty IRAs.

The dog maker took umbrage in blue handkerchiefs with white trim.

Mabel believed until he took her red hat.

Chipmunks can’t vote so folks in Florida might consider independent raccoons.

Speaking of independence-Did you hear about the man who froze his dead mother for two years?

To answer your question: a plethora of recent examples personifies the conviction stated in the premise.

Ramifications on the brink of destruction-Or why pick a dead pigeon out of a pie?

And remember, in America, there is no discount for quiet desperation.

Dobyn’s Oysters

2011-11-16T05:13:00.001-08:00

From House in the Attic

I love oysters. Dobyn’s Oyster house is still the only place that makes me want to eat more oysters than I can eat. Twelve stools circle the gnarled wooden bar. A forever sea of oysters fill the icy sinks.

Barney Hogan, worked on a day-old growth of beard and his twenty-fifth year at the oyster bar slipped me a couple of extras now and then. Barney always remembered a face, even if he couldn't put a story with it. His partner Ted Norris, looked sixty, hair gone white with a curl coming off the middle of his mottled forehead. Liver spots on the back of his big tough hands. A driver's license said he was seventy-four. He shucked oysters and quahogs while I ate. He grinned like he knew just about everything there was to know.

Barney and Ted worked the afternoon shift and it seemed like they'd be there forever, but I knew the place was changing. The neighborhood had changed. Oyster bars had sprung up all over everywhere. I knew if I came back at six, the oysters would be pre-shucked and stacked on plates by bright-eyed boys in white shirts and flashy teeth.

"Why don't you take a break before your hernia pops into the ice," Barney Hogan said in his always-soft wry voice.

"Good idea." Ted set the oyster knife on the edge of the bar and wiped his hands on his apron.

"You might as well earn your keep for a change."

"Some kind a guy," Barney said, giving his big nose a pinch and a shake. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and stared off toward the stairs leading to the upstairs dining room.
"Some kind of guy."

It was mid-afternoon and business was slow, so Ted came around and sat at the stool next to me.
"Can I buy you a beer? I said.

"No thanks." He clasped his hands together and propped both elbows on the old wooden bar.
"Never get through the night."

Barney chuckled under his breath and leaned over the bar. "He'll catch up later."

"Listen to him." Ted pointed one finger at his partner without unclasping his hands. "Listen to him.

They both laughed quietly. Ted wanted to know where I was from.

"Massachusetts, but I live in San Francisco. I’m staying with my brother up in Marlboro."

This was the fourth time I'd had this conversation in Dobyn's Oyster House and the third time with Barney. He always remembered me, but frankly I felt at odds because I never had the same address twice. I kept thinking they'd put it together and decide I was a flake. One week he's a tour guide, the next time he comes back he owns a movie house. Here comes that nut case again. I didn't have a permanent address. Not the makings of a good New Englander.

"I grew up in Richland," I said.

"Never been that far west," Barney said with a straight face. He slipped me a small Blue Point.

"You like it out there in San Francisco?"

"It's home base for the moment. I run a movie theater,Cinema if you like that. The Joaquin Cinema. It's in the book "

Barney's oyster knife met the shell cupped tightly in his left hand. He probed for a weak spot, slipped inside like a traveling salesman and with a turn of his thick wrist, sliced the muscle and the Blue Point gave up. He cut the meat free from the top, tossed the top half aside, flecked some shell bits off the meat with the tip of the knife, and ran the knife underneath for insurance and the set the oyster aside in a dish of its own making. This was one fresh oyster, with a clear white center sitting all puffed and proud. The edge had the magnificent sheen of blue all around. Cool, clear, juicy liquid. I could tell by looking at it, that not a taste had been lost between the time that oyster had left the sea and arrived in Barney's hands. This oyster hadn't sat anywhere it wasn't supposed to. It had been iced properly. This oyster was clean. Barney set another oyster next to it.

"Sounds good to me," Ted said good-naturedly.

"It has its drawbacks," I said.

I could feel Ted shift his weight on the barstool next to me. "I guess you won't be going to the Gulf."

"Not hardly. That's all wrapped up. Handpicked back in September. Just like a convention. They plan it a year or so in advance."

"Naw, they don't," Ted said with smirky disbelief. "How many oysters did you eat? Barney, how many oysters did he eat? They're getting to him."

"Must have been the clam chowder," Barney said.

Ted and I watched a woman in a black trench coat with red hair tied in a bun run by the bar. I eyed the door, thinking she'd come in, but Ted shook his head.

"She doesn't like oysters."

"Ted knows them all," Barney said.

"Barney likes the octogenarians," Ted said. "He likes to hear the creak in their bones."

"You live here all your life?" I asked Ted.

"Not yet," he said with a great big smile full of thick yellow teeth.

I ate another oyster and the three of us sat in the sweet moment of three minutes after three in the afternoon.

Barney wanted to know how cold it got in San Francisco.

"Maybe 38 degrees Fahrenheit. 57, 58 degree average temperature mornings,some hot days here and there. Damp cold. Always wear a jacket. Afternoon wind will blow you to hell. Along about twenty after two, bingo. In it comes."

"Beats shoveling snow," Barney said.

"You bet." I tasted the cold oyster turning warm on its way down. "How about a half dozen more?”

"You got it," Barney said.

I said, "When I was a kid and I got tired, I went in and somebody else finished shoveling." I realized I was in a little deep water so I qualified myself. "Up to the age of eight anyway."

If you grow up in New England, you learn to watch how you couch these little remarks. I should have said, if I lived here now, I'd have to get out and shovel it myself. Saying things like that can come back to haunt you thirty years later. Somebody, and you can bet on it, somebody will remember that Harry Bickham said it was OK to shovel snow when he was a kid, because he could always get his folks to finish it. NOW LOOK AT HIM! I know he's on assignment. But he should have shoveled that walk. Not him. He's waiting for somebody else to do it. What does he THINK? This is California? He's just like the rest of those Bickhams. Never did fit in. His mother isn't even from here. His old man met her in New York somewhere. He went out of town to find her. Probably met her at a dance hall. Probably drunk when he met her. Drunk the rest of the time. Why would he go over there and find somebody? So there you are. She doesn’t look like she ever shoveled a walk either. I wonder what he was really doing in California? Doesn't seem to be married.

"I hate snow," Barney said.

"My son comes over and shovels mine," Ted said proudly.

I finished off the oysters and drank another beer. I felt a little boxed. My left hand dropped instinctively to the bottom of my rib cage. No liver sticking out. Time to quit the booze. I didn't want to blow the afternoon with Barney and Ted. I didn't want to get flip-stupid. I still carry the old New England hypocrisy that says you should always look good. No falling down. No pissing in your shoes, or somebody else's even if you're dying inside.

And I value the way Barney and Ted cultivate customers. It's classy. None of this, “Just because I wait on you, I deserve twenty percent.” Barney and Ted make you part of the process; your life becomes fuller because of oysters and the shucking of oysters and people who make sure oysters are served right, so that when you eat the oysters, they are the best high you can imagine. You appreciate the people who bring the oysters on the truck from the boats and you appreciate the cold tough hands that catch the oysters and sort the oysters and you appreciate the ice the oysters sit in and the cool lemon slices and the tangy red sauce and the talk around oysters, the world and snow and life. Barney and Ted make you part of their life; they make you come back. They toss in a free one now and then and they get it all back. Everybody makes money and everybody's happy. The Barneys and the Teds are damn precious in my life and I want them around forever.

That afternoon, I scarfed a dozen and a half, washed them down with clam chowder, three beers and wiped out a dozen quahogs to finish off the hour. I left ten bucks on the counter and took my check to the register.

Body Count

2011-11-07T09:07:00.001-08:00

Each day he cuts out the New York Times
Names of the Dead American Service members
reads out loud, name, rank, age, hometown
then places them in a green metal dish
to rest with the silences in between.

Rain

2011-10-08T18:35:00.001-07:00

Thunder. They shuddered. For a second the power failed, the room blinked dark, flashed on and Betsy laughed.

“Thank you,” he said.

Betsy walked to the window and stared into the night. “Harry?”

“Betsy.”

“For the dance?”

“For the dance.”

Harry turned off the lights and they stood in shadows. A nearby streetlight spread pouring rain before them. Softness in the air became a song..

They undressed slowly, tossing each garment to a distant dream. Then the door and for a second they stood looking at the rain. Stepping out, they turned to each other. Betsy took his hand and twirled and bowed. Harry bowed.

The night grew around the rain, the silence in-between and the two stepped in, a swing a run, a turn and Betsy tossed back her head. Harry spread his arms and drank the sky. They ran, oh how they ran in the rain.

Key West with Poo and Company

2011-09-19T23:56:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from Flamingo Heaven

I stay in Key West. I don't call anyone. I don't ask questions. I write articles for the Island Gazette, sometimes three a day and I feel alive. The TV says the Key West Amusement Park in Orlando is doing well. Early one afternoon Zeb stops over. Zeb feeds the cat for me. In return, I edit Zeb's mystery writing.

Zeb is six feet six inches tall and weighs nearly three-fifty. He lives just behind me. The wooden floors in his two room cabin bend beneath his feet. To the outside world, Zeb appears a menace. With his huge tapered head and pocked face partially hidden by a short beard, I always think of him as a bedraggled satyr. Zeb baits hooks on the Crown Lena. He sells tee-shirts on Duval Street two nights a week. He’s always writing a book.

Zeb moved to Key West to escape the hugeness of himself. Somehow in Key West, he can be left alone. He stays out of bars because he gets in trouble in bars. Although he doesn't drink, people think he's the perfect person to fight with because he looks mean. He doesn’t fight, not because he can’t handle himself, but because his heart isn’t in it. His book plots are preposterous. His women talk like dolls and all of his men smoke cigars. He's so naive, he's priceless. Political correctness is lost on him. Not a mean hair in his beard; he lives alone with five cats and a hamster named Anthropology.

Guess who shows up with new rings, a red wig, and a pink dress with a plunging neckline, lipstick smeared on her cracked lips, green eye shadow and pink flats. A gold anklet adorns on her thick left ankle. Her cold gray eyes are clear, her great eyelashes dark and kitten like. Her picket fence teeth are bright. I wonder if she still has the black hair by her naval. Poo!

Poo sits back in the big rattan chair that Zeb always sits in, but he gracefully gives it up. It's hard to believe this big man could be so gentle, setting a TV tray in front of Poo with a napkin. He sets an ashtray shaped like a blue butterfly with red spots by her cigarettes.

In this outfit, I have trouble picturing Poo as the women on the boat telling me stories of blue crab exorcisms and folk singing. I never got much more out of her concerning the exorcism. It wound down to, "If you'd care to insert your opinion in the jukebox, you got a song coming." Now she seems suddenly older, a mask, a simulation. Even when I saw her almost naked standing with her arms around D. in the motel, maybe it was too dark, I thought she wasn't a day over thirty-eight. The day I first saw her hustling Bobby and Rocker on Miami Beach, she just seemed like a woman with a little mileage on her.

Zeb bows. "Would the princess like me to light her cigarette?”

"The princess lights her own cigarettes, thank you very much," Poo replies with great dignity. She lights up and blows smoke straight at the middle of the room.

Zeb smiles like a great moon man. "And how's Spider?" he says to me. My eyes remain fixed on the great Poo, who at this moments needs a bunch of grapes to pop in her craw to round out said persona.

"Spider's fine." I snap a beer out of the fridge and hand it to Poo.

Zeb sits on the huge threadbare woven rug. The floor gives slightly.

Poo blows a long cloud of smoke across the room. "How is that alley cat of yours?"

"She’s a Bombay cat. Spider Cat is on a diet," I say.

"Hasn't got a handle, but she has a place to put one," Poo says.

"What does?"

"Your cat."

"Right."

The truth is I heard Poo had come to Key West to “restart” her singing career. I've avoided her for weeks. I need to stay clean. I want desperately to know what happened to D., to see her again, but I want to stay out of jail, thank you very much

"So you have to come over to the club and hear me play tonight. I'm doing my rendition of Evita.”

"She plays beautifully these days," Zeb says. "I'm putting her in my new novel. Did I tell you about my new novel?"

"No, not yet," I said. "But you will."
"Of course I will." Zeb is certain. "It's called Only Dolphins Die Twice. Great title."

"Intriguing," I said.

"What do you mean, intriguing?" Poo smiles. "This is the book that will make Zeb one of the names in Key West. He may even get to play volleyball with the rich and famous Tommie Clifford and Amelia Canard. Or Fanny Snow. Won't that be hot? They might even have him over to that pool, you know the one, and have some drinks. That is if Amelia doesn't decide you're not in her god damn club. Speaking of which, you got to meet Henry."

"Henry?" I say. Five weeks, day, whatever time ago, you were sitting on Bobby Adamciek’s lap.”

She blows a steady stream of smoke into the room. She sips beer. "Just one more blue crab I had to get rid of. Another Florida love affair. I loved him. God he was hot."

"I can see that."

"She's the Queen Bee of the Folk piano," Zeb says. "You should hear her play."

"What happened to Judy Henske and Bob Dylan?"

"There ain't no Bob Dylan," Poo says. "It was all a lie. I was in the Winn Dixie and they played "Blowin in the Wind," as muzak. He let it just go to hell in a wheelbarrow? What a phony he turned out to be."

"You mean to hell in hand barrel," "Zeb says.

Two neighborhood cats, a tiger and a manx slip into the room and begin circling his great thighs. I must have left the back door open. Another, slightly larger tiger cat sits on the kitchen drain board staring out the kitchen window to my left.

"Dylan got old," I say.

"I still believe the sixties didn't go far enough,” Poo says. “They all lost their nerve. Too soft. When it all came down to the damn nitty-gritty, they laid down and got to be Yuppies. And, now," she smokes faster. "Now, up in Seattle. Did you read that?"

"Read what?" Zeb says. "I've been working on my novel."

"In Seattle. Now that they've fleeced the whole god damn country. Now that they ate all the god damn ice cream. Now they want to DROP out and live off their earnings. Or they sit in front of their computers all day and steal. You'd think, to hear them talk, they were doing something. They want it both ways. I want to live with people and I want to smoke my cigarettes and play my piano and wear my rings.”

The small tiger cat jumps on Zeb's shoulder. Zeb never flinches. "Let me tell you about my novel."

"Just the plot," I say.

"Oh tell us the whole thing," Poo snorts. "Where the hell have you got to go anyway, Harry?”

"The plot?" I said.

"Two dolphins."

"Of course. Gay or straight?"

"Male and female. Georgia and Hamilton sent to search for a couple lost in plane crash originating in Ocala. Couple are 91 and 89. Left at noon. Georgia and Hamilton thwarted by counterintelligence. Plane last heard from just southwest of the Tortugas. Single engine. Smuggling. Hamilton's wife needs kidney. Drugs. Government needs drugs to buy guns to finance domestic insurgency. U.S. Government broke. No money to pay mercenaries or DEA either. So talk dolphins into going to find cache. Can't afford to pay, so plan to kill dolphins so they won't tell. I can't tell you the end."

"Very good," Poo says.

I watch the larger tiger cat drop from the drain board and saunter out of sight.

"You can tell a lot from the title." Zeb raises his eyebrows. "Is that your phone?"
“You can tell a lot from titles," I say.

"Are you going to answer your phone?" Poo says.

"I'm afraid. It's trouble. It has to be trouble."

"Maybe it's money," Zeb says letting the Manx walk back and forth across his lap
under the alternating palms of his great hands

"Or a story," Poo smokes.

"I'm on overload now." I push myself out of the chair and walk lazily to the phone that stops ringing. Spider Cat follows me to the phone. Too late. The answering machine kicks in.

"Harry? Harry? Is this you? It doesn't. Never mind. It's you. Harry, can you call me. It's me. Maggie. It's about Reisha. You know Reisha. The one I said would be a good friend in Florida. She thinks like you. Remember? I thought you should know. Her brother. You remember the brother, Ken? He went to the Nocturnal Café with us? Remember? No, you don't because you didn't go, but you remember when we pulled in the yard. We went to the Paula Nelson Folk, Poetry thing? That one? Remember I told you?”

"Jesus, Maggie, get on with it," I say to the machine.

"We left early because Paula just ranted and Ken was just divorced. You don't remember. Well, anyway, the brother, Ken, he was so angry. Remember how angry he was when he saw the menu for Ethiopian coffee, he wanted to know if they brought you an empty cup? Remember I said, 'No they bring you a cup with a dead baby in it.' Now you remember. Then I told him his women bashing was too much and to just cut it out? That's the one. Ken. Well I got a call from Reisha's sister; at least I think it was her sister. Ken is dead. I called Reisha three times and she doesn't call back. Reisha can't talk because of the Jewish thing. They buried Ken. My father thinks they bury Jewish people straight up and down. I know you like Reisha. I'm going over. It's Friday morning. Harry, he was murdered. We should go over. I hope you get this today. I'm going now. I love you. And Dr. Lenzel is not going to press charges. Oh, and I got the results of my neuropsyche tests. Bye, bye."

I wait for the red light on the phone to steady.
"Seems like the Ethiopian coffee arrived," I say. “And Dr. Lenzel is not going press charges? And the neuro-whatevers, are in. Let’s just imagine what all else this means.”

I sit down wondering what the hell I'll say to Maggie. Poo interrupts my thoughts.

"D. wants to see you," she says, lighting a cigarette. Spider drops to floor and disappears in the kitchen.

"What's she up to now?"

"She asked about you."

"Rocker?"

Poo laughs. "He went back to his painter.

"And Bobby?"

"Poor Bobby got a job at Office Depot. He had to take a drug test. He said he was going to quit after he got enough money to get a portfolio for a talent agency. He wants to model. Was that your ever-loving Maggie?”

You should put this in your book, “I say to Zeb.

I watch Zeb run the scenario, such as it is, through his mind.

"What about Si Lee?" I say.

“The papers said he swindled something from somebody,” Poo says. “He was part owner of the Blue Crane Inn. By the way, how’s Maggie?"

"Just my luck. She calls when you’re here.”

"Go up and see her."

Poo drinks her beer and then another. She smokes three more cigarettes and by that time there are no cats to be found in my house. "I'm playing tonight.” She
adjusts one of the rings on her left index finger. I can't get past the red wig.
"I'll try," I say.

"Run up and see D.," she says.

After she leaves, Zeb and I sit for a half hour or so with out speaking, which is very nice. I think Poo is just one big trip, one metamorphosis of many in my life. Who’s to say? The neighborhood cats slips out. Spider Cat eyes me warily and proceeds to snooze. I know I'll have to drive north.

September 11-Anniversary of 9/11-A Covey of Ducks

2011-09-12T07:13:00.000-07:00

Sometime ago, I read about an 18 year old who stabbed a duck in front of Benihana’s, because he hates ducks. What makes one do such a thing? Why a duck? Is this just one more kink in the great swing of the 21st Century, where everything is fair game, in the grab, keep and kill of whatever shows up on the screen next time?

I try to think of this duck as a threat, something to hate and I am reminded of a few years ago when I lived in Pompano Beach, Florida. Each day I walked past a canal at the corners of Atlantic Boulevard and South Cypress Creek Road. I often stopped at the stone bridge and gazed east to watch the wildlife, the turtles frozen on rocks, fish zipping in shadows below, the iguanas, not indigenous, some up to four feet long waiting in the grasses to my left and ducks, mostly Muscoveys, a large heavy South American breed that multiplied triple fold over the years in suburban and urban landscapes. Red-beaked, black, green feathered, some white and black, some patched, some all white; they lope and waddle all over South Florida.

On this day, a single female, young and sleek swam my way hugging the left shore. Behind her in blips and kicks, thirteen dark, little duckies swimming in her seamless wake. I watched them for a very long time until it seemed the day had wandered on without me.

Over the nest few weeks I saw Mother Duck again and again, but with fewer ducklings in tow, until one day I discovered her swimming alone. What could it be? Rats seemed obvious. Rats cling to shorelines and prey on such young. Foxes, possibly? Iguanas? Probably not. What else? And what could Mother Duck be thinking if she could think?

Today I think what grace in this cynical world of bombs, gadgets, toys, murders, lies and duck stabbings. Mother Duck seemed thankfully oblivious to anything less beautiful than her ducklings swimming and dipping their beaks, flapping their untried wings and their instincts into ever, hopeful tomorrows.

DEAR THEN

2011-09-06T17:40:00.000-07:00

Remember your madness. You left to survive
the white birch, the gray rain, the cool slopes.
Remember your wedding to the fat maple tree, how it pressed
to your naked flesh that resplendent fall.
Girls you once loved but couldn't tell, swell in its rough bark.
Uncaught fish are memories in a dark hallway called gone.
A self-addressed stamped envelope won't help.
Forgive this lack of correspondence, its rising cost.

The Death of Bacardi (a true American)

2011-07-31T07:11:00.001-07:00

Last day of April, Bacardi
the alligator that ate the toy turtle
the size of a cookie cutter
turned up dead in Big Pine Key
Turtle jammed the valve
between Bacardi’s stomach and intestine
This nine foot natural couldn't digest
Lost seventy two pounds
They also found a toy
plastic soldier in his gut

Why everybody knew Bacardi
Icon gator with 151 rum tail tag
The local swamp guy
The guy next door with wife and six kids
The guy growing rice in India
with an eye peeled for Texmati
The regular at Max’s Diner
The elephant who reads from memory
that he will soon be shot
The Monarch butterfly in waylaid flight
Bacardi of low water and muck
or so he thought, if he thought
when the plastic turtle got chomped

Why old Bacardi, he just went along
He sat there in the swamp that was him
until somebody with a look alike turtle
Maybe a flag he was supposed
to recognize, a food, say a potato chip or a Coke
passed around the neighborhood that day
Hadn’t he hung in the park for X years?
But a turtle, what surprise in this wise
Day and age, a plastic animal
One of the ones you find in the back of trees in Somalia
Or say, Nepal, a make believe something to eat
which if the alligator had watched his Youtube
or his CNN, he’d have known
not to eat the plastic soldier in the first place
but Bacardi just lay there in his scales
Grabbed what came along,
Showed up ferocious at the movies
Snorted, snapped, whipped the tail
Got caught in another bomb or a flick
for the tourists and the news.
while the turtle seemed to grow real
in his belly and the soldier, well
what did one expect from an eternal march?
A Victory? A solid meal?

Night Poem

2011-07-18T10:09:00.001-07:00

This poem can't sleep.
It slips in and out of bad rhyme.
The lines bump, run on
come up short.
It hears explosions between syllables.
Smells death in the distance.
The poem blinks, rolls on its back.
Its lover tucks her head on its shoulder
and the poem thinks, oh yes
now I can count my breathing
finish it in the morning.
But the poem can't listen.
It keeps seeing faces
blank faces, white nothing
and silent screams keep the poem
running after itself.
Something, someone is dying.
The poem dodges looking for a place to hide
a fox hole, a haiku, a villanelle.
It just can't sleep with all the goings on
all the young faces, the bodies blowing up
in darkness and repetition, all the bruised
words, the onomatopoeia, alliteration
gods, tyrants, poetry flags and enormous bombs
shaped like poems for the flash
and forget, of what is, or not
that keeps it awake this time.
Maybe a glitch, the poem thinks.
Maybe start over, free itself
find another truth in whatever
godforsaken hell flashes
in the poem this time.

Bastille Day

2011-07-13T18:25:00.001-07:00

I drive into the VA clinic
parking lot at 8.43 a.m.
just as WTMI radio announces
Bastille Day, time for the Marseillaise
I whip around the lot four times
squeeze into my parking spot.
and the glory that was France
fills my small car.

I slip the car in Park and pump my arms
singing what little French I know.
I’m marching past the Arc de Triomphe
when in the left corner of my front
windshield I spot a blue pickup
with the words Blue Angel hooked
to the top of the front license plate.

A chiseled seventy plus cowboy
with straw hat and sunglasses sits in the cab
holding a long plastic tube
and I stop marching in my car.

This cowboy shoves the tube down his tracheotomy
with the gauze around the metal
jams the tube past his gone larynx
sucking up phlegm and snot.
His head lurches. He gags.
He wretches. He sucks up
war, cigarettes and time.

The Marseillaise breathes victory all around.
This whole pass in review marches by.
The sun beats on, the cowboy
puts his tube away and wipes his chin.
I turn off the radio.
We turn off our ignitions
and get out to stand
in line again.

Politics?

2011-06-13T18:51:00.001-07:00

Politics?

The Politician in John Nichols novel, The Magic Journey said, "What you do is create a whole bunch of issues that don't exist, then you get everybody running around not knowing their *** from a hole in the ground, then you do what you want."

Sarah Palin News

2011-06-05T10:56:00.001-07:00

Toy girl on toy bus
feeds the fool’s spoon
its daily buffet.
Salad with no dressing
on New Hampshire’s plate
A pickle to delight
or sour the main course
yet to be named.
Mock turtle soup
with Crackers?
Jello with whipped
polar bears?
A non-ethereal ride
to honk and flee
with a few stops
at the bank?
Mindless Heaven
with microphones
for Jesus and his
local take out
meals to Dubai?
Nothing like
hot crossed buns
to keep the media
alive and wanting.

Found Poem in U.S.S. Newport News Guest Book

2011-05-30T06:05:00.001-07:00

Do any of you know Stanley Pilot
who died in T-2 that night?
He was a good friend
and as a matter of fact
he was the one who taught me
how to play football.
No one would tell me much until now.
I was 13 when he died. I am 44 now
and a veteran myself.
I have found his name on the wall.
Please any information from some one
who knew him would be
gratefully accepted.
Thank You All
for what you have done.
James D. Burris
Former SSgt, U.S.A.F.

America

2011-05-27T07:21:00.001-07:00

I saw something burning on my chest
And I tried to brush it off
With my right hand
But my arm wasn’t there
The soldier said.

COFFEE NERVES of the Times

2011-05-22T10:09:00.001-07:00

Suppose my wife, if I have a wife, wears boxer shorts. Or my sister, if I have a sister, eats ragweed Maybe my son, if I have a son, kisses goats and my best friend, if I have a best friend, dislikes me. If the mayor of my home town, if I have a hometown, thinks about feet in the town square on Sunday mornings, or the Librarian in my home town, if I have a home town with a librarian in it, fondles a picture of God dressed as Arnold Schwarzenegger in church, if there's a church in my home town, if I have a home town; would I drink coffee? How fast? How much?

The next question is, if my wife, if I have a wife, stops wearing boxer shorts, or my sister if I have a sister, stops eating ragweed, or my son stops kissing goats, if I have a son, or, assuming I have a friend to begin with, the friend stops disliking me and the mayor of my home town, if I have one, stops thinking about feet in the town square, if there's a town square and, if the Librarian in my home town, if it has a librarian stops fondling the picture of God dressed as Arnold Schwarzenegger in church, if there is a church, how would this effect my coffee drinking?

Now if the Librarian in my home town, if I have a home town, if my home town has a Librarian, or a library for that matter, finds something better than God dressed as Arnold Schwarzenegger even if she isn't from my home town, and has her own home town. But if she doesn't have a home town and kisses God as Arnold in a church in a town that's the closest thing to a home town, but isn't a home town to her, or she moves to a town, that if it could be a home town, would be? And if the church in that town that isn't her home town, but could be a good place to fondle God dressed as Arnold, if there is an Arnold, would she? Or she finds a substitute for church, assuming there's a church in the town that might be her home town, if she has a hometown, if she suddenly starts wearing boxer shorts, would she be my wife, if my wife wears boxer shorts, if I have one? Would I stop drinking coffee?

Suppose there isn't coffee. Would my wife even think about boxer shorts? Would the Librarian in my home town, if I have one, fondle God dressed as Arnold, if there is one? If there isn't, would she still imagine there is, or would she go to church if there is a church and not think about it? If there's a substitute for God dressed as Arnold Schwarzenegger, would the Librarian think about that in church, if there's church, or outside the church in her home town, or my home town if we live in the same one, if we have the same home towns with churches in them, or not?
Suppose my wife knows there isn't any such thing as coffee, even if there is? How does this affect my relationship to the sun? Does it come up, or not? If there is a sun to come up, will I go back to coffee if I gave it up, even if there isn't any?
If I don't have a wife, would the Librarian have a substitute and would it be boxer shorts. Maybe my son wouldn't kiss goats because I wouldn't have a son, assuming I'd have a son with my wife. But my sister, if I have one, might still eat ragweed, and yet, she might not, if I didn't drink coffee. Or if the Librarian didn't find a substitute, would her thinking about a substitute effect my coffee thinking, if there is coffee, or a substitute for coffee? Would her thinking have anything to do with how much sugar I put in my coffee, if there's sugar? Would the sugar substitute part of my thinking about coffee and if that could change my relationship to the Mayor of my home town, if I have a home town with a mayor in it, would it, and would I?

If I put this substitute for sugar, if there's sugar, in my coffee, if there's coffee, would this change my wife's relationship to boxer shorts, if there are boxer shorts, if I have a wife? And if I do, would the mayor stop thinking about feet in the town square if there is a town square in my home town? Or if he isn't in my home town, if there is one, how many sugar substitutes, if there's sugar, or sugar substitutes, would it take him to think about feet somewhere else, if there is a somewhere else with a church and a Librarian with a home town. Or there isn't? And finally, suppose the Librarian doesn't live in that home town, but if she did would she sit next to the Mayor in church, if there's a Mayor to sit with. And would the Mayor confine himself thinking about feet on Sunday mornings, if there are Sunday mornings to confine oneself to, or would he go back to the town square that may or may not exist?
One final, final question comes to mind. If there's no Librarian and no Mayor, or the Librarian can't find a substitute, if there is one, for sugar, or Arnold, or sugar substitute, would it affect how much coffee the Librarian drinks? And would the fact that the Mayor doesn't exist mean he might have become my wife, assuming she wears boxer shorts, if I have a wife? Or would the Mayor, who doesn't exist, be the friend who dislikes me, and would the friend stop disliking me or would he stop thinking about feet in the town square if there's a town square with ragweed for my sister if I have one? Or would the goat my son kisses, if I have a son by my wife who might not be, eat the ragweed in the town square that may or may not be if I have one, if my coffee drinking stops, assuming of course, that there's coffee.

Selling the Farm

2011-05-18T08:49:00.000-07:00

The Democrats know the rats in the cellar, but they dare not set the trap. To rid America’s reverence for the Father, the Son, the Holy Buck; and its wand waving war mongers, this party, let unconstitutional acts run amuck. And they’re still leaking. See 8-1 Supreme Court Ruling on Search and Seizure.

A new and revived party? A hard sell at the pump. All the flag waving, snorting, turf-treading on the original state of slavery, the smell of war, trim to the eye, fat to the pulpit; may not park Othello at the gate. The only “change apparent” rattles in the jobless pockets from Oshkosh to Gary, to Miami, San Antonio and beyond. The Legislature, awash in somnambulistic hustle, enmeshed in the land of Oz, sleeps with itself, and prays not to be found out before the casino closes and the band stops playing. Rockets red glare boils the Great Plains, the purple mountains, the valleys and the rivers it will consume forever, if not in body in spirit. The smell of old blood and orchids wafts in the committee rooms and the buzzards hold the combination to the safe.

It will take more than a whisper, a prayer, and a promise of thereafter with America’s heart hooked to the exhaust, the blurb, the wasteland, the clicked, the botched, the collective idol, all devoid of hindsight, clever, and bleak of wonder. It can be done, certainly in no short order, but it takes, without steroids and magic, courage to trap the rats and lock up the clowns.

I KNOW

2011-05-09T09:06:00.000-07:00

I know the dingy rooftops, the dirty blinds, the porch barbecues and left over beer can nights. I know the bar keep woman leans in, leans out, and bitches about Angie being late and her boyfriend’s fucking and the drugs and how she’d go back to Pittsburgh but… I know the long smell of bar room morning beer and I see the bar swamper get off work and the empty bar chairs on the late art deco dream gone sour. I see the homeless bare-chested, bald 35 year old black shorts man standing in the alley chewing his lip like he’s really waiting for somebody or something.

I know the young woman crossing the street carrying two plastic bags in her left hand who has the word NICE written in white on the back of her red shorts and I know the clean cut middle aged guy is following her and I see she picks him off when he crosses behind her and slips in the parking lot to the left and she tries the door to the Laundromat and it won’t open.

I know the dim tattoo parlor walled in serpents, flowers, swords and butterfly dreams and the playboy tee-shirts hung in their own particular silences and I know the maid getting off work from the Holiday Inn with fatigued and hopes stuffed in a shopping bag and I know the cab driver shaking hands with the yellow cab driver in front of him hopes for an airport, a Miami, a ride to make it all worthwhile and I know the vacant streets of spilled beer and lamb chop dreams and I know the tired pizza tossing man and the tee-shirt salesman and surf board boys and the old Italian barefoot wrinkled man whose long legs are getting skinny as his butt walks his Styrofoam cooler with ice and beer to the beach and I know the fat girl who casts me a wary glance at the light when she pushes the X street button. I know her from lost bedrooms, tangled sheets and distant radios in the night and I know the cold men drive by to somewhere jobs about kids and malls with assorted specials and down payments and I know the thirty plus guy to my right wants this bench and or wants to talk to me or ask for money and I know the sun cooks the Florida brain by 10:30 A:M.

I sit on the bench in front of Holiday Inn and watch a Japanese couple walk back from the beach with a live crab in a plastic bag. I see the waitress left the mustard and ketchup on the table in front of the Blue Parrot Lounge all night. I know the morning dim tattoo parlor walled in serpents and flowers and swords and butterfly dreams and the playboy tee-shirts hanging in their own particular silence.

I know the beach is on its way to extinction and I know no there is no one else besides my wife. I know what the TV promised and I know the President and I know about the naked boys shot in the head and plowed into the sand and I know the about Pilgrim’s Pride and Co. who slam chickens against the wall for fun for hatred and just plain boredom and I know they rip chicken beaks off because life is hard and they’re mad so they spit tobacco in the chickens’ mouths and I know KFC Colonel Sanders wanted to run for VP with George Wallace.

And I know the barrel bellied gray haired blue trunk sneaker man who’s almost just like me walking with uncertainty to the beach and I watch him turn back to see if he knows where he came from and I understand and I know the echo of beach voices, the far off sounds of half conversations and the overthrown beach balls rising in the sun and I know the tanker silhouette straight out to sea, at one and half nautical miles waits for its shot into the Everglades and I know the gay club on Miami Boulevard right down the block from where the cruise line CEO got shot and drove his car into the Miami Sub wall around the corner... I know the club used to be the 4 O’clock Club full of pink and baby blue suits. Motown, rock, do wop dreamy nights and I know John McDonald got drunk at Baja docks and tossed his bottles in motel windows on A1A where books flew high and became best sellers.

I know the two black dudes sliding by, the short one thumbing his cell phone, are killing time and looking for something and I know the Korean with the beard who just walked by this stone bench is not the same Korean who cooked me a Korean breakfast in the American Diner in Wyoming.

And I know it’s easier to drop a bomb than switch to hydrogen although they both can do the same thing. And I know piles of dead children are cheaper than gas pumps and I know the whole shooting match is a front, a key to the collective trough and all hands are out…And I know a beautiful woman and I know the ant crossing this sidewalk at my feet is a bigger hero than Shaquille O’Neal, thank you very much Shaq, your numbers up complete with cheeseburger and an order of fries six bucks plus, along with Jay Leno who ran out of jokes a long time ago along with O’Reilly and the Shoo-la Goons, and I know my God’s not dead, how about yours but who is it anyway? And I know we train our children to shovel bird shit out of computer cuckoo clocks and I know there is no time for the word because we must forget to remember to forget and we have the drugs for that too.

I know the blond umbrella boy selling green umbrellas is going to be in the movies or on TV and I know I can’t have anymore Panelli’s Deli Zampino and Cheese sandwiches but I want one and I know the waitress with the wary eye has an ear for words but not a good ear and I know that’s Palmetto dung, not bagel garlic under the forks in the drawer because it’s Florida and I know enough to wash the blackberries from Chile now that Allende is dead and I know the bathing suits on the Argentine tourists are the trap and I know the TV doesn’t want you to read the credits because you’re in a hurry but did you get your French Canadian Surf burger today and I walk past Splish Splash Surf Shop, Liquid Addiction, Pink Pussy Cat, Blue Parrot Lounge with Key West Dining across the cattywampus from Bikini Bob’s with its Oh Boy the wild dream neon night and I see the trickle belly men and I see the girl walk back to the Laundromat and I read Cross Country on her red shorts butt and I think she works in the Laundromat when I walk by and see her on the Net and I know the blubber bellies and the skinny bunnies and the wikey wikeys.

I know because I stand in it, to be it, to hold it, to touch it, to smell it, to follow it, to eat it, to make love to it, to make love with it, to dance in its ads and I watch the girl walk out of the Laundromat and run through the traffic to the beach and throw up her arms and laugh and her girlfriends laugh and I see them laughing and the traffic runs by and the sun boils higher… I know because…I know.

Singularity Prophecy at Risk

2011-04-28T18:29:00.000-07:00

Singularity Prophecy at Risk

Singularity is defined as the moment when technological change becomes so rapid and profound, it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. Raymond Kurtzell, often named the Singularity visionary thinks the time will come when some humans have their brains scanned and placed in robots. Alas, it seems someone is already missing.

Kurtzell was taken aback recently when he learned that Leland Petropolus White signed off with a nameless laboratory, left his body to science and took the scan. This seemed to work until last week, when the program logistics left “him” doubtful, but he could not find the doubt. This truth sent “him” robot to frenzy of grind and frozen moments. His former wife called the lab. More scans, virus protection, fragmentation and the results self indulgent, a phrase uncommon to robots. It seems that Mr. White, or rather the “him’ that was not, had “forgotten to remember to forget.”

Raymond Kurzwell will be interviewed on 60 Minutes regarding this issue. Mr. White’s presnt self is frozen in limbo awaiting suggestions.

Wooden Duck Molested by Raccoons

2011-04-21T07:43:00.001-07:00

Fort Lauderdale, April 22, 2011

Melville Campo, reported to local police officers that the family wooden duck, Angelica, recently refurbished, repainted and placed outside his front door had been attacked by five raccoons. He and his family are devastated. Campo, a Unitarian deacon, and long time animal advocate, seemed shattered while telling this story.

The investigating officers suggested calling animal control. Mr. Campo said he might refer the incident to the IRCOOP, or International Raccoon Coop, which has recently become an international organization dedicated to raccoon care and love.

He said, that these raccoons, long time neighborhood beasts were getting pretty old. Campo cited a recent study mentioned in the February 21st edition of Time Magazine states that telomeres are segments of DNA connected to aging. “Researchers at Harvard Medical School administered…telomerase, an enzyme that reverses the process.” Campo thinks this procedure along with other combinations of science and prayer might diminish attacks by aging raccoons who might also be mentally unstable. .

Angelica the Duck has been repainted and reset by Mr. Campo’s front door. A small glass necklace with blue blinking lights is strung about her neck. Police have agreed to drive by Mr. Campo’s home on a regular basis. Mr. Campo plans to add more ducks to the flock which might lower the chance of raccoon attacks or possible molestation.

Which Robot Fits the Pocket?

2011-04-18T08:58:00.000-07:00

Did the apple of our eye rot in the blinking, bonking? Did we simply climb in the Hummer and drive off only to find we got stuck in the exhaust?

Who has the key to Paradise? Is it on the dresser? The couch? Mars? Maybe it’s in the salad bowl? Maybe in a vested pocket?

A recent story in the news reads, “Woman pleads guilty to defrauding the banks.”

Please!

But!

Cockroach detection is an issue. Instant micro chipping for large palmetto bugs with detonation devices applied up to fifteen miles are a serious threat. A Washington news correspondent was quickly censored for suggesting cockroaches are bank products and that some eat parts of Iraq and New Orleans. He asserted that some cockroaches are asked to run for office.

101st Plasmatic Extravaganza

2011-04-08T19:11:00.000-07:00

In the blink of America, in the belly of Saudi Arabia
on the spine of China and Pakistan and Sudan
a day of magnificent explosions get sold in cracker boxes
toys, and necklaces and underwear flap everywhere
Digital cookies wrapped in tasty chocolate blowups
kill fish and babies and grownups and goats and chickens.
They kill the sky. It’s a Fourth of July Thanksgiving
when everyone has their head up a turkey butt.

Johnny steps on a Baghdad bomb in Kipling’s Afghanistan
and the country makes Super Bowl dressing with bowed heads
green peas and marshmallows on sweet potato pie.
Guns echo in the plasma screen, the teams take the field.
The pretty girls wag their rumps, beer froths in Paradise
and all over everywhere, purple mountains majestically
watch the clicking, clacking, babbling, flickering game

Somewhere in Texas an Attwater Prairie Chicken looks for a mate.
Somewhere in Florida, a nine foot alligator chokes on a plastic turtle.
Somewhere the Ex President wears jeans and smirks.
Somewhere the Ex Vice President hides in his fat listening to
his private heart machine beat him alive.
Somewhere the President Elect peddles a movable feast.

A thousand elephants with crosses tacked to their sides
and butterfly wings clipped to their ears march out of the sky.
Mexicans and Puerto Ricans and Dominicans and Haitians
stand in line for the next trolley, the next truck or boat
the next something and somewhere in Chiapas, a Zapatista
slices a strange Lacandon custom with a laptop.
America’s bugles hoot the alleys, the shopping malls
the empty schoolyards and the parking lots.

Movie stars wearing flashing teeth and short skirts wail
cross-eyed songs in the Forget You Night. Flags flap
in the bombed out brains of soldiers eating crow.
Babies screech, mothers scream and wives stand
at blank windows staring into emptiness.
A philanthropist mail-orders nine hundred dollar caskets from Costco
with “He Didn’t Get It," printed on the lid.

Priests Hail Mary on her way to Dubai for a facelift.
Jesus takes a good room overlooking the sea. Rabbis rally.
Mid East kings sell slick promises of BEST Buy
in a Black Box with whores in the backroom on Sunday.
A man marries his dog in India and Minnesota
opens five Bed and Breakfasts for single canines.

When all the announcements are made,
all the prayers whispered, all the turkey stuffed in all the craws
and all the butchers close their cash registers and Bibles
and all the tight canons and Constitutionals
and the all overheards are overheard
and all the pundits choke on the babble in their throats
and all the pretty girls jump all the pretty boys
and all the slot machines stop at strawberries and 7
and all the Easter Bunnies die in waiting and all the
monkeys hang from their cages waiting for somebody
somewhere to speak up about something besides Freedom
Democracy and Terror, the immortal screen flashes MORE!

Where Jake Danced

2011-04-06T09:44:00.000-07:00

I walk through the glass doors just like I own the place. This is the Fontainebleau, the monument to class, pharaohs, Sinatra, real chandeliers, important swimming pools and the deserved life, back when every story had a happy ending and all your dreams came true. This is where Jake left fame for success. I’ve come to see the Grand Ballroom where Jake danced. I want to feel what the magic must have been for Jake. I want to go back to that innocent time. I realize it might be hard to capture, because I see they’re redecorating the hotel.

First, I check out Poodles Lounge and the Steak House, an Art Deco room with shiny black furniture and red flashy stripes. The club kicks back to bluesy, smoke filled rooms with jazzy torch singers to fall in love with. Back where the buzz worked and the world was smooth and timeless. Or there’s your $13.50 Stars Show of Shows in the Club Tropigala. “All your favorite names of the silver screen of today and yester-year, together for the first time on stage through the magic of special live and audio-visual effect.”

If you prefer the pool, the brochure says, “A symphony of graceful curves, exotic greens, deep blues and glittering whites await you. Cool Atlantic breezes and warming rays of sun. Today it’s almost too cold.

The pool fits the brochure’s description except for the plastic rocks that make up the waterfall. Nearby, two young men with no tans fidget in their lounge chairs. They try not to stare. They try to gloss their eyes with laid back film. They want a tan. They want the girl in the string bikini. Like Bay Watch. Like Acapulco Heat. But there’s no sun. The rest of the sunbathers lie under blankets with their sunglasses on. They’ll lie there blank-faced even if it snows. They’ll wait out this flat afternoon. From time to time, they may wiggle out to eat. Or take up the vigil around the tiki hut, or the Saloon Lagoon and drink margaritas, rum cokes or beer. They don’t seem innocent or full of wonder or lolling in tropical splendor. I mean this is, “Begin the Beguine” Land isn’t it? This is supposed to be the sweet curl at the end of the highway, the seat at the bar, the chair you asked for, and the rest one deserves. Not today. This pool crowd just lies numb, waiting for sun, rain, food, sex or something.

And, yes, here comes the six foot model wearing a breezy red dress. The hot camera clicks her every pose. Two high-heeled Cuban women strut toward the boardwalk in 1950s shorts. The oyster eaters languish at the tables in front of Coconut Willy’s. I’m partial to raw oysters, so I can just taste all that salty oyster juice dripping from their chins, their sunburned cheeks, their wonderfully lipstick lips. Piles of oyster shells mount before them. The health spa crowd, from across the way, amble around the pool. In sharp contrast to the regular tourists, they’re tanned to stop the gods. I try to imagine Jake sitting up there on his life guard perch holding court.

He waits. He watches. He grins. I can’t see his eyes behind his cool sunglasses. Back from Korea, a mere twenty-one, a muscular Irishman with a big grin for just about everything and everyone, Jake’s a hunk, a bone, a kick, a black-haired Adonis with good teeth and brains. Jake entered the Jesuit Seminary right out of High School. He didn’t last. Too much fire, not enough cool. Now Jake sits on that life guard chair, tanned black, his slick black hair smoothed back, not a hair out of place. Is he cool? Is he afraid? Does it matter? It’s the Fifties at the Fontainebleau Hotel. And right here by the Fontainebleau pool, Jake gets discovered.

The Fontainebleau needs a male ballroom dancer. Jake is handsome. Jake has the body, the moves. He can be trained. He’s hired on the spot. Jake wears a tuxedo. She wears a sleek, silver white gown. They’re tops! They dance the Great Ballroom. Its magnificent crystal chandeliers shine. The exquisite orchestra plays. The starry waxed floor stretches to infinity. Oh these beautiful people. Oh yes! The tide rolls in. The tide rolls out under smooth swept breezes. Oh, how they dance.

But Jake is not a great dancer, at least not as talented as his partner. He knows it. They’re supposed to go on a U.S. tour, but Jake abandons the blue spotlight on the Grand Ballroom floor and moves back to Syracuse, New York to work for his brother’s insurance firm. He wears a dark suit and slicked back hair.

When I met him, he was just about to leave his brother’s business. The suit fit perfectly, but Jake couldn’t wait to get out of it. Times were changing. Jake was changing. Jake’s brothers were dentists, doctors and lawyers. Jake tried the priesthood. Jake even tried professional dancing. Now we were all trying on new clothes. America was changing. We were a long way from the Fontainebleau.

Jake became a roofer. Jake read poetry and roofed. Jake worked hard. Jake played hard. Jake laughed Irish. Then he met The Arabian Princess Forever. She was an art student, truly Arabian, third generation. They moved in together over a Laundromat on South Crouse Avenue in Syracuse when it was still considered a sin. Jake was a big time Irish Catholic. He tried to contain himself, but he escaped. He and the Arabian Princess Forever had Sunday dinners with musicians and poets, lunatics and painters, priests, lawyers, dreamers, college students and bums. They ate tons of tuna casserole.

I made a batch of tuna casserole with sage cheese that was terrible. Nobody would eat it. Jake ate a big plate and laughed all the way through it. One Christmas I invited him and the Arabian Princess Forever over for dinner. I bought chuck steak instead of sirloin. Jake sat at the table and ripped at the tough piece of meat like a caveman. He laughed, oh how he laughed. He ate the whole thing. The Arabian Princess Forever had a few bites. She smiled.

After graduation, The Arabian Princess Forever moved to New York. Jake roofed. Jake loved The Arabian Princess Forever. Then a real estate company bought the Laundromat, tore it down and put a Red Barn Chicken franchise in its place.

One Thursday, Jake walked into the Red Barn Chicken and asked for tuna casserole. They looked at him like he was crazy. He insisted. He demanded. “I want tuna casserole,” he said, accenting the T on wanT. He wanted to see the manager. The manager told him they didn’t have tuna casserole. Jake pounded on the counter with his big roofer fist. “You DON’T HAVE IT?” He shoved his mad Irish head in the manager’s face and bared his teeth. “What do you MEAN, you don’t have IT? I had it the last time I was here.”

Then a strange thing happened. Jake did a complete turnaround. One Friday noon, he climbed off the roof, took the three hundred mile bus ride to Manhattan. He met The Arabian Princess Forever at the Tavern on The Green wearing his roofing clothes and his tarred boots. He asked her to marry him.

The Arabian Princess Forever was a top of the line commercial artist.. Jake became her agent. He was good at it. They made money. They were in love. They were really, really, really in love. They had kids. I heard that they adopted a string of Vietnamese kids. They filled their house with kids and a god that worked for them. Jake was a long way from the Fontainebleau.

Someone said, “Fame is Madonna. Success is Mother Theresa.” I wonder if back then he already knew the difference. Maybe he saw the faces by the pool. Maybe he saw beyond the glitz. Maybe he felt he didn’t fit or perhaps he just knew he wasn’t that good a dancer.

I don’t care. I have to see the Grand Ballroom. I really want to dance in that room. I’m in awe of Jake for having had the chance. I’m such a hopeless romantic. I mean after all, weren’t you supposed to dance off down the ballroom floor with the girl of your dreams? Weren’t you supposed to dance with perfect steps and a marvelous swirl? I mean, sweep her off her feet! I mean, weren’t you suppose to dance off into never –never land, where everything comes up clean and peachy? Jake danced here. I’m thrilled to be walking here.

As I walk back by the pool crowd I feel the change of times. I think of Cobain’s lyrics, “I’m stupid and contagious. We’re here, so entertain us.” I really don’t want to feel that loss of innocence today.

I walk through the lobby and up a short staircase. A series of big brass doors stand to my right. I step inside. It’s enormous. What a place to dance. It’s big enough and long enough to dance forever. I look up at the row of crystal chandeliers. They need to be cleaned. One hangs slightly askew. But oh my, that ballroom. YES! It’s so, so big.

The waxed floor has been covered with carpet. I feel how quiet it has become. I try to imagine the floor without the rugs. I try to picture the flash, the lights, the sparkle, the smell of perfume and white shirts. Way, way down the way, I hear the echo of a vacuum cleaner. They’re putting up chairs and tables.

Magnificent brass-framed mirrors line the ballroom. I see the room fill with dancers dressed to the nines. Way, way, down at the end of the room the conductor raises his wand. I hear the laughter, the sudden hush just as the music starts. It’s magic. I imagine Jake, in his tuxedo and his dancing partner in her gown, swirling, swirling down the long sweet room under the sweeping blue spotlight; the music carrying them off to fame and forever.

I stand wistfully in the ballroom for such a long time dreaming, working the dark room for an inkling of that time, for something I can really touch, back before the crazy war, the assassinations and the up-side-downs of it all. I ache to be back there, for just a few moments, when life was a sure thing if you played straight and looked good. Back when you could be discovered in a soda fountain, by a pool, or in any old place at all. Back when Jake danced.

Two From The Road

2011-04-04T09:06:00.001-07:00

Elk City

Linda drives
says she wishes she
could have more kids.

Doctor talked her
into a hysterectomy
at twenty-one.

She stares at
the highway
running
flat out west.

Michelle

Capped front teeth
short brown hair
high hips
probably her
Dad’s.

Ten years old
Love her so
damn much.
Afraid I’ll run.

Don’t think I
should have
taken her and
her mother on

Her mother
talks about old
Tucson and
the circle they
used for
cowboy
chase scenes.

Rock and hills
flash in
the rearview
mirror.

Michelle jumps
around the
small space
between clothes
and window
in the
back seat.

I want to
hold her
little self
forever.

News On A March Full Moon

2011-03-18T19:12:00.000-07:00

Somewhere in a nearby yard a blue jay
yaks and yaks the morning quiet
way beyond the clicking news of smiles
and banks washing profits off casket walls.
Mid morning and the news reads
Sarandrea, Jessica Y., 22, Pfc, Army; Miami
First Cavalry Division. Killed in Iraq.

Marjorie Pollock is text messaging
by the organic oranges at Whole Foods.
Neal Bellenger holds a two pound
ground buffalo package in his left hand
a cell phone in his right.
The newlyweds contemplate organic cane
sugar as second ingredients in yogurt.
Daniel B. Hyde, 24 First Lieutenant, Army,
Modesto, California is dead in Iraq.

Beyond the three dollar collard greens
traffic zips and tears the afternoon.
No need to signal or cut off the competition.
It’s only three lanes and four hundred yards
to the gas station and a cheap hoagie.
A homeless man passes out a newspaper
at the traffic island. Put a little in the pot
please, and God Bless you Jeffrey Reed 23
Army Sergeant, Chesterfield, Virginia dead in Iraq.

Late afternoon stuffs the mind, wipes
pleasure off a job that may or may not
exist in a few days, or tomorrow.
Lorna Guzman, social worker for Women
in Distress hopes Day Care is taking care
Keisha wants to tell the M.D.
with 40 patients a day that
she missed another period.
She has to get home.
She has a class tonight.
Patrick De Voe, he’s dead in Afghanistan
Twenty-seven, Private First Class
from Auburn, New York.
You know where that is, but then

It’s almost dinner time and Shirley
brings in take out hot and sour, lo mein
a side of barbecued wings.
Did you hear Tiger’s back?
TVs blink the news, the news, the news.
Who did what and who said if?
She’s a democrat underneath.
How about that short horse in England?
They think it’s stuck in mud.
George Clooney may show up on ER.
You know Rush Lim and the other one
who took all the rich guy’s cash.
He’s going to plead and Jay Leno
will have his say later on.

By the way, it’s a full moon.
Look out the window at the perfect sky but
don’t forget the names whispered in the stars.
Jessica, Daniel, Jeffrey, Patrick
echo in blood, in guns, in storms.
They’re coming home.

A Few Takes

2011-03-06T10:21:00.000-08:00

A News FLASH spins on three local TV stations: "Monkey Loose." Station one shows us where the monkey has been, station Two shows the monkey captured in a cage and station Three shows us the empty cage where the monkey chewed its way out. A newscaster stands in front of the camera and says, "We want you to know, that we have now established a Monkey Hot Line."

I envision a chimpanzee holding a cell phone, then my mind whips to a woman I met several weeks ago, who was leaving South Florida because people are unfriendly. She sits in her packed car. An Igloo cooler rests on the passenger seat. It contains her dead parrot on dry ice. She’d like to put said parrot on a raft and float it out to sea if she can find a biodegradable raft. She is driving to Boca Raton to consult friends before continuing to Alabama which I think is not a good idea.

I remember the Terrorist Bees of Boca. A beekeeper in Deerfield Beach was reported because his bees allegedly flew two miles north to the Boca Raton Executive Airport and deposited bee droppings on planes. The camera zooms to the bee keeper, who says that bees do not fly two miles for this activity. The camera zooms to a large women who on the Boca Raton City Council. She announces, "We cannot have bees in Boca Raton. Boca Raton is a growing community."

I try to connect a monkey on the run, and the bee keeper’s with these warring honey pots in the Middle East.. New cars roll into gas stations. The front page of the Sunday New York Times boasts a photograph of a navy man hitting golf balls off the fantail of a carrier. I hear Fort Lauderdale school kids are protesting their right to wear pajamas to school because they feel more comfortable.

I must admit, "It’s a long day."

Limits

2011-02-14T10:35:00.000-08:00

Little feet run the stairs
squeals, laughter, hoots.
Fridge door slams.
School bus, prom, graduation
gone and still not gone.
Phone rings at hours not your hours.
A simple purr since you turned it down.
A little peace is good.
The TV blinks past arthritis, pills and Tide.
They challenge the walls
the arms, leg and flesh that dropped
their beauty to this earth.
“Look what you did.
The job sucks. I hate you.
He’s my true love.
It’s not just sex.”
Unremitting froth ruins
and feeds leaving home for good.
Your left eyebrow grows cynical
A wait after the rant, the heat
and maybe, if you’re lucky
“I love you Mom.”
Now sitting alone on the porch
watching the first quarter of the moon rise
you wonder at the odds
the magic of the stars
the hunger of your children’s hearts.

Weather

2011-02-06T02:44:00.000-08:00

Always something to keep us up nights.
Credit card gets maxed, the Neptune Society
offers information and the wife
still loves you even when
the TV flicks the mortgage
to your brain, to a drug
to a talking M and M, to a car
that wants sex. Something
Eisenhower didn’t foresee nor did Roosevelt
never mind this President
and you aren’t an Idol, a famous someone
nor a free agent dribbling
down the main drag to Paradise.

Friend, the moon is coming up
between the bombs and the sugar-coated dreams
slipped nicely between the lawnmower
and a thumb out for Mount Zen.
But how does one choose on a hot day
or a cold snowy night when the sky
falls white to the distant hills?
Where did it go, this song of ours?
Stand still. Wait a day, a week.
Give it a try. Listen to the click
when your eyes open and close.
Hold up your hands.

LAST NIGHT IN THE ST. PAUL HOTEL

2011-01-21T06:46:00.000-08:00

Just a few hours ago he stood at Spec’s bar
setting the Korbel to a good pour
for a fisherman from the old days.
With his free hand he waved goodnight to his wife
slipping out the door with their only boy.

The young woman from Portland stepped
into Spec's, cool, mystified by life
skin weary from too many nights of booze
and blow, eyes burning to his, small breasts
heaving whatever life is beyond what she or he can't go back to.
Let's go bowling she said right after the last customer left.

Where did time fly he thinks holding bowling balls
in each hand, steadying himself by the bed
with thin sheets and weak springs?
He imagines for a moment she just stepped out,
to a little girls room down the hall.

Why isn't he home with his computer,
talking to endless silences on the screen.
Voices without real names or expectations.
Voices he can enjoy in the comfort
of the first owned home with his beautiful wife
boy, good food and with luck, benefits.

He hooks the first bowling ball.
Aims at ten blurred pins at the end of the alley.
Takes the one two three four steps he took
in the lanes three flights over the drug store back home
What time is it? What year? Where did she go?
Are there two moons this month?
The room smells like blue and copper pennies
blood, cigarettes and snow.

Horns honk, a voice calls from the other side of the sky.
It can’t say itself. It frowns like a great noisy mushroom
shutting the outside inside out. All he hears
is the bubble and gurgle of blood bursting his body.
Veins in his hands bulge. He carefully hooks thumb in hole.
The aluminum taste of American Beer rises in his throat.

He sees his four year old son run through Lafayette Park
and jump on a swing. Oh the boy’s soft skin.
Oh how his boy’s sweet hair flickers at the back of his fragile neck.
Oh how his boy’s laughter wiggles like a wild crazy brook.
Oh how he pushes his son higher and higher on the swing
until he feels the flash of tension in his boy's brand new body
in this big blue world of sky, apartment houses, green grass and fear.

The babble of his heart turns to distant thumping footsteps
on the outside stairwell, like a Swat team marching to get him.
Like a string of men rushing the hallway, guns drawn on either
side of the cheap hotel door. His third step reaches the alley.
The bowling ball leaves his hand in a long sweep sliding
softly to wood, like thunder on the horizon, tittering down the hall
and “Please don’t wrung through telephones

He sees his second wife crushed behind the bookcase. He sees
his friends stop for dinner and drinks as he puts her in a cab
to the hospital. He sees the waiting room doctor stare straight into his eyes
and say “miscarriage”. He hears the doctor ask about the bruises on her back.
He hears himself say stairs and misunderstanding.
For half a second he stands over her bed gazing at her curly brown hair
spread on the pillow, her eyes whipped like a lost mouse.

“Where's the girls?” he shouts to the dim room.
Outside, neon blinks, red, blinks white.
Now he fishes with his boy on a Mendocino Creek
where there are rumors of boars.
Here he can teach his boy not to fear, not to run.
He can tie a fly with patience, be a man of balance and form.
Here all two hundred and forty-two pounds of him dance
the most incredible waltzes; here he secretly teaches
his son the history of the tango and the coyote.

Suddenly he sees an infant in diapers reach for the brightest
light he's ever witnessed. His turquoise blue eyes
wash free of uncertainty and doubt. The bowling ball cuts
the light, the day opens on the highway, blossoms
to a meadow with a winding creek where daisies
sway with goldenrod and rabbits sit in tall grass.
The sweet trickle of his son's laughter explodes.
He hears a voice, a bubble, a ring. A shimmering closes fast.
He smells his sour sweat, tobacco and blue white blow.
Strike, he whispers. Strike. Strike.

Weather

2010-12-29T05:57:00.000-08:00

THE GRIEF MAN

2010-12-27T07:15:00.000-08:00

He had an idea for the New Year and he knew he could make money. He rented a sky blue pickup truck and stuck signs on the doors that read:

THE GRIEF MAN
Pick Up and Hauling, Day or Night
No Grief Refused.
Reasonable Rates
Telephone 1-800 NO-GRIEF

He drove around the neighborhoods for weeks. At first people peered through their curtains or went in the house when he slowed down, but one day a small woman in her seventies waddled down her front walk and asked him if he could take the memory of her dead husband. After six years, not only did she not miss him, but he was haunting her house to the point where she couldn't find anybody else, and she had to admit he wasn't, if you asked her ninety-six year old mother, a very nice man to begin with.

The Grief Man smiled and she wrote a check. He put the dead husband memory in the truck and drove off slowly, partly out of a sense of honor and hopefully, so the rest of the neighborhood would see that he really was serious and write down his phone number.

Of course the woman got on the phone and the word spread. Within days his phone was ringing off the hook. He could barely fill his orders. A man wanted to get rid of his son's drug addiction, another man wanted to be relieved of the embarrassment of wearing a hairpiece, not the hair piece mind you, the embarrassment thereof. A child called. It seems the kid down the block got a tan cowboy hat and he got a red one when all he really wanted was an I Pad. He couldn't throw his red one away because everyone would know. Parents called in droves to rid themselves of the worry of what to do about leaving their children alone. Alcoholics called at all hours of the day and night. The back of his truck reeked with alcoholic grief going into withdrawal without people. Then there were the sick, the elderly and the fleeced, who lost their entire savings to illness or inscrutability. The Grief Man left them at the curb with cherubic smiles. A single mother wanted traffic removed. A fish cutter said he never wanted to see another fish. A fast food worker wanted the smell of French fries removed forever. A set of twin women in their forties wanted to rid themselves of their likeness.

The Grief Man took credit cards. The Grief Man bought two cell phones. He didn't need to advertise. The Grief Man could barely fill his orders. The Grief Man had to rent a warehouse.

A woman from Pembroke Pines, Florida said she was too hot. A man from Pulaski, New York said he was too cold. The Grief Man agreed to take heat and cold via overnight express. A Chicago banker wanted the entire New Year removed and the Grief Man devised a way to do it on the installment plan with balloon payments. Best he could do given such short notice. The banker agreed. A Las Cruces, New Mexico woman, wanted slipperiness taken out of satin sheets. Children with dead pets called from all over the world. A little girl from Adams, Massachusetts wanted a sun fish she caught, cleaned and buried in the back yard the summer before, to be put back in the lake. A therapist from Los Altos, California wanted to know if the Grief Man could remove the need, "To talk it all out." A man who said he represented a large government agency he refused to identify, called regarding the elimination of war and poverty, but left no return phone number.

The Grief Man got rich. He picked up a too-late Eminem record collection, sixteen truckloads of Brittney Spears supermarket Musak and one volume of poetry by Robert Service, four hundred thousand truckloads of used Harry Potter videos, a four by eight mini-storage unit full of 1960s memories and stadium-size tonnage of books about the uselessness of the sixties. The Grief man couldn't fill the number of orders for the removal of grief over the Martin Luther King and Kennedy assassinations, but he managed to put a dent in it.

So it was, on New Years Eve at 11.57 p.m. that he drove his truck up to the side of his house, full of last minute pickups ; cockroach problems, found money, winning lottery tickets, missed chiropractic appointments. He felt exhausted, but happy. He gazed wearily at the Christmas tree aglow by the fireplace in the adjoining living room. He sat down at the kitchen table and opened a beer. He watched the smoky gas escape from the top. He picked up the bottle and brought it to his lips, when the phone rang. He paused to wonder who it could be and he promised himself he would not answer. He listened to the phone ring, one two three rings; he wanted to drink his beer. He picked up the phone.

It was the little boy of the red cowboy hat. The Grief Man wanted to know what he was doing up at that hour and the boy said he'd been to church and the minister told him to be grateful for what he had instead of always wanting what somebody else had and could the Grief Man return his red hat? The Grief Man hesitated for a second before obliging. After all, it was the New Year and this was a little boy. Little boys don't always understand what, or why they do what they do.

The Grief Man looked at the nice hot chocolate that he hadn't even sipped. . Now he had to go out and get the red hat, but before he could get his coat on, the other phone rang again. The kitchen clock read 12.09 a.m. It was the New Year. The woman on the phone was crying. She said she was Susan of the Susan and Sylvia twins. She said no one recognized her without Sylvia and would he please, please return her to, at least, a shadow of her former self.

By 12.20 a.m. the phones never stopped. The fast food worker said she needed the smell of French fries on her skin to feel alive, the alcoholics wanted their drinks, parents wanted their children to go somewhere, anywhere, so they could be alone, the cold man from Pulaski couldn't stand sweat, the hot woman from Pembroke Pines couldn't stop shivering, the banker called to say the balloon payments on the removal of New Year had given him no place to begin, nor end, and the widow called to say she discovered the Grief Man's phone number on the refrigerator door and it reminded her that she needed to cry, but she couldn't remember what for, so would it be possible, to return what it was she had forgot to remember, immediately.

Thereafter the Grief Man's phone never stopped ringing as he drove frantically and forever into the night of nights, the forwarding of calls jamming his truck phone, his ears, his very life; the calls to the Grief Man waxing toward a hopeful dawn.

The Giraffe’s Christmas

2010-12-08T11:29:00.000-08:00

Whipping down 17th Avenue, in my Levis and sweat shirt, I spot a giraffe lying next to four trash cans. It’s a beautiful giraffe about four-feel tall. Someone has thrown away this giraffe. It leans against the trashcans, rear legs buckled and long neck limp and hung over. I inspect the giraffe and I see it has both eyes. Its cloth nose is sewn back on and its ears are still in place. I see small holes where the wire for its hips has worn through.

This is sinful. This giraffe needs a child to love it, even in the shape it is in, so I pick the giraffe up by its tail and neck and slip down the street, careful not to be too conspicuous. A few houses down, I decide to prop it against a tree, but I’m not sure if the people in the house have kids. I try to remember where children live. As I prop the giraffe by the tree, I hear a car bearing down on me. I scoop the giraffe and keep walking, which is good because the car pulls right into the driveway.

I remember the new baby around the corner on 6th Street where bushes line the house and the father smokes cigarettes outside the front door. It would be nice for the baby to have this giraffe, even if it doesn’t really know what a giraffe is. Father and Mother can take the baby out and show them the giraffe. Magic is what little children need. I love my giraffe, but I know what must be done.

I sneak up to the drive. A small palm tree, with spurs looms to the right and a line of hedges runs down the front of the lawn to the left. I sidle-up under the short palm tree and prop the giraffe’s neck in a spur. I stuff the body upright underneath and it stands proudly in its great giraffe jungle night. I am so pleased to know this Christmas Eve that someone will find a giraffe in their yard by morning. I slip across the street. As I walk off, I hear the baby start to cry and wonder if the baby suddenly knew the giraffe was there. I slip down 17th Avenue.

Christmas morning I wake-up in the dark. I lie in bed thinking about Laura. I’m not feeling quite myself. I get out of bed and pull the covers over Laura’s right hip. It’s raining and I worry immensely about the stuffed giraffe under the palm tree. I sit in the big chair, in the dark, looking at the Christmas tree lights drinking my coffee at 5:52 AM. I know the four-foot fuzzy giraffe outside the baby’s house is getting very wet. I am worried. I wonder if I can find a raincoat for the giraffe.

That night I walk in heavy blue sweatshirt, Levis and my black running shoes. I find the giraffe by the palm tree; its head slipped one notch down the spurs. I lift its soft head and hoist it’s behind up a notch so it remains regal. It’s dry. It has survived the rain.

Every day I check on the giraffe. Laura has gone north to work. She didn’t call last night. I sit in the early morning dark drinking my Bustelo coffee and staring at the Christmas tree perched on the bookcase. It’s almost New Years.

It’s cool, very cool and I’m up for a long walk, but that night when I start walking my heart begins to pound coming down 17th Avenue to 6th. Maybe the giraffe had been tossed out. At the corner, I glance to my right and see its left hind leg sticking onto the sidewalk and his long neck reaching into the palm tree to its full four-foot height still attached to a palm spur. My giraffe survives.

I am so pleased. Above, Orion has just passed the zenith. There’s Aldebaran and to the North, Pegasus gallops silently and where Cassiopeia should be, spotted clouds sweep the sky. I listen to sound of this night. I breathe it simply and as clearly as a glass of water. I know I shall never hear this night again.
The next morning I wake up alone. Laura is still up north. I take a pillow out to the couch where the Christmas tree is lit. I’m mesmerized by the light. I take the brown woven comforter from the back of the green chair and lie on the couch. I’m afraid I won’t sleep, but soon doze off.

That night I skirt the corner and ease-up on the house. When I reach the drive, I see the man sitting on the top step of two by the front door. He wears a dark shirt and white slacks. His hair is dark, full and curly. He stares at me. The Giraffe is gone. We stare at each other for a few seconds. I walk on. .The giraffe is GONE.

For a few days I harbor an empty place in my heart. Where could it go? Who took it? Did the man out front toss it out after Christmas? Did he know I put the giraffe by his palm tree? How could he do it? Every giraffe deserves a Christmas. This is HIS Christmas.

Laura arrives late on New Year’s Eve. When I ask her why it took her two and half hours, she goes crazy and runs around the house screaming, “It’s the driving, driving, driving. The cars! The crazies out there. On Christmas and New Years and every day. She’s shaking. I walk out to the living room and stare at the blank TV screen. She calls me back to the kitchen. We hold each other. We stay home for New Years. We sleep. I awaken early worrying about the Giraffe.

Late that afternoon I bake the small organic turkey with a dressing of spices, kumquats, sunflower seeds, mushrooms, dates, onions and carrots. I make cranberry sauce with orange peel. We hold hands before eating our dinner. We have vanilla bean ice cream dessert. This is our ninth News Year together.

I convince myself I must get on with my life without the giraffe. That night I take my evening walk. Orion is just rising and the weather is cool. I loop the neighborhood and for a nice change I slip down 17th Way toward 5th Street. A long row of one floor apartments with a connecting porch lie to my right. Trees line the sidewalk in front. When I pass the first apartment, I see a flash in my right eye. I stop.

There in the first crag of a fat Banyan tree sits the giraffe. His button eyes sparkle. Nearby, I hear a child singing.

.

RAIN

2010-11-23T09:01:00.000-08:00

Thunder . They shuddered. For a second the power failed, the room blinked dark, flashed on and Betsy laughed.

“Thank you,” he said.

Betsy walked to the window and stared into the night. “Harry?”

“Betsy.”

“For the dance?”

“For the dance.”

Harry turned off the lights and they stood in shadows. A nearby streetlight spread pouring rain before them. A song became a softness in the air.

They undressed slowly, tossing each garment to a distant dream. Then the door and for a second they stood looking at the rain. Stepping out, they turned to each other. Betsy took his hand and twirled and bowed. Harry bowed.

The night grew around the rain, the silence in-between and the two stepped in, a swing a run, a turn and Betsy tossed back her head. Harry spread his arms and drank the sky. They ran, oh how they ran in the rain.

2010-11-22T05:46:00.000-08:00

I Would Like a Pound of Piece of Mind.

So I said to the clerk in the supermarket when she asked if she could help, "I'd like a pound of piece of mind" and she said, "You cannot have my piece of mind" and I said, "I don't want YOUR piece of mind; I want ONE pound of piece of mind, whereupon a short blond woman from Connecticut with a full shopping cart, burst out laughing, and said, " “This sounds like Monty Python or Abbott and Costello."

Now John Bennett writes and wants to know if, “You would like to pound your mind to pieces?”

NO! I Want One Pound of Piece of Mind.

And John Bennett writes, "Marty Python AND Abbott and Costello."

From THE KEEPER OF WATTS

2010-11-08T06:20:00.000-08:00

I am in Boston the day after the election. We cooked America on a Teflon grid, never mind the chef’s scrambled in their own eggs somewhere between virtual and cash, Jeff might have committed suicide, yet he still pointed at my signature, the root of it all. Yesterday the Senate ate it self in the cafeteria and The House of Rep., sold their mothers at 29% and wrote off the funeral as an asset in Afghanistan?

Enough brain wash and endless meandering, this virtual clandestine thievery, ongoing until the average checkbook looks invisible to the naked eye.

I need to know where the hell, The Keeper of Watts hangs out, if he was not HUNG out. Thus I perceived the idea of calling my brother Bill the invisible accountant of God’s Little Carnival, a Unitarian with a peg leg for prayer (he stored the last supper in the peg leg). And a true loving wife that no one could ask for more.

Fours hours and twenty one minutes later I meet him outside Grolier’s Bookstore in Cambridge. He wears a red beard and a green suit with tails, chin thicker than I knew and he carries a very large cage full of Society Finches in his left hand. They scurry madly, flicker and snick here and there, but otherwise, just your American Finches accustomed to cocooning in secret malls, TV blinked living rooms and step down dens, all on sale, but then…

He holds up the cage and smiles. We stand in the small shadows of the side street just feet from the entrance to the World’s greatest poetry bookstore and to consider the election.

“Have you considered expatriatism?” he says pointing to the Society Finches, of whom he adds, “I am buying them removable tattoos, just in case.”

“I’ll take the French Fries,” I say and he nods. The French have been screaming about retirement age in the streets again. “Mustard works,” I add.

“Miriam and I just moved the trailer to Hibiscus Point.”

“Less alcohol I suppose, but how’s the fishing?”

“Haven’t cast a thought,” he grins, tapping the bottom of the cage.

The brown and white Society Finches settle in, stretching a leg or wing now and then. They seem happy to be near Harvard, but not of it.

“I’m going to find the Keeper of Watts.”

“Good luck, Harry.”

“I sit at the curb and he joins me, placing the finch’s cage between us. It is fall and the coolness blows from the main drag blows over us.
“There’s an old joke about the guy who go all around the world to find the guru who will tell him the meaning of life and he finally meets him in Tibet and looks up into the late day and says, “I have come so far, great guru. What is the meaning of life?”’ and the guru replies, “Life is a banana,’ whereupon the man almost collapses, obviously shaken and says,’ Look, I have come clear around the World. I have given up all, my wife and children my job, my sense of consumption. I am, as you can see, I’m in rags. I am cold and you tell me life is a banana? And the guru seemingly nods and says, “Do you mean it isn’t?’

“Thus I want to talk to the Keeper, not the schlepper.”

“Didn’t you hear the version of the song,” Bill says with his lighted brown eyes, a scurried rally for the insanity of day to day? It goes like this and I know you are a better poet.
Folding up the ham.
Folding up the ham
We will come rejoicing
Folding up the ham.

“Jesus saves.”

“So I take it you are not going to Tibet.

“I’ve been to the Middle East. Met a very lovely woman in Hong Kong and another in San Francisco. I met a toad, who maintains an excellent diet in today’s world. The flyburger.”

“I’ve heard of that,” my brother says, leaning his elbows on his knees and staring out at the street, where a very tiny woman wearing a hat and pink veil walks by with an iguana on a leash. The iguana wears a wool pink suit. “In fact some of the offshoots of Monsanto have considered a genetically altered flyburger to help master world hunger.”

“With genetically altered catsup no doubt.”

“No doubt.”

“So what do make of the election, flyburger, or Jesus or whomever?”

“Well, you’re the poet,” Bill says. “You know what rhymes with bits.”

“I stopped writing poetry. My boss put all the quatrains in a plastic bottle with a sealed label and renamed them, Idols for All Occasions. Not to be taken lightly. Pop them as you please. Don’t look. Swipe the card here.”

“Harry, it really is great to see you and let me tell you, these birds,” and he strokes the cage wires gently, “really appreciate your understanding even when they know you’re the subject of rancor and contempt. And we all know from out family trees that you are only a cognizant blemish in the rhetorical eulogy based on condos in Afghanistan and a Wendy Double Stack.”

“I like to think of myself with a bit more celebration and my thoughts on the Keeper of Watts? It’s a bad waltz out there and if we keep dancing, we are going to wear out the shoes until we bleed to death from the children’s feet.”

“I suggest maybe we just talk to regular people and other toads and see if they are Keepers too.”

“How about you and Miriam and I going to Florence and hanging out with Bottcelli for a few days?’

“Great idea. Keeper comes through there on occasion they tell me?”

“Then we’ll do that. Now you got me going. Want to hear the poem?”

“You got a poem? I knew you had a poem. Is it in the bookstore?

“No, not yet. It will be. Here goes.

America votes for itself and there is no net
America, weeps a man with his right hand on his heart
and his left hand up America’s dress

VOTING FOR CLOUDS

2010-11-01T13:22:00.000-07:00

One imagines this Republican dream as a long archway molded to a
tunnel, where babies, soon after walking toddle the march, winding
years behind them, stopping briefly for bright sun, small packages of
swings, picnic tables, birds, kitty cats, delightful gardens, then
back in the chute to the next harbor, the right schools, the American
dream festooned with little doors to stop and grow and pray and sing
hymns of opportunity and diplomas, the latest toys IPads, wing dings,
French fries, burgers and herculean promises of more and then back
in the tunnel to emerge, trained, ordained, armed, and maintained,
for the next unconstitutional invasion, or draconian snap at the
next scrap of soil that won’t part with their share of the pie
or don’t like the cookies we send them.

This is it. There stand the god fearing cherubic, fair-haired
specimens, soon to be draped in the flag they so dearly love,
bugled to the Arlington of choice, lost in the rush of oil
pipes pouring back the goods, Republican victory illuminated by
Sarah Palin’s,“I accept the challenge of a tough fight.”

So This Is It Elmer

2010-10-26T07:28:00.000-07:00

1

Drawers full of lotto tickets
old photos and tee shirts
you cut the Vs in
letters to vendors in Houston
who promised investments that paid off
and a watch that got lost.
What I think about most Elmer
are all the conversations, the hours
talking on the phone
or sitting across from your wheelchair
and not understanding
your garbled bubbly words.
I tried not to be impatient when I
couldn’t get it, no matter how hard you tried.
Sometimes I said I have to go
and I had nowhere to go.
On good days when I caught
you right after the meds kicked in
you’d be so lucid, so opinionated.
No end to the information you read.
Tibet, the Indians or the track.
When you were a Merchant Marine in the Philippines at sixteen.
When you put a bowl on your head for a haircut.
When we played dominoes outside with Jim
and Lorraine until it rained.
You wore a bib to catch the drool.
Deadly serious. you knew your moves.
Tongue tucked to the side of your left cheek.
Your big hands danced slowly on the blocks and Jim
at 92 added the whole board while I caught my breath.
You turned into an elf that day, got on the elevator
right in front of us and disappeared.
Lorraine said it was sweet to see you carry on.
You reappeared in the hallway and took
us to the electric piano where you played broken tunes.
Lorraine played next to you and you
banged some hot Hoagy and Stachmo
for the whole damned world to hear.

2

Tonight you lie in a coma
They say you can hear
that your pulse is low
that you’ll be gone tomorrow.
I talk on the phone with Debbie the nurse.
I’m in Florida I say.
I’ll have to be frank she says.

Here in Florida the moon’s a sliver first quarter
and Orion appears in red clouds.
Tonight your daughter arrived,
the one with red hair the nurse says.
Tomorrow the daughter who’s a nurse will come.
They are your children
and so am I.

Tonight Father Elmer
my crazy wild man
my insatiable clown
my streetwise intellectual
lost in a dopamine nightmare
that freezes thought and voice.
My father, Elmer-you are dying
and again I feel if only
I had enough cash-enough
flash-enough of something
to make your life easier
to relieve your pain.

Oh how you did go on
trying to rock the pain away
rocking in bed, rocking in your wheelchair
rocking on the john,
trying to rock it all out.
How lost I feel knowing
I won’t talk to you again.

Elmer, you’re the last bet at OTB
the last great drum in the night
the last bang on the table
the last squint in the face
the million dollar ticket.

Elmer, where ever the hell you’re off to
this time, we’ll miss you.
From here in Florida
to Norton, Mass and Jamestown, New York
the money’s at the window.
Your horse is at the gate.

October Masks Are Marching

2010-10-13T10:57:00.000-07:00

Today the refrigerators hum. The price of milk matches the price at the pump. New ice cubes clunk in all the freezers. Yesterday a man got out of prison after serving three years for throwing his black worker in a lion cage to be eaten.

Sirens wail. The limos drive candidates for froth and crowd management to the latest condo, to hoot the fervent backyard BBQs, the fallow rooms, deer heads nailed to old wood, their glass eyes witness from coonskin cap to tipping one for Jesus. The band thumps in time to the ever matching, clanking tanks rolling the sands, the hills, along the rivers from Georgia, Palestine, Darfur and Pakistan, the latter, another perpetual shrug, cash passed under the table, fists around the oil pipes from Venezuela to Afghanistan.

What does the day mean? Who will be the Vice of Whom? Not enough clout to the left. The obvious napkin and fork, the plate on the table in the house of discontent. A man of great honor refuses to bark at the door, a slick clearing of the throat to his right. Clusters, mumbles, wistfulness, the lost soldier, a blight, broken knight wanders backrooms, far from seven house splendor, a man of the people, who might have heard about the boy shot to death in the Knoxville cafeteria, now cold, stiff, the morgues of America filling with the disenchanted, the lost, the raging, addicted clots, a three winged duck in Fort Lauderdale seeking a home…but….but..

The cluttered week scatters and subsides the clap trap-the unwizardry of politics fading in quiz shows, crime repeats and soft porn until dawn. When the Summer Triangle fades the Northeast Sky, it will be Saturday and the roads, the parking lots, the giant warehouses stuffed with must-have 10 pound packs of chicken wings, wide screen TVs, Martha Stewart bedding specials, millions of chemically ripened tomatoes, Georgia peaches from New Jersey, entire mountains of cell phone possibilities, eight pound Gorgonzolas, one a day Cialus for a daily crack at the prize, will be on tap for a simple swipe of the card.

Unnamed Swiss consortium endorses Uncle Remus for sugar-free cereal ad. Federal investigators in Syracuse New York seek proof that terrorist chimpanzee was released on South Salina Street by Al Qaida. The unidentified chimp, who seems to pose no threat, and responds favorably to energy drinks and mild head stroking, appeared on an earlier video, obviously shot along the shores of Onondaga Lake near the now abandoned steel mill. A small group of protesters lined the Northeastern corners of East Genesee Street and Salina during rush hour waving banners that read, APES ENOUGH.

Hurricane Paula misses Texas. She blows a kiss from Merida. Northern Oregon thinks twice about Low Flow toilets. Amazon rain forest deforestation rises 67% and the U.S. Mint boasts an Alaskan State quarter portraying a grizzly with salmon in mouth. VP Candidate Palin disavows need to preserve polar bear as endangered species. Palin buys a whale..

Soon to be released film, “Manure” invites field of reviewers. San Antonio, Texas Independent book publisher in serious condition at local hospital after choking on a live squirrel while promoting memoir, IT BEATS ME by latecomer San Francisco poet, Lucifer, Stantmaker. Credit card debt soars. Bird seed distributor offers in-flight toilet paper dispensers for parakeets.

Bomb explodes in Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad. Heads line roadways in protest. Putin snickers at the World ATM. Condoleezza Lice sells Arab Cookie Jars to Israel entrepreneurs.
Boiled egg in Hollywood, Florida is said to possess a shadow of Jesus Christ in its yolk. A neighborhood hen is caged suspect. Local church claiming virgin birth seeks to preserve shell as historical evidence.

It’s Sunday, a sodomy of icons stamped on baseball caps, TV shows and panties, T-shirts, shampoo, whatever you need to be owned by. Slip on the Bible of your dreams. Get real. The organ plays and for a few short minutes, perhaps America fakes attentiveness, somewhere between the wafer and the wine, the signs, the blessings, perhaps a sacred universe, a digression to quieter times, of ruthless crucifixions, promises of renewal, awakening, sitting in the pews, restless, for something beyond the weekend off, and the howling, drooling, speculating, electrically magnified news, that wheedles, and gnaws at the remotes, the hearts, the very strings of the soul.

From…The Zuni Motel

2010-09-26T17:45:00.000-07:00

Outside the restaurant, the New Mexico sun flat out baked Jack Fry. What the hell was he doing in New Mexico? And what the hell was he doing with Belinda? No money, no nothing. Listening to Martin? Christ almighty! With a kid that wasn't even his. Oh, my! True love. He stood in the restaurant parking lot with hands on his hips, staring into the hazy afternoon. What ever happened to Rosie? Whatever happened to the dream of Rosie?

Jack was too short to play, but he played anyway. It was the year he had his second pair of racing skates. Everything was being investigated, executed, or couped over. The Democrats stuck it to the Democrats. Somebody put Ike in a dirigible and floated him halfway around the convention center. He smiled and became a Republican. It was a great year for margarine, mink coats, fixed tax fraud and the feeding of many pigeons. Mitch Miller blew smoke over the 78s and "Big Jay" McNeeley blew teenagers right out of L.A. "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." Johnny Ray tore his clothes off and waited twenty-seven years to be booked at the Rio Nido Inn in Rio Nido, California. He was a smash!

Round and round the rink went Jack Fry, every afternoon and night. Faster and faster, the blades flashed under the floodlights and later at Boll Field, the big field with the little cabin that had hot chocolate and a pot bellied stove that burned pine, Fry talked to a girl, who talked like gravel and her name was Alice, she was a Catholic and she wore yellow mittens and white figure skates, had curly blond hair under a green wool cap tied under her chin with strings of tiny bells. Fry raced around the ice listening to organ music and holding hands with the girl who talked like gravel. He walked her home past the Italian American Club by the railroad tracks, where the carnival came every August and parked the big flatcars with marvelous red and yellow wagons and trucks. And kissed her, oh her face was cold and her lips were flat; it was her first kiss and his first kiss; it was so cold the snow squeaked beneath his boots and all he heard was the thunderous beating of his heart.

That summer he directed a show about skeletons and oranges on his front porch. He called it, THE FUN SHOW. Nobody came and he watched sadly from the sidewalk as his friends kinked and gyrated, waffled and giggled in the 88 degree afternoon. Directed a murder mystery for his sixth grade class that fall. Stabbed his girlfriend six times with a wooden knife he made in his cellar. Left some clues. Caught the culprit. Solved the crime. The whole class clapped; the teacher clapped. Broadway was only a smile away.

Eva Peron shrunk and Elizabeth Taylor stood on a Riviera beach sipping through a straw while the Klu Klux Klan flogged a housewife in North Carolina. Arnold Shuster blew the whistle on Willie Sutton and somebody got Shuster. They sure did. Jersey Joe Walcott took it bad in the thirteenth, the heat got Sugar Ray in the fourteenth, Nixon relaxed with Checkers, and Harry Krajewski campaigned for the Poor Man's Party with a pig on a leash. It was the year of pubic hair, lilacs and a hint of sweat to come. Nobody was breast fed and everybody ate 42 hot dogs that year.
One morning he woke up to snow and there was no heat in the bedroom. He rolled over and looked into the wooden radio. Jack Fry decided he had to find Rosie. He didn't even know what she looked like.

Ed Selby’s daughter, Leisha had him going. Ed stored refrigerators in his back barn for years. He had a freezer full of chickens, peas, corn and pork chops. All part of an empire, a furniture business he built from scratch, the remnants of a rag business his father ran from a cart for forty years.

Jack Fry discovered if he climbed up on a refrigerator box by the window in Selby's barn, he was eye level with Leisha's bedroom window. Leisha stood by her bed on the second floor, pulling her white top off and tossing it on the bed. She fingered her brand new breasts. She fondled her nice pink nipples. She slid out of her kitten yellow panties and lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. She stroked her brand new self slowly, slowly, slowly. Fry kept himself well occupied, except on the nights of a new fallen snow.

Yes, Jack Fry had to find Rosie. Once he leaped on that bus with his suitcase full of already worrisome ideas about "life," which was an easy word then, he knew, he just knew. When a pretty brunette, who sat next to him got off, dragging her suitcases to "home," probably a neatly trimmed lawn hugging a ranch house with aluminum siding, just outside of Kingston, he thought she was crazy.

He knew the bus station cafeterias of Jell-O and tuna salad sandwiches, fried eggs and bad coffee taken cream and sugar, were on the route to a new SOMEWHERE. He sat at the far end of a table with one eye on the clock, it being a ten minute stop, knowing ice skates and a drunken, howling old man in a nightmare he hoped to forget, held little hope. He believed in humping trees, grass between his toes, fine mysteries and danger. Only for the instant the burned coffee shot through his veins at an hour he was somewhere he'd never been at an hour like that before, did he sense, that what he might have left behind, was himself and that seemed to be perfectly all right.

From Reel Cinema-If You Like That-Aunt Jane

2010-09-01T09:55:00.000-07:00

As we pulled away I looked back and saw Aunt Jane waving from the front window. I saw her in August staring down the block past the garbage cans, kinked and bashed at the curb, her fingers resting on the sill of the half open window. A light breeze tickled the ends of the white curtains. She was thinking about Uncle Mark back when he called on Sunday afternoons in his blue pinstriped suit, his already thin black hair and his polished black shoes. He drove up through Albia and out to the country, and back along Crooked Lake where they stopped to dream, back when his eyes were icy blue in the lake's reflection, when she was secretly afraid, but so in love. She listened to the long-and-ever June bug harping through the heated afternoon. From time to time, a fish rose on the lake and she watched the concentric circles ripple to nothingness. They might build a cabin up there some day, in a couple of years, say 1925. Aunt Jane raised her arm to wave, perhaps to call to him, but he was gone and her hand that was a fist just a second before, settled in a brush of fingers along the folds of her dress and the silent room took over.

Research

2010-08-11T05:11:00.000-07:00

Philosopher Plumb wrote on August 10, 2010

The species is often considered endangered, but scientific research has found that Zither Spooned wrens attach themselves to leech critters and form bonds that are best described as orni-ejaculatory emissions predicated on technology recently made available. It is said that removal of the escape button renders androgynous behavior.

Addendum added:

Furthermore, said creatures often cohabitate with unauthorized pythons, who if the truth be known, were hired by the administration to spy on the orifices of all substandard species, those being defined as for the most part taxable in both the monetary and philosophical sense. This is a snake-lined province, but the orni-species gives sensual credence to all those with feels of erectile ennui.

Letter Received-August 11, 2010

Dear Philosopher Plumb,

Thank you for the epistle on the orni-ejaculatory emissions of those who attach to leech critters. Very interesting scientific research. Will the escape button be left intact to eliminate androgynous behavior? This I would recommend.

With regard to these serpents who spy on the orifices of substandard species, it would appear that the orni-species serves dual function, the Mata Hari of the animal kingdom, so to speak, bringing sensual delight to one and much information to another. Useful in more ways than one.

Please keep me informed of any future findings on this very interesting phenomenon.

Yours Truly,
The Nurse of Naturalism

Reply to Nurse of Naturalism-August 11, 2010

Dear Nurse,

It is with great honor that I share my findings with said persona. Given the oblong success of the species, your wealth of knowledge bridges the understanding needed to harmonize such indigenous creatures, which, given the opportunity might fornicate with the wrong birds, or crocodiles given the opportunity, but this withstanding, it is with grace and gratitude, that you bear such understanding.

I shall with much admiration share more of my findings.

However, I think it a matter of considering the situation as a crock, if not at least the absence of fortitude and honor. This is not to negate the question, but rather to implicate the notion that all that probes is not fecund, or in another light, all that leap do not land, but then from the Zitter Wren's perspective, a small entry is much safer and keeps crows from the roost.

Philosopher Plumb

America Loses a Few Teeth

2010-07-20T09:54:00.000-07:00

According to the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Rachel Fernandez, a pot bellied pig and “full fledged member” of the Fernandez-Fleites family of Miramar, Florida, who died after dental surgery, “lay under her favorite pink Princess blanket…a sweet smile on her lips, is the first swine in the cemetery.”

So who cares about a $500 billion orgy at Goldman Sachs, or a governmental takeover of the banks? This isn’t Venezuela. This is America, a one big hooray with a cruise to the ATM and beyond. What spiritual revelation when a woman in Edgewater, Florida gets knocked out by a leaping dolphin. Why isn’t the dolphin a friend? He’s on TV. You can swim with dolphins (for a little cash) but as with other wild creatures, don’t feed them.

Unfortunately, the amphibians hulking the governmental shores these days prompt financial cartoons parlayed in flotsam and jetsam while Congress stands at the edge of the aquarium voting for Ahab to harpoon the game.

One can wiggle, froth and blow off simple love, the little pig that died at 15 months in a human dress and sweet embrace. It does bear faith in earlier pleasures like the pet rock, a wig on the bald, and the spirit of America. More so, the pig belies the ease, the mask we have become, not a hurtful creature at birth, our friend; this metaphor is like the talking M and M, the sweet bears selling toilet paper to the tune of the Hallelujah Chorus with a wild hug for more.

No surprise when the “dolphins” turn up at the party, the back door of your local broker, bank or get off course and knock the bottom out of the boat that is you, all in the name of democracy freedom and terror. These gorgeous creatures’ radar spins irregularly these days. But, we can’t stop tinkering with the wiring.

One has to feel sorry for the pig, or maybe the “family” who put the pig in the dental chair for a mere $2000 with little chance of return. The truth is, Rachel Fernandez is not the first swine buried in a cemetery.

Bastille Day

2010-07-13T20:08:00.001-07:00

I drive into the VA clinic
parking lot at 8.43 a.m. Friday
just as WTMI radio announces
Bastille Day, time for the Marseillaise
I whip around the lot four times
squeeze into my parking spot.
and the glory that was France
fills my small car.

I slip the car in Park and pump my arms
singing what little French I know.
I’m marching past the Arc de Triomphe
when in the left corner of my front
windshield I spot a blue pickup
with the words Blue Angel hooked
to the top of the front license plate.

A chiseled seventy plus cowboy
with straw hat and sunglasses sits in the cab
holding a long plastic tube
and I stop marching in my car.

This cowboy shoves the tube down his tracheotomy
with the gauze around the metal
jams the tube past his gone larynx
sucking up phlegm and snot.
His head lurches. He gags.
He wretches. He sucks up
war, cigarettes and time.

The Marseillaise breathes victory all around.
This whole pass in review marches by.
The sun beats on, the cowboy
puts his tube away and wipes his chin.
I turn off the radio.
We turn off our ignitions
and get out to stand
in line again.

Friday Morning at the Deli

2010-07-08T09:47:00.000-07:00

Looks like Friday’s quiet,” I say.
Larry of the red and green Italian Donegal
adjusts his wireless glasses, leans an elbow
on the display case at eye level between
mozzarella and salted mozzarella and says
“Don’t give me no trouble.”
“What trouble? Who gives trouble?” I say
“A half pound of red peppers
a half pound of mixed olives
the Gorgonzola crumble and I’ll go
for the mild Italian sausage, two please.”
“You would,” he says and I watch his hand dive
into the glass case and flip up two nice ones.
“What else?” and he sets them on the scale
steps back and presses the buttons.
Up come the red numbers 1.2 pounds $3.71, then $6.47.
“I’ll go for the two pound pork loin, the one in the back.”
“You eating it tonight or freeze wrap?”
“Regular is fine,” I say glancing over at Marietta
the clerk with pulled back black hair who waves
“ Good to see you. Where you been?”
She flirts a hair and she knows, I know.
We talked about her high cholesterol last time in.
Today she goes back to the provolone cheese customer
a short woman with gray hair and tiny hands.
Do I need meat pie, grape leaves, stuffed cabbage, no
I’ll make my own I think while
Larry rolls the pork in white paper, tags it
and sets it on the counter top with both hands
“Thank you for the trouble,” he says and I say, that’s fine.
Larry’s pale blue eyes recede to the customer numbers.
“Twelve?” he shouts? “Thirteen?” and he’s gone.

I stick my sausage, pork and the rest in the green basket
move to the pasta aisle, the rice, the capers
the frozen sauce to my right and down
past the bake shop to the right of the register.
“The engagement's off,” I say to Nancy from Queens
and she laughs as she always does.
“See how you are?” she smiles.
Her small teeth delight the bright morning.
She rings up the meat, cheese, two tomatoes, sweet onion
brussel sprouts, Romaine lettuce the fat bunch of basil.
I’ll make pesto for a month and then some.
“Yeah, I see, but, it’s true love,” I say.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” and pressing the bills and the change in my hand
she slides the plastic bags my way and we wink
without winking and I step outside
into another good day.

Washington March-May 1969-Recall

2010-05-29T08:23:00.000-07:00

Protest-Written 1992

We war in Bosia, the Cubans beat themselves to death worrying about Castro while they get their balls cut off at home. Bobbitt pays his bills with a sewn-on penis, the Haitians get nothing for nothing, the Jamaicans wait table, the Huizengas of the world invest in solid waste to say the least. O. J. Simpson slices up history and wants to talk about it, paid per view, and Pizza Hut puts pepperoni and cheese in the crust. America sits numb as a Klondike Bar while the world heats up the ovens for another go. Kids all over everywhere whack off momma's head, shoot Papa for a trip to Disneyworld and if you don't like that, cancel your NO Fault, NAFTA contract and lease a car.

I read stories of wandering crooks and I watch jobless kids hooking in Holiday Park. I try to imagine some reason for driving up and down I-95, in small wars of little people gone crazy in a swirl of defeat, and broken brains. What happened to us?

1969. I see the swirling day under big sky Washington Monument, how the hill fills with sweeps of beards and hoots and soft sweet songs of somewhere new. All day sweat sticks to us like new dawn. All day we wait and listen to the speeches. Coretta King slices the air with cool oration of where she's been, suffered and how we're here because of wars over there and wars to be fought at home.

We eat what we can in the slippery grass running up the hill in the heated day of a war that can't seem to end, and I'm afraid because I'm still in the Navy, that a camera will catch my military haircut. The FBI and CIA takes pictures. The screaming little guy in the teeshirt next to me could be a narc, a pig.

All day we wait. Linda's tired but willing, her long face and longer red hair pushed back over her shoulders, her ten year old daughter, Michelle excited, barely knowing why, wants to be with me and wants to know something besides endless treks from one husband or boyfriend to the next. Her little picket fence smile is full of hope and grit as we swim along with the swirly crowds up and around and the endless swaying hot dog vegetarian day runs clear to the Lincoln Monument.

All day the excitement grows; all day we hope for what we're not sure of, a stop to the evil war, the war that "over there," the war that has one ship wondering what the other did, the Westpac, COM 4, Westmoreland's water buffalo counts, South Vietnamese abandoning battle stations to stage their own coups five miles away so the American troops get cut to pieces by their own mines trying to recapture Catholicism in the mud. All day long the guns pump, recoil big orange smoke rings into the flashy newsy nights. TVs in all the wardrooms and officers clubs from Hon Matt to Saigon, blink a story choreographed in teenage boy sweat and blood fed buy NBC and little Dan Rathers poking their noses down gun barrels and trenches for the sometimes made up battles with medals.

We wait by the big bump Washington Monument reaching to a sky that no longer holds real air, wait for the dark, the hand-held candle threaded through an ever bobbing hungry desolate night. We march down off the hill to Pennsylvania Avenue toward the dome, to the curve in the road, the S that sweeps to the White House, the candles forming a stream, a poetry, the hum the silence overcoming us, the lights in the White House steady, the windows empty, the thundering silence lost in that breathtaking night the President isn't home and won't come out of his so-big White House ever, as long as we all shall live.

Now it all seems so long ago and these days, hope knocks on the door with its hand out. How can we cope? How do we detach? All the soldiers have gone home to fight another war. We dream of the hushed night of candles. We hear the anthems echo down the hall. We wait for the phone to ring. Now I wonder where Linda and Michelle went. I stand under Orion on a one in a million cold Florida night. I wonder what have we learned?

The Tool Shed

2010-05-18T05:01:00.000-07:00

From House in the Attic

I walked back through the house to the tool shed. Wasn't that where a man was supposed to hide out? A blue drop cloth draped the tractor mower; the leaf blower had been detached and stored in the back corner next to the snow blower attachment. I stared at the snow blower chute. I stepped up and took a close gander. Standing over the blades didn't frighten me, but I was deeply respectful. The blades looked so benign, so cold, so still. But I felt like they were alive and just waiting for me to crank up the tractor. I imagined the feeling of my whole arm grinding up in that machine. I heard the blades jam for second, then the thunk, the infinitesimal hesitation, the blade winning, the crushed gore sensation, the blood and tendon and yellow fat shot into the new falling snow. I saw my arm in the chute all the way to the elbow and felt the flash terror that no one would come and get me out. I remembered the white heat and this mess that was luckily only my hand hanging in front of me. I held my broken hand with my good one and listened to the wind and the silence between the wind. I put my tongue on the roof of my mouth to control the fear. In a few seconds it worked.

I looked at the hanging tools, the cans of lubricating oil, neetsfoot oil, WD 40, hanging paintbrushes, a small American flag stuck in an empty mayonnaise jar. It had forty-nine stars. I smelled oiled machinery and leaves, the dank cement floor, the faint odor of grass and fertilizer. How many people have stood in all the tool sheds everywhere? Portifino, San Miguel Allende, Odessa? Men who escaped the house, to fix, to screw, to bolt, to mow, to shovel, to fertilize something. I heard the little pops of the oil can pressed at the bottom, the slurpy thick gush pumped into the little holes in all the tiny corners of all the lawnmowers and moving parts in my life. There was a little spill on the cement floor, and a toss of sawdust on the spill. Hand pushed lawnmower blades clicked through long summer, whirred in the air over the edge of the terrace, balked in the rocky back lot. Invisible June bugs bore a steady song through the heavy air, and never ending grass kept right on growing. Teenagers romped in their new bodies, raced through the warm nights fueled by super-electric hormones, the fresh smell of swimming and hot dogs. The chatter and shriek of their dreams echoed across all the little afternoon ponds and lakes and swimming pools everywhere. How magical tool sheds are, I thought. How forgiving and deadly, how seemingly cool even in summer when the spider dances its eternal ballet, wraps its fresh flies in a mad whirl of deadly ribbon along the window panes, and up into the dark beams. Now, the tool shed was leaf quiet. Cobwebs covered the window and outside I saw a small blue rubber ball lying in the wet February grass. Beyond that, birch trees. I heard the wind race low along the lawn. It rushed right at me. I turned my head and it raced off. I cupped my left hand in my right held it until both hands felt like they were the same temperature. I felt closer to home for the first time in years.

America

2010-04-25T17:57:00.000-07:00

I saw something burning on my chest
and I tried to brush it off
with my right hand
but my arm wasn’t there
the soldier said.

Today

2010-04-18T10:48:00.000-07:00

For Kicknosway

Dawn slips a tight grip.
takes the fist from the heart.
A late half moon cuts west
a crow or two, wrens and mockingbirds later.
It's a day, a bang of promise if only.
In the near distance, voices.
Is this a hoot or yesterday's whisper?
The walls say nothing.
You sip coffee, go over the news.
A few more dead.
A bomb in last week’s cereal ad.
Ms. Nipsy won Idol Monster of Tomorrow.
She smiles from the page.
Then it's a shower, the fix to survive.
You dress for said occasion.
The red carpet sweeps just
below the prefrontal lobes.
You step out and the sun nods.

North Beach Letter

2010-04-06T06:26:00.001-07:00

Upon hearing of the death of the Poet, Bob Kaufman

Green and Grant. Green and Grant. Somebody said, Green and Grant. Why is it? Why? How come every time I get to Green and Grant there's Bob Kaufman crossing Green and Grant. Is it because Bob Kaufman is always crossing Green and Grant? Is it because he walks around day and night and Green and Grant part of the tour? Is it because I only cross the block when he's crossing? Or is it because he's always there when I'm there. Or am I there when he's there?

Bob Kaufman crosses Green and Grant for the last time. So said the news. Bob Kaufman returned from silence in the Seventies. He'd been gone a long time. He came back as T.S. Eliot. He came back as T.E. Lawrence. He walked the neighborhood saying, "T. E. Lawrence, that's it!" He went to the Times Theater and came back as the Owl and the Pussycat. He said he'd been around the World on the 41 Union. He snapped, turned inside out and came back.

I don't know if people who say they'd die for poetry actually plan it. As Bob Kaufman said, "Everything I planned came as a complete surprise." I have a tendency to believe him. Whatever the reason, he moved through us all, this wiry craziness wound among us, a clip of how we all come and go inside; a slip, a turn, the vague comprehension that what we do is too much, or not enough. Yes, he made us painfully aware of how far one can go. He challenged us with silence; the inappropriate enigma, the madness we emanate only to find out too late, that behold, it's true. Not many cross that line and those that do, come back with a limp or a torn parachute. But wait, true madness that doesn't want the whole blanket puzzles us. What is this? Who is in there?

I must confess I don't know why people do what they do. Heaven forbid, that I should know why they write. I write because I don't know what the hell else to do. Because I truly feel empty when I don't, or can't. Oh, but we're talking DIE! Here's a man of internal hieroglyphics. Here's a man the scholars and "Beats" tried to turn inside out and read. They sat him in a chair and took notes, while his words swept the streets on secret scrolls. All along the avenues he walked, the dark craziness of us all, the living haunt, the escape from the mirror that is not us.

We all take our buses across town and back. Some of us stay and muse. Some settle in for the long winter, some decide it will always be spring. Some are summer to begin with. Some of us become the Fall, the nostalgia at the top of the hill in the timeless wind where we reflect upon the dream. Or we realize the dream isn't a dream, the executioner has stepped in the ring and all the cards have been played. Then we can mail our picture to the public relations man or forget it. Or we keep what we learned and forget we could have been that dream walking along the avenues, crazily dreaming of a better world. Perhaps we are that, perhaps not, hopefully a little of both, in the grand trajectory we spin for ourselves.

Oh how he walks, with all the human things we had, have,
all the give and take, slipping off down the block, in a bouncing,
sliding, exciting time, when all the dreams are big ones and we say
it again. "Every time I cross Green and Grant, there's Bobby.”

A Matter of Truth

2010-04-01T08:11:00.001-07:00

An article Garrison read in a magazine confiscated from Cabin 3 on the magic practices of the Azande in the Sudan, sent him to temporary ecstasy. He immediately drove out and bought a scrawny New Hampshire Red hen from a farmer, one of eighty-two emaciated birds the man free-ranged on a quarter of an acre just north of Pine Key

A short time after midnight, Garrison heard Sweeney banging around out back. The cab door of the semi slammed a couple of times and Sweeney went into a coughing jag that seemed to go on forever. Sweeney gagged and spit and carried on out there until Garrison thought he might have bought the chicken in vain. Suddenly it went quiet.

Garrison took the frazzled hen out of the double-thick shopping bag and untied her legs. She was an old hen that couldn't cough up an egg in a hormone factory and Garrison reasoned rightly that he'd paid a buck more than he should have. But then, he didn't want to ask Fry for one of his. He flat didn't want to explain why he wanted it. He took the popcorn bag off the counter and fed the bird on the rug. The bird went crazy and Garrison got more excited by the second.

When he was sure the hen had ingested enough, he began asking it the question. Underneath it all, he was ashamed of himself, but he had to know. "Did Spring do it with Sweeney?" He tried the subtle approach. "Did that nice little man out back of this motel, take advantage of my beautiful Spring?" Garrison watched the feasting bird for any sign of faltering, but he knew the chicken would eat popcorn long after they stopped being hungry. Keeping that in mind, he emptied the bag on the floor and assumed a more direct approach.

"Chicken, did my Spring do jump on that truck driver?"

The hen went on eating, which led Garrison to believe maybe he was wrong, and if he was wrong, a great emptiness stood just around the corner. What would he do if he was wrong?

He had visions of going home after his mother and father died and sitting on the front porch rocking away to total madness, his body finally rotting right there in the chair, then going to bone and clacking along with the rocker until the sun and the buzzards ate every last trace, until all that remained was the porch, a pile of gray dust and the infinite screaming silence that held no peace.

The hen kept on eating. "Did Spring have intercourse with Billy?" Garrison waited a full twenty minutes. According to what the ritual said; if the answer was NO, the bird would walk right off, but if YES, if indeed Spring had done it, the hen was due to keel over at any second. Garrison sat down and opened a beer. Maybe the hen didn't understand him.

"How about it, hen? Did my sweet Spring have sexual relations with a truck driver?"

The hen stalked the motel lobby and even went so far as to poop under the wall clock. Ordinarily, Garrison would have strangled the bird at that point. The hen stopped pecking at the spots in the rug and shook herself. Could he be wrong? The hen preened. She looked up at the blinking, silent TV with disinterest. Finally she waddled over to the computer table next to the counter and settled into the carpet beneath it.

Garrison continued to drink beer, his adrenalin so high he thought he'd scream. The damn chicken was ok! It had to be. It just had to! He leaned over in the chair and checked out the hen. Her eyelids fell lazily, but no...No, she wasn't dying. The book must have been right. No bird could survive that much rat poison.
He stepped over to the fridge for another beer. When he returned the hen hadn't budged, so he went over and spooked her. She flew at the front door, squawking and flapping and carrying on until Garrison wished to hell he hadn't done it. She flew up on the counter scattering papers everywhere. He had to get that bird out of the office.

Garrison opened the front door and hooked the screen door open. When he turned around the bird was gone. He peered over the front desk. Somewhere he heard papers rustling, but no hen.

It took a full three minutes to find the hen upside-down in the wastebasket, her yellow feet running a curious marathon up the metal sides, coming to a slow wretched finish along the newspaper weather report calling for snow showers and a low of 29 degrees in higher elevations, while the bird's head flopped over a Battle Creek story, COOL CAT FREED FROM SODA MACHINE.

Now Time

2010-03-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

Is the clock ticking off heads
Seconds to none
The minute staked to drugged noon
The hour of change
When no one has any to spare
A day of dogwatchs
Because nobody can keep it up
A month of falling and
Everyone’s punishing
The year of the Pig and
Everybody wants a bite
A decade of menopause children
And a century of hair
That’s rapidly falling out.
It’s soul time with steeled hands twisting
It’s Mother Mountain Time for one last breath
It’s Sleep Time on the timeless concrete
It’s Cold time
Bad time
Hate time
Rape time
Steal time
Kill time
Dead time
And everybody has
Their own hot excuse for running away with the good times
It’s a trip with no destination
A space to avoid
A lie down and mind fuck time
A rundown grandfather time with the pendulum still swinging
Almighty Spring is choking on its roots
Summer’s a social disease
Fall is coming nuts down
Winter will screw us to death
We’ll wake up to our bone’s alarm
And start all over again
With me time
My time
Tick time
Took time
Tock time
Tick time
Tick time
Tick time

Roll Out the Barrel. We’ll All Have Barrels of Funds

2010-02-25T05:44:00.000-08:00

The Glass-Steagall Law erected barriers between banks, brokerages and insurance companies in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash. This New Deal reform cancelled by Clinton (he added NAFTA to the corporate lunch and the Bush Administration went on steroids) reflects a major shuffle with a handful of trump cards disappearing under the table.

Solid business used to be the goal. Today, running the show into the sewer and begging for a handout is the game. With auditing practices complex enough to fool the fox in the hen house, with CEOs who let the dice roll instead of maintaining a safety valve for investors and stock holders, we’re “led” to the alters, the wars, the echoes in the mall and the silence between national drumbeats so thin the music doesn’t even play.

The loan sharks are in the bedroom. Its din din for Jesus and the cash. This Wallow Land of epistemic opacity and eulogistic sound bytes, runs up the tab, bears arms for oil, or sits under the Congressional flagpole waiting for the next job, the next hurricane, the next foreclosure, the next shoe to drop from Uncle Sam’s never ending slog to corporate victory.

What an orgy. Create the crisis. Demand payback for years of economic polymorphic perversion. Streamline the hedge funds with no promise of return. Add Presidential power at the Congressional Dance Hall this week. We’ll hold our breath while the global financiers pant for more. In this flushed out game of drop the soap, perhaps a worldly body condom is in order.

Zippo the Moon Clown

2010-02-15T07:53:00.000-08:00

If the western sky held promise that morning, one might have been encouraged. A single great white heron passed under the last half of the moon just before dawn. Another morning in Paradise; the courage to drive on, or at least to the pump. But wait.

Pressing issues held at bay somewhere between all night movies and Paid for Programs, secretly wrapped in drive-through McMuffins and see through napkins, an ageless crush, a thrust, egos and splash. If only we could get it, whatever the hell it was, and it was-to own, steal, lend, bend the market, slip a fid, cash in, move to Dubai, Maine or “whatever”; stuff the affair in a suitcase. One man’s floozy was another’s gift certificate.

America watches the screen for the prize night after night; boinked, mesmerized,, the hooting pundits shone on themselves, berating, amending, frivolous laughter, a chewing unending sound byte staring down their own cameras. The screw that might turn the tide, the real meaning of id and the subservience or intellect, the jokester, the fool, tucked carefully between a Mercedes, cologne, the drama of drugs to keep it up, cool it down, pad the calamity, thin the mind and belly for the price of a gallon, intramuscular please, a song to remember, the, the election up for grabs depending upon whose hand slips up America’s skirt at the moment.

“Good Fences mean good neighbors”. Who said that? That integrity basked in towers and long reflecting pools between Lincoln and Washington. If we just stood on that faithful hill, that braved spaciousness we would own, or at least claim, but alas the Island in Maine had loosed the bad meat in Texas, the crippled, the superlative, the world grabbing hustlers who sold guns, said no, who played the Star Spangled Banner on their heart pumps and waved judiciously . On with the folly in the folds of the cheeks, the grins, to any and everyone. Oh the TVs blinked somewhere between aghast, awe and chest thumping; the children awash in flash, ready or not, in line for the next rocket, the bombed out skulls that cooked them. Tampons ruled, or was it a slow leak in Paradise, the polar bear leaped for a chunk of life, college students stared down dim hallways called gone, geezers rolled eyes of despair and I told ya, a little Viagra in the medicine chest, the gunning down of Kennedys, MLK, but an echo in their hearts.

It ripped on. Real life drama flashed the screen. Who’s real? Who’s not? Step up to the mike. Let’s hear the cracked tenor kid, the soprano squirrel. Beat each other senseless with bamboo sticks on a strange rehearsed island. Click it. Text it, phone it, bleed on the floor, gamble the rest, fall in love with your own particular discontent. We have a cure.

Ask them. They talk about change. Watch the candidates march the stage from Oshkosh to Hawaii, the University of Ding Bunny to the Pre-School of Lulu—they are freedom. You know. Like that. Wasn’t it the famous astronaut Edgar Mitchell who said, that one of the first things you discover when you enter outer space, “God is not up.” Yes, the sun rose in the East. The moon disappears. The rush of traffic thins the day.

America Loses a Few Teeth

2010-02-04T10:39:00.000-08:00

According to the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Rachel Fernandez, a pot bellied pig and “full fledged member” of the Fernandez-Fleites family of Miramar, Florida, who died after dental surgery, “lay under her favorite pink Princess blanket…a sweet smile on her lips, is the first swine in the cemetery.”

So who cares about a $400,000.000 orgy at AIG, or a governmental takeover of the banks? This isn’t Venezuela. This is America, a one big hoorah with a cruise to the ATM and beyond. What spiritual revelation when a woman in Edgewater, Florida gets knocked out by a leaping dolphin. Why isn’t the dolphin a friend? He’s on TV. You can swim with dolphins (for a little cash) but as with other wild creatures, don’t feed them.

Unfortunately, the amphibians hulking the governmental shores these days prompt financial cartoons parlayed in flotsam and jetsam while Congress stands at the edge of the aquarium voting for Ahab to harpoon the game.

One can wiggle, froth and blow off simple love, the little pig that died at 15 months in a human dress and sweet embrace. It does bear faith in earlier pleasures like the pet rock, a wig on the bald, and the spirit of America. More so, the pig belies the ease, the mask we have become, not a hurtful creature at birth, our friend; this metaphor is like the talking M and M, the sweet bears selling toilet paper to the tune of the Halleluiah Chorus with a wild hug for more.

No surprise when the “dolphins” turn up at the party, the back door of your local broker, bank or get off course and knock the bottom out of the boat that is you, all in the name of democracy freedom and terror. These gorgeous creatures’ radar spins irregularly these days. But, we can’t stop tinkering with the wiring.

One has to feel sorry for the pig, or maybe the “family” who put the pig in the dental chair for a mere $2000 with little chance of return. The truth is, Rachel Fernandez is not the first swine buried in a cemetery.

Love Forever

2010-01-21T07:31:00.001-08:00

He only sneezed when he smoked. She waved her hands at the air. She winced. She opened windows. She thickened her tongue. She grabbed her throat. She feigned vomiting

He went on with it. On with smoking. On with loving her. He watched her cross the room and try to open the window. She grunted when it stuck.

She jammed her forearm under the window and grunted. Not about to ask him. She pushed it up a third. It stuck. She pulled back the curtains on the other window. She looked into the parking lot at the side of the apartment house. A man in a brown suit rummaged through the trunk of a brown Altima. She adjusted her red-framed glasses.

"Is the chicken organic?"

"It's organic," he said flatly, his eyes staring into the cigarette smoke rising around him. "You don't need organic, but if you think you need organic."

"Do you want me to have a hysterectomy?"

He flicked some ashes in the empty milk carton on the kitchen table. "No, I don't want you to have a hysterectomy."

He picked up the coffee cup. The cup had a crack that ran just under the handle and off into a blue flower. Would it break with the heat? If it broke with the heat and splashed down the front of him, would he have an excuse to move out?

"I don't want you to get sick," he said. "I don't care if we don't have children."

She eyed him warily. "You say that. You always say that, but you always ask me. Every month you want to know. And you don't seem glad when it comes."

It was due any second now. This time, yes. A twitch. A rush. He smoked. He felt her backing away, her face turning sour, just hating the smoke.

He heard her zipper. He looked up from his cigarette. Her lips were wet. He heard her pants button pop. Then the zipper. Sheer panic rose in his stomach and shivered through his chest. He wanted to run. He loved her so deeply. He was afraid she'd leave the room. Do it, he said to himself. She must have felt it. Yes, he knew, that she knew.

She zipped up and went to the refrigerator. "Do you want some organic chicken?"

Plumbers Delight?

2010-01-11T10:51:00.000-08:00

It all sounds so rational, the bailout, the slight increase in interest rates, borrowing to meet payroll, mortgage, recession, then a man with a bomb in his pants gets on a plane.

Does this smell like another Code Red? Is this country, so numb it flushes itself on war, high risk finance and speculation, while the middle class buys suction on a credit card.

Is this Democracy on a hamstring with the butt end facing the dark side of the moon?

Did “In God We Trust” pull the plug and sell the toilet paper to Dubai along with the Chrysler Building?

Can we expect our children to thrive, not just survive in a glimmer beyond, “Say Cheese Please” and “Hi,. I’m me?”

Do we honor America when we run elections like carnival sideshows complete with TV Freak Talkers while we’re frisked at the airports, spied on at the malls, the phones, and watched in restrooms just in case we pass normally?

Are we the final goof in the release valve, a country where Noah poses as Fannie Mae and Dracula stirs the pot?

What planet eats itself and sells the bones? What country stares at the corpse they become without hindsight or an odor of total outrage?

Did the apple of our eye rot in the blinking, bonking, zippo games we invented to divert? Did we simply climb in the Hummer and drive off only to find we got stuck in the exhaust?

Who has the key to Paradise? Is it on the dresser? The couch? On Mars? Maybe it’s in the salad bowl? Maybe in a vested pocket?

A recent story in the news reads, “Woman pleads guilty to defrauding the banks.”

Please!

You Know Him

2010-01-04T14:24:00.000-08:00

Desks full of unfinished paperwork
Tired eyes, hair cut weeks over due
Gabardine slacks or jeans
Professors, department heads, teachers
Of poetry and prose who
Know all about romance with tenure
Modernism, language, commas
The Beowulf of their dreams, Plath,
August Wilson, the Lenore Prize

He was like that
A pleasant sort who used to box
Before the college got him
Tenure wore him down
Political correctness whipped him
Numbness collared his heart
Bills for the spendthrift wife
Who chain-smokes and forgets to say thank you
Ate his soul

I entertained him with stories
He wanted to know about the egg exercise
I used in class and the penguins
What about the penguins?
What Delmore Schwartz said in the Orange Café?
What was that thing about William Carlos?
The Wheelbarrow? And I went along.
Made a few bucks but I wasn’t going to get on the shelf
I knew that, although he said he’d help

He took me on temporary full time
Something I understand quite well
And I was good, very good he said
He hired me again for one last semester
And I gave the job one more shot

Until the day he stepped in my
Temporary office and sat hands
Clasped in mild sweat
Elbows on knees
And told me how he’d been to that
San Francisco Beatnik bar I told him about
He’d seen my picture with the Wild Bunch
Even had a beer and by the way
Although he didn’t say by the way.
He said, you didn’t make the full time cut
He sort of smiled, then we talked
About nothing in particular for awhile.

That’s the way it is
When life gets tangled in myth
That isn’t yours and the third eye
Lives in its own shadow.
Can’t cut to the chase.
These tired guys just rummage the desks.
Play the newest toy and the old
Text slips in with faces that blend.
Faces that smile behind lives
They don’t dare live
And fear they have no name for.
People who don’t quite
Fit the story they teach
To begin with.

I sat in the empty room
Thinking about black timeless nights
The lonely road from Albuquerque to Kingman
Sitting on the motel porch
With the owner and his wife
Drinking coffee and how
They drove me across the California line
To save me fatigue and grief.
I thought about the day I stepped out of the car
Just southeast of Winnemucca and gazed across the barren land
With a touch of humility and wonder and said
To no one, My God people walked to get here.

Late that night I stood outside the casino in Wells
Staring up to the highway and rock
Where the great trucks groaned by
And the steel night rolled on.
One of those nights when you step out of time
Relax, and know the awe of just being.
While the little old lady inside
Punched quarters in the machine
Sipped on her greyhound and puffed
Those non-filtered cigarettes.

As for him, you know him.
He dove back to his desk
His papers and his toys.

Evening in North Beach

2009-11-29T17:24:00.000-08:00

Cool angles line my Genoa Place hill
A Fitty Fatty thick-tailed gray cat stops in mid-run
Eyes me from its crouch on the step
I feel my legs still strong after the climb
Somewhere a stereo plays Pet Shop Boys and a nearby
Window wafts children’s tantrums and promise of late dinner.

North Beach pioneers come and go
From ships that used our sea side for ballast
To aging, dusty landlords holding the
Neighborhood of anonymous shoes and plastic bag shuffle
Banging, restless clean kids of unforgiving weekends
Eat pizza and lean on forever parking meters
Piss in doorways and watch the dreamy,
wispy soft haired girl just waiting to happen.
in bingy-bangy pasta, jook and fried bread
In howling, hairy, wink-wonking dancers
In three piece suits and toothless fresh from jail
In the sweet grass of Washington Square
a breeze whispers echoes and sometimes’
madness floats the god blue sky and all Zen is OOPS.

Who’ll go out in the wildly sweaty bearded night?
Who’ll go on stage to waste the fool’s spoon?
Who’ll read all night, the poems coming faster?
While naked, naked, naked shouts from the raw end North Beach
Of crab shelled tables, empty wine bottles,
cigarette butts and a World’s chatter.

The Fitty, Fatty, thick tailed cat cocks an ear
Where hips grind beneath the clucking Lattes
Chronicles mumble political rollovers, dead poets
And drowning physicists, the dope’s lawyers and
Sad, sexed-out smiles of old shoes and yesterday’s
Baseball games scatter amid the blown out bar droop
Ever hungry homeless going nowhere while

Shadows close in and the delicious sun hugs the Golden Gate
Soon the new voices will pull up in dangling Suzuki’s
Wanting parking, empty storefronts, some limey sauce
Of sorts, to cover up the fishiness of this unusual situation
at Grant and Green and a hundred wars that tear
the children from our hearts and this magnificent cat
Half-slinks, watches and waits for me to catch my breath
Waits to see what I will do with this long, steep evening.

Tomales-November 1938

2009-11-02T09:45:00.000-08:00

Excerpt from Flight to Point Reyes

Pasquale Pannini was looking for dogs not airplanes. He stood at the southwest corner of his two hundred acre farm peering into the starless night. For a few seconds, he thought he heard an airplane, but the drone seemed to be fading.

Earlier that evening a pack of dogs tore into the field and killed nine sheep. He counted the ewes, lying dead in the dark, the red B brand almost invisible with winter wool, blood splattered at the throats in the senseless slaying fashion of mad dogs and human beings.

Never mind that he had lain two miles of new fence with three runs of barb. In hindsight, he thought he should had have added a fourth run along the ground.

Pannini was furious. If he saw one dog, any dog, he’d kill it. The dogs had to have come from town, but how and why? Everyone knew better than to leave their dogs out untied. They’d pack up and the next thing you know, they’d start killing sheep. He’d kill any dog that ventured within a mile of his sheep.

He wasn’t the one staying up nights. Farmers from Tomales to Salinas searched for ways to stay put, stay solvent, and maybe as Old Man Lawson at Dillon Beach said, “Stay sane”. Even the McClures and the Pierce brothers at Point Reyes, who had a big stake in butter, were staring down the rooster’s throat.

Northern Marin County was changing. Watch your back. That was the word. The speculators would slip in and before he could say, have two shakes of a lamb’s tail; they’d take the open range and he wasn’t sure what they’d do with it, but it wouldn’t be fallow for anything except coastal deer and jack rabbits. He cocked an ear to see if the dogs were back. Just the thought of their barking echo tore a pit in his stomach.

Now a plane approached. Looking through a cluster of Eucalyptus to the corner of the field, he followed the drone up the slope towards the curve in the road a half a mile west where the town of Tomales slept. He thought about his wife, Angela and the light in the window on the other side of the knoll. She had patience when other folks seemed to be moving somewhere, anywhere.

The drone grew louder, rolling like far off thunder and continuing out to his right. Pannini still couldn’t see anything.

Good not to think about sheep for a second, nor dwell on the fate of his three girls, one after another, two, four and five and a half. He had no illusions about their being interested in sheep when they got older. His grip on the shotgun stock lightened, the smell of oil and sweat wafted on the slight breeze slipping down along the grass towards the house. He felt a chill enter his clothes. He did see something.

It flew towards the Bay at almost tree level. A red light blinked on the left wing. The drone rose in pitch and he heard two drones, one somewhat more distant, but very close together. Far behind him, a small dog began yipping and he recognized it as his own tied by the little shingled doghouse next to the kitchen window. The dog, Lulu Bird, named by the three girls, stopped abruptly. The plane was almost out of earshot and he thought it must be headed towards Tomales Point some three miles away. Why would an airplane head out this way?

It brought back memories of Chet McKenna drowned five years ago trying to bring his sixteen footer through the sneaker waves on a stormy afternoon. Nobody but a damn fool would take a chance run out of Tomales Bay on a day like that. But Chet had to have his halibut and Pannini guessed the sharks had to have Chet. He sighed and the pit returned to his stomach.

Again, the sound of snarling dogs ran through his imagination. The dumb sheep stood waiting to die in the moonless night. Angela was pregnant again. They’d name this one Surprise. During the evening, Angela sat at the kitchen table sewing and waiting. His brother Jake out at the Coast Guard Station would tell him about the airplane.

Pannini stood by the fence for another twenty minutes. The dampness had set in and he began walking. No dogs. He knew he’d never find them unless he stood watch. They could be, and probably were local dogs that packed up at night. He’d pull the dead sheep out at dawn.

The weather in Northern California had turned cold and damp. Pannini shivered. These dogs were not sheep dogs. He wished it was spring. His wife, Angela loved the Spring in Tomales and she was right.

The protein in the grass fattened the livestock. She’d stand on the porch by the pine tree and talk about the broccoli she’d grow. She had a little New Zeland wild spinach growing by the porch. Greens did well and with the a long damp spring maybe cabbage. With the help of compost from the mushroom farm in Petaluma, perhaps broccoli and cauliflower.

She pointed out the birds. House finches, Brewers blackbirds, yellow crested and white crested sparrows, red winged blackbirds flitted off by the tool shed. Just last March the two of them stood on the porch and watched a male house finch picking out nesting spots for his mate. The two finches flitted around the yard for twenty minutes or so. The male hovered over a crotch in the pine tree by the corner of the house. The female chirped, ‘No soap’. He ran the female out to a line of pine by the front gate. They were in and out. The house finch, cap up, redder than Christmas flew off to the left and she followed. They flew back and off behind the house to the right.

A little more sun on the back field and they’d grow tomatoes. A few more months of cold and rain. The Coastal deer would chew up everything in sight if you didn’t fence the garden. He built an eight foot driftwood fence around the house that summer. He hoped he enough money for another fence beyond that. The house finches didn’t nest close by, but Pannini saw them perched on the driftwood fence on and off for the rest of the summer.

Fishing. He’d go tomorrow. Pelicans. Brown pelicans. He’d climb down the banks where the poppies grew in May and the ice plant and the wild Iris, or maybe he’d walk out to the point at Dillon or back to the estuary where the sea lions sunned in semi-circles. They’d eat the fish. Pests. He could watch them for hours if he had time, but he had so little time and if he fished and a sea lion swam past, the fishing was over at the spot.

He brought home some nice two pound ocean perch. Beautiful fish. Turquoise and red with a small rainbow along the sides. Fresh fish. Everything a family needed. Feed all five of them. His oldest, Marcia, liked the baked perch. Esther and Bernice not so much. Horse mussels bigger than your fist.

Angela boiled them. She chopped garlic. She heated butter from the Creamery in Point Reyes Station. She placed an enormous bowl of mussels in the middle of the table and she poured the butter and garlic over them. They ate mussels with both hands. They used one half of the shell to scoop the entire mussels from the other. They left the shells on the table. Everyone picked up afterward.

You took mussels at low tide. The last time out he had just shingled the back shed and he was whipped. He shouldn’t have gone out. The tide was changing. The tide rose to his chest while he was slicing mussels off the rock. He remembered the sheer power of the sea sucking him out and the realization that he had no control. His legs slipped beneath him. The bucket half bucket of mussels filled with water. In a brief catch of luck, he yanked himself off the current and pulled himself ashore with the bucket of mussels. He didn't tell his wife how he got soaked. Tomales meant work. Hard work.

He heard the airplane in the distance. It sounded like it was turning back, then it sounded close. It dipped to silence.

Yes, spring and salmon fishing with herring runs up the Bay. The kids would get sick of crab. He never got sick of crab. He could eat two crabs without butter. There would be hummingbirds on the porch in late spring. His wife, Angela would see to it. He didn’t hear Flight 6 again.

Say the Moon

2009-10-11T05:50:00.000-07:00

The year 2012
Your kids can go.
Too crowded here.
Not enough fast food
or rice for that matter.
It stinks, the air does.
No one walks without crutches
or a little cart that
scoots the forever aisles
in search of owner.
So why not the moon?
A station to STOP
Take care of the body business.
Johnny on the Moon Spot.
We can call it that.
Proceed to Mars later on.
Use caution.
Leave germs at home.
It’s for sale.
But watch the red sand.
It might be Communist or worse.
Why wait?
Sign up now.

Oysters

2009-10-05T07:48:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from House in the Attic

No place makes me want to eat more oysters than I can eat than Dobyn's Oyster House. The original wooden bar, all gnarled, warped fits maybe nine or ten stools. A sea of ice and oysters spread right in front of me.

I scarfed a dozen and a half, washed them down with clam chowder and three beers and wiped out a dozen quahogs to finish off the hour. Barney Hogan, working on a day-old growth of beard and his twenty-fifth year at the oyster bar slipped me a couple of extras now and then.

Barney always remembered a face, even if he couldn't put a story with it. His partner Ted Norris, looked sixty, hair gone white with a curl coming off the middle of his mottled forehead. Liver spots on the back of his big tough hands. A driver's license said he was seventy-four. He shucked oysters and quahogs while I ate. Barney and Ted worked the afternoon shift and it seemed like they'd be there forever, but I knew the place was changing. The neighborhood had changed. Oyster bars had sprung up all over everywhere. I knew if I came back at six, the oysters would be pre-shucked and stacked on plates by bright-eyed boys in white shirts and flashy teeth. Ted Norris grinned like he knew just about everything there was to know.

"Why don't you take a break before your hernia pops into the ice," Barney Hogan said in his always-soft wry voice.

"Good idea," Ted said, setting the oyster knife on the edge of the bar and wiping his hands on his apron. "You might as well earn your keep for a change."

"Some kind a guy," Barney said, giving his big nose a pinch and a shake. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and stared off toward the stairs leading to the upstairs dining room. "Some kind of guy."

Mid-afternoon and business was slow, so Ted came around and sat at the stool next to me.

"Beer?" I offered.

"No thanks," he said, clasping his hands together and propping both elbows on the old wooden bar. "Never get through the night."

Barney chuckled under his breath and leaned over the bar. "He'll catch up later."

"Listen to him." Ted pointed one finger at his partner without unclasping his hands. "Listen to him," he said. They both laughed quietly.

"Where you from?" Ted wanted to know.

"I'm from Massachusetts, but I live in San Francisco. Staying with my brother up in Marlboro."

This was the fourth time I'd had this conversation in Dobyn's Oyster House, the third time with Barney. Frankly, I felt at odds because I never had the same address twice. I kept thinking they'd put it all together and decide I was a flake. One week he's a tour guide, the next time he comes back he owns a movie house.. Here comes that nut case again. I just didn't have a permanent address. Not the makings of a good New Englander.

"I grew up in Richland," I said.

"Never been that far west," Barney said with a straight face. He slipped me a small Blue Point. "You like it out there in San Francisco?"

"It's home base for the moment," I said. "I run a movie theater Cinema, if you like that. The Richmond Cinema. It's in the book "

Barney's oyster knife met the shell cupped tightly in his left hand. He probed for a weak spot, slipped inside like a traveling salesman and with a turn of his thick wrist, sliced the muscle and the Blue Point gave up. He cut the meat free from the top, tossed the top half aside, flecked some shell bits off the meat with the tip of the knife, and ran the knife underneath for insurance and the set the oyster aside in a dish of its own making. This was one fresh oyster, with a clear white center sitting all puffed and proud. The edge had the magnificent sheen of blue all around. Cool, clear, juicy liquid. I could tell by looking at it, that not a taste had been lost between the time that oyster had left the sea and arrived in Barney's hands. This oyster hadn't sat anywhere it wasn't supposed to. It had been iced properly. This oyster was clean. Barney had already set another one next to it while I was thinking about it.

"Sounds good to me," Ted said good-naturedly.

"It has its drawbacks," I said.

I could feel Ted shift his weight on the barstool next to me. "I guess you won't be going to the Gulf," he said tongue in cheek.

"Not hardly," I said. "That's all wrapped up. They had it all handpicked back in September. Just like a convention. They plan it a year or so in advance."

"Naw, they don't," Ted said with smirky disbelief. "How many oysters did you eat? Barney, how many oysters did he eat? They're getting to him."

"Must have been the clam chowder," Barney said.

Ted and I watched a woman in a black trench coat with red hair tied in a bun ran by. I eyed the door, thinking she'd come in, but Ted shook his head. "She doesn't like oysters."

"Ted knows them all," Barney confided.

"Barney likes the octogenarians," Ted said. "He likes to hear the creak in their bones."

"You live here all your life?" I asked Ted.

"Not yet," he said with a great big smile full of thick yellow teeth.

I ate another oyster and the three of us just sat in the sweet moment of three minutes after three in the afternoon and moving.

"Say, how cold does it get in San Francisco?" Barney asked.

"Maybe 38 degrees Fahrenheit," I said. "Celsius, I haven't the foggiest.
57, 58 degree average temperature. We have some hot days here and there. Damp cold. Always wear a jacket. We mean it. Afternoon wind will blow you to hell. Along about twenty after two, bingo. In it comes."

"Beats shoveling snow," Barney said.

"You bet," I said, tasting the cold oyster turning warm on it's way down. "How about a half dozen more?

"You got it," Barney said.

I said, "When I was a kid and I got tired, I went in and somebody else finished shoveling." I realized I was in a little deep water so I qualified myself. "Up to the age of eight anyway."

If you grow up in New England, you learn to watch how you couch these little remarks. I was going to say, "If I lived here now, I'd have to get out there and shovel it myself." Saying things like that can come back to haunt you thirty years later. Somebody, and you can bet on it, somebody will remember that Harry Bickham said it was OK to shovel snow when he was a kid, because he could always get his folks to finish it. NOW LOOK AT HIM! I know he's on assignment. But he should have shoveled that walk. Not him. He's waiting for somebody else to do it. What does he THINK? This is California? He's just like the rest of those Bickhams. Never did fit in. His mother isn't even from here. His old man met her in New York somewhere. He went out of town to find her. Probably met her at a dance hall. Probably drunk when he met her. Drunk the rest of the time. Why would he go over there and find somebody? So there you are. She doesn’t look like she ever shoveled a walk either. I wonder what he was really doing in California? Doesn't seem to be married.

"I hate snow," Barney said.

"My son comes over and shovels mine," Ted said proudly.

I finished off the oysters and drank another beer. I realized I felt a little boxed. My left hand dropped instinctively to the bottom of my rib cage. No liver sticking out. Time to quit the booze. And I didn't want to blow the afternoon with Barney and Ted. I didn't want to get flip-stupid. I have the old New England hypocrisy that says you should always look good. No falling down. No pissing in your shoes, or somebody else's. Even if you're dying inside.

And I value the way Barney and Ted cultivate customers. It's classy. None of this, “Just because I wait on you, I deserve 20%." Barney and Ted cultivate you, make you part of the process, your life becomes fuller because of oysters, and the shucking of oysters and people who make sure oysters are served right, so that when you eat the oysters, they are the best high you can imagine. You appreciate the people who bring the oysters on the truck from the boats and you appreciate the cold tough hands that catch the oysters and sort the oysters and you appreciate the ice the oysters sit in and the cool lemon slices and the tangy red sauce and the talk around oysters, the world and snow and life. Barney and Ted make you a part of their life; they make you want to come back. They toss in a free one now and then and they get it all back. Everybody makes money and everybody's happy. The Barneys and the Teds are damn precious in my life and I want them around forever. I left ten bucks on the counter and took my check to the register.

September 11, 2009-Anniversary of 9/11-A Covey of Ducks

2009-09-15T06:41:00.000-07:00

I read recently about an 18 year old who stabbed a duck in front of Benihana’s because he hates ducks. What makes one do such a thing? Why a duck? Is this just one more kink in the great swing of the 21st Century, where everything is fair game, in the grab, keep and kill of whatever shows up on the screen next time?

I try to think of this duck as a threat, something to hate and I am reminded of a few years ago when I lived in Pompano Beach, Florida. Each day I walked past a canal at the corners of Atlantic Boulevard and South Cypress Creek Road. I often stopped at the stone bridge and gazed east to watch the wildlife, the turtles frozen on rocks, fish zipping in shadows below, the iguanas, not indigenous, some up to four feet long waiting in the grasses to my left and ducks, mostly Muscoveys, a large heavy South American breed that multiplied triple fold over the years in suburban and urban landscapes. Red-beaked, black, green feathered, some white and black, some patched, some all white, they lope and waddle all over South Florida.

This day, a single female, young and sleek swam my way hugging the left shore. Behind her in blips and kicks, thirteen dark, little duckies swimming in her seamless wake. I watched them for a very long time until it seemed the day had wandered on without me.

Over the next few weeks I saw Mother Duck again and again, but with fewer ducklings in tow, until one day I discovered her swimming alone. What could it be? Rats seemed obvious. Rats cling to shorelines and prey on such young. Foxes, possibly? Iguanas? Probably not. What else? And what could Mother Duck be thinking if she could think?

Months later I walked by the stream. Something moved. I waited. A nudge, a shadow, a beak along the shoreline. Then more. Mother Duck swam toward me with a string of duckies edging alongside. I counted. Eleven duckies.

Today I think, what grace in this cynical world of bombs, gadgets, toys, murders, lies and duck stabbings. Mother Duck seemed thankfully oblivious to anything less beautiful than her ducklings swimming and dipping their beaks, flapping their untried wings and their instincts into ever, hopeful tomorrows.

THE LAST DAY OF WORK

2009-08-30T17:37:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from Mohawk Electric

At four-thirty P.M. the workers file out of the Mohawk Electric for the last time. A few men holler, a few men curse. Some raise fists. A man in a red plaid shirt is stoic. Another man's half smile bears a trace of doubt. Women appear as lifetimes washed away. They stream toward their cars lining the three block parking lot to the East. They stop suddenly. Their shouts fall off in the afternoon. They seem to hear something. It appears to be getting cold. Now the men and women look around at each other. They gaze upon the long brick buildings. They see the wires and the transistors whirring through the years. They see capacitors and radio tubes and ohm meters and scraps of metal and brooms and an ever ending whirr, now silent. They listen. They stand for a long time listening; they stand for such a longtime they begin to feel uneasy.

Now they shake each other's hands. The women hug each other and begin to cry. Some are big women in slacks, other's short with close cropped hair and glasses. Sometimes it's hard to tell the men from the women. Before long the men and women set down their lunch pails, stick car keys back in pants or purses. They hug, they kiss, they begin to tell each other how they'll miss each other after all these years. We'll see each other all the time someone laughs within a cry.

At the North end of the lot, behind the small cyclone fence, George Lassiter emerges from the little white door laid back in brick. He walks swiftly to his car looking neither right nor left. He gets in the black Chrysler Imperial and closes the door. He hears nothing. His face appears rested, as if experiencing some sort of awakening; as if a million racing thoughts run on behind. He starts the car and inches forward. For a second he feels nervous, wondering if he can get through. When he reaches the gate, he sees clearly through the tinted glass. No one looks at him. They're all shaking hands and hugging. As he noses the big car out, they part. They let the car run right up to their thighs. Lassiter can't really tell if he's brushed anyone or not. He feels closed in, claustrophobic, inching the car out through the jam of workers. Lassiter feels strange pushing the workers without them acknowledging his presence. He's known them for years. My God what will they do? Toward the end of the lot, the thought leaves him. Lassiter hears himself sigh. The car dips at the curb. Lassiter drives south.

The workers remain in the parking lot for hours. Along about six forty-two at night, Perch Watson drives north on Beldon Street and he is amazed to see the workers standing in the dark. They hold hands. He blinks. Yes, he sees they're holding hands and swaying, swaying so imperceptivity he has to stop the blue cruiser and roll the window down. He feels the cool September wind rush in. It smells like cold and it smells like the Richland 's bubbling stink running behind the plant. A faint heated odor emanates from the men and women holding hands. It smells like old blood and tree bark. It smells like elm and falling leaves and cool sweat. The smell sways gently and the dark figures in the parking lot turn purple and chalky and brown. They seem to begin to possess a dotted orange caste to the purple that Perch can't fathom. They hold hands.

Officer Perch Watson sits in his baby blue cruiser across the street in front of Zukor's Variety. He thinks he hears a Spanish accent. He listens. He can't locate it. He rolls the car windows down. Finally he sees Mario Perez talking to Wingo inside Zukor's Variety Store. Even in the evening murmur of the closing factory workers He hears Wingo grunt. He smiles. He's a cop. He knows things. He hears things. He squints across the seat and down the aisle inside, past the Wonder Bread and Twinkees and donuts on the left and the soft drinks and chips on the right, to the pinball machine. Wingo leans in. The machine bangs and bells and bonks. Perch sees Wingo has balanced the back legs of the machine on his loafers. Perch shakes his head thinking Wingo is a hopeless loser. Mario Perez stands next to Wingo waiting to play. Mario is the same height as Wingo, but he is younger so he doesn't look as squat.

Perch remembers Wingo used to look like a round bullet blasting off tackle. He saw Wingo's skin through the thin black crewcut back in high school. Now he sees a black curly mop Wingo reportedly bought somewhere near Boston. It's rumored Wingo has a whole set of wigs, but no one can prove it. His wife Candy doesn't socialize much. Candy is a strange woman. Wingo bangs the pinball machine.

Mario Perez, the last person hired by Richland Electric, is the first person to be let go and the first, and only Cuban, to ever work for George Lassiter. Mario Perez rocks back and forth on his heels. His head seems to follow the steel ball under the glass, bonking here, banking, flipped up, shot down, across, back along the side. Perch Watson cannot see the ball from the street. He imagines the ball whacking off a light and disappearing down the hole.

Mario seems to be getting the hang of it. He seems to know what the ball feels like. His body rocks a beat, maybe a half beat ahead of Wingo. Perch thinks Mario Perez is singing or humming or something and he hopes it doesn't set Wingo off, but Wingo is intent. Wingo leans over the pinball machine and now he has the whole front end wrapped inside his short arms. For a second it seems like the pinball machine is growing out of Wingo's belly and that Wingo is wrestling it to the ground.
Perch dismisses the image and turns his attention to the parking lot. The workers sway in the September wind. It is dark now. Perch worries. What if they don't go home? He tries to imagine what they will do if they don't go home.

She Married Him

2009-08-21T07:54:00.001-07:00

Once they were alone, she was alone
All day she wandered the house looking for herself
Then she made supper for him and the two boys
Sometimes he arrived mad
Sometimes as if he owned her
Sometimes as if he loved her
Sometimes he took the meatloaf and scraped it into the garbage
The two boys sat across from each other
Sometimes he stared at the plate in rage
Sometimes he said the milk in the coffee tasted sour
The two boys sat across from each other
Then he read his book
And she sat in the chair next to him and read her book
It was the same book
A mystery about finding the killer
The one who did it
The one who always did it
Somewhere between pages he’d go outside
At first she wondered where he went
Maybe it was the stars or the moon
But when he came back he looked wild-eyed
And she didn’t dare talk to him
Sometimes she let the kids eat before he got home
Sometimes they ate in the kitchen
Sometimes no one spoke
Sometime he screamed at night
And she knew banshees lived in the attic
One night he crawled down the hall on all fours howling
One night after the kids went to bed
She said she knew
He said what do you know
She said she knew he was drinking
And he threw the ashtray with his cigar still in it
And it broke the lamp and she tried to run
And he twisted her arm and pushed it through the living room window
And the glass cut her wrist and he tossed furniture everywhere
He called her a bitch
He called her a bitch
Didn’t she know?
Didn’t he give her THIS house, this LIFE?
Then he stormed into Winter night
She called the police and she knew
She knew it could be the end, that they might not believe
She called them anyway, anyway, anyway
And they stepped into the house and looked at the broken room
One of them held up her wrist
One of them bandaged her wrist
And then HE leaped into the room
It was his house and they better get
the God damned hell out of his house
He lashed at them with a broom handle
and they wrestled him to the floor
The lights next door snapped on and they dragged him out
and yanked him through the snow, twisting and cursing and shouting
And he was gone and she was alone with a bleeding wrist
Two children and she did not know who to call
She did not know what to say and she did not know where to go
Then it was dawn, then morning and the two boys
came down and saw the broken room
And they didn’t know what it was
And they didn’t know why
And she couldn’t really tell them
So she held up her wrist and she made breakfast
She saw that they washed their faces
She saw that their socks were clean, their coats
were buttoned and their hats squared
She cupped her hands around each boy’s face
She kissed their foreheads and sent
them off to school with strange looks in their eyes
Then she cleaned up the living room, taped the window
And threw out the broken glass
But she needed to change her bandage and throw the bloody one away
But he had the money, and she didn’t drive
Then it was quiet, so quiet she could hear her heart beat
Then she sat in her chair with an empty coffee cup in her hand
She lit a cigarette and watched the smoke rise about her face and hair
She waited and she waited and she waited
She married him

Harry, It’s You

2009-08-01T09:41:00.001-07:00

Hey there, Charlie, or is it Hank or
George maybe floating in the Tigris
Face down, bloated, the uniform, what’s left of it
Hoisted on a TV screen, and umm yes
Professor Hump is stroking his chin
And Admiral Fuchs has drawn the line.
And what do you think President Loopsky?
Oh I forgot, you’re foot got caught in Albania
George, or is it Harry they are talking about.
You face down with some commodity at risk
But you wouldn’t know what that is
Because you’re dead and you wouldn’t have
Gotten the drift before the stock soared.
Jim, no Harry, George, we’re thinking about you
And we understand you have given much
As have your comrades, all of them
Lumbering along the bombed out brains
The computerized, video that is them.
George, Oh I’m sorry, I forgot, Ken
Lydia, Samantha, no Heather, or is it Sam
Lying in the sand between the toothpaste commercial
The rush to Hummers and home loans
The foot long subs, the long legged dreams
The Freedom Credit card they promised you?
Harry, yes, we understand

The Affair

2009-07-25T11:50:00.000-07:00

Blond, pale white jeans, she waves hello
and glances back at the parking lot
On the next walk around the lake she sits
in her red Toyota with a thin bearded man
A white truck that says “Electronics”
on the door is parked alongside.
I walk past benches, picnic tables,
the stillness of twelve-twenty-two P:M
the orange iguana, the wings-spread anhinga
the homeless man sleeping in the shade
the pedal boats alone on the dock and this time
I walk slowly knowing they are close and sure enough
there by the first table to my right, this cautious shadowed pair
his right eye watching me carefully, she ignoring it all
I slip by the fallout of this quest, this harboring of want
already raising ruckus beyond the birds, the quiet lake
the simple lunch breaks, the space we give ourselves
By the time I make the next round, my iguana who has been sitting
in the same spot is green with a tan head, the homeless man
is asleep, his feet twitching in thick socks and the couple
are walking back to the parking lot holding hands
in that maybe forever dance, we know the end of

Francois Mc Fong Says, George

2009-07-16T12:57:00.001-07:00

What are you doing down there, George?

Are you parking the car, George?

George. Not there, George.

George, put the wheels to curb, George.

Not like that, George.

No, George. Back up George.

Wait, wait! Not there George.

Don't leave the VCR in the back, George.

This isn't White River Junction, Vermont, George.

George, uh, uh. No. Don't back up, George.

Not like that. No George.

Maybe you can get a real job, George.

I hear that what's his name

down in Colorado, Balfour's his name,

sucks prairie dogs out of their holes, George.

He has an old septic truck and some flexible tubing.

Green tubing, George. You like green. Heard he sucked up

53 dogs in an hour and twenty minutes.

Says it doesn't hurt them at all, George.

George, they suck right into the truck

and in a few minutes they're just like new.

They can be relocated or dispatched. George,

Maybe you could drive the truck. George.

How many cars can you park, George?

George?

Fireflies

2009-07-09T07:29:00.001-07:00

Eyes of the ancient souls
Blinks to remind us
Of our significance
Among the stars

Wand Wavers of America

2009-06-25T09:30:00.001-07:00

I left my wand, in Argentina. High on a bed with luscious breasts.
I left my brain in Argentina. High on shelf and out of breath.
I left my mind in Argentina. High on a cloud with a tiny head.
I left my pants in Argentina. High on a flag I love to hoist.
I left my family for Argentina. High on a dream I had to waste.
I left America in Argentina. High on myself and to hell with the rest.

Poem at Point Reyes

2009-06-23T14:11:00.000-07:00

I remember the slow drive
Swerves, cuts to the side
The grass thinned to sand
Trees poked from the falling hills
The rift of sea air, the waves
That become us once we hear
The silent awe, the world
More often than not denies our ear
The one with silence beneath wind,
Somewhere between
Skittering plovers poking beaks
and whisker-sleek sea lions

That day the fog grew thick
At the entrance to the bay
I stepped into the sweep
Of gulls, hundreds of gulls and brown
Pelicans, edging here, there, flapping wings
A little nervous when I walked in
But casual the way gulls are, or can be
As long as you keep the pace slow enough
For peace, they’ll put up with you
I waved my arms, the wings
I wished for, made me one with them.
And the gulls, nodded, slipped aside
Or simply stared the way birds do
Wondering what a human
Thinks he or she is
On this strip that lets us breathe together
Without hindsight or an edge.
One of those days that make us realize
It’s all a big wash, a timeless dance
We all put up with, with a little care
A little patience, rain, shine or fog

The All America City

2009-06-08T07:02:00.001-07:00

In the All American City, TV and newspapers proclaim
one disaster after another until we don’t know
our butt from a post-Russian hole in the ground
and somewhere along the line we forgot what a good Sobrett
tastes like, or a bus smell going somewhere.
Wasn’t it ‘86 when the Challenger’s teacher
exploded in all the children’s faces
and nobody was to blame and nobody came to say
there may be a problem here?
Now we walk in dream and the keyboards click
no sin to behold, no chance to test the wind.
Sirens wail in the wicky-wacky extravaganza
and behold, oh giant guns, humongous cannons, why
we all clap and big old hungry us gives the world the finger
with stars in our eyes like some lost Plato
not to mention our deficit savings accounts and now
the sweet children cock their ears for some sign
of relief, gaze from windows at the milk running
through the streets and we scream Bang Bang.
We dance on irradiated moons and cremate what’s left
Oh yes, oh, yes, we have sung the song
at all the curbs and suburbs in all the All America Cities
our America Zen salute snapping and drifting
at the unfolding, curling, whopping, whooping flag
that hangs on the hot-plated, cooked up bone scraping
surprise it turned out to be this time.

Say Cheese Please

2009-05-13T14:48:00.000-07:00

Hoop Cheese it is.
On sale two bucks off
with the card, only she didn’t ring
it up right the first time.
I paid full price so here I am at 8:03 a.m.
standing at the lottery and take-
back counter with my cheese.
The long aisles stretch clear to yellow
lights and hollow music
From time to time a sales associate
that’s what they are now
sales associates
glances at me like maybe
I’m waiting for a bus.
And I wait and she, the cashier of the moment
asks what I want.
The discount is what I want.
She has to call the cheese person, she says.
So I wait with my Hoop Cheese
at $5.15 that should be $3.15
for this middle aged woman to appear
with gauze cap and a question mark in her eyes.
It’s a very big sign I say.
I don’t understand why you don’t know.
We’re doing the best we can the cashier says
and I say not good enough.
So the woman with gauze hat walks off with my cheese
and I keep it up.
I say how come you don’t know what the hell
you’re selling and she says she’s just taking up space
and I say, I think that’s true.
We’re trying to help you she says and I’m about
to just cash in, when the gauze hat returns with the Hoop
Cheese and a label to stick on, which I think
is the discount, but by the time
they stop fiddling I’m sick
of the whole thing
the empty super market, the empty faces
the vegetables down the way
looking lonely as hell
and the Hoop cheese in the gauze hat’s hand
that I no longer want.

So I say just the refund please.
You mean you don’t want it?
No the refund, please.
And she says it again
“We’re just trying to help,”
as she slips the fiver and the change out
of the register into my hand
and I breathe a sigh.
I am so glad to be away from the death
of the place, the discounts on life,
the whole damn cheese.
Hoop or not.

The Price of Flight

2009-04-14T13:24:00.001-07:00

My friend Tim, the doctor says that the flight from the East Coast to San Francisco is enough travel and perhaps too much. The world, he says, is running all over itself and it’s sometimes a shock to the system. But there is a stretch of Northern California beach that I must visit at least once a year. I have to fly and I have to drive north to get there.

I have driven enough, especially in Florida where pastel precludes hurricane and a good number of people settle because there are no hills where anyone can get a good shot at them. Half the time I’m in cardiac arrest just trying to exit I-95.

I rent a car in San Francisco. By the time I get to the clerk I change my mind. I tell the agent to cancel my reservation, then in a miracle of mental reprieve, I jump back in line (the guy with the Panama hat and the cigar crammed in his craw casts me a sidelong glance) and the agent tells me to wait just a second. I wait. I get the car. I sit in the car. I am afraid to drive. I want to walk.

At Point Reyes Station I buy some Calistoga water. I see they have barbecued oysters cooking on a grill outside the supermarket; Pacific oysters that for me are best eaten cooked. Raw they are too slippery and the texture. Unlike the Blue Point that is thin and solid, these are soft and hard to get down. I eat four juicy oysters with a plastic fork. The man who sells oysters wears a white tee-shirt that says,” Love" in faded letters. His upper teeth are large.

The oysters set the mood. I’m in the familiar. The air and the food and the sea beyond fit well. I drive up the winding road to the eucalyptus and the redwoods, to the turns and shallows that dip to turns that make my heart sing, “Let go.” I reach the peak above the coast. Below, as far as I can see Limantour Spit and the bigger than big California coast line stretches before me. I am humbled and awed. I coast down letting the car switch lanes with the contour of the road like some wild natural roller coaster. I park.

I take out my soft blue denim jacket. I wear the black sweatshirt and Levis, the white sneakers and polo hat for the sun. The colder weather is a mild change for me although I lived in Northern California for many years. I hike down the trail to the beach. To my left along the flats, the marshland is quiet. The reflection of the day casts darkness about the ducks flitting and dipping bills in the water. I walk down to a small split in the trail and turn right to a path behind the dunes. I see a sparrow, a pile of raccoon dung and no rabbits. Far to my right in the inland bay, across a plain of low dunes, I spot a flock of Canadian Geese. Beyond the geese I see a great blue heron alone just off shore.

After a mile or so, the path runs to soft sand and I climb the lip to the magnificent rolling sea and the ever roar of tide. Plover scurry and sweep the sand. I must walk slowly along the hard sand to keep them from flight. The plovers line up in little herds and sometimes when I pass, they scurry into sweeping meadows of plovers. I walk northwest along the sand with the dunes to my right. Beyond the dunes I see the white cliffs where two figures on horses ride down the south ridge..

The fog arrives early today and I begin to feel refreshed, yet uneasy and unsure of myself. Walking northwest along the empty beach, I scan the far cliffs for a relative bearing to tell me where my special place in the dunes lies. I climb the narrow stretch of sand that becomes the dune and soon I see the open space in the dune grass lying like a tongue. I climb the tongue. I see a two pieces of driftwood with a round stone tucked in a hole between them. I am home again.

I sit and stare at the sea. Months of work and hurry have taken their toll. I hear the sea run on. A California gull with the red tipped beak darts, turns and soars. I strip to my black shorts and lie back in the dunes and close my eyes. My brain rushes on and on for what seems like hours and hours.

The sea sweeps in and over and beyond my thoughts. I sit up and wait. My mind is clearing. I dress, climb down from the dunes and walk north toward the end of the spit where the sea spits toward the back bay. I expect to see the gargantuan elephant seals or sea lions raise their heads to inspect me; to hold me in tight watch. Instead, I see the sea lions are pelicans. I hear sharp billed terns squawk.

They know I am coming. I slow down so as not to disturb them. The pelicans and the gulls ruffle and arch and snoot and shake themselves off and wallow in sand. Brown pelicans sleep with heads in wings. Some preen. Some yawn big pelican yawns with beaks raised to the sky like great trumpets or wild flowers opening. To my left, a covey of dark Hermann’s gulls stick close to the water. I search the dark birds for a Hermann’s gull with a red breeding beak More brown pelicans and aha! Far to the right of the spit, where the bay eases into a narrow inlet, I see a flock of giant white pelicans, brown pelicans, California and western gulls, occasional black mud hens and swooping terns.

The pelicans flap their wings. I walk slowly. Some run. A sweep of pelicans rise and flow out over the water and swing back around. Some settle where; some keep flying. I walk closer. The trick is to walk slowly. Some of the birds still fly up, but most just walk slowly at safe distance.

I stand in an arc of pelicans. They go about their business. I flap my arms. I say, “Pelicans this is it. If you are looking for a heaven, it is not up and it is not after; it is here and it is our job to keep this balance.”

The fog is closes in. The terns shoot back and forth. A second year California gull stands a few feet away in brown, gray body, aware but seemingly ok with my being there.. I flap my arms again. We are all one here. What’s the rush?

We humans jump from one thing to another while the credits run up the right side of the TV sets and the new show bangs the right side of the screen. We’re one big video game leaping to the next button. Car ads spin the cars until you think you’re batty. Oh, and the cell phones? The pelicans have no cell phones and they are fine.

I flap my wings and a few pelicans flap but not at, or with me. Soon I must leave these beautiful birds in this fog. Then I do.

Back along the beach I keep a slow pace. It’s getting late. A speck coming toward me becomes a short woman with black hair and bare feet. She strides by and we smile, then she is gone in fog. I walk on looking for the three trees that tell me I’m almost there and then I’m there. I climb the sand and look back.

Four harbor seals emerge from the surf. A string of brown pelicans sweep over them and fly south. I feel blessed and now I must walk along the hard path past the marsh where it is darker than before and so still. Brown ducks. Shadows of ducks. I watch the reeds and the grasses become darker shadows. The ducks grow dim in the last light. I thank everyone and walk back to my car.

Julia and the Rain

2009-03-28T12:58:00.000-07:00

The rain hissed in the trees
dripped at the edge of the roof.
She stepped to the door
and looked at me
sitting on the porch couch
in the dark.
The screen door stuck
at the bottom
she pushed it open with the side of her foot
and stepped down.
She stood short in the light.
She sat next to me
snuggled under my left shoulder
and with a deep voice
that finished an aria
but hadn’t come down
still smooth and dark blue.
A voice carried above a whisper
like a swan that is always on the lake at night.
She said, “David what are you doing?”

We listened to the crickets for a long time.
Once the chickens startled
and we heard the thunk
of chicken feet readjusting to the roost.
I could almost feel their feathers
settle around them as they sank slowly
to the wood and their breasts rested.
We could feel them blink once or twice
We could see the blank lids drop lazily into night

“What is it?” she said.
“What’s what?” I said
looking for a way not to talk
and I wanted to talk.
The great oak trees hung in the rain above us.
They felt magnificent.
I pulled her close to me.
She fit thickly and firmly
under my left arm.

THE MOON IN HIS POCKET

2009-03-10T08:56:00.000-07:00

One evening Mr.Moon was walking with himself in his pocket.
On a hilly road his shoelace came undone.
He was bending down to tie it when
Mr Moon rolled out of his pocket and down the slope.
Over and over and over and over he rolled to the end of the earth.
Mr. Moon ran after Mr. Moon but he was moving so quickly
The interval between Mr. Moon and Mr. Moon soon grew far apart.
This is how Mr Moon lost sight of himself in the blue mists far below.

Poem for the Lost Soldiers

2009-02-28T15:35:00.000-08:00

Why are you taking our young
from the water, the hills and the air?
Who are you, men of guns
and short eyes, who worship ends
who take from trees and moon?
Who break a kiss, a son, a daughter
in the midst of leap and song?
Who called you to unleash
rage, false wisdom and rot?
How did you come to believe love
is just another toss in the breeze
a roll, a simple new face in the crowd
easily picked and tossed to the next?
Why do you rinse in other people’s tears?
Who are you in the darkness?
What do you salute in the morning?
Children turn cold in your hands?
When will I never have to ask?

Rooster Breath Theater-Act II

2009-02-22T09:22:00.000-08:00

Long live Seemstra
the loveless piano player
and his donkey
Hoosenfeff

BLEEP Stewart sold a cat
to the other side of Paradise
and he came up with a discontinued
edge of circumstance.

Fritter Loop had three legs
but the loan department
didn’t care.

Zing Stripe wore two sets
of suspenders to bed for good luck.

Wiley Ramgo ran red lights
with his eyes closed.
They sold his car to the nearest light bulb.

Ronnie Bravinski ate four roosters
on one plate and has yet to
find time to comb his hair.

Ed Matthews’s wife, Winifred
sold his pet rabbit to a priest
with one blue eye.
and nobody cared.

Everett Moran sold
a dead parakeet
to his dry cleaners
and he got
a free coupon.

Melody Blank
took a loan
on her virginity
with interest.

I’m not one to
raise an eyebrow
but Jesus didn’t
come to
Easter Dinner.

River Lipcomb
ate a spider
with chop sticks
and his mother
put the web in the freezer
for dessert.

Adrienne Fester Porter
bought a pair of used
alligator pumps
for her piano.

April Bong Bunny
plays ping pong
with his psyche

Iraqi Special
John the Baptist
ala video mode

U.S. Special
Salome au lait
avec regret

August Boppet sold
fifteen pounds
of self esteem
to a lost
spider monkey

The army issues
punch cards for
each appendage lost
in combat.

Ernest Taylor
rented last year’s
Christmas to a
Chrysler Salesman
who offered discounts.
on dead shepherds.

Mr. North, the local baker
found a cross-eyed tarantula
in his noodles.
He added Hoisin sauce.

Looie the Easter egg
eater got paroled
on the condition
he would not
take a yoke.

Rooster Breath Theater-Act 1

2009-02-16T09:09:00.000-08:00

Who put the dip stick in the egg plant?

What rat fed coconut oil to the hamster?

Better yet, how did the goose snot get in your cheese sandwich?

Not all iguanas suffer post partum depression.

There is no underwear for American Eagles that compound interest in the war effort.

Never mind how the worms found the lettuce.

Rubin Schnickle eats blue berry pancakes with horseradish.

Keeping in mind the myth of the cross-eyed seamstress and her mother, Olga Crumbuckle.

Ever since Mirabel got caught sucking graham crackers in the attic.

So what if Charlie eats hot dogs in his nightgown?

No tax addendums for sugar ants

You can’t blame the war on disenchanted walnuts

Sam won’t buy apples from the bird vendor.

If and when Hercules gets a breast implant.

Needless to say, the rabbit population doesn’t suffer from black holes.

Every so often Genghis Khan stops at the river for some KFC

Why is the price of a gas pump less 8 cents tax, worth your child as ransom?

Just because someone asks for your Social Security Number doesn’t mean you have to buy them a Happy Meal.

If a man calls a President by his last name you might think he is grown up.

Who ate the community goat?

Chicken breath may be sold as hallucinogenic fowl.

This is the second course based on rattlesnake egg whites designed for two-timing politicians.

Who put the adhesive in the chocolate cookies?

Androids are now on sale at Wal Mart.

The case of the asymmetrical sphinx.

The case of the mindless canary advertising Tide Liquid.

Small lapses in the future of ironing boards based on faulty IRAs.

The dog maker took umbrage in blue handkerchiefs with white trim.

Mabel believed until he took her red hat.

Chipmunks can’t vote so folks in Florida might consider independent raccoons.

Speaking of independence-Did you hear about the man who froze his dead mother for two years?

To answer your question: a plethora of recent examples personifies the conviction stated in the premise.

Ramifications on the brink of destruction-Or why pick a dead pigeon out of a pie?

And remember, in America, there is no discount for quiet desperation.

Bail Out America

2009-02-11T07:41:00.000-08:00

The wind is blowing
The snow is falling
and the monkeys
keep eating the pie

What of the Life You Supposed?

2009-01-31T09:26:00.000-08:00

The moon comes up to remind
you of timeless journeys
giant leaps, promises of more
a screen door in Albuquerque
the motel porch in Kingman
shadows, endless voices
picnics on mountains with no names
But the road doesn’t always smooth out
no matter the shocks on the limo
the view, the catch of the day
Sometimes, you wonder where
Susan went, or Elmer
You suppose he’s still at OTB
in Troy or Albany
Wife perfect as they get
No qualms unless you
can’t get over yourself
Life chugs along, a breath
at a time, and rolls over
the same bumps
you sometimes like to avoid
simply reflect upon or
go mad, tear up the lawn
get on the roof and bark
set the house on fire
or crack jokes on the phone
with an old friend who knows
Three-nineteen A.M snaps you awake
but you’re smart enough
to keep some change
pasted in the right side
of your brain and two cups
of coffee at dawn, a little silence
Don’t want to talk
because soon, say thirty-eight
minutes or so, you’ll feel
life take hold, settle in
for another taste of that pie
sitting on the shelf
you built for it.

Florida News

2009-01-28T07:52:00.000-08:00

John C. Wickmeier, an associate of the Leave it to Beaver Federation has been charged with over indulgent Chicken Tacos consumption, which he says is an addiction and due to childhood feelings of abandonment, in which no chickens were ever allowed in his presence and because, his Aunt, one Priscilla Vanderplot, was arrested for stealing Rhode Island Red Hens from a local poultry farm, which she said she sacrificed for God.

Mr. Wickmeier is being sent to a local facility for observation. He has requested a nest, but local law officials say this is not a given. The defendant insists he once laid an egg.

Awake

2009-01-20T05:46:00.001-08:00

Window to your left.

Tiny click of overhead fan

Quiet spread across the neighborhood

You think back when the days emptied

When she simply appeared

Not a soiree, a fantasy, a blank wish

You knew something caught right off

Your mind drifts to her breathing

Your arm rests on her shoulder

that feels larger than your own

A female great horned owl hoots

from the nearby park

Silence and you remember the first dance

At the Pink Hotel, following step

Beyond the mystery of folly, messes, not funny

Days, good and bad memories that fade

And disappear at 3:07 A:M when

A tiny light no one but you can see appears and someone says

This is it and for a second you don’t know

It’s you talking to yourself

It says yes she is the prize the whole damn thing

Beyond wars, endless slaughters, souls gone awry

Crooked politicians, dropping APRs, failed dreams

Impossible circumstances and just plain wisdom

And you lie there hand on her shoulder

Listening to the awe holding

The two of you so still

Friday at the Market

2009-01-08T10:44:00.000-08:00

I’ll go for the two pound pork loin
The one in the back
A half pound of red peppers
A half pound of mixed olives, the gorgonzola crumble
Parmesan and Romano mix, so how’s biz?
Looks like Friday’s quiet.
Larry of the red tama Shan hat and wireless glasses says
Just wait and he adjusts his glasses, leans an elbow
on the display case at eye level
Between the mozzarella and salted mozzarella
Don’t give me no trouble, he says, raising his voice
What trouble, who gives trouble, I say
I’ll go for the mild Italian sausage, two please
I was thinking prosciutto but now it’s sausage
You would, he says and I watch his hand dive into the glass case
and flip up two nice ones
What else and he sets them on the scale
steps back and presses the buttons
Up comes red numbers 1.2 pounds $3.71 and he rolls them in wrap
Marietta, the Puerto Rican woman with pulled back black hair waves
Good to see you. Where you been?
She flirts a hair and knows I know
We talked about her high cholesterol last time in
Now she returns to the provolone cheese
in the eye of her customer, a short woman with gray hair
and tiny hands
Meat pie, grape leaves, stuffed cabbage, no
I’ll make my own I think while
Larry rolls the sausage in white paper, tags it
Sets it on the display top with both hands
Thank you he says, for the trouble
and I say, That’s fine.
Larry’s pale blue eyes recede to the next customer.
Twelve he says, thirteen and he’s gone
Marietta talking to a man standing over the chicken breast at the other end
I stick my sausage in the green basket with the rest
and move into the pasta aisle, the rice, the capers,
the frozen sauce to my right and down
past the bake shop to the right of the register
The engagement's off, I say to Nancy from Queens
and she laughs as she always does
See how you are?” she smiles
Her small teeth delight the bright morning
She rings up two tomatoes, sweet onion,
brussel sprouts, Romaine lettuce the, two foot bunch of basil
I’ll make pesto for a month and the rest.
Yeah, I see, but, it’s true love, I say.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, pressing the bills and the change into my hand
she slides the plastic bags. my way and we wink,
without winking and I step outside
into another good day.

Body Count New Year 2009

2008-12-28T08:09:00.000-08:00

Each day he cuts out
the New York Times dead in Iraq
and places them in a green metal dish
to rest with the rest
of the silence in between.

The Grief Man

2008-12-21T07:04:00.000-08:00

He had an idea for the New Year and he knew he could make money on it. He rented a sky blue pickup truck and stuck signs on the doors that read:

THE GRIEF MAN
Pick Up and Hauling, Day or Night
No Grief Refused.
Reasonable Rates
Telephone 1-800 NO-GRIEF

He drove around the neighborhoods for weeks. At first people peered through their curtains or went in the house when he slowed down, but one day a small woman in her seventies waddled down her front walk and asked him if he could take the memory of her dead husband.

The Grief Man smiled and she wrote a check. He put the dead husband memory in the truck and drove off slowly, partly out of a sense of honor and hopefully, so the rest of the neighborhood would see that he really was serious and write down his phone number.

Of course the woman got on the phone and the word spread. Within days his phone was ringing off the hook. He could barely fill his orders. A man wanted to get rid of his son's drug addiction, another man wanted to be relieved of the embarrassment of wearing a hairpiece, not the hair piece mind you, the embarrassment thereof. A child called. It seems the kid down the block got a tan cowboy hat and he got a red one when all he really wanted was AUTO THEFT. He couldn't throw his red one away because everyone would know. Parents called in droves to rid themselves of the worry of what to do about leaving their children alone. Alcoholics called at all hours of the day and night. The back of his truck reeked with alcoholic grief going into withdrawal without people. Then there were the sick, the elderly and the fleeced, which had lost their entire savings to Illness or inscrutability. The Grief Man left them at the curb with cherubic smiles. A single mother wanted traffic removed. A fish cutter said he never wanted to see another fish; a fast food worker wanted the smell of French fries removed forever. A set of twin women in their forties wanted to rid themselves of their likeness.

The Grief Man took credit cards. The Grief Man bought two cell phones. He didn't need to advertise. The Grief Man could barely fill his orders. The Grief Man had to rent a warehouse.

A woman from Pembroke Pines, Florida said she was too hot. A man from Pulaski, New York said he was too cold. The Grief Man agreed to take heat and cold via overnight express. A Chicago banker wanted the entire New Year removed and the Grief Man devised a way to do it on the installment plan with balloon payments. Best he could do given such short notice. The banker agreed. A Las Cruces, New Mexico woman, wanted slipperiness taken out of satin sheets. Children with dead pets called from all over the world. A little girl from Adams, Massachusetts wanted a sun fish she caught, cleaned and buried in the back yard the summer before, to be put back in the lake. A therapist from Los Altos, California wanted to know if the Grief Man could remove the need, "To talk it all out." A man who said he represented a large government agency he refused to identify, called regarding the elimination of war and poverty, but left no return phone number.

The Grief Man got rich. He picked up a too-late Eminem record collection, sixteen truckloads of Brittney Spears supermarket Musak and one volume of poetry by Robert Service, four hundred thousand truckloads of used Harry Potter videos, a four by eight mini-storage unit full of 1960s memories and stadium-size tonnage of books about the uselessness of the sixties. The Grief man couldn't fill the number of orders for the removal of grief over the Martin Luther King and Kennedy assassinations, but he managed to put a dent in it.

So it was, on New Years Eve at 11.57 p.m. that he drove his truck up to the side of his house, full of last minute pickups ; cockroach problems, found money, winning lottery tickets, missed chiropractic appointments. He felt exhausted, but happy. He gazed wearily at the Christmas tree aglow by the fireplace in the adjoining living room. He sat down at the kitchen table and opened a beer. He watched the smoky gas escape from the top. He picked up the bottle and brought it to his lips, when the phone rang. He paused to wonder who it could be and he promised himself he would not answer. He listened to the phone ring, one two three rings; he wanted to drink his beer. He picked up the phone.

It was the little boy of the red cowboy hat. The Grief Man wanted to know what he was doing up at that hour and the boy said he'd been to church and the minister told him to be grateful for what he had instead of always wanting what somebody else had and could the Grief Man return his red hat? The Grief Man hesitated for a second before obliging. After all, it was the New Year and this was a little boy. Little boys don't always understand what, or why they do what they do.

The Grief Man looked at the nice hot chocolate that he hadn't even sipped. . Now he had to go out and get the red hat, but before he could get his coat on, the other phone rang again. The kitchen clock read 12.09 a.m. It was the New Year. The woman on the phone was crying. She said she was Susan of the Susan and Sylvia twins. She said no one recognized her without Sylvia and would he please, please return her to, at least, a shadow of her former self.

By 12.20 a.m. the phones never stopped. The fast food worker said she needed the smell of French fries on her skin to feel alive, the alcoholics wanted their drinks, parents wanted their children to go somewhere, anywhere, so they could be alone, the cold man from Pulaski couldn't stand sweat, the hot woman from Pembroke Pines couldn't stop shivering, the banker called to say the balloon payments on the removal of New Year had given him no place to begin, nor end, and the widow called to say she discovered the Grief Man's phone number on the refrigerator door and it reminded her that she needed to cry, but she couldn't remember what for, so would it be possible, to return what it was she had forgot to remember, immediately.

Thereafter the Grief Man's phone never stopped ringing as he drove frantically and forever into the night of nights, the forwarding of calls jamming his truck phone, his ears, his very life; the calls to the Grief Man waxing toward a hopeful dawn.

Dead Man

2008-12-08T08:45:00.000-08:00

Dead before he hit the sidewalk, gray teeth, bloodless gums
His mouth permanently agape at the sky
The usual crowd gathers. A young man with two day beard
sharp chin, arms folded, thick bleached blond woman,
say thirty-six in the blue print dress who parked
her Honda across the street stands off to the left
beyond the young man and me. She seems
at loss as to why her life is interrupted on the way
to church, or going home from “His Place”
along with the rest of us who wait to see for sure.

I know he’s dead. I’ve driven ambulance, cut down hangings
pulled heads out of ovens, delivered babies in snow and he’s dead
as surely and perceptively as grass without water dies.
He’s dead. Head back, little body askew on the sidewalk
His blue shorts show no signs of mess, his banty legs awry,
tee-shirt not sweating through. No one knows who he is. No ID.
Does anyone know first aid? And I who know first aid
stand aside while an entourage of well-meaning
men and women surge or approach cautiously to the end
of the no named man lying on the half-shaded sidewalk
head at the foot of a sapling, eyes half closed and vacant.

A tall muscular gay man with shaved head and earrings, stripped
to the waist, rollerblades right up to the corpse and I say again, “He’s dead.
Leave the blanket. Don’t cover the face. It freaks people out.”
One guy with thin moustache misses what I say and rips the blanket off.
And I repeat, “Don’t cover his face,” then he drops the blanket.
The roller blader pulls the blanket off, takes the dead mean’s pulse
with his thumb which says to me, he doesn’t know his thumb has a pulse
of its own and no, he won’t be able to revive this man, who’s Latin
say five feet-five, hands beginning to wax up, cool down, gray hair settling in.
He begins to look unreal like he’s in a casket and the roller blader knocks
some CPR on his chest, tentatively touches the dead man’s face, tips his
head back, looks inside his mouth, shakes his head, says "purple" and before
sirens become trucks, cops and oxygen he skates to his immortal day.

This man reminds me of my own death, a face with no name lying
on a strange street in a stranger neighborhood. The day I left home,
the day I left my wife, left California, came back, went home.
The day I got tired of trying to make sense of it, when the carpet rolled out
or upand I wasn’t sure why. And now, just a stroll down Sunday, what better
day the sirens come calling, red trucks blast and loom, young men step down
swing off the great metal with sure and measured stepstheir paraphernalia
designed to give us another whack, a chance to hold on.

Perhaps it’s their sure step, the swarming blue-eyed harmony, an act
of life hovering, a strange enclave of angels even when they know
it’s too lateand it is too late. They circle and dig from their
little black bags some accoutrements for life and this time
it’s not mine to perform; it’s theirs to pretend.
They lock on the oxygen, defibrillate and push, take out a stethoscope
to pronounce him after I’ve pronounced him and I’m hard pressed to speak.
I have passed the baton. My wisdom let’s them sign the final say.
I walk away. This man’s face tilts skyward, presses my mind.
A touch of larceny and trickery. He unwittingly and finally marks
what is and isn’t and what trails this sweltering Sunday
toward home, toward light, toward ever-sweet tomorrow

Homage to a Flea

2008-12-02T14:00:00.001-08:00

Somewhere between yesterday morning
and last night, a flea slipped
in my armpit while I rode
my bike from the optometrist
to the bookstore to the park
and around the block after dark.
Somehow this invisible
free flying insect got caught in
my snag of everyday life
my daily bag of tricks without an airbag
life insurance or a last supper.

Unbeknownst to me
it bit and bit leaving no itch
just dry red markers
of attempted escape
from my churning arm
my restless self.

How heroic this tiny flea
alone in peculiar sweat
awash in dark spinning,
chugging bed of hair and skin
Searching for a way out
bumping and biting, ripping, racing
against a time it doesn’t know
eating at a wall of constant motion
or falling off crushed and wing torn.

While my universe pedals on
as the earth passes under a silver moon
wondering how to breathe or drink
or spill, rotating into the endless
speck of it all, without a name,
or a bug to pin it on.

Mike and Me

2008-11-20T07:15:00.000-08:00

I meet him in the supermarket today
Janet, the cashier is asking for my discount card
He rants about Bob weighing himself with umbrella in hand.
Mike in yellow tee-shirt, short mustache
ball cap and shorts talks about
keeping the blood pressure down.
I say when I left the condo
where I was on the board the negativity
dropped and so did my heartbeat.

Mike runs his emphysema past me
his take on God, the revolution he expects
will take America, but it will start
over there, China maybe, the East
How the doctor told him he had two years to live
How he went home and threw out two cigarette cartons
And two quarts of tequila, just like that
How he walks 10 miles a day.

I tell him about the dog for sale
The joke about the guru who thought life was a banana
and Mike, a bricklayer in retirement
tells me his roommate can’t stop smoking
the drinks, his veins just bulge with rage.`
How the Jewish neighbor told him to throw
out the Free Range Chicken Broth and only
use sea salt for the boiled chicken.
How swimming in that ocean after work
cleans the chalky residue from the bricks.
off of his arms, his skin.

We shake hands and I tell him I have ice
cream in the shopping bag and milk.
He tells me he listed the five women who work
the supermarket as the most beautiful women in the world.
He says several other women and he puts his hands on his hips
and sticks out his chest to show their indignation
want to know why they aren’t on the list.
He gets a kick out of that.
I am about to tell him the joke about
infrequently as one word or two
but I forget the lines.

Mike and me stand a few seconds
staring into the early morning drizzle
to the wide street beyond the parking lot
One of those good moments when silence
makes the bones cool out.
Two men in the game
running off a little hope
a kick, a laugh or two.
Watching the day scoot on.

On Reading a Poem

2008-11-10T06:53:00.001-08:00

Take this poem.
Put it somewhere.
Don’t even read it
or read it if you wish.
Then put it in a box
or a drawer, the closet or a niche
with your medals, shouts
runs across the world
a marriage or two, a child, maybe three.
Let the poem lie there
getting yellow at the edges and stiff
so it doesn’t look like a poem
or anything else in particular besides old
and hard to follow and go
on with your own particular
parachute, war or door to Paradise.
Then someday when it rains
or the neighbor mows
the lawn or your wife
just sent out for pizza
or the stars shift across the deep black sky
Pull out this poem.
See what it says.

Palomar The Duck-excerpt from The Zuni Motel

2008-11-05T10:27:00.000-08:00

Benjamin Bean stepped out of the motel office to the highway where the rush of an occasional car punctuated the night. The gas station across the street stood cold, empty and closed. Benjamin worked the night shift. He understood the night.

Daylight promised the Super Bowl to come! The Sugar Bowl while you wait! A little Shiatsu thrown in. Twenty four kinds of virgin olive oil. America promised war in Iraq. America clapped. Horoscopes read at 974 numbers-$4.50 a minute. America murdered between commercials. AIDS wiped out thousands. Luscious leggy blonds ambled through sand dune dreams of forever California with perfect pouted lips. The President shook his fist and said he'd be home tomorrow. Perch-fingered, beautiful, sweet-breathed Americans drove BMWs over turtles and tricycles all over everywhere. America rounded third, slid home, and went back in the dugout smiling, knowing full well a five dollar box of popcorn really cost eleven cents. America let the air out of its tires. Benjamin made $8.00 an hour.

The VACANCY sign hummed in its red neon. Beyond the halo of the office lights, darkness, so very dark he stepped into it like the ghost of himself lost momentarily beneath the incredible stars.

Where the tail of the Big Dipper dropped off to Arcturus, Benjamin began drawing Palomar the duck, letting the square beak feed down around the Sickle of Leo. Palomar ran with hot, fat feet, his eyes ablaze. Palomar thumped across the sky and his insides filled with bunny rabbits and fluffy blankets, Teddies and cash, big green guitars and ice cream sandwiches, roast beef. A long red carpet flooded down Palomar's neck, settling just below Draco the Dragon's head.

His vision of Palomar began when he was four. Someone left the screen door open and the neighbor's Muscovey duck waddled in and up the stairs. Benjamin stood at the bottom of the stairs watching the big duck climb to the top landing and turn around. For several long minutes he and the duck went eye to eye in the dimly lit hallway. What a big duck! Maybe the duck could be his friend. He thought he could hear the duck breathing. Then his father came in the house and saw the duck. Up the stairs he went, his rubber boots leaving puffs of dust on the green runner carpet. Benjamin was afraid of what might happen to the duck and maybe what might happen to him, although he wasn't sure why. For several long minutes the duck ran amuck.

Benjamin heard wings scrape the walls and his father's big feet thump the wooden floors. He heard the duck fly at the Venetian blinds in the bathroom and small bottles fell everywhere. Finally it half-flew back downstairs, bouncing once, landing on one leg in front of him and banging its wings along the floor to the porch, where it took to low flight off to the left and out of sight. Benjamin walked out on the porch, but there was nothing to see but morning. Not even a feather.

Palomar reappeared the first week Benjamin Bean worked at the Zuni Motel. He and Jack Fry, who lived with Maggie and her daughter, Camille down in Unit 3 got to drinking Coors Light in the front office. They got to talking about chickens. Jack could talk about chickens all night, all day. Jack planned on having show birds if he could get over the idea of having to shampoo and blow dry the chickens. He'd heard about a Rhode Island Red that had been housebroken although he'd never seen it. Fry had a penchant for silver penciled Wyandottes and bantam Golden Sebrights, none of which Benjamin had ever seen, despite the fact he'd grown up in the country. They agreed turkeys were a royal pain unless you got the brown ones or chocolate which weren't as inbred and stupid. Fry wanted Runner Ducks.

Benjamin told Fry about the lost Muscovey duck. He said he couldn't figure out why the duck was so important other than the fact he and the duck had gone eye to eye that morning. No one, not even the neighbor who owned it ever saw it again. It made Benjamin spooky and he wandered around for weeks trying to find that big beautiful scary duck, then school started. Sometimes he'd get up in the middle of the night and wander around the house looking for the duck. Sometimes he was sure it was in the house and it terrified him, but he didn't dare tell anybody.

Before he met Palomar, whenever his dark side appeared in a vast wasteland of broken machinery and burned off soil, he just tore into it. He wandered in this desert for hours. He stopped and talked to people, who stared at him in befuddlement and sorrow, their voices rising in long painful whines that echoed. A wretched woman with long gray hair, who on close inspection was much younger than Benjamin thought, often met him at the intersection of two roads with crossed wooden arrows that said DOLLAR and UMBRELLA CITY. She carried a full tray of vegetables and soup, bread and salad and a small pile of almonds. She seldom spoke. Once she asked him when dinner was being served. Over time he learned that she had been in India where her teeth had become abscessed. She'd gone to a dentist, who pulled all of her teeth and broke the bones in her mouth. Benjamin saw blood at the corners of her mouth when he walked away, going in the direction of neither arrow, turning back to see her, staring after him for a moment, before moving off toward Umbrella City in a slow shuffle.

Benjamin’s feet pounded along the hot earth burning off all around him. He saw bodies, naked and torn, panting, wanting him, or just standing there waiting. He ran from body to body looking for the one he wanted. There were men and women and children in all sizes and shapes. Giants and dwarfs, ladies in wheelchairs and fat uncles with huge soft penises they swung like lariats. Sometimes he wanted to blow their brains out. Sometimes he'd lie on a stretch of ground after taking off his clothes and simply wait for them to do what they wanted, thinking it would be easier.

He drew Palomar. Its beak sharpened, became more duck-like and the big bird took over the whole damn sky. Suddenly Benjamin could place all the parts of his day inside the duck. Palomar soared. Palomar was magnificent and there was more Palomar than Benjamin could ever imagine. He stuck a bill on Palomar's head. He dabbled with the feet and he plugged the red eye in, but it didn't feel right. It felt right, but it didn’t feel right. Nothing felt right. Maybe Palomar was just another pile of nothing.

Now, years later, Palomar stood in half-drawn broken lines across the Northwest sky. The stillness of this electric sky seemed to betray Benjamin and yet it looked like the same sky. It left him crazy and ashen in the blue night, feeling grayer than the dust about his shadow, thinner than his silent, cold bones, almost as quiet as the soft and tender breath he knew as a child. It felt raw and foreboding, sinking deep into his chest as if a strange sickness circled his lungs like a vulture. He raised his eyes to the sky knowing the duck had to be finished. Somehow.

"Palomar," he whispered. "I need your itty bitty red eye up here. I can't go home to Texas anymore and I can't stay here. I need you big ole duck in the sky. I need you to fill up the night when I'm crazy, so I don't go over there in the desert and get all messed up. I need you like a warm stream and an inner tube floating on top of the stream and me in the inner tube, just floating along. I need rest, Palomar. I can't run crazy anymore. It sounds funny when I talk to people. I can't even be straight with myself, or Spring, or Jack Fry. I just wait for night when I can rest and I can't rest because I work nights. I tried drawing you in the daytime and that doesn't work. Where am I going to go? Ole Palomar, you got to come through. Or else I'm_____

"Or else what? Who are you talking to Benjamin?" Camille said, stepping out in the starlight.

Benjamin said. "Your mother will have a fit. Never mind if Jack finds you out here."

"She's sleeping. Besides, it's beautiful out here and I heard you talking all the way down in my bed."

“Where’s Jack?”

“I hope he’s sleeping. He has to work.”

"I'm sorry," Benjamin said, softly, thinking he might have woken up the whole place. "Did I wake you?"

"Not exactly. I had a dream and woke up and I didn't want to wake Jack or Mommy up, so I went for a walk. So who were you talking to?”

Benjamin pointed to the sky.

"What's that?" Camille said.

"It's a duck. It's Palomar. I believe there's a duck up in the sky that goes along with the other constellations. Only it's my duck. And I trace this duck all over the sky and put all the things I think about inside. Like what I smell and eat and what I hear or a person maybe."

"Can you make me a duck?" Camille asked.

"I don't know," Benjamin sighed. "I've been having a hard time lately. Let's see
now. Let's go up and take a look. See the stars way up there to the North?”

"Yes." Camille said.

"Well that's Cassiopeia, the lady in the chair.”

"Where?"

"Up there where the Big Dipper is. No, look, see where it looks like a ladle? There. Like a soup ladle.”

“Yes, I see,” Camille said. "

“Now see where the handle is and how it comes down into the scoop part and then goes up to the end? Well on the end of the ladle. Here. Spread your fingers and put them up so they re the width of the end of the ladle.”

“Like this?”

“Like that. Now, walk your hand up from the ladle, only keep the same distance. Walk it up five and half times.”

“Like this?”

“Like that. Now you should be on the Little Dipper, which looks a little bit like the Big Dipper.”

"I see. I see. I see it!"

"The second star in the handle is Polaris, the North Star," Benjamin said. "Follow my finger up up up and there's a bright star. There! Polaris. See that?"

"Where do we go now?"

"Now, follow my hand," Benjamin said, and he held her hand. He drew the duck's belly under the Big Dipper tracing the neck outside the Little Dipper to the beak, to the head and then a sweep over the crest of Palomar’s head and down the back of his neck and around the outside of the Big Dipper again. He drew two webbed feet right into the tail of Draco the Dragon sweeping the skies below.
"And now you can put the eye in it,” he said.

"How do I do that?”

He held her hand and pointed to a place just behind the bill and up. Make it round or square or oblong."

"I'll make an egg with a dot," Camille said.

"Good. Now that's Palomar the Duck.

"Hi Palomar."

"Now you get to put anything inside the duck you want," Benjamin said.

"You mean pretend?" Camille asked.

"I mean put anything up there that makes you feel good. Or even if it doesn't feel good."

"Like what?"

"How about your cat, Spider?"

"Sadie's her name now. I'll put Montezuma, the rooster up there too even though he's been mean lately. Where should I put him?"

"Anywhere you want. In his belly. On his tail. In his neck."

"Ok, I get it. I'll put Montezuma the Rooster up there. Let me see. On top of Palomar's head,” she giggled.

"Now you've got it," Benjamin said."

"And Radar and the Princess.

"Who's Radar and the Princess?" Benjamin said.

"They're my secret friends. And then I'll put Archie, my boyfriend on Palomar's back."

"What a great idea. I never thought of putting things on him. How come I never thought of that?"

"Mommy can stand on Palomar's feet so he won't get away."

"Don't you want to be free and just fly away?"

“I do. I do, but just in case. And we can put all the other chickens in his belly."

"Does he eat them?"

"Of course not," Camille said, looking up at Benjamin's face now bright in the starlight. "What are you going to put in Palomar?"

"Let's see," Benjamin said, folding his hands at his thighs and gazing childlike at the duck, who began to glow at the edges. "I'll put Spring up there and Jack and I'll put Tommy up there. He's my brother and he's dead, but I'd put him up there."

"I'm sorry," Camille said.

"It's ok. And maybe fat old Elmer, my old friend from home. I loved to hear him laugh. He laughed like Jell-O and he shook when he ran and laughed at the same time. He was my friend," Benjamin repeated, pausing momentarily to remember Howell's round cheeks and his big thick teeth in the moonlight on Love Field. "And maybe Lenny, a guy I used to know. Lenny used to tell me all about the beautiful places to go even though his life wasn't very beautiful. And Cindy, she lived down the road from us in Dollar, Texas; that's where I'm from. I used to go over and sit on her porch after school when I was eight, but then Daddy wanted me to come home. I never did figure that one out."

"I know what you mean," Camille said. "I had a boyfriend in Sacramento when I was seven and you'd thought we were going to get married the way Mommy told it. He said all kinds of stupid things. His mind was warped. At least Mommy said it. Warped is a funny word. I think he was just jealous."

"And think I’ll put a nice old farmhouse up there. Not a big one, but big enough to have a porch to sit on, on summer nights."

"With a screen to keep out the mosquitoes and a fat cat,” Camille said.

"But you've got a cat."

"But it's not a fat cat." Camille said.

"Well maybe you can feed it more."

"Maybe," she said thoughtfully. "And a swing for Mommy and a little door for
the cat to go in and out. And a big soft puffy mattress with big pillows."

"I'll put a pound of peace of mind up there."

"I'd like to put God up there where I can see her," Camille said.

"How do you know it's a her?" Benjamin said.

"Because I said so,” Camille said. “And I can see Palomar right now."

"So can I, Camille. So can I.

For a few moments Benjamin and Camille watched the sky stand still and then it seemed to shift, perhaps a hair, perhaps a slight nod to the East. Camille pointed to Palomar again.

Highwayman

2008-11-02T06:30:00.001-08:00

In the dream, he imagines the will
of some ancient god sent him
out at night to find the lost space,
the empty room down the hall,
the song trickling in the window;
the one he can't make out the name of

In the distance he sees lights
specks, pinpoints in the darkness.
He stops to stare at the dim reflection
of the broken yellow line chasing before and after.
On either side of the highway the dark
trees form a great hallway to the sky.
where that many stars are so hard to imagine,
where he tries to pick out what he remembers
when he was a kid, the North Star, the Big Dipper
Arcturus, the eyes of Taurus the Bull.

Tonight Jupiter and Venus hang one over the other.
Mercury and Spica close in; they'll
almost meet on tomorrow's Harvest Moon.
Tonight he misses her musk, her breathing
at 4. a.m., her shoes scattered on the bedroom
rug, her underwear on every chair.

Tonight he pictures her next to the fat
Vice President of Sales he doesn't
want to know the name of. This
guy she met on a houseboat off
the Sacramento banks in steamy August.

He banged her against the wall.
Dumped her pocketbook on the floor
and tore up her money.
He cried, he begged her to stay.
"Not now!" he pleaded.
"This is our time to build,
our time to make it really WORK."
How pissed she was, she said.
Because all this time she thought
it was his suitcase behind the bed.

She just stopped, wouldn't try.
and he knows he didn't try hard enough.
He knows deep in the shadows of the highway
he's safe from home, from her
from the lies, from himself.

He imagines she’s almost to Nevada
the blinking plane swings north just
south of Tahoe, west to Oakland and down.
He sees her newly curled hair
her lips thin with fatigue as the headlights
bear down and a satellite crosses the zenith
and careens into nothing. Is it last
night or tomorrow night in a dream?

Headlights, he hears an engine.
The truck so close it could hit him.
Suddenly he remembers mad sweaty faces,
endless sparkling gin, damp breasts, hot musk
teeth flashing, dark, then ever-swelling dawn.
And a safe childhood lawn before this, before
he couldn't stand the sick of being sick and quit.

Caught between the awesome stars
and the anonymous truck,
the man fades from the road.
The pickup passes, its red lights shimmer
like a UFO in some childhood dream.
The smell of pennies and blood fill the air
and he thinks his lungs might burst.
Night swallows him, trees bore in
The highway at his feet seems to disappear.

He remembers three years ago, no four
driving past a man walking the highway
two hundred miles from nowhere.
For a second he swears he saw the whites of his eyes
flash in recognition as he passed.
That night he saw a car a few miles back.
Maybe it's was his car, maybe he broke down.
For an instant he thinks maybe it was his father
but his father died years ago in the Albany VA
of sinus cancer, cigars, and drink.

Nine miles later he thinks, God
he looked so damn lonely, maybe
I should have stopped, maybe I should
go back and drive him into town. He's only a man,
just a tired man looking to get home. But he
doesn't go back. Three days later
on his honeymoon in Olgonquit, Maine
he awakens at 3.22 a.m. to the most beautiful
perfume he ever imagined. He rolls
over and looks at her. How lovely
she has become since they met. How she's
grown on him like a great mossy heat.

Just yesterday she seemed so young.
Look how smooth her skin is, her flat belly rises
and falls next to him, until the sound of her
soft breath breathing makes him shudder.
Suddenly he thinks he hears music.
He springs out of bed and moves silently
to the French windows, like air, like stardust.

He pushes both windows open and peers
into the endless night. "I should have,"
he says. And his bride wakes with a start..
"What is it?"she asks. "Tell me.”
"Nothing," he says. "I just should have.
Go to sleep. It's really nothing at all."

In his dream the man walks the shoulder of
the highway all night and when the sun rises
he is amazed at how free he feels, how hungry
he has become. Hundreds of cars
pass, sometimes a semi almost blows him over.
Once he hears a fragment of an old hymn
so close, he almost turns back.
Occasionally he raises his right hand
to wave someone down, but thinks better of it.

At noon he walks through a small village
where a gas station attendant shoots him the fish eye.
He’s forgotten to eat and no longer has an ache.
It seems it all happened somewhere else
the endless love, the dark, the tin
thumping of his heart, the job he can't
remember the name of, the names of stars
a wish for clean socks, headaches,
tender hands, telephones, all of it
lost in the long stretch ahead.

Jackie's Poem

2008-10-30T06:41:00.001-07:00

I was going to stop by the porch
That’s a dream and you know it
If you are still around
But they tell me you are not
No one even knows who
You are, though the family name
Is faded paint at the Rug and Cider Mill
I still feel your thin neck
I see your long legs in jeans
But I’m sure the pony tail is gone
We stood in shadows and I’m not clear
What we were doing then
It was more heat and wish
The next day I got the flu
And never saw you again

Fall arrives breast up red and yellow
And I’m not looking for what wasn’t
Might have been in the orchard
Or the porch, or whose dream is who’s
You are gone, the house is gone
The moon, oh I see it
Your blue eyes, your small face
Your chin close to mine
Somewhere in the mix of things I see
A silence of sorts, a wish
Running off toward spring
Where the boys and girls are new
See how they dance oh
See them leap and sing

Excerpt from House in the Attic

2008-10-26T10:07:00.001-07:00

In Troy I learned about take, have and give and what a train can do. Train came easy because Aunt Jane walked me up to the end of Glen Avenue one night after a freight train hit a car at the crossing. The tracks shone sharp and steely in the spinning fire truck lights. Flashlights probed the twisted metal blown all over the crossing. Shadows of men moved in and out of the lights picking up pieces of flesh and putting them in bushel baskets. I smelled death. Not the stench of rotting death I'd smell years later. No, this was a dark, but not unpleasant odor that felt like an extra layer of air hovering just out of reach.

Have was giving my softball to a kid for a nickel thinking it was take and he wouldn't give it back.

Troy was the Flying Red Horse and where we got our eyes tested. Freihofer's Bread and Borden's Milk were delivered by horse and wagon. I went to Troy to hear about the Yankees instead of the Red Sox and to see how Uncle Mark umped semi-pro baseball. I went to hear Cousin Jay say Cohoes and Waterveliet like it was somewhere. It sure smelled like somewhere. I wanted to cross the Green Island Bridge. Was it green? Where was the island? I wanted to hear about Uncle Mark making big guns at the Waterveliet Arsenal and I wanted to grip the little white plastic counter with the tiny black numbers he used to record strikes and balls. And I wanted to be someplace where I didn't have to be afraid. I always felt safe at Aunt Jane's.

I know its BINGO at St. Pat's for Aunt Jane. I smell the church basement on Sundays. I smell scalloped potatoes and ham, macaroni and cheese. I hear three phones ringing in Cousin Jay's basement on Saturday, Sunday and Monday during football season. Bet the spread. I know the round-shouldered man, the snappy-eyed kid, the physics professor with the raspy voice and the Lucky Strikes in his shirt pocket that won't go to the doctor, the mechanic with the red rag hanging out of his coveralls pocket, the lady upstairs with the jangly earrings, the cop with the dead brown eye. Kids blat in their cup o noodles; the checks have stopped. Bet the over and under. The scrubbed-faced clerk in Jimmy's Variety at 6th and Glen smells like Clinique and candy bars. Bet a game, a race, bet three, four, five times the rent. Park the car out front.

No work has stripped Troy of heart and bone. The shirt factories and brickyards have gone to seed. The Waterveliet Arsenal used to make the big guns for World War II. Now it makes a few missiles, and what with the Gulf War maybe a few more. General Electric in Schenectady has been laying off and rehiring for years. As John Dos Passos said, "Steinmetz was the greatest piece of apparatus General Electric ever had until he wore out and died." RPI looms high above the Hudson; it's crumbling facade of brick and column, marks the fall of Troy behind the Police Station. Russell Sage College is co-ed now and a bagel shop across the street caters to properly improper students, septegenarian running shoes and a plethora of tweed. La Salle and Hudson Valley Junior College are a long time coming a short way and Emma Willard School stands stiff in her bones. Boarded up buildings sweep the edge of the river with the Troy Judo Club and KoKoro Karate hacked into the cracks. The old Wusterfield Candy Company hangs in at Congress and River Streets, a few hopeful antique shops have quaintly tucked themselves in, and up toward Fulton Street they've bricked the sidewalks and stick in some Please-Come-Back streetlamps.

Troy is pizza, grinders and submarines, blank counters; tired cooks in front of ovens, onions and extra cheese please. A half-frozen alley cat sniffs a bent trashcan. You can smell the cold grease from the bottom of a car on his fur. Small clusters of calf-length coats and down vests hover at bus stops. The Troy Pork Store has held court at Fourth and Perry beyond anyone's memory and up a block and around the corner, the price of a Troy Famous little hot dog, as long as your thumb has gone up a nickel. They're soft and dyed red and they are hot, oh yes.

All over February, uncertainty hangs in the dank air; all day, all night SCUD missiles tear into mad television sets full of star shells and sand.

At 6th and Congress, a skinny man, say twenty years old had spilled laundry all the way down the stoop. Now he stuffed the half-empty laundry basket in the back seat of his 74 Plymouth. He sat in the car that wouldn't start slamming his fists on the steering wheel. The smell of sour washcloths and dirty snow filled the air and his bleached blond wife, skinnier than the man, skinnier than a Time Out, stood on the stoop dangling a lit cigarette in one hand and holding a four year old girl in a yellow parka by the wrist with the other. She glared stone-eyed at the stream of laundry falling down in front of her. While we sat at the light, the little girl began crying and her green left mitten fell off. An old man straddled the curb and the street. His eyes were closed. I heard a radiator banging in the hallway behind the wife. The light changed.

Take turn right on Second Avenue to a strip of brownstones with names carved in brass by the doorways. It's a nice quiet street with white curtains and old venetian blinds on tall windows, with promises of Lavolier shades and Fax machines in every bathroom. Yellow ribbons flickered on dark tree trunks. Fallen leaves complimented hopeful pragmatism of sweet smelling, strident, optimistic men and woman on the way to meetings or lunch at the Clam Bar Broadway. Half a dozen blue points please, a glass of cabernet, expresso, and chocolat mousse please. Gentrification planned, honed, revised, touted for bonds, reworked, revoked, rescinded, re-ordered, re-voted, re-thought, re-framed, re-written, removed, re-invented. Great sets of teeth surrounded corned beef sandwiches and perfumed hair wafted carefully in the afternoon breeze turning icy cold.

Men and women sip coffee at Mc Donald's at 4th and Fulton. They smoke endless cigarettes and get rattled by the possibility of swarming kids who haven't even gotten out of school yet. They go up to the Post Office for checks, checks, checks, or poke through the Mall for something different when they get tired of sitting. A gray string of men peruse the tote boards at OTB arguing ten pounds on a $2500 allowance race. Buy Lotto, read the Morning Line. Next door, the cab dispatcher sits by his desk in the window sorting through little yellow slips. From time to time he strokes his smoky beard and lifts his weary eyelids to the radio mike in front of him, leans in to bark an order to Kenny up in the Berg, or glances at his straw-haired phone taker cranking down addresses on her yellow slips. Bowling balls echo ten pound salutes up by the Holiday Inn. Uncle Sam still points a finger at young men with basketballs, Ipods and lamb chop dreams.

The bus leaves for Bennington, Burlington, Boston. The bus goes to New York, Atlantic City, Waterveliet, Albany, Cohoes, Menands, Saratoga, Lake George, Glens Falls, Montreal.

The Plumber's Delight?

2008-10-18T08:43:00.000-07:00

It all sounds so rational, the bailout, the slight increase in interest rates, borrowing to meet the payroll, mortgage relief and a 783 drop in the Dow.

Does this smell like another Code Red two weeks before election with a hint of Terrorist, Terrorist, Terrorist, in this country, so numb it flushes itself on war, high risk finance and speculation, while the middle class buys suction on a credit card.

Is this Democracy on a hamstring with the butt end facing the dark side of the moon?

Did “In God We Trust” pull the plug and sell the toilet paper to Dubai along with the Chrysler Building?

Can we expect our children to thrive, not just survive in a glimmer beyond, “Say Cheese Please” and “Hi. I’m me?”

Do we honor America when we run elections like carnival sideshows complete with TV Freak Talkers while we’re frisked at the airports, spied on at the malls, the phones, and watched in restrooms just in case we pass normally?

Are we the final goof in the release valve, a country where Noah poses as Fannie Mae and Dracula stirs the pot?

What planet eats itself and sells the bones? What country stares at the corpse they become without hindsight or an odor of total outrage?

Did the apple of our eye rot in the blinking, bonking, zippo games we invented to divert? Did we simply climb in the Hummer and drive off only to find we got stuck in the exhaust?

Who has the key to Paradise? Is it on the dresser? The couch? On Mars? Maybe it’s in the salad bowl? Maybe in a vested pocket?

A recent story in the news reads, “Woman pleads guilty to defrauding the banks.”

Please!

Security Measures to be Revised

2008-10-16T07:48:00.001-07:00

A $100 permit and microchip implant for iguana identification? Too many iguanas? Iguanas grow to be 6 feet long? May live 20 years? Terrorist iguanas?

Never mind iguanas. Forget it. Just take off your shoes and don’t bring too much shampoo or shaving lotion to the airport. Is your pen poison? Are you a little weird in the lips, oddly dressed, say a suit and tie? Well, stand by. No micro chips yet, but we hired a few thousand donkeys at the airports to search our “iguana” for weapons of mass eruption, fondling our parts and bags, dipping into the nothing they so dearly love. Heaven help your orange for lunch. Have a pretzel, a plastic glass of coke. No iguanas on the plane. We double fine iguanas and no gum.

A seemingly innocent man in blue suit, black shoes and unmatched white socks attempted to leave his spearmint gum on the wall just outside the security gate at the Albuquerque Airport. Cameras caught his disguised calmness and his thumb pressing the gum into white paint. He was taken into custody and sent to Guantanamo.

Another passenger, Mrs. Emilia Gorman switched flights after her flight was canceled in Detroit. She was taken into custody because the print sheet of her boarding pass had two flight numbers. A housewife from Grafton, New York was ordered held without bail for transporting an illegal substance, but released after authorities revealed the container held her husband's ashes, which she intended to toss, as per her husband's instructions, to the sea lions in Northern California.

Hints of retraining security at airports are in the wind. A more hyperactive machine is in the offing. The new device is said to detect penis movement and other unmentionable activity that flags irregular and dangerous behavior.

Cockroach detection is an issue. Instant microchipping for large palmetto bugs with detonation devices applied up to fifteen miles are a serious threat. A Washington news correspondent was quickly censored for suggesting cockroaches are bank products and that some eat parts of Iraq and New Orleans. He asserted that some cockroaches are asked to run for office.

Micro chipping cockroaches will come before the Senate for a vote in the near future. Iguana Rights Activists have requested a hearing at the Washington Monument.

America Loses a Few Teeth

2008-10-14T05:54:00.000-07:00

According to the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Rachel Fernandez, a pot bellied pig and “full fledged member” of the Fernandez-Fleites family of Miramar Florida, who died after dental surgery, “lay under her favorite pink Princess blanket…a sweet smile on her lips, is the first swine in the cemetery.”

So who cares about a $400,000 orgy at AIG, or a governmental takeover of the banks? This isn’t Venezuela. This is America, a one big hoorah with a cruise to the ATM and beyond. What spiritual revelation when a woman in Edgewater, Florida gets knocked out by a leaping dolphin. Why isn’t the dolphin a friend? He’s on TV. You can swim with dolphins (for a little cash) but as with other wild creatures, don’t feed them.

Unfortunately, the amphibians hulking the governmental shores these days prompt financial cartoons parlayed in flotsam and jetsam while Congress stands at the edge of the aquarium voting for Ahab to harpoon the game.

One can wiggle, froth and blow off simple love, the little pig that died at 15 months in a human dress and sweet embrace. It does bear faith in earlier pleasures like the pet rock, a wig on the bald, the spirit of America. More so, the pig belies the ease, the mask we have become, not a hurtful creature at birth, our friend, this metaphor is like the talking M and M, the sweet bears selling toilet paper to the tune of the Halleluiah Chorus with a wild hug for more.

No surprise when the “dolphins” turn up at the party, the back door of your local broker, bank or get off course and knock the bottom out of the boat that is you, all in the name of democracy freedom and terror. These gorgeous creature’s radar to spins irregularly these days. But, we can’t stop tinkering with the wiring.

One has to feel sorry for the pig, or maybe the “family” who put the pig in the dental chair for a mere $2000 with little chance of return. The truth is, Rachel Fernandez is not the first swine buried in a cemetery.