A Pair of Glasses

What is it you called morgana was not the red glow

Of the wine glass or plain morning but candle light

Too was and we grew older then and now what’s

Not the same.

Eventually crawls like a bastard onto a highway

Garden path or a train station platform revealed

Long old we had worked on broom handles and

You clutter in the midnight like

An attic.

Glasses like sky tiptoe dawns before us

With no light and dank geranium aspects

So the cloud no longer seemed like a jellybean

Or a tunic of grapes you lapped.

Perhaps we oft the stars when climbing down

Miles of handshakes light years of handfuls

A smiling jerk concerned with door hinges

Doesn’t matter now that dinner is forgetting.

Harm is now immeasurable there is no

Meter by the bed stained glass has no chance

Against

“Brick and mortar and lime” once used

To build his tower.

Up to the sky communicating distance

How when one is gone no other takes its place.

Uncle Frank

It was a long drive. Pulled over a place

As fitting as any when it’s all green all rest

Room to repose us jalopies and burn the nose, no cut

That air.

The radio high-pitched with “high and lonesome sound”

Claw hammered banjo, irritating the speaker fabric

Maybe a bird or squirrel, leaves too, not sure.

I headached

Caffeine and smoked, clocksmeared from the uncharitable lanes

I left her running, the road long enough, the car clear

From it, and idle she was faithful from the lake of all

Places I would have to piss, but must of needed the comfort

Of that most similar though much more magnificent

Toilet.

My urine, like a fountain arrow directed me to the nodding round

Gem, gleaming poached near the bank, wobbly and firm.

I laughed out “hey uncle Frank.” Being that a miracle,

Like a bee sting, would have to find me. Like a skull.

Like it was.

My instinct beyond me, my zipper a loose I thought

“That’s not uncle Frank.” And one step in I got eyes’

Sockets clean as pizzazz, drunkerly forgiving charm

Like my aunt would say, he was a no good drifter.

The brainpan

Floated

The current I could not tug waded my uncle’s imposter

Agreeing, concurring, bowing bodiless away.

Dragon Fly

Swimming pool, plum tree, agapanthus poke from greenstock

and groundcover,

Buffed winds paddle dust on my mother’s porch

Where the pail Snaketail stream-haunting,

Darts from one resting place

To another, seizing prey along the way.

I say, “I remember you”

On Huntington Library lawn, Lacy park dream, in my young father’s eyes

Fighting lightning bugs across Cleveland river fantasies.

World all over

We’re resting on logs now, stones, and leaves,

We creep and squat

In dark ooze on the bottom of a stagnant pool

Then climb up any convenient support

And transform into adults.

So I say “we must be friends,

I’ve know you long enough”

And you yellowish with reddish veins and clear tips

Fly through summer thoughts landing

Now that I’ve been far away

In warmer springs farther north. Is it true you die so quickly,

No quicker than any last breath

But

You must have seen something I missed

While catching a fly in midair

Before the earth

Stood without you.

To the man in the desert building a house of sand I hope you kept a record

Leonard Cohen

The First Birth

Did you ever think of how horrific the first birth must have been

Unexpected, a child fell, hung bloody, both of them screaming alone

In tall grass of Africa, more than likely unsuccessful

Did she run to escape the miniature tormentor, dragging it

For miles till it stopped screaming

Or did she grasp a stone with brand new opposable thumbs

And silence it with technology. Or dive into the lake

To wash it quiet, eyeing for tigers, wading while blood reached

For the surface, and was it raining or hot, weather we have never seen.

We can guess she did not bury it or give it a name.

Let’s suppose soon after, in a safe place, she invented a song

Without words, a gentle howl, a godless mimeses of another earth;

A kind born cry of mortality.

Tiny Macabre

Splidatikick, bedroom, bedroom, bedroom

Mizzzzzz bdik, pshshshshshsh…;

“Click

A television reported that a tornado hit southwestern

Kentucky at 3pm this afternoon and several houses

Click,

A Nearby train did dash through miles of insects

Splitting a northeastern wind at 60mph

Lake Erie juggles white sailboats

Margaret “a writing major”

Just returned from India

She’s quoted in summation: “Splendid”

600 hundred golden retrievers

A freak storm

That hit northern California today

Brought hail and moments just as small,

Of sentimentality

Click,”

What was that Napoleon said about Saturday night?

It vanished into a forest

In europe

Bada doom doom doom doom

Da da doom doom deem

Brightyellow flickerish lamp sizzles bug

World

The morgue breath

Froths

In angelshadow

A broom handle that

Swung

As though there are no hands

At all

Click,

A can of paled worms

Was left out by a seven year old

Without a dream left in

One of those buttshaped noggins

“Click,

That moment the fish died

In the corner

Of his eye

Bada doom doom doom doom

Dad a doom doom dum

(There is a man dying who is watching this film)

“Rhoda, bring me a snapple”

Click,

I fucked you because your

Intelligence was attractive

“Like a game show?”

Click,

Ba da doom

An ear lost its shadow

To an Ernie Ford song

Today

Click,

How I could have

Should of known better

I have no idea

Oh! Orson Welles

Click,”

Bad a doom doom doom doom

Color bars

(It’s pretty again

For a minute)

My wife turned to me and said

“Walk with me through the vines

Before the bombs drop”

Ba da deem

uuuuu hooooo

(a sigh)

Peschoop, chick.”

We Live Among Crowded Scenes

(The sound of a flashbulb clacking as in antiquated photography)

Pay attention to the way-

ning effort azzit buzzes into mercury

Like dead Jellyfish peeled to tide

In a theatrical universe, then

Kaboom!

Spotlight on the small white cat, trotting a-

Cross---between metallic spurns of oil, threads

Of automobiles---a busy freeway

The wind in an eyeball that collects sound walls

Of unforgivable pink. Sun or no sun the world

Will have its parade no matter how little that kitten.

Orange signs blink “detours are fun”

Riddle you helpless to a tornado shaped building

With a parking spot at the wedge

The barker’s megaphone knuckles

Have “lick pusy” tattoed on em

in crayon font---

He shouts, “plato, playdoe, pay doe…now

Hand me something you can’t see”

(You, crowded around yourself)

The mariachi band will never stop

Playing at your table.

(Besa me, besa me mucho).

Soon the walrus in your grandfather’s tuxedo

Will pick his teeth with whole catfish bone

Half-lit behind the velvet lamp shade

He pets your kitten,

Picks his mandolin a rendition of

As the Saints Go Marching In.

A photograph of your knees

Is printed on the awkward menu

You decide to have a cheeseburger

---Medium rare.

25,26,27

25

Yellow starthistle sucked at daylight in Roseville train yard

Robert’s veins creaked with chemo-electric rush, beeps of machinery

We sit waiting for northbound Union Pacific Scarecrow, Klutter, and little Timy

Max the cocka-poodle has fentanol suckers stuck to his fur, Bob sleeps

Charlie blinks red, Dunsmuir in line, raised by Hells Angels Timy bleeds

Bobby weezes with sleep apnia, cancer, she’s calmed by Zanex, television

In boxcar hum and sway, rollicked in soot blanket lake Shasta swims bellow

He thinks for hours on itched boils, Fox news, and “don’t bury me yet, I’m not dead”

Bob the veteran splits cold coffee n’ whiskey, orating schizophrenic; donut shops, guns

Come to find out she’s been fucking his cardiologist, he thumbs through medication What hour is it?

Past midnight we crawl through spotlights into Klamuth Falls the bull is waiting

The round soldiers in their regiment pill bottles dissolve in his chest, it’s stage five

Running with metal braced military packs we enter the BNSF yard, poised to flee

He’s not ready. Thinks about his wife’s smile, his son’s dirty boots

26

Did too much blow night before the funeral, I miss the sublimaze, the oxicotton

Read Dylan Thomas to the crowd, weird group of Jews and cemetery rats

He worked there, in the mortuary, twelve years sober 13 dollars an hour

Wasn’t long after I left Jersey, Bergen County jail, stolen inmate cup, that he died

Proud his son hopped freight trains across the continent, never heard of Guthrie

Or anything American, a Zionist he thought of Israel, sobriety, and pain

Lying in bed, I lit a smoke, twisted the knob of the fiber optic peacock music box

He’s only tears now, animal thoughts, a monument of decay

27

I jerk off, look down, and no shitting you, it’s the Virgin Mary!

9 am Captain Beefheart growls out pathological blues

“Strawberry caterpillar, strawberry butterfly”

What are these stains on my boxers, take a picture quick

The peach tree is blossoming birds and pomegranates are hard to eat

Skid row dope, Mexican says “I know people who would stand where your sitting”

Shut up, I’m living like Bukowski, late twentieth century, Fuck Lowell

She doesn’t mind the Tijuana whores, kisses in New Orleans, Mescalin in Death Valley

O yes, mescalin in Death Valley, incantation for fat fingers, we all three cry for fathers

Nude in the sun spittle, dancing in the Panamints, we cry for our fathers