6961. FIRST YOU HAVE TO FIND HER

FIRST YOU HAVE 

TO FIND HER

Ten thousand meddlesome things : Mike, at

the garage named 'Mike's', with his head once

more underneath a hood. He's always staring

down at metal; the small deli next door, seemingly

always going out of business, then back again, and

then out. Who would want to buy anything from

there? Mike says he only gets buttered rolls and

coffee, if he doesn't make his own.

-

Next to that, the old house with the ten cats at the

garage  -  they roll around and then just seem to wait.

Someone feeds them, and they stay, someone gives

them milk every other day. 'It's not me,' I've heard

Mike say, 'Whoever it is that lives there, but first 

you've got to find her.' Storylines of a similar bent

recur : the sergeant from the local police comes by;

all he wants is to be sure Mike's got a current permit.

-

Then, just up the road, is Sal's; another garage, but 

way larger than Mikes, and with a crew of five. An

antique fire truck sits outside, and Sal's also has five or

six charter-buses that he keeps. Local schools, field trips

and sports teams going places. He's got two drivers as

well  -  one old, black named 'Cheetah', and the other

some retired prison guard making pocket money. He says

he 'likes the zoo trips the best. I mean, I take the kids anyplace

they're going  -  museums and sport-sites and down the shore

too, but I like the zoo trips best. Seems everyone's happy.'

-

There's a lady there, she does the payroll and the accounting;

schedules trips, lines up buses and drivers, and all the rest.

Betsy. Nice lady too, but (yes) first you have to find her.

She drives a vintage square Buick  -  that's how I know if

she's there. I look where she parks (same spot always) and

if there's no Buick there, I know she's not either. Things get

easy, but never out of hand. Just, first you have to find her.

-

They call this Cavendish Road; sometimes people ask,

the ones who are lost or otherwise don't know where they 

are. It was an old farm road, long ago, and then, like 

everything, like the rest, little by little, it got built up -   

once small building after another, and then another small 

business front and a driveway and a garage, then a light, 

and  -  finally - a big paved road and traffic too. Now, most of 

the time, and especially during school time, there's a crossing 

guard about : always helpful and good to see, but,  

-  yes  -  first you have to find her.

6960. HIM THE ONE

HIM THE ONE

Him the one down the rabbit hole of 

eminent domain; never got breath, never

came up again. I was the one waiting with

the tea-cup in vain. Him the one, with the

verses of songs with the words just too long.

I took the remembrance, and then I took his 

hat. You can't bring me nothing, 

if you can't bring me back.

6959. NOW THAT IT IS

NOW THAT IT IS

The gaping hole in the chest, well, that was a

heart. The transplant wouldn't take, so they

just ripped it out  -  I do feel better now, 

somewhat relieved in fact. I'll find something

to fill the spot, sooner or later, I'm sure.

We spend a lot of our time at the riverside,

now that it is easy, and now that I can move.

The fish jump the water with ripples and

bubbles. Both things I envy them having.

Two days a week a man comes by with a

cart  -  coffee, pastries, finger foods to nose

at, and all the rest. problem is, he intends

to talk, and do nothing else. His prices may

be cheap, but his habit is expensive. Talk.

Talk. Talk  -  once of those guys who thinks

all space has to be filled with words, an

incessant chatter, on and over, about 

inconsequential things. I finally always

end up just sending him away, but he 

always does come back.

-

I can function pretty well  -  like an uncaring

hillbilly now, without a heart. I get by, and I

look at various things with a different eye :

the squirrel who prepares for Winter, the

bird of prey, high overhead, just swooping

around to see what's fallen, and where. Every

few days, another roadside carcass, or a deer

laid dead deep in the woods. Things I, as a person,

would never usually see. I'm lighter by a few

pounds too  -  and all that raging sentiment has

also disappeared. Whatever happens, I don't care.

Now that it is gone, that is the way it is.

6958. A WRITER'S LIFE IT IS

A WRITER'S LIFE IT IS

(...at all)

You know [you would know, yes] that it doesn't

always have to make sense, and that making sense

sometimes makes no sense at all. The candy-wrapper

is all the gift you gift; not the candy itself. And that

the line on the wall is not a line at all - just a shading

where the light goes dim : so like a harbinger of

all yet to come; yes, of all yet to come. 

[You would know, yes].

6957. AGRARIAN IMPULSE (nature)

AGRARIAN IMPULSE

(nature)

Certain things you have to learn 

to love : that hatchet in your back, 

that axe you are holding, without 

a handle. Those trees, now 

begging your forgiveness.

6956. I HAVE LEARNED HOW TO BREAK THE LOGJAM

I HAVE LEARNED HOW 

TO BREAK THE LOGJAM

Seven a.m. and the matinee blues have started

already. I have to go on at one. Nothing ready and

can't read my lines, let alone know them. Drunk like a

fig for four days already  -  I swear I never wanted this.

Much rather be in Albuquerque doing an Arthur Miller.

Here though, this slathered stage-door is covered in

debris and markings, and someone else has left a

puddle of piss in the entry. Nothing but filth lives

here when I'm away  -  that's the dark side, and the

one I never see. By contrast, they bow down to me.

-

I don't know why, and I've weathered a lot of storms.

The limos pull up, and some hoodlum gets out instead,

demanding money and a free pass for his 'friend'. All I

can do is groan. 'I don't do tickets, sorry', would 

probably just get me killed. Listen, don't be me.

Though I have learned, yes, how to break the

logjam, it brings me nothing good at all.

6955. THINGS THAT HAVE DISAPPEARED

THINGS THAT 

HAVE DISAPPEARED

Becoming the left-handed merchant of dreams

is nothing at all like being starlight : diffused are

the colors of eternal time, the time that never ends.

Is this the manner of the means we keep? If so, I

have already lived a hundred lives and lost a thousand

men. Hannibal, be silent and cross those Alps.

-

Otherwise all of it goes by the boards. Poe's cottage, as I

visit it, means little to me, Annabelle Lee. Now the dark 

roads cross its edge, and it sits there like some pile in the

middle of a really bad spot -   an intersection of nothing

and all. Whoever it was who sickened there and died

has no power over me. The broken fence, I decry.

-

This island makes me sick  -  its criss-crossed roads

now covered by creeps and useless people, serfs and killers

too. No pantomime brings forth a juggler for the begging.

Anywhere I go, I want to leave; and taxi-drivers try to

earn their pay by passing by, not stopping, just passing by.

The world is an emollient of turmoil, and so many things

I once knew and cared of have disappeared. 

There is no way to get home at all.

6954. TURN TO PENNY BUNKUM

TURN TO PENNY BUNKUM

She's really a great lady, my favorite kind, the

one I love most, the daughter of mine. Though

I never had one. Always wanted. Life is a

cumbersome life-raft, somehow both pulling you

down as you wear it (it wears you) yet saving

you as well, keeping it all afloat. Otherwise,

what is there anywhere? A Qwik-Smart roadside

stand, an attraction of sodas and malted, a queer

qwid on the edge of his/her own disaster. God,

I can't stand people who can't make up their minds.

-

I have a ginger-felt hat that I wear; the brim is too

long for the subway; takes up two seats. Plus, I

probably look like some stupid montanero with it

on, singing putrid songs about some highland

farmland, the lass who got away, and the fine,

fresh water of the River Leewon. So, now I

sit next to the electric meters at the side of some

crude cinder-block building dispensing refreshments

in the hundred-degree heat. How has it come to this,

that the State will dispense refreshments for free

to its minions. And who am I? The geek with the

brownie shirt was just making fun of me for

drinking hot coffee. His point seemed to be that,

on a day like today, everything should be cold.

Pretty much like I was to him. Foolscap

head-dress upon all his motivations.

-

'Wanna' watch a movie? I got one in my car. It's

about a love match between this criminal from Mars  -  

but no one knows that, of course  -  and a lady he meets

at the library. They fall in  a sort of love and he winds

up in bed with her daughter. Unbeknownst to everyone

anyway, in another time-zone layer, he's already her father

in another family and they raise astral sheep that graze on

the surfaces of hard-stone planets peopled (though you

can't really say 'peopled') or inhabited anyway, by chimerical

beings who want to be present but are not, and cannot be.

It is only vicariously, through imaginings, that they can 

exist at all. Something like a dream in our own sleep, but 

one which doesn't disappear and you can remember always.

-

By the time I get around to answering that guy, he's back

in his car with the windows down and the movie is already

playing (I think) on the back of the driver's seat, and, on the 

back seat, two kids are intently watching it as he drives away.

While I turn back to Penny Bunkum again; 

the daughter I never had.

6953. ROBESPIERRE RUBBER BAND

ROBESPIERRE 

RUBBER BAND

I want to think that was the name in full  -  funny name

for a funny guy, though I profess the French probably 

pronounced it not as 'rubber band' but more as 

'rubeairebond' without the 'd' as well. So much of

that is just funny stuff; I'll be laughing to August

first. I just tonight realized, too, that I haven't seen

a television screen on since February first. I don't

know what the French would say about that.

-

It's all a round-robin, it's all a fool's game.

6952. A LOAF OF POUND HAVEN

A LOAF OF POUND HAVEN

Michael the Marksman was just by here; he 

broke all the windows in this house. 'Peppershot-

haystack-broadspray-pattern' bullets were all he used. 

They smelled like ammo, but sounded like belch. Michael

said that's the kind of ammo they used in the Old Testament

to break up the crowds  -  like at the Tower of Babel, and 

when Sodom and Gomorrah were going down. Yeah, like

I believed him, and I can't believe he thought I would. 

I know the truth, how those crowds around Moses were 

stilled with Motown songs, and a burning bush.

6951. CAPPING THE MOTORCYCLE DEATH-HEAD

CAPPING THE MOTORCYCLE 

DEATH-HEAD

The van was in the weeds, the old style of van, 

windowless, white, like a delivery. Of something. 

Hopefully alive. They pulled it over, into the 

marshes by the end of the bay, and  - yes  -

threw something out. I'm so tired of all this. A

personal sort of home-grown terror. Bikers on

parade, fighting turf wars like shits and giggles.

-

What tendencies to unbalance the land are rife with

this fair stupidity? I can name ten, but I won't. Club

names and majordomos too. Collective IQ? maybe

a hundred  -  and each time they kill someone else

it decreases the lot by five more. Zero can't be

far behind. Why else this game, charades on

wheels of fire. Charades on wheels of fire.

6950. MAYBE MADAM MADE HIM

MAYBE MADAM MADE HIM

Never knowing what happens in the house of ill repute,

they're playing once again the blues. House of the Rising

Sun and all the rest. I splashed my Jack Daniels against

the deck of that porch and started fighting with that guy :

he'd proclaimed himself the winner of a single-man contest.

I didn't know even a touch of what he meant, but was just

tired of hearing his shit. If you've ever fought with a broken

bar-bottle, you must know what I mean. The feeling's intense.

-

Nothing much came of it  -  drunks aren't good at anything  -  but

I walked away proud I stood up for something. Problem was,

in my stuporific haze, I hadn't a clue what it might have been.

6949. LOST 'EM ALL IN THE FLOOD

LOST 'EM ALL 

IN THE FLOOD

The place where I used to live is no more;

cowboys and hoodlums abounded. I had huge 

metal boxes of automotive tools, and the lingering

carcass of a motorcycle too  -  lost 'em now, all

in the flood. I walked away from an angel singing,

and a purloined cat a'wail. There was a neighbor

or crutches who wanted my clutches. Lost 'em

all in the flood. The mantle-piece made of marble

fell hard-down off the wall, tearing the brackets

and gaping large holes. I could put my hand in

them, and the marble it stayed on the floor. I had

sheafs of beliefs and a Maidenform bra. Lost 'em

all in the flood. It wasn't so much the water, 

much more it was the mud.

6948. WHAT KIND OF MYSTIC ARE YOU?

WHAT KIND OF 

MYSTIC ARE YOU?

After the dark and then the light, that little

paper bag, blowing down the street. It chases

its own eddies in the twisting surface breeze. I

know and understand how things pass : their is

a source of mayhem within the heart of peace.

6947. BUGLER

BUGLER

Did twenty things today all different : went to the

vet not for me of course got a letter from the govt. in

the mail, yes for me, and not good, replied twice to 

some cockamamie address in Philadelphia on Spring 

Garden Street, the same street where the once-great art 

school was but now is sunk and Robert Venturi has a 

building too, if anyone is after old-swank colloquial 

revolution-making architecture  -  it's nutty but I always

liked it  -  so anyway nothing of any good import happened.

-

I'm thinking whatever  -  you have to take the good like 

you have to take the bad, and they all mix together anyway. 

It was a point I always tried to get across to my crazy father 

who was always so sure that the only things good were of his 

own race and nationality, which meant nothing to me. But he'd

never shut up about it  -  how that was paramount, and in the 

forefront of everything. Don't marry out of your kind  -  or 

something; I never figured it out, and he went bazooey 

anyway and lost it until there was no sense left. 

I never did tell him I was an alien.

6946. STRANGE BACCARAT

STRANGE BACCARAT

These are dark images, of a dense and foreboding

nature. Black. Are you never happy or elated?

Sipping in your Chinese cups this fragrant tea,

why is it mere bile that it coughs up? Do you see?

-

Love and goodness and an infatuation with grace :

each of those should be enough to lift you. Walk, then,

down this linear street with me. We will pass the bar

and the tavern, the pizza place and the greengrocer

with the retarded son who handles the lettuce and the

pears. Only those, apparently, are what interest him.

-

His father has said to me : 'It's all in how I handle him,

and it's all very well. Each day, every morning, I bring him

in and I tell him he's the head of the Lettuce and Fruit

Department. You don't know. It swells him up with a

sincere pride, and he's happy and busy all the day through,

sorting, arranging, misting, and watching his subjects.'

-

I walked away somehow with a glow : a wondrous and a

truly amazing world, and one, as well, somehow just

filled with love in even the harshest circumstance,

and a strange baccarat at that.

6945. HOW TO BE ME AND WHY

HOW TO BE ME AND WHY

Simple. Don't. Stay up all night reading Ulysses, having

dreadnought libels thrown your way after five hours dead

in slogging through Joyce. Watching all those pictures come 

to life thinking about Hell, labor, and strife. Buying a 

stress-heavy ticket for lottery millions. Misgivings.

Talking to that girl, again. Two years ago, everyday, it

was about her Jeep, now it's about her Benz, and she 

looks different too. Not mine. Just different. Everyday,

in front of the house. Today, a block away. Again.

School-girl graduations turn into twenty-year old

things instead. Interesting transformations.

-

Dark coffee, late night wine, anything red and bitter.

Have to stay up, just to watch the clock crash land while

another friend flies off to Paris at dawn from JFK. No,

Newark. Newark to Orly. I am an orphan here in

Fat City; holding court in the chess club of Carmine

Street, sitting down at the Bowery Poetry Club for

another tense break. Crush me a dark-roast now.

Will anyone understand if I say I mean a person?

-

How to be me, and why? Please no, don't. One wasted 

life is more than enough for the legendary calculation

about how humans live. 'The way we do have our

tongues out a yard long like the drouthy clerics

do be fainting for a pussful.' Stephen laughed.

6944. OH ROVER

OH ROVER

Oh, Rover, you are the one : skipping like a heartbeat

over glistening water, watching the filled boats come

in, seeing the people emptying out. Just an evening's

reverie, this time with you and me. A commuter's new

nightmare can be our own Heaven. We watch while

they wait in the hundred-degree heat. No milestone 

like this, ever before.

-

So what do I care; Hall of Fame, with A-Rod's name.

All those now-debunked fortunate ones are leaning off

to the other side : watching things fade, talking politics

with someone else's boss, seeing the skirts go 

strolling by. This stretches my own tendency to 

blanch; like demanding filtered water 

on a camping trip to Nome.

-

When I was 7, I said my prayers. At the very same 

time, regardless of prayer, I was hit by a train and 

'Dead!' they declared  -  but I came to life to welt 

them a mutt like they'd never seen before. Before

them  -  like Edith Piaf  -  I will stand up and say:

'Je ne regrette rien.'

6943. I AM WARP THE HOOF

I AM WARP THE HOOF

Triangle Shirtwaist stuff, and the Brown

Building, and all those ancient girls impaled

on fenceposts. Each time I walk by I die anew.

My lot in life : to associate with the burden of

each and every other. This is not an easy task.

-

I have no modern features, am an old disgruntled

soul; larking profundities and scheming profanities,

what more can I do? I want to smother you with my

concern. Redemption is a single circle whole  -  once

I close it, I am free.

-

Like everyone else, I am everyman too. I draw

pictures with my mind and  -  like this!  -  they 

come to life. But then I have to care for them.

-

(I am sitting in a cab along eighth avenue watching

a crowd of protest surge and swerve. They remain

angry about something, something of no concern to

me. This man behind the wheel here, he begins telling

me how I will be late and he cannot help it. I smile to

him in the mirror. 'It's okay, fella', I say,

 'all will be forgiven in the end').

6942. RADIO SIGNALS FROM OUTER SPACE

RADIO SIGNALS FROM 

OUTER SPACE

The high enrichment of a nighttime sky is pulling

down the half-moon as I watch. There are vast

languages passing  -  things I don't always get

to understand, but often do. Radio signals from

outer space are not necessarily from another

place : the soul is in the Spirit wherein 

lives the wandering heart.

6941. TUNIS

TUNIS

I remain in love with ten thousand

things. Like Basho, on a hilltop, 

scribing out his simple mind.

See the wind shadowing through

these fir trees; while I sit here,

picking at my peeling skin.

6940. SLOW ESSENCE

SLOW ESSENCE

The forest will not come to me, I will go to the

forest. All those darkened animals of my surmise,

I know I will see them among their shades and bowers.

Nothing any longer shall scare me off; for I am of them

and they are of me. We share the essence of this Earth.

6939. AND THEN HOW I MADE TUCKER'S

AND THEN HOW I 
MADE TUCKER'S

This is all the now: St. John of the Cross and

that dark night of the soul stuff. That's in the

been there-done that department, as old in time

as it seems. The dark curtains are covering my

eyes, and these people think I'm already dead.

There are lilies in big vases all around me, and

someone has put pennies on my eyes. 

I dare not awake, they'd kill me.

-

Think about it anyway: what more is to be said.  

Down on Forsyth Street all the ghetto boys I ever knew

lived there. And Stanton maybe too. It never seemed

right, and I loved it there, dark and bleeding dangerous

as it was. Knives came out at night, and I remember some

girl got stabbed to death for not having sex.

-

Every ten years a new batch of people start saying 'what's

the world coming to?' It just starts all over, for the new

bunch, but it's like a re-run for the old. And then the

world never comes to anything anyway  -  black presidents.

women pretenders, exotic embezzlers, and crooked cops.

The more things change, the more they stay arranged.

6938. I CANNOT HOPE TO TURN AGAIN

I CANNOT HOPE 
TO TURN AGAIN

'...Because I cannot hope to turn again consequently

I rejoice, having to construct something upon which to

rejoice.' Well, Hiram, there's your berry juice and that

was T. S. Eliot squeezing the grapes. These men all share

despair - something like that of Tiresias and the hollow men.

All crazy coots anyway. And more than that I can add :

the churchyard gate was broken open, the collection box

was mine alone  -  the poor can go take care of themselves.

What makes this all interesting is that I start out with the

knowledge that all these others have to first start from

scratch to acquire. So, I'm ahead when I'm behind.

The quest for Salvation, you know it really requires

much more than just transcending the mere denial

of carnal love. I only want to endure, and after

the separation is ended. Key-marks and signal words.

Do not doubt for a minute they're not consciously placed.

What I hate the most is the over-and-over aspect of this

baleful life; repeat behavior, like running a stop sign

over and over until finally something hits you hard;

or jumping in front of a train only when you are

sure of the timing and sure it's arriving. Why 

miss yet another great opportunity. "I hear

that whistle blowing, it's coming down the 

line...' Conclusion: 'the amount of research

required by the context of this poem is not

justified by the amount of reward the

poem has to offer.' Huh?

6937. JEPSON AT LARGE

JEPSON AT LARGE

These handcuffs are hurting my feet, and these

shackles are killing my hands. All in all, it's a

mixed-up jumble. Can I drive anyone home?

-

The fourteenth girl with the fleur-de-lis should be

the one I choose : she'll come right at me with food

and pies, and make some goodness out of this world.

6936. I GUESS I GET TIRED

I GUESS I GET TIRED

Here, where the treetops sing, wires on wires,

dangling from poles, and the broad sky wide-eyes

its place, I get tired of hearing about the successes of

others. I am a carrion. I only wish to pick the bones of

the failed and the dead. Tell me nothing more, please.

-

Though I am happy for your placement and your 

success, I really wait for no more of that at all. In fact, 

please, just disappear from our my bead-trimmed 

window; your information is cluttering up my

space, and I guess I just get tired.

6935. NEARING TREMAIN

NEARING TREMAIN

The two farmers I thought were  family were

watching me as I was watching them. Some strange

Route 6 store named Piggly Market or something,

nearing milk and bread, nearing eggs and coffee, nearing

cigarettes. They all were there, and those two took it in.

Everyone looked up as I entered, of course  -  same old

crap like a Bob Seger song. Those two, I'd swear were

siblings setting out to do each other. 

-

At the entry, some lonely beagle was struggling for my

attention, on  a rope that neared extension as he wiggled.

All good things like this always come together : the local

gun, the cop with the ill-fitting suit, his twisted Dodge

Avenger Police Special looking mad as hell through the

trees. It too seemed looking at me, and the dirty-messed 

girl standing by the counter in twenty-day old jeans.

-

'I bet you'd think to just park anywhere, mister.' Addressed

me so, she did. 'No, no,' I said, 'I parked where it said open.'

That seemed to satisfy the bunch, even the languished cop,

of whom the others greeted the morning and noted, 'Morewick'.

Maybe it was 'morning, Rick.' I really couldn't tell. A thought

flashed in my head of something to say, but I didn't say it

because I couldn't back it up  -  'It ain't no sin to be alive.'

6934. BRITTLE

BRITTLE

How I had to shake my heart to break away

I cannot say : let it be sufficient to remember 

this alone  -  I was singular in my ineptitude.

I sat on the broken steps of the Marlton Hotel

just watching people pass. So many occurrences 

were present, I knew the time-warp was mine alone.

I saw this jack fellow, as he held to the banister,

both shaky and drunk, it was sad. 'Tristesse', I said

to him, 'Tristesse? It sounds like a fiber-cookie in

some future world.' Just then, another trembling

sound broke through the walls. I looked away.

I was tired, and finished with this all.

6933. PUSHING FOR IT

PUSHING FOR IT

Glamor-girls grown seedy with attention; the kind

of anticipation a doting mother pushes onto her kid

dressed as Barbie  -  like some death-gown in a little 

play. The tumbling audience applauds, and continues

to watch what plays. A hundred little Jon-Benets.

-

Nightfall having arrived here with no luggage, in

mid-Summer you know it won't stay long  -  another

few hours, another morning song. Abbots and monks,

they crawl the dawn with their psalm-books in hand,

praising the god of locution and the God of the land.

-

I am stuck in the hallway, between portions of need and

portions of desire. My time is running down, like the

same time that nightfall has, and this candle, my sun,

has begun now its burn at both ends. Emily Dickinson

or one of those remainders said what a glorious 

light it throws. No, no I only see shadows.

6932. TRAIPSING TO GREGORIOUS

TRAIPSING TO GREGORIOUS

We were standing on Third Ave, or Lexington, 

along the side of the street : a few chatterbugs going.

One taxi veered sideways left, and the driver was

heard : 'You did not observe that signal-sign!' One

good, chortling sound. I couldn't remember, two days

later, where I'd been. Has that ever happened to you?

-

The car had passed the window clutter, but it did

hit the lightpost nearby, and I guess the taxi was right 

to say what he did. No one was hurt, but the cab took 

off. Smart man to get get away with something like that.

In my mind, the taxi had caused the crash  -  but by yelling

out and taking off, he put himself in the clear.  I don't

know who else said what, but I never heard anything more.

-

There are all sorts of professional and social business right there,

jewels and watches, travel and travel luggage, some wicked

German store even sells high-security travel bags. Eight

hundred bucks a pop was the cheapest I saw. The woman

all look rich, and the guys have sterling eyes.  So, in my

traipsing to Gregorious I felt like a rich man at large.

6931. OCEANS AT STORM

OCEANS AT STORM

Those decadent waves are riding me again,

tearing down awnings and ripping up streams. 

Little eddies of salty water run everywhere, while

the huge, white surf surges and spittles. There is,

entirely, no land left. The carousel on the boardwalk

now just seems to wander. Some kids are eating

cotton candy, and ice cream  -  the colors of

everything are childish. Moldy green, wild pink,

suggestions of blood in the red. Some blue, like

a dead person's cheeks. Suggestion is everywhere,

and these fat bottomed girls do suggest. I think

they've come here from Irvington or Hillside.

-

Cannot reach the talk, cannot haul the salty creature,

cannot bring the wasted, drowning man back home.

Truly, I am helpless  -  like listening to a calliope play,

though I be deaf. My head nods, but to nothing.

-

Oh I am my own Sigmund now : I am looking at

breasts and bottoms and hips again, and  -  Hell  -  

I am lost. What revanchist pier has gotten me here :

old cat-man, no-hat-man, walking the sandy shore

with a four-year-old dog who soggy traipses through

sticky sand. My arms are branded by sun. I have

no idea of protection, nor rays. I am burned, and

lush, with these moments, now, of living.

6930. FRILLY AND SORRY TOO

FRILLY AND SORRY TOO

Around here they don't sit up all night 

talking about John Ford and all those 

blast-fungus westerns  -  they've got better 

things to do. Like unclog the sink of 

yesterday's bad debris,  or clean up the 

kitchen of needles. Put away the 

clank pots, and count those IOU's. 

Life is a miraculous montage of 

malicious intent. Sometimes anyway.

6929. NOTHING MODERN AT ALL

NOTHING MODERN AT ALL

So many lost items on the ringtail of soul :

men who remember their childhood, others

who don't at all. There's little crazy difference

between. The wolf in the woods comes out at

night. Sundered are the differentials of form

and feeling  -  if you remember one thing you

can still remember another; one does not cancel 

the other. I've seen ghosts go door to door, peering

into windows and knocking at entryways, pressing

doorbells to be let in. They are looking for something

they left behind. Nothing modern at all.

6928. LOVE APPLES

LOVE APPLES

Before anyone knew the tomato was not poisonous,

no one ate it at all  -  it was part of the nightshade

family, and those things killed. They called them

'love apples' for whatever reason they had : I don't

know. Round and red, like a hearthstone circle.

Finally, somehow, they learned it could be eaten

and one wouldn't die. Now it's all over a pizza pie.

Just goes to show how things really do change.

6927. CAN YOU BLAME THE ELDORADO?

CAN YOU BLAME 

THE ELDORADO?

This load of paperwork will have to suffice :

the sheriffs are in the other room looking at the

photos. The two cars involved seemed almost the

same. Two Eldo's from 20 years back; curiously,

they crashed into each other. Three people died,

one still alive but barely. Can we call coincidence

like this a too-much game? Was this a high-speed

suicidal rush wherein two these like-minded people 

with both their heaving Eldorados, and spouses or

girlfriends or whatever, decided to crash into each

other at 85 miles per hour to see what happened?

I think not. I wonder, can they blame GM for a

fatal attraction between aging Eldorados?