Huis Clos on Stage
Three body shrubs in shingled sweat
deck an island near the road.
Leaning against a cardboard sign:
"Give & God Will Pay You Back!"
Fingers tap dance fancy rows
of callous automatic locks.
A hot sun burns through gauze cloud.
I adjust my rearview mirror,
pretending busy takes me off
the fish hook of my impotence.
Eyes like marbles turn away.
Tires with their silent teeth.
I see their faces shining
in my yellow lights.
All my moot advantages
in purse of heart
fisted like a turtle
hiding in its stony shell.
Lightening seizures, ragged guilt --
diamonds in my wedding ring
cast razor glares into the glass.
These hits 'n runs of destiny
selling key chains on our streets.
Two of them too young to know
earthquakes of the hunger rumble
tearing at protruding ribs.
Iced Petit Fours
"First you take a drink, then the drink
takes a drink, then the drink takes you."
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
Away. If asked, I'll say I prefer our ghettos,
les miserables in authentic voice,
not stewing in their burgundy.
Real graffiti, gutsy anger, glimpses
of our broken chairs that have no
seats when music stops.
The doorbell rings. I answer it.
We march like ants toward liquor's sap,
the only fluid dripping from the felled oak.
Iambic chants that might end wars --
a tribe of Indians erased
because of blood they wore on sleeves.
A family that could be pines,
a walking coffin in a bottle's neck,
hugging the binding noose
with every muscle we own.
A world of iced petit fours,
perfect squares, pasted in an unmet past,
frosted in their Cover Girl.
A quart of milk goes sour.
The children are bored,
motionless as a stopped clock.
Nimble pouring paring rite
learned before our alphabets.
Boxes of our wired jaws, decorated jail cells.
We had whole words, once upon clarity's time.
But the sonnets drowned and corks still float.
We have chosen this splintered oar.
These gloves that arbitrate our Hells.
Dolor's palette crusting in the evening sun.
Arrowed chins of fine Picassos
hiding old decaying teeth.
If asked, I'll say I much prefer
honest tilts of risky rivers owning grit,
marrow packed with silt and shame.
We are a room full of dull paintings hanging straight.
Crutch & Bone
A family of coasters and corks,
goblets and platters
signed by the bottled tear.
Fishing for hooks
while rivers wind
their circus currents all alone.
Jewelry set against our flesh,
a fine display of fireworks
when flames of grief
have buried wicks.
Dry rot underneath this home,
tiny termites of our trials
soused and sassed by alcohol --
our answer to each question mark
that flowers pollen in our eyes.
All my scrapbooks look the same:
every hand enshrines a glass.
Tome of touch a nutty jar
of peanut butter no one
sticks their fingers in.
Leaning on the cocktail hour like
crutches pitch a tent for bone.
Snake pits under saggy lids
could be a sack for miracles --
but waterfalls are punished crimes
and we prefer our cubes of ice.
Moss of silence, black gangrene
clings to all the rocks we are.
A pile of stone acquaintances
discussing stocks, the rising price
of paper towels, the weather
in the Middle East.
Evening's coma summarized
in sweating quaich, waiting
for the jigger's tongue
to lick a wound that just won't heal.
Lonely Carrots
Another evening gathers us;
we fidget in our Gucci shoes and
I am an ant in Carnegie Hall
chasing the wet sap of applause.
God laughs through his saxophone
and I hope, upon dashed hope,
you will set down your mug,
open a waxy conch to my grief and my joy
cocking its battle in pendulums.
I tell you I have landed in some magazine,
as if that piddling fact is a John Glenn stunt,
which it's not, mais qui.
Your no's in wrinkled silences
wadding me up for the toss.
After the slaughter, I wash the goblets and plates
of my leftover self, wilted cabbage of my brains
set before you on a slide, eyes invited to this grief,
a carrot I pray you'll help me peel.
You nod a pretty thank you note,
for supper was nice.
Clouds contain what we are not;
showers are brewing in thunderhead gray.
When you leave, tapping the squeak of ritzy brakes,
I sense my smallness in the air.
Love is a Quixote wish;
windmills crank against this force,
this flourish without gallantry.
Will we ever skip this course of lies
and deal with cold potato time?
Its lumps, its buttered languishings.
My corkscrew limb they severed
just above the knee
because it wasn't normal's form.
My mother's death, a rotten card
in cheated decks.
The moon crumbles in ash;
sunlight's cookie saved for other continents.
But dinner was good.
Or so I repeat to dreaming ears.
Still Lives
We cherish ways we freeze our heat
and warm deep chill.
Toothpick stilts of 80 proof
make shortness tall
for moments riding misery.
We're booted dressy prostitutes
who pace an alley for relief,
end up swimming in their bile --
mascara in their pocketbooks,
layered make up for a face.
It's drinking time. The dinner hour,
a feast defined by corks and caps.
I crave a change of London guards,
their halted pulses buried well
beneath their clothes.
Quiet's yellow hue a yolk
familiar as our morning eggs.
You don a pair of sunglass shades
as if their wafers soothe a slaughter,
bloodshot eyes, our wars within.
I try to laugh, stick to lightness,
pick it up like heavy rocks.
Train the fungus green regret
to keep its itching entity
for tombstones of an empty page.
I fill our ruts with busyness,
scrub counters with my fisted palms
as if I'm cleaning Ecuador of poverty
with nothing but a paper towel.
Like Tantalus, I reach for fruit --
bow swats flesh and I defer.
Like Tantalus, I reach for lumps of river breast --
waves withdraw and thirst remains.
Genitals of jabber flat.
Orgy and oasis dry.
Our Thistled Land
I trim my claws for Sunday brunch:
drag out vodka, orange juice,
nice champagne, tonic water, bottled beer.
Then I flip some sixty crepes
as if we're French and not a batch
of alley bodies dressing in expensive cars.
Counters look like sleazy pubs
and 10:00 a.m. does not dispute
the calling of the blizzard's foam.
I hand you scraps of weathered love
in verses meant to break this chill
like ice picks pierce a cube and spray.
You brush off climates of my soul
as if they are a mound of aphids
eating centers of a rose.
I dry the dishes carefully,
stack them neatly in a lie.
You place a beer cap in my palm,
gather gifts like wilted daisies
brightening a dying room.
I fiddle with its satellite
that circles livid ashen moon:
this epitaph, this impotence,
this tiny fist, a tight bouquet.
Between the lines of angry vowels,
my thin cocoons of artistry,
their butterflies in vertigo
questioning the mucus wrap,
years of running, rummy running
adding up like ticker tape.
You say to me in silences,
blunt and cold as
snowflakes falling on a rock:
"I drank away a stony heart."
As if a whiff of Chardonnay
could ever clear our thistled land.
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