Coming on in Grim Fashion

An eager rooster takes a wrong
turn at the corner of river and trees,
misses the mountains entirely,
races beyond the limestone pillars
that archaeologists had drooled over.
The morning mysteries give me
enough nausea to last until lunch.
Hens spend the afternoon laying
eggs in hammocks before they
succumb to a barking Walt Whitman
on his way to the refrigerator.
Construction on the apocalypse gets
hung up at the city council meeting.
A shaky rooster is ferried across a parched
reservoir disguised as a grim Allen Ginsberg.

Remembering to Forget

A black cat warms to the cushion on
the kitchen floor as obedient eggs
scramble up in a skillet from the import store.
My concentration is broken by a front
door bell that has put its teeth into the bright
temperature of my early morning examination.
The day seems to be divided between piles of
impertinent socks and insistent shoes that
attempt to measure imperfect space.
The potted plants go bone dry before I can
flood them with a watering can full of mathematics.
A black cat stalks field mice in the tall grass of
the bedroom where babies used to gurgle up amnesia.

On Top

I want the June version of success,
the egg up a tree with feathers in the mail.

The barking cat remembers when its world
was nothing more than a clump of hair.

I condemn the morning for keeping me in the dark,
the sparrows nest in the small of tomorrow's back.

An empty continent is shipped to my
door with a manual in five languages.

I grind giddiness into a bad excuse for going out,
acceleration goes barren in the cut of the bloom.

The sea sits on my kitchen counter in an eight-ounce
glass with a potato taking root.

I muscle summer into sweet submission,
the sun shoulders the curve of the source.

The crow follows the morning, the grasshopper
follows the crow, the ants are left to clean up the mess.

Carrying On

Eddie Pancake waited on the bar stool for

a personality transplant that wasn't coming

anytime soon as a bucket of kangaroo spit

kept the red ants out of reach of the piano

lesson that raged down the greasy stairs.

On AA meeting night, Eddie kept pigeons

under the armpits of his dented dreams.

Over the years, the sweet debris of indifferent

sex was swept into the corners of a conceptual

life that was very Danish modern.

There were ghosts in the upper bunk

heading for Cairo on a drunk camel.

Eddie was left wearing army boots and

a party hat as a piano was crushed by

the power of a million frantic butterflies.

Tijuana on the Half Shell

The girls stick to the bald guy like Elmer's glue.

Burgers buried in grease sizzle on a side street.

20 arms stretched out behind a plastic curtain

donate blood for some sex money.

While a laid-off bus driver downs his first drink,

the bald guy leans on a sticky handrail and fingers

pesos like they are being devalued on the spot.

The girls bust out laughing as they each

grab for the arm of a pressed white sailor

who has testosterone calling the shots.

Slices of yellow cheese bubble over the

horizon as the laid-off driver stumbles into

one last strip club for the night.

If I Were ...

If I were a caterpillar on page one of a children's book putting its fuzz to the grndstone, I probably would not stop believing in the power of camouflage to keep me safe from the scrutiny of an English department that feeds on Foucault and Derrida.

If I were leaning over a hospital bed mercilessly murmuring about misplaced meaning with the spark of dementia setting fire to the drapes, I probably should not lead an invisible crusade to fire up a camera full of family brushes with delusion.

If I were hyperextending myself into ultimate fighter mode in front of a rowdy Vegas crowd, I probably should not be leaving a cab with the meter running on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

If I were rummaging through a trailer home for my childhood and I found furniture floating out of a full-length mirror, I probably would not break out the Yahtzee dice and roll up a storm of sixes.

If I were channeling Charlie Parker on a Saturday night with clouds hugging the mountains as a wind tears through the valley, I probably would not punish the babysitter who taught me about nakedness in the chill of my parents' bedroom.

If I were riding on the back of an Indian elephant through a national forest with my feet talking trash, I probably should not shock myself into believing that my ATM card is home building up an empire of nondeductible debt.

If I were listening to the White Album at midnight in bed with the covers over my head, I probably would not want to be grinding my teeth down to the source of the Nile with the clocks running backwards up Victoria Falls.

If I were flipping through a reference book in search of the year a German novel was first translated into English, I probably should not be expected to remember that I need to pick up a new supply of filters for the house ventilating system.

If I were curled up in a sleeping bag on the beach just south of San Felipe in Baja with a big wind blasting snakes out of the rocks, I probably should not take the time to relive the Thirty Years' War and how whole patches of ground were denuded by careless armies.

If I were standing in line at the market with five items in my basket, I probably would not have enough time to run down the list of all the girls whoever made me lose consciousness with their earthshattering French Symbolist kisses..

Not Losing Sight

Eileen's eye focused on

the sea and not

the arcade that was

morphing into a hazard

for everyone in

the extended family.

The day was full of

vermilion petals and

feathers that floated down

from a previous generation.

She watched the ocean be

transformed into a palace

full of fragrant myths, and

a gallery ready-made for

swimming away from

the geometry of dread.