Poetry on Parade

The dogs were first on the scene, first to

look puzzled at the scraps of poetry

flying across the hardwood floor.

Desert lizards let themselves in through

the open window in the back and

slid their way toward a batch of experimental

sonnets that were swirling around a fan.

I was the last to know that my

girlfriend had trashed my bell bottoms,

the last to know that my rollerskates

were still hanging out on the stairs,

the last to know that poetry was making

a comeback among the creatures in the hall.

Opera on Ice

It was time for the tenor to walk
the walk and belt out some polar
bear tones with bloody feeling.
I saw it from down under as a
walrus in steel helmet kind of
German persuasion thing that
would make even the freaky Wagner
proud to be shivering in his boots.
A pretty soprano with tits that
could make an orchestra cry took
center stage and melted the hearts of
many a frozen passenger.
Without missing any of my toes,
I skated away with my baritone
still intact and my magnetic north
settling in for the season.

It Will Be a Coltrane Day in Heaven

I walked the walk as a soprano

sax warble splashed against the

walls of blue and sweet sand.

It was Coltrane condensation that

ennobled my pebbled heart to

thread the margins of a cascade eye.

In the afternoon of arabesque

organs, a pumping heaven found

the stain of Medici on a baritone

gallery of vermilion love.

Representational Rocks

As I take one last shaky step
away from the light, I pocket
my count of the dry rocks on an
inverse path to a psychic waterfall.
Soon there will be representational
art in the center of the canyon that
can outlast my unstable astronomy.
I dig up mothers who had manipulated
their fuzzy children as if they
had been testing one of Euclid's theorems
without a pavilion of spiral netting.
It is the pathology of rocks that sweetens
my salty fluids as a spherical palace of
silver girders supports the knuckled horizon.

Boating with a Butcher

We counted by the leaf, by the
fingernail dug into the desert.
It was ours by default, it was
our green oasis with folding chairs.
No one saw the tinfoil swan take a
dive, it was up to me to tie the
cartilage to the bridge that spanned
the endless flow of a gardener’s grit.
The water fooled us all by cracking
the bodies down to their knuckles,
by breaking the backs like a butcher.

Versions of Henry and June

If it is the Paris Henry remembers, it
is not the one that June claims to inhabit.
He followed all the skinny legs across the
melting snow until he had rope burns at the knee.
Henry recuperated in a trapdoor apartment with
a photograph on the bed of June as
a burglar with her legs living in a penthouse.
It was the Paris Henry could not know in
his corrosive days inflicting bruises on a typewriter.

Speed Limit to the Moon

At first, I couldn't fathom the possibility of

speeding off to the Moon at a moment's notice.

I mean, I don't remember hearing of anyone

else taking the chance of putting the pedal to

the metal and flooring it to the stars.

So on Sunday night in my aging Altima, it

came as a big-bang sized surprise to

come upon a route that seemed to go

off into the sky, but also there was a

speed limit of 25 miles per hour posted.

What was I to make of this sign, this

speed limit to somewhere way out of my zip code.

Not to be discouraged, I didn't figure that

the Highway Patrol would be chasing me

down for speeding around the Moon.

With nothing better to do on my Sunday

night (I was going in search of my own

Golden Globes at this point), I took a

chance on visiting the outer reaches of

something before daybreak and once

again gravity would be cramping my style.

Dropping Count

I started counting from left to right and

still I couldn't keep up, couldn't keep time.

It was a Beatles song or maybe the Byrds.

I settled for something less, something for

me to lose track of, to wash down the wall.

It went fractal on me in a shifting moment.

My eyes subtracted dimension, my fingers

reached for random drops of infinite rain.

Playing Tennis Without a Net

There is no correction on improvement in
the sway of ambition and routine redefinition of
bread as first judged to be reputable.
All encouragement was crowned with
mercy and spit, and driven like a spike into
the humble institution of tennis.
I took an oath, I cleaned a revolution of all its
spots, and took a frosty sojourn across
the field of knife fights and pick ax excursions.
The poem returned to abstraction without
vowels, without sprung rhythm.
I was of no help with my humanist
palms and grasshopper syntax.
The truth needed to be worked over
behind the woodshed, as our good neighbor
Robert Frost let the air out of radicalism.
It is the crooked way that wins the worm,
that farms the bird, that converts the net into grandeur.