On the Clock

The sanguine answer didn't come to me
soon enough to make a difference in
the big picture, but I was there when I
said I was there and not any later as has
been rumored in circles that i refuse to
acknowledge for purposes of this discussion.
The ticking continued as I spoke up for
myself in the center of the fray that was
not of my making in any sense of the word.
It could have been resolved in duplicate but
no one was pf a mind to carry through to the end.
Things were left to fester and my reputation
was left in tatters by the shabbiness of it all.
There was not one scintilla of truth to any of
the allegations that piled up at my door.
I merely paused before entering the building in
the back and could not have been standing
near the melting clock after lunch was served.
To make matters worse, I banged both knees on
the banister that was bulging beyond usefulness.
Although not trained in the law of diminishing
returns, I surmise that bald face lies should not
be left unanswered and that I am well within my
rights as a jester and a rube to take issue with
all the unsubstantiated accusations hanging on the clock.

And as I Slowly Turn to Walk Away

The blood work will tell the tale, will run the wires from here to there and back again, will fill the deep end with meaning and a sweet, sweet refrain.

The royal rube goes to the doctor to get rid of his rubeness only to find out that it can't be removed, won't wash off, doesn't respond well to medication.

The strange girl with the bum knee waits for something tumultuous to come to her on a Tuesday in broad daylight near the pet clinic.

The hardwood floor takes a deep breath before prodding the Greek gods to take their debate outside.

The tragedy in five acts between mother bird and baby bird is played out above the slanted driveway that winds around a cedar tree.

The mystic in a muddle manufactures a message that all good boys and girls can place under their pillows for a future reward of monumental proportions.

The razzmatazz boys take the softball game into extra innings humming a little Benny Goodman and inhaling some sloe gin fizzes.

The rehabilitated cousin stands in the street with his pantlegs rolled up and a crude smile plastered to the middle of his face as a spaghetti truck loses speed at the top of the hill.

The garage sale goes into overdrive by putting on the market some really cool dark matter and slightly worn winged spaceplanes.

The king of the avenue of oaks faces a flickering globe of light that rides the back of a painted turtle.

The circus clown with adverbs for shoes reclines in the metal chair that has dug into a flower bed full of adjectives.

The ocean takes issue with the river and the river is not happy with the stream and the stream is no longer on speaking terms with the puddle for allowing humans to muck up the works with their waste and religious fervor.

The crickets start up a band in the bathtub and keep the spiders up all night.

The film crew lights up the evening at the period gas station on North Lake Ave. while the starlet does her best Marilyn Monroe in the backseat of a vintage Rolls.

The sidewalks are sagging under the weight of horrified buccaneers who have been given shovels for swords as dazzling dirt clods fly into oncoming traffic.

The mad scientist flips some cosmic flapjacks for the extended family on a mid-week morning with a pack of starlings taking over the power lines.

The hapless young husband attempts to dig a trench around each rose bush before taking a beer break as his gallant young wife climbs the ladder to the highest point in the galaxy of weeds.

The waitress in a leopard dress spirits away the empties before her partial unraveling in the parking lot with the dessert chef from Fargo.

The family picnic is dismantled by a swarm of bees and uncle Joe hitting on the Goth girls hanging out by the restroom.

The retired schoolteacher flexes her tattoos on Mother's Day under the shade of a gazebo with ghosts gardening in the geometry of family.

The paper cut conversations between interrogators and messengers cannot be contained at the edges of intersections that ancestors find divisible by sky.

The juggler dumps her bowling pins into a duffel bag and brings out the chainsaws to the delight of the middle-school gymnasts.

The petulant gulls break up the monotony of the morning by pelting the windows of the newly renovated library.

The great ballplayer trips over a first base dream and splashes into a nightmare before any peanuts can be shelled.

The three-story apartment building on the next block is moved to a local parking lot until it can be adopted by a needy town somewhere between here and Las Vegas.

The bag lady of Ventura pushes her cart full of pelicans to the fish market where the summer wind pulls its weight in shrimp.

The wandering soul of Saticoy gets lost in a seventh hole sand trap and keeps on digging.

The cynical older voter predicts that California will never stop relying on propositions to make matters worse.

The sun goes down on the lost continent of Oxnard forcing the eight ball to teeter on the edge of a corner pocket.

The ice cream truck does a midafternoon spin around the nature reserve parking lot before going for a psychic reading.

The neighbor's dog goes into the dance of the infinite tail spin as the first star of the evening gets a running start at the whole sky.

The ghost with a grudge takes up residence in the childhood home that had kept him quiet at all cost.

The movie starts at the drive-in as the freeway traffic zooms by and young girls suddenly pop out of the trunks of several souped-up sedans.

The garden rat lets the air out of my tires, puts a hole in my radiator, shatters a side mirror, keys a door, and leaves droppings on the hood that spells out how he's not leaving the Republican Party anytime soon.

The pool guy pockets the tips he earned rubbing lotion on the backs of the bridge club ladies before heading for the pizza place at the end of the street.

The Derby crowd with long-shot dreams and domestic beers hunkers down in front of the big screen to watch twenty horses go the distance.

The tipsy tourist with a terrible rash and a tragic sense of direction tumbles into a taxi on a hot night in Tarzana.

The woman with the mesmerizing freckles takes a dozen cell phone calls in the produce section to fill up her Sunday morning.

The Jackson Pollock of main street leaps into the air during a hailstorm flinging red paint with the brush in his right hand and blue paint with the brush in his left.

The excruciatingly bad street musician continues to make up songs on the spot and share them with his public hanging out at the red light.

The uninvited mathematician pulls a formula out of his hat and presents a family with a fresh frame of reference.

The acutely sensitive researcher stays late after work to feed into the computer new variables that he hopes will prove his suspicions to be correct.

The Florida guy with animal magnetism and alligator shoes takes the microphone at the city council meeting and wins support for a new dog walk behind the crumbling industrial park.

The Dorothy Parker of the fast food set opens the day with a breakfast burrito and a brilliant retort addressed at a belching bus carrying Catholic girls down the straight and narrow.

The bourgeois poet with bags under his eyes secures another blanket for the night by taking down an ornamental banner from the wall of lost causes.

The crazy American editor living in Myanmar heads for the border hoping for another strip search serenade to make his day.

The senior citizens lock heads over a game of chess on the back porch while Sixty Minutes gets to the bottom of the vice president on a portable TV.

The exhausted wife sits in the center of her garden and glows while a wayward husband inflicts his wrath on the corporate world and future children remain frozen in time.

The good son takes out the trash without being asked, runs a bath for his little sister, removes his toy soldiers from the dinner table, reads more Edgar Allan Poe, keeps all evil thoughts to himself.

The loitering crow eyes the remains of a sweet and sour TV dinner that had been purposely dumped at the edge of the driveway before the first sprinkle had turned into a downpour.

The young woman who had just outmaneuvered a brown bear is clipped by a passing car before she has had a chance to change her luck.

The family of skunks runs into a wounded possum behind the prison chapel on a moonlit night in July.

The fire victims appear on the network news in order to thank their lucky but singed stars that the winds died down long enough for the water drops to blanket the remaining structures.

The movie people point the bright lights toward the mausoleum and call for action.

The light changes from red to green allowing a well-equipped infantry of middle school recruits to advance into a hapless neighborhood with full carte blanche privileges.

The morning sky brushes up against a battered sphinx that has been nervously shaking off its protective scaffolding.

The local librarian with an imported limp posts teenage constellations above the sliding doors to the meeting room where Earth Day becomes latticework for the undead.

The Santa Ana wind carries all the crickets rescued from bathtubs, sinks, and closets on a new journey across the deserted streets of commerce.

The midnight coyotes rush north to drink from a glistening trench that has been cut near exposed sprinkler heads.

The homeless man returns to his side of the philosophical divide with a skinny dog under his feet.

The Consumed Poet Prepares to Cross Over to the Other Side: Or, Aphorisms Run Amok

The early poet prepares to not let a rendezvous with the cubbyholes of history to deflate any and all aspirations to be resuscitated by rapture.
The distracted poet prepares to take the shape of a swan in a pinch as a sweet wall of blossoms protects intricate exchanges of impoverishment.
The early poet prepares to retool the kinetic dichotomy that took assimilation off the table.
The marauding poet prepares to masquerade as a permanent structure on the prairie in order to trap intelligent life.
The early poet prepares to footnote the fleshy approximations of prodigious testimonials.
The Harold Pinter poet prepares to be as menacing as a lump of laughter.
The Willy Loman poet prepares to skip the sales pitch and go directly to the sample case from hell.
The biofeedback poet prepares to buy a kiss from the redhead who lives in the burning house on the next block.
The Our Gang poet prepares to belt out bad opera on the backlot of a second childhood.
The early poet prepares to alter the dosage on erratic approaches to windmills.
The conundrum poet prepares to bend a thunderbolt into a sturdy bookcase for the torn mandates of heaven.
The boomer poet prepares to live forever inside a nonjudgmental Venice bungalow with three dogs, two cats, a turtle on Prozac, and a dragonfly that knows all the answers.
The mailman poet prepares to deliver inspirational sketches to paranoid shut-ins across the southland.
The early poet prepares to be preoccupied with the purification of a prurient plot.
The canal poet prepares to dredge up an arcade full of noxious obsessions.
The receding poet prepares to cut back on all unnecessary rhetoric around the edges.
The early poet prepares to pour water on the exception instead of the rule and watch rows of struggling languages snap back with time-lapse film.
The Pandora poet prepares to wrap a bushel full of fancy presents that will stain the world with a lust for dread.
The disingenuous poet prepares to take back everything that was covered by the previous agreement.
The early poet prepares to search for an infinite freshness through the wrong end of a telescope.
The intruder poet prepares to divert all attention away from the helter skelter commingling of indeterminate repercussions.
The severed poet prepares to give numbers to all the parts left out in the rain with the riffraff.
The bicycle poet prepares to do a barefoot flip over the handlebars.
The Parcheesi poet prepares to commit perjury in the arms of a prime location.
The Ozzy poet prepares to think up a few very eerie polka metal tunes.
The early poet prepares to chime in down a windy road where perception counts eviction notices.
The preacher poet prepares to take a big plunge into two nonparallel faces of hospitality.
The harebrained poet prepares to fly south by way of the cobweb of melancholy.
The early poet prepares to disinherit all insubstantial mirages.
The route 66 poet prepares to wax up the corvette before landing in the middle of a family feud with a pretty Peggy coming between friends.
The tall poet prepares to look an unbalanced mountain dead in the eye and tell it to shape up before buzzcut season comes around.
The early poet prepares to not be undone by the iridescent bliss being offered by the heart.
The chameleon poet prepares to take up residence on the underside of a spring moon as wildflowers grow yellow to the sky.
The early poet prepares to redirect all the water under the bridge away from the frayed castles and family cups terracing around a floating choreography.
The Viking poet prepares to set sail for the outer reaches of the back porch with puzzled squirrels jumping ship for the safety of the wobbly roof.
The early poet prepares to step clear of all the banana peels that could take this day in a whole new direction.
The Monty Python poet prepares to serve a meal with prawns and stuff fit for all proper English mothers dressed for sleep.
The method poet prepares to mumble all the way up Mt. Hollywood in hopes of meeting the ghost of a young Marlon Brando.
The early poet prepares to not fall prey to a professorial exclamation collapse lurking in the halls of collaboration.
The contraband poet prepares to smuggle a batch of thoroughbred dust in a bag of loose fitting skin across the rope bridge that spans a conical depression.
The supportive poet prepares to attach a transcendental amount of weight to the words of others.
The door-to-door poet prepares to do some heavy cushion inflation for therapists with sinking sectional couches.
The early poet prepares to oversee the meticulous alignment of a mountain gazebo atop the molehill of a mind.
The Medici poet prepares to walk in vermilion with the weather relegated to a private wing of the Louvre.
The inverse poet prepares to scrub the navel from the inside out and the touching of the toes is once again an Olympic event.
The early poet prepares for the aftermath of something as the ripple effect carries the mother of all wighats out the window.
The curveball poet prepares to have some scary optical illusions ready to go for opening day.
The alchemist poet prepares to bubble up into the atmosphere with Clint Eastwood riding shotgun.
The shadow poet prepares to do the dance on the far wall of forgiveness.
The early poet prepares for a rapprochement between hard cider and overhanging trees after hours of diplomatic negotiations held in the hand of magnified wings.
The birthday poet prepares to save the midnight snack for the daylight hours when the shambles of celebration will be in full tilt.

The rural poet prepares to take the first dirt road past the dairy farm where the honeysuckle and variegated ivy collide.

The early poet prepares to align the swaying window silhouettes separated by receding paper.
The offshore poet prepares to float a few vowels in the face of a flotilla of consonants.
The early poet prepares to expand what is containable and to contain what is expandable.
The pickpocket poet with the scratchy talent prepares to lift a line or two from the tomb of the undiscovered Bedouin scribe who fell off the globe on flat day at the cheesecake factory.
The early poet prepares to inhale the semiprecious vapors of an anxious migration of thought.
The whispering poet prepares to tone down the static emanating from between the ears.
The pack rat poet prepares to stuff the cupboard with cans of immaculate mischief.
The revolutionary poet prepares to pin proclamations to the shower curtains of the dead.
The early poet prepares to turn the unsaid into a ruckus.
The campfire poet prepares to tap into testimonials of the trees.
The early poet prepares to ban fidgeting from the breakfast table.
The maybe poet prepares to make words cough up a new angle.
The fussy poet prepares to sweep up the shards of sunshine that have gathered in the corners of the driveway.
The LA poet prepares to advance up Mt. Washington at dusk.
The wise poet prepares to relish the divine pull of emptiness.
The early poet prepares to be charmed by the baritone of the river.
The intermittent poet prepares to be pelted by sad syllables.
The skittish poet prepares to set up camp under the grand piano.
The early poet prepares to make room for puttering on the shady street of purpose.
The giddy poet prepares to give the thesaurus a breathalyzer test.
The early poet prepares to put the fatted calf through its paces.
The early poet prepares to laugh at the private asylum built by the past.
The hardboiled poet prepares to keep one eye on guard the whole night long.
The stowaway poet prepares to disappear among some disheveled deck chairs.
The early poet prepares to paint fanaticism into a neutral corner.
The brute poet prepares to do battle with the blank page before sundown.
The early poet prepares to take the temperature of an indescribable banality.
The late poet prepares to put one big psychotic tooth under a diaphanous pillow.
The early poet prepares to acknowledge the tyranny of parlor indiscretions.
The Dylan poet prepares to go as cryptic as crayons in Sunday school.
The Elvis poet prepares to scare the sun out of its socks.
The early poet prepares to measure the morning rhythm of the insect world.
The village poet prepares to have a conference call with subterranean termites.
The early poet prepares to drag the sky for lost luggage.
The punk poet prepares to do a header into the mosh pit.
The early poet prepares to gaze at the blueprint in the mirror with the steady eye of an engineer.
The fanatic poet prepares to work the alphabet until it drops.
The early poet prepares to be a handwritten note in a spring pocket.
The early poet prepares to disappear in the strength of astral ligatures.
The early poet prepares to terrify the day with lustful silence.
The mid-day poet prepares to have a gondola moment on the way to the market.
The early poet prepares to be humbled by the nearest living accident in the garden.
The restless poet prepares to talk about seedless metaphysics with the gardener.
The early poet prepares to be less intimidated by the density of an unexpected smile.
The uneasy poet prepares to confront the intentions of a double-edged thought.
The early poet prepares to pocket at least a day’s worth of plausible deniability.
The cranky poet prepares to push the already dented dream over the dam.
The early poet prepares to ride a dromedary deception through the day.
The sleepy poet prepares for the BBC on the radio—war, pestilence, cricket scores.
The early poet prepares to play golf with the Buddha in scorpion country.
The cool poet prepares to not care about the cowgirls kicking down the barn door.

Gone Missing

I was the missing son who
lived under his mother’s feet,
not the dead son who drove
her crazy from daylight to
sundown with a father who
begged her to shape up and
fly right in the eyes of God.
He had been a farmer’s boy
with a nose for local history.
She had been a city girl with
the hands of a poker player.
I was the skinny kid who
drank extra rich milk and
loved crunching on hard candy,
not the unborn son who was
a genius in the making and
would have loved to pin his
parents to the wall like Amazon beetles .

An Early Morning with Subtitles

A daughter lost a foot in her
sleep as a distant train was no
longer distant but was whistling
through her philosophy and her flesh.

A mother put away a lawn
mower after losing a husband in
an all-night poker game with
wild cards raining down like leaves.

An Indian chief with a bad case of
irony whittled down an English
sonnet to a blistering haiku in
the early morning hours of betrayal.

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.