little Jack Horner and Molly

Three Musicians and Two Nudes
all of them Castro Street dudes
dealt with life on their San Francisco street
near a corner where little Jack Horner sat watching his thumb
as he pulled in a trick
and pulled out a plum
everyone in the crowd thought he was dumb
eating his Christmas pie and listening to jazz
he took a ferry to Alcatraz
he made his way back home
and gave five guys a happy wave;
they thought they were saved
but he gave them the bone!
on the subject of Chinatown
he juggled balls inside his pants like a circus clown
near the popular Anchor Oyster Bar
one shot would soon become twenty-nine
he said he felt very fine
he made his way slowly over to Pioneer Park
and fell asleep in the dark
everyone in the crowd thought he was a cheat
when he reappeared like a Jesus on Lombard Street
and he wore his pants baggy like a dwarf
panhandling tourists down on Fisherman's wharf
in the heat of the day or up really late
he often camped out near the Golden Gate
with his California date
a sweet thing named Molly
who came in on the F trolley.

Tinsel Town

We're going down to Tinsel Town
'cause seriously we're sucking blue
but I've got the fix
standing right in front of you
a brown coat with shoulders slumped
young ass happily humped and humped
over the park bench at two am
asking you repeatedly to get it up again
but your appetite was getting old
what once was hot now turning cold
bottled booze still much too weak
we haven't been this fucked up
for nearly half a week
and man, the railroad stars coming out tonight
each one of them looking to get a bite
with you sitting on a cushioned chair
feeling cool, almost debonair
a silent rider with tickets to the show
you wanted to attend,
but couldn't go
i found the carpet stained with cigarette butts
and little drops of sweet honey
i tried to laugh but it wasn't funny
we're going down to Tinsel Town
and man, we'll be spending all our money
'cause seriously we're sucking blue
but I've got the fix
standing right in front of you

eating my cake

in the absence of a belligerent dadaist,
i drove to the gravel lot with Pink Floyd
playing Time rather than keeping it under
the mattress where i normally sleep,
under wraps which i frequently toss when
i jump up, shouting Vive Dada! each morning,
mostly just to piss off some people i know.
when i parked over loose stones, a storm was brewing nearby.
i was able to hear the claps of thunder much like an
agitated audience waiting for the music or some words
to have a certain predictability, when,
with the house lights low, they shamelessly caused a scandal by yelling,
stomping their feet, holding obscene signs,
mostly just to piss off some people i know.
and it soon began to rain in an unsophisticated fashion,
like a fuse of an iconoclastic stick of dynamite having been lit,
then finding packed gunpowder in a fizz of explosive spite.
i stayed inside my car and missed the wetness of it,
eating my cake,
mostly just to piss off some people i know.
when my lunch was finished i somehow or other made a fuss
with a persuasive lady who offered me an explanation, and i would
have stood up had i been able, but i was worn to a pulp by
worries and sirens and traffic carried here from another city.
so i sat undeterred as the bourgeoisie became the intelligentsia,
leaving my car only when the rain stopped,
mostly just to piss off some people i know.
and when i did, i saw more of myself than before.

The Old Lady and her Shoe

today she weeps in such a way
there are no tears ever found upon her dress,
on the cheeks below her eyes,
or on the hardwood floor.
according to accounts, she once drove a car
far into the night, into the early morning hours
they even said.
at her side was a favored pocketbook she could use
for shopping, if a store's lights might appear at 3 am
on any lonely rural road.
they never did, even as she neared the gulf coast
out of gas, drifting to a standstill.
according to accounts, on another trip she veered off the asphalt
and hit a fence, taking out a telephone pole, smashing
her Honda Accord so that it was deemed a total wreck.
she suffered a slight knee injury which, according to accounts,
required a few small stitches and anti-biotic.
contrary to her widespread belief, she could no longer play the
card game Bridge, or even Blitz.
her family decided to confiscate her license.
soon it was said she lived in a place without color, but her fingernails
remained powerfully red.
inside her new room were placed many family photographs, but she struggled to
identify the faces, naming only a few.
imagine her satisfaction when an idea came to her!
she looked comfortable in her wheelchair, in the new
room which was decorated to resemble an old room from her former life.
these days, according to accounts, she remembers her own name
and not much else.
although she has plenty of shoes, her left foot is swollen, sensitive,
and usually wrapped in a thick blue sock.
her right foot wears the shoe, usually a sneaker.
and she is finally living a modest existence, one she never dreamed of
as a young girl.

dog bones and the river

the cat was in the fat!
i can tell you that
but not much else
the dogs were into bones!
i still hear their groans
and contented sighs
the damn radio lies
so i try my best to ignore it
shit!
the river was more beautiful today
than i remember
weren't we floating happily just last November
when the wind grew intense
since then, we've been building a fence
which is newly grown
i offer you my moan
sitting with you at the outside table
our busy waitress was efficiently Mabel
i saw the name tag over her small left breast
the vegetable wrap sandwich was the best
you've ever eaten, you said
you saw the scab on my head
i watched the water flow, it's always downstream
where i followed my dream
like a galloping pig
i offered you my fig
but you said you prefer to wrestle
we ended up at an English bar
where sailors drank from a whisky jar
couples were dancing everywhere
tossing feathers into the air
masses of whores and bad champagne
we left before it began to rain.

the smile

your ebony hair,
like a shadow without the moon,
fell fashionably across the sky
and landed loosely on my head.
i watched your rosy cheeks
and nowhere have i found
a more gratifying smile.
your coral lips and pearly teeth
always came knowing when to talk
and where to eat,
and when we were alone,
i showed you a ripe strawberry:
its' juice ran down your throat.
you were smart enough to know
where you were going,
and in the end,
followed in my footsteps,
even if i was mad.

Doors

i thought i must be deranged
when the good doctor said it was basal-cell
carcinoma, but don't panic, it's small,
something like a centimeter in both directions.
sure, nature fascinated me, yet my interest
did not extend to admiring any form of cancer,
much less an ugly welt growing on my own sun-stained neck,
refusing to heal by tossing that unwanted small scab to
grow new, healthy skin over an existing resistant red hole.
i could reach it with my fingers and have my
way with it, touching and picking in some delightful
effort to convince myself it was simply a game, but
since the medical man stood by his opinion, i would
soon need to visit an experienced dermatologist to
have my unwanted friend removed before i fell in love with him
or her?  wait; does a cancerous growth have a sex?
within seconds of leaving the doctor's office, i saw my
reflection in a swinging glass door (the one next to two
fat men studying a painting of trees which seemed
to my eye to be unfinished) and my hair was combed perfectly
and wonderfully blond.  a young boys' suit fitted around my
shoulders, pants perfectly creased down to the ankles, and with
a smile which would turn out to be genuine, the image,
in our brief moment together, privately told me
"This will be the year of doors."

Apples and Gypsy earrings

"How about them apples,"
the girl with the Gypsy earrings
was heard to say in a common language
all too familiar to men of a certain charm.
being the apple of her eye, i claimed to be familiar with
all the varieties she kept hidden underneath her piano.
in fact, i loved her apples and often thought of decorating them
with shiny cloth and sequins to suggest the sparkle of
wet lips about to take a hasty bite, or maybe, possibly,
the stems should be adorned with fringes, and the skins
with Spanish tassels, for a more progressive
mark on taste than that left by dull orchard growers.
once, bobbing for apples toward the end of a Halloween party,
i kept tactfully quiet when asked if i wanted the red one.
almost from the start, the color never was important.
and thinking about an apple a day has kept me healthy,
especially when i look onto my tree-shaded garden and,
nearby, see the Gypsy girl dancing against the sunlit sky.

Something silly in Philly

i sent her a photograph
before the war
but that's in the past
where i can't go anymore
one day i got a big surprise
when my unbelieving eyes
saw her in an appliance store
near the boardwalk on the Atlantic shore.
her hair cut short,
she was pushing a nice intelligent man
into a plastic garbage can.
i didn't just avoid her, i ran.
i heard she married him
and like charcoal and ink on paper
spent two years working
his head into a fine black taper.
he went no farther than St. John's Wood
before he became a former lover,
like modern art toiling mostly undercover.
her next affair lasted only so long:
she played the viola and wrote a song
for a lively Russian officer
who was an admirer of Andy Warhol's
screen printing of Marilyn Monroe.
he perfected an alcoholic drink with some potato
and called it Vodka before he became hooked on drugs
and threw himself under a train in Spain.
her bereavement was essentially without pain.
she's now rumored to live in Philly
or in a suburb nearby
and for the life of me i have no idea why
i'd even think of her again.
it's silly.

Saint-Martin's-in-the-Fields

in an alien madhouse
nineteen frogs and a tiny field mouse
danced as if possessed on the altar steps
of Saint-Martin's-in-the-Fields,
the great Anglican church in Trafalgar Square.
the fact that they used the score to
Beethoven's Seventh Symphony
for their musical accompaniment
was one of the more fashionable touches
during the afternoon performance.
another was the red shoes each frog wore,
which had been expertly hand sewn and fitted;
the field mouse wore his elegant military cape.
they looked forward to buying new clothes
before they left London, but preferred the
anonymity of plain suits when not on stage.
unfortunately, they were certified insane
by jealous competitors, admitted to an asylum
where they were forced to remove all their jewelry
and had their final air of mystery confiscated.
once that happened, their show was postponed.

a sacred fire

simply wearing modern dress
no better time to confess
i know nothing about costume
sitting style less inside my weekly room
spraying the walls with ten dollar perfume

once i was a self-made man
who talked better than he ran
with a keen eye for the frivolous
who boasted of knowing what he could only guess
looking for more i came away with less

methodically still writing
with perfect nails for biting
i would gather fresh material for a feast
but was never able to slay the beast
who expected much but found in me the least

ashes of a sacred fire
when burning hot could inspire:
a nervous little gypsy smile
followed me for a day and a welcome mile
so i stopped to kiss it for a while

scattered seed corn under a shadow

in a conventional but relaxed way
i sat at my desk in my bedroom
flipping through pages of disorder,
looking for grains of dust.
there were piles of old Atlantic magazines,
rumpled socks, and album covers stacked
knee high with an Elton John record at the top.
Rubber Soul was like my evening shirt, starched
and out of sight in the middle of the pile.
that one, I didn't see.
but Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was nearest,
and being within reach when i leaned backward,
i thought sometime i'd give it a suitable play for
my friends while i wore some incredible costume
with long sideburns and designer glasses.
but my current book, Neptune's Inferno, would have to be finished first,
and in it i had just landed on Guadalcanal with the US marines,
certain that Japanese soldiers were watching from the
nearby jungle, as i deepened a taste for adventure on an
island in the south Pacific no one really seemed to want,
but soon too many would die defending to the last man.
Shelley had already written a line in his "Adonais":
"He has outsoared the shadow of our night."
Shelley knew the honored glory of the combat dead, and i heard
his hymns in my head, but soon my ancient AM/FM radio,
catching the light from the rising sun, chimed in with a
hissing We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel, the piano
man, who was to become a friend of Elton,
although he never wore an awkward outfit.
by the time the Guadalcanal campaign ended in early 1943,
Billy was not yet born in real life.  when he did become famous,
he never started a fire or knew that a day would come when not
a single participant in the epic of World War II would remain alive
to tell his tale.  i quickly grew tired of thinking about Jamaica Jerk Off
and turned down the volume on the music so i could hear
my own breathing.  in the predawn, all i could see were
men in individual foxholes scattered like seed corn.
and i finally found my lost wristwatch in a pants pocket, but
decided at the last second to leave it there, unmarked by a date of birth.

unicorn blood and magic

We stood in the middle of the dirt road
radiating hostility,
trying to make sense of the latest threat
flying from the white saloon in downtown Tehran.
a tyrannical and mean-spirited religious
man had been making wild charges and
it was our intent to call him out.
but he didn't show at high noon, as we had been led to
believe: one old man looking like Gary Cooper passed by, but
he was wearing a black cowboy hat.
the Iranian's main advantage over us was the fact that
millions of the faithful believed him when he
said that watching Harry Potter movies would
create an urge to drink unicorn blood.
we love unicorns and never want to see them harmed!
the Potter movies were entertaining, too.
horses and movies are fun, so we needed to give this
stone-thrower a great big bitch slap.
we're willing to wager he's never seen a live unicorn or
spent a single day in intellectual surroundings;
it's magic that he even has a voice.

hide and seek

smiles escaping her lips
soft spoken messages swivel her hips
my favorite glass of Jim Beam
still full of little sips
if you know what i mean

in late afternoon
a private song but it ended too soon
i never really stood a chance
to sing the entire tune
of the fateful romance

exhausting supply
waiting for morning and another lie
it kept adding to my grief
in crazy costume i
slipped away like a thief

now to disappear
it would be so easy to reappear
and my favorite game of  hide and seek
i'd rather be near
than turn the other cheek

white fruit watching the moon rise

i am always in my arm chair
or a chaise lounge,
sometimes watering my shrubs
but only if i can reach them.
otherwise i read, and am often seduced by a book,
embarking on a secret affair with each page
as i finger it's edge.
when the air is dry as in a drought,
my shrubs become a flight
of brittle stairs which i climb with a white rose
in my hand, looking to solve actual mysteries.
what i find most clearly is that
i am inspired by central figures, those large
cubist personalities always at ease in traffic,
steering toward facts rather than faith,
wanting to show each one a flower before i pause to solve a riddle.
if it's summer, a fragrant scent will be painted
on my nose and the only evidence it's from a
fresh rose is the petal inside my mouth.
when it's winter, a nearby beach is closed, all the people
are painted black, and the sign says NO SWIMMING.
a life guard is on duty, but only to ensure there is no nudity.
my white can become snow or a star or the moon and sometimes
it will remain a rose.
like a watercolor, i can make it become what i want,
the colors wrestling, running, and caressing each other.
before it is eaten, i would sign and date a basket of white fruit
and present it to you while watching the moon rise.
that's a fact.

hard-working hands

on her wedding day
near the park in Montreal
my dark-haired woman
said "I do" and almost had it all

a little French
and a special glass of wine
all her friends looking on
thought that she looked just fine

once a little girl
sitting alone on her bedroom floor
hoping to find a dream
by opening every door

she dreamed someday she'd find a Prince
has been looking for him ever since

a mister right who's never been wrong
someone to help sing her favorite country song
to carry the weight of life
when it gets to be too much
the man with hard working hands
and a tender touch

on her wedding day
with our friends and a smile
my dark-haired woman
said "I do"and had me stay awhile

a quiet dance
and a special kiss for me
we'd always have that day
as a favorite memory

once a little girl
sitting alone on her bedroom floor
hoping to find a dream
by opening every door

she dreamed someday she'd find a Prince
had been looking for him ever since

a mister right who's never been wrong
someone to help sing her favorite country song
to carry the weight of life
when it gets to be too much
the man with hard-working hands
and a tender touch

in the trenches (with Apollinaire)

my wounded head was bandaged in cloth black
as i made my way to the front of the assembled crowd.

ahead of me was a noted celebrity, and i thought i
knew his name.

but no, it wasn't who i guessed.

it was Matisse!

he certainly wasn't my best friend or even, in
such circumstances, an intimate acquaintance.

and i saw Cocteau with a green face who
seemed eclipsed 

by the expressive music of tonights' show:

i could always
count on his envy, so clear and simple, like a sustained whole note
held for an indefinite length of time.

eternity, i thought.

he was upset and tried
to grab my attention.  

when he spoke,
i noticed also his tongue and teeth were green.

he invited me to contribute a poem for his next play which
was due to open a month later.

i wrote a piece about androgyny.  

he loved it and promised
to dress the part of a liberated woman.

later, when he gave birth,
he unbuttoned his blouse and released two helium-filled balloons.

five little pigs

five little pigs
tails twisting in the wind
noses flying high in the air
acting like they've never sinned
but they couldn't quite get it there

five little pigs
channel surfing a TV show
passing whiskey in a bourbon bottle
huffing and puffing, taking a blow
their old engine at full throttle

five little pigs
smoking a stack
packing their bags for Phoenix
and they weren't supposed to be coming back

sipping sour home-brewed beer
they kept drinking until they made it disappear
and I heard their rebel yell
one pig stumbled and the other pigs fell

the air was thick they couldn't see
a big bad wolf cut down the last tree
it was an old big cottonwood
they wanted to save it but never could

five little pigs
squealing in their pickup driving away
i wonder where they are today
there is no water underground
and no good cropland can be found

i'd just like to know
which way did they eventually go?
five little pigs
last seen near San Bernardino
out of gas and out of wind
acting like they've never sinned

Chasing Ice, the Documentary

the Paris Opera
never knew the documentary film
Chasing Ice
but it was a dandy
of insane beauty
and extravagant still photography!
just the sort of thing to get the beau monde to turn
out in force, but in an entirely different place and time, of course:
before the death of planet Earth,
the dance halls were full of squares
and suburbanites filling their pickup trucks with fossil fuel,
while flashlights were stationed at
every crossroads, looking for business as usual.
their rays of light would help the endless procession of cars
find their way to the top, where they raided
the rooms upstairs and tossed pillows, ensuring
that the party be kept going until three in the morning.
the fortune hunters and the artists tried to understand
what caused the ancient glaciers to disappear, but they
framed each other with water that kept rising from the melting ice
each held in a thick glass full of the finest Kentucky bourbon.
men were overheard to say life was hard and would finish shortly,
so a vast quantity of champagne was also consumed, often with caviar and toast.
very drunk, they found a mattress and went looking for some head,
which they always found on another set of shoulders.
the invited guests began to believe this was all a dream.

Woman with a Vase

into the wind:
the air had come over from the one side
and left a mark
on the water's cold edge.
the sun shining down caught the steady breeze
shaking the beach with bits of light.
and where it was dry:
a child's toy, two women talking about life,
distant organ grinder music, a plastic fork,
an assemblage of bric-a-brac, and so forth.
with a flower vase carried in her right hand
which held ointment instead of fresh cuttings,
a drowning girl sat nearby on her shadow,
her bald head a mystery.
she looked up and saw a cloud
about to block the sun.
a kite fluttered overhead
when a young boy unrolled his string.

Cuban Heels and the White Balloon

there was a large pale sun
in a greenish sky
where i in a deck chair,
on an Atlantic beach,
wrapped your breasts around my apple
which was about to be eaten in
one big red bite.
the nearby coffee-colored sand,
upon which sat the
handsome buttocks of a lady
with a flower fully in her mouth,
felt warm and wet between my fingers.
then a steady breeze returned,
and she put on black tights and a pair
of Cuban heels as the white balloon
rose into our night sky.
i began making
preparations for bed, which was radiating heat.
there, she became a small reclining nude
cradling her head in her hands,
a soft green leaf
resting on her right thigh.
imagining myself the gardener, i entered to water her plants.
it was late summer before we awoke to watch
our reflections sleeping in a mirror.

the blue butterfly

a bright blue butterfly was
sniffing the wet spring air near my
foot trail, her wings moving purposefully.
she was hanging from a helpful tree
as I passed by without my net.
I was searching for the trench I heard tell of,
dug several hundred years ago by prisoners
of a continental army, having been captured in
New Jersey, after having been sent by a greedy European
King in exchange for lots of money.
and perhaps I did find the trench, for what I did see might have
been the trench, leading from a small fresh-water creek
to a nearby foundry where cannon balls and shot were once formed.
but over time, wind, water, rock, and wood filled in the trench with
all sorts of dirt and forest junk, leaving only a shallow depression
where once was a mighty ditch of great consequence.
now all I saw was a long, angled depression and realized that
no simple geological explanation made sense.
this find must have been the trench, I mused,
and the blue butterfly seemed to agree.

The Dream

the bloodstain was very discreet,
not at all an oozing gob of gore:
a tiny smear of red hiding among the shadows,
the details of its' origination lost in a folded sheet
underneath the sweetest candle on Christmas Day.
there was an elaborate tea party downstairs
where all the fires were lit
and guests with their presents were seated
in a large black leather chair which wrapped around them
like a shroud.
although they dreamed of climbing to the second floor,
to the bedroom where my forehead stretched over an entire pillow,
it was closed to their entry in spite of the richness of their gifts.
i sat naked with the bloodstain, quiet in a deep brown armchair.
the stone in my hand would soon become a woman
who would dance on my mind with her mouth.

in quest of movement

breasts and arms
both playmates near my neck
the wall clock ticking
effortless licking
my eerie little head
never far from bed
exploring in the light and shadow
in quest of movement
but how far can i go
before i reach the lowest toe
of that very nice girl
who has rhythm inside of her curls?
will she be nimble and quick
or full of nothing but bulk?
the arrangement of flowers is yours
and the misty, out-of-focus contours
are mine
the light-footed dancer
bottom-heavy on my chest
in a fit of irony
settles down to rest
while i, like a sculpture of a reclining nude,
bide my time for the praise which is sure to come
as i wiggle my thumb
without strength; in fact it's almost weak
in my newly contemplative technique,
which is anything but unique.