House Sitting (a "B" movie) for Amelie Frank

1.
The Monahans are in Europe,
leaving les objets de papier,
two ancient dogs, and two
patrician cats in your care.

It's late, the Sylph is sleeping, and we

(employing laughter)

have achieved the specific gravity
of children - two human balloons
with our backs and feet
against the cottage cheese ceiling.

We bump and nuzzle,
compare notes on the feng shui
of the room, and fly into fits
at the cat's astonished stares.

Here:
hours, minutes, and boundaries
have become meaningless.

Here:
everything is waveform and wingbeat.
We speak the shibboleth,
we know the semiotic semaphore.

Here:


2.
Yours, sister-friend,
is the peculiar grace and tenderness
of freight trains.

The sheer tonage of sorrow
in your tow is so stupendous -
your grasp of night song
so non pareil.

I commend myself
for uncoupling you from these
however temporarily. And as for me
these visits

to a childhood neither of us had
leave me breathless
as the boy I never was and wanting

more.


3.
We put each other on (and off)
like costumes.
We visit empty envelopes,

or burn them and scatter the ashes.

We laugh,

until the isness of everything
sideswipes us again;
things take weight
and we fall to the floor -

cinematically.

Letter to the Doctor, or, The Lycanthropes Lament


Rumor has it you’re resorting
to your pipes and syringes again, your world
contracted from planet-sized,
where your friends are all at large,
into a fist-sized ball of opish. Little brown orb
where it is always summer, under an albino sun;
where there is no place for regret,
and all the pretty girls and boys
are required by custom to go naked,
so that the wearing of clothes is shameful.

Symptomatology, mine which only occurs
when the moon is full, and the dew upon the grass,
monthly, like some weird repeating menarche
involving other’s blood.

Yours, catalyzed by almost anything, a word, a star, a photograph,
happens at random times and places. The outcome is the same –
both of us oblivious to morals, mores, conventions –
both of us loping through the streets, unclad,
laughing.

I am no longer safe even in sunlight. Nor are those around me. Those nearest me.
You have never been safe. Nor have those who’ve loved you.

I write, I suppose, to let you know your diagnosis was correct.
To ask you for a word, some hope, perhaps a silver bullet,
if you ever come back from the haze.

Keep in touch, I must go now, I can hear the moon.

Jade Blue


Solar flares and proton storms,
noctilucent breakers, the happy resolution
of recurring dreams; all the hue
of Buddha’s Seventh Stone.

On a midnight walk in Arizona
we saw the once-in-a-century appearance
(at that latitude) of the Aurora Borealis.
It made us think the mountains were on fire,
until we saw striations in the shifting red sky curtain
turn slowly to

the perfect color
of the time we saw surf light up at night,
on Venice Beach, when we searched
for the Holy Barbarians, (who had already
made their getaway). We stumbled across the sand
to see that all the waves were luminous,
glowing with

the perfect color
of the final installment
of my recurring childhood dream –
swept overboard in a storm
I would always startle awake; that time
I found to my surprise that I could breathe
underwater, gliding graceful as a fish
while the storm raged above me.
I swam, untouched by trouble, at peace.
in a warm and welcoming sea

the perfect color
of your eyes, that day,
the first time that you said
you loved me.

airplane poem


like tin pushers sitting in darkened rooms –
the better to see the green spokes circling
the screens; the better to wrangle
the calculus of transponders in motion –
watching, hushed, while
little alphanumeric scribbles
representing unbelievable amounts
of metal and flesh at high
altitude and speed
tick their incremental way
across a video game version of flight.

a hundred years from kittyhawk
to here, darling, where we live
beneath these aerial pathways.

remember in the barrio, how the roar
of inbound to LAX bothered us less
than the loud late night mariachi wafting
on the weed-scented breeze,
or the occasional drive-by bullets?
while three blocks away behind the invisible
barriers of their manicured lawns
the well-to-do worried more over
plummeting property values, than
planes falling out of the air.

how oddly fitting that our address
and fortunes have changed –
yet our circumstance remains similar:

now the roar of inbound to john wayne
is the whitenoise we’ve grown accustomed to
up here on our hill, above the taquerias,
the carnecerias, the noise and graffiti
of all those sweet brown people who
pray god into their cinder block and wrought
iron walled yards full of cars
to protect them
from falling airplanes and from
the whites who live above them
like tin pushers sitting in darkened rooms.

unpunctuated tercets ending with haiku


at a loping gait we catch up
with the subject of this sentence
the third millennium

a tertiary parenthesis
playing bumpercars
with its brothers or possibly

the third of those monkey statues or then again it could be
the smokebound eastern seaboard
of a triptych by Hieronymus Bosch

you may notice our voices echoing
when we speak inside the hill
blown up to build this place

this peaceful feeling
is the kirlian residue
of that thirty million year old stone

(breath)

we are divining our future
in the vermicular calligraphy of the sun
dried night crawlers on the sidewalk

studying our past
in the mating patterns of raptors and the mourning
doves nesting outside our window

wishing we were hollow
boned and alate fertile as these smug
birds returning in an unseasonable spring

(exhalation)

according to prevailing theory
the planet is a pirate ship
manned by chaos finest contraptions

a loose knit crew
flaunting the second law of thermodynamics
exchanging high fives and piña coladas

while they commit mass suicide as art
poke holes in the ionosphere
make swiss cheese of the protective force field above them

while they raze the trees
that breath the gas that blows the bellows
which fires the coals

of life on a ball that chance built
or again this could be
all by design like

smooth rivers washing
all of our sorrows down to
oceans made of tears

The Catalog of Unwritten Poems


A cellar full of wine
bottles, sleeping on their sides,
heads down, dreaming
drunkards’ dreams.

A rhetorical question,
in a Yiddish accent, George Jessell
(with a lazy eyelid) asking:
“who is like god?”

The attempt to write
upon the inside surface
of a wedding band,
purchased for “the other woman,”
by another man.

The epistemology
of insects, and brown-skinned
fancy-dancers,
chanting.

The portrait of the artist
as a young automobile accident.

An attempt to decipher
the acid vision hieroglyphics
of acoustical ceilings.

The moral imperative
of extensive tattooing.

The portrait of the artist
as a middle-aged credenza.

A secret history
of the victories
of small potatoes.

The learned distrust
of anyone named Howard.

The endorphin junkie’s lament.

Epiphanies in pop songs –
life changing illuminations
in box-office flops.

The portrait of the artist
as a Dead Letter File.

Sidereal time in a bottle,
(from the cellar in the first stanza),
decanting streams of data.

The elegant flare
of a young girl’s hips,
drawn with deft lines
on the insides
of your eyelids.

The death of love, displayed in toto
from Chain-Stoke to rigor mortis,
and finally its ghosts arrival
on your doorstep,
carrying
a toothbrush.

Oneironauts


In my sister’s dream redemption comes
in the form of a pick-up truck.
In mine, my father, dead for decades,

drives a yellow bus to the shore
where bilingual fish explain
all secret knowledge.

In mother’s dream Christ appeared to her
after the manner of Yahweh disclosing
his backside to Moses,

but it didn’t involve vehicles –
just a tree, a red flannel shirt,
and dungarees. Cars are omens

in my wife’s dreams; their portent
depending upon make, model, mileage,
Kelly Blue Book value, but above all –

who is behind the wheel of this latest model
augury? Who drives my sister’s pick-up
while she pulls the walking wounded

over the tailgate into safety?
And who could possibly imagine my surprise
when the folding door hissed open

in my dream, and the driver of the bus
was my dad, finally come to take me
to the place where all the real answers are.

Five Haiku



Dolores River

White noise through soft pines,
half moon over dark river,
rain laughs on our tent.



Mesa Verde

Salt lick, after hike,
hollow of your collar-bone;
suddenly – a deer!



Cougar Crest

Burnt trees shed black skin,
white flowers sway, bow low to
hymns of urgent bees.



Whiting Ranch

Sandstone and soft place,
apple bread cheese wine and kiss;
shy the reaching trees.



Chaco Canyon

My eyes swallow you,
watching water sing down stones,
the curve of your leg.

Directions to the Next World for Brendan Constantine


Follow the crows who’ve finished
the day shift, flying north-west.

The crows follow women in severe suits,
their chorus of stilettos. In the trees

the chirping of the smaller birds
sounds exactly like adding machines.

The women follow repentant gunmen,
who, taking parables very literally,

amputate their trigger fingers.
Follow the itch in their phantom digits

pointing toward the bodhisattva
with his back to you, by a tree,

keeper of the X-Ray mandala,
the map to the next world.

Approach slowly and press your question
against him, until your dark question

turns white as an insistent thumb
jammed upon the doorbell of heaven.

The Workmen for Alan Michael Parker


Just before the workmen, worthy of their hire,
come into view, they are announcéd by strange melody
and syncopation – the rising and percussive songs
of nails, like questions; the descending arias
of saws, like answers. The rat-a-tat of nail guns
in a rhythm section repetition:
shave and a hair cut, shave and a hair cut –
the very music of Vishnu and Shiva –
personified in hardware.

A woman, sunbathing naked on the roof, gazes out
into the sky’s thin sea, watching clouds scud by
like schooners. A woman who, between the din and drum,
becomes a tunéd fork, tines humming to the whine of saws, the drums of hammers.
And the workmen, worthy of their hire, become arouséd
at the sight of skin, that world, that sea of skin, into the which
they each and all wish now to be drownéd.
And gravity fails, in a localizéd manner.
And the naked woman rises, in a profane annunciation.
And the workmen, worthy of their hire,
stare into the future and begin to speak in tongues.

Poem under the influence for Matthew Rohrer


The candlestick beneath the stairs
plugged its ears and sang a tune to cover
the sound of the chandelier gagging.

Inter-racial affairs went on among the mismatched
dining room chairs.

A white pine Scandinavian modern
shamelessly pressed its leg against
a cherry wine skinned Windsor.

The old blender, canvassing for the upcoming election,
had pissed itself. Mr. Coffee
and the toaster, tittered, down at the end
of the counter – figures, a Republican.

Upstairs, all the books in the library
sighed.

The radio alarm clock
declared a wildcat strike,
causing the hapless homeowners
to be late for work.

Later,
over dinner,
they thought it odd
that both of them had dreamt
the sky rained
men in overcoats and bowler hats.

He, being dead, yet speaks, pipes, writes


Listen:
lessons in bone.

Jazzman lifts brass, like knife,
riffing filigrees of sadness, sonic scrimshaw
upon hammers, anvils, stirrups, all
the smallest ossicles of this
benighted head.
Bowed head. Eyes burn.

Listen:
my love comes,
kittenlike,
bearing gifts. Four roses odorless
and still as newly killed mice;
lays them out, like my heart,
at her feet,
with the news of her leaving.

Alone now with the jazzman,
taking all the wine dark lines
of haunted face,
written by the blind luck draw
of double helix,
scribed by horn
(not ax, but knife)
now sharpened
on the castanet clatter
of my love’s knocking,
my love’s leaving. I raise

a toast:
a cup of gladness
turned to vinegar and gall.
Put four roses into it:

The color of memory.
The complexion of time.
The shade of solitude.
The hue and pattern of
the chiaroscuro coloratura
the jazzman scratches on my bones.

Listen: I will
raise a toast to the woman,
whose tuition, though bitter,
costly as a mouthful of ants,
is the unwilling dues
I pay to hear
all the way to my bones,
that hard bought beauty
of the blues.

Dear Doctor for Matthew Mars


Forgive these
erasure marks. False steps and feints
toward speaking something into existence. Like

small worlds flung from lips and fingertips,
some crude and inchoate as moons, others
fearfully and wonderfully
given over to tourism.

One speaks of invisible engines,
another of secret rooms;
then of course we have the synthesis
of hyacinths and biscuits.

This could be a conversation
if we communicated telepathically
and our bodies forgotten languages
suddenly returned. Here’s a clue:

your name is the abbreviation
of a mountain. Mine,
the eponym of an archangel,
the chief apostle, and
a certain person
tenderly disposed toward
the drunk and disorderly.

Yours is the Art & Science
of the Doo-Wah-Diddy, decryptions
from your skin. Mine
is just to keep the brush and thud –
whitenoise to mask my tinnitus.

I am alone now with the ringing in my ears, and

Doctor, you were never dear
to me, just a useful, albeit charming,
means to an end, until now, sir,

thank you for singing at my wedding.

Graffito


And so we drive through weather and night
outlining the coast with our lights
in an evanescent calligraphy, like

an ideogram for the two of us,
and the suchness of earth and water.

Graceful, dramatic, frightening
as the breathtaking dive the continent takes
into the misnamed sea.

Everything about this moment
from the tire hiss to the intermittent
metronome of the wipers,
delineates a character, much like

the stylish gang-write I saw, upon the black
metal backdrop of a streetlight somewhere;
the one which made me wonder
if archeologists of the future would find it
elegant but indecipherable.

This jitterbug line of light we describe
along the ragged edge of our world
becomes our secret art and text –

its translation known
only to us.

Childhood Aspirations


When I was a boy
I was a bird interpreter,
translating every dialect
of chirp and twitter.

When I was a little older
I never really wanted to be
a doctor,
lawyer,
butcher,
baker,
big deal maker. Instead, a
paleontologist, digging up dinosaurs,
exposing evolutionary newspapers
in splintered patterns
of bone.

When I was a boy
I was polymathically perverse.
I wished to be an astronomer,
charting the constellations
of freckles
between girls’ breasts.

I never really wanted
To be a policeman, or a fireman, instead
I wanted to fly
I wanted to be naked
I wanted to see women in disarray
I wanted to be pathological liar
I wanted the moon to be my lover
I wanted to be copper-
skinned and cool,
I wanted to play
the trumpet.

When I was a boy
I was a bird interpreter. Even though I knew

there would never be any money in it.

Asa Nisi Masa


I am thinking of a word, a shibboleth
scribbled in Cherokee, which signifies
a place where we might meet,
unless you accidentally mispronounce it
as percussion and ocean sounds.

It is rather like the child’s word,
the magical word, the one the mentalist
divined from Mastroianni’s mind in 8 ½.

Remember?

Dear reader if you do, you are either
well versed in Italian cinema, or
coming up hard on senior citizen discounts.

I will give you a hint:

I recall a beat-up VW, squealing around the schoolyard,
an older couple in it, disguised with wax lips
and Buddy Holly glasses with big fake noses;
they were shooting water pistols and laughing
their asses off. I took them as my paradigm
of maturity.

Does that help?

I fear, unless someone from the Paint Clan comes
to whisper something in your ear, we may never meet.

Do you have my word yet?
Do you have your own?

Dog Whistle Politics


Ladies and Gentlemen our presentation
will begin promptly at the equinox
or solar eclipse,
whichever occurs first. Meanwhile,
our lovely attendants shall attempt to guess
your exact atomic weight.

Place your wagers, and remember, it’s all for charity.

We are, it should come as no surprise, permeable
membranes, permitting entrance if presented
hospital flowers, semi-wilted, in a rusted
George Washington plug tobacco tin.

That last bouquet was useless, got no one absolutely no where.

We request your quiet attention; this is
after all a one-way valve, (unless we specify otherwise),
only having traffic with:
criminals,
madmen,
little children,
loose women,
spiritual types of all stripes,
arty-farty boho folks, and faithless dogs
named Freedom.

At our intermission we shall be serving complimentary hors d’oeuvres –

turpentine cocktails,
grist for the mill,
free lunches,
amnesia,
finger sandwiches
(made from actual fingers!),
and a quaint little pasta
with a piquant sauce
concocted
from your deepest fears.

Ars Poetica

There are lemon slices and lily pads in the waters of the pond. Rocks peek out of cracks in the boxes, and bees are busy in the weeds. At the park on the Street of Clocks men are reading the spaces between the words of their books, and chess masters at the benches play backwards. Tie-dyed shamans divine our future, and study our past. Our term for far, far away (in the lingua franca) is: “there, where a child cries mother, mother!” Our word for here is: “here.” Eternity exists in a heartbeat; the multiverse within your pretty sister. There is a bordello in the basement of our church, frogs and crawdads in our aqueducts, and fire hydrants have taken to pissing on the dogs. There is mariachi music, and the cordite cologne of live ammo, on the yesca scented breeze. Hep cats sit in the windowsills, sniffing. Small brown men walk around whistling. Mormons ring the doorbells two by two. In the morning, songbirds sing so loudly the pictures on the walls go off kilter. Nightly, we are serenaded by sirens. Everywhere, all around us, there is breathtaking beauty – which seems to be the reason the newest fad is suicide. Our mathematicians do the Macarena; our theologians do the Antler Dance. Our philosophers are all hollering: “Ollie, Ollie Otsin, free, free, free!” By day we work the mines. At night we sleep in the whorls of our lovers fingerprints.