Not in the News Today

I’m learning to play a stringed instrument
Shaped like an uprooted tree
For an outdoor drama about Keith Richards
Aging into the Statue of Liberty

The Beatles of course are my old pals
Lately we’ve been meeting up again
At school play practice and such
They seem a little down, at loose ends

I see my golden opportunity
I tell them they can do anything
You know, anything you want
What do you want to do?

We linger on a broken set
Bare frames and crumbled stone
Flowered bathrobe, cigarette
Empty ashes from my espadrille

John smirks, says he could call Yoko
Ringo says there is a requirement
First you have to have a feeling

Weave me a rug
That blossoms in winter
Grow flowering grasses
From a comfortable couch

Pull off the dead pine boughs
Shiver the plastic dolls and cars
Until the toys are shiny shards

George practices sirsasana
On a pile of dust
For all of us warriors
Scared and scarred
Who curse into our hands

I see Jupiter just before dawn
So fat I think it’s a helicopter hovering
Over bad traffic on the expressway
Until I look through my glasses
Good news for the morning commute
No tie ups on the Gowanus
A big planet in plain view
While we swing into sunlight

I push my father, not so old but frail,
In a rolling recliner chair
On small wheels up a steep street
Bumping over sidewalk seams
As dusk falls and windows light

He gives me a tiny box, a kit
To make a matchbook house
Like Tinker Toy sticks the size of splinters
He warns me not to spill them

I leave him in his living room
On a low pallet beside a TV
He says we’ll meet at the flea market

I carry two light cases of his odds and ends
Out into the night and unfamiliar blocks
Lost as it begins to rain but stops

I take a wrong turn up cemetery steps
And cannot get back down
For the crowds of people climbing

Won’t heal the wound on my hand
Won’t close the skin over the sore
Won’t conjure clouds purple blue black
Trailing golden fire tonight

Street King Six Hour Energy
Is a boiling glass cooker
Of anxious eyed oysters
That crackle as they open their shells

Is it because I grew up in the TV set that I dream in promos for holiday specials about a plucky young orphan who discovers the secrets of her mysterious family from her twin uncles, one mean, one kindly, narrated as always in the unctuous tones of the universal voice-over artist, God’s show-biz brother?

No feeling is final the sages say
But when a song on the radio
(The dB’s “Picture Sleeve”)
Can tear open an old sore
I didn’t even know I had
Then I know something
Doesn’t go away

Jefferson Memorial
Upside down in the mud
Dirty old nickel
Beside newspaper pasted
Acorns, wet leaves
Bent bottle cap
Perfectly placed by a freak
October snowstorm
Expertly painted by warm
October sunlight
The headline says AGAIN

Why must I wriggle through a suffocating chute
To get to the big room with the freedom?
My inner voice says just let it rip.
Another voice asks what are you holding back?
Another, what if nothing rips out?
And another, who let you in here anyway?

Is life stupid? It depends
On your opinion as we ride out the storm
In our Carnival Tours submarine.

My bike tires sink into sand
Before a black wall interrupts the road.
Our hostess, a Shelley Winters harpy on wheels,
Bears down on me grim-visaged
And I can only howl.

Gut rehab the office floors.
Nothing leave of walls and doors.
Cascade slabs of black metal.
Weld with flying sparks
Into the most robust reporting
Toolkit in our space.

Find an exit out of the whipping wind.
Stumble along a grassy hillside.
Great electric trees of lightning leap
Up from utter forest darkness.

Appears a misshapen oblong moon
Dripping over Christmas shopping streets.
Pretty dancers in the frosty air
Not unaware of the end of the world
Sourly smiling through their steps.

Fashion a tiny diorama lamp.
Terra cotta shell and brass socket.
Solder to the bulb and burn seconds
Before turning to cigarette ash.

I walk in metal shoes that scrape
A grating scratch against the walk
To the man and his old machine
Supposed to clean the crust
From my black Stetson.

The gilded watchworks are unimportant.
So says an angel in confidence.
I don’t believe her but probably she’s right.

Chain link fences line the kitchen.
The metal doesn’t hurt my grip.
I hurtle high and backward flip
As if on gymnastic rings
To treetops awash in golden sun
That lift up my heart so high
My ancestors must have been happy up there.

Bullwinkle says, hey Rock, watch me pull a rabbit out of a hat.
The flying squirrel always replies, Again?
Yes, again. Do it again.

Try this trick with a foreign coin.
It looks more unusual and
Prevents spectators from cheating.

The secret is the hand that has been held
To the forehead will be whiter
than all the other hands.

Use the wand slowly and mysteriously.
Make the wand quiver dramatically.
Tell the white handed person to show the coin

To men in fancy straw hats
Riding too high on their heads
Because beneath they have bricks

Wrapped in paper, tied with twine.
Fundamental alchemy
Just lying there flat

Conjuring substance, space
and rhetorical gout weed
All over Prospect Park.

A letter T cut out on the floor
Says lift the rug to find the box
Hidden beneath the boards.

Open it up, take out the pot
With the handle upside down.
Wrap it in a napkin and run away before the lion roars.

In even his halcyon heydays
Seers always say Lux is headed for hell
And now their hair’s on fire again

New one! new one! he shouts over the traffic
Crematogaster lineolata
Also known as acrobat ants

Never seen before on Broadway
Riding ponies sidesaddle
In the festival of logos parade

Seven hundred fifty species of fig tree
Each with its own pollinating wasp
And kilted piper keening

Let Lux be cold seawater for awhile
Clean and clear over granite rocks
No? okay, forget it

His basement cavern in the rain
His wretched shelter
His blue tarp sags and falls

A guest at a stranger’s house
Swimming book in hand
He strays into the pool next door

White marble statuary
Neoclassical décor
He trespasses on some god’s ground

So what if Lux be damned
He climbs the iron idols
Puts saltines in the mouths of the avatars

He rejects all gods that demand worship
And deeply suspects the devout
Of bowing before their own belief

Is he villainous? clever? he smiles
At his captors and slides
Face down the ice slick bridge

Across the frozen pond
To aright himself with ease
And stare his seers down

Mister Imperioli, vacationing in Napoli
dreams he is arrested
for impersonating himself

as a child in exile
on his grandfather’s farm
he discovers the grass glows

more green below the clouds
the welcome closeness
of an overcast sky

“Aloha from Hell” is damn right
Imperioli agrees with the Rockaway Co-op
one hundred degrees in the breeze

he must manage his imagination
so as not to lose his mind when
deep night breaks at metal grinding

scavengers in his alley
and his neighbors’ imprecations
but he and his pajama wife meet

the sketchy shifters on the street
and invite their family up
in the kitchen for coffee

he likes big bags of old shoes
and the makeshift thieves bazaar
where huge wooden heads keep watch

over shacks scrawled with mottos
about how to beat the system
reconfigure time and feeling

Imperioli awakes at the picnic
to suggest his pals pool their resources
and go in on grandfather’s farm

I am leaving
things out for you
three prayer rugs

to see you through
some second hand showbiz
I took a shine to

big Alice gives me letters
to edit once I clear
my office of collectibles

little Alice
has a sore
on her shoulder

young Michael performs
his piece pulled under
by waves of dominos

in the shadow of the gothic
we laugh while our legs sink
into the sodden turf

“tears such as angels weep
burst forth” at musty memory of
the tootling recorder of Room 222

rather wrinkled in white
make-up and Marie
Antoinette wig

working it breaks up the day
that’s our joke
home from the job

we stole into a stranger’s house
we thought he was a man
we brought our own party food
and our musical machines
we flipped through his magazines
when the tube hanging from his ceiling
burst blue fluid on the floor
we sat stock still and admired
our beautiful bodies until
we heard clicking keys in the hall
and we got the hell out of there
but not before someone saluted
from the roof yikes
we were spotted

what lit the urgent fire
in the gorge below
a random spark in

the heat and drought
did it rise from fissures
in sun bleached rock

muses Sydney Strange
of the Antiques Exchange
(417 Third Avenue, N.Y. 16, N.Y.)

and wonders why
during the whole of the engagement
they never served his coffee

while he tried to sleep
the façade fell off the wall
a rumble of limestone masonry

toy hands and heads of Della
Robbia baby dolls dropped
like exiled angels on the doorstep

what is a cherub’s life anyhow
awful flying toddlers says Sydney
too holy for true

why not turn into a tree
it would be no tragedy
we do it all the time

or be the grandmother goddess
a seer in the racket of traffic
on Rector and West

her throne a battered club chair
her face a withered apple
her hair glossy black

presiding, dignified
in a fiery red pants suit
beside a hot dog vendor

whom Sydney presumes
is her dutiful grandson
preserving the flame