Not in the News Today

Collect your flashlights to set up camp in the dark.
Put your gear on a cart at the pier to embark
For a planet of ice run by bureaucrats where
The president smiles and pulls out his hair.

The radiator whispered I should leave but I declined.
Furniture rearranged itself; sofa arms linked and let out the cat.

Nothing to read but baseball news with the front page excised
And an old number of Jailer magazine, the prison trade rag.

While searching for my cell in a Subaru’s backseat
I fell asleep. When I awoke the street was dark and someone
Was opening the door. Be not afraid said the stranger
Or might have if I hadn’t bolted from there like a bat.

Dull office afternoons of unpleasant expectations,
A cloud of dirty confetti pushed out to sea
Leaving me a tiny dot on a timeline stretching infinitely
Back to a smudged past and forward to a darkening future.

Cross the canal at low tide, climb easily on the drawbridge
Counterweights, lose a sandal in the muddy bank.
Make a choice at a crossroads beneath the trees:
A white knit coat with a French dictionary in the pocket,
A crunchy fish like a crab that is eaten while it’s still alive,
A lawnmower that one rides behind a Japanese boy
From Armco Steel to Monroe High.

En route examine a sunflower mutated from exposure
To pollutants until it resembles a squashed basketball.
Stand on the roof and strain to see fireworks shrouded in smog.

Like the panic of finding a kid in the trunk of a borrowed car,
Or a waterbug I couldn’t squash with a wet newspaper
The future used to offer so much fun
Our closets would be bigger than our bedrooms.

How happy to be riding in an open car, sunny Brooklyn
Floating past my elbow like Oz, down the rabbit hole
And off to school through a secret library passage
To a natural nether world where I traced arabesques
In the air unafraid of the ever-changing technology.
I kept my balance and turned on the lights.

A seagull, a pigeon and I, another common bird,
Shared the sheltered river sun on a frigid afternoon.

After the seminar with beastly Bill, the sage-like old satyr,
My thesis, wrapped in plastic like a bag lunch and
Tucked into a warm green leather satchel,
Was promptly stolen by embittered farm boys
When the cops stopped us out on route four. My thesis.

Ice on the river, carried off by the current

I inflated the inevitable rubber raft
For an anxious ride down subterranean streams.
Like serving a tennis ball with a kitchen broom,
I used what was given to me.

Ice on the river, melting messages

As Hermes said to Aeneas sidetracked at Dido’s,
Grampa wants to know what the hell you think you’re up to.

On the steep beach cliff I could see down into a vortex in the surf, at bottom was an industrial yellow cylinder, black numbers stenciled on the side. I heaved a big stone that struck the waves with an ominous low gulp.

Ice on the river, pallid spirits

In the green room before my interview on mental disorders,
My cowboy shirt on backwards, my guitar unstrung,
Kindly musicians retuned my mettle. Imagine.

Ice on the river, broken items of time

Thread the wire through the mouths of the couches.
Give away free parking vouchers
To lucky motorists on Joralemon Street.

Ice on the river, crack the cold off of me

The information was up to the minute.
The information was unreliable.
The information made us ravenous,
For more information.

The information had no effect
On sunlight scattered like shards
Of happiness across the rippled river.

December dawn cloud
My puffy rose friend
I’m glad I was up to see you.

A man made of grass blew by
The kitchen window while I
Angrily ate cold fish from a dish
In the sink and anticipated
The pies I had to bake.

Wondering about the import of what I had experienced—what to do?—I waited on the pier for my party clothes. I so wanted those images and feelings to signify something about my days at the farm/school/clinic.

We couldn’t get to Uncle Johnny’s because a boulder was in the way, so detoured through a farmyard where the dogs were as cute as any I’d seen—big woolly heads like cartoon sheep. When I couldn’t drive the car I pushed it in front of me like a baby stroller. Easy.

Tangents turn vinegar,
Said the smiling singer.
Try to tie a string across a pond.

Crouched over in the camping tent, teenage Pete was awkwardly pulling on his swimsuit when the backyard was invaded by a hostile band of bearded medieval warriors. Thinking quickly, he defused the situation by launching into a spirited rendition of the Beatles’ “Fixing A Hole.” The brutes were dumbstruck and soon joined in the song.

Swim a black paint pool.
Emerge white as sky.
Monitor the reservoir of ink.

I ate the strychnine apple while waiting for the next attack. Set up all my dolls on a corner of my desk. Studied the spines of the books on the shelf and decided it was time.

Embarrassed egg on his face,
Arms full of sweaters and a hanging plant,
He pulled pieces of a ring from his skin.

After our host, an aging glamrocker, had snaked an electrical cord around the hall, he led an edit meeting. Cousin Siri pitched a return to the tainted meat in the tropical war zone—green flesh in the frying pan.

Fungi grew from the small of his back,
Morel mushrooms (Morchella) and
Alder Bracket (Inonotus radiatus).

I twirled my special curve with the nasty inside-out break. I thought it was a kingfisher at its work, but as our boat drew closer the bird became a bald eagle rushing like a dolphin just beneath the surface.

Dark stillness of the river
Before rain. Drove a roadster up
The narrow winding stairs.

Aunt Kaye asked for a blanket and a broom and surprised us with her clowning camel impersonation. She fashioned a portrait of Goethe from a fried egg and warned that bugs would bite if we went barefoot on the old boat.

Everybody understood the urge to draw
A satisfying conclusion, yet
Who said you had to say good-by?

When the civil war rail car rolled
Out to sea as planned, could be I blamed
For fearing things got out of hand?
The tracks were laid upon sand.

Bedroom lamps would not light up.
We wrapped small toys in colored thread.
The lay of the land was thin enough
To see babies in their beds.

What ensued when a boy cooked up
Vegetables in a Tupperware bowl?
A mess in the ancestral kitchen,
Volcanoed produce on the stove.

We understood you had to find an angle and frame your performance properly. Even then a high dive often ended with your ass on a splintered plank.

And me in a seersucker suit,
Meeting my maker from school.
Who was the sucker and who was the seer
As a cataclysm rolled through the room?

Lightning flashed across the screens,
Flames reflected in window panes.
Pin-striped spokespersons were dispatched
You could smack them with a hurricane.

But my gimlet-eyed judgment
Poked unreliable holes
From which to see in the moment
What really mattered most

To the well-dressed men who met the train
Brandishing Mason Pearson hairbrushes.

The building was struck by a plague
Of davenports, sofas and divans,
So many that the freight elevator
Was overloaded and stuck in the basement.

Before me and the boys headed out
For beers on route four I lay down
And gazed at the swirling galactic pageant
In the summer afternoon treetops.

One wants to be helpful, even in Limbo
Where most of the work is waiting
For something to happen. Or is it?
Maybe one doesn’t quite comprehend

The tasks at hand. We tried so hard
To get down to cases, to face the music.
Pelted by hazelnuts in the swimming pool,
Made furious by dawdlers in the library,

I sadly watched my last smoke
Turn to mush in the rain. Wasted
Hours of a vacation day
Looking for a place to stay.

We polished pianos at the outpatient clinic
Where a headless man wandered the halls
Pleased by his reflection in red beret and pony tail.

At the bottom of Yankee Road our big car
Swerved into a cornfield because
Bags of mirrors blocked the brake pedal.

I swam across the floor of the lecture hall
While the professor paused to make a point
About easy chairs and extracurricular affairs.

Directing that vampire play and wondering
How to get the coffins on and off?
Put ‘em on casters, that’s what I say!

Take the stage door and the back stairs.
Stroll down to the pond across the piles of typewriters.
Forget your fedora? Get a ski cap from the second-hand store.

How sweet when old friends from drama school
Fly over Grampa’s farm and call Happy Birthday
From an airplane’s open cargo bay.

We were children riding bicycles
Toward a dark wood, pennants
Streaming from our antennas.
Electronic tethers to the solar plexus
Made me feel a little sick sometimes.

We crouched over a black high-heel
To see what it had to say.
Uncle Joe came up and laughed.
Do you expect that shoe to talk to you?
Embarrassed, we said no although
It sure seemed like that shoe had news.

Little Sis missed her meeting
With Mister Underground. He
Lived in the subway and blackened
His hair and beard to play the devil
Who filled our ears with serious absurdity.
Yet without asking he’d borrow a taxi
To give a young lady a lift.

He used to talk to the meadow grasses,
Converse with creatures and things
In ancient, unremembered tongues,
Then he forgot all about it.

While visiting the bodhisattva in the shadows
I lost a black sandal in a jumble of shoes.
When I found it my footwear was white.

You must be calm and focused, she said.
I shouted, I am calm and focused!
Just somebody please take care of this baby.

New Bedford Falls Ocean Basin
Was a park that used to be under the sea.
Think of what it looks like now.

Elvis Presley in his army uniform lowered himself out a hotel window and jumped down to a shallow balcony to speak to thousands of soldiers on the waterfront. “This is tense,” Elvis said. “This is queer.” I had to give a speech about Elvis. I climbed out a hotel window and lowered myself to a ledge outside the floor below. I tried to open the window behind me. Locked. I edged over to the next window and got in, falling over a convertible sofa that was upside down on the floor. A sign inside the door said, “Room reserved for owner.”

Barefoot on a bridge in Belgium
I read “On Being Mice and Men.”

Office Tower Pizzeria was a place to meet,
To act, to plan, to scheme.

The customers were crazy, poor, crooked, deformed,
A bird-faced guy, hooded eyes, rolled dollar bill in his mouth.

An ambulatory head had come a long way, it was said,
Less selfish now but a little sour.

A lost band of Chinese men danced in the trashcan alley,
Couldn’t choose a movie, so they put on a play.

Went back and forth across the roller coaster bridge
Until they got used to the ups and downs.

On this ride the thrills and chills are different. Watch
A baby fall over the rail to the river below. Worry

As rescue rowboats search the dark water. Relax
When the child is found alive and well. A miracle! No kidding.

Or that’s what they seemed like.
Duty has always been your watchword, Troy,
Said his absent mother, Aphrodite.
Duty will guide you now.

Abigail and a sleepy gang of gatherers
Plucked tender jewels from wet branches
On a Hudson River hillside
As fog lifted over the Catskills.

Jane had just about enough of Jeremiah
And his snotty remarks about how she ought to be able
To handle the job even though she never played
Any varsity high school sports.

In the seaside café the children were calm
Before it was time to board the ship.
Edna and Junior took off their shoes and socks
And draped themselves around the floor.

Arrived the Skipper, a round-faced genial
Fellow whom everybody knew from somewhere.
He made the rounds of passengers,
Gently lowering expectations.

The folding tables continued to fall
Like dominoes all over the muddy parade ground
Whose idiotic idea was it, wondered Clay,
To do Thanksgiving outdoors with a hundred guests.

Sherman’s childhood home was transformed,
Transparent plastic walls inside and out.
His mother and father resumed the youth
That always seemed so old to the kids.

Bernice couldn’t decide between two schools
Of thought: Make a plan for a team
Or go it alone. In hallways packed with busy bees
She was new and didn’t know

What materials were hers to use.
Silly goose, they were all available.
Still Ned liked her blue ocean waves
And her affection for theatricality.

Manfred wrapped sea stones in cotton prints,
Made artificial environments,
A single boat spared by the storm.
But Shirley had her doubts about

That gilded grand piano dinette set.