Archive for May, 2007

I took the wrong bus and ended up
In a little town outside of Paris
That I hoped would be cheaper but wasn’t.
I was unsure about the room off the café,
Some kind of smoking lounge. That is,
The table was covered with cigarette butts
And there didn’t seem to be a bed.
I had less than a hundred francs,
A bag of clothes, a bathroom scale
And a printer encrusted with fallen leaves.
I needed a place to put down my stuff
But what then?
In a world devoted to parties
My wife had left me by the waterside.
I sat in the debris on the pier
Amid the nodding sea birds and sea bird statues
Wondering,
Is this place picturesque or merely filthy?

What is the value of civility anymore? A ringing defense of common courtesy seems laughable—as futile and embarrassing as railing against the rudeness of rowdy kids on their way home from school. It could be worthwhile, though, to calmly inquire into whether or not it still pays to be polite. Why broach the issue so tentatively? Maybe because the current standard of what constitutes acceptable behavior has sunk so low that we can only regard it with cynicism and apathy.

Why beat your head against a world of half-mad dopes and ungentle freaks who couldn’t recognize an act of kindness if it fell on them like a bag of quarters? One either learned at an early age not to toss trash out the car window or one didn’t, end of discussion. Maybe civility is too much to ask during our fearful age of extreme wealth, poverty and political upheaval. Why be polite to the slow cashier when a bomb might blow the whole store to smithereens?

When so much of life seems beyond control, however, it isn’t a bad idea to seize on a small matter that may have a big effect on the day to day routine. Under what circumstances is it acceptable for us to ignore each other? Unless the strangers on your street are coming at you with switchblades, it’s fair to say you can pay them no mind. But what about the recognizable neighbors who aren’t brandishing knives? Do we owe them a glance, a nod, let alone the time of day? Yes, we do.

more to come on this score

On assignment in a southern California of invented memories a teenage girl and her unusual uncles follow after a full of shit film director to a meat museum beneath twinkling towers.

Each exhibit is partly composed of edible flesh that visitors are welcome to sample—a bit of rare roast beef, for example, from the shoulder of a neoclassical nude. If that seems like an invitation to a stomach infection, stay out of the art market.

One wing of the operation is given over to a day care center, which adds to the sense of shifting behavioral standards—not moral compromise as much as a simple lack of mental clarity.

That kind of confusion brings them to a reprobate actor, an affable veteran of a 1960s sitcom, who hangs out nightly on a pier, playing drums in pick-up bands. He spends his days in a rambling old ranch house that floats upon a shallow lagoon, rising and falling with the tides.

To swim in the darkness
Of a familiar stream
And paint green spirals
On the ceiling.

Tell me about a time
that you made a critical decision
without supervision.

Upon the return of the missing aviatrix,
a little disheveled but cute as hell
in her Lucky Lindy flying attire,
I regretted having cut my hair.
In her father’s house
I’m just another guest.
Long hair might have lent me
a more mysterious air.

How do you maintain your composure when
you are in the hot seat?

My wife has the magical cobblestones
and a working method for getting
from campsite to campsite.
I do my best to organize
the music CDs.

What new skills or ideas do you bring to the job
that other candidates aren’t likely to offer?

Here’s Henry Adams in paraphrase:
The Old Dowager Duchess of Somerset,
A terrible vision in castanets,
Forced me to perform a Highland Fling
With the Turkish ambassador for partner.

How can you help our company
be more profitable?

Watch out for the one-eyed wildcat
shooting up the stairs. Oh, no!
He got inside the house
and the walls are falling down.

The obnoxious boy with the bullwhip
Takes a brutal lesson from the boxing coach;
So many jabs and uppercuts
That you begin to feel sorry.
A little.

You carry the campaign posters
Back from the beach: enormous symbols
From the Periodic Table of the Elements.
Na, sodium. Au, gold. Sn, tin.
Who wins?

You gave me an envelope of faded snapshots,
Poolside pictures of children in mermaid outfits.

You smoke cigarettes in the courthouse lobby
Where a police captain and a maintenance crew
Are inspecting a big glass door that won’t open.
They decide to take it off its hinges.

You play the butler in spangled livery,
But of course you can’t find your costume
And don’t remember your lines.
Judy Garland in a raincoat and frumpy hat
Is leaving the building, but then she comes back.
She doesn’t care about your trouble,
But you let it go
And cut the dirty bandage from her hand.

In the passenger seat you pull teeth from your gums
Along with that expensive implant you just had done
And wonder if meditating will make it okay.

From your locker they steal your shoes again.
You’re lost in the halls and confused again.
It’s turning into a challenging day.

The hardhats at lunch at the back of the van
Snicker and sneer at your kind of man
But you tell the assholes to stay out of your way.

You’ve got a place at the table in the dean’s dining room.
She gives you some pillows, not a moment too soon,
While you’ve still got your chops and something to say.

We sift the soil for artifacts, finding keys to cars that are no more. Then it’s time to join the family in an unfamiliar church. Is it a wedding we’re waiting for? The priest is noticeably absent, replaced by two flashy young men with shiny black shirts and gel in their hair. They stroll down the aisle and break into a song and dance routine. The new German pope would never approve, but let’s allow the young believers to have their fun.

A bumper sticker on a ’59 Chevy Biscayne
says NOBODY WANTS TO BE EMERSON
MORE THAN THE WIFE OF BATH.
Does she or don’t we?

You’re attending what they refer to in the trade as an “event.” The audience is lying down on a room-sized upholstered platform covered in pillows and blankets. Okay, call it a great big bed, so what? You’re none of you too comfortable in your business attire, crawling around and trying to be chatty. The attractive if somewhat hyper emcee is painting bullet-pointed motivational slogans on windows that take in the city from forty stories up. His exhortations are nonsensical and therefore charming. Competing with the PowerPoint Picasso for your attention is a snarling, half-naked little man with a tattooed head. His supposedly sinister routine involves tossing audience members into a pit. That moldy old shtick just makes you roll your eyes.

As you climb the cables
hand over hand
to the lavish apartments
at the top of the Manhattan bridge towers
the monstrosity of the location
registers like a cold shock.
Why would anyone live
all the way up here?
And where do you shop?

From his pocket he pulls out a sort of ballerina’s sock,
something that would fit in a toe shoe.
He puts his hand inside and presses
his fingers against a stretched out space
near the end. This is the softest spot, he says
and I nod respectfully as the camera draws in close
and the ghostly face of the young Jackie Gleason
appears on the sole, smiling endearingly
as we fade out.

that’s the end of that one. but here’s a little something you might like:

Sunday School

You’ve been neglecting your classes
And hanging out in the park.
It makes you feel bad; your sister gets mad.
She folds the laundry and scolds.
You see your teachers coming and run.
In a corner by a fence you find
your notebooks and your new shoes
but you can’t put them on because there’s mud.

Beside the shoes there’s a novel, Fathering the Catholic Son,
With a picture on the front from the movie.
In front of a village hillside is blonde Timmy from the Lassie TV show,
The boy master of the heroic collie dog.
But no dog here, just Timmy in a black T shirt
Wearing an expression like Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary’s.

In the mirror I was startled to recognize
the face of my grandfather.
And I had an epiphany—
do what Grandpa would do!
Though just how a retired steelworker
would handle a musical comedy wasn’t quite clear.
Probably get good and drunk
and blow the whole thing off. Still,
it was a breakthrough and much more satisfying
than scraping the mud
off the only shorts I brought to Paris.
In the final frames, we are wearing jackets and ties
standing beside a car on a dark street
and I tell the other guy, a Bob Cummings type,
Show me that thing you’ve got.

more to come …

At a nightclub in a midtown office tower
a group of men assemble in front of the stage.
Our attention is drawn by a man in a serious suit.
He says, You have all been chosen for your long faces.
We check each other out. He’s right;
Horse faces all, with varied haircuts.
We all audition and I ace out the other guys
when I stroke the girl’s palm and sigh to the skies.
I am so happy
but can I quit my job, leave
my family behind and move to L.A.?
The director was confident
I could shrug off the old nervousness
and let myself shine.
But what did he know? He was a caterer’s assistant,
not even a real head waiter.
A good dancer, though.
And I really liked that step he showed me.
So I shaved especially carefully
and noticed the more I scraped, the more hair appeared
on my face and neck and chest
until I was dragging a razor across
most of my upper torso.

to be continued …