Archive for October, 2007

Let’s talk about you for once
Let’s get down
How many chances will we get?
Something to drink?
Here you go
So how are you supposed to react
When an alligator is biting the seat
Of your wife’s flowered pants
And she doesn’t even seem to notice?
Naturally it’s exasperating
It’s that kind of day
You’re left alone at the ferme auberge
Some kind of agritourist hotel
Gators are slithering with their smartass grins
All over the damn yard
So forget about having lunch out there
You’re stuck in the room
Messing around with some broken antique
Grooved marble and metal you can’t even figure out
Call that a vacation?
Me neither baby
Me neither

Back in Paris again—or is it Lyon? Certainly it’s France, but a quarter that feels at once very familiar and yet unconnected to an actual arrondissement. Bistros and bookstores sit on a rise above a small park with a fountain and a view of a low bridge that glitters over the river. You happily eat your steak frites alone until someone comes and says you spent too much.

The elevator in your building is cramped and dingy, lit by a bare fluorescent bulb. The car stops between floors and a bug-eyed man thrusts his unshaven cheeks through the partly opened doors. He stares, deranged, above your head while you holler he should get the hell out.

And who were those unscrupulous thieves and con artists debasing the neighborhood with their bullying, criminality and tasteless furnishings? Your brother —the big lug—tried to reason with them, to appeal to their better nature by hosting a seminar on the public good. But then somebody set the houses on fire. You make your way past the scorched Lay-Z-Boy sofas, the eroded chalk outcroppings and the ruined pond covered in algae, and you wonder where everybody is this morning.

You visit the former residence of a non-famous actor. Who? A cheerful storyteller with a house in the woods, where he lived poor but happy like a cowboy or a pioneer on beans and homemade tortillas every night. He was a little embarrassed about the rawness of the place, but proud of the checkered curtains he hung on the windows.

You only live twice
Or so it seems
One life for yourself,
And one for your dreams
—Leslie Bricusse

WATER MUSIC

You don’t change the course of a river
By curling up the corner of a map.

In a flooded beer garden
You wade through icy water
That chills your feet through your boots.

You pose for pictures at the pasture gate
To the little lane that goes to down the lake.

Crocodiles snap as you climb a shallow ravine.
Three steep paths lead past a pond into the dark.
The crocs thrash and gnash but fall back.

You trespass through the yards
Of retired sea captains
And walk the cinder paths around an island.
You wear layers of old man clothes
And carry a small blue ladder
To climb the rocks that lead
To a view of the city.

Your crazy girlfriend drives her car off the pier for a laugh, then neatly spins it round and takes it up out of the water again.

You rouse a ragged black sailor
Asleep on the deck of a sloop.
He is dazed and still in his dream
As he climbs the lines above the water
And smiles down on you, shouting,
“Custard and cabbage!”
Then he turns and disappears into the clouds.

Sing to me of the man, O Muse, the man of twists and turns
Driven time and again off course, once he was cut loose
From the midtown office tower.

The Intellectual Property Licensing Strategy Analyst
With 3-7 years total business experience,
Including 1-3+ years contemporary strategy/
Management consulting experience?

Um, no. Not that guy.

The leader of a team of analysts
In executing project workstreams on a day-to-day basis,
Ensuring timely execution and high quality output
Addressing clients’ needs?

Nope. But keep trying, O Muse.

You are robbing a convenience store with a famous actor, Phil Hoffman, in scrubby bearded grunge mode. The manager, an unsympathetic slacker dude, is reluctantly opening a cash box in the back room, when you start hitting him with the receiver of an old-fashioned black dial telephone. Unfazed by the blows, he flops onto the floor and taunts you for your incompetence as a thief.

Hey, that’s more like it, Muse. What else?

Walls of sand are eroding in a cavern littered with stacks of vinyl LPs. A voiceover narrator describes how immense dunes are worn down by wind and waves. But it makes no sense—you’re inside a cave. You pick up the black records and Frisbee them into the walls, where they stick.

A confused and older-looking Dean Martin wanders in, cool suit, thick glasses. He wonders if any of these records are his. That’s Amore, maybe? Poor Dino looks a little forlorn. Frank’s not around, and forget about Jerry.

By holding on to the retractable wings of a small bird, you are able to fly high above a grassy field, and maneuver turns and dives. It doesn’t quite feel safe—you don’t want to risk your life and jeopardize your family’s future, so you descend and place the bird in a pristine white dovecote.