Archive for December, 2007

You are a bridge you can’t cross
Flayed alive, alive-o
A document you can’t check in
Alive, alive-o

A prominent politician with close-cropped grey hair looks at you glumly from the cover of a magazine and asks, “Why am I the face of the STD issue?”

Dear Diane Kennedy I left my book bag on the school bus

You are a bridge you can’t cross
Flayed alive, alive-o
A document you can’t check in
Alive, alive-o

A tiny barroom perched on top of a truck
Counter narrow as a ruler
Bottles of beer like dollhouse toys
Barflies cramped, knees in their chests,
Wedged sideways inside

You are a bridge you can’t cross
Flayed alive, alive-o
A document you can’t check in
Alive, alive-o

An ancient instrument
Elegant carven arm
That you bounce down the summer sidewalk
Past a landscaper and his lawnmower
To open the heavy door of a church

Alive, alive-o

Inside the cool darkness
Descend a polished staircase
To the room where artifacts belong
And find to your surprise
A busy crowd of assistant curators

Alive, alive-o

You say, “Wow, I’m usually—”
“—The only one here,” they all chime in.
“Then let’s have a party,” you say.
But you don’t mean it. Someone
Pops open a can of beer. You
Put the dark carving back in its place
And smilingly make your way upstairs.

Alive, alive-o
Alive, alive-o

An unusual day at the beach: you’re paddling in the waves when a convoy of trucks roars down the road and pours tons of ice onto the sand. A glacial wave of ice cubes crashes over the breakers and nearly buries you.

Would it be a sin
To ask you to
Make something yourself
You choose a parked car
On a Parisian boulevard
To scope out your new existence
After awhile you realize
An old friend is in the back seat
Keeping a wary eye on you

You are a guest at a fabulous old English estate owned by a family that shares your name. In the kitchen enormous gas ovens and ranges roar with blue flame, but nothing is cooking. You mention it to your host and he says the fires must be left on low.

You clear furniture out of the way to make room for yoga. Chatty friends and neighbors arrive until you’re all packed in elbow to elbow on your mats. You’re getting irritated because nobody will stop talking, and there’s a little radio buzzing music in the corner and you can’t turn it off. You have to put the damn thing out the window. Enough!

Outside on the street the men are complaining about their cars, one of which appears to be a roofless sedan, sunk up to its windows in a pit in the pavement. An off-duty policeman parks his convertible and gets out to look things over. Wow, what a big problem. You jump in the cop’s car and peel out before he can react. He’s hollering as you speed down the highway, weaving through oncoming traffic like a maniac.

You descend into a flat, open plain of fields and farms and pull into a gravel lot beside an almost completed house—patches of bare plywood here and there—alone by the side of the road. The yard is empty except for a line of poplar trees and something that looks like an old wooden circus trailer, grimy and paint peeling. Dusty posters of circus performers, acrobats, leering clowns and freaks, hang behind chicken wire in frames that block the windows. Something about the smirking faces pisses you off and you pound on the pictures with your fists to smash in the windows. You holler, “What’s going on in there? Something bad?” You manage to knock some of the clowns out of their frames, but you don’t try to get inside the trailer. You’re afraid. Could be a yoga class that can’t get started because nobody will shut up.