Archive for October, 2009

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.