______________________________________________________________
some poems by michael mcneilly (mcn):
water wings
But in the end we drown;
we breathe unknowing until breath
requires more than thought
can animate, and we draw one
then not the next;
as we carry within us the sea
of which our final breath is made
flesh, our own blood or what
would have been our blood
had there been time,
or a beach for the waters
of our heart to wash upon.
It is our own blood in which
we drown, as the voices
we have tried so to
ignore at last come
crashing in, wake us
from our sleep of life.
And the heart that uttered
blood for us day by day,
kept our secret sea held to
its shores, kept the raging
river of our blood
within its banks
is startled
into silence,
struck dumb by other
voices that must pull
us down, or up,
or call us home.
mcn
--
value
not the
summer boardwalk
forest of
unattainable young
thighs
but the hot night
memory of slipping
in sweat sliding
off you
laughing
the one in the hammock
out the 2nd floor
window naked
her head shaved
laughing up
the 30 thousand
dollar sport
utility vehicles
nothing
in comparison
the cruises
the single malts
the thousand dollar
suits the gold rolex
nothing
that one touch
of her lips
that was all there
was recorded here
forever
the small hand
tugging my beard
back down
your voice in
morning darkness
no celluloid princess
no walking barbie
no inflated temple
love goddess no
vestal version
the one with
the slender fingers
that wrapped me
in breath-faint
touch
the streetlamp
light sliced apart
by half-open blinds
spread on the
bread of you
the best things
are free
whether you can
get them
or not
McNeilley
I have to go out today
it's been 3 days
since I opened my front door
and I have to pay the rent
and I'm out of coffee
but if this wasn't my
last pack of cigarettes
I might put it off again
it's not raining
but the sun is pretending
it's spring
it's what some would call
a beautiful day out there
with my luck I'll run into
conversations about that
I don't mind the world so much
it's people I don't like
their false smiles, phony
gladhandling bullshit
that 90s way
everyone looks down on
everyone else
still if I don't move the truck
they'll think I abandoned it
and come knock on the damn
door again, so either way
I have to go out today
the pack is getting thinner
the coffee thicker
but I sit by the computer
wondering if you will write back
from wherever you are now
problems you won't
talk about between
the lines of the rare
message from you
I know we don't talk much
these days, we always kept
our problems to ourselves
but still one of the better things
to me about the world
is that it has
you in it
as we write to each other
mostly when things seem ok
it's been a while now since
there has been much
communication we
have our own internal
clocks for this
when things are not ok
which is lately not that seldom
it comes through between
the lines all the same
I never understood this
but it's as obvious as
that bright damned sunlight
I have to go out today
taking you with me in
my head, more so than usual
if for no specific reason,
without thinking much,
without worrying about you
as this would only piss you off
smile into their
vapid faces, cringe at the
price of another carton,
fine day, yes, fine day
did you see those cherry
blossoms, not much wind
but colder than it looks
McNeilley
to see without light
when I wake up too early
as I do so often lately
and lie looking at the ceiling
I think of you for no reason
as when I fall asleep not at
some set time but when I am
too tired to stay awake you
always come to mind and I
have come to accept this
though at times I still wonder
what I could have done or
said but I can think of
nothing still too often after
too much to drink or simply
over a cup of coffee there
you are again a thought with
no content just a presence
some remembered feeling
of rightnesss that had
to have been my mistake
that should vanish as you
have but will not here at
bedtime and there in the
glowing morning dark with
nothing in between
McNeilley
First Church of Jesus of the Dead Safeway
We're so glad you've decided to attend our services.
We like to keep them short, so we can get
right to the Cinnabons.
We chose this old Safeway as a form
of recycling. They're always abandoning them
for something newer and more plastic.
This old brick building is a nice home for Jesus,
warm and dry and spacious. And the rent is cheap.
We don't have sermons, we just read a bit
from our bible, which has nothing in it but the
words of Jesus. So we won't have a lot of
discussions about who to hate, going to hell,
smiting the enemies, stuff like that.
We'll just talk a little about what he said,
see if we can figure out what he meant,
and try to live up to it.
Jesus never said he was perfect, and
neither are we. He had a lot of good ideas.
That's all this place is about. That
and the opportunity for communion.
And some singing, we do believe in singing.
Feel free to bring instruments,
feel free to dance.
For communion today we will have
Cinnabons and lattes. This is one way we
spend your contributions. The rest go into
the food bank and the homeless shelter.
You may wish to contribute or take from the
free boxes in the back room.
The clothing is not fancy, but it's clean.
There are cots in the back if you need
a place to sleep, but we do ask you to
help clean up. But I think we should
all pitch in.
If Jesus were here, God knows he would.
McNeilley
the you the water remembers
-----------------------------------
we took the bumper jack with us into the lake
to anchor our swimsuits
and swam skin to skin
until the day reddened past noon
and when I pretended I couldn't find
our underwater locker
you stood and walked right up onto the beach
less red than I
the water closed behind you like
the fog that rolls in over Alcatraz
and my pride cost me
a bumper jack and some swimsuits that day
but I walked out too
tried to shrug off the water and the sun
with an assurance akin to your own
and we dressed in the sand
it's the one thing I remember best about you
20 years since
and I haven't a single picture except
this one to recall
the you the sun bathed in splendor
the you the water
remembers
.mcn.
What Light
__________________________________
My heart climbed
the wall of her
apartment building,
finding good footholds
among heavy old vines,
all the way to the balcony,
where its hand became caught
in the wrought iron railing;
and as the fire department
came to rescue my heart
again I saw her
watching there,
her face in the window
like the moon among
nasturtiums,
nodding her head like
a plastic dog in the
back window of
an old Ford,
the kind whose
eyes light up
when you hit
the brake,
her blonde hair
blowing like
candy wrappers
in the wind.
.mcn.
Postmortem
.........................
Cold, not stiff,
it lies on marble slab,
eyes open to the ceiling,
as though waiting
for the next movie.
Sorry,
not a double feature;
separate admission required;
sold out.
Knife slips in,
slides from sternum
to the
pubis bone:
Good God,
green butterflies,
music and
circling golden lights;
bells and a breeze,
shooting stars,
meteoric,
no wonder it died:
it just filled up
too full inside.
Contents released
fly through
an open window
like winged
valentines.
.mcn
when dogs fly
---------------------------------------
the first time
I tasted the stuff
I was at a girlfriend's house
I was 15
her parents weren't home
they had lots
of money
we lived in a dry county
north of dallas
but her dad worked in big d
and brought home what
ever he wanted to
they had a full bar
off the kitchen
we made martinis
or she did I watched
she made them for her dad
they tasted weird at first
but they got better
she had two afghans
big damn longhaired
long-eared dogs
they use them to hunt
lions in africa she said
they were a gift from
her uncle who was
lloyd bridges' cousin
I think that was it
they had a 6 ft. fence
and those dogs could fly
right over the damn thing
anytime they wanted to
we took a pitcher of martinis
shaken over ice and strained
out to the pool
and went swimming
and she'd call the dogs
and they'd come running
take off on one side of the pool
and jump all the way across
to the other
sometimes they wouldn't make it
and we'd laugh at them
as they scrambled out
and they'd tear back to the end
of the yard and take
another run at it
floating on our backs
looking up at dogs
flying over us
big blond dogs with ears
like wings
drinking martinis
and laughing at the moon
I remember thinking
this drinking is
pretty good
pretty damn
good
mcn
As you eat white asparagus with mayonnaise
_____________________________________________
As you eat white asparagus with mayonnaise:
single black olive, on the end of my finger,
and is this montrachet, or graves, or semillon?
The fragrant bright pink salmon waits, poached with dill sauce, as
you eat white asparagus with mayonnaise.
Your lips, parted in the beginning of a smile:
and as you gesture with the chilled and supple staff,
a brilliant white on white and cometary flair,
a blonde wave curls across your forehead. A glint of
gold chases the peripheral flash of your hand,
as you eat white asparagus with mayonnaise.
I break a roll, my eyes upon the slender stalk,
hand halfway to my mouth, overcome against my
will, all thoughts of this dinner past my reckoning,
as you eat white asparagus with mayonnaise.
.mcn.
keep writing
-------------------------------------
and at the end
of the letter
keep writing
she tells me
in lieu of
goodbye
as if I
could stop or
something maybe
she just means
keep writing
her
the poetry
will keep coming
no matter what
I do and some
people will hate it
and that makes
no difference
maybe they hate
shit too but
they keep
shitting
what it's good for
makes no difference
you just keep
doing it
it's like the
cheapest therapy
like a sunny day
in December
like free booze
as if you wouldn't
drink it
I write it down
and some people
read it
and if there was
no one to read it
I would keep
writing
like the tree
that falls
in the forest
and nobody's there
to hear it
as if the tree
gives a shit
it's like there's
this hole
in my head
where the craziness
drains
out
I don't need
a doctor
to lance it first
I don't need
a prescription
or even a
few bucks
or a bottle
keep writing
har
mcn
(11/5/96)
continuum
------------------------
choices unmade
branch out behind us
as we climb
toward the top
until inevitable
the unexpected
breaking of that last
slender branch
.mcn.
Syncretic Intussuption
A hand against a slender arch of back
a curve undescribed
its radius of a calculus as eventful
in theory as in application
still despite our finest efforts
we remain unconvinced
of our beauty
our strength
so we do what we must
must do what we must
we reach for one another
down distances like interstellar highways
and there in the space between
what is known and
what is thought
hope lies waiting
- Michael McNeilley, Olympia, WA
the gods that live in the trees here
---------------------------------------------------------
speak softly to the birds in the night.
the birds listen, and remember, and repeat
what they are told. they speak the words
of the gods in bird language, in the
mourning calls of doves, the harsh cries
of crows, the chirps and natterings
of small birds the names of which we
do not know. in the night the dogs
take it up, carry the song to the moon,
but in morning the dogs sleep, and the birds
bring up the sun for us, we who wake
wondering of the message, of the clouds
our dreams drag over things that should
by now be simple things, as something
in us knows how little is in fact
unspoken, that it may be only lack
of belief or trust or simply listening
that haunts our failed comprehension,
and why it is alway in morning it comes
to us, whether we hear it or not,
how much there is we do not understand.
Long Division
====================================
I do not know as yet how many
of you there are, though there must be
many of you I have not met, as there
are many of you in me,
and many more without.
Nor do I know how many times
you goes into me, or me
into you, as it must proceed
there are many of me as well.
I do know that not all of us
have met, as I do not expect
all ever will, or even think
it likely we should try. The lines
that run from there to here
between us are much longer than
the lines connecting me to you
and you to me, though some of these
are strong enough to bear the weight
they must. What comes between,
anticipation only serves to justify
in retrospect; there is no scale to measure
what will happen next, or where
each line will lead, or what divides
our fragile we into its dividends,
nor what remainders might obtain
should we reduce to you and me again.
So there can be in this no summing
up, no quantity interpolating
postulates withheld, no way to put
a number to our days, as only time
resolves. I only know the fulcrum
approximates equality as best it can,
though we must stand like butchers in
our stained white coats, rounding up
and down the costs and weights, uncertain
furtive thumbs pressed to the scales of fate.
mcn
The night was dark
-------------------------------------
and warm, and the ape heard
rustlings in the grass, though
there was no wind. And he made
soft sounds to himself, and climbed
the tree, and sat on a lower branch,
sniffing the air. But the clouds
moved to the east, and the sky
brightened, and as the full moon
peeked through he raised his head,
and climbed higher, at first
watching for movement in tall
reeds, but seeing nothing, smelling
nothing, with nothing to escape;
still he climbed, branch by branch,
toward the light: the light that
cast stark shadows on his fur,
that lined the shape of leaves
upon his arms. Climbed until
the branches thinned, and he
could climb no higher, and moving
one paw above him, watched it
traced against the moon, and reached,
reached as high as he could reach, as if
to touch the perfect light
set into the blackness of the
summer sky. Reached and stretched
and wished he could extend just
one small bit more, to brush it with
a fingertip, stroke its glowing face.
And there in the branches more
apes appeared, reaching, holding
arms up high, with soft whimperings,
each hoping for arms long enough
to touch the jewel of night.
I think there are more dogs here
--------------------------------------------
than people. as I sit out in the new
mexico night air in a t-shirt and sweat pants,
with a drink and a cigarette, they're
a backdrop like the stars, barking
in the distance at drunks or prowlers
or one another or the moon, the moon which
hangs overhead like a black velvet painting
of a spilled bowl of diamonds. thinking
if I were back in Aberdeen I'd need an
umbrella to do this, if I were in Indianapolis
I'd need a parka, but here it's just
cold, and it's a dry cold, the kind that
won't give you an earache just for spending
a few minutes outside on a night
without wind. and there's an owl
in one of these trees who drowns out
the dogs every few minutes. the owl is
out here every night too, probably
watching for chihuahuas. the guy behind
us has two chihuahuas, I think the
little male is named Taco, or maybe that's
just their plans for him. if it were
daytime he'd wander around the corner
right about now, drop the empty beer
can he'd be carrying and bark at me, pick
his can up and run, but I think even he has
brains enough to know that owls hunt
at night. our tiny lawn is dust, but
for a couple of corners where I planted
tulips, I've been watering there, I think
they'll be coming up soon. tomorrow
will be sunny again, warm enough for
spring, and tulips know. inside a pretty
girl is reading in the bathroom, the loud
exhaust fan straining to pull the smoke
out of the tiny windowless room, so it
won't harm her cats; reading some scary
book with a computer virus in it that
can kill you. I should go to bed but
the stars are brilliant, the night sky clear,
the dogs are winter crickets singing into
the glowing dark, the owl a mystery all
its own, and the light from the streetlamp
frosts the bare treelimbs like an Atlanta
ice storm as the door opens a crack,
the small voice says "don't freeze,"
and I decide not to, knock off the ember,
save the butt for later, roll in.
why I watch you sleep at sunrise
-------------------------------------------
I know a woman whose husband died suddenly,
a match in a gale. she moves through her
empty disordered house in clean pressed
clothes, with the thought of the need
to bathe once more today;
and a man whose wife was lost by slow degrees,
a torture and release that could not bend.
who replaces his furniture with new, draws
his life back from memory, though he would not
have her go, and her thought will never;
and a friend who must pull back her touch
from the one who can no longer find within
the need of this, grasping at sullen air, her
fingertips worn smooth on a seamless wall
of inconceivable indifference.
you turn to me smiling, two cats on your lap,
the briefest greeting, practically unheard, and I
am moved to touch your shoulder just in passing,
to let no smallest opportunity be missed,
knowing nothing lasts.
mcn
cracks in the driveway
-----------------------
he really hates
sleeping alone
but she's sleeping
under grass
on a little
hill
with flowers
he calls up
old girlfriends
with nothing
really
in mind
and the air
conditioner
breaks
and has to be
replaced
annie calls
and she always
liked annie
and the plumbing
in the kitchen
floods the room
with water
which drips down
the steps into
the den
he still wakes
every morning at
3:30 to give
her her
medication
but he can't
so he takes
some
nothing grows up
through the cracks
in the driveway
they must be
new
and mary calls
to see how he's
doing
and the next
morning
he finds the door
to the freezer
open
the big one
in the garage
must have been
a few days
from the smell
and he has to move
her car
out front
to wash out
the freezer
with a hose
then parks her
car again to
the right
where it
goes
like he still
sleeps on the
left side
of the bed
and what to
do with all these
teddy bears
he replaces
the teddy bear
canisters in the
kitchen with
manly chrome
ones
in the afternoon
bells ring
like an alarm
but they are
gone before
he can track them
down
one night
he finds himself
standing
in the kitchen
in his underwear
with a wrench
but there is
nothing to
fix
mcn
Dance Friends Dream
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Eyes closed, breathing slowly in, then out,
concentrating on the point where out becomes in,
I begin to visualize them. They move, or float, in
that odd slow motion found in dreams. They are
wrestling -- no they are dancing -- arms on
one another's shoulders, turning in a circle
counterclockwise across the floor.
It seems they are dressed in silver nylon spandex
leotards, but one is not drawn, or at least I am not
to consider the shape of them as individuals.
A small circle of friends.
Still they shine as they revolve, groupwise, centering
on -- what? Not me, I observe from one side,
from some sort of hiding place, I'm not sure where,
as if between walls, looking out from between dark
blue panels unseen, so that the silver revolving ring
of dancers, lighted from within, turn past me as
within a frame.
I cannot see all of them at once...perhaps all of one
or two, and parts of others. They turn crabwise, like
Escher characters, each walking in a sideways circle
-- a revolution, a rotation of friends. If they don't revolve
around me, do they revolve around something else?
How can they, they have only me in common.
They are friends of mine, but not of one another --
some of them know each other well enough
to hate each other. As my good and true friends,
somehow they must.
Lights flash as they turn faster. They seem to be
coming closer. Will they see me? Can I let them
know that I am here? Can I stand up, slide between
the panels, join the dance? Where should I begin?
If I am dreaming, I imagine then I'll have to wake up
soon -- if so I hope not to remember any of this
unless I can remember it all.
Will they know...will they ask? Sometimes it seems
they can tell. What will I tell them? I dreamed of you.
mcn
(not at all sure what the hell I'm doing this morning.)
elegance
---------------------------------------------
is not always
the fine sauce
so many seem to think
but more like a roux,
its base a long-simmered stock,
warmed slowly until
the flour is just brown,
never harmed by the addition
of a bit more wine:
thickened by butter,
time and patience, complex,
yet simple enough to
dip a biscuit in.
mcn
the opposite of winterizing
--------------------------------------
the phone rings
and I tumble out of sleep
fall halfway out of bed
to answer it
hello?
is this wym's radiator
repair?
what?
wym's radiator repair?
is this wym's radiator repair?
no, you have the wrong
number
oh
and a late spring breeze
billows the curtains
which are also filled with light
I have slept too long again
and I knew it wasn't you
but I do feel some
connection this morning
something like a kite string
so many miles long
one of us is holding
so that the other will not
fly away
though I do not know
which is which
and I imagine a tail
of colorful old neckties
the way the string curves into the sky
and seems to disappear
but holds the kite
which without the string
cannot fly
and I close my eyes and
tug on it
as the phone rings
hello?
is this wym's radiator
repair?
no.
just me again.
dang it!
mcn
Dance of the moon and sun
------------------------------------------------------------
There are pieces of you all around me,
they arrange the darkness and the light.
Morning sun filters in through the memory
of your hair. I read poetry before dawn
by the light of your smile; it is better for this
than as an umbrella, as it lets in words
more readily than it keeps out rain. When
I run the water, the bathtub asks about you,
and the morning coffee pot speaks in your
voice at times, though it knows you never
drink such stuff. Some nights your fingertips
against the windowpane are all that hold
the dark at bay; as your love is in every
corner, telling me nothing bad can get in;
as when I close my eyes at night, I look
into yours. Your touch surrounds me as
I wake on the sofa, the tv still on. I would
have frozen by now without you, would have
stopped breathing or gone blind. And this
is your heartbeat in my chest; I know the
rhythm: two beats together, then not quite
too long a pause and it repeats, moving
the blood through me, just as your breath
on my eyelids begins and ends each day.
And when you come to me in the night
you are whole again, and all is as it
should be, as if you'd never left.
mcn
The yellow-bellied sea snake
The yellow-bellied sea snake
must shed its skin to grow, but in
the logic of the sea it finds no rock or stick
or truth on which to rub,
and so it ties itself in knots, pulls itself
on through, and sheds its skin against
its skin, passing through transition
in a singular, Gordian display.
As, like the yellow-bellied sea snake,
you attempt to tie yourself in knots,
your breasts brush soft across me,
rolling like the sea.
Though grown, we each have growing left,
big as we may be, but rubbing one another
we stretch our length more freely, more decisively
than those who take this passage on their own.
At last our lost skins sink together, thinly gliding
ghostlike through depths of water bending, contorting
our departed shapes, while burnished, gleaming,
pink and healing, up we rise.
Michael McNeilley
the good ones are
already taken
the jobs the women the lives
I should know this
having had some of the best
of all of these
having fucked them all off
running after more or better
of course taken is one thing
kept is another
the good ones move on
it's like trying to keep
a rainbow
the sun goes down
McNeilley
my fault
not in pursuing you
though that I would not
is no reflection.
not that there was more
to be said, though there is
always more.
unless too much
has been said
(too soon for that.
but that I realize
though I could go on
describing your hair
for weeks, and that I will
if only for myself,
as I could go on
with your lips
and that the voice
on the phone
I thought was you
was not and that I do
not know the color
of your eyes though
it was dark (as it was
always dark).
and it is no excuse
there was not time
though there is not.
McNeilley
Coffee
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An old man looks out his window, watching a bus pull
away and cross the intersection. He turns from the window
holding his coffee cup, swirling it although there is no
coffee in it, considers taking a bath. She always told him not
too much coffee, just the one cup in the morning, and
that he should remember to bathe every day, as these were
the kinds of things he would soon forget once she was
gone. He places his cup among others in the sink. The
bathtub is clean and damp, still warm. He sits on the toilet
and watches as the tub fills. By custom, he draws too
much water, so that some always runs out the overflow as
he gets in, leaving behind as much water as will fit,
making a sound he's always liked hearing. He images a
spider trapped in the overflow, washing down the pipes.
As he slides into the water he thinks of her, and although
she is not here to scrub his back he smiles. His toes surface
and submerge, and he watches them break through floating
rafts of soap bubbles, then sink again, like a shipwrecked
crew of drowning men. After his bath the water circles
down the drain, but without his glasses he cannot tell if the
whirlpool drains with or counter to the clock, although he
understands or thinks he remembers that it always turns the
same way, like a dog circling nose to tail on a carpet looking
for that one best spot. The word "coriolis" slowly
surfaces and submerges again in his mind, and eyes closed
he watches it as from a moving vehicle, experiences it as
he would a neon sign flashing past in the nighttime. He
makes a note on his mental blackboard to watch closely
next time which way the water circles as it drains. He smiles
again, as he can have his coffee now that he has bathed.
-McNeilley
back
----------------------------------------------------------------------
some that i've linked to on other sites but am keeping copies here
in case that site goes down:
__if you keep a rat in a cage__
If you keep a rat in a cage
the rat will lose the impulse to bite you.
Will take food from your hand gently, before
running away with it, back into the corner.
Will climb above on the perches
like a bird in the night.
Will race to the cage door in the dark
and watch you pass, hoping.
Will press its face against the bars,
against the floor as you pet it, as you
stroke it kindly with one finger.
Will perch on your shoulder, and run around
inside your coat, and try not to
piss on you.
If you keep a rat in a cage, and you leave
your best wool sweater there too close by,
the rat will drag it in, pull it through
the narrow opening between the bars
with a strength that seems supernatural,
and tear the crap out of it,
pull the shreds together in a huge rat's nest
and sleep in it, happily shrouded in
closeness to you.
If you keep a rat in a cage, there is no guarantee
the rat will come to love you, but
chances are good. As is the likelihood the rat
will be authentic in its affection;
will be constant and return good treatment
in kind. And if the rat escapes,
the chance is strong it will return
from beneath the eaves, chattering,
turning its head to one side,
showing one red rat eye, unblinking,
entreating, freedom is not so much,
take me back in.
...
__pull of the abyss__
I walk out to the mailbox and though
there is no letter from you again, there is
a free trip to Japan,
and a box of chocolate-covered haiku,
and I eat the haiku though they are
strictly off my diet,
and I forward the free trip to Japan,
which is not addressed to me anyway,
to its rightful recipient.
I walk out to the mailbox and find
the path particularly long, unusually steep,
rutted and rocky but dry at least,
and the mailbox hands me a letter -
the letter is from an ex-wife -
she is gloating about her recent sexual experiences
with a prior ex-husband -
and I take the letter back to the house with me,
up a particularly steep and rocky path home,
and repackage it with a cover letter
to the editor of Handjob,
and glide back down the hill to the mailbox
which accepts this gift in the spirit given,
swallows it like cough syrup,
with a tiny burp.
I walk out to the mailbox and am moved
by the mailbox's inner beauty -
I open the mouth of the mailbox,
pull out its long aluminum tongue
and it regurgitates to me a t-shirt catalog
from the fat guy clothing store,
but the fat guy clothing store catalog t-shirts
shrink after a few washings
so that fat guys can't wear them anymore,
and I put the catalog back in the mouth of the mailbox
like a wafer to its tongue
and close the jaw and pull up the
red flag.
I walk out to the mailbox alert to dodge
the drug-crazed grannies of death,
who drive Plymouth minivans up and down my street
tranqued out on multiple prescriptions
of Medicaid serotonin reuptake inhibitors,
valium and alprazolam, health store valerian
and reds from the bingo palace,
cursing me through their rolled-up windows,
waving bony fingers I try to ignore -
and find the mailbox full of birthday cards.
I walk out to the mailbox just as
the sun comes out, blazing like death,
and Ed McMahon appears from behind a bush
waving a big sign FREE! - FREE! - FREE!
a check the size of a billboard rises
behind him and he yells to me,
"this check could have your name on it, if...."
and I run back to the house muttering
"I'm sorry I cannot afford to accept
any more gifts at present."
I walk out to the mailbox
and instead of your letter I find
a small white envelope from the IRS
and I know it is not a check
and I feel like a '78 Firebird with one
plug wire off, straining up a mountain road,
sputtering and missing, the hot smell of
burning oil, radiator hissing, wheel drawn by
the pull of the abyss.
I walk out to the mailbox and the mailbox contains
an inflatable wheelchair,
and I pull it out and blow
into one tire and blow into the
other tire and blow up the frame, the seat,
the back, the little wheels in front
until I am too tired too tired to stand
and I sit down but the wheelchair grabs me,
pulls out huge rolls of duct tape,
tapes me down and I am
glad you are not here to see me,
wheelchair-bound.
I roll out to the mailbox and find a card
from the government granting me health,
and a bill from the government for
"health and other services,"
but the bill is more than I can pay
and I push my wheelchair into the envelope,
seal it with a kiss, and send it off,
postage due, and still I feel better.
I walk out to the mailbox and find
a woman is leaning against it,
holding a bottle of Jameson's -
she wears a tiny black dress like a message
from inside some smaller bottle,
her red hair the color of sailors' delight,
and I ask "how may I help you," and she says
"do you have any grey poupon?"
And I say no, no I only have regular American mustard,
the yellow kind, taxicab yellow mustard like
for corndogs, and she says, "that'll do, then,"
and the evening begins without error.
I walk out to the mailbox and
I walk out to the mailbox and
I walk out to the mailbox and turn and
cannot see my way home, the mailbox glistens
like an iceberg in the chill winter morning air,
foghorns in the far and bitter distance,
and I stand on the slanting deck of my life
as the band strikes up one last tune
and deck chairs slide past me into the
cold Atlantic, whispering
your name.
...
__under the same full moon__
doc slides another scotch across the bar
and I pull it to me
parked here on my stool like
a hearse among sports cars
a week away from another year wasted
suturing up my heart with threads
of loneliness
while half a continent away
the advertising agency party outside rages
as you climb up on the copier
twirl those tiny panties on your finger
laughter like ice in glasses tinkling
and someone pushes the button
to print my birthday card
...
__How erasers are made__
In the factory the workers
dump chemicals into vats,
adding a quality of denial
thought problematical
in some circles.
The product is rolled into
long cylinders, then broken
into formal eraser-lengths
by men who wear tall hats
and speak only to one another.
In the arts section, large
eraser pies are formed, then
cut into rectangles by
disks that spin with a
sound like vacation.
Other eraser shapes are made
in rooms without windows.
It was recently ruled deceptive
to make an eraser in the
shape of a heart.
Erasers leave the factory
in small trucks, and enter
the stores before dawn,
packaged in colorful promises
few of them can keep.
...
__Like trains into tunnels__
Yeah I saw the whole thing,
that knife slid into him
like he was loose dirt.
Naw I dunno, just a knife.
I dunno, long enough I guess.
They was having
some kinda bitch about somethin
over there by the pinball machine.
He called her a damn whore, I
remember that real clear,
and she yeah she
stuck him good, like he was a
balloon...you shoulda seen
his face pop, like one second
he was in it and the next
he was gone.
Seemed like he deserved it though:
like he'd been top dog for so long
she didn't have no way out but to cut him;
and he was so tough and
shitty grinning, and then
gaffed like a fish,
and I ain't surprised he's dead.
Knife slid right easy
through that silk shirt,
right between the ribs so perfect,
the old tongue into the slot,
and he was just so much
meat and she was gone.
I dunno she was...
well kinda average lookin...
about so tall, brown hair, that's all.
I never seen them before.
Hey, honest, but
he sure bought it fast,
it coulda been worse for him;
she knew what she was doin,
you can tell.
Yeah I saw the whole thing. Like he was
loose dirt and been turned over.
No I didn't see her face;
I'da liked that but
I was watchin his at least.
You know even when you covered him up
he still looked surprised.
...
__dip in the pool__
man
all these fempoets
hate sex
he said
you must not have met
some of the ones
I know
I told him
well
some of them
don't hate it exactly
but none of them
are any
good at it
so give up
I told him
find a nice
cowgirl
or something
no way
he said
I have to remain
available to the
poetry
gene pool
natural insemination
services
available
widely published
genes
hell
he said
social duty
fulfilled is worth
any price
you dip
I told him
those babies would
follow you through
every incarnation
fuck up your karma
among the choir
invisible
yeah
he said
and their
mommas too
just think
down the line
the artistic complexity
of it all
trailing clouds
of babies
lesbian mommas
and poetry
into a red karmic
sunset
but just as things
were getting really
interesting
one more Jameson's
and he was
out
cold
...
__a clean shaven man__
I was doing club fights in Fort Worth
in a joint called the Leprechaun
4-rounders mostly
for $50 and meals and drink chips
and a room when I needed one
I won more than I lost
stayed down when I needed to
moved from light-heavy to heavyweight
because the food wasn't bad
spent most of my days in the weight room
those were good months
the best night
and the one guy I still remember
big and ugly with a wiry beard
the kind that comes up almost to the eyeballs
named Blutarski or something
they called him Bluto
and he snarled and played the part
it seemed to come natural to him
to piss people off
the crowd hated him it was a lot like
professional wrestling
but our crowd was more sophisticated
and needed real blood
it was an 8-rounder and
Bluto dogged me from the introductions
talking his line of shit
glaring at me and spitting
I had a tequila hangover and a fight
with some dancer the night before
I forget her name now
but Christ she had a mouth
so I'd been called enough names already
and one glob of spit landed on my shoe
and Bluto looked at me like he'd
scored a knockout and called me
a little chickenshit and I decided
to stand him up for a while
I was light for a heavy
he must've had me by 40 pounds
but he walked through his rounds like
my grandma and didn't know shit about boxing
I think he was a bar bouncer
maybe used to play football
used to outweighing and outmuscling
but I'd had 87 amateur fights
and learned from my mistakes
and you could tell most of his fights
had been with some poor drunk
I let him chase me around for a while
muttering and cursing and trying
to give me the finger with his glove on
trying to tie me up and thumb me in the eye
hitting on the break going low
the usual no-talent bullshit
and I got on my horse and rode
and in the 4th he spit out his mouthpiece
so he could cuss me better
but they made him put it back in
I waited till he got sloppy
then after one break feinted left
he bought the fake and I jumped right
and landed a wide hook to his ear
rang his bell and the look in his eyes changed
just like I knew it would
he started protecting his face after that
and I worked his body like a heavy bag
bent over and pounding
skipping back when I could feel him
tense to come after me and
the heart drained out of him
like blood from a hung deer
I kept gutpunching him until I
I bruised the hell out of the ribs on his
left side probably cracked one
and he bent his left arm down and held it in
which was what I'd wanted all along
and I switched to southpaw
and started jabbing him with my right
hooking him with the left
he'd never seen that before
didn't know what to do about it
swatted at me like a flyswarm wincing
and grew a mouse under his eye
and by the time his eye contact went out
and he started watching the ref
and the cursing and spitting stopped
it was way too late for him
I'd hated him that long
I couldn't let him down
one of the cornermen hated him too
he saw what I was doing
and buffed my gloves with sandpaper
he'd hid in a towel
I hooked old Bluto to the ribs just often enough
to keep his left down
and threw that nasty right jab
straight on with a clockwise twist at the end
that pulls the skin to ribbons
and the crowd loved it
the ref's white shirt turned pink
and Bluto looked like a steak with a beard
I stayed away from his eyebrows
blood in the eyes and they'll stop it
he hit me one good one in the balls
but that's what cups are for
the crowd booed and threw shit at him
and he didn't try it again
I knocked his mouthpiece back out
and this time nobody handed it to him
he went down in the 8th but his manager
was disgusted and wouldn't throw the towel in
and he waited out the count on his knees
and I walked up to him bent down
spit my mouthpiece on him and said
"I'm strong to the finich"
they should've stopped it on cuts
but that almost never happened cuts
were the point
they gave me extra chips for a good win
and I sat in the lounge with a rare steak
cleaned up and hair greased back
tired but my whole body one big smile
and this one dancer from the club
a blonde with the lungs of a pearldiver
kept looking at the bandaid on my chin
cut yourself shaving?
she asked I laughed
you shoulda seen the other guy
and she said
I like a clean shaven man
and sat with me and I used some chips
on gin martinis
not something I'd drink myself
I went to the head
and worked the old penny jimmy
on the rubber machine
rattled the handle back and forth until
the little boxes sprayed everywhere
I filled my pockets left behind a couple
that fell in the urinal
next time I came in they were gone
I got a laugh out of that
she ran the little plastic wrapped boxes
through her hands like diamonds
smiled up at me like any princess
and we tore into them
blew them up and sailed them around the room
till the whole joint was laughing
I said I'm Mike what's your name
she said her name was Olive
and we laughed some more
you've filled out some I said
she said I'm pumped up
they threw us out at closing
and I felt my pockets and not
thinking too fast said shit
we blew up all the rubbers
I never had much subtlety
and she laughed and reached in her bra
and pulled out 2 little packages and said
I gotta couple
her room was a lot nicer than mine
gold walls with green curtains
flocked wallpaper and a decent stereo
and she put on Scott Joplin records
which are just as good as Bolero
just as good as blues
better than Mozart
for the occasion
I woke early
feeling better than I'd expected
hey you lowered my blood pressure
I told her
like you lowered Bluto's she said
and we started the day
laughing some more
your name isn't really Olive is it?
I asked her and she answered
it was last night
and we got back in the bed
under the forest canopy
of Texas morning light
blasting through green curtains
and laughed and laughed
some more
...
__before the sky begins to grey__
pull down stars and pour them in a bag
put the moon away in careful wrapping
push trees aside to clear a space
turn back the wind for now
roll up the carpet of voices
brush away stones of distraction
fall back into my arms
just close your eyes and breathe
it makes no difference if we find
what we think we are looking for
so long as we do not forego
what there is to find
the space between breathing out
and breathing in is our assent
the sky burns quiet into morning
and timing is everything
...
__visiting hour__
the rain paints a glow
around each arc light
high above the yard
like haloed harvest moons
and water drips and sparkles
on the chain links.
the moms are not
on average bad-looking -
one in tight knit pants
another with flowing red hair.
they leave one at a time.
they do not speak.
then a mom and a dad
come out together
gesturing against
the glaring dark
their mutual laughter
incongruous
but their faces harden
as they divide toward
separate cars.
and the door buzzes out
another mom who turns the corner
and I see the common feature -
a stiff set to the jaw
eyes somehow unfocused
and a walk too quick
not brisk but more as if
afraid they might begin
to run.
one or two attempt a proud
look of self confidence
but their eyes betray -
shadows surround them
from the many lights -
they walk in pools of shadows.
and you turn the corner
past the red sign that reads -
Warning! Juvenile Detention -
framed by lights and barbed wire
you are momentarily
unfamiliar.
your face in that same set
like some sort of stroke victim -
your eyes pools of sorrow
and I spill this sad cup
of coffee that was all
I thought to bring you.
you stand there in
the shadow of the car -
out of the lights nothing
in your hands and we wait
to look each other
in the eye
and watch instead
the rainy blacktop
and the one short shadow
you cast now -
the size of a
small boy.
and glancing back together
we must look away again -
look up to see
the moon has built
a fence
against the stars.
...
__what you want__
I never know although I do know
you will not tell me. and this is a joke
men make when they try to speak
of women, that they always have
to guess, but I never laugh. because
you cannot tell me what you do not
know; because you cannot tell if
what you want is what you need.
and it is so difficult for any of us
to know what it is we need,
and there is no one to tell us this,
though some will try.
I know you fear you want too little
and too much. that your desires
become frightening in the light,
and that you feel I cannot know you,
that I will not understand, or that
I will, or what to do if this key fits
or it does not.
but as all men say they do, or just
a little more perhaps I do know
what I want, as what I know I want
is no more and no less than what
you want. and this would take us
nowhere if it were not true all things
contain their opposites, as I
and you.
...
__I would write you a poem__
because you like it when I do,
if I had anything to say, but if
I have I could not tell you what.
and you think I can always write
another poem, that there's a switch
inside my head I can turn on
and a poem will appear. and you think
there must be a light inside me that
never goes out. but one day one
of these poems will be the last one,
and it could very well be this one,
or the one before. and if there is
a light in me perhaps it's more
firefly than flame, more like
a simple absence of darkness,
though there may be something in me
that will not let the dark remain
where light could shine. but if
there is, this is a thing that
will not play games with windows,
or illuminate small things
that hide for their own safety, things
that light could shrink or fade. I would
write you a poem if I had something
to say, something that needed saying,
some small candle to the shadows
of doubt or indecision, but this
is all I have for now. that I hold
a light within me that is yours, that it
shines for you as you may wish, and that
you may burn down the wick without
asking, or snuff it out, or read quiet by
its glow, or fly into the flame.
...
__God's guitar__
God's guitar looks for all the world
like a vintage Les Paul
except that sunburst finish
is the real thing
God's guitar
has a tone that rings like Saturn
the resonance of a blue woman
the pitch of sounding belugas
God never plays hymns
but sings songs of freedom
in a voice like Odetta
from a rooftop in winter
God plays Stairway to Heaven
and they dance across the clouds
in quickening multitudes
until it rains in the desert
God's amplifier is an old Fender
tube model with true reverb
and God lets Jimi play any time
he wants to
...
__The yellow-bellied sea snake__
The yellow-bellied sea snake
must shed its skin to grow, but in
the logic of the sea it finds no rock or stick
or truth on which to rub,
and so it ties itself in knots, pulls itself
on through, and sheds its skin against
its skin, passing through transition
in a singular, Gordian display.
As, like the yellow-bellied sea snake,
you attempt to tie yourself in knots,
your breasts brush soft across me,
rolling like the sea.
Though grown, we each have growing left,
big as we may be, but rubbing one another
we stretch our length more freely, more decisively
than those who take this passage on their own.
At last our lost skins sink together, thinly gliding
ghostlike through depths of water bending, contorting
our departed shapes, while burnished, gleaming,
pink and healing, up we rise.
...
__dogma__
the dogs run
up the sides of mountains
tongues hanging low
some with noses full
of porcupine quills
some with clinging pups
some matted and mangy
and scarred and broken
some dragging their
fallen brothers and sisters
daughters and sons
some with pieces missing
tattered ears bobbed tails
some large and rangy
some tiny, weak and slow
some strain to pull trees
bicycle racks and park benches
some lope freely smiling like fools
the dogs run
up mountainsides
and those who reach the top
float off into the sky
panting out clouds
howling down the wind
barking up the moon
...
__bluebird__
the bluebird
of happiness
a fine blown
glass bluebird
her mother sent
had a tiny chip
out of the tail
and she cut herself
placing it
on the white
window sill
...
__not really a scream__
Larry the Lobster
looks out upon the smear of color
that is a crowd of human faces.
his claws wave menacingly
in a stream of bubbles.
small children
shrink back behind
their moms -
two smaller lobsters
react self-protectively:
2nd and 3rd prize.
Larry weighs 14 lbs.
and is older
than anyone in Ishmael's
Restaurant today, though
Harry Melvin,
who bought two chances,
is almost as old.
the customers have bought
raffle tickets
to win Larry the Lobster.
827 chances have been sold.
the customers await.
there is tension, expectancy
and garlic butter in the air.
some wear bibs.
some wear Birkenstocks
or Doc Martens
and will set Larry free
if they win him.
some are undecided
but know they'll be on tv
either way.
they hold numbered tickets:
the same numbers are painted
on ping pong balls
with red nail polish.
next to the tank, the balls fill
a large wire barrel
mounted on a wooden sawhorse stand
with a crank on one end.
Ishmael Green spins the drum
slowly. proudly. the idea, the raffle, the
balls, the drum, the tv coverage,
the free advertising, the recipe
for clams casino, the wine list,
the name Larry
were all his idea.
people spill out into the lobby
and from there into the parking lot.
the p.a. system crackles.
Larry the Lobster
was born off the coast of Maine
the same year
as Charles Bukowski,
lived through three wars
numerous police actions
a dozen major changes of fashion
and 10 presidents.
a television reporter
points her microphone.
the camera pans.
two numbers are drawn.
the crowd moans.
a woman nods enthusiastically
her husband's eyes glisten
and children jump up and down.
bubbles slowly rise
in thick clam chowder.
in the next room salad is tossed.
water boils.
steam clouds the windows
and Ishmael spins the drum.
savors the moment:
I was born for this
thinks Ishmael.
the rattle of the balls
audible through the water
in the big tank
sounds to Larry
a little like mating calls
so long unheard
and he turns
tail raised high
as his number comes
up.
...
__my son believes__
the earth
will cleanse itself
and beyond us all
what will remain
will be scorpions
roaches and
styrofoam
and the scorpions
will run things
and the roaches
will be the
rebels
and eventually
the styrofoam
will attain
life
and that'll be
the beginning
of the end
for the scorpions
and the roaches
so my kid
tells me
over a bowl
of miso
sometimes
I think we are
not so far
apart
...
__she has the bear again__
she's carrying him around
in that big bag with the handles
the white bear the one from
value village
I try to get hold of him but
he never leaves her side
she has the bear under her desk
between her knees
she takes him to meetings
in his bag like a big lunch
sets him there on the floor
like an extra purse
at night she curls around him
like he wasn't real
...
__rituals of dawn__
It's his 80th birthday,
and Jack Lalane raves on
about the junk we put into
our bodies.
Boils, pimples, aging and death
scream down like bad health bombs
upon our foolish heads.
As he lectures he pumps
the barbell up and down
like some ancient hypnotic
device. He has wrinkles older
than I am, but his biceps
agelessly expand.
You wouldn't wake your dog up
in the morning and give him coffee,
a donut, and a cigarette,
would you? he asks, and as he stands,
sipping carrot juice in the Southern
California dawn, a verdant light pours in
through picture windows framed
in shades of palm,
and rollicking white puppies
circle him like earthbound doves.
But then the dog is back
to wake me up again,
his wet grey nose insistent,
and I knock over last night's
final glass of scotch, cursing
and he shies away, then pokes
once more with that sharp nose
as if to say get up, let me out,
make coffee, you lazy bastard,
and how about
a light?
...
__love and the rat__
the rat is
a clean animal
strong for its size
and brave
fierce and knowing
confident and
independent
it has been said the rat
has mystic powers
the ability to pass through
the smallest space
to subsist on next to
nothing
the rat is a friendly
loyal and caring pet
will pass up food
for attention
and soothes
at your caress
the rat will eat
most anything
will be happy as
a vegetarian
though it must gnaw on
something hard now and then
so its teeth do not become
dull
or too long
I tell you this
so that when I say
your love is a rat
that lives in my heart
you will not
misunderstand
...
__the turtle who looked at Napoleon__
Exiled to Saint Helena
in the South Atlantic, in 1815 Napoleon turned
to gardening, turning the soil with the
simple implements at hand, spacing the tiny seeds
in straight long rows with military precision.
Napoleon's jailer, Sir Hudson Lowe found
himself as bothered by rows of the Corsican Guard disguised
as radishes, ranked across the earth outside
his office window, as by Napoleon's contentment.
In a singular act of creative malevolence,
Lowe sent off to the Galapagos
for two giant land turtles.
The frigate bearing them arrived,
Lowe named the turtles Jonathan and Josephine
and set them loose in the garden of Napoleon.
Bulldozers by nature,
the giant tortoises nosed up and
swallowed down the radishes, tomatoes,
turnips, carrots and onions, smearing
Napoleon's careful rows into the dust.
Over morning coffee, through office window bars
Sir Hudson sat smiling at Napoleon's eaten and
uprooted, flattened garden.
One day as he watched, Napoleon himself
rounded the corner, moving slowly, contemplating the sea.
Dressed in gardener's tunic, head towel-draped
against the heat of the South Atlantic sun,
Napoleon bumped along, crouched on the back of
Jonathan, eyes straining past the breakers, as if
to spot Nelson's flagship.
Lowe watched, somewhat dismayed
as Napoleon surveyed
the sea from his rolling helm,
squinting into the noon sun for the
mirage of his emancipation.
But Napoleon died in 1821, his power drained,
unable to adapt to turtle life:
powerless to attain contentment
in slow uncoverings, green vegetation
and long waiting.
Wild goats pulled up the grass of the Galapagos,
and the big land turtles suffered starvation, their
ancient ranks further thinned by sailors
who found them excellent for soup and shell.
But fine grass grew on the grave of Napoleon, and
on the grave of Jonathan's mate, who died soon after
of some turtle disease.
A turtle grieves long,
but Saint Helena offers
food and good weather,
and Jonathan remains there today, lifting his old head
among the flies, "Bonaparte," still barely legible,
carved low near the rim of his giant shell.
Jonathan opens a red-rimmed, baleful eye
to the morning,
an eye that gazed upon Napoleon,
the eye of a turtle of destiny, who thought
no more of the little man long ago riding
than he thinks of today's flies.
But Jonathan still
considers the radishes, as they
arrive each day at sunset,
compliments of the British government,
a longtime legacy of Sir Hudson Lowe,
and Jonathan is often content.
In 1840 Napoleon's remains
were shipped to Paris; In the compound in Saint Helena
little of Napoleon but his death mask now remains.
Not even a tree grows there still, that gave Napoleon shade.
But Jonathan moves slowly on
across the volcanic surface,
through what once was a garden, resolute,
his three-chambered heart slowly beating,
eye upon a nearby clump of grass, as green
and new as once upon Galapagos.
...
__say goodbye__
It's like Frank said when
he worked in the pound,
killed all those dogs
in the evacuator, sucked the life
out of them in the oxygen
deprivation chamber:
he took a lot of them home,
the cute ones, the ones he
couldn't bear to kill -
the ones he wanted to save,
and they ran out in the
traffic,
broke their chains and disappeared;
one got killed in a fight,
another ate rat poison.
One way or another they died,
every last damned
one of them.
One day someone came in with
5 perfect poodle puppies
and Frank was told
to kill 4 and save one. The choice of
who lived and who died was left
up to Frank,
so he took the runt of the litter,
the one who seemed he could
adapt
and he killed the 4 best ones,
reduced their air pressure
to that at 30,000 feet,
where they puked their hearts out
like all the others he
"put to sleep,"
and took the little one and put him
up front in a tiny cage,
where he would appear
pathetic to the general public,
some of whom selected him and
took him home that very day,
but who returned the next week
for another puppy, saying
the one they got
had "just died. He was fine and then
he died. The kids are all
broken up" they said.
And they wanted to know if there was
a money-back
guarantee.
You can't save anybody, Frank decided,
the system takes over
and that's that.
After a while Frank stopped
taking any of them home.
Frank modified
his objectives, but you can't say
he ever really gave up on them.
Like Frank said,
"I don't want to save them, not really,
I just want to rub their
fucking ears."
And he rubbed their ears, the furry discards,
the smart ones, the dumb ones,
the old and the young,
the rejects, the crippled and lame, the ones
with bad markings, the wrong coloration,
With problems beyond
their understanding. And each time before
he put them in the chamber, he looked
into their eyes.
And if there was no salvation, if there was
no redemption, at least there was
someone to say goodbye.
...
__Backstage Here at the Cartoon__
We want you to feel comfortable backstage here at the cartoon. Backstage
tours are a fairly new service with us, but me and Lydia want to expand
the business some, now that little Daryl is big enough to help out.
Daryl does some of the inking, and cuts out screens for the backgrounds,
and has real good people skills. Say hello, Daryl. I'm Marvin McNeilley,
owner and operator of Dinky Dog Adventures. My wife Lydia will be out
soon. Lydia will be serving drinks and snack treats later.
We all hope you enjoyed Dinky Dog's adventures today, and hope you'll
look in on us again tomorrow, to see what happens when Dinky catches up
with Nasty the Cat. Dinky was right after him today, but there's only so
much you can get done in four panels. We'd like you to think of the
cartoon as a sort of mom and pop operation, Lydia and me... make that
mom and pop, and son. We like to think of you, our readers, as our
customers. As most of you probably know, we bought the cartoon from the
Happy estate after old Walt died. We hope we've carried on in the spirit
Walt Happy began, from his first Happy Strips way back in the 30s, and
that we've kept Dinky new and fresh and alive.
Dinky will be out to meet you all in a few minutes. Until then, we have
a stack of cartoon bowling balls, here in the corner, that you can roll
at Nasty the Cat when he comes out from behind that curtain in back, and
runs across the 18th hole of our fine new miniature golf course. Three
complimentary bowling balls are included in your price of admission,
and...yes, here comes Nasty now!
Daryl will help you, and do take the bowling balls from the top...Lydia
and I'll be back in a moment. Have fun, folks!
Christ, Lydia...where's that drink. I been talkin to these morons for
half an hour, and now you finally show up. Go out there and do the next
part. I hate those fuckin white rats, all over the damned stage. I can
smell their shit in my sleep.
This ain't like it used to be, when we did just the cartoon. This
backstage bullshit is for the birds. If that damned agent of mine could
syndicate a few more strips, we wouldn't be doin this crap. Old Walt
would never have done this crap.
This Dinky is gettin old, too. The strip's been through dozens of Dinkys
since it started, and not all of them died of old age. This Dinky drinks
too damned much. I should drink so much as Dinky Dog.
This Dinky's lasted a good long time, though. Still, for me, they'll
never be a Dinky Dog like my first one. He was a star from day one.
I worry about him, Lydia. The little Dinky couldn't take over yet, he
ain't big enough, but one of these times, I think Nasty the Cat is gonna
pull out that great big mallet when old Dinky is lookin the other way,
and WHAM and that will be all.
It happened to Larry the Lobster just that way, you know, and they been
out of business maybe ten years now. That anchor fell on him in panel 2,
and the last two panels he just laid there, squashed, and the next day
the new lobster they ran in there just didn't look the part, or
something, and everyone knew it wasn't the real Larry, and they dropped
him like a hot potato, or a steamed lobster, whatever.
Don't know what happened to old Larry Jarvis, used to do Larry the
Lobster. He was around the Animation Bar a lot for a while...then I
never seen him since.
Okay, damn it, I'll go back out there for a while. Where's that fuckin
Dinky?
That Dinky Dog's one funny dude, hey folks? Let's give him a big hand.
Boy he sure almost got that cat that time. You better watch it, Nasty!
Lydia tells me she's a little bit under the weather today, so Daryl here
will help you folks with the punch. We have free popcorn and peanuts for
the circus segment coming up, and hot dogs, cotton candy, caramel apples
and souvenirs are available inside, under the Big Top. Take it away,
Daryl!
Shit, I dunno. After all, it is cartooning, and cartooning is all I ever
wanted to do. I remember my dad used green chalkboard paint to paint the
walls around my bed when I was a kid, I wouldn't stop drawing on the
walls. And then later he brought his friends around to look at the
walls, when I got to be 10 or 11, and I pretended to sleep while they
laughed at my work, but it made me smile like crazy, cause all I ever
wanted was to make people laugh.
It's cartooning, at least, but sometimes I wish I could do Sluts of
Titan again, just for a couple of college papers, or something. I mean,
there was no money in it, and I worked my butt off, but it was mine.
Then again, I guess this is mine.
I know you don't feel up to it, Lydia. I never feel up to it anymore. I
used to think I'd never get any serious work done with the customers
around. But, if you got no customers, you got no work, you know? I mean,
it's like that tree falls in the forest crap, you know, and if there's
no one there to hear it, then who the hell gives a shit?
So I got Dinky, and I do Dinky good. You know I do. Hell you seen Up
Your Tree lately? Or how about The Beavertons? Wotta buncha crap. And
Slime...some papers been using Dinky for a lead-in to Slime, but it
ain't helpin. I tell ya, them damned slugs just ain't funny. Things
could be worse, you could be doing captions for Slime.
So customers are a pain sometimes, but they pay the bills, and Dinky
loves em, God bless his stupid cartoon heart. I'll go out for the grand
finale. But lay off the stuff, okay? You gotta do this tomorrow,
Sunday's coming up, and so's the first of the month.
So there you are folks, and I hope you enjoyed your afternoon backstage
here at the cartoon. Watch your step on the way out, and follow Daryl on
up. Dinky and Nasty and Lazy and Pukestick and all the gang thank you.
Hey pals, wave goodbye to the nice people...our customers. See you in
the funny papers!
I know, Dinky, but you got it good...damned good. They love you down at
the Animation Bar, and at Boop's...you still crack them up like
always...and times ain't so bad, you know what I mean? But you got to
learn to live within your means...you're not Babyman or SuperHound or
something. Maybe we ain't runnin on the editorial pages, but we got a
good gig going here. But we all gotta split what comes in, and there's a
limit.
Here, let me draw you a beer. You gotta lay off the hard stuff anyway,
like me, we're both gettin too old for this crap. I mean, what
difference does it make. Beer ain't a bad time. Yeah, go on, but don't
keep little Dinky out too late. Sunday's coming up, you know.
Night, Nasty. See you guys tomorrow.
If booze was ink that dog'd be the size of a K-Mart. I know, Lydia. He
always seems depressed, after. Not like things used to be. But we'll
keep it together. You can't party all night, all your life.
Yeah, Daryl, I appreciate you been workin extra. But you got to do your
chores, same as the rest of us, and you gotta help out, especially when
your mom needs a break. She's been workin hard on a whole new
script...it could be a real breakthrough for Dinky. You got sketches to
ink, and you got school tomorrow. Hell, Daryl, someday this will all be
yours.
...
__Salvation & Bliss__
In the summer of 1960, circumstances forced me, against my will, to
accept Jesus Christ as my lord and savior. At least two of us, Jesus and
I, knew at the time that I did not truly mean it. And we both knew that
sex was the cause of it all.
Somehow repression turns out to be the one agent that can color sex with
the most importance, and in that time and place, in the town of Bliss,
Texas, an all-white Dallas suburb; in the early 60s, in a place which at
that time was proud of the fact that it had no black residents within
its city limits; in a dry county, where no alcohol could be bought at
any time, except perhaps if you'd known the druggist long enough; where
"blue laws" forced grocers to cover aisles containing non-food items
with netting on Sundays, lest the heathens attempt to buy a roll of tape
on the Lord's Day; there and then, to us, boys in our early teens, sex
was everything: though we pretended otherwise, there was nothing else.
Bliss had been a small town, 500 or so residents, when my dad came back
from the war with his buddy Dan, and married the cousin of Dan's wife
Helen. Bliss grew, but slowly. Today, more than two dozen millionaires
live in Bliss, including several members of the Dallas Cowboys. But in
1960, the only millionaires we knew of were H.L. Hunt and John Baresford
Tipton, and one seemed as real as the other.
For all its significance, sex remained an enigma, a mystic secret held
deep in the minds of a generation of Bliss boys: boys who staked out
summertime positions in trees near the homes of certain girls; boys who
squirreled away torn and ratty pages from "nudist" or "art" magazines
stolen from the trash behind the barber shop; Bliss boys who would never
admit they had taken a stray cat up into the loft above the garage to
learn, alone, the painful lesson that there was, indeed, no way even to
begin to fuck such an animal.
The 1960 adolescents of Bliss had so little real knowledge of sex that
sex held for us entirely too much meaning. Since all sexual meanings and
truths were undefined, sex gleamed so brightly in the light of its own
aura few details of it could be made out. Looking at sex, up to the age
of 15 or so, older for some, was like looking directly at God, or an
eclipse, or that explosion of the atom bomb we all knew was soon to
come. We knew we needed some sort of special glasses for "safe viewing"
of such events, but in spite of our lack of the proper equipment, the
force of the spectacle made it impossible for us to turn away. We
dreamed of Dallas under a fiery white mushroom, and of our female
classmates, and of other wonders of which we could not speak.
The power of our lust caused it to mutate into a deeply individual
thing, so that we were often unable to discuss it, or even to refer to
it at all, except in terms of its objects. The lengths to which we would
go to feed, yet to deny this lust, remained secret as well.
For example, while once engaged in a bit of birdwatching outside the
home of one Doris Singleton, over on Greenfield Avenue, the main street
running through Bliss, my friend John Fogg broke his arm, having lost
the grip on his limb at a particularly weightless moment. As John told
me later, he leapt to his feet, jumped two fences, ran home, grabbed his
bike, circled in the driveway and, steering with one hand, crashed into
his own garage, breaking the arm again. "The brakes didn't work," he
told his dad, the Reverend Fogg. His explanation for the pair of WW-II
Army surplus field glasses found strung around his neck: "I was coming
home from birdwatching at the lake."
"I forgot I still had them," he told me later. Of course, he never
mentioned what he'd actually been doing, even to me; but to me, he
hadn't needed to.
We searched for the magic glasses through which to view sex safely and
clearly, and passed back and forth rumors that would later be forgotten,
as too impossibly stupid ever to have been seriously held. Some had seen
their female relatives partially naked, but with no basis for
comparison, none were certain of what they had seen. The pictures in the
magazines were still more confusing.
I had such a magazine, stolen from my father's closet, called the
Swedish Sun-Worshipers Journal, in which naked, Scandinavian-looking
women played endless summer games of volleyball, on a softly-focused,
strangely-faded black and white beach. Their breasts were wonderful, an
identifying sexual feature with which we were all familiar, but their
groins held no clue: airbrushed as they were to clean, perfect
blankness, they looked like living Barbie Dolls. They looked good,
nonetheless. I never showed the magazine to anyone.
Billy Turner had seen his mother naked, and was sure he had spotted a
beautiful penis in the growth of hair "down there." Pubic hair was no
mystery to us, but whether or not women had pubic hair . . . remember
the nudists . . . and what, if anything, lurked within it, was a subject
of much dispute. As to what one would do with a woman's "beautiful
penis," none of us knew, but we all wanted to find out.
Still, for all our unfamiliarity with the details of our lust, our lack
of specifics only intensified our need to know, or to find a way to
express our lust to its object, or objects. For some time, my object had
been a 14 year-old girl by the name of Lillian Rose.
Lillian Rose. Coppery red hair. Tiny, but with legs that seemed
unimaginably long and slender.
Breasts were the essence of Lillian Rose. In sixth grade, sudden as
Texas spring hail, breasts appeared on Lillian Rose, seemingly
overnight: so unexpectedly they affected her equilibrium. In response to
a sudden weight that threatened to pull her over on her nose, Lillian
Rose effected that wonderful, shoulders back, erect posture that is
enticing on anyone, but a terrible and inspiring attribute on a tiny
woman with breasts each suddenly the size of her face.
She wore ribbons in her long hair, often. A button nose highlighted her
friendly, round little smiling face. Lillian Rose.
Sex was on all our minds night and day, but somehow, among my friends,
there was tacit agreement that Lillian Rose was above all that. Those
semi-rebels I hung out with spoke of her only obliquely, calling her Big
Rose, and her 13 year-old sister Ruby, at 5 feet a bare 2 inches
shorter, Little Rose. For some reason, no one spoke of the Roses, little
or big, in terms of sex, though sex was a topic rarely missing from any
other conversation, and although the Roses were rarely absent from our
small town circle of happenings, public thoughts of sex intersected with
the Roses only rarely. Somehow, Lillian was one of the guys. Perhaps no
one else looked at her like I did, saw her with my eyes. Perhaps no one
else was paying attention.
Most oddly, Lillian's finest features were somehow never mentioned,
causing them to take on the aspect, in my mind at least, of twinned
sacred totems, the divine unnameables, the blessed unmentionables. There
were dissertations on grapefruits, melons, pancake tits, baseball tits,
D-cups, ice cream scoops, but nothing about Lillian's Roses. I always
felt it was a silence too sacred to break, not for me to say, and kept
my mouth shut as well.
I can't determine exactly what part religion played in the creation of
this strange environment, except that its deep, underlying sense of
repression heightened everyone's sensitivity, at a very sensitive point
in our lives, in those simple times, and that the social aspects of the
church drew us together. Most of us had no choice but to attend church,
and all my closest friends were First Baptists, thrown together as we
were so frequently simply because Bliss First Baptist took up so much of
our time. We were there each Wednesday night, for meetings and services,
often on Saturday, just about every holiday, and twice on Sunday. We all
attended Vacation Bible School together for years.
Each function ended with a "call," a request that one commit ones soul
to Christ. By this time in my life, everyone I knew had done so but me.
Bliss First, a Southern Baptist Church, practiced full immersion
baptism, in a font located center-stage, behind the choir, concealed by
golden draperies, surmounted by a giant, golden cross. So many lights
shone up through and down upon that water during the monthly baptism
rites, a blind cave fish could have seen Jesus. I was no more eager to
enter those waters than to take a toaster with me into the bathtub.
My strange religious deficiency was looked upon as shameful, as a
signature of fear and disbelief, as a deep personal embarrassment. Many
had gone down the aisle more than once. Many went down annually, some
monthly, a few even more often. After the first baptism, further
dunkings were not necessary, except in extreme cases . . . soldiers
coming home from Korea had been an example. Additional commitments,
risings and comings down, were viewed as a blessing, as a tribute to
God. That I could not do this even once, placed me in a category I
inhabited alone.
There was nothing good about this small rebellion, unless one could
argue there was something bad about making the commitment I could not
make, that all others had made; and I could not, or would not argue
this. I had no quarrel with anyone else's commitment, I simply could not
locate one of my own. Pressure was always there to "join the church"
(although my parents made sure I never missed a meeting, I could not
"join" without making my "vow"), but at church functions, this pressure
was rarely overt.
But it was a custom in those days to "witness" to others . . . perhaps
it is still. Used as a verb, one "witnessed" not in the usual sense of
seeing something, but more along the lines of "providing an example to
others of that which one had witnessed." Having experienced a personal
conversion, it was a sort of duty to "witness" to others of the rapture
of this event, or so it was explained.
In practice, one arrived unbidden at the home of a selected sinner,
preferably one of some social acquaintance, who would therefore be
unable to toss one out, and proceeded to harass that person into the
guilty admission of some generalized sin, in hope of the forced
acceptance of baptism and church membership. The alternative to eventual
conversion, it was more or less stated, was current ostracism, future
hellfire and eternal damnation. The choice was meant to be obvious.
This need to threaten and convince others was taken as a solemn
religious duty by a surprisingly large number of church members. Success
at witnessing was termed "saving a soul," and supposedly earned great
quantities of eventual heavenly perquisites, applause in heaven, or
something, for those successful in marketing the praise of the Lord.
As putative Christians, my parents could not refuse entrance to the
groups of church elders that sought me out for the occasional
browbeating. My old man was always cool, knew all the answers to all the
questions, nodded sagely and waited them out. He had been baptized at
Bliss First before his marriage to my mother, and had rarely been back,
though he always managed to make sure I went.
My mother was always flustered at these times, probably feeling she
should have been attending church regularly, but explaining to herself
that she was performing some valuable wifely act by staying home with my
dad. At any rate, she had been a bonafide church member since the age of
5.
The focus always ended up on me, as the oldest of an unbaptized litter,
and I thought I withstood it fairly well. I nodded yes, except when
asked if I was prepared to jump in the tub and get it over with, at
which point I muttered something as to how I was "just not ready," and
prayed with them as they prayed for me, and even thanked them as they
finally left. I never felt inadequacy more deeply than standing in my
own front doorway, watching the witnesses leave, soul clutched tightly
in both hands, heart beating madly, watching the smiles fade, the frowns
appear on the faces of my parents.
Until the last time. My final "visitation" was by the Rose family. Mr.
Rose, a deacon of the church, seemed, like an elementary school teacher,
to use "Mister" for his first name, though I later learned he sold
cotton at the trade mart and was known there as "Darrel." Mrs. Rose was
a large but short woman, seemingly a pair of enormous breasts with a
little smiling head, and dimply smiling legs. The Rose daughters,
Lillian and Ruby, attended, along with their younger brother Bud. Bud
Rose enlisted in the Army some years later, and never came back from
Vietnam . . . it always seemed likely to me that he was driven up some
hazardous hill, chased by his misbegotten name, but there is no way to
know for sure. I looked up his name on the wall, and found it under
1969, after I moved to D.C.
Bud looked at his feet, and Ruby watched me like I was an odd bug
specimen, pinned to a board, but Lillian smiled sadly, actually reached
out and touched my hand. And for just a while, my life changed.
"I think I will, soon." I said, looking into Lillian's green eyes. "I've
been waiting for the spirit to move me, and I can feel it happening." It
surprised me to string all these words together in such painful
circumstances. Moreover, it was the perfect thing to say, as everyone
lightened up considerably, and Lillian smiled at me in a way no woman
had ever smiled at me before. I will never be sure of this, but I think
the idea of her intersection between my pain and my conversion was a bit
of a turn-on for Lillian.
As I had said, the spirit was moving me, as well. I hoped for a long
prayer, and got one, and thought frantically of exposure, pain, and my
grandmother until my erection subsided enough for me to stand. But now I
was all but committed.
If I went through with it, Mr. Rose would take it as another "jewel in
his crown." The idea of Mr. Rose wearing a crown, in his celestial
robes, with his black wingtips, was strangely disheartening. But now
Lillian expected it of me, and certainly I had been moved, by something.
It took little introspection to prove what. Lillian looked back at me,
smiled and waved, strolled down my front walk, tucked her slender legs
into the back of Mr. Rose's severe-looking, gray 1960 Ford 4-door, and I
moved to sit down again, hands in my lap.
Mother said, "I knew you'd come around," as she patted my head. Dad
disappeared behind his paper, ignoring it all but, I think now,
understanding it better than I did. It almost never occurred to him to
explain things to me; it was always like a game with us, where I figured
things out, and he told me if it turned out I was wrong.
But in the code of honor current among Bliss boys, I had a debt to pay.
Lillian had made her requirements of me understood, and though I was not
sure what the payoff might be, one Wednesday evening, at prayer meeting,
with Lillian and the others watching, I stood after the call for
commitment, and walked down the aisle in utter fear for my soul, almost
convinced that I had one, ashamed to look at Lillian Rose or the others,
even to see the smiles, or share the happiness, knowing the calculating
depths of my transgression: knowing I was moved by no commitment I could
dare explain. Even later, as they patted me on the back and shook my
hand, I only met Lillian's eyes.
I had never been able to talk to girls before; at 14, girls scared me
because something about them seemed so important, and because of my
lifelong fear of making mistakes. But I learned I could talk easily to
Lillian, now that I was no longer afraid to try, and over cherry/lime
Dr. Peppers at the Carnap Drug Store soda fountain, the social center of
Bliss, Texas, I learned what it meant to talk to a woman as a friend.
Sadly, though at first Lillian moved me almost to orgasm by her mere
presence, and though she always maintained an energizing effect on me, I
soon came to know that the rivers beneath Lillian Rose ran crosswise to
the direction of my spiritual travel. For sensuality, talking to her was
a bit like talking to John's sister Martha, whom I dated occasionally,
and who was only slightly more interesting to be with than my own little
sister. The few things we had in common, she had only slight knowledge
of or regard for; her main interests consisted of what I considered at
the time "girl stuff," and "church stuff," two areas which I found held
little appeal.
Worse, she seemed to share none of my feelings of arousal, and in fact
to have a strangely dampening effect on me, the more I talked to her. In
short, while I enjoyed basking in her female presence, when we started
to interact, there was no interaction. The spark died on its own. The
thing about Lillian Rose that had seemed to set her apart from other
women turned out to be her lack of sexuality, for me, at least, as I
guess it had been for all of us, all along. It came as no surprise to me
that I was the last to see this. At any rate, never one to take sex
lightly, I was unable from then on to think of sex while thinking of
Lillian Rose, especially if Lillian Rose was there in the room.
Lillian was resolved to attend college. Further, Lillian would date no
one until after college; this was a prerequisite of her father's support
of her college expenses, with which Lillian was in full agreement. After
college! Impossible. I knew my dick would explode long before, and the
sexual appeal of Lillian, never more than a vague idea, began to fade.
Lillian Rose ceased to appear in my fantasies, although gradually she
became one of my better friends. We corresponded long after, and I came
to rely upon the simple common sense that always seemed to underlie her
advice; it seemed that she genuinely did care for me, whatever her
reason. And we did share one further experience I have not forgotten.
As to sex, a couple years later, on the occasion of my 16th birthday, I
began driving my own 1950 Studebaker, purchased for $50, to be used as
transportation to and from my job in a grocery store, and which turned
out to provide transportation of a different sort, as well. Therein, I
nailed two different flute players at the drive in, on separate
occasions of course, and was a year later myself nailed one frantic
Wednesday after evening service by the long-underestimated Little Rose
herself, Ruby, near the beginning of her heated slide into total, jaded
wanton abandon, which led her to eventual SMU sorority membership, and
selection as a Cotton Bowl Princess in the Christmas Festival Parade, a
parade in which I rode as Santa Claus; another story, indeed.
I came easily to the understanding that there could never be any
assignation with Lillian Rose, but it was not rational judgment, more a
kind of adolescent honor, or response to a challenge, that drove me to
commit what I thought then was my greatest sin: the making of a vow I
could not intend.
The object of my faked conversion was unattainable. But I remained
committed nonetheless to go through with the ceremonial sin-cleansing
that is baptism. To renounce my conversion would have been socially
fatal; this was never an option.
To put it off . . . plead illness, for instance . . . would have been to
risk further derision. I was, after all, the oldest, by several years,
of my crowd to "accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior." That I was not sure
what these words meant made no difference. Likewise, the fact that I was
cleansing entirely the wrong sins had not escaped me.
But as my baptism approached, I actually grew ill . . . I sickened, as
they used to say. Had anyone else known the truth of my "conversion,"
they might have pointed out to me that God was already punishing me for
my inept horny hypocrisy, but though I truly believed the water might
boil, I was learning for the first time what would be a vital lesson for
me, that in this as in so many things, I was doing it to myself.
Worse yet, I was to be baptized by the Reverend Jonas Fogg. His crazy
son John, my best friend, and I had been in weekly trouble together
since the first grade. For infractions ranging from lobbing ripe
persimmons into the parking lot during prayer meeting; through skipping
church uncountable times; to spending our tithe allowances at the
convenience store, and eating, drinking and farting in the back row; to
going to other churches on Sunday, and watching priests, Presbyterians
and snake handlers, then claiming with vehement truthfulness, "I was so
in church!"; and later into seriously drinking and otherwise carousing
in a manner not befitting any Baptist, John and I nipped at far too many
flavors of forbidden fruit for the Reverend's taste. And if the ideas
for these research projects of ours were more often John's to start
with, it was due to his knack for visualizing the grand malfunction,
rather than any "bad influence" one way or another, that led to our
frequent mutual penances.
I came to the garden alone, dangling in the tournefortia outside the
door to the nave, awaiting my fate. Reverend Fogg arrived, stern,
white-shirted and belted. He stood with a faint smile, adjusting his
glasses, seeing through me, as I had known he would. Reverend Fogg
always knew what I was thinking, what sort of mischief I was planning,
even when I was thinking and planning nothing at all.
Inside Bliss First, he stared only at me as he spoke, and I could not
concentrate on his words, certain he could actually see the tits in my
mind. I remember trying to erase them, to control my thoughts, but even
though I knew tits were no longer really at issue they remained, a
wholly-imagined vision stuck in my head, blasphemous in their timing, in
their persistence, and in the close detail of their rendering. I stood
with two other supplicants, each of them about 9. "Let us pray."
My first sexual experience was, for many years, the most frightening
thing in my life: after all, I was quite young, it was dark, and I was
alone. But the prospect of my baptism quickly pushed all other fears
into the shadows, and even looking back on it, I remember the truth of
"fear and trembling" as only a church can provide. Of course, as the joy
of sex comes to gives way to its anticipation in the hierarchy of
pleasures, it was those moments just before my baptism that I remember
as most frightening of all. I was blasted by fear of the unknown, of
divine retribution, even simple fear of drowning, for after one went
under, was it not ones belief that pulled one up again? Did not the very
act of baptism symbolize the trust of the baptized in the Lord, who
would save the sinner from inhaling the waters?
Worse still, I feared some deeper retribution for the fact that I knew
at heart that I did not believe even in the punishing God himself. It
had occurred to me then, on dark, sleepless nights, that the punishment
for that must be terrible indeed.
As the organ ceased, the church was silent, but for the occasional
cough, and the pounding in my ears as I waded carefully wade across the
pool of blinding light. The Reverend Fogg placed his left hand on my
neck as I entered the baptismal font, and with his right hand reached
behind me onto a small shelf and nabbed a white handkerchief. He held
the neatly folded handkerchief in his hand, and spoke to the
congregation . . . a few stock phrases concerning my sins, their death
and my rebirth . . . just as he had, with minor variations, concerning
the two children baptized before me. My stare fixed upon the
handkerchief, the initial "F" stitched neatly in the corner, and words
ran through my mind like a hawk-chased rabbit: "Failure." "Fantasy."
"First." "Fear."
"Fucked."
In my mind's eye, I imagined Reverend Fogg standing there, dressed as
always except without his suit coat, smiling at the congregation,
looking down into the bubbling water. "He should be up any time. This
rarely happens . . ." Spreading the water with his hands, as if to part
it, then smiling up again. "Blessed be the Lord, in his infinite wisdom
. . ."
The act itself was immensely frightening, then in its execution, oddly
perfunctory. Grabbing my nose with his handkerchief-shielded hand, the
Reverend Fogg put out a foot, tripped me neatly at the back of my knees,
and dragged me under before I could close my eyes. Under so quickly, so
briefly, I found myself pulled up again with absolute strength and calm
assurance, with pure certainty of control. As much as part of him might
have wanted to drown me, the Reverend Fogg was a professional . . .
unable to do it any other way. Reverend Fogg pointed the way to me, led
me and pointed upward, out of the baptismal, and as I climbed the
stairs, the choir burst into song and the curtains closed, he slapped
the wet handkerchief into my hand, a damp and strangely appropriate
souvenir.
Under his black Baptist church pants, Reverend Fogg wore pinstriped
boxer shorts, and black socks with garters into the baptismal. I watched
him dress afterward, relief sponging over me, out of the corner of my
eye as I dried off and dressed in the small room behind the proscenium.
I had never seen a man in garters before, and never did again except in
antique skin flicks, a lifetime later. I was certain it was cold, for
summer, even after I dressed. I felt myself covered in goose pimples.
But as Lillian came close to me my skin smoothed.
Her smile flashed genuine; I hold it, its memory, even now, frozen in
time. It contained a look of compassion the like of which I have not
seen since. Whether or not she had known the actual reason, Lillian knew
she was a part of what had happened, and was genuinely proud of me for
what it seemed to her that I had done.
Lillian Rose leaned forward. Her breasts heaved, once, straining against
the white broadcloth of her Peter Pan-collared Christian blouse, the
heat from them rising to color my cheeks, rising to my temples, pressing
in like Christ's own blessed hands, my breath catching with hers, and in
that promised blissful moment, as she kissed my right cheek, looked in
my eyes, then kissed the left, in the dark sliver of the blink of an
eye: salvation, I began to heal.
...
peanuts
peanuts
to trunk
to ocean liner
to iceberg
to north pole
to santa claus
to not what you wanted
to searching the bars
to boilermakers
to talking politics
to dentist
to coffee dribbling down the chin
to lovely woman laughing
to engaging discussion of poetry
to dinner
to breakfast
to more dinners and more breakfasts
to a tiny package with dinner
to first class tickets
to las vegas
to left at the altar
to losing your shirt at roulette
to the long flight home in tourist
to the free coke
to peanuts
mcn
july 2000:
The night after Jimi died
I spent a 360-hour evening
on blue speckled bombers
crouched in the corner
of the living room
of some forgotten
acquaintance
listening to
Electric Ladyland
playing over and over
arm off the turntable
watching the ceiling run
down the walls
following the trails
of my fingers
rolled my hand
up into a ball
hid it in my pocket
so I wouldn't have to
look at it
tried to visualize
a guitar burning
on stage amplifiers like
rockets exploding something
dramatic but
ended up watching tiny
horses and wagons race
one another around
a cowboy lampshade
mcn
june 2000:
Crazy Dave
"The ward is against me,"
jokes Crazy Dave, unable to change
the channel on the
Lawrence Welk ward tv.
"The ward is not against you"
answers the serious psychologist.
Dave had been in the ward
before, plenty of times,
always on the borderline.
Drugs brought him close to the
edge. Love pushed him
over.
Crazy Dave got back inside
trying to off himself with a
single-edge razor blade -
woke up on a mattress
soaked with blood,
clothing clotted, stinking,
Morrison still singing "The End"
over and over on the turntable.
Crazy Dave gave up his life,
threw out his art,
and part of his life
came back, unwanted
but his art
didn't.
She would never hear him,
never did hear him, and they
could never understand,
never understand things
they would not see, and with
his art gone, Crazy Dave
couldn't see
those things himself.
The art bled out of Crazy Dave,
and what was left
of his long hair turned gray,
and 30 years later now
he plays guitar
in the one-man ward band,
takes requests, and knows
the ward is not
against him.
mcn
may 2000:
My finest hour
In college in the 70s
I managed a skinflick -
we booked German softcore
through a distributor in Denver.
It was cheap but came with
fantastic one-sheets
half the people driving by
would slow down
horns would honk
outside the Cinema 18,
cops would come
make us duct tape up
the good parts
then come inside
stay for the feature.
My favorite was
The Abducted Bride
the star was a dwarf
who smuggled heroin
inside teddybears -
used it to maintain his
harem of teenage concubines -
ran around yelling
my teddybears!
my teddybears!
The owner, Barry Goldberg
wasn't sure you could put
"abducted" in the newspaper
what with censorship and all
so he changed the title to
"The Stolen Bride"
without telling us.
At least he knew what
abducted meant, though
I guess he thought it meant
more than it did.
First time up on the screen,
Artie the projectionist
started yelling for me to come see...
I got up there just before
the title scrolled off the screen
"The Sinful Dwarf."
We lit one up
blew the smoke out through the
lamphouse ventilator
and watched the thing -
it was hilarious.
Suzie at the snack bar
pounded and pounded
on the door to the booth -
"lots of them want
their money back..."
Me and Artie shouted down
"No refunds!"
"No refunds!"
and lit up
another one.
mcn
april 2000:
Poemula
that's me over your rooftops
that's me collecting bile
above manhattan
above chicago
above dc
that's me on your bedpost
you only thought you dreamed it
me with my kettle
red black and steaming
with bigtime innercity heat
that's me pouring it into
your rich jealous poemburning
pompous asshole husband's
shell-like ear
mcn
february 2000:
New Mexico, 74 degrees, January 28th
I broke a beer bottle
she said
I think I cleaned
most of it up
you broke a beer bottle?
over one of the neighbors'
heads
or what?
no on the dumpster
she says
I threw it but
I missed
you missed the neighbor's
head? I ask
and she gives me
that look again.
you threw a bottle
at the dumpster
and it broke
and you cleaned it up?
of course
she said --
I was angry about
the beer bottles.
she goes around picking
up the beer bottles
and cans the neighbors
leave everywhere.
the neighbors
are lowlife dipshits
I guess she's not used
to neighbors like that.
but this is poets' housing
not that the neighbors
are poets but they
are funded like poets
she picks up rocks
out back
and throws them in
the dumpster
I tell her
hey they're just rocks
you can throw them
anywhere
you don't have to take
them out to the dumpster
throw them at
that damn chihuahua
and she gives
me that look again
but I'm smiling
like I didn't mean it
one bunch of neighbors
gave us a sofa
when they moved out
actually lainie said
you taking that to
the dumpster?
thinking it looked
pretty much ok
and I come into the
bedroom from watching
tv and she screams
at me
pointing at my pants
which have a
big fat roach
running up them
the sofa hit the
dumpster very soon
after that but I think
some of the roaches
must have escaped
and she is not happy
about this at all
but the cats love them
fresh meat --
now the little cat
Ninna is in heat
suddenly
assaulting us in the night
with horrible ghostly
moaning sounds
and weird bed dances
bumping her butt
up against us
like we might have
a boy cat hidden
in a pillowcase
and just won't share
now the chihuahua starts
barking again
the chihuahua who
slips through the fence
to shit in
our backyard
the chihuahua who
yips like he's been
stepped on
morningnoon&night
the chihuahua
who comes running
full speed through
his closed back door
in which his owners
have thoughtfully knocked
a big ugly hole
to accommodate him
and I think yeah
I gotta find a way
to make more money
to apply to other housing
cause summer is coming
the neighbors all will throw
open their doors, gifting
our 90 degree summer evenings
with a dozen versions
of the macarena
and boombox mariachi music
and beer bottles will fly
mcn
january 2000:
when dogs fly
the first time
I tasted the stuff
I was at a girlfriend's house
I was 15
her parents weren't home
they had lots
of money
we lived in a dry county
north of dallas
but her dad worked in big d
and brought home what
ever he wanted to
they had a full bar
off the kitchen
we made martinis
or she did I watched
she made them for her dad
they tasted weird at first
but they got better
she had two afghans
big damn longhaired
long-eared dogs
they use them to hunt
lions in africa she said
they were a gift from
her uncle who was
lloyd bridges' cousin
I think that was it
they had a 6 ft. fence
and those dogs could fly
right over the damn thing
anytime they wanted to
we took a pitcher of martinis
shaken over ice and strained
out to the pool
and went swimming
and she'd call the dogs
and they'd come running
take off on one side of the pool
and jump all the way across
to the other
sometimes they wouldn't make it
and we'd laugh at them
as they scrambled out
and they'd tear back to the end
of the yard and take
another run at it
floating on our backs
looking up at dogs
flying over us
big blond dogs with ears
like wings
drinking martinis
and laughing at the moon
I remember thinking
this drinking is
pretty good
pretty damn
good
mcn
december 1999:
I dream I am a blimp pilot
I pilot my blimp
my big black
blimp down
the river corridor
down the shipping lanes
where weather is
predictable
and navigation
is a breeze
it is night and I pass
blimp hotels and bars
clifftop moorings and
treetop apartments
with dim red
porchlights
and I pull into
the Judy Bar
which offers free parking
for blimp jockeys
and my heels spark
on the metal gratings
as I pass through those
swinging doors
everyone working in Judy's
looks about the same
female and male
waitrons dressed alike
it's a clone bar
and one with copper
hair and that
intractable headache manner
takes my order
white spider with a twist
and as she turns
to go a motion
in black denim
I think of you
walking away from me
and then it all
starts to make
sense
mcn
november 1999:
my kingdom for a long slow chance
but I have no horses no men
the battlements are crumbling
humpty is dumped and
nobody is putting anything
back together again
the peasants are ragged
and the smoke from the fires
outside the moat blows in
day and night and day
and coats everything yellow
like cigarette smoke on a low
bedroom ceiling or the fingers
of an old man rolling one at
a bus stop saying I can roll
these now with one hand
on horseback in a windstorm
if I had a horse but before
he can light it the bus comes
mcn
october 1999:
I think it was the meth
that came between us
I think this was why
she shaved her head that time
and why another later day
I came home to an empty house
why I became committed after
that to sleeping with as many
people as possible
about whom I cared
not at all and why
my sinuses became
battlegrounds my arms
began to cramp when reaching
for things I did not want
and how my heart slowed down
when I gave this up at last
as there are never enough lines
never a point that does not
jab its way in never
roses when roses are needed
though sitting in a bar alone
at 2 am someone always
comes in and shoves some
under your nose
though I do know when this
happens the solution is
to buy one
put it in your beer bottle
carry it home
after last call
its head down hanging
there from an
unnoticed thorn
mcn
__editing lessons__
get a few pounds of
fresh shrimp, as big
as you can find,
the kind with the head
still on, and make a boil:
a commercial mix will do,
and drop in small potatoes,
carrots, celery ribs, fresh
green beans and corn,
whatever’s in the garden.
the shrimp go in last
and only need to cook
until they curl up.
pour out the boil,
put everything on
a giant platter
and sit around with
plates and beers.
when a shrimp is cool
enough to touch,
twist the head off,
hold the head above
your mouth,
squeeze
and suck out
the brain juices.
many like this
part best. when
done with a head
give it to a cat.
if you do not have a cat
but do this outdoors,
a cat will come.
now eat everything in sight.
pull off shrimp legs
and throw them in the grass,
and use a good
cocktail sauce, it’s best
to make your own.
start with tomato sauce,
or fresh tomatoes that
have gone too ripe:
add lemon juice, tabasco,
vinegar and a little
worcestershire,
and lots of horseradish.
if you don’t have
horseradish,
go back to the
beginning, and don’t
start.
these are directions
for editors. if you are
a writer, boil water:
directions for macaroni
and cheese are on the
box.
...
__Lyn Lifshin sends__
me pounds of poetry
envelopes stuffed
to bursting
taped to hold it
all inside
for once
a long brown and red
Lifshin hair stuck
under the label
she used to change
the address on
one of them
note scrawled on
the envelope back
“it looks delicious”
stamps stuck on
in all directions
as if she’d been
in so much hurry
to get on from
there to the
next thing
...
__Shipping & Receiving__
I’ve been writing this stuff
and sending it out
for 30 years now,
since I was a teenager.
I have a few of the old ones
I keep around, and oh, god.
But some are still okay,
still manage to get themselves
published in
the little journals,
which seems to be the point,
to appear in the small press,
to keep your name in the
public eye, to keep going
out there with it,
out there over and over again.
And some asshole in
Texas returns a full envelope
with a note, “there’s no
story here,” and a small town
Kansas twit marks up the poems,
like some mean and stupid teacher,
crossing out lines and
writing in pained, awful ones
he thinks are new.
One woman in Michigan
accepted my poems,
then printed them with terrible
changes, her own idiot additions,
as though the poems didn’t
speak clearly enough, needed
a kick in the butt, required
the carefully unsaid stuck
back in, lame yet surprising,
like that last turd in the
morning toilet, that you were
sure had gone down, floating,
circling slowly.
I keep sending it out,
not because I expect
some beautiful grandaughter
of Hemingway or Faulkner to
show up at my door one morning,
wake me to the news of
a major new find,
an important literary prize,
champagne and fresh-squeezed
orange juice, then money and
parties and talk shows.
Nobody cares about poetry.
I keep sending it out
because it is the poetry
itself that wakes me
in the morning, my head
stuffed with it, cramping
to get out, and I
type it up, and send it
off to the freaks and the angels,
the idiots and the imposters and
the friends who publish
“the best we can find,”
because I can’t get truly
rid of it any other way.
Because sending it out
is my only means to flush it
away, to make it go down,
to send it rolling or crawling
or sailing off to find the place
it was meant to go,
to stop it from spinning,
interminably circling,
and let me go on
with the morning, make toast,
brew a cup and
drink it down.
...
__being the editor__
don’t kid yourself
it’s no fun
being the editor
it’s no fun seeing
things this close up
through so many different
unfocused and astigmatic
other eyes
the poem with rape screaming
drunken puking and killing
all on half a page like
television on paper
the poem about nothing
about me me me
tossed word salad
“new writing”
concrete poetry
its feet in a washtub full
visual poetry
no better seen than heard
shaped poetry
like beating your swords
into cowpies
what it is
is pure indulgence
the only purity in
the eternal me
in the effect upon
the eternal me
in internalization of the
existential me
in reflection of
the internal me
mirror of
shit
it’s painful
what you go through for the few
good ones
it’s a microcosm
of life
the shit sandwich
the fucking you get for
the fucking you take
all over again
but as the editor
you do get
kissed first
the poet writes
“I do know many of your
better-known authors,
personally,
and some of
the others,
as well”
but somehow the talent
failed to rub off
“I have published in
The New Yorker
and The Paris Review
and The New York Quarterly
and The Tablets of God”
but you must not
have sent them
this pile of
shit
“I have studied under
the channeled ghost of Dylan Thomas
graduated from the
Academy of Poetic Narcissism
kissed the feet of
Charles Bukowski
and given workshops
on Olympus
to the muses”
and this
constipated
wordlabor
is all
I have
to show
for it
I am worthy
I am worthy
I am worthy
you are worthy
but your poetry
this poetry
this mailing
this submission
spews
many honestly try
but simply cannot
or send their best
and it just doesn’t fit
so little will fit
and it’s so difficult
to let these know
that while this connection
will not be made
someone hears
their voice
that they are at least
heard
that they are in
the minority and
that they should read and try
again read and
try again
it is not that I am waiting
for the perfect fusion
it is not that I am waiting
for a ladder leading upward
it is not that I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
it is not that I am waiting
for a new Ray Carver
I am only even waiting
because the waiting is forced upon me
as I wade through all this
self indulgence
all this pretension
all this supercilious
nonsense
for the page
that speaks in a voice
all its own
and goes on to say
something
being the editor
sucks mostly
but I have to be the editor
to get this done
then it has to be
impossible to impress me
I cannot publish bios
with poems to remember them by
it is the writing
only the writing that matters
yet so much of the writing
simply does not
matter
and so much of what is done
is done to
impress me
then the mail arrives
again and among the
fat franked official
university envelopes
with 3-color crests
among the embossed linen A-6 mailers
that grant unattainable titles like
poet
in among the demands that
“this poem may only be printed
beneath this picture,
this picture may only be reproduced
above this poem”
among the tries that are not
honest tries the attempts that are not
best attempts
and the patently ingratiating
undisguised buttkissing
in one envelope
from some place like
Austin, Springfield or Monroe
rings a bell
the tone of
brilliant silence
flashes a light
that draws the moth of
fascination
but is not blinding
that ignites the
night and makes
my day
then is forced itself
into waiting
to extend its reach to make
the entire week
as nothing else comes
and more of the other
piles up ever higher
and we learn why
after a time
so often no one
not even the deserving
gets a real reply
somebody always
has to go and
spoil it for
the rest of us
meanwhile
with patience
enough will come
to fill an issue
that hangs together
and then begins the harder part
than finding writers
the finding of
readers
and while you may think otherwise
while it may seem that
it must be otherwise
it is no fun
being the editor
but if you can’t write
and you love writing
you have to do
something
...
______________________________________________________________