FLOWER
MOUNTAIN
The
date on the FAX display said 4/13/02. I waited.
The
display showed a date 14 years in the past: a wedding
of
total wrong and absurdity. The mom in redbud
cotton
blouse, with her son, spoke Spanish in a knot
of
rapidity as I pressed the buttons. Time. It is all Maya,
illusion.
They sent an image of a visa to a distant cave
beneath
New Mexico. The cave was lit by fluorescents. The cave
warbled
with the sound of the incoming FAX. Guards waited
for
it, and then stuffed it in a TOP SECRET envelope. It's all Maya.
For
example, once I was on a train out of Boston South, going to a
wedding
in
Western Massachusetts. This was 14 years ago. A knot
was
in my stomach because the bride was an old friend. Redbuds
were
starting to blossom. At the reception I drank a Bud
and
ate a mound of fried chicken. I lived in a cave
of
loneliness. People moved away from me to form a knot
of
friends several chairs down. I could not wait
for
the day to end. The bride was in love with her wedding.
I
don't even know why I was invited. A woman named Maya
read
a poem about the couple. It was the month of May.
That
night I dreamed I met a Sasquatch named Yellow Bud
Foot.
He was waiting on a path near a wedding
at
Plymouth Rock. I threw cold baked potatoes at the cave
of
his mouth. He sang a poem of gratitude, “Wait.
Remember
old Yellow Foot when you travel this knot
again.”
The place where I walked in the dream was a knotted
path
on Flower Mountain. My life, likewise, may
be
a fascinatingly strange movie. I wait
and
watch the scenes unfold, unravel, bud
and
progress. I'm helpless in my role, a theatre-cave
of
perception with a light beaming a hidden wedding
from
a clattering projection booth behind me, the wedding
of
my thoughts and actions: flowers opening, knots
of
zinnias nodding in the rain. The astronauts' cave
is
actually space itself. The test pilot may
break
the time barrier. The sky is gray. Everything buds
in
a test of flame. Special wings are deployed. We wait.
BACK TO SLEEP
Scottish woman has red hair, milky skin, chocolate
fingernails. She plays companion to Dr. Who. She's a chip
off the old supermodel. My knee hurts.
I feel like a very old man. I've no endowment.
It's costly to live. I eat beans. Jesus is coming
but I don't know if I'll be around to see him.
He's going to lead an alien invasion soon.
See me? I'm scared. It's a character flaw. Chocolate
insulin. I watch the same show on DVD.
I crawl into bed and hope I sleep, an ice chip
on my lips. Sometimes the cat curls up, an endowment
of warmth, around my ankles.
He sits like a Buddha, a cookie,
if you will, of transcendence. I think I'll dream soon:
A pretty young woman holds my arm; we walk endowed
with intimate knowledge of each other, chocolate
in a heart-shaped box. I don't know her name. I chip
away at a stone with a small metal pick. It's coming
back to me: a memorial, a tombstone, night coming
too quickly; the woman no longer walks with me,
moon gray as chalk above the chipped
typography of gravel drive, and soon
enough I'm awake, a bit shaken, the chocolate
fur of the Siamese on my feet, the endowment
of molecules circulating in a tree of
nerves and veins and other confused viscera. Chocolate
to feed hypoglycemia, the sun-bright cookie
of light I see in the darkness. And soon
I calm myself and sleep again. The chip,
chip, chip of the sleeping clock. The chip
chip, chip of a shrew in the wall. My endowment
awakes inside of me and keeps its eyes open. Soon
it will change into a different day. It's coming.
I'll read the news, eat a granola nut cookie
for breakfast, drive to work in a shiny beetle.
BLACK
Fairfield High Trojans Marching Band orbits
my house, step dances on the streets, and plays
“Paint It Black” by The
Rolling Stones.
It's not a reference to the peeling paint
on my house, or is it? It feels more like a commentary
of the first eights weeks of Trump. I butter
my toast and get the coffee going; I sear a couple
of eggs with a crust of Parmesan. I peel
clementines and think of that Sci-Fi
movie “A Crack in the World” where life's
finale gets the dubious promise of a reboot
from a sexy woman, a beefy man, and one
startled chipmunk rummaging through
the smoldering ashes. I feel allergic
to everything, yet I promise myself I'll go
to the library and decatalog books published
in the early years of The Great Society.
How to Praise Creative Children
and other titles. Did Donald Trump
ever play Twister in kindergarten?
Did he even go to kindergarten? Or did he just stare
at a pile of money and contemplate
its personhood? I've been told to just think
and make things real. That's one possibility.
A young Hindu asked my advice about creating
a persona whose existence depended
on the perception of patterns. He told me
to keep a lid on it. I saw a series of red doors
receding in a tunnel of infinity mirrors which,
when you and I both contemplated it, were all black.
SPARKY
Sparky, the former security guard, is checking
his email. Certain people set him on edge.
It is March 27th. This is not Disneyland.
Hayley Mills adored Walt Disney.
Walt would make Hayley root beer floats
in his private movie theatre. Hayley was money.
Pollyanna helped cement the franchise.
Sparky has other problems, though,
like how to eat, and the glad game
just does not cut it when your belly
is screaming. These are tough times
and I don't want to see anything worse.
Many people come here for the free internet.
Libraries are the nation's living rooms,
offices, refuges. There is a shelf
that screams NEW! NEW BOOKS!
I watch the lights burn. I hear two sticks
being rubbed together. Someone is leaving,
ear buds plugging the sounds of surface reality.
Sparky watches the computer screen
as if it were a roulette wheel, a jackpot machine.
There are no company picnics,
no softball games, no wedding receptions
to crash, no funerals. Snake eyes.
I have twenty minutes before I close
the place up. Bartenders would say,
“You don't have to go
home, but you can't stay here.”
They are tossing out boxes of expired
Jell-O behind the Valu food mart. It's been
drizzling all afternoon.
The street looks like the skin of a python.
McChild McMartin
The monk of the brown canvas hippie bag
chased a Pokemon with his smart phone
all the way through the library and onto 4th.
It was spring break. People were constructing
a police-blue arc de triomphe
near the east-west highway where an anarchist
had freed all the inmates
of the pet shop: cockatiels, tuxedo kittens, and hedgehogs.
The animals wandered innocently on the lawn
of the retired high school art teacher's
replica of Lincoln's Springfield home,
and a rogue croquet ball caromed off
the hubcap of a sea-mist green VW Beetle.
Sirens erupted all over town. It was Taco Tuesday.
Meanwhile McChild McMartin dissolved
an expired Alka-Seltzer tablet
in a glass of pink motel bathroom faucet water.
Sponge Bob laughed wildly on the television.
He, McChild, could have been watching the news
which was concerned with the demolition
of a bridge near Big Sur,
but he hated the news. He had come to town
to pray and meditate and eat a bag
of Doctor Bronner's All One God Faith
herbally seasoned corn chips and to slug down
16 oz of black cherry kombucha. He had done so.
And now the Alka-Seltzer. McMartin
dialed up his sister on his smart phone
and told her he would be late for the funeral,
but would appreciate it if she saved a plate of ham
salad and a chocolate cupcake for him.
Their father had been a brutal man,
but now the fog came down or had arisen
and the lights of semi trucks seemed
like good guesses.
RANDOM EPISODES OF THE TIME TUNNEL
which starts with the one about the Titanic.
I liked the panelled luxury liner set and Susan Hampshire
as Lady Brit in Distress. A French stowaway
ate a banana in a janitor's cabinet. It had focused detail
for a cheesy TV episode. The concentrically
circled techno-vagina that took the hapless scientist
back in time, or forward: wow. Here they are
in their multicolored and helmeted space pajamas.
There was a board game. There were metal lunch boxes.
Everything happened in 1966. Why is that?
The Rolling Stones still looked like mushroom boys
back then. Merlin the wizard, and gigantic black widows,
and that was just in first grade. Robert Duval
and a chrome alien who resembled Samuel Beckett,
the human race was improving. My brother drove
the Volkswagen to retrieve the Pasquale’s meatball
and mushroom pizza. A black storm arose and brought rain,
thunder, and the lips of a lonely tornado
against our picture window. We were captured
by Algonquins, imprisoned by Napoleon; we shook
the Frosted Flakes to find the submarine prize.
We drove to South Dakota for vacation,
licked ice cream at Custard's Last Stand, ha ha.
We drove the time tunnel highway, pitch night,
dodging jack rabbits. We built radios to contact
people from the Holy Bible: kings and lepers,
sheep and shepherds. Somewhere along the line
I took a vow of silence and one of poverty.
Our leaders kept pounding the earth with bombs
and oil wells. Plagues scouted the scenic overlooks.
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