the tilt of the planet offers up the north to the sun/and new warmth turns crystal to flow
the new heat activates an earthy redolence/activates hormonal response in creatures
and in the smelters of certain minds/the metal of new resolve is refined
hope shakes off sleep and rises
the garlic bread end beckoned/murmuring that seven oven minutes at threefifty/would make it perfect/and so it was
as i munched i realized/that the frequency of nocturnal bathroom visits/was increasing/and the next visit to the urologist/might be dire/and naturally my hypochondriacal imagination/leapt forward to end-of-life issues/stark as the zipper-sound/of a body bag
dancing away from such morbid musings/i thought happily of the weekend now imminent/and the poetry I would hear/the friends I would see/and the meal after the reading
but for some bizarre reason/the image of a scottish terrier’s hindquarters/with a furiously wagging tail/tugging the tender flesh of the perineum hither and yon/popped into my head/and won’t unpop
time to go back to a bedpartnerless bed
where my garlic breath will not offend
The Clay at times transcends decor and pottery
With shape and decoration proving timeless.
The potter wins the artisanal lottery
.
And though some day time makes her feebly doddery
The work she’s done endures in realms not chimeless.
The Clay at times transcends–
.
Now hold on just a second, Buster. You have set yourself up for failure. Sure, you will find more rhymes for Pottery and Timeless, but soon you’ll resort to Snottery and Slimeless and even worse, and the Poetry Gods will mock you dismissively. You’ve got the easy-rhyming Clay and the not-bad Potter and the even-better Pot to work with. Start over!
But–but–I wanted to do something with words no one has used before…
Sometimes there’s a reason for things never being done before, Bud. Here’s what you do. Go back to the potter’s wheel and MAKE that ‘timeless’ thing. It might take you a year, but it will be time well spent. Give the world something to marvel at, THEN write about it.
Yeah, that makes sense. But that’s doing things the hard way, isn’t it?
No, fella. That’s doing things the infinitely more rewarding way.
You’re right, dammit.
Now Get Crackin’!!
“stick…burn” the surgeon warned/as he injected yellow fluid into the hand
the local numbing agent acted quickly
an incision was made and spreaders made of it/a pair of conjoined parentheses
the surgeon deftly sliced compartmental tissue/that had impeded nerve transmission
soon he was satisfied with the loose weave/of the tissue
bound the parentheses back into a line/with internal stitches that were flesh-entombed
and two strips of surgical tape were crisscrossed over the cut
and gauze and an ace bandage completed the wrapture
.
nine days later here we are/and on the hand is a rorschach test of sorts
you may see a petroglyph of a coyote/or the trickster himself
it could be a pond in winter/or an ideogram meaning “desolation”
or a bridge or pier
but the patient sees “slow healing”/and reminds himself
to be a patient patient
this old man once got by/on an average of four hours of sleep per night/but now it is as if he is repaying an insomnia loan/and longer sleeps make for more vivid dreams
two nights ago he and his brothers were on a bus
(one brother in real life had passed on six years ago)
the bus dropped them off at a hotel near a ski resort in colorado/at which they intended to ski/and the deceased brother said/”i’m gonna look around”/and left the lobby/and the other brother was elsewhere as well
the clerk lady had a file on the dreamer/including the laminate from his high school i.d. card/with a faint image of his babyish younger self/and the clerk grinned and said “that’ll be a flat five dollars”/and the dreamer drew a crumpled fiver from his jeans/and pressed it between his hand and the lobby desk/and rubbed until it was as flat as he could get it
the little bell on the front door jingled/and a woman he did not recognize walked in/with a classmate and crony from long ago/and now the dreamer recognized the woman
she’d had some work done/smooth forehead/collagenned and dermabraded face/and buttressed breasts/but forty years ago she’d played him and dumped him/did the same to the classmate too/and now classmate and old flame/were making another go of it
she was flirty with the dreamer but he would have none of it/strode out the door and onto the brittle ice-encrusted snow/leaving stomp-prints in his wake
somehow he was on the roof/finding it vital to crawl lest he slide and fall/down and off the steep-pitched edge
a skier landed near him from above/grinned and “hiya”ed and pivoted/and launched herself off/and the dreamer was sure he knew her/but couldn’t give her a name
somehow he was on the ski lift/and a peruvian young woman was chatting him up/explaining that she loved to ski year round/and half a year hence she’d be back in peru/and here came the dismount point/and she said “chase me”/heading for a black-diamond trail
“no way” thought the dreamer/and slid toward a blue trail/on a burton board he was using for the first time/but it was just like a skateboard/and he deftly threaded through dozens of hesitant newbies/picking up speed/getting cocky/but here came an unavoidable TREE*#*#*
the dreamer gasped awake
uninjured/intensely relieved
and hobbled to the blindingly-lit bathroom/to complete his relief
Roy McRae was in a fix/Since Roy McRae was in a crash/And his Fiat Spider was burnt to a crisp/Along with his Umpire’s uniform.
His street clothes smoked his time too short/He ducked in a nearby menswear store/And behold a tuxedo fit well. With a snort/He snagged a cab. It began to storm.
He prayed that rain would postpone the game/Alas though the stadium was a dome/And he got there spiffy but wet of hame/And despaired that he didn’t have time to change.
The fans went crazy to see the fella/Unregulatory below the neck/But he said “Play Ball!” though no Cinderella/Felt more out of place, but hey, what the heck.
He called the pitches with delicacy/The batters baffled his voice so soft/The pitchers howling with unfettered glee/The fans as well. And then far aloft
A too-slow pitch was sent to the stands/And near the foul pole it did go/But Roy scratched his cap and threw up his hands/And cried, “Fair or foul? I just don’t know.“
And history, Friends, that day was made/And things will never be quite the same/For Roy McRae made the record book grade/As the first Ump ejected from the game.
.
And the moral of the story is
Clothes make the person
So watch what you wear
Because things may worsen
If you’re too debonair.
i syrup my hotcakes with the sap app
cure my constipation with the crap app
get out of jail with the beat the rap app
and enjoy somnolent refreshment
with the nap app.
.
did sammy davis junior need a tap app?
einstein a thinking cap app?
birds lack a flap app
and sexually transmitted diseases thrive
without a clap app.
.
sometimes up the app-strewn road
we’ll ditch simulation
screw like bunny spawn like toad:
old school stimulation.
Just like in the movies
The camera tracks you as you thread
Your way through foot traffic
To a restaurant entrance
And go in and spot the man
In the bulky brown coat and fedora
Gun at his elbow
.
Cut to a closeup of the man’s face
He is kindly and grizzled
And old enough to be your dad
.
He is exactly old enough to be your dad
Because he is your dad
And you two are following a script
Co-written by the two of you
To show your mom on her birthday
.
You tried to make it Hitchcockean
Because Mom is a Hitchcock fan
And so the gun is a Maguffin
And the script is laced with doom words
Like “fatal” and “enigmatic”
.
The two of you discuss an evil woman
Whose modus operandi is death by kindness
Who is a nefarious genius who must be…
Eliminated? Stopped? Done away with?
.
“The trouble is, I love her,” says the man
“God help me, I love her too,” says the girl
And they break character
Turn to face the rented cinematic drone
And say, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!”
.
It’s exactly like the movies
Because it is a movie
An indie done on a shoestring
And Mom’s going to love it
basket wordweaving
.
a nest is a basket of birdies;
a basket for peaches changed histories;
and ella sang in the late thirties
of tiskets and taskets and mysteries.
.
containers of stiff-fibered lattices
hold picnics or handhelds or bread,
while catholic uniforms plaid a sis
who basketless may go unfed.
.
the slangness of basket weaves parity
with genitals, bowlsmoke and bastards,
a versatile twisting of clarity
and provenance dim-distant-pastwards.
.
“so silly”–oh, really? believing
that wordplay and mindflex may yield
new pathways to language beweaving
new verbiage is this poet’s shield.
.
so gather your own stalky fibers
and weave–it is not a big ask,
you may become language macgyvers
and in your own basketing bask.
.
Notes: The early game of Basketball involved a peach basket. Ella Fitzgerald recorded “A-Tisket A-Tasket” in 1938, overriding the objections of her record label, and her career skyrocketed. Baskets come in many different custom, function-related designs. The Urban Dictionary has five pages’ worth of words and phrases involving variations of “basket.” “MacGyver” was a TV series whose main character was famous for improvising solutions to dire situations with unusual materials at hand. And Catholic uniforms got dragged in by the heels simply because of a need for a rhyme with “lattices.”
every day comes accelerating proof/that i am or am becoming the cranky old man cliché/i made such cruel fun of in my youngsterhood.
why, just half an hour ago/when a young man lurked by the lobby door/that requires a key fob for entry/and wanted to use me to get in/i said “forgot your fob?”
“why no I don’t”–“you don’t live here??”
with a half-apologetic air he said “my girlfriend is asleep.”
“when i let someone i don’t know in, i feel like i am betraying my fellow residents.”
“I promise I’m not homeless or–“ “grrr. the POINT is not to put me in this position.” and walked away before he answered.
sure. i am not becoming a cranky old man. I am a cranky old man.
but my younger, cruel-fun self ought to be aSHAMED of himself.
pfui.
One with Clay, Image and Text 