Your Name Here: Poems (5 page)

Sometimes a dangerous slice-of-life

like stepping off a board-game

into a frantic lagoon

drags the truth from the bathroom, where it has been hiding.

“Do whatever you like to improve the situation,

and—good luck,” it added, like a barber adding an extra plop of lather

to a stupefied customer’s face. “When they let you out

I’ll be waiting for you.” It had been that way ever since a girl with braids

teased him about getting too short. Yeah, and I’ll bet they have

places for people like you too. Trouble is, I don’t know of any.

The years whirled quickly by, an upward spiral

toward what ghastly ascendency? He didn’t know. He cried.

One November the police chief came calling.

He had secretly been collecting all the bright kids

in the universe, popping them into a big bag

which he lugged home with him. No one was too sure what happened

after that. The kids were past caring; they had the run

of the house after all. Was it so much better outside?

Snow lashed the windowpanes as though punishing them

for having the property of being seen through. The little town

grew quieter. No one missed the kids. They had been too bright

for that to happen. Night sprang out of the dense cold

like an infuriated ocelot with her cub that someone had been trying

to steal, or so it pretended. The frightened townspeople sped away.

There was no longer any room on the sidewalk

for anything but “v’s” drawn in pink chalk, the way a child

draws a seagull. Down at the tavern the neon glowed a comforting

red. “All beer on tap,” it said, and

“Booths for Ladies.”

You have a kind and gentle nature. Not overly

challenged more than once. The “small things” matter

once you’ve replaced the dish on the shelf

and moved very convincingly toward the door.

“Just dying for attention,” you’ve been around

the block yourself a few times, paid the bills

and furniture. You were a tulip

in some past life, it says here. You have “two lips,”

as winy and luscious as a Chevy

in your dad’s garage.

On a sorry note, your correspondent

notes that you have a tendency to fly off to Europe

at the slightest provocation. Must mean you’re getting old,

or “devoid of charm” is maybe what it says.

It is likely that a viable present can be brokered.

Your past is all used up now, anyway.

The lilies love you more than ever

now, it seems. I love you too, but my brow

is furrowed.

I mean, what am I going to tell my shoe?

In the end it was their tales of warring stampedes

that finished us off. We could not go them one better

and they knew it, and put our head on a stamp.

“Then I should have some pain, too?”

Do you know where you live? Probably.

Abner is getting too old to drive but won’t admit it.

The other day he got in his car to go buy some cough drops

of a kind they don’t make anymore. And the drugstore

has been incorporated into a mall about seven miles away

with only about half the stores rented. There are three

other malls within a four-mile area. All the houses

are owned by the same guy, who’s been renting

them out to college students for years, so they are virtually uninhabitable.

A smell of vitriol and socks pervades the area

like an open sewer in a souk. Anyway the cough drops

(a new brand) tasted pretty good—like catnip

or an orange slice that has lain on a girl’s behind.

That’s the electrician calling now—

nobody else would call before 7 A.M. Now we’ll have some

electricity in the place. I’ll start by plugging in

the Christmas tree lights. They were what made the whole thing

go up in sparks the last time. Next, the light

by the dictionary stand, so I can look some words up.

Then probably the toaster. A nice slice

of toast would really hit the spot now. I’m afraid it’s all over

between us, though; Make nice, like you really cared,

I’ll change my chemise, and we can dance around the room

like demented dogs, eager for a handout or they don’t

know what. Gradually, everything will return to normal, I

promise you that. There’ll be things for you to write about

in your diary, a fur coat for me, a lavish shoe tree for that other.

Make that two slices. I can see you only through a vegetal murk

not unlike coral, if it were semi-liquid, or a transparent milkshake.

I have adjusted the lamp,

morning’s at seven,

the tarnish has fallen from the metallic embroidery, the walls have fallen,

the country’s pulse is racing. Parents are weeping,

the schools have closed.

All the fuss has put me in a good mood,

O great sun.

Now another one who said it is gone,

killing all the wonderful suspense, desired or not.

Shut the window. It’s chilly in here.

Yes, I know it’s only open a crack.

It’s “all moon and no stars” again,

and I cast no shadow.

It’s not a good thing.

There aren’t that many seats.

I remember when Clement Attlee was world premier.

There was more austerity then but less things to get done.

The amniotic valley still holds memories of those

kids who have sway, some blue-violet,

some only an outline. It was what he meant by austerity,

I think. There was a man named Silhouette once,

renowned for his stinginess.

As I think about it the more it gets lighter and brighter.

I had asked for it monogrammed.

A hurricane blasted the triple-mud sundae

into the room where I like to write sometimes in the afternoons.

There was no dealing with the gangsters then.

They all had disappeared.

My dog, green pussy, came along with my bowl of grape-nuts.

I let out an unaccustomed howl

yet no hoosegow gaped.

I was wholly on my own.

Hollyhocks strangled the windmill’s blades

till it stopped to ask for more, for directions

where it was going, which obviously was nowhere.

Cormorants clove the air. Men had poured oil

on their eggs to prevent them from hatching

so as not to reduce the fish population,

though the fish had never asked for that. Far from

it. They believed in the equality of the species,

that a pesky bird was worth no more and no less than a dumb fish.

Man, again, is the interloper here. He takes whatever he chooses

from the dish life holds out, then acts surprised

a century or two later when the world has spun out of control,

and wakes up scratching his head, wondering what happened.

We should all be so lucky as to get hit by the meteor

of an idea once in our lives. It would save a lot of hand-wringing

and bells tolling in the undersea cathedral,

a noise to drive one mad, past the brink of human decency.

Please don’t tell me it all adds up in the end.

I’m sick of that one.

Whatever charms is alien.

Throw it back in the water, makes no difference.

I was amazed at your absence, child,

from the chapel’s round window.

You forgot, you see.

And me, sometimes.

There is true worth strapped away in there.

Fifty is young today. So’s eighty. Depends

on which side you’re looking at it from.

And she leans toward purple colas,

returns with salt on her tunic’s hem.

Too crazed to cry. In which she resembles

all of us. I’m not going to the benefit.

I hate charity. But it’s the greatest

of the three. Can’t help it, I’m an old boa

constrictor. I feel about life much as you do:

as a diary from many years ago. We thought we’d caught

something in March, some kind of flu,

but it lasted even until now,

though no one remembers it. You will,

upon opening your garage door, stumble

on some unpleasant evidence of the neighbor’s dog’s

recent passage. Is there anything you can do?

No. Later on in spring, when the robins

are nesting, something will splat on your car’s windshield

or windscreen. Again, it profits not

to go looking for causes and effects

in a froth of rage whipped up

by someone else. August with its cooling showers

from the hose invites us to take a breather.

Yes, a breather is what we’ve longed for,

can get no closer to

than the rain barrel, its surface of dust and

fruitflies. Well, back to work

again. It is the one thing that won’t be

denied that won’t save us. Pensively, the watch crystal’s

warning us to be off, ere another hour strikes.

Oh, I love you so much in such a little time

it seems a shame to have to go on living.

Yet another hour protrudes. The imps

have all become children. Well, wish them away.

The pyramid’s gravitas

will never manifest itself with them around.

The wolf took up a broom and swept the walk

up to the front door, and seemed to

want to be petted for its efforts.

The hell with that. The empty corral

is on the point of coming into being, a “perfect”

circle, brand new as you please.

Somebody, someone in authority, said it was all a joke,

so we packed up and went home that day.

The failure to see God is not a problem

God has a problem with. Sure, he could see us

if he had a hankering to do so, but that’s

not the point. The point is his concern

for us and for biscuits. For the loaf

of bread that turns in the night sky over Stockholm.

Not there, over
there.
And I yelled them

what I had told them before. The affair is no one’s business.

The peeing man seemed not to notice either.

We came up the strand with carbuncles

and chessmen fetched from the wreck. Finally the surplus buzz

did notice, and it was fatal to our project.

We just gave up then and there, some of us dying, others walking

wearily but contentedly away. God had had his little joke,

but who was to say it wasn’t ours? Nobody, apparently,

which could be why the subject was never raised

in discussion groups in old houses along the harbor,

some of them practically falling into it.

Yet still they chatter a little ruefully: “I know

your grace’s preference.” There are times

when I even think I can read his mind,

coated with seed-pearls and diamonds.

There they are, for the taking. Take them away.

Deposit them in whatever suburban bank you choose.

Hurry, before he changes his mind—again.

But all they did was lean on their shovels, dreaming

of spring planting, and the marvelous harvests to come.

Really? Uncle Pedro is coming

with his entire entourage? They want

to take over the whole top floor?

They say they’ll be arriving soon? Day

after tomorrow? Not in a century,

I bet. These things are like dreams

of things that are real. And they really exist

beyond the breezeway, where no man has ever been.

How, then, can we be confident

they are solid and peaceful, like chimeras?

The shit list is long

and extends far back into the last century.

If we admit them
now ...

I was just standing on the landing

and a rush of air whooshed by me

on its way to the attic. I caught the scent

of Uncle Pedro’s discreet
eau de toilette

(notes of lily-of-the-valley and wild hickory bark)

but to conclude that I am involved in this,

or that any of it is my affair, is, well,

downright dour. I am off on my own again,

will return in an hour

to see if the house has burned down

or the calf given birth to calflets.

If all you want is kittens,

come back later. At dusk. No later.

The kittens will be in by then.

“What if I said I want no kittens,

just a big fat you?” The Motorway City,

Leeds, has more of them, more varieties.

And I said I just couldn’t. Mime the dialogue

any faster. They’re taking rollcall now.

With all the spontaneity of a sarabande

he wakes up, showers, puts on a tie,

jumps in his Dodge and drives to work.

Here there are other, secret choices.

He cannot look at them. He must needs leave this place,

office, whatever. The beavers look at him endangered

from their saw-palmetto-shrouded photomural.

No matter, he’s driving to this special house.