The hands of my watch have stopped

The hands of my watch have stopped
dead on the dial, frozen on the face of it

and the spoon full of steaming soup
is an inch from my mouth, arrested.

Anticipation is suddenly my middle name on
my license as the spoon drips back into the bowel,

clueless to how many hours have passed by us
like so many cars leaving the city once a factory whistle blares

or someone yawns the right number of times
as the sun drifts to the horizon, to sink beneath the sea.

The cat looks to be posing for cute posters of
cats knocking things over, like it's done tonight with

that drink that is stuck in mid air , in front of the TV
with the beer ad on where no can even lick the suds

from their mustaches because time has stopped for the time
because you're out of the room,

on a cell phone ,
smoking a Camel.

You are probably conspiring with a girl friend
to stuff me in burlap bag and leave me

on a corner in a bad neighborhood, thinking gypsies
or blues musicians will find me and give me something

to do besides moon over your image, holding my breath
until you come back into the room,

just like your doing now, coming through the door
reeking of filter tips, cell phone in your grip,

looking at me askance when you see me exhale,
blowing out candles in the process, oh yeah,

I mean it's okay, really, I'm just glad you're back
from the break you took in the middle of my proposal

which means that all the breakable things left in the air
in your absence can now come crashing down to the

hard tile floor, all the bric-a-brac and my world particularly
getting bruised, bent and shattered and breaking wide, wide open,

my heart is broken again
when it's time to swim

and there's nothing funny about this at all,
I mean,

you're kind of cute, the way you
reduce me to rubble
even in my finest
courting clothes.

Flight Home

I give you sun when it
should be cloudy all day
so now the mountains
are full of snow that
has fallen too long over
the slopes, the cliffs,
every ravaged turn of
twisted road.

Satellite transmissions cannot
penetrate the clouds that
have wrapped the peaks of
the highest Sierra,
I call all of your names
when I see the shadow of the
plane fleetly cross the field,
a speck of a car moves
up slim sliver of a road
that follows a huge ravine
of brown land, I cannot jam his radio,
my wings are stiff as my neck,
I call your name.

There's five hours of
thumbed magazines
and fast food wrappers
remaining where I sat
trying to control the weather
and flow of information,
but I can see that California
still looks the same
once we've landed ,
grey autumn skies
and mirthless cheer on every
face coming off the ramp,

Did you enjoy
the snow I gave you as I flew over your state,
did you miss your favorite shows,
did you read the books
you said you bought?
Some things are left hanging
and there's nothing left to say
or do except leave like they do
in bad plays ,
and it seems that everything for awhile
is suspended, free of intention
until you snap to as if from sleep
and see that
there are things
you cannot wake up from.

"

EXCITING NIGHT

Exciting Night


Exciting TV drama
and the sizzle of steaks
breaks
the monotony of having a
like in a roof that
just drips
as long there's a floor
and a old carpet to ruin
with a seeping, creeping rain.

On the set
it's a show about
people
at work who wave their arms
and raise their
voices in the interests
of what the right thing to do is,
so much yelling in
the face

of your co-workers,
so much insubordination
because there
is so much principle at stake
as to whether to charge the credit card number
for the guaranteed no show.
The desk clerk berates his manager
while the bell man looks on
while straightens
his lapels and
looks vaguely haunted
in the awful light of
valet parking...

"...Damn it, Dan, we held the room ALL FREAKING NIGHT
and they didn't show
even with two
telephone confirmations.
I coulda sold that room
a hundred times over
if I could have.
We gotta charge 'em,
c'mon,
we gotta pay for the night maid..."

The music rises while the three of them freeze in place
while they squint
and rotate their jaw lines,
and then the commercial hits
the screen, and then
I turn off the sound,
fixating on the drip,
the growing stain
in the rug, I grit my teeth
and look at you in the other room
listening to
all five volumes of
live Johnny Winter
on head phones,
I am trapped in a house
where only little things
having no
sane description
effect the course of the night, the mood it takes
even as the storm rages harder and there is
the sound of continuous applause
through out the house, down the hall ways,
up the stairs and echoing against
the tile
and grouts, bouncing off the mirror I stood in front of this morning
licking a lip with a tongue that
needed to taste something that
was lost in the stubble of
a beard turning gray completely
only after the new century
has wrapped its arms
around the house
and its storyline and made sure
everyone knows
that where they sleep
is a roof closer to the one
we die under

In however much time it takes,
assuming we're in doors, in bed, after sex with
a woman
you 'vet loved since
before the beginning of memory,
assuming a life that deserves applause
like the way the rain sounds now,
crisp and demanding and rattling the
chains of heaven's
rusty gate

A gun goes off after the commercial
and I see
the clerk, manager and the bellman
still standing behind the front desk
while a guest they'd been ignoring
holds a smoking gun on them,
screaming words to the effect that his continental breakfast
gave him the squirts bad,
a situation not helped
by hotel plumbing
that's old and
clogged with the evidence of strangers passing through town
on their way to better shows,

you are singing
to Johnny Winter
real fine
"...It's my
own fault, baby
treat me the way
the way
you
wanna
do..."

You slide down the seat,
you shirt runs up
your waist,
you rib cage
rises and falls
with the fluid rush of Winter's blues guitar,

I dream of smoking
after we make love,
I dream of you
dreaming of me
in all the rooms
where there are ceiling leaks
on a night that
hasn't enough
bowls or pans
to catch every drop.

cloud cover

there are echos of songs
we used to know which
become deadened with
age and too much polishing,
like bright forks tapped against
the stems of long wine glasses,

but i see nothing beyond
the curtains, the day is a blur
as notes of sampled melody
leak from headsets attached
to thin, twin wires, it's a men and
women lifting glasses to toast
a union, the rising moon in the
middle of the day,

cars stall too long
at the fork of the road
just as clouds take away the sunlight
and make the shapes seen through
the curtain lace disappear
like water stains evaporating on
white sheets, there is smoke
from behind the dumpster
where caterers lower their trays
and light up their desperate unfiltered brands,

i keep being kissed on the cheek
and called 'sir' by small children,
i smell aromas, burned match heads,
the smell of your hair crosses under my
nose, i cross the room and open a window,

the band packs up its instruments,
valet service hands back the keys they've kept,

something happened today
just as the sun reached the top of the day
and the moon gave a smile or a wink
before ducking behind a cloud
passing as if it were in a cartoon
that plays when you leave the room
for a drink or the bathroom,

something happened
and I was there in the thick of it all
going down,

and there's nothing to report
when you ask me
how my day was
other than a shrug and a grunt
that mean i love you
every minute you're not here."

LANDING

there is not enough of you
to go around

even as the plane circles
airport a third and a fourth time,

a deck of cards in your hands
contains nothing but sixes and eights,

and there's only hard, dry land
under the wing span's shadow,

eyes closed, your head up,
head phones as usual, private music,

the rumble of engines fills my ears
that have just popped open

like corks flying
from carbonated bottles,

i wish i could sleep
as i imagine the city
does now as we approach,

i wish we were in an apartment
below us in bed and half awake
after making love, my arm coming
up to your breasts, complaining
in grating mumble that we have
to buy a house away from runways,
in the country or may be the mountains
they fly over,

my fingers grip the arm rests,
my eyes turn to the window,

the skyline comes on us too fast,
like everything in life,

it comes on us too fast.

John Paul ll Arrives at Heaven's Gate For Processing
take off the hatand put on some pants
take a seat,pick up a magazine,
you don't need a menu, sir,this is much stays true.
yes, there is band practice around the clock.sorry, but we like our brass section.
says here you liked to ski and travel.
wait 'til youget a load of the wings/
no more sacramentsgiven through bullet proof glass.
we don't need clockswhere we are.
that's why it's calleda waiting room.
no, it's not passed your bed time,you're dead, remember?
oh, you can blesssomething if you really like,but it's carrying coals to New Castle, really,
yes, everyone has to fill out the paperwork, yes , I know who you are,
I know who everyone is.

the last thing i ever did
was t

Gossip Carpet
Smooth be the mood for answers
Always crying, the thick gossip carpet
Being rather than perceiving
The brunt of emotion landing flat ina lap, legs unfolding.
Tailored for just this minuteR
inds littered on the alphabet promenade
Lotions make the hands look years apart
From wear and wrinkles that worry the flesh,
What a wonderful remark
About liver stainsthat allowed us discordance and beauty.
From here’ we see Ron reciting
Boy, did he ring the wrong number
I thought it was blue, but the water’s azure
There are many trains to Tarzana‘
Though has the couplet that rocked the boat
Ted would never be intimidated
By people staring as he hammers,
Bleeding into the font on the page,
That shirt from India.
Tailored from her see the carpet’ promenade
Ron wonderful and beauty
Many trains to azure Ted remarking
Lotions in Tarzana discordant’
Wrong number and the ring on her finger

Don’t just starnmer, litter alphabet couplets
Cover your wagonsAnd wash your decks...
I am not moved by the Tarzan yellAs might be vines divining in
Dining rooms or from diving boardsAnd see judge holding up wrong numbers
Called on account of alphabets placedOn the wrong buttons on each phone
In the House of Cards decked with
Bounds of Holly Stevens who
Cuts a rug and calls me to the carpet
To insure her father’s idea of
Palm trees limning the last edge of earth.

a cannon shot for Hunter S. Thompson

aim my ashes
to the mountains
and the cold, clear springs
pouring over polished stone
down to the towns
where my name
is on shelves
with other histories
of a peculiar species,

tell me i'm fired up
and ready to go boom
again in the night,
hold your hands
and interlace your fingers
as i cover the land
with the dark, dry essentials
that remain when
the baptism is over,
i will be the smear on
the stones, the soot
on the trees
as it rains
and i return to the
ground in converted joy,

remember me as a shriek
in the night
when alarms went off
and there was only
a rattling of typewriter
keys and ice clinking in a glass,
the deadline has been
reached at last,
i am here at last
under the wire,
son of a gun,
i made it.

Well, Yes

Native speakers are not the light
that brings the room it's glow,

going somewhere in time other than yesterday
will not make the mailman go away,

all your lovers have found something to do
with the lives you left them with,

well, no, I don't fancy a boot on my throat,
but would mind if I blew up one of your tanks?

As hard as I squint, shower curtains remain shower curtains
and somewhere a few thousand city worker vests are missing,

All anyone wants to do is walk with pride at some point in their
life time, which we pray is long and filled only with the routine
bad luck,

Yes, she says to me, this is another day that you haven't screwed up, have a hot slice of pie.

Warped Cassette at a Garage Sale

There are hours of old music
that needs to be heard again
that only decays into static
as the wound reel warps and writhes
around the plastic reels,
the longer these tapes lay
in the sun, in Tupperware bins,
priced four for a buck
the longer the drum solos
get in time signatures that
would baffle the sensors of Alien invaders,
Russians in missile bunkers at the fair edge
of the Ukraine would stop dreaming
of snow and vodka and rise themselves
searching for a red telephone,
Washington would shut down
as anguished saxophone improvisations
hobbled over the three legged race
of "Giant Steps" poured over the
radios and each broadcasting outlet,
mothers handed children toys and
told them to go to sleep,
ugliness such as this horrible screech
meant something was coming for us all,
there were naked people on the corners
reaching their arms to the sky
as if to grab a line, a ladder,
hitch a ride on a beam of light
that would come from cloud
you could not look into,
deliver you from static and screech, scorns,
the evidence of bad breath when reed players
don't ge their teeth cleaned,
the planet shuts down as
ruinous scraping of stiff Afro Combs on asphalt
continues until there is only quiet
save for moaning
and the odd car horn blasting in the distance,
the skronk has halted,
everyone rises their head, takes a breath,
goes back to work
as they take their seat with a notice
that no missiles for mercenary angels
are anywhere to be seen,
the cassette machine snaps off,
warp music ceases,
"Man , that is some funky stuff" my neighbor says
and I take his quarter
for the ruined Santana tape,
he says he can't wait to
play again
real loud.

4th of July

My love knows no spending limits,
the matter was always academic,
the lots from which fireworks were seen
could be viewed as check marks against
a scorecard that is invisible, behind the clouds,
the wind blows toward the land
you'd never get for a birthday.

Even if we stood here all night
the wind would taste the same as
it did last year as we light our fuses
with old Zippo lights, there were sparks
in the dark and flinty remarks
as the sulfur caught fire and the
curvature of the caved-in moon
gave us white, chalky light
to search for our eyes in the dirt
under the leaves and the blanket
we brought from home, the
threshold we carry ourselves over
like weight that shifts in assignments
of motion , water displaced and rising
as the moon leans to the shoreline
for a kiss and a sip of what we're drinking.

She rose a leg as though to dance,
he played a song the same as always,
you sang those words with those strange notes
that rustle the highest limbs of California fronds,
I am writing a novel with every pause in the chatter,
in my mind I'm at my desk laughing again as
all the words fill the monitor and fall off the screen
and onto the floor.

It was clear, this dream
I had, we stood here with our
friends with our sparkler
and glasses of wine
cheering the American Night
as rockets screamed across the sky,
risking our homes or at least car keys
that might fall from our pockets,
but there is only empty night
in front of us, a moon shining light
that ripples over the water
that moves toward land in
serpentine movements,
as I was saying,
"…if we stood here all night,
if we made a big, tall wish,
if we're good with ourselves
and our words we put into the world
that goes to sleep trusting
the rime of light to creep over
the horizon come dawn,
we can see where we might
live in futures where we all have our keys
and we all get to drive home
from the fireworks at the beach…"

In favor of steady work

Icing on the cake
was all it takes
to get me to follow
a rule rather than bend it
to what my moment of need
might happen to have been
if I were with a friend
who chided me
on losing my gravitas
in this tight circle
of rules and cash value,

just make it sweet
and neat
as a treat and
as if it were were
a cocktail at the end of a shift
of shuffling orders
and rubber stamping
receipts in big red ink,
rules as they are
are fine if there's a kiss
or at least a nod
at the end of days
when the light darkens
through our office
and retail windows,

pals sans skills
on pills
and copious quantities
of smoke and coke
can stand their corners
and thumb their nose
while they leave
their trail of
running hard luck stories
about how it
was a bit of bad luck,
misunderstanding,
a bad break
they couldn't shake
nor bake as truth fully cooked up
like it were a scheme
that was their dream of becoming,
it's numbing to think all this,
what's remiss in the speech
and dress and the place
where they stand
in a pride that guards
cracks in the sidewalk
as heads nod in sleep,
a respect for weather
that forgives them not
at all
because weather knows them
not all This Fall,

I argue at times
not a wit
nor a flick of
the wrist that
twists every bad note
like it were some
malformed melody
someone else wrote and played,
how long have
I stayed
above water
like an an adult
oughta,
it's a voice, a cash register sense
of the world,
a sales floor
flooded with creme filled donuts
oozing underfoot,
zoo animals charge past
the register stands,
bosses and their assistants
asleep in the front seats
of company cars,

none of this makes
me star or delivers from the Devil
but I am above sea level
and have reveled in
the music of screams of joy
and been blinded by the
coin of the realm
as it it glittered and glinted
while all of us
squinted
and made plans to
go to movies
plays and
dinners our wives and husbands hinted
were the places
to let the evening's big hands
crawl steadily to
another calendar day
spent parsing
the history of
every rotating mystery
and solving this problem,
right now,
big or smaller fork,
fish or pasta,
Coltrane or Satriani,

benefits easier to take
than
nonconforming
myself to oblivion
on a corner where
i would be the boldest
among the coldest.

Uncollected Grace

You see me large on the horizon
before the light dies behind me,
i look to be on fire on top of the dune,
clouds red with last bursts of sun
that turns my outline black, without
face or wrinkles, freeze flamed
on a the cold blue whispers of sky
that remain for mere moments
before my singing reaches your ears
and straightens your spine,
straight as a trapeze wire,
my arms are full of groceries
coming down the steps, my singing
flat like pennies after a train
has passed, there is no fire
this engine needs to be, I say,
handing you a bag, the television is
on the news and the sound is off,
the ocean before us goes black
and even the clouds are dark
with idioms and uncollected grace
as tongues of flame hang onto
their candle wicks just barely
as they bend to an upstart wind,
there is no food in the pantry
but there are cans in the bag,
actors making faces on the screen,
a plane droning over head,
oh those stars and the satellites,
you say
finally
as you turn a key, open a can,
i wonder how much they hear,
what all it is they see...

TED BURKE: writing and more writing

TED BURKE: writing and more writing

Hic Haec Hoc

There is no talk on the sides of book stores about when the pain stops and the living begins.

I breathe long enoughto have all the chess games I refuse toplay when fingers wave in someone's face in the check out line of the drug storeand cars come rare inches from each other when making hard turns at those corners gives new streets to get lost on, looking for something to do as sirens and school bells debate with their shrieks and trills about the stages of life in a city where each high risecomes to a point, a prod,a sharp stick or folded hands,what ever the songs on the corner seduce you with.

There are no songsabout where all the flowers went,we improvise a rosary of latter day insults and even as we speakof when a word meant its meaning,bullets fly faster than lettersin the mailand we leave ourcars at home.

It's the heat of a sun that I makes my brow a shiny and beaded furrow, worries that anticipates her needswith samples from the archive of good answers.

Generic cigarette smoke comesfrom around the corner.

We love our townand life that vanishes to keep the name pushing onbehind a hedge where people just explode as they contemplate buying more things for a house that has more roomsthan family available to live in any of them,a universe that feeds onits best designs, a crushing sameness to the days.

Scream for Heaven

We scream
for heaven
to allow through the gates
even though
we came
as we were,
in our underwear,
wearing funny hats.

Browsing Poem

A phone rings without remorse
from inside a purse tucked
under her arm,

It's a muted hysteria as it drones on,
screams among the cough drops
and used Kleenex,

Ring, chime, digital quotes of
pop tunes and classical clich�s
punch through the air,

Necks strain, eyes blur under the
incandescent light, everything has a price
but no one can sell anything,

She looks at the candle holders,
inspects the diamonds, her fingers
leave prints on the glass,

The phone continues to scream
it's medley of taunts and tones,
mix with the discreet jazz that plays all day,

Her head bobs up and down,
rhythmic, exact, a twitch
for an off beat,

The wires from her headset
goes taut and then relaxes with
each swerve and turn of her head,

Better tunes than what the
store pays for,

Yet the phone screams on and on
as she browses and bops to her
private distractions,

The sales floor is empty,
her prints are on
all the glass she laid a finger on."

Pass the salt as you would
a hat that passes for a dollar
that keeps the doors open and
the floor swept,

In dangerous years
the salt of our tears
pass through our eyes
while white caps on waves
hear yet another cry for help
just beyond the turn of the coastline
and TV ariels

Several shy poets rent a room

Who are these scribeshiding under the bedwith their notebooksand pens, coughing up balls of dust each time a floor board creaks underfootor a cat on the porch meows and scratches doors,looking for a family to move in with? Handwriting is a a trail of tears and terror under the singing springs,there are bills to pay,stamps to lick,a metaphor to ponderas fingers stroke pens to remember an address while cramped under a mattress ,

What shall we write about, oh yes,half a bird on the sill,a lone cup on the far table,ankles defacing the knot holes with unforgiving heels,but now, is the coast clear,is there anyone watching?

We leave them their food on white plates with clean silverware,paper napkins at best,and then leave room where we can hear all their furious scribbling about the truncated view proceed as if it were a race,the tips of pens and assorted quills tearing across pages of journals and the lines of otherwise blank pages,riots of images of strange sights,a world espied through mail slots and around the corners of doors left ajar,

We leave them their food and then leave,closing the door,and suddenly there is laughter up and down the hall,cartoon soundtracks, sound effects of things bouncing and springing from wall to wall,pies in the face,Splat!We walk awayand mind our own business because the rent check cleared and that's all that matters on day full of sunshine…

page not found

not the voice that comes
from the steam
nor the tide that turns
at the drop of dime
into a newspaper machine.
not a name that fades in the ear
when you turn a corner
nor a name that comes through the
ear peace of your phone that
rings at the dinner hour.
not a lover who misses you
after all the years in jobs
on a far coast where time zones and
temperatures are closer and hotter
that the hotel sheets
are to the mattress where you stare
at the door to the hallway,
the shadows of feet passing in
the middle of the night,
you wonder what your lover
has too say,
not about this meal you're eating
or by what you're reading
but instead about how you're living
in this world when
nothing seems real enough to
count on as if life itself mattered,
i say all these things come back to us
always in the moments when
we're required to be
the selves we've always rehearsed in
mirrors, at home, imagining interviews
and interrogations,
i think of the way your lips grew puffy
the first time i made you cry,
the way your hand traced the words of
the book you were reading
before setting it down
to dress for openings, dinner,
where ever we might be going,
the masks cracks and falls to the floor
when some meaningless phrase is said
and suddenly, powerfully
it’s clenched fists in public places,
the world is removed just then and too loud as well,
it's all those things after all,
every last cough and bottle of beer we balanced
on the fire place, there's nothing i ever had
that i don't miss, you were everything
in front of me, passing by and gone
like a road sign that couldn’t be read.

Some things get said
that ruin the taste
of the tacos even
as they hit the roof
of my mouth,
and it's the same damn thing
like it was in the day
when ballparks were for
cheering the good guys,
the ones in the white uniforms

at these prices

at these prices
you would expect
the bread to be
sliced by Christ himself,

under these ceilings
a heart might stop
in awe as the neck
cranes back for
a view of arches
detailed with angels
and their bosses
with nary a cobweb to
disturb their conference,

with names like these
on plates this ornate,
you aren't sure if your
about to eat a meal
or commit some crime
against decorum,

in a city whose ills
slip under the
short circuiting radar,
it's easy to dream
with eyes wide upon,
sitting straight up
in your chair
in amazing taverns
overlooking a Pacific Ocean
that is black
as secret ink when
there's no sun to shine
on the coast
that's been carved up
and built upon
and otherwise carted away
in trucks to landfills
where nothing grows
but resentments and
gun registration,

every newspaper sold
from corner machines
tells you what day this is,
every email asks you
to get thinner, richer,
bigger than lumberjacks in drag,

at these prices
who could afford
not to spend
a little more, scrape
some more shavings from
the credit card
and dampen the
scream
under the lamp
by the pier
on a night
when clouds and sunsets
riot in swirls that
make this city
tremble and quake
under the boots
you wore to work?

Remote Control Dynamite

All these pieces of tape on index cards, getting shallow by degrees of heat,
dragged, smoked and fried to the numb where the brand name surrenders to the burn, crisp in their knowledge of magic candles that don’t blow out, rubber candy, remote control dynamite.

Sections of the body lend their pours for a sweat against poverty, but who could think of such things now?

Perhaps it’s being too dense against the sham of identity that we take objects that don’t return hellos and give them homes as though it’s the beginning of something beautiful

Back at ~home base, the slugger tightens his belt, gets mad at the ball, dreams of monies and hosannas and a confetti rain if he’d only hit his boss.

These leave only the inevitable: thrice the chance of unions coming apart, a management of soured excuses.

Big stick, small dick, that’s what he said.

To a pal who found repast in the silence ‘til he spoke up.

Why bring that up now? Sweet honey in the rock is a hard course to go.

Big talk, small wonders, he replied, you’ve denied the parenthesis of disease, imagined or real.

It catches with you, says TAG! you’re IT, the fruit of my labors.

Rubber necking with you was a big mistake, my thorax is on leave of its senses, who do I turn to?

Not you, or they, or anything or anyone remaining with a thirst.
Duty calls, and it’s the nature of things to expel the bottled vile.

Call me airmail, or call me anytime.
Little bits of glass cling to my brow.
Small animals make nests in my mistakes.

A package arrives in the mail. Lots of wires, a battery, a clock, something packed in aluminum: A send off to write home about.

A great country we've always lived in

Days are full of empty bottles
through which shorelines are amber
on a coast of an always setting sun,

Nights are sirens on rocks
singing as they wash their hair
and cars pull the shoulder of the coastal road,

Where we lived was rugged
and full of trees that were thick like armored battalions
around the soft essential center which was warm
and worth fighting for,

Yes, this is a great country we've always lived in,
hidden in magazine photos and underlined pages
in books telling so many stories of balance,

There was always enough
money to go around
and it never rained or snowed
while we were awake

But our snapshots are full of snowball fights
and us as kids holding umbrellas
as we waited for the bus that took us to school,

Life is as we read it to be,
dust does not rise from
the dirt roads we lived on,
our stories stop in the middle
and we go back to the beginning
when maybe being here
with these tasks and worries
seemed at first to make sense,

Something has got to change.
nothing can change at all,

I take off my glasses
and talk to my dead parents,
I submit my ballot; I approve the whole slate,

Soon we'll have everything we've ever needed,
freedom from fear screams in the hall,
decades rolled back,
pleated dresses on house bound mothers,
fathers in black and white ties
in wide ties at the dinner table.

Fencing Lesson

A fence runs between
the houses whose rooms
are stacked with boxes of things
that collected over the decade,
ephemera of years that started
when love was love and duty
was a man in a tank watching
Aral mountain ranges on the
other side of a Cold War border,
hands ready for the pistol
and radio at his reach
lest any hoards tried
to dilute the United States of America
in storage,
I slept like a bone in
an airless vault.

But everything
was turned inside out
by the time I woke up,
the fence remains
but everything
I live next to is three stories high,
even TV antennas snatching images
from the sky are gone from my view,
chimneys are rare
as honesty at retirement parties,
satellite dishes sneak
the world to
my house of boxes.

And love became duty
to remain on the border
of the bed
my limbs stayed in,
too late realizing that
the line of death was
my breath heavy with scotch and mouthwash
and pithy perfumes for the tongue
when all my speech became poetry
about duty and honor while she nodded and brushed her daughters' hair, she takes a loose strand
from her shoulder, she examines the end, the hair is split,
voiceless, she speaks

This where it ends,
I cannot breath,
there are fences running all over the world going somewhere
and all
we do is put the past away
in boxes until the corners of rooms
crowd me
and speaks to me in loops of your language
that's liquid and lost in attention to
details that are about why
you become invisible
even in bed,
which is more like a mining camp
than the place where
dreams slip across the darkness
when we've stopped talking, when our eyes are closed,
when our breathing should be the same,
not a race to the sunrise.

Everything is inside out
and I'm stupid enough
to believe that the man in the tank
loves the world even as bombs go off
around the limits of our fences,

But now I love a room
with high ceilings,
empty corners,
rooms big to swing
a cat by the tail,
where my voice rises high
and loud and rings against
the pipes and then dies
away like notes plunked
from a fine-tuned piano,
I love the discovery shoes,
sober talk, doors without locks,
windows left open
with every racket of car alarm
and leaf blower
and weekend carpenter
speaking to me in sounds
that bustle
in phonics that flash a language
that words trail
like a dog after its master
where back yards yield to one another
like lovers wearing blindfolds in abandoned parks
horrified that they might
be passing each other as
both their reaches miss their
objects of desire
and both of them walk sightless in the other direction,
around corners
and into busy traffic
before one, and then the other
takes off the blindfolds
to discover that they are
in a different city
than where they started the day,
every one is in another part of
the map, fenced in with invisible lines
that is the borders armies
make whole populations extinct for,
the world
might learn to do something
with fences that run up and down the
avenues and right into the living rooms
so that the couches and beds have
politics in every position you assume
running from stress, I say,

unwind my string
and kiss me, please,
you are a moon I want to have orbit me,
I am a gravity you cannot deny,
you make my fences sway in
your bluster and flower print dresses,
I regret fences I set up the day
you left town,

the last thing to be seen
were you on the other side of the fence
getting into your red Volvo
just before you drove away
with my heart in your trunk.

Public Affairs Broadcast

I was in the living room with the TV on C—Span that afternoon, waiting for the Furies to visit, when one fly, and then two landed on the rim of my glass of orange juice. This must be it, I thought. On the screen was another panel discussion by some dais of experts summarizing what they hadn’t found out after years of drawing substantial salaries. The flies skirted around the rim, stopping occasionally to inspect a shred of orange pulp that had been congealing for an hour since I last touched the glass, and then skirting around again. One fly took flight abruptly, performing miracle circles and dives through the depressed haze of cigarette smoke, while the other remained on the room, seemingly entranced by the pulp. I looked at the screen again and listened to a man at the podium who looked to be in his fifties drone on in a voice that was as lifeless and dry as chapped lips pressed against sand paper. Balding, his fringe flowing over his ears and the collar of black shirt, his face oval shaped, his suit an orchestration of wrinkles and color blindness, I had him pegged: a soft boiled egg after a thrift—store binge. I scratched my nuts and then my scalp, thinking that I ought to take shower, as the smoke was no longer covering the body odor but now mingled with it after the while, creating an ambience that was double the funk. One fly remained on the glass rim inspecting the texture of the orange pulp while the other one was gone all together. I lit another cigarette and listened to the TV.

“Well, “ said the speaker., who was sweating huge globules from his lips, “I was going to address to the problem that Rock Criticism is no~ facing in light of recent advances in digital technology and the emergence of non-white cultures in a main-stream genre which, ironically, was the creation of a vital American subculture. These, among other developments in international popular culture, poses some interesting problems for a generation of mostly white and middle-aged and male rock critics ~who, unless they get with the program, stand to become the next generation of reactionary commentators who, strangely, will relinquish their claim of progressivism and in turn become protectors of aesthetic standards that, in the long view, never in fact existed. BUT--”
The speaker looked up at the audience, stared straight in the C-Span camera, and gave a grin that was roaming all over his doughy, chinless face. He picked up the pages of his prepared talk and flung them in the air. One hand grabbed the podium while the other wrapped; around the microphone as though it were a gun. The pages fluttered downward around him.
“-—BUT--” he continued, his voice louder and animated now, nearly slurred as his syllabics went free—lance, “BUT.. . I’ve been in the hotel bar since I ‘ye checked in this morning to consider the talk, and damn that bartender Jorge has a heavy hand on the pour, and I gotta tell ya I managed to stack a perfect pyramid of shot glasses, and I considered this thing here called rock criticism, and I’m pretty goddamned fucked-~ right now, and so I have preface all coming comments by saying that this a pretty fucking lame way to make a living, the other people who’re gonna talk are buncha Lit. Crit. drop outs who get their insights from a dime bag and a bong rather than a knowledge of The Unities, and frankly I think it sucks that I’m an assistant professor at Buffalo, NY junior college where the average humanities student LeRoi Nieman is too abstract and that a 7 and 7 is a mans’ drink. Whatta bunch of limp dicks! You guys are a bunch of fuckheads because you’re paying an asshole like me to tell you something. Have a drink, you fools. Hah! But on with the topic. Let’s see, let’s talk about niggers...”
At this point, the camera cut to the other panel members, who were sitting along a long, battered folding table that was draped with a white, coffee stained table cloth, three white males in grey business suits, carefully cut long hair, and wire framed glasses. While two of them remained shocked and ducked under the table, the third arose and walked of f the stage. The camera remained on the man at the podium, who was waving his arms as though signaling planes to land. He had stepped away from the podium, and was screaming at the audience.
“IT’ S NOT THE SAME! WHERE DID ALL THE POETS GO? WHERE IS THE SHAME. YOU ARE ALL FOOLS. I 'M FUCKED.... “


I grabbed the remote control and after flying through the channels, came across one of those half-hour advertisements for a questionable product that’s pathetically disguised as a talk show. I turned the sound of f and pulled my harmonica from my back pocket, but became frustrated when the middle notes of my brilliant improvisation came out sounded flat and atonal, a spike in the ear. I buried the harmonica under the middle cushion of the couch, and decided to get out of the house. I pushed the cocktail table out of my way, upsetting the orange juice glass. The fly was gone, though. He didn’t want to hear about niggers either. I was standing in the middle of the room.
“Okay, I give up” I said.
Then I sat on the couch again, picked up the remote control and turned the sound back on and watched this guy and that guy and that woman (who I imagined seducing) all take turns at the microphone talking their share of nonsense for hours and hours and hours.

—

Lost in a Swirl

Chuck was lost in a swirl of his own thoughts just as Alice came up to him at the bus stop.

"What are you thinking" she asked, her voice a brassy rasp. She placed the plastic bag she'd been carrying on the bench where Chuck sat, where it met the warped and over- painted wood with a wet , crackling rush of air.

"Oh, ya startled me" said Chuck. He rubbed the back of his neck and looked up at Alice, squinting to see her face. If he still had the glasses that got run over by the city bus a month ago, he wouldn't have to strain his eyes to see the droops and sags in her face, the
lines that looked like ravines seen from planes on implausibly clear days. He could tell she was smiling. When she frowned her face seemed darker, more a smear or stain in a cloth than the cheery cloud she usually seemed in his blurry world.

"Whatcha thinking" she asked again.

"Thinking about going downtown and getting me a few bucks for a pint of blood and then
getting a room at the Sattler to get out of the cold, ya know? They're gonna tear that thing down and put some condos or offices or some such nonsense, and I thought it'd be nice to spend a night in a room with a roof and windows that close and all, for old times sake."

He fell quiet, and after some minutes Alice spoke up.

"Mind if I tag along?"

"Nah. Let's get going then."

Chuck stood up and pushed the shopping cart he'd filled with everything he had and both of them moved up the main street, mindful of traffic, quiet as shadows as they moved toward the high rises, the tall buildings just over there, the towers of commerce.

Plato's Walk-In

In front of things adorning the lawns of our town, I abjure to squint of cranes and deers, jockeys with faces white as the walls of empty gallery stoic as they are in their enameled resolve,

Not here or there nor on any brush in sight can relief be spelled in a flick of the wrist , a motion that captures the tone and twist of a minute in this day when all the frustrations seemed they might just dissolve like thin sheets of sugar under warm tap water and just wash away, there is not a gesture that lets me to release things short of releasing all fingers from around the neck of the idea that is old, inert, unable to be redefined or made new by new paint on old boards.

The doors of the houses are wide open , dogs whimper and yelp their routine protest about weekends in the back of the truck,

It's broad daylight, the sunlight is spread like miles of smiling bed covers over the happenstance of my moods in this moment, the newsboy pitches the paper to the roof,

again,

It's business as usual, a full schedule of things to do or lie about doing.

Should I continue with my walk to the beach in a constricted stride, suffering the thoughts of phone calls that seemed to be about everything that was never said until the night past and hysteria goes back to sleep, my mind seems a cave with deep, slurred echoes of what we talked about, the impossibility of the desire, the attraction to fires, bright lights at the end of cigarettes?

Damn these animals and doors, damn this daylight, damn the world and it's orderly progression.

Car Wash

there's a last chance for love
in each sigh you make
watching your car get dragged
through the car wash, sudsy and wet,

but even as breath escapes through
your nose and a sad whistle comes
through your teeth, a homeless man
hands you dollar, and you drop it
as he turns, it's filthy and creased,

your car is shiny as a new penny
in the glistening and buffing that
makes machines gleam with
sex and torque after hours,
thank you, you sigh, I'll park my own car,

the homeless man is out in front
of the wash,he pushes his cart
full of cans and newspaper wrapping
into the alley, he drops a dollar in the street,
he is in love with the Wendy's senior cheeseburger,

you get in your shiny car
while the city awaits your arrival,
everyone you wanted to see you
behind this wheel are eating dinner at home
or are dead before you could brag,

and the homeless guy just gives away
his money,

so no one right at this minute
really gives a shit

what it is your driving
when there is still
the boss's work to be done,

goddamn it,
you say.