Gatorade don't do it

Someone has to be the one
breaking the bad news over old bread,
catching us when there’s one arm in the coat
and chewing stale toast.
Seldom do you expect that
the length of the shadow
following you might possibly
be only one of many such shrouds,
all with names and families,
black or grey streaks falling across
sidewalks and brick fences,
each taking turns keeping you in line,
waiting your turn, motherfucker.
It’s getting so bad
that we’ll take a meeting
behind bars and resolve
that this is the year
we will throw away.

She said go deep

She said to “go deep”
as she handed me a football
which I dropped then
while I wondered out loud
how and why these goal posts
were erected in our store
to which she said
that she refused to
take her work home
but it was simply wonderful
to bring home life to the job.
As usual, I shrugged
and answered the
phone in my best
late night
broadcast
voice
and found myself
speaking to
a woman who had a book
with a yellow cover
that reminded
her of the dress she wore
seven decades ago
on her first communion,
in the spring,
when flowers bloomed
and relatives started sneezing.
She paused and
then hung up the phone,
and as I put my end down
a kid from the neighborhood
was at the counter
asking me the price
of every book and
pencil in sight
in between segments from
his gasping saga
of buying a tombstone for an
uncle who once got funny with him
in a closet
two holidays ago.
the kid laughed nervously, fast,
breathless, as I said,
and ran out the door
onto the cracked, pricey sidewalk.
My coworker
was doing drum solos
with number 2 pencils
along the glass shelves
that displayed the
heaviest books in the store,
she smiled and riffed,
pinged, rim shot her
way out of a tight
rhythmic problem,
the phone rang again,
she tells me to
get that,
but I get nothing at all
except a headache,
looking up from the counter
after I pick up the receiver,
some middle aged guy
in an MC 5 t-shirt
holding a mounted moose head
over the cash register,
a long stretch of Bullwinkle
waiting to be kissed,
it’s all I can do
not to look up
from the small holes
in the receiver,
it’s still three hours till lunch.

At noon all the cats

At noon all the cats
behind the bushes
and yowl for their rights
to milk and stiff fingers
scratching their heads.

Such faces they make
when there is one can left,
squinting under the sun
that’s not even blinding
the visiting team’s outfield staff.

She learned how to
read when the cuffs came off,
signs in hard English explaining
basic hygiene as it doesn’t get
mentioned in stacks of Elizabethan smut.

One bullet was all he needed,
one clear shot,
a gun would help, he joked,
and then a car pulled out
from a parking spot and
he stepped on the gas,
turning hard with a squeal,
gravel flying.

It’s just another
rumor of fires
behind the hills
where there are still trees
to clear for our houses
and meals with families
from other states.

Cats leave the pool alone
but sing to the moon instead
as jets make their way in
formations ready for desert blitz,

These are nights when
no calls get through,
cell phones go out of range
in the back of your pocket,

Emergency operators are
standing by as you stand there
staring at the phone and trying
to watch the ball game at the same time,

Did you say you’re from Detroit?
Great. That’s where Jimmy Hoffa
was sliced into a dozen Sicilian pizzas,
y’know?

Karl Marx wrote his wife
love poems for each daughter
who died waiting for him to
change the world.

San Diego is a home
that makes sleeping
seem a crime against
drugs and their use.

Goddamnit, I say
move the mountain
to Arizona, to hell with the Cross.

Every Floor Gives Way

You are a card carrying
waste of time
and I am
a prince and a punk
whose words make
noise like coins
falling on marble floors,
a rattle and a snap,
and then silence
like a big room after a wake.

One of us
talks too much
on right-turn radio
where opinions
are all you have
when the facts
are no where
in the vicinity.
The other of us
packs a lunch
every morning,
and by 4pm
notices the
long shadows of
buildings draping
over the park bench
where they
nap until quitting time.
The paper bag
clinks with
the rustle of
broken glass,
a police radio
repeats the name
of another child gone
missing from the
playground,
a child reads the names
of those who died
somewhere at work,
over a city that was
getting ready for lunch,
afternoon naps,
both of us
stare at each other
when the bad news
reaches our table
at the bar,
news stations
offering their best
screaming headlines,

All we ever do is scream
at each
other
I say,
And you
add.
That's the only time
we hear each other

I scratch
where it itches
before asking
you for a kiss
like you gave me
in the days
we were younger
and full of the future.

We'll meet for dinner
at eight you say,
we'll line our pockets
with knowledge
and bread,
dance
together to the news, weather, sports.
all notes
about forms of battle,
we'll raise our
voices
and yell the worth of
our lives and anxieties
into the mix
we'll pass between ourselves
while the
earth turns, cracks, splits apart
and the cries of the night
merge with the sunlight
and becomes a part our day
of yelling and screaming
and every floor
collapsing from under our feet.

No Birds

So much depends on sunlight,
a head turning the other way to
avoid a crash of sight lines,
long sails on the bay during
still water days,
hotel keys dropped in the sand.

God is dead asleep
in the hills
along paths the coastline,
the philosophy of dust
contravenes conventional wisdom
those beautiful things
last forever in the shapes we gave them
because the roads to the beach
are lined with abandoned houses
and farm equipment left
from another decade in arid fields
that turn into mire and mud
every time it rains.

Nothing grows here.

Catholic to the bone, look,
there are no holes in my hand,
Jesus must have dirty fingers
after he arose from his ales,
I baptize myself with layers
of deodorant soap, water circles the drain
in a funnel, and then is gone.

The tornado pulls itself
over the land and reconfigures the
towns and farms it ploughs through,
this land is matchsticks and glass
blowing over the hills,
windows blow out buildings,
everyone ducks into cellars
and door frames,

The shoreline boils and churn,
waves are white,
there are no birds in the sky.

A Wild Rotary Blade in his Pants

"I am tired of drying the goddamned cat by hand."

That was what he said. Drying the cat by hand and all he could do
was rant and spew about how much he hated being alive in a city
where no one knew the meaning of the fine phrase "get down." It was enough
to make a man wish that none of the riots of sixties had taken place
if only because it was time for a man to be a man and cram a wild
rotary blade in his pants.

"Why don't we go into the other room where we can can
figures some shit out and shit like that?"

"Fuck you, I want a copy of Commie Grelb Pants magazine
on my coffee table right now..."

I picked up a copy of Gravity's Rainbow and hit him over the head with it,
and kept hitting him until there was nothing to swing at.

Change for a dollar

Most of the change from the dollar
For the newspaper falls to the floor,
It’s all you can do not swear and smile instead
As the cashier with the greased fingertips
Widens her eyes, eyebrows pitching in
An A frame of worry,

A tiny smile on her face trembling as
She fights back the fear, her mouth
Shrinking to an ‘o’ of ‘oh my”, she giggles, she sobs,
Everyone stares past the candy bars and magazines
To see who made their angel cry,

Oh my back creaks like
A door on a corroded hinge,
My knees crack when I bend,
Snapping twigs are what
People remember for

Every penny is flat at your feet
And red faced as you stare hard
At several Lincoln copper tone beard
Tarnishing under the fluorescent light,
Round taunts lying on two tone tile,

You smile at her, you bend over,
Knees make the sound of snapping twigs,

Oh my goddamned back

Every dime, quarter and nickel
Has rolled under the counter,
Out of sight, having scurried
To some dusty corner
The janitor’s mop couldn’t reach,

I’m making the sounds my father made

And you swear you see him as you stoop
Walking out of an elevator and out the street,
Wearing a nice suit and fine hat from fifty years ago,

Around the time you were born
When all this wear and tear began.