HEAVEN IN YOUR HEAD

 

The heaven in your head is just so
Of pretty pictures filled with pastoral
Utopias and adolescent dreamings.
Just imagine if I were there and you,
You were there too, locked inside together
Seeing through perfumed colored eyes,
All the world with its simple complexities
And complex simplicities
And wouldn’t it be just
Swell, if you removed
A little bit of the Heaven from your head
And a little of the Hell from mine
And together we could make
A perfect or so
Purgatory for two?

 

GOULASH APOCALYPSE Pt. 2

It was Night of the Big Sombrero.  Men with skin the consistency of aged leather draped themselves in festive serapes and danced the Hopak on the narrow ledges of high walls while the women wailed and gnashed their teeth at passing goats.

Rosalita, a glowing, cherry flavored cheroot dangling from her grey, cracked lips, ripped off her saffron rebozo and tossed it into the mud.  A glass of sangria exploded at her feet as she began to caterwaul like a maniacal cat being castrated.  Her eyes rolled back in her head till only the whites showed and she began to shriek dire omens in a form of archaic Gaelic that had heretofore been unheard in these parts.

Father Umberto O’Flannery clutched his head and fell to his knees before Rosario’s feet and began to beg, “Aye, Senorita Mahoney what evil is this ye speak?”

But Rosalita spoke no more and would not speak again for many years.

All went silent as the revelers struggled to make sense of Rosalita’s ominous warnings.  Was something truly horrific about to occur?  And if so, would it be today, tomorrow or ten years from now?  Or was she simply mad as a hatter?

 “That’s the problem with these prophecies,” complained Juan Darby, “they’re always so vague.”

“Aye, brother Juan,” replied his brother Lupe, “I for one would like to know wherein I should go to work in the morn or sleep in.  If the end really is nae a-coming I don’ coddle to wasting a perfectly foine day a-working.”

There then occurred much discussion on Lupe’s wise words.  It was finally decided that while Rosalita’s prophecies were almost certainly complete bullshit, it was better to be safe than sorry and in an unanimous vote they agreed to continue the Celebration of the Sombrero and declare the next day also a holiday.

A mariachi band then began to play an Irish reel and Father O’Flannery opened the church wine cellars to all.

There was merrymaking the rest of the night and when the end did not come the next day, it was decided this should be an occasion for more merrymaking and another holiday was declared.  

 Thus no more work was ever done by the Mexican Irish who instead chose to celebrate each day that the end of the world had not come. 

AND ALL THE COWS COME HOME

Cows graze in concrete pastures,
where once bloomed fields of sweet, lavender grass,.
gathering in homogenized herds,
lowing in mute bovine confusion,
their dumb eyes search the horizon
for the farmer who no longer comes.

They follow asphalt rivers

through dead cities, trampling
splintered bones and fallow dust,
lolling about the face of the world
uncertain of their destination.

Coming upon an abandoned abattoir,

instinctively, they fall into line,
but with no one to start the machines
all they know to do
is wait…
and wait…

FRIDAY NIGHT MONSTERS

It began with the slow, ominous thunder

of funeral bells, the creeping groan
of a creaking door, then the hushed,
whispering voice of a woman intoning,
     “In the dead of night,
      When the moon is high
      And the ill winds blow
      And the banshees cry
      And the moonlight casts
     An unearthly glow,
     Arise my love with tales of woe.”
The camera would cut to a coffin,
its lid rising slowly to reveal
an ashen faced ghoul with dark, shrunken cheeks
dressed in black, gloves and hooded cape
who introduced himself as Sammy Terry
with a deep, diabolical laugh
and would bid us welcome

to Nightmare Theater

just as at the end of the night he would

wish us “Pleasant nightmares,” before

sending us off to bed with the same

sinister laughter.

 
It was the Friday Night Monster Movie Bash

and no youngster growing up in central Indiana

during the sixties or seventies could fail

to recollect WTTV’s resident horror host

and his sidekick, George the rubber spider who spoke

in a high pitched chitter that only Sammy could understand.

So camp and obviously fake

yet it never failed to frighten us.

The movies were of secondary interest;

bad 1950’s B-films of bikini clad babes

being pursued by atom age monsters from the sea,

giant insects, robots from outer space

and bug eyed behemoths from the deeps

sprinkled with an authentic classic

like “Dracula” or “Frankenstein” or one of those

lush gothics from Hammer Studios.

Instead, we watched for Sammy’s dry

gallows humor and comically

convoluted commentary

or that night’s cinematic snack.

 

We always had to beg our parents to stay up late,

promising extra chores and dismissing their concerns

that such ghastly images would give us nightmares

or that we would grow up to be psychopathic killers

or even worse, Democrats,

wearing them down with a child’s insistent persistence.

We’d pan pop our popcorn, slather it in real butter

and salt then leave half of it uneaten

when the movie’s frights became too much

for our eight year old brains,

spend most of the night peering at the screen

through spread fingers and giggling

as we tried to out-scare our siblings.

 

Later, in our bed, all assurances to parents aside,

those horror flick beasts, no matter how cheesy or faked,

would follow us into our dreams to chase us

through the nightmare labyrinth of sleep

but it was Sammy who came to us most often,

rising from some dark grave to pull us

screaming into his dungeon where even George,

that rubber, dime-store Halloween prop

was transformed into a hideous, fanged giant

from the blackest reaches of Hell.

 

 

     

 

DRAMEDY

 

A man so poor he is forced
to sell the part in his hair,
permanently damaging
his once near perfect coiffure,
decides life is meaningless and sad,
tries to kill himself
ala Sylvia Plath
but when he puts his head in the oven
he discovers he is out of gas,
his supply having been
cut off for nonpayment.

His mood darkens

when he is charged with
casting pearls before swine,
it brightens when he inherits
10 million dollars
from an unknown Nigerian uncle.
Tragically, the next day
he is killed
slipping on a banana peel.

THE ADOPTION

A woman enters a room, holding her uterus.

“Look,” she says to her husband, “I’ve removed my uterus.”

“And why would you do that?” asks her puzzled husband.

“It has given us so many lovely children,” she says, “I wanted to examine it more closely. Isn’t it beautiful? The way the fallopian tubes spread out like a butterflies wings.”

She holds it closer to her husband’s face that he might better admire it.

“No, it is not beautiful,” says her husband, “It’s hideous. It belongs inside the body, not outside dripping its fluids all over the linoleum. Go put it back before it goes bad and is of no use to anyone.”

“I was thinking of putting it in a jar and placing it on the mantle for others to admire,” the woman says.

“But, what if I want more children?” the man shrieks, not realizing he is shrieking in an unknown language.

  “We can always adopt,” replies the woman, “in fact, you can adopt my uterus and I can adopt your penis.”

“But I don’t want to give up my penis,” the man thrashes on the floor, white spumes of seminal saliva spurting out his mouth.

“Then my uterus will be very lonely. It has known your penis so well.”

PEARLS AND SWINE

Those Calgon cowboys in their
starched white shirts,
gold plated cufflinks,
eyes focused on the digital
tickertape scroll of the market board,
buy and sell the world
at forty dollars a share.

In steel and glass cathedrals,
the certified public priests of high finance
play pecuniary hymns
on computer keyboards
with their powder soft hands,
chanting aloud in solemn,
Harvard educated voices,
from the Wall Street Journal.

Somewhere in the Mid-west,
a farmer tosses hay from a wagon
with scarred, callused hands,
sweat stiffening his chambray shirt.
By dusk his back will feel
like it’s being squeezed in a vise.
The only stock which concerns him
are the pigs squealing
in his muddy field.

He has turned 200 acres of ground,
readying for Spring planting,
a crop that come harvest
might not be worth enough
to break even, if those
Calgon cowboys and priests
in their holy skyscrapers decide
the price of a bushel isn’t worth
the sweat off a man’s brow.


Published in Blue Collar Review, 2011

BREAKFAST WITH OATMEAL

It is a morning for coffee, eggs and bacon.
But since the doctor has forbidden me
the pleasure of life’s small vices,
I eat my hot oatmeal, grimacing as I wash it down
with bland, watery decaf.
Upstairs I hear my wife’s feet
shuffling towards the bathroom.
I read the morning paper while I finish my oatmeal,
passing over the bad news for the sports page,
then the funnies.
I hear the toilet flush just as I reach
Pearls Before Swine.
My wife stumbles into the kitchen
looking as if she might really be on the hunt
for some tasty brains.
I distract her with oatmeal and decaf.
The oatmeal looks very much
the way my brain feels most days.
As she sleepily spoons the mushed cereal
into her gaping maw,
it suddenly occurs to me
that as much as we’d all love
coffee, eggs and bacon,
most of the time,
we have to settle for oatmeal.

A Comedy of the Absurd

Suppose a man awakens

some anonymous morning

and finds the world has slipped

into one of those off-off Broadway plays

where nothing makes sense

and everyone speaks

in melodramatic non sequiturs.

At first, he is confused

by what he sees,

it is as if the world has been

turned upside down and sideways.

He begins to fear he is losing his mind

and soon they will come

to lock him away.

But as the day goes by

and he becomes acclimated

to the rhythm of this strange,

Kafkaesque universe

he realizes that this is the way

the world has always been

and it is he who has been

out of step all this time.

Published in Poem, November 2009

Tonight's Feature

 

The clouds separate, like the drawing

Of the curtains at a movie theater

And the sky is suddenly flooded

With a cavalcade of stars.

Elizabeth Taylor as Cassiopeia

Lounges seductively upon her chair

Casting come hither glances towards

Steve Reeves’ Hercules who is locked

In mortal combat with the Hydra –

Special effects courtesy of Ray Harryhausen.

Kirk Douglas as Orion the Hunter

Pulls the string of his great bow

And sets fly a flaming arrow

That impales Ursa Major’s rump

Who rises up roaring and with one

Giant paw swipes the Big Dipper

From the sky, spilling a shower

Of shooting stars all across the sky.

A 1950’s science fiction rocket

Blasts past overhead,

Disguised as a satellite or an airplane,

But we know it’s an invasion

And only the teenagers down at the Soda Shop

Led, of course, by Steve McQueen

Can put a stop to their nefarious scheme.

Later, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers

Traipse across the blue face of the moon

Then it’s intermission and the night

Is filled with burlesque popcorn boxes

And dancing hot dogs.

Published in California Quarterly, Spring 2010

Finding Home

How far will a bird fly to escape

Winters arctic display?

A thousand miles or two,

Following the same

Migratory pattern year after year.

Yet we are surprised when a man

Changes his skin to escape the past.

That the earth continues

Its seasonal cycles whether

We are here or not is miracle enough

Or that salmon know the way

Back upstream to their spawning pool.

We will never understand the conversation

Between the trees and the wind

Or how far we will travel

In our lifetime, a million miles

or only a dozen, so what can we

Ever hope to understand

Of our own lives?

That we always find our way home

Is miracle enough.

Published in Poem, May 2010

This Island of Tears

 

 

The moon rises over the twisting spirals

and minarets of the old gods.

It is the quiet solace of their

ancient sanctuaries that call me

from my hotel room to the streets below.

The warm tropical heat is like

stepping into a blast furnace

after the cool air conditioned climate

of the hotel, I can smell salt

from the sea just a mile distant.

A truck rumbles by, spraying me

with cold water from the evening’s rain.

Up and down the avenue,

hard muscled men with olive skin

gather on the stoops of tenements,

listening to loud, lively rap music

and chattering jovially in their

exotic, alien language.  But I’m

the foreigner here, an intruder

in their world. I pass by silently,

a ghost tourist, keeping my eye

on the pavement at my feet.

There is a hint of agitation in the air,

a barely restrained sense of menace

in their posture and voices,

as if at any second they could explode

in a fury of fists and violence.

But they pay me no mind

and I soon pass by their neighborhood

into a narrow row of shops

and bars, leaking light

from open doors and plate windows.

An old woman with two snaggled teeth

and a scarf wrapped around her head

offers to tell my future

for ten dollars American.

But I already know my future.

It is behind me in the shadows

left by my passing.

My feet come to a stop on the stairs

of a looming, majestic cathedral.

The stained glass depicts St. Michael

brandishing a flaming sword.

I reach out and grasp the ornate handle

of a huge oak door.

But the door refuses to open.

Heaven has denied me entrance.

The moon drifts behind a cloud

darkening the street around me.

I can travel no further.

Published in Ship of Fools, Fall/Winter 2010

Disclaimer

No one was injured

in the making of this poem.

Whole families were not

wiped out by computer guided smart verbs.

No soldiers were fragged by friendly nouns.

No innocent bystanders were accidentally

gunned down by stray adjectives

from some random drive-by.

No women were beaten to death

by jealous prepositions

and absolutely no children

were harmed by conjunctions.

 All stunts were performed

by professionally trained

parts of speech

to bring this poem to you

100% injury free.

 Published in Poem, November 2010

Work for the Day

 

The way the twisted cords of yellow twine cut

into the fingertips, the weight of the body

as it turns and tosses

the tight packed bales from the wagon.

On the ground, your partner stacks

as fast as you can throw. Sweat

seeps down your back

into the crack of your pants.

You can smell your own

clean, sweet odor like a field of timothy

drying in the hot sun.

The cows keep watch, their heads

dangling over the fence, wondering

what curious creatures we humans are

to be expending so much effort in such

a seemingly meaningless task. 

Three hundred bales by noon,

unloaded and neatly stacked

to the barn’s wooden rafters.

You go inside for a quick lunch

of a cold meat sandwich and a bottle

of icy beer downed in a single

long, ecstatic drought

that leaves your head

slightly swimming and pleasantly buzzed.

All the long afternoon stretches before you

like those endless rows of Indiana corn.

Sighing, you push your ball-cap

back on your sopping forehead and right then

the evening seems a distant promise,

but you know the day

will not be long enough

for all that’s left to be done.

Originally appeared in The Rockford Review, Winter/Spring 2011

Rattling the Bones

The Juju man shakes his bones

onto the scarred mahogany table,

bends his bald head to study the results.

The dry, scaled skin stretched

thin as vellum across his glistening

black dome which begins to bob

up and down like a mesmerized cobra.

He mutters something in unintelligible Cajun,

looks up and tells me,

with a wide toothless grin,

 that I’m under a curse

that’s why bad things keep happening to me.

He tells me it’s a generational curse;

something my grandfather

or great grandfather did a hundred years ago

is the cause of all my misfortune.

He hands me a small bag

called a gris gris,

that smells of earth and herbs,

tells me to wear it close to my heart

but if I really want to be free

I have to bury an egg

in a cemetery at midnight. 

He takes my forty dollars

and sends me away.

Beneath me I can feel

the bones of my ancestors

rattling their innocence. 

Published in Abbey, 2011

Necromancy

The dead man sits up and wants to talk about his life,

his sins and transgressions.

He’s Catholic and didn’t receive last rites.

I tell him to shut up, it’s too late,

his body is now an empty bag of meat,

his soul having flown the coop, crossed over,

gone to that great Disneyland in the sky.

Things got weird from there. 

The moon was casting a double helix

and a red caul covered the sky. 

The cadaver of a young girl cried

that such a thing hasn’t been seen

since Romulus Augustus was deposed  by Odoacer. 

I should have removed her tongue when I took her eyes. 

Now she thinks she’s Cassandra

issuing dire warnings of the apocalypse.

All around me, the dead begin to babble excitedly,

trying to climb off the tables where

I had so carefully arranged them.

I command them to get back,

but like sulking children they start to whine

and pout, stamping their feet,

demanding to go outside to gaze

at the portentous moon.

The rebellion continues until

I threaten to remove their brains.

I think I really need a new line of work

Published in Abbey, June 2011

The Magic Guitar

Itinerant, John Wanderer

strums his guitar all day long,

a penny a song, a dime a dance

while Napoleon Socrates prances along

in time to the music.

When they have collected all they need,

John takes Socrates by the lead

and off they ride

to the next town down the line.

And all the while John continues

to sing and play.

One chord changes night to day,

another and Spring become Fall

and still another turns the blue sky gray.

Every so often he frets a special chord,

a secret and awesome chord

that he and he alone knows.

And John, who is neither young nor old

any more than he is really a man

but something beyond our reckoning,

plays the song which will bring

the universe to an end.

Published in  Storyteller, Spring 2011