Mud

I've always wanted to wrestle an angel.
That Tyrannosaurus angel, the one who threw
Jacob's hip out of joint in Genesis.
I want to wrestle with that angel in .

that's wet, primeval, slime-slippery slick.
Slick as the moss on a rainforest redwood.
Slick as a wet log bridge suspended over a raging stream.
Slick as those stones in the same stream in summer,

the stones that capsize you into cold water,
the water you would have preferred
to have submerged into slowly,
inch by inch, stopping at the waist,

like a cautious explorer in crocodile country.
A wild, muggy country of butterflies and panthers
with no doctors or lawyers or wireless connections
for a hundred-thousand square miles.

A country much closer to the moon than ours
where ear-splitting monkeys howl,
frightening you from sleep
only to find, beside your hammock,

that dinosaur angel,
scale chested, arms crossed,
solar flares flaming from his eyes,
muttering, "Want to wrestle?"

Twelve

I’ve always envisioned the six of them lurking
in the halls of the vacated school,
bored as hell, stinking of Marlboros,
spitting at walls, pissing against lockers,
at war with the whole damned galaxy—
then Higgins sees us on our Stingray bikes
cruising the corridors, weaving around poles,
and swears to his buddies, "I hate these motherfuckers” —
because we’re Austs, because we’re lucky,
because we haven’t a clue,
because our backyard fence boundaries
his grandmother's orchard
and we eat of the fruit of her trees
with her permission--not his.
Never his.

Those unpruned pregnant nectar-rich trees,
lush apricots dripping with gold
into the dusty high weeds of that gnarled orchard
too huge for her to manage
which Higgins prowls like a border guard
whenever he’s left with her
with Liberty Valance eyes
and a soggy peach in each clenched fist.

Of course we resist--my brothers against his—
heaving threats, insults, dirt clod grenades,
until that inevitable hurled stone
rebounds off our sliding glass door and
signals a clear declaration of war.

I hop the fence solo one dry afternoon
thinking the orchard all mine,
stumble to my knees, look up to find Higgins
glaring behind the star thistles.
I swear he intends to tear me in two
but stand my ground as he warily circles.
Then the wilderness pulls us down and we clutch
and roll in an awkward embrace,
biting the earth, pummeling nothing,
then abrubtly, dirt-caked with dusty nostrils,
stand and part our ways,
relieved to have wrestled Apollyon
for ten seconds and survived.

It’s Higgins sets us up the next spring
at the empty Junior High.
My six-year-old brother, sun speckled and small,
straddles his thick-tired bike
as I grope my filthy locker for a
history book misplaced.
Someone’s hand interferes, clutches the metal door.
 “What are you hiding in there?”
It’s Fredricks. I know him. A wounded raccoon.
I wonder how many grown men he’s defaced.

Six guys surround me. I pause to consider.
Higgins among them, smirking.
And then the spider bites
between the knuckles of my freckled right hand.
That’s Brinkley, gibbon-faced, alcoholic,
drilling his cigarette into soft smoking flesh.
 “Does that hurt?” he says with a clownish grin,
then clears his throat, spits three times in my hair.
I thrust my bike at him.
Surprised, he falls back. Remembering my brother,
I say,“Let’s leave these punks, Tim.”
And back away.
And they let us go. Laughing.

We speed ourselves home, not speaking at all
except to conspire, “Don’t tell Mom.”
Not a cloud in the sky that day, my right hand stinging,
the air full of lilacs and blossoms
and the pondering of my twelve-year-old mind:
how no greater indignity has yet been inflicted
in the history of mankind.

Overheard Outside Burger King

Could you spare a quarter of your sterile life?
A grain of salt from your pillared wife?
Could I work for one smile of your arctic face?
Or a whiff of warmth from some mythic grace?
Anything'd help: a hat of yam,
a loaf of luck, a shoe of jam,
your skull encased in a wooden cask.
Please help. God bless. I'm shrinking fast.

Clog off, odd wad. Go melt in hell.
I'm busy in my diving bell.

morning

Cheap Trick

Double-quick 
       D
       R
       O
       P
       kick! 

    WHOP kick! CHOPstick! 

    Frank SINATRIC! 

    Caustic Gnostic!
                

June 28, 2011

One week after the longest day
of this endless tragic year
I glance out back
at my budding summer garden
to discover the rain
playing a viola
hosting a surprise party
for the baffled world.

Lament of the Obese Wraith

Now that I'm dead I need more exercise.
Death strips you thin, they say, but they're dead wrong.
I roam back alleys, heavy with regret.

In my day men loved my supple lies,
my breasts like loaves of bread, my promises.
Wise men thought twice and gave me up for Lent.

Now I buckle sidewalks with my thighs,
trigger earthquakes, stagger like Queen Kong,
half her height and twice as corpulent.

An irate priest once tried to exorcise
my bloated presence from his parish yard.
I stuck in his gate 'til winter was half spent.

Greed transcends the grave, entices flies,
distends the ego, basks in disregard.
I haunt dark corridors, fat and out of breath.

Awkward Moment

I tasted infinity in my wife's meat loaf
but was afraid to tell her as she's a
sensitive cook

and besides we had guests.

So I swallowed hard and asked,

to no one in particular,
"What single-syllable sound would you choose
for your epiphany?"

to which my wife replied,

"You're just asking that

because you don't like the meat loaf."

"I don't much care for infinity," I confessed.

"Makes me feel negligible,"

to which all our guests applauded.

"But you are insignificant," said my wife.

"We all are, in the great grand scope of

eternity. In six billion years,

what will it matter?"

We all grew quiet and stared

into our napkins.

"I have an answer to your question,"

said my wife:

"∞"

Yow

YOW! Bit hard
the inside of my mouth.
Why the hell does this happen every time I write a poem?
Chewing away on the
rubbery gristle of
undigestable thoughts
I've inadvertantly devoured
the inside corner of my lip.
Poetry should never be
this hard.

Nein One One

[The random words I used for this poem are in bold type]

I was a shy and guarded young bank exec
burning out my esophagus on breath mints and Marlboros
with little reverence for those not upwardly bound.

Each morning I downed two scrambled eggs,

three tabs of Concerta with high octane Starbucks

to keep distraction at bay,

commuted to work absorbed in audio books

on motivation, risk, and investment,

trusting fully in the omniscience

of finance gurus

and their high-stakes investment advice

until that cold morning when two wild geese

crashed into my office tower

and the resulting explosions that did not occur

reminded me of my unfinished life

and the irreversible damage i might not inflict

upon the precious and fragile world.

imagine that

you're flying above the clouds in the agonizing light
of a halo on the brow of a bullet-proof dove
bearing an olive branch straight for Noah's Ark
you're a blue lozenge cooling the sore throat of the sky

and i'm sitting here in the hail storm lonely as uranium
a piece of cast-off fiction yellowing on the street
one of the drowned ones spinning in turbulence
a swollen appendix about to rupture

I like to imagine us combusting all reason
praying in unison, prying the future apart

Mermaid's Lament

Not so very long ago
our songs would intoxicate
even the most resistant sailors,
lure them to the deck rails
where we would seduce them with
our kelp-filled gazes,
our luscious metaphorical breasts,
persuade them to abandon all,
to leap into our outstretched arms
and endure forever the icy waters
for the thrill of our embrace.
But now the great ships pass us by
and hardly one sailor in a thousand
will stand at the rail to gaze,
and those who do take photographs
seeing only seal skin, whiskers and blubber,
and call our songs 'barks'. 

Request

Pardon me, ma'am. Would you mind too much
if I took one deep breath
of your fresh laundered blouse
that smells so sweetly of the sea?
Or if I buried my nose into your damp hair
so recently rinsed and shampooed
and clinging to your neck in lovely ringlets?
I've been standing in this crowded commuter train
for three long hours now
in tight black shoes
with nothing to read but
a red computer manual
and could use a little reason
to live.

How to Write a Poem

First off, give up trying
to write a poem.
Just give it up!
Do something else instead:
basketball with a homeless kid,
laundry, taxidermy, nap.
Send roses to the obese neighbor
in the blue house up the street.
Email your dead mother.
Call three friends and make fun of them.
Walk across town barefoot
in search of the burning bush.
Gargle with baking soda,
brush your cat's teeth.
Wait for a moment when your heart is quiet,
then grab a pen and paper
and quickly scrawl
your soul's most recent dream -
not a poem, not a poem.

One Way of Looking at a Blackboard

Amontilado twenty-fourno snub mountain ash,
Theo onomastic moving picture thingamabob
Wash theo eyeball ofay theo blackboard.

[This poem was composed by taking each word from the first stanza of Wallace Stevens' "Twenty Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" and replacing it with the very next word in the dictionary.

"Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird."]

Dream While Driving

I fell asleep again today, this time while driving.
I dreamed I was awake, and driving
on the very same freeway
on the very same day
and every driver in every other car
knew me and waved as they passed.
Some honked their horns and smiled.
Small children pressed their faces against the windows
and gestured wildly.
It felt good to be known and recognized.
Everyone drove safely,
and gave me lots of room.
I did not recognize a single man, woman, or child
though they seemed to know me very well.
I wondered - had I known them in some other life?

A taxi driver wearing a turban
rolled down his window
and motioned for me to exit.
I pulled off at the next freeway offramp.
I found a place to pull over beside
a field of golden barley.
I waited for him to come to my window.
It took a while, for he had but one leg
and he had to walk with crutches.
"Do you remember me?" he exclaimed,
smiling broadly but with tears in his eyes.
"I'm sorry," I said, "I don't remember you at all."
"I am Mansi, your son in law," he said.
"I married your daughter."
"I don't have a daughter," I said.
"Your daughter Gloria, with the beautiful voice."
"I'm sorry," I said, "I don't remember a thing."
"It's okay," he said. "Remembering
isn't everything."
He embraced me then and I woke up.

I was still driving, but on an unfamiliar highway
that seemed to stretch on forever
between foggy rice fields
without another car or farmhouse in sight
and no way to remember
from where I had come from
or where I was going.

Camp

The camp pool glowed green once the sun blew out.
Guys with clipboards herded us into teams.
My team, the Ravens, chose me to start.
My mission: to hold my head submerged
longer than any other teenage fool.

At the whistle, I plunged into water
cold as space, silent
as a whale's womb.
How could I not taste death?

My team shouted words from far away.
Loneliness embraced me like a ghost.
I hid there for what seemed like hours
beneath the stones of duty
until my lungs heaved, grew wings,
lifted me back
to the world of the living.

One other child endured Sheol
two seconds longer than I.
I felt deeply for her.

This Poem Starts with a Deep Breath

"Take a deep breath," my doctor said
in a strong Korean accent.
His stethoscope pressed cold against my chest.
In a frame on the wall, his medical license
butted up against a print
of the lovely Mona Lisa.
"Why is she smiling?" I asked.
"Why is who smiling?"
"The young woman in the painting," I said,
"on the wall behind your back."
"I can't stand that painting," he said.
"Everytime I walk into the room
it's as if she's smirking at me.
She's thinking, 'You call yourself a doctor?
You're just a quack."
"Well, are you?" I asked
as he looked into my ear
with a strange device.
"Well she sure thinks so," he said
in a brusque physician tone.
"She's the Mona Lisa. She must know."

From an examination room across the hall
I heard an old man scream.
The doctor tapped my kneecap
with a tiny rubber-tipped mallet.
"I don't think you're a quack," I said.
"I think you're very competent.
You did a great job on my ruptured spleen."
"Do you really think so?" he said.
"And remember that band saw accident last year?
I thought I'd never write again.
And here I am, on my third novel."
"You're very kind," my doctor said.
"I need more patients like you.
What color bandaid would you like?"
"I'll take green," I said.

"I want to prescribe some medication
for your invisible nose," he said.
"Whatever you think is best," I said,
although I'm okay with it, actually."
By the way," I said, as he wrote my prescription down,
"why don't you replace that painting
with something a little more uplifting?
Leda and the Swan, perhaps,
or maybe something by Warhol."
"I've considered that," he said.
"But at this point in my life
I just don't want to make big changes.
And besides," he said,
"Mona Lisa keeps me humble."

Airport

It is a terrible thing to fall in love
with an airport security screener.
"Please remove your shoes," she said,
"and place them in the bin."
I stared at her, unable to speak,
grateful - so grateful -
for the lilt of her voice.
"Sir," she said,
"remove your shoes."

Outside it was snowing.
All around me, anxious travelers
divested themselves of their
precious jewelry.
I crawled onto the xray belt.
"Scan me," I cried.
"Look into my heart.
See that I am an
honest man!"

A Mountain of Shit

1. I was sitting in Starbucks staring into my Espresso Macchiato and thinking about the fecal matter stuck to the bottom of my shoe when it occurred to me that dog crap is only metaphor for real shit.

2. Real shit is the wealthy business man who purchases a first class ticket to Cambodia in order to rape a ten-year-old enslaved in a brothel from which there is no escape.

3. Real shit is the mountain of refuse on the outskirts of Manila that regularly avalanches down to bury the children skipping rope below.

4. Real shit "happens" all right, but lets not diminish that truth with a dumb shit sticker tacked onto the bumper of a chunk of metal spewing real shit into the life-sustaining air we breathe.

5. Real shit "happens" because we allow it, dispense it, toss it, fan it, eat it, smoke it, sling it, and imagine it into existence.

6. Real shit begins when the sperm of greed meets the ovum of dark fantasy and births naked carefree indulgence.

7. It's not what a human ingests and which later drops into the latrine that equals real shit, said the Rabbi; it's what oozes from the dark corners of the human heart that stinks up the world.

8. Hitler's real name was Adolph Shitler. Mao's real name was Mao Tse Dung. Stalin's real name was Joseph Shitionovich Stalin, otherwise known as Little Shit. But despite their atrocities, let us not think that we are less capable.

9. Real shit is the 10 acres of tin foil manufactured each day to wrap eighty million Hersheys Kisses made of chocolate originating, by the way, from the Ivory Coast cocoa farms where child slaves work 100 hours a week making us happy on Valentine's Day.

10. We are shit athiests refusing to acknowledge the existence of shit we can't see. Which is why the plastic pebbles swirling in the Pacific now cover Hawaiian beaches and catch in the throats of gulls and crabs but don't really bother us much.

11. Real shit isn't the dog feces on the bottom of the shoe. Real shit is the shoe on the top of the dog feces made of materials that won't decompose any time soon.

12. Real shit is the plastic straw and styrofoam cup into which I stare in my daily Starbucks ritual.

13. But then again, who really gives a shit.