Like you, I depend on the kindness of zombies –
they share their bandages and a smoke with me
down here in the subway – our boxcars of the undead
on Monday morning, stereo
boombox trains coming and going.
Should I enlist the rats to help clean my wounds?
gnaw away the necrotic pizza crusts
falling from the trash bin of my soul?
Debride the brightly colored M&Ms
that look like candy but bring no solace.
Is there forgiveness or salvation
this far underground,
six feet times six feet under,
the six train running on the third rail,
Lexington Ave local the sign of the beast?
Let us say our prayers then, you and I,
kneel on the platform with the banker and the zealot –
those who washed with soap today,
and those who baptized their sins
with vodka.
Quake Time
It was early, but my day
was in the can –
shiny and sealed and ready to be shelved –
when the world
punched through
its tin
The ground began
to gear and turn,
the floor pry open –
Earthquake in New Jersey –
where all the heartbreak
and forbidden highs
have festered, dormant,
a tectonic release
of waitresses in diners,
sloppy love in the parking lot
of the Vince Lombardi
Truck Stop.
Our dogs blasé, Jersey girls
after all. I open my phone to Spam,
its potted meat of memes
But nothing that can contain
our release, our moment –
our Dinty-Moore botulism
Swelling past the point of explosion –
enough fracked hair
to fissure rock,
more attitude
than even the earth
can bear.
MWA 1951-2024
After Lorca – Of the Dark Doves
The night you died
there were two stones
in the kitchen
One was a wolf
one was a cat
One had its throat in the grave
one was twice as sorry
There are three ceremonies
a chamber where ash is asleep
and a jar of blood
Slicked, I slip on pearls
you rolled like dice
before heaven’s gate
before swine
Your last words to me
two stones fatted for sacrifice
Two calves
with stones in their throats
You were three times prodigal
then you were none
Wine poured slick like blood
cut from a howl
I am a wolf at your grave
without a voice
Two times you died
One was a sorrow
and both were none
For Shay’s Word Garden & Ruby Tuesday
Spice Travel
After my leftover fish
exploded in the microwave
like a rover crash-landing
on the furnace of Venus,
still hungry,
I sent a deep space probe
to the nether reaches
of the refrigerator.
What is that growing, glowing nebulae
back there
in the vegetable drawer?
Alien life!
Potatoes sprout eyes that ogle carrots
with bad intent,
kale uttering in accents
the vernacular of dirt.
Tabby cat mushrooms
curled up asleep,
manic beets fantasizing
Broadway success.
Spinach blindfolded and
walking the plank
Into Popeye’s
waiting mouth.
And the fruit!
Pear leopards pouncing
on blueberries
madder than hatters,
clementines
mixing metaphors
and recipes
for disaster.
As the door swings closed
rage, rage against the dying of the light!
Oh ye broccoli of stalks,
ye Brusselsed sprouts –
Abandon hope
all ye who enter here.
The spice man cometh.
Oh yes, oh yes he does.
(With apologies to Dylan Thomas, Dante Alighieri, and Eugene O’Neill).
Walkie-Talkie
My old mercury tooth-fillings
are antennae the exact radio frequency of Howdy Doody
and Home on the Range cowboy stations
out of Durango, signals bouncing
madness from the ionosphere into my jaw.
The Science Lady tells us bull elephant tusks
and buffalo horns
resonate with satellites,
GPS sending them howling
in stampede Sputnik frenzies.
Blue whale ribs
channel Fipper reruns –
that chortling song on deep sea recordings
are laugh tracks sounding
until all is darkness in the Mariana Trench.
Creatures with drowsy engines upside down
playing trombone bones, playing the bones bones,
nuclear test TV patterns spread their
Hiroshima wings –
I dream of Jeannie.
Yet remember our awe at that flight of the gannets?
Thousands-upon-thousands wireline seabirds horizon-to-horizon,
returning to their single rock in Novia Scotia –
a nanometer silica of longitude & latitude
nesting between the waves.
What God do they know that I do not?
I who stumble home, not by Creation's let there be light,
but by a tin voice in my pocket –
"You have arrived at your destination."
when nothing could be further from the truth.
Richochet
What else could we do that night when the Dog Star was rabid
in the sky over France? After the Louvre where
Mona Lisa pulled a revolver from her lap,
Gauloise dangling from her lips, crying «Vive la résistance!»
Our brains abandoned by laughter
slamming through countries without repercussion,
air brakes on trains not powerful enough to stop us
from our hero’s journey, our youth unloaded
and stacked with backpacks on the platform, American
pancakes, milk and cookies food fighting with croissants snapping open
switchblades of butter. Nothing more important.
Chanson du ricochet: Song of stones, skipping over water.
Silent Sunday
Adamantine
My obituary says
no lighting votive candles –
enough with this fetching of angels like moths
who burn their wings in the flames.
Ghosts are indeed invited
to the reception, but no deviled eggs
will be served for obvious reasons
of hell and high cholesterol.
My urn should be a mason jar
that once canned root vegetables –
pickled remembering, havoc beets,
parsnip soul food for the other side.
Feel free to comb through my cremains
for adamantine – waste not, want not –
help yourself to what was hard, irreducible,
my topsyturvy cinders of bone and star.
Cut Him Off
It was an accident for sure
my dumping vodka in the vase
instead of water –
Russian lilacs inebriated,
drunk with color,
violets dancing
without any wind,
tiger lilies carrying on
with the lemon verbena.
Even the shrub spiders
stumbling down their webs
and singing beloved poison songs,
their chanteys of smallpox
and revenge.
Where are my coffee eyes this morning
to cut through the fog
and find the keys –
Because these flowers
will need a more sober poem than this
as their designated driver.
Crumbles
Baudelaire (why is it always Baudelaire?)
sat near the window to write fortune cookie scripts.
(Even flâneurs and boulevardiers need
extra absinthe boodle).
He’d done well with his bumper sticker:
“Honk if you love Jesus!”
but inspiration is lightning
that doesn’t strike twice.
Today he struggles:
“The fox covers itself with the scent of lilies,
its soul an ethereal fire, the rhythm of shadows.”
No, no, that will not do.
“Weeds and wildflowers both die
with the language of silent things on their tongues.”
again, no, he scrapes the palimpsest –
ghost words haunt the page.
How will he release the pieties, the taboos
of General Gau’s chicken?
The dark wishes
stirring in a pot of wonton soup?
For Shay’s Word Garden Word List
For Ruby Tuesday prompts
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