An Open Mic at the Saturday Service

(Please Kneel)

I try to follow but keep getting lost.
Begin here. Cut there.
Too much!
Not enough.
Little wonder these pews bristle with excitement.
Getting down to the final quarter.
Imagine those who think it's a passing fancy?

(Please Be Seated)

Is this as it should be
or as it should have been?
Not a clue!
Pass the daguerreotypes, please.
We need all the support we can muster
in times like these.
Did something happen at the fork in the road?
Was a CIA graduate involved?
Will we ever know?

(Please Stand)

This hymnal is mispaginated
and the Hammond is missing the color-coded strip.
At least, that's what I choose to blame it on.
Did I say something to upend you?
Just keep reading the book
from cover to cover
from sea to shining sea.
It's all there
all the questions, all the answers.
(A knock at the door.)
FedEx.
Suddenly, the atrium is awash with sunlight.
I should have stayed the night.
Yeah, right!

(Please Kneel)

Dietrich is at the mic.
I've heard he's persona-non-grata
at the Dumb Ox
having caused a ruckus
over the five proofs.
Trotting out barrels of references
like some twitchy mid-winter graduate student.
Let's google a getaway.

(Please Stand)

The reader seems punctilious.
I'll take it down a notch or two.
Consider the state of tap water for instance
then lecture me on the benefits
of homeopathy.
Erstwhile, as suggested, I stood in someone else's shoes
and liked how they felt.
I even walked a mile
with a camel.

(Please Be Seated)

A ghost at my bedside
reminds me to pick up a quart of milk on the way home.
Voices in the walls.
Are you listening?
A team of horses
canters through the afternoon soap opera.
Ladies and gentlemen
Ladies and gentlemen
hedge your investments.

(Please Kneel)

Scapegoating!
Yes, scapegoating.
Think of it as a profession -
one of the oldest
akin to masonry
or taxidermy.
Think of Abelard, tonsured and castrated.
Heloise's emails -
love notes thinly disguised as philosophical conundrums.
Ask yourself if it's worth it.
If you fit in
and I'll come back at you
with an Early Bird Special.
An Early-Bird-Gets-The-Worm-Special.
A Blue Light Special.
A Saturday Night Special.
Consider the feeders
and those on the brink.

(Let Us Pray)

I’ll Pencil You In

I looked for recipes in her translation of Proust.
I could be wrong.
Maybe they're not in there.
Maybe they're in Pee-Wee's improvised monologues
or in the words of friends and acquaintances
drifting in and out of consciousness,
having bid farewell
to Uncle Miltie’s cork-lined water closet,
for years the standard bearer for liquid plumbers
profiled in Better Homes and Gardens
that ubiquitous enabler
of tepid blurbs for Geritol.
Or maybe they're coded into the graphic versions
of Stephen Hawking’s Time Lost
hawked by junkyard dogs and other ne'er-do-wells.
Regardless, time passes.
Fashion plates spin with glee.
The Discovery Channel goes on record
in a vain attempt to transfuse vinyl.
Anything to keep out of hock.
Anything to stave off the due date,
admittedly missing a grace period.
The life of a court jester juggling, what,
five, six, seven balls
in the halcyon days of bungee jumps
accelerates the metabolism
sets loose change chomping at the bit
pockets fluttering with delight.
This is good, yes?
Dishpan dilemmas melt away.
You awake in the diorama featured on QVC:
locks unchanged; doors ajar.
Dusty volumes doze on podiums, awaiting magic fingers.
Everyone is in fine fettle.
And after? Who knows?
At the very least you’ll be penciled in
somewhere ages and ages hence.

Gérard Bertrand
www.gerardbertrand.net

Appropriating Myself

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.
          - Buck Mulligan quoting Whitman in Ulysses by James Joyce

The dogs are in the trees again. And they're barking. I am escaped from the pages of Dickens, my words nestled all snug in their beds. A black and white segues from my past. A symbolist jumps in insisting on the last word. He is dressed down. Woe to those befuddled crossword puzzlers or those courting constellations on rooftops with the satisfaction of a meandering brook. This dealership is known for its BLTs. My place in the sun layered in dust is appropriated by a Jay Gatsby lookalike living on the edge with a certain je ne sais quoi despite the bulging lines at soup kitchens. Footsteps echo off buildings scheduled to be razed before change punctuates the thought-balloon - ghosts on the spur of the moment waiting for the lost to stumble, entering their shadows, cartographers linked in time. The baguette did come in handy as you said it would. But how did you know? Without blackbirds in the trees I wouldn't have the mind of summer. Why don't we rent a little bungalow on the water this summer where each midday we can crayon in our missing persons? The artichoke under glass dances to Mahler's slow movements rising from a wax cartridge in front of a great fire brimming with wooden arms and legs. The menus here are blank, the newspapers' words missing but with a trace of a message that tricks us into thinking it can be pieced together and understood. Your free run wooden horse has run away. It was her heels - neon yellow spikes clickety-clacking though the intersection, charging gawkers a fee for a free ride - a free ride that would take them to the palisades of their dreams, leaving them winded with enough pocket change for the meter maid. Many are puzzled and await word from above. It will come. I want to be transported to an earlier time filled with jawbreakers stamped with phrases of affection. I suppose I too want it all. You called in for takeout. We selected items from two columns. That’s when I decided it was time to refill the rapidograph with red ink and begin a series of one-liners in red - the red saturating the eye with disbelief. You audition for the part of Iago, thinking this would be a great way to spend the summer - a summer of unrequited doubles. It was a throwaway, I had to admit, that unsettling feeling you get as the bath water departs, counterclockwise, leaving you, toweled, thinking about the final scene in that film whose title is slipping away. The name Wichita could happen to any of us. Now what? Now what do we do? . . .

Onto Something

There was much ado on TV about a hoosegow.
Someone had left a window open.
A strange voice kept shouting Trim the sails
perplexing several.
A cashier cashed out and clocks
wound up synchronized.
Don't drive drunk became the rallying cry
as we hailed a cab.
A symbolist jumped in
insisting on the last word.
He was dressed down.
Far too few have visited this hamlet
which is sad given its vistas
and cascading waterways.
A theme song might help.
Perhaps a structural for the pole barn.
Cateyes shimmer at the thought.
You too would have agreed with her panoply of curls.
Indeed, she was drop-dead gorgeous.

In the Dream, My Mother Buys a Truck

Of course, she never drove, but she’s here
at a Ford dealership with her pocketbook and apron
kicking tires, looking under hoods.
One of the salesmen is repairing a soaker hose
for the tomato plants.
This dealership is known for its BLTs.
Another is tap dancing through the showroom
trailing Be right with you to my question
about next year’s models
prancing down the runway.
My mother appears at the far end
of the parts department
eager to test-drive a blue diesel-powered F-350
with extended cab and bed large enough
for groceries and Hummels.
She pictures a B&B with lots of shelves
and will not be dissuaded.
It will not fit in the garage
which sits half-painted next to the grape arbor
where the dog likes to paw through dreams
on hot afternoons.
My father stands by with pencil and tape measure.
He likes to fish, and mentions this
to a passing game show host.
It’s getting late, the dealership is closing.
They’ve already turned off the lights.

In and Out

Orange-slickered sheriff's deputies
wave cars through a red light away from a washout.

A yellow schoolbus deposits its solemn passengers
then loops around the flag a few times for good measure.

Trees hail cabs.
Strays pick through leftovers.

A lineman lashes himself to a pole
like a sea captain in a storm.

News anchors drop.
The world tilts.

The runoff is enough to make one think twice.
Looms spin on and on without skipping a beat

their ropes and pulleys oblivious
to the homeless person checking in for Game Two.

Others master the Art of the Deal:
Knowing when to stay in and when not.

It's all here in the Instruction Manual
along with your next assignment.

Even More than the Tree-Lined Streets

The days, busy with their tree-lined streets, are sadly more than enough for many despite their claustrophobic underpinnings and the worried look on the faces of billboards: the retired academic with his early bird specialty; the Wittgenstein scholar and his prim partner clutching her handbag and Old World dictionary, yellowed and dog-eared, huddled with their hound on a flowered windowseat overlooking the local acquifer overgrown and struggling for recognition. Woe to those befuddled crossword puzzlers or those courting constellations on rooftops with the satisfaction of a meandering brook. Switch-hitting is long dead. The words not spoken continue to say it all: the unsolved math problems, the crumbling fruit stands, the forgotten air pumps hissing at the encroaching rust.

Optional Holiday

I am escaped from the pages of  Dickens,
my words nestled all snug in their beds.

A black and white segues from my past -
a soapy rendition of Fanfare for the Common Man

the sidewalks cluttered with gentry
who can't imagine a better way out.

I am glued to the 27-inch slaughter at Bull Run.
I should consult a vintner

but with the hour late I settle
for the watery declensions of the Magic Eight Ball

plastered with Ask again later.
My evening continues to fester with pizza and wings.

Somewhere in the distance a preacher’s homily
transmigrates into a ziploc bag.

My place in the sun layered in dust
is appropriated by a Jay Gatsby lookalike

living on the edge with a certain je ne sais quoi
despite the bulging lines at soup kitchens.

Riding  Toward Death

          for Mike Burke

My friend Mike put together
a packet of information on Raymond Carver
for our poetry group:

color photos of Ray
(with cigarette of course)
chronology
quotes
poems.
Pretty impressive!

I'd seen most of the poems before
and recalled Ray delivering My Boat -
a favorite - at one of his last readings:

          My boat is being made to order....
          It’s going to have plenty of room
          on it for all my friends....

I’d not seen Powder-Monkey
about Ray's friend, John Dugan, a carpenter

          Driving nails. Drilling and planing lumber.
          Joining wood together with other wood....

and how Ray had watched
as one day
John put away his tools
barely taking the time to say goodbye
got into his pickup
tuned to Ricky Skaggs
and drifted over the center line
         
          riding unharmed, and untouched,
          toward death.

Looking at the poems
brought to mind
how Ray had wrestled his demons

          I came out ahead. I didn't lose....

met Tess Gallagher

          Tess, of course, I wouldn't go anyplace without her....

lived together for ten years
and got married in Reno
a month and a half before he died:

          And did you get what
          you wanted from this life, even so?
          I did.
          And what did you want?
          To call myself beloved, and to feel myself
          beloved on the earth.

I had to laugh. Ray had beaten the odds.
His last ten years were, as he said, gravy

          No other word will do. For that's what it was. Gravy.

On the Spur of the Moment

We await a connection
an unfolding of the uncommon
a respite from the pulled file
the cold case
the addendum
a moot point for those
waiting in line in the rain
umbrellas poking clouds.
The specials around every corner
beg the question.
Smoke rises from the chimneys
of those taking their dog
and pony shows on the road
a road potholed and cluttered
with abandoned
mass transit buses.
Footsteps echo off buildings
scheduled to be razed
before change punctuates
the thought-balloon -
ghosts on the spur of the moment
waiting for the lost to stumble
entering their shadows
cartographers linked in time.

My Conceit

          Tell me about your conceit.
          My conceit?
          Yes, your conceit.

My conceit can be used as a substitute for salt.
My conceit can be found in aisle 5
and also among the ruins of Shelley's Ozymandias.
My conceit has won the hearts of wooden horses worldwide.
My conceit bedazzles female jockeys
and inspires coeds.
My conceit is reversible.
My conceit recently featured at Ben & Jerry's
and is the flavor of the month.
My conceit is cluttered.
My conceit has been ripped by college dropouts.
My conceit has an unlisted number
and vanity plates
and can go 10,000 miles between oil changes.
My conceit is wash and wear
and ready-made.
My conceit is buy one get one.
My conceit is H U G E.
My conceit was once misled.
My conceit is a rental unit
and a walk-up
and a small cape.
My conceit is two standard deviations above the mean.
My conceit is based on revamped criteria.
My conceit cameoed in The Story of O.
My conceit is not intimidated by clogged drains
or lint
or know-it-alls
or artsy fartsy types.
My conceit is on cable.
My conceit is available at Starbuck's online.
My conceit comes with free refills.
My conceit is on Facebook
and Linkedin
and even on Formspring.
My conceit is no stranger to perfect spirals.
My conceit is up close and personal
and Kindled
and Blogged
and Twittered.
My conceit will appear dramatically during the second half.
My conceit lives at the end of a tree-lined tundra.
My conceit is on hold.
My conceit is at the door.

Ramesses II

Ya think?

Summer is about to stretch out on a hammock

pull toys lined up ready to grab us.

This summer will be different, yes?

Who knows, maybe it will, what with the clouds of coders

hammering out Things-To-Do lists

to fill days that end up seeming sadly short

as if they were lopped off at the knees by a mad wizard
using some sort of rusty old truncation machine.

But this summer will  be different, I promise.
This summer I will challenge the wizard to a chess match

and crush him, knock his smelly socks off,

run him out of town with an opening gambit

the likes of which hasn't seen the light of day

since Bobby Fischer wowed the world.

Your Email Address Bounced

The baguette did come in handy
as you said it would.
But how did you know?
There seem to be pieces missing.
Information out-of-sync.
Voices retreating
into wrong numbers.
And behind Door #2?
My iPhone.
Splattered - Dali-esque -
the victim of a hit-and-run cabbie
rushing home to dinner
and Reality Reruns
my email address bouncing
at 9th and Greenwich.

The Concocter in the Park

Draped in feats of legerdemain, yards of ribbon
a concocter works the park

plying passersby with tales of knights errant
and other minor traffic violators, served up

with scrambled eggs, home fries, Canadian bacon.
Everything is sautéed to perfection:

his mastery of Middle English
his recently departed hairline

his days as a university student
his work in soup kitchens

where he learned the art of concoction
while busing tables to the airport.

But that was long ago.
Today, in the park, amid a throng of thongs,

he hands out loose-limbed lines to the sun-screened
who, after reading the fine print, morph

into centipedes and move on,
legs linked, whistling, in harmony, Hail To The Chief

leaving the concocter poised, mid-sentence,
dollar bills pirouetting into his upturned cap.

Thirteen Views of Blackbirds

          with apologies to Wallace Stevens

I
The audience went wild.
There were blackbirds in the trees.

II
Driving to breakfast in early June
I feel like pasta primavera
and blackbirds in the trees.

III
The strange sound at five AM
from the blackbirds in the trees
made me get up
and check the refrigerator.

IV
Curbside the Harleys
discuss Wittgenstein
and the blackbirds in the trees.

V
Without blackbirds in the trees
I wouldn't have the mind of summer.

VI
The mime outside my window
keeps me abreast of the progress made
by the blackbirds in the trees.

VII
I would like to think
the thoughts of an Afghan hound
as he picks up the scent
of blackbirds in the trees.

VIII
Having flown the trees
the blackbirds hit the road
in a green DeSoto.

IX
The tree line is of little interest
to the blackbirds
who have returned from shopping
dog-tired and laden with gourmet snacks.

X
There are one, two, three blackbirds
in the memory of trees.

XI
Little wonder the blackbirds in the trees
regard a ream of paper with horror.

XII
I fancy myself an ornithologist
whenever I attend a commencement
of blackbirds.

XIII
At the sight of blackbirds in the trees
I move to the far right lane.

Salad Days

There was little we could do, little anyone could do.
Several of us became disheveled,

and considered obtaining a restraining order,
applying a fresh coat of paint, calling 911

for a good, old-fashioned cookout.
We could have set another place at the table

but most likely the invitation
would have been declined as off-color

sending the rumor mill into overtime.
The point is not whether we can pick up where we left off.

Instant Replay

But first I need to collect my thoughts.
May I borrow that Etruscan vase?

And what about the boxcars sitting on the siding?
Any plans for those?

It doesn't take much to tamp down a symmetric shape
the moon peering over your left shoulder

excusing itself momentarily
for the latest global positioning junket.

The scrambled eggs do look good
but I think I'll go with the gruel.

I want to walk in someone else's stomach for a day or two.
Can you point me in the direction of a colonoscopy?

I think I've told you that along the way
I'd like to pick up a new philosophy of the commonplace.

Take that broom for instance.
Does it really think we have no idea of what it's been up to?

Making those ridiculous generalizations?
Harboring resentment to the point of fraying?

Why don't we rent a little bungalow on the water this summer
where each midday we can crayon in our missing persons?

Overnight at the Ventriloquist's

His voice is everywhere.
His knowledge of cork vast.
He talks about his plans
to retire to a walled city
with underground labyrinths
inhabited by used car salesmen
posing as television personalities.
He will not take No for an answer.
Jobs are scarce, he says,
from under the rug.
Too many words, too many words.
He whistles in three-part harmony
and keeps five balls in the air.
Halfway through the evening,
he saws a woman in half
while drinking a glass of water.
The other guests continue
to arrive in suitcases.
We fall under his spell.
Dinner is served by candlelight.
The artichoke under glass
dances to Mahler's slow movements
rising from a wax cartridge
in front of a great fire
brimmed with wooden arms and legs.
We are shown to our rooms with flashlights.
Later that night, it begins to snow -
thick, indifferent flakes swirl down
like confetti in a snowglobe.

Meditation on a Bottle of Mediterranean Red

My feet touch down on warm, golden sand.
I walk over to a table and sit down.
A mustachioed, aproned waiter takes my order
for a glass of Mediterranean Red.
A breeze ripples my papers.
A tall woman in white linen passes,
followed by two children
and a black dog.
I finish the wine and this poem
and walk down the beach to my villa.

Out of Time

He points to his watch.
I ask him if it's broken.
He shakes his head,
and points to it again.

Paging (Through) Dr. Williams

Red-faced
balding
in faded scrubs,
he walks
his hound
and waits
while she pees
nonchalantly
on the red
wheelbarrow,
sending
the white
chickens
scurrying
in a flurry
of feathers.
I pass
noisily
in my rusted-
out sub-
compact,
munching
on the sweet
cold plums
I took
from the fridge
when no one
was looking.

The Other Place

          after Charles Simic

But then there's the other place
the place of soliloquies
forgotten lines

broken links
lost articles of clothing
threadbare stuffed animals,

the place of amputations
mangled tricycles
crutches

spent shell casings.
To visit this place
is to search the corridors

of REM sleep,
looking for a clue
among the rubble

looking for a friend
who vanished.
The menus here are blank

the newspapers' words missing
but with a trace of a message
that tricks us

into thinking
it can be pieced together
and understood.

Psych 101 : Adrift in Theory

Wolfgang Kohler's ape, Sultan, snaps together two sticks and snags a banana from the ceiling of his cage. The whole in Wolfgang's theory is greater than the sum of its parts. Pavlov's dogs drool to the tintinnabulation of bells, happy they won't be rocketed into space for at least forty years. Fred Skinner's pigeons play ping pong for food pellets during the day, launder money at night in the school's photography lab. John B. Watson, behaviorism's father, beds down his lab assistant and is given his walking papers. He stumbles into advertising and rises to VP, writing copy for cigarette ads. One of his grad students, Mary Cover Jones, counterconditions four-year-old Peter's fear of animals using scoops of ice cream. She sells her idea to Ben and Jerry. Sigmund Freud smokes cigars, collects Egyptian artifacts, wears out 306 couches, bifurcates humans into those who wish for a penis and those who fear for their penis. He sees no happy medium. Clifford Beers jumps out of a fourth floor window into a mud puddle, foiling his suicide and priming his pen for a A Mind That Found Itself, while Gustav Theodor Fechner's opus The Mental Life Of Flowers is too much too soon. Harry Harlow tricks rhesus monkeys into falling in love with stuffed animals. They hide his booze, sending him over the edge of a visual cliff. Alfred Binet puts together a test to measure intelligence. He should have stuck to law. Hermann Rorschach spills a bottle of ink and markets his accident for countless James Joyce wannabes. A stick of dynamite drives a crowbar through Phineas Gage's frontal lobe. He becomes a sideshow sensation, and prefrontal lobotomies become the therapy of choice for society's square pegs. Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini compare notes with Mary Shelley, use an electric current to induce epileptic seizures in patients with mental illness. Erik Erikson studies art, comes to America as an art therapist, and promptly loses his identity. Philippe Pinel unchains the insane in La Salpetriere; they join SAG, and get bit parts in J. L. Moreno's psychodrama, King Of Hearts. R. D. Laing maintains that the world, not people, is mad, drops acid with patients, dies of a heart attack while playing tennis in Saint Tropez. Tommy Szasz argues that mental illness is a destructive social construct, a myth and nothing more (or less) than “problems in living.” Carl Jung has a midlife crisis and explores the occult; Alfred Adler strives for superiority; Abraham Maslow actualizes himself in full view; Tom Harris assures us we're OK. The sixty-minute hour turns out to be fifty-minutes long.

Just Out of Reach

What you realize after all
is that there is no catching up
no beating the odds
no shortcut through the woods.
What you realize
is that it is a slippery slope
a blind alley
a dead end
however you spin it
waiting for you
in aisle 7 at the supermarket for instance
or at the 19th hole
or at the slots in the casino
or on your well-worn walking path
along the river
or on a beach even
during summer’s dog days.
The shadows behind the blackened windows
now out of earshot
suck the life out of your collected works
your interim reports
your bargaining chips
your plans.
Red, green, white, blue.
No different.
No options.
Prep chefs and blackjack dealers among others know this.
Why else do salads border on wilt
or tires on 24-speeds flatten
just as one is about to crest a hill
ring up a sale
return the library books
sail off into the sunset
swim to a distant shore
look in a mirror to find home?

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Hard Left

Your free run wooden horse has run away.
Forget the conductor with his chorus of auditions!
He meant well but his baton misled the strings,
losing them in a rat’s nest of high rises,
overdue library books, and time-lapse phonography.
Jot down the criteria for your new avatar.
Don’t be intimidated by fledglings.
They’re harmless, as harmless as fuzz
trailing single speeds and eviction notices.
Directions? Of course! Take a hard left
out of the parking lot, then another, and another.

And So?

Graffitied boxcars lumber through storage bins.
What? No ticker-tape?
You do remember ticker-tape parades, yes?
Quizzically, of course.
There was enough runoff for another diatribe
by the third impartial visitor
who for some logistical reason refused to use the sidebar.
How many homes have been held hostage by soaps?
I wanted to do the right thing
cartwheeling across the front lawn
spigots discharging venom in hot pursuit.
We all wanted to do the right thing.
Cabbies rubbernecking something fierce.
It was her heels - neon yellow spikes
clickety-clacking though the intersection
charging gawkers a fee for a free ride -
a free ride that would take them to the palisades
of their dreams, leaving them winded
with enough pocket change for the meter maid.

On Listening to John Cage's 4' 33"

And Then Some

After the crowd thinned, we crowded into an omnibus
no larger than a hallmark and rode around town
as the credits tumbled out of control. With the exchange rate
plummeting, we looked to each other for clues
to the Chinese puzzle box purring in the middle of the road.
I'd never thought it possible
but there I was floating on a sea of flotsam
without a care in the sky
while you busied yourself skipping around
from I to he to you with oafish abandon
laying down the beat for a distant bassoonist
with the determination of a rickety metronome.
It was time to call it quits.
This of course was out of the question
so instead we saddled up and rode off into a billboard
with others charged with passing out soffits.
We must have done the scene nine and a half times or so
when in the last half hour the director
seemingly inside himself shouted Taglio!
Everyone scattered.
Teamsters rushed in and released the pigeons on cue
which was closely monitored by a local animal rights group
led by a middle-aged assistant college professor
who kept announcing off-camera that she had nothing to wear.

Perp Walk

I want a chord to resonate with the media hounds at the door.
An A minor perhaps
accentuating the trials and trepidations
of the parties of the first part
busily blogging their bowel movements.
I want to wade through their webs of wire, hands held high.
I want to be transported to an earlier time
filled with jawbreakers
stamped with phrases of affection.
I suppose I too want it all.
There’s no disguising the fact:
the LP in the atelier scratching to be set straight
trumps all self-deprecating patter
echoing between the two-families.
Maybe it’s the vegans
proselytizing in the nosebleed section at the double-header.
Let’s just say it grows tiresome.
The replay of this shackled white collar on parade
will likely invade the dreamscapes of many.
As it should, I guess.
Not to be tampered with, though, would also be
an acceptable cornerstone in this revitalization project
aimed at making downtown
a safer place for the moms and pops and kids
carpooling in to experience The Pirate Ride of a Lifetime.
They’ll have plenty of time later
to return to sorting their recyclables.
That mindset would indeed be a step up.

The Last Time

I’ve forgotten the last time
so I’ll write about a different time.

It was warm.
Stemmed glasses chased each other around the table.
The wine breathed in the season.
Something simmered on the stove.
Someone waited for a cab.
You called in for takeout.
We selected items from two columns.
Finely tuned impediments carved the moment out of time.

Whoa!
Strike that line!

Your Russian friend – that’s what we all called her –
your Russian friend stepped out of a magazine
and stopped by
on her way to a restaurant
where her lover and meal waited.
She again spoke of the Old Country
the cycles of tumbling granite
the many shiny rings
and the artist who painted her portrait
in the nude.
My cell failed.

Sorry, but that's all I remember.

Anna Akhmatova

But I Do!

That’s when I decided it was time to refill
the rapidograph with red ink
and begin a series of one-liners in red -
the red saturating the eye with disbelief.
Around noon, with the aha moment on break
I began color-coding departures
just to keep track of who went where and why.
The love letters in the sand had washed away
with the rest of the whites.
This was probably a good thing
though I was hard pressed to convince myself
as well as passersby
who  looked at me as if I had two heads.
But I do, I told a news anchor
who had taken the wrong right turn
and ended up in our neighborhood.
But I do have the answer, I repeated,
though, by then, she couldn’t have cared less.

The Garden of Unearthly Delights

You stroll … into some version of the present.
          - John Koethe

You audition for the part of Iago
thinking this would be a great way
to spend the summer -
a summer of unrequited doubles
only with a deeper resonance
a summer traversing the seven levels
the early-birds-getting-the-worms
sitting up on all four-wheelers
and taking notice - a shot in the arm
revitalizing your steps following
the dotted line to that little hideaway
where under the covers
or rather under cover of darkness
you explore the outer reaches of Pilates
loosening the Cartesian duality:
I thank therefore I am.
The unaccustomed glance of interested parties
the simplicity of elusive gestures
await your entrance in Scene Two
leading you away and astray
a garden of unearthly delights
a pay-as-you-go travelogue into now.

Lily Cole

Account Suspended

Life is on the wire, the rest is just waiting.
          - Karl Wallenda

They went ahead with the auction
despite minor setbacks.
The overflow unloosed itself
and spread through the room.
All 210 lots sold
exceeding the market’s projection
displayed as PowerPoint
on the southwest wall.
The bidding affected a certain aplomb.
Blushes appeared randomly on guests
who in desperation
phoned home for legal counsel.
Reassured, the crowd spilled out
into curbside bistros,
maitre d’s making the most
of the moment, ignoring
the fray mired in streams
of pre-owned vehicles and landfills.
I tried to access a public Wi-Fi
but was left hanging, in mid-air.

No, That’s Not It

But since I have not forgotten my former inability to swim, my
ability to swim is of no avail and I cannot swim after all.
          - Franz Kafka

As if from within a camera obscura
as if through a damp lens
the image sliding down
threatening to disappear
to become something else
something unrecognizable
Kafka looks across an intersection
from a basement apartment.
A woman is leaving an emergency room.
She carries a basket.
The basket is filled with linens.
No, not linens, letters.
Yes, letters.
The basket is filled with letters.
She crosses the intersection
and gets into a car.

Franz Kafka has been engaged to Felice Bauer for five years.
Their relationship is carried out almost entirely by letters.
In the autumn of 1912, Kafka writes to Felice: "Lately I have
found to my amazement how intimately you have now become
associated with my writing, although until recently I believe
that the only time I did not think about you at all was while I
was writing.”

The woman drives to a lakeside cottage.
She enters the cottage.
A dock stretches out into the water.
The woman appears wearing a black
one-piece bathing suit.
A dog (hers?) runs onto the dock
and jumps into the water.
The dog paddles to a raft.
The woman jumps in
and joins the dog on the raft.
She dangles her feet.

“Write to me only once a week, so that your letter arrives on
Sunday - for I cannot endure your daily letters, I am incapable
of enduring them.”

Kafka forgets, for the moment,
his fear of water.
The dog’s ears perk
at the sound of a loon.
The woman looks in the direction
of the loon.
Kafka gathers up the woman’s clothes
and places them in a basket.

“What have I done that makes you torment me so? No letter
again today, neither by the first mail nor the second. You
do make me suffer! While one written word from you could
make me happy! . . .”

There is food and drink on a picnic table.
And several copies of a script.
One has Kafka’s name on it.
It contains only his lines, these lines:

It is not able.
The trees are some of them.
The white ones.
No, I don’t remember.
It wasn’t that.
I do know someone with that name.
It will rain.
Of course not.
Nothing like that.
I am talking.
No, I disagree.
What I said was this.
No, I will not agree to that.
I’ve told you already.
Please, let me explain.
Differences? Of course.
Yes, but doesn’t everyone?
This is ridiculous.
Of course not.
No, I will not agree.
But I will not wait indefinitely.
Somehow?
What is somehow?

“If I am to go on living at all, I cannot go on vainly waiting for
news of you, as I have done these last few interminable days. . . .”

Felice Bauer and Franz Kafka

The Here of There

It was a throwaway,
I had to admit, that
unsettling feeling you get
as the bath water departs,
counterclockwise,
leaving you, toweled,
thinking about the final
scene in that film
whose title is slipping
away. Not only
the last segment
with its redemption,
but the full catastrophe,
highlighted
and underlined
for all to see.
I checked the backups
just to be sure.
There was little sense
in phoning ahead -
this has never worked,
at least for me.
So I reconfigured the setup
and began recoding
the moment,
flagging incidentals
which for whatever reason
over the years
had proved instructive
or at least instrumental
in some fairly innocuous way.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

The Next Best Thing

The bull in the pasture contemplates Kierkegaard's dilemma
worries life's truncations
pockets few regrets.
He too deserves to bring home the bacon.
He too deserves to be happy.
As happy as fledglings with water wings
testing the shallows
hoping for the next best thing.
An all expense-paid trip to anywhere awaits us,
Faure's gestures coloring the runway
giving runaways, buckling beneath carry-ons,
another chance.
How many times have we heard this story -
this tale told out of school by dropouts young and old
misled by home and hearth
yearning to work their way through blue Mondays
to express themselves in the express line?
There's enough distance here to turn the tide
to give us something to look forward to
with enough left over to feed the thousand redundancies
waiting patiently at the back door.
Another day trundles into view, sprinkling its inconsistencies
as we walk quickly past whistling Dixie
exchanging metaphors with a reasonably dressed anyone
hands tucked safely in trousers.
Surely you can think otherwise
but the next time you see a turnip at a farmer's market
examine it closely.
It could hold the answer to your world.

Melville's Sister

I'm talking with Melville's kid sister
a scrappy toehead
with eyes like deep water
who signed on for a tour of the high seas
with her brother
but ended up here
in New Bedford
pierced, inked, in mauve coveralls,
slathering mustard and meat sauce
on footlongs for hard hats
from a shiny aluminum vending cart.

She communicates with great whites in trees
tends a small garden of hooded flowers
whose petals hold charts of whale migrations
collects harpoons she uses as pokers.

She talks about her brother
writing a novel about a mad hunt
for a fearsome whale
in a room on the second floor
overlooking distant mountains
in a farmhouse
on 160 acres in the Berkshires
that he named Arrowhead
after the relics he dug up
with his plow.

Her eyes grow dark
as she mentions his demons
the locks on his writing-room
his pacing to escape the mind’s maelstrom
the ungodly boredom
his endless digressions
his obsession with privacy
that led him to destroy nearly all his letters
his dislike of photographers
(“to the devil with you and your Daguerreotype!”)
the so-called “failed” scribbling -
“The Whale” - too ambitious, too long, a leviathan
despite its marks of “unquestionable genius”
the accusation of madness
prompting his postscript “I ain't crazy.”

She chuckles as she tells me
how much her brother likes to watch
the farm animals eat,
especially taken by what he calls the “sanctity”
of the way the cow moves her jaws.

I too am taken, with this strange woman
whose costumes mimic the South Seas,
whose toenails match the color of noctilucent clouds
whose hands are music.

Off hours, she fulfills fantasies

her voice like billowing sails
guiding Ishmaels through narrow canals
spellbinding them
with the sounds of humpbacks
note for note
measure upon measure
before releasing them
drained yet sated
into the morning commute.

The Liquidity of Precision

As elusive as rutabaga is the position
of locking the steering wheel
into the arc of a roundabout
and spending the day
going 'round and 'round
without care, without regret -
a potentially merry merry-go-round,
a spin cycle of spinners,
spinsters, spin doctors,
all spinning toward something or other
with the circularity
of a Shaker spinning wheel
or otherworldly enso
where the liquidity of precision
takes off the top of the head
like a line from Emily Dickinson,
transporting one
to a land whose inhabitants,
white-haired, bearded,
possibly bespectacled,
clothed in loose-fitting garments,
wax philosophic
on language's imprecision
with voices echoing the words
in the brown first philosophy text
sitting on the bottom shelf
where it was placed
a day or two after classes ended
some 40-odd years ago.

Searching for Bobby Fischer

Day 1

My friend's cat, Bobby Fischer, is missing.
He took off without leaving a note
without taking his food dish.
We're worried about the food dish.
It sits in the corner all day
twiddling its thumbs
thinking about Bobby Fischer.

Day 2

My friend and I hail a cab.
The cabbie misunderstands us.
He takes us to a Rotary meeting.
The final vote is being tallied
on whether or not to airlift a causeway.
The causeway is cause for concern.
Some Rotarians feel it's water under the bridge.
One Rotarian recalls seeing Bobby Fischer
walking along the causeway earlier in the week
seemingly preoccupied.

Day 3

The man at Kinko's has crooked teeth.
My guess is he knows something about Bobby Fischer.
He scans a recent photo of Bobby Fischer.
We attach it to a sheet of white paper.
We consider captioning it Desperately Seeking Bobby Fischer
but settle instead on Searching for Bobby Fischer.
The man with crooked teeth says he likes it.
He makes 110 copies but only charges us for 100.
He says he knows how we feel.
I don't trust him.

Day 4

We divide up the posters and plaster the neighborhood.
Several passersby comment on Bobby Fischer's good looks.
A few pocket posters as souvenirs.
One old man draws a mustache on Bobby Fischer.
We call the police.

Day 5

The message on my friend's answering machine is garbled.
Something about a round robin.

Day 6

Bobby Fischer has done this before
only to return a few days later
reeking of catnip and stale mates.

Day 7

Bobby Fischer calls.
He says he's been thinking about making a move.
He says he has enrolled in a method acting class.
He wants to throw himself wholeheartedly into something.
He wants to bring real life to the boards.
To forget himself.
To give his mind and body to a fictitious character.
My friend and I nod knowingly.
We hand the phone to Bobby Fischer's food dish.

Day 8

We bump into Bobby Fischer's acting coach in the library.
He's taking out a book on gambits.
He tells us that Bobby Fischer will be using
a little known gambit on opening night.
He's rather defensive for a Sicilian.
He gives us two tickets.
I don't trust him.

Day 9

Opening night.
We're packed in like sardines.
Bobby Fischer is loaded with greasepaint.
He plays a bishop who's sacrificed.
The klieg lights make him blink.

Day 10

The play receives rave reviews in the Post.

Day 11

Bobby Fischer calls.
He wants us to pick up extra copies of the Post.
He says the play is being made into a television miniseries
which will air during ratings week.
He says he has to go.
Oprah's limo is waiting.

Day 12

Bobby Fischer calls.
His voice is shaking.
He says the television producer, Boris Spassky,
decided to cut his part
in view of the current crisis in the Catholic Church.
He says Boris Spassky told him the Church
has enough problems right now.

Day 13

The doorbell rings.
It's Bobby Fischer.
He's back.
He smells of catnip.
His fur is matted with dried greasepaint.
His backpack is stuffed with dog-eared copies of the Post.
His food dish brims.

Eating an Elephant

You blink, and the rules change.
Or the game.
Or something.
And you find yourself in the middle of a field.
Or an alley.
Or a strange town.
Somewhere.
Anywhere.
And these tin soldiers appear
and begin marching through.
Single file.
As far back as you can see.
Wielding muskets with bayonets.
Metal on metal.
Loud.
In unison.
Quite impressive.
But they don't see you
because you're hiding behind a tree.
Or a dumpster.
Or whatever.
Then the sound changes
to rushing water.
And you're white-water rafting.
Flying along.
Waving to the people on shore.
A rush.
Your life jacket is riding up.
It's hard to open your mouth.
You're trying to say something to the people.
But you can't.
You can't open your mouth.
The guide is shouting to hang on.
You're soaking wet.
You look around at the others.
They've become cardboard cutouts.
The scene shifts.
You're in a front row.
A ballet.
A fidgety ballet.
Young ballerinas.
Gawky.
Sweet.
You try to read the program
but it's too dark.
Blackness.
The ballerinas appear overhead
suspended by wires.
Hundreds of them
in different colored tutus -
white
yellow
purple
red
black
even multi-colored
even tie-dyed
in different positions
arabesques
elevés
pliés
jetés
relevés.
A Frenchman is up there too.
The guy who walked
between the two towers
of the World Trade Center.
And Yo-Yo Ma
with his cello
and music stand
playing Bach's Sarabande
the same piece he played
while the names
of the victims of 9/11
were read aloud.
And then you're back in a lecture hall.
Stadium seating.
A PowerPoint.
Cyber Security.
And the expert is trotting out
that overused analogy
about eating an elephant
though his is a tad more palatable
because of the animation
which takes you back
to the hours
the days
you spent playing Pac-Man
in your quest
for some sort of digital grail.
Frighteningly informative.
At least that's what you penned
on the evaluation sheet
figuring What the hell,
I'll throw him a bone.
But it was.
Frighteningly informative.
Knowing that they're out there.
Armies of hackers
and crackers
pale-skinned
t-shirted
fueled on power drinks
wielding keyboards
instead of bayonets
breaking and entering
accessing your passwords
your letters
your numbers
your bank accounts
your credit cards
your secrets
your most hidden thoughts
your most hidden desires
with the ferocity of Vader
spurred
in many instances
by nothing more
than the knowledge
that it's there
out there
waiting to be plundered.

Mayonnaise Sandwiches

Patti ate tape. She carried around one of those red-and-green Scotch tape dispensers - the metal kind with the serrated edge - and every now and then would pop a piece into her mouth. I attributed her pale skin to that delicacy, and wondered how the tape was able to traverse the miles of intestine we had read about in Scholastic Science, the weekly newsheet Sister Edward made us subscribe to and read from every Thursday afternoon to break up the archaic lab experiments we, or rather she, demonstrated, flanked by Bunsen burners, pipettes, and crotchety nine-volt batteries, in a vain, nationwide knee-jerk to supplant Sputnik; the same Sister Edward, or Stir Edward, the truncation used when, leaning forward in the wood-and-wrought-iron desks bolted in tandem to the floor, we vied for our fifteen minutes of fame as we arced our propped-up hands 130 degrees in front of her great stone face to signify our readiness to regurgitate some trivium if called upon; the same Sister Edward, ornamented with half a dozen rubber bands on each wrist, who held a marksmanship medal for knuckle accuracy at three yards with a twelve-inch ruler, and who, like Merlin, kept, among other trinkets, a handkerchief up her sleeve. Patti may have been partial to tape, but my pièce de résistance was mayonnaise sandwiches, ideally accompanied on their journey to the center of the torso by a slug of Ovaltine, which, decades before the cyanide-laced Tylenol scare sent American companies scrambling for ingenious devices to outwit disgruntled, axe-grinding, former employees as well as garden-variety sick tickets, used a waxed paper seal that had to be broken to get to the brown crystals, and which, if sent with a fifty-cent piece taped to a square of cardboard to some storefront address in Battlecreek, Michigan, displayed at the end of Captain Midnight's Sunday morning black-and-white half hour, entitled the sender to one plastic decoder ring.

Captain Midnight

Postcard from Giza

Recording the experience in our audio diary
reminds me of Kant -
head stuck in cloud

walking his puppy dog in the park every afternoon like clockwork:
too much time spent burning Tana leaves
playing board games with mysoginists

sipping lemonade from street vendors
whose labyrinthine robes promised hypnotic delights
from the second of seven levels at blowout prices.

Little wonder we were told our eyes would play tricks!
You recognize the brother I never had.
A street urchin panhandles a dog then a cat.

The afternoons peter out
despite repeated attempts by email to revitalize things:
bills interspersed with postcards

including one from Giza with pop-up pyramids
which resembles in some strange way
Dürer's Perspective Study of Recumbent Nude Woman.

Calling the Shots

The table-read went as well as expected
despite the second movement
which, I later learned, was what everyone had slogged
through the rainstorm to hear

especially the Johnnies-come-lately
who had taken up residence poolside
with coupons to the Lone Star Bistro
where buy-ones get-ones rule.

My testimony was based on pages 396 through 550.
I committed everything to memory
despite the standoffishness of the font
and became quite smug in my readiness.

The demands of the party of the first part
were submitted by a recent graduate of the School for Clowns
who had the judge and jurors in stitches
leaving me to call the nine-ball into the corner pocket.

You're Kidding, Right?

The whole of it of course
is cobbled together from memory -
yours and mine -
its place settings bronzed
and listed on eBay
with a blowout Buy It Now
prompting an EMT
to weigh in, followed
by a herd of multi-linguists
who in another life
were born-again bookmakers.
Most of us, however,
continue to live off the land,
feigning interest,
bellying up to the bar
in the final quarter
trying to second guess the meaning
of the hand-printed sign
hanging in the restroom
above the rightmost urinal.

Fountain by Marcel Duchamp

I Can’t Imagine Why

Have you studied the online ads for getaways lately?
The welcome mats at neighborhood kiosks
impish in their cuffed-trouser weariness?

The snowshoed arbiters at the door, delusional yet endearing?
Think of their kids, their worrisome spouses,
their elderly mothers shortlisted for nursing homes.

The garbage scow wending its way slowly out to sea
blurts an ultimatum to landlubbers
whose wallets are hacked daily by newfangled come-alongs.

Yes, the laundry’s been folded
the library books have a day or two left
the cable continues to cajole.

Yet, there is little jollity here
she heard him say as he drove out of sight
reminding her of seventh period Latin class

and the togas hidden away, mothballed and shrink-wrapped.
A suffragette’s stem-winder is tossed into the ring for six figures.
Nostalgia of that ilk does little for the wobbly tram

does nothing for the bolts of lightning stacked in warehouses
awaiting the green light from the comic-strippers
tooling around town in monster trucks with a picnic lunch to boot.

Unlike the Biplane

You've built memorials to broadcast your credentials
laying the corners of obelisks with plumb lines
that mimic the sun's rays and the innocence of clouds.
But in other more fabled cities

the townspeople speak of miracles -
silent films with subtitled clues to headstone rubbings.
These have been collected in a book
with line drawings and brilliant endpapers -

the book that is now being auctioned off
in a red room filled with empty seats.
You've waited here in the wings with your bid
and now the endgame approaches.

It has several stops to make before it arrives
to take on more passengers
unlike the biplane that made an emergency landing
here in your cornfield a few days ago.

With Apparent Theatricality

Keep your eyes on the specials, our waitress warned
reducing us to watercress, leaving us wet and wilted

eager to commiserate with culverts in one-horse towns up-river,
Guernseys supplanting gumshoes deployed to quell the babblers

who had thrown caution to the wind,
threatening to bury the village in an avalanche of aphorisms.

The close call mid-flight left everyone tight-lipped,
even the reformed ventriloquist whose lines atrophied.

Perhaps it's time to re-examine the scaffolding for loopholes?
Didn't the Times report a shortage of Hollandaise sauce

in its profile of that fortune-teller-cum-salad-chef
blurbing her unwritten memoir with balsamic insouciance?

The old nag gave up the ghost in the final furlong,
said Susan, that tiny twit, in the next-to-the-last-episode

which landed at her feet in a snowstorm
prompting her to spill her guts

to a rather plain-looking counterman dressed to the nines in plaid.
They reportedly retired to Sin City.

The Consolation of Slanted Rays

My workaday blog morphs unceremoniously
ejaculating delight-speak with blurbs
stripped from grains of rice
by interns who happen along.
Newhires arrive on the heels of spring.
They peek behind the curtain
despite admonitions
and find me borrowing a rototiller
from my neighbor
a former munchies poster child
who now moonlights as an FBI informant.
He wears a flowered codpiece.
His standard poodle jerks me around the block
leaving me stranded mid-sentence.
Someone will surely stumble upon
the brevity of my short story
releasing the codex of my dreams.
I worry unannounced departures.
Letters of rejection lie unopened on my table.

To a Locomotive on the March

It's like a locomotive on the march.
          - Frank O'Hara

Sometimes in the middle of the night
its whistle awakens me
and for whatever reason I scramble to check my bearings
arm wrestling with an uncooperative compass.

In those moments, the roundhouse looms:
my father in blue workshirt
chatting with the engineer and fireman
faces blackened from the road.

At four, I stood in the cab near the firebox
waiting for the conductor's lantern
sparks flying from the smokestack
steam spewing from heaving pistons.

I've made notes of those memories
which stretch out for miles
scribbling them late at night
after the others have retired

pensioned and peaceful.
But somehow I've misplaced my marble composition tablet
along with other wash-and-wear items
mail-ordered in anticipation.

O. Winston Link