& so we come the conclusion—last Sunday’s poem, “She Sells Seashells” is the last poem in the book The Days of Wine & Roses, & so is also the final poem for this blog. When I first began The Days of Wine & Roses blog, I thought I might use it for my poetry in general, but at some point it became clear to me that it should only be a online repository for the poems in my book, The Days of Wine & Roses. So this blog will remain online, but I won't be adding new content for some time. At some point in the next year or two, I'll be re-publishing The Days of Wine & Roses (book form) with ISBN & improved distribution. I did this recently with my book of recent poems, The Spring Ghazals. As a minor note: while this blog is inactive, I will be moderating comments just to keep spam out.
What remains? I would like to reproduce the Acknowledgments & Dedication:
I want to acknowledge those I believe were most crucial to the creation of these poems & this book:
I’d also like to acknowledge the readers of the Robert Frost’s Banjo & Days of Wine & Roses blogs for their encouragement.
This book of verse is dedicated to my beloved wife, Eberle Umbach, without whose love, hope, encouragement, & creative presence there would be very little poetry in my life.
If you are interested in this book as a book & not just as a series of blog posts, you can purchase it at lulu for $10.00 (US).
Thanks for your support, & all my best wishes to you, dear readers.
The tugboats are all in a hurry like clocks
& 7:00 a.m. is never far off
while the trolley's clanging its bell
It feels like
a glockenspiel looking for love all the while she sells seashells by the seashore
& we're all in the pink this minute like
a soap bubble floating downtown with nary
a cent to its name Meantime
the newsstands just now are opening their shutters
What heartbroken gladiolas! Still she sells seashells by the seashore
I suppose our sadness never quite gets ripe
& vermilion as mangoes blush
but the ocean gets tipsy sometimes
What can't it forget like a rainbow that's lost
its hat in the breeze? Nonetheless she sells seashells by the seashore
Hey Time slows down sometimes
It never sits down in the sun-
flower yellow sun on a beach blanket spread as
thin & flat as a snapshot
That's ok take my hand anyhow & anyhow she sells seashells by the seashore
Ishmael was walking into a restaurant where the walls were plastered with clocks. A pair of PF Flyers. A crabapple tree beneath which someone’s sitting skinning an apple with a paring knife. Alice is far away on a steamship sailing for Turkestan. Ishamael felt certain he was wearing a turban. A mischievous stop sign. A cup of lukewarm latté served by 1 of the dozen anonymous gals he thinks about at 3:00 a m in lieu of smoking cigarettes. The gobi desert seems so empty: nothing but dinosaur bones & sand dunes & a hot dog stand rising with its weiner dog sign grinning crazily in the orange & gray sunrise. A white hand was reaching thru the sky— as if she’d busted it open with her fist as she reached for this morning’s new bottle of milk & the newspaper. It wasn’t as violent as all that. Just a rupture thru the azimuth between True North & Modesto. True North/True West. A piano rising awkwardly off the lawn in the midst of Hungarian Rhapsody No. ? in ?. Ishmael is unhappy just now. Ishmael has a tootsie pop & a cup of coffee. There has to be more than this. The Royal Palms on Cumberland Island, GA were fucking the thunderheads. Lightning bolts scratching the black sky all the way to the ocean surface. The night sky as usual could be just abt anything: a time machine for instance. Ishmael could walk into it without scarcely getting his brown oxfords wet. It could be said he needs a shave. The night sky black as the skin of a Royal manual typewriter that’s black as the skin of a pit viper coiled in the mud in the Okefenokee swamp gorging itself on screaming mice. An alligator marching into the Winn-Dixie in Ocala as if it knew how much we love parades. The ticker tape raindrops, the glass busting kersplash as her hand busts thru the sky’s picture window. Makes me think of fisticuffs on St Pat’s in the Mill bar in Winooski, VT, Ishmael w/an infected set of stitches swelling his left wrist as he wallowed into the 3rd year of a 3 week binge. It was like leaning off the same bar stool 3 weeks running. Ishmael in a knee-length navy coat falling smack off the curb into the street onto his kneecaps. Somebody playing sweet jane from Rock n’Roll Animal & Ishmael gonzo in the bathroom trying not to drown in a urinal: I know a man in Christ who, 14 years ago, whether he was in or outside his body I cannot say, only God can say— a man who was snatched up to the 3rd heaven. I know that this man— whether in or outside his body I do not know, God knows— was snatched up to Paradise to hear words which cannot be uttered, words which no man may speak. & so forth. A Royal manual typewriter spitting out obituaries in the alcove back of a bay window & outside the winds getting especially frantic, the hurricane of ‘38 with its flipped out pea-green houseboats scattered across the Fenway— the sky which could be a time machine so dark it’s spitting out rutabagas & eggplants etc. Ishmael walks into the future with wet feet. He’s standing in slushy snow on a street corner in Washington state just outside a Rexall drug store. The ghost in the machine. An american chestnut bookcase. Emily drove a blue car. Jane reaching thru the sky to snatch the milk bottle. A rupture.
In a castle that's brainstorming atop a mesa,
in Istanbul under an orange street lamp,
the typewriter won't stop clattering—
which irks Max Gala, the infamous ballerina who's tipsy
in Istanbul. Under the orange street lamp
Jimmy Calypso does the sort of tango
which irks Max Gala. Infamous as a ballerina, tipsy,
sweating capsized stars from a dry martini,
Jimmy Calypso does the sort of tango
that also looks like a sharkskin suit
sweating capsized stars from a dry martini.
These love letters penned in the moon's ink seem hypnotic
& also look like a sharkskin suit
lacking a handkerchief. Max Gala stares at
a love letter penned in the moon's ink; it seems hypnotic,
& literally flies off the clattering typewriter
like a handkerchief. & Max stares at
the castle's silent films while Silent Alice
literally flies off the clattering typewriter
that keeps itself busy cranking out
the castle's calamitous films; while Silent Alice
is smoking Chesterfield Kings on the heavenly elevator
that keeps itself busy cranking, out
where there are just a few stars
smoking Chesterfield Kings. On the heavenly elevator
also, Max feels like a palm tree in an Istanbul saloon
where there are just a few stars.
Some are blondes, & some the are the red-heads
Max also feels like. Palm trees in an Istanbul saloon
are obsessed with Silent Alice, like everyone else;
some are blondes & some are the redheads
drunk on french kisses—the french kisses
are obsessed with Alice. Like everyone else
Max sometimes takes life for a 3-ring circus
drunk on french kisses, the french kisses
glowing like the whiskey sours
Max sometimes takes life for; the 3-ring circus
is sparkling in the oasis amongst the stars; they're
glowing like whiskey sours
the moon sucks through puckered lips
sparkling in the oasis. Amongst the stars there are
last cigarettes & then there are last cigarettes
the moon sucks through puckered lips.
Max Gala thoughtfully finishes off the sky's
last cigarettes. & then there are last cigarettes
rolled up in Jimmy Calypso's love letter
Max thoughtfully finishes off. The sky's
like Alice's rhinestone-studded sunglasses, absorbing things
rolled up in Jimmy Calypso, his love letters
& Max Gala's feathered Stetson & Alice's
rhinestone-studded sunglasses. Like Alice, absorbing things,
a beautiful brunette bird's soaring thru the miasma
like Max's feathered Stetson. & Alice is
also one of the Queen of Night's incarnations that's
a beautiful brunette bird soaring thru the miasma
flecked with light, & graceful as a leather jacket
that's also one of the Queen of Night's incarnations.
That's how night exists in the desert castle,
flecked with light like a leather jacket
Max sports in delinquent mufti. She knows
that's how night exists in the desert castle
where bubbly's drunk from the snakeskin boots
Max sports. In delinquent mufti, she knows
the last dance is saved for Alice who's soaring
where bubbly's drunk from the snakeskin boots
that are actually Alice's;
the last dance is saved for Alice who's soaring
where the moon's fez is also floating. These thoughts
are actually Alice's
in a castle brainstorming atop a mesa,
where the moon's fez is floating, these thoughts also
are the typewriter's, & it won't stop clattering.
I forget what I was going to say oh
bony kneecaps with gooseflesh
not to mention a blossoming quincebush
asleep on the deck of a steamship
pretty face
in a broken glass
in an underwater cocktail lounge
here's a man who lives a life of danger
a tourist from Kansas a fat cloud
floating towards the wharf
Sayonara pal time passes non-
chalantly into San-raku's Sushi House
Platonic watches
Mickey Mouse watches
day-glo watches drenched in lethal doses of radiation
A water pistol's waiting in the bushes
for something & it's blue & yellow but I
forget what but that won't stop
time passing with its
hats with stupendous last names
Amoretti Timaeus
Gamma globulin
floating nonchalantly as I forget what
jellyfish steamships
terrorists
There are so few real eyeballs left
Most of the rest have become Death's-Head Moths &
the rest are first-day issue stamps
& the bugs are furious furious gyroscopes
spinning solid gold hits from the Fabulous 50's I forget which
the bugs are furious furious zeitgeists
are zipguns
it's 86 fabulous degress in this obese fog
it's 97 degrees
it's 103 degrees in the wide-eyed white-hot moonlight
The amphetamines have big ideas
Timaeus
Atlantis
Forbidden Planet
You're asleep on a steamship
Do they call those packetboats or
package stores
covert radios
Platonic radios
placebos
Rosie glued to the Outer Limits reruns
It's sad how these things happen
Who feels like
rose bushes
rose bushes blooming peppermint swirls
& corneas red from crying I
forget why
You're asleep on a steamship the water's blue but it's
unsatisfied—Life's funny
what's anything like
a steamship
seasickness
green anti-freeze green ocean
with no name other than Joe
or oviparous mass or radio out-of-commission
Things are coming to life as if
things had much choice: the masking tape, the
scissors, mothballs, rootbeer-flavored lollipops
sucked clean to the cardboard fingerbone
baby carriages like umbrellas on wheels, I'm in one now
smoking a macanudo, it tastes like Papa's socks on April
8 1965— these inanimate objects
had their own ambitions in life: the whiskbroom, the peppermint
candy wrappers crackling something electric gone on the fritz
the briarwood pipe
now we're in business c'est la vie c'est la guerre there are no more
doctors more importantly there are no more
black doctor's bags, no more stethoscopes
there are plenty of folks who can't comprehend the absolute
despair of watching a wind-up elephant
pedaling a trike
tip over as I am right now
as my head becomes a light-blue lightbulb
it's not what Mamma wanted what Mamma wanted was
a new turquoise car
& visions of the beautiful for instance a conical party hat
walking past a flatiron building on a lemon yellow
soda pop of a saturday afternoon
which reminds her of a song
for four hands
& pink & turquoise visions of the beautiful a
picnic basket & excelsior & every possible color of
jelly beans
I'm going to town
where everyone as if they had much choice
dreams dreams
& one night Jane dreams the circus has come to town
& the town's a laundry basket developing mildew
& the mildew's a town with its outskirts & storefronts boarded up
& the board of directors spends wednesday on the phone
spouting obscene graffiti
& as usual Jane comes to in Golden Gate Park
which as usual teems with ducks & perambulators Look at me I say I'm an Easter basket
The apartment's windows vibrate white wavelengths & these resemble nothing so much as a sublime rendition of Rhapsody in Blue played back with the volume off;
in between I floated deaf as an umbrella raised in June in its positive-thinking weather & you resembled nothing so much as a sublime rendition
of resentment like The Waltz of the Flowers backwards; so many frequencies criss-crossed it felt like silence in June in its positive-thinking weather & you
spoke mouthfuls the way a potted cyclamen speaks, the syntax reversed; there were lots of objects falling; so many frequencies criss-crossed it felt like silence
it felt like a petunia screwed into one's lapel; the petals must give you a headache budding like that their syntax reversed; there were lots of objects falling
like petals that give you a headache budding; our apartment's windows vibrated white wavelengths the green-skinned nights we got tipsy on jazz & streetlights & Rhapsody in Blue played back with the volume off
A dish of red beans & rice congeals on top of a mahogany armoire while yellow light slants thru venetian blinds like a baby grand’s lid trembling imperceptibly during some
Revolutionary Étude climax while a sack of Popeye’s 3-piece spicy white meat chicken oozes grease on an embroidered ottoman while Charlotte paints her toenails C# black while
a passel of mayflies is giving it up in the mentholated smoke New England evening air like a swarm of slot machines simultaneously coming up
cherries while a rose bouquet leaves Marlowe with premonitions of 1 thousand Maoist blossoms debating the musical questions of a personal life
A doorknob sprouts in a VA tomato patch under a steaming tapioca bare-assed sun— but it’s not a miracle Ma Chère it’s got no door to look forward to— in a VA
tomato patch where Marlowe’s making a new start as a garter snake creeping thru the evil 4-leaf clovers & a croquet match occasionally interrupted by sonic booms that are actually
latex enamel electric blue peacocks whooping Siamese orgasms— in a VA creeper miracle Ma Chère where there’s no new start to
look forward to Marlowe sheds his skin 1 more time like a drenched black trenchcoat mumbling Sayonara to all that
A prop job with the tsetse fly shakes like a ukulele strumming My Little Grass Hut like a kaleidoscope undergoing the shudders shattering then coalescing as a map but it’s alright darling
Marlowe just thinks he’s a desert island with a fountain pen & 1 solitary Royal Palm He’s actually an Easter Island fetish dressed in a tux aloft in a shuddering lawn swing surveying a
distant landscape that hasn’t got many mouths or ears or eyes tho the wind’s got an armload of black & white photos
swirling like so many undead shadows The prop job hunts for any chimney it can descend into in lieu of a dead volcano
A streetlight with scoliosis a confirmed old bachelor too the night’s prismatic night sweats are a problem too a con- firmed old bachelor with a bunch of re-
collections it just can’t shake with a wheeze like a fire extinguisher wheezing mica a confirmed old bachelor a trace jaundiced at that the night’s incontinence is a problem too there
isn’t much sunlight to say the least there isn’t a Holiday Inn swimming pool glinting blonde to say the least the fog on Divisadero 12 any-
thing a m thick with soap bubbles in search of a mouth & Marlowe feels more like a spectroscope with an astigmatism no less
India ink spruce trees up on the hill it could be anywhere watching the sunset’s locomotive crash into the swamp with its refrigerators & rowboats & slightly effeminate
ferns & a black wool blanket overrun with beetles & ladybugs & a snapshot of Jane with a peach pie & a thermos It could be anywhere anytime September 2 1988 Albemarle
County VA like a porcelain full moon that looks like a magnolia blossom sprouting from a caboose that’s rattling & hooting through heaven like a
tugboat chugging through water lilies & Marlowe’s just now dropping a line to the past stating If you miss the train I’m on you will etc
The sky’s big blue eye isn’t a blue eye after all sure looks like 1 tho & sincere too the rose petals pressed between the pages turning black the newspaper clippings turning piss yellow the
Polaroids taped against the infinite the clouds’ whitish teeth chew them up spit them out just like Wrigley’s Spearmint Well the sky just can’t quit smoking So why’re you so nervous Mr Marlowe
There’re awnings everywhere on the margins of existence & they’re all undergoing acupuncture It’s taking place on Haight & Masonic for instance
where Rosie’s strolling like a dog-eared paperback novel as dirty blonde & voluble & in which Marlowe can’t find his place
A coffee cup squats in a singular mood of lust & vapor & resignation like a shooting gallery duck that keeps coming back for more & maybe the night’s kind of syrupy not sweet tho
there’s not 1 toothache in the violet fog not 1 sugar packet not 1 pair of panties drying on a clothesline under a gawking monocled blue blue moon’s decapitated noggin that can’t stop
thinking Who wears monocles nowadays but the sky’s riddled with unstable stars that can’t stop coming unsnapped like safety pins that can’t stop
falling gigantic as ironing boards flattening hopes & fears & so forth unnoticed by most as Marlowe’s head floats off like a chipped coffee cup
A blue coughdrop lost in the depths of Marlowe’s sport coat pocket like a spelunker run out of luck amongst vampire bats & subterranean phone numbers no one answers gives up the ghost
gasping We are such stuff as dreams are etc. & sinks like a mollusk that’s lost it’s shell into the godforsaken depths of a lachrymose pre-socratic tidal pool tastes like a stale Carling Black Label
& it wasn’t so long ago either Jekyl Island GA June 1988 Jane did the australian crawl in a lukewarm ocean of interminable love or at least
sex with loads of good will behind it like a waterbed on castors with a burnt clutch lurching like the subway Marlowe now stumbles into
A deuce of hearts misplaced in the arms of a VT forsythia bush the other blossoms of course a sort of raincoat yellow & the heart inside the coat’s sort of sputtering like a buckwheat pancake on a
griddle in a Mojave truck stop in the middle of 100 miles of yucca & borax & bleak fortune cookie sticking their paper tongues out like so many 5¢ Chinatown postcards Marlowe’s penning return address un-
known tho it could be the North Pole for that matter someplace he couldn’t escape from like a snapshot mis- placed long ago in a bungalow run aground long after the
Mendelssohn wedding recessional shed white yellow blue pink scads of umbilical blossoms scattering ev- eryplace as tho the mailbox had blown up at last
The sunset just looks like radioactive chicken soup iridescent & pissed-off & splashing across the flat-top Victorians lurking Dear Diary like water glasses in a diner whose whole herd of stainless butterknives
will slice fluorescent light into butter & harmonicas & Marlowe’s jukebox breakfast on another tomorrow with its odor of sex & Ivory soap floating across the Pacific amongst almighty Holsteins chewing & lolling like trawlers
It all looked like a vinyl tablecloth spreading a classical picnic in the ruins of the Parthenon where Maggie’s sipping her 5th milky espresso & the moon by then
spilling its milk across the table spilling its milk across Marlowe who’s feeling about as bucolic as a hospital bed sleeping it off in Dolores Park
A black umbrella wobbling above blue yellow & purple gingerbread houses thru sheets of rain with its maple sap half-life & an avenue meantime menaced by black rotary phones & princess phones & the stained
glass doors guarded by dachshunds with bobbing heads & the only fish that swim past Marlowe sport big black dewlaps like Jerry Lewis bow ties tho Marlowe feels like a kite doing the deadman’s float tho
Nantucket is pretty far off still & Maggie’s flickering there like a lovely black haired candle a smattering of black-eyed Susans blooming across her
black scuffed combat boots tho as usual she’s a concertina exuding Nino Rota tho the wedding got rained out in the 2nd inning
The blue cars sighing a little like zippers unzipped in a breathless studio apt in the midst of this miserable sonofabitch effluvial moonlight that’s sweating like a bottle of Mexican Coca Cola in the
Sacramento bus station May 1988 It felt like a country radio station sobbing sucrose & Dear John letters & Pictures from Life’s Other Side across a Formica counter in the midst of Marlowe’s nervous
collapse like a red dwarf star’s collapse like the red tip of Alice’s Marlboro collapsing into an ashtray amidst a fistful of ocotillos when it was too late after all & Marlowe
feels like Ambrose Bierce in the midst of Mexico D.F. in the midst of life & so forth & after all darling the blue cars come to a stop at the stop sign
A cigarette drowns in a strawberry milkshake its last words being Save the last dance for me as the tumbleweeds waltz a Brahms waltz under a life preserver orange TX sun May 1988
& Marlowe walks smack into the future into a telephone booth misplaced in a spaghetti western an unruly Rorsarch blot smearing the western horizon like a down sleeping bag with egyptian dreams
But a few things are true at present a slice of strawberry rhubarb pie drenched in melted vanilla ice cream a dial tone chirping Waltzing Matilda
& Marlowe growing a little bit older as VT sinks like a beer bottle in a stagnant beaver pond whether or not Marlowe actually uses the phone
This poem previously appeared on the Haphazard Gourmet Girls blog. Although the blog is no longer extant, the editors have my continued gratitude for the role they played in my return to writing poetry after a 12-year absence.
A quart of clamato & a wrecked green canoe amongst loads of other stuff a stuffed orange easy chair going up in smoke to the tune of Beim Schlafengehen set by Richard Strauss sung by
Ms Melodramatic Archaic Ocean tragic as the rain in Charlotte NC raining mandolins & buttons & Vitamin B complex something Marlowe longs for like a cigar store indian with a breathtaking crush
So Marlowe wants to unscrew his lid & spill it There’re so many dishes surfacing in the sink the toy boats have all run freaking aground like
an onslaught of words starring dirty windows like a wishing well smashed with wooden nickels like a waterlogged Kaw-Liga in a bonfire
Tweed birds— sporting thought balloons too thinking gadzooks an unmanageable rainbow landing at the bus terminal— & other wooly entities in the bottlebrush trees & tea kettles whistling thru Marlowe’s paranoia
So much for Wednesday’s red desert floribunda with its debonair hopeless yodeling The cigarette smoke’s a gray sky white planes penetrate What could they be hunting down
A wool NY Yankees cap misplaced under a quilt Or somewhere equally stifling 17 weeks of Sneaky Pete & smoke not to mention
oceanic dreams about steamships & icebergs emerging under a hairy evening star that’s recuperating like a fright wig floating above Point Lobos
A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets were written over a bit less than three months in 1996; the date on each poem indicates when it was written. I remember them as being pretty spontaneous overall, & while I’m sure I envisioned more than seventeen sonnets, I think the seventeenth sonnet, dated August 1, 1996, brought the sequence to a good end point. The sonnets will be posted here, one per week for the next 17 weeks!
Some people assumed at the time the sonnets were being written that the character “Marlowe” was literally intended to be Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe character. Tho I am a big Chandler fan & read him a lot around this time, this was at most a piece of the puzzle. I liked the name in general, & I also had the (reputedly) dissolute Elizabethan poet in mind as well as the fictional LA detective. There also are both autobiographical & imagined details contained in the character quite separate from either of those two figures.
One final note—just because I liked the way it looked, I abbreviated state names in these poems: VT=Vermont, VA=Virginia, etc. When I gave readings I would say the state name, not the abbreviation. The streets referred to are in San Francisco, mostly either in the Mission or the Western Addition (or betwixt & between the two.
The first sonnet was dated 5/21. Here it is:
5/21
A badminton net in a VT backyard afflicted with a Rosicrucian sunset & an outbreak of communist mosquitos buzzing a Manachevitz buzz in Mr Marlowe’s a- symmetrical ears— & a transistor radio
perched in a scotch pine sporting superfluous shades & crooning Blue Bayou— which is likewise superfluous— as Baltimore Orioles swooping into the hedge to roost make Marlowe think
Descartes was right for no particular reason except he’s cadaverous drunk & shouldn’t be lounging in the tattered green & white lawn chair after all
his eyes floating westward plasmic inside a spectacular bronze Chevy Malibu 15 miles east of Needles where shuttlecocks & fortune cookies are likewise dissolving
There aren’t any plans, just sand dunes & morning sunshine w/ its coffee & scrambled eggs on a blue plate & so forth.
* * *
The zinnias are on the nod.
* * *
A snowdome in the midst of which is Max strumming a guitar. She has dreams about flamenco dancing on the deck of a packet boat. Were these packet boats or package stores?
* * *
Cigarettes lit & smoked in a gray frenzy.
* * *
The walls weren’t any color that’s got a name & I wasn’t about to give them 1
* * *
The snow fell, each flake a homunculus w/ an umbrella.
* * *
Max & Jack in a parking lot under an orange marmalade full moon, & it’s dripping sweat & tears of rage & cigarette ash & bread crumbs. They all went out to breakfast.
* * *
What a plethora of picnics: & all w/ the accompaniment of a string quintet.
* * *
The stars were late—
* * *
The world’s up past it’s bedtime It’s not the world’s bedtime it’s mine
* * *
They were never really lovers, it was just one of those unavoidable collisions in the midst of stoplights & Black-eyed Susans
* * *
How often can a memory warm a soul?
* * *
The night sky is puzzled & has only 1 cloud— there are a whole string of etcs & ampersands stretching toward the western horizon.
* * *
A lonely harmonica w/ laryngitis.
* * *
Ascending on funiculars into the constellations
* * *
A bassoon-like cough maybe like a couple bars from Franck’s Symphony in D Minor
You’re laughing the silk poinsettia Xmas necktie again, the one the fuchsia bush ties on for another hungover magenta Sunday here in statussymbolland & laughing an HO gauge Lionel trainwreck, the requisite catastrophe: jumping the tracks at Santa Rosa sometime in March 1987 when you yourself were feeling a tad like a bicycle perhaps— jumping the tracks under the indefatigable lemonade sunshine you can sip if you like thru this pleated straw— the trainwreck spilling cedar waxwings & eggplants & a passel of gorgeous scarlet yo-yos soaring let’s say just for the heck of it into the clouds etc
I’m constantly astounded by such things: & June busting thru as usual like a headstrong taxi nailing a puddle— Don’t contradict me! I’ll deny nothing: you somewhere else in that pink & green neon-hemmed black pleated skirt: the night itself with its tons & tons of black coffee dis- solving sugary stars into sugar itself & as I was saying a neon-hemmed skirt advertising Vegas sexy as a 2-door Cadillac Coupe de Ville rolling over the Mojave northward ex- ploding San Francisco snowdome calendars skyrocketing out the power windows, rolling from diner to event horizon to diner like a flying saucer
like a flying saucer sporting a bonnet with actual gardens sprouting on it— which is 100% demonstrable fact, this happening— which includes a waterfall falling then falling some more, such a silky lincoln green necktie with big coin print, such a cascade of schmaltzy Nilsson songs with their own astonishing beauties, such a torrent of surfactants— i.e. your laughter & crankiness & nobody knows your business & nobody knows your business— & fugitive goldfish & April showering strawberries strawberries strawberries & stubborn Vietnamese lunch menus, in essence they’re bad translations from Les Misérables with a touch of fish sauce & fragments from 10,000 homeless nasturtiums scattered across the know universe & across the first drive in theater in Camden NJ 1933 & you somewhere else
But you are most assuredly NOT NJ whatever else I might say I might say for instance bird’s nest soup or I Didn’t Know What Time It Was as if I were actually Frank Sinatra oozing Extra Virgin Olive Oil all over the antipasto’s black tree-lined avenues— but the checkered tablecloths were spectacular as ever!— Spectacular! but more like an opera actually, actual plastic redshell turtles glued to the terrarium rocks & of course your weekly horoscope with its fits & its empty hands & a half a grapefruit— as if I were actually Frank Sinatra though I’m really neurotic & twitchy, I’m Rudy Vallee with a redwing blackbird’s heart where my tongue ought to be Take my word for it! Things are always this way:
black penny loafers aching for a shine & actually feeling about as dumb as a Bellows Falls VT wishing you were here postcard especially if seen thru basically octagonal glasses brimming with hummingbirds swirling kaleidoscopes, a diet Mountain Dew effervescing into lily of the valley in a glass snowdome, a field deep in the depths of darkest Sonoma comprised of lime sorbet a misplaced blue sailboat sailing west by southwest thru a #1 PETE plastic Pine-Sol bottle a skyblue-pink TV set hovering where the sunset was supposed to be, a blackrose print dress speaking perfect French & hovering on its own lonely clothesline— black penny loafers self-conscious meantime as a frozen vanilla yogurt upside-down on the sidewalk i.e. the paper cone’s downside & nothing to say but See you in the funny papers or else
Adios! I’m OK actually I feel like a blue light blue moon on any godforsaken Saturday in the most Pabst Blue Ribbon- ridden cocktail lounge on Valencia— or else like a raspberry bush with its bruised ego & angst & feeling slightly preposterous sporting as no plant has ever the black silk full moon rising necktie you’re laughing thru your 117 moods each in a different shade of green I don’t doubt the world or fate much but I’m standing by a cup of tea in my hand but maybe it’s not your cup of tea
when the sky’s tumbling into a heap of frustrated nightsticks the cops with their sea of cop- ernicus eyes gawking luridly & gray at the balloons in disarray which are red & Israelite with memories of the desert the silhouettes of Joshua trees the tawdry Rte 66 gift shops lurching into view straight out of the pages of Bullfinch the hedge had a baltimore oriole nest hidden just out of the king snake’s reach there are only 16 things left in the world besides memory green eyes a television set a pair of Reeboks a baseball glove a cheeseburger etc I can’t remember what to say after we say good-bye & the blinds are drawn & the oven’s turned off the streetlight on Grove St glaring into my eyes well sleeping’s sort of irrelevant when everybody wants to smoke & be in love with you & be somewhere dancing
In this film I'm not quite dead but I'm just as good as because I'm a snowman; & besides she's wearing a wool cap, which gets my attention. There was something, too, about catching a train, & the train meantime was inching up the elevator shaft or somewhere else it's snowing like crazy & in the Cyrillic alphabet or, as you might guess, a bit effervescently like this string of white Xmas lights exploding into still photos of her 93% naked. I've said that before. It's not like a string of white Xmas lights exploding into still photos of her 93% naked, it's like a flurry of eyeballs each staring fixedly behind a monocle. I told her it's 7:23 in Berlin & there are few poems that could compare with the goldfinches singing in her underthings or some other French lyrical malarkey about jewelry, rhododendrons & grecian ruins undergoing a blizzard; but as desperately as I was looking for an orthodox church & a Pennsylvania Dutch quilt with complex memories of her pajamas, just then I was somewhere else; & who doesn't understand that desperate sense of being displaced when someone passes the borscht through the clouds, through the Bolsheviks in their rabbit-fur hats & through that piquant aroma of copulation that accompanies every good meal, & all the while you're thinking of making it like souls in bliss in a house full of 16 tons of snowdrifts: though to be honest you're utter strangers, not to mention you're a snowman. But I told her it's 9:30 a.m. in Moscow & I need to get inside. There were a few other non-sequitors, for instance my moustache becoming the 1 sentence of a love letter that'll penetrate the centuries like a passenger train, its sleeper cars awash in snowstorms— but it really wasn't like a flurry of eyeballs each staring fixedly behind a monocle, it was like a seasick dictionary. Words, words, words. Right now it's hard to say why I'm thinking so much about her amidst the dead sockeye salmon gillcovers & the brokendown zambonis & the crumpled Personals section & the baggy Russian monsters. It's hard to say anything. That's what winter means, folks. The world is flat & so is this beach. Skating across the Pacific. Skating across the Pacific we fall in love & then through the black ice thousands of miles west of Waikiki. Under the dense & frozen waves you could see boxes of chocolates that sailors have been tossing overboard since time immemorial. I was about 7 then & drowning in the rural town pool's black water; at the bottom was a no-wax ice rink linoleum floor chock full of figure skates cutting her silhouette into a map of upstate NY's unhappy arthritic finger lakes, & there I was becoming a balalaika. Thank god it didn't hurt, & on top of that, here I was, if not dead as a doorknocker, then a snowman at least laying with her under a ton of salt & beach balls & dog sleds. If this ain't love, what is it? Nonetheless, I'm inundated with realists. Nonetheless, the revolution is tramping on snowshoes towards the Ice Palace. At last we have reached that delicious place where everything makes sense, but here amidst the Kleenex & the tortured teeth & the blowfish & the hypothermic gloves, who can tell who actually had a mind of winter? Good-night, my one-&-only, I'm floating away from your lovely wool face through the ice & through the regions of space where there isn't an awful lot of matter, just a few mongrel stars & a tavern with Rhinegold on tap. When next we meet I’ll practically be an iceberg.
It was one of those nights the wind has lots of hands all groping for 16th notes the turntable spits out spinning off whistling black lips without any body— they sounded like a clarinet wheezing a kiss through exsanguinating teeth & it emanates from this birdcage that's in fact a wire mannequin's pelvis & there're no sleeping parakeets there, there's only a radio perched on the edge of a precipice & a pair of mirror sunglasses looking lonesome without a face;
& each hand gestured desperately like the hotel's curtains, & just as out-of-breath & as stitched at the wrists, because one night at the same time Gwendoline snatched the pentangle down through the curtains thinking eternity & The Sunday Funnies as well as I want a blue ballpoint— which is nothing if not blue blue eyeballs exsanguinating— they'd come to realize they were not so happy as everybody thought they must be;
& each hand had a few too many blue blue eyeballs bursting the seams i.e. the lifeline, the loveline, they looked like paper napkins folded into hats transformed to the Sunday Funnies folded into hats— as if some stupendous haberdashery had been turned upside-down & shaken through the curtains & then over the edge of the precipice;
& there wasn't much wine left & what there was tasted like combs & paper napkins & Gwendoline's blue blue eyeballs, it tasted like dried roses in a Mexican chapel, except it was white— & Jackson sat slumped on the edge of the bed because he'd come to realize he was not so happy as everybody thought he must be, in fact he was out-of-breath like a turntable & had had a few too many, he was a sleeping parakeet caged in a mannequin's wire pelvis & at the same time slouching without a face inside his raincoat;
& as I was saying there wasn't much wine left behind in that hotel with stupendous curtains & what there was swarmed with spongilla & ciliata & hydrozoan polyps & of course flagella enacting a tableau from this Pompeian fresco emanating halos & combs & whirling black lace personal things stitched at the wrists, or was it actually the Sunday Funnies folded into hats;
& Gwendoline sat on the edge of the bed, the bed was a turntable whirling black lace personal things on a stiffened finger, & these things were actually black lips whistling without a face, & as I was saying this turntable it was spinning 16th notes into long black hairs combed straight through teeth through an out-of-breath clarinet;
& that clarinet spit up bloody teeth, it was the kind of kiss Gwendoline recoiled from tasting, all spongilla & ciliata & hydrozoan polyps & also this exsanguinating rose halo— she thought she must have been drunk in a Mexican chapel, & she was tired already from resuscitating so many suffering bastards;
& Gwendoline wondered what she should do with her hands, they were desperate gestures stitched at the wrists— or were those actually stitches or were they pentangles Jackson's blue blue ballpoint had inked in at the same time he was thinking paper napkins or 16th notes, because he was perched on the edge of eternity like a hat;
because it was one of those nights the wind has lots of teeth, when everybody realizes they're not so happy as everybody thought they must be, i.e. they would be headless mannequins sleeping in a Mexican chapel except they're white & unresuscitated, & Jackson's wheezing drunk on the edge of the bed, he's slouched inside his raincoat & at the same time recoiling from flagella's long black lifelines & lovelines stitched into the Sunday Funnies among the suffering bastards;
& Gwendoline sat on the edge of the bed, she was a radio perched on the edge of a precipice, which was in fact as like eternity as the hotel's curtains transformed to mirrored sunglasses, or was it pentangles the black lips spit up— because at the same time she realized she was not so happy as everybody thought she must be, i.e. she could not in fact be a halo, because Jackson's folded into a hat & stitched at the wrists & she's the flagellation tableau from a Pompeian fresco which is actually the Sunday Funnies upside-down in a birdcage;
& there wasn't much wine left & what was undrunk was actually exsanguinating roses & as I was saying it got shaken out like black lace personal things when the turntable's transformed to wind amongst lots of whirling hands, except the wine was white though it tasted like a raincoat & at the same time Jackson was perched without a face on the edge of a precipice like a 16th note groping for a kiss;
& Gwendoline wondered what she should do with her hands.
The stars aren’t flowing downstream they’re static
* * *
Eating tortellini with pesto & just the proper shower of black pepper & slices of Granny Smith apple
* * *
I suppose the desert’s just another big sky-blue American car you can sleep in
* * *
The gray sky kind of cracking at 5:00 a.m.
* * *
A humungous iceskating palace crammed to the rafters w/rusted Chevies The windows don’t open & it’s raining
* * *
The stars hung to dry over Mission Dolores, probably sad themselves; we were having a perfectly sober chat about domestic life
* * *
Feeling categorically empty at the bottom of the well surrounded by tarnished pennies
* * *
The mailman was extremely, one might say perilously, late that day
* * *
Somewhere it’s midnight in an peach orchard where Max is strumming a mandolin in lieu of gathering fruit
* * *
Cat’s-eye shades that yearn to be butterflies. A yen for gothic literature.
* * *
A teacup filled w/evil conundrums & blue eye shadow. A cigarette holder that doubles as a letter opener. The mailman delivers.
* * *
A mirage, a gasoline stain smearing rainbows across the pavement until it shimmers into a dim glimmery swimming pool.
* * *
Dilapidated hurachi sandals slapping anapests
* * *
Fire trucks
* * *
There was such a profusion of golf balls orbiting the earth at that precise latitude. You could see them day or night, marking perfect parabolas, with a yen to become true satellites.
* * *
A peasoupgreen trolley car an easter bonnet an elmtree
There was something like snow I think the sky spit out it could have been postage stamps steamed off envelopes it could have been candy kiss wrappers too bad it wasn't Though someone says Alcoholics Anonymous it's No Exit's sentences reflected in a gin gimlet's remains make Victor's head swim like that but it could have been frosted artificial fingernails Nuncle Artie' d like to gnaw he feels toxic caustic metastatic as if he were lost in deep space nebulae above Las Vegas As for the sky it could have been diet pills it could have been the fizz 's 1000 fisheyes as if this were just another evening Dixie spent drifting through the bathtub speedread- ing Schopenhauer & the Personals & bubbles that could have been snowdomes if they weren't soapsuds if they weren't thought balloons there was something inside them if it wasn't plastic roses it was homunculi chirping snatches of Blue Velvet & asinine Schubert lieder & Judy Garland's mouth was there someplace a taste of eucalyptus coughdrops & butibarbitol melting under her tongue don't ask me why she does that those bubbles exploded off the Rum & Coke Dixie sipped washing them down there were 250 miles left to travel through the known world including all the horrors and hoo-rahs of Utah the Great Salt Desert's white skin's a car crash waiting for Jayne Mansfield to happen it had that same sense of tragic preposterous happenstance as The National Enquirer & was as flat Let's go mumbled Victor like the reincarnated Jean-Paul Belmando he felt like just then & in general as hooked on Lucky Strikes too Back to the sky it could have been nickels the one-armed bandit coughed up the sun at the vanishing point of Winnemucca's main drag seemed no more no less blonde rising that morning than Miranda her hair could have passed for Pernod merging with smoke or some equally poetic vapor she was someone Nuncle Artie wanted desperately to drink there were never any other tomorrows he could walk in on there were checkered tablecloths & horoscopes & copulating ice cubes whatever that meant She tells him Get a life that moment she felt she could understand Elsa Lanchester's dilemma everything's alive including herself everything began with an F as in Felix Culpa who's staggered clear from the innards of a Holiday Inn sign in Needles the one Victor & Dixie'd eaten Coconut Cream Pie scribbled exquisite cadavers on napkins drunk Coc- a Cola smoked dope in the parking lot at They were looking for junk supposedly stashed in the bronze Impala's glove compartment turgid as Bangkok & looked for spaceships zooming westward like postcards through the pink cellophane sunset stretched above the Kingman MacDonald's Dixie chewing Bazooka Joe Bubblegum read aloud The Poetics of Space & Dear Abby looking for answers no one knew the questions to the news- print's Baskerville typeface was something else the sky spit out another tragedy on the rose-pink horizon another mov- ie Nuncle Artie's masticating phone numbers during like popcorn actually he's choking on raw stockings this is the way the world ends he quotes he didn't look anymore like TS Eliot sporting a Stetson than any other compulsive masturbator he keeps his false teeth his ballerinas his fugitive numerals in the water- spotted glass on the dresser steeping in Polident his hands are Raggedy Ann dolls his body's a doubleknit suit hung-up undrycleaned in the Oldsmobile's backseat window viewed in passing like a late night TV commercial the sort the frolicking goddesses of banana splits whisper true love throughout he doesn' t think Hegelian suicide in so many words it's a fact of life like scads of pink paper parasols scattered across the polyurethane bar that thinks it's a mirror of course there's not much hope for Nuncle Artie in any purple kimono sky good-bye I can't say I knew him that well everybody' s alone in this world & so forth Victor for instance whose favorite words are laughing bones fedora dope & void he does- n't look like Robert Frost he feels like him sometimes meantime the lounge's Bride of Frankenstein Motorola's blue capillaries rippled the picture tube's screen it was someone's face Dixie couldn't place though she wants to kiss it if it wasn't Proust it could have been any drag queen crooning Over the Rainbow which gives her the strength to live the next five minutes She feels like a Vivaldi violin concerto about as labile like a string of bubble lights love's everywhere then for a millisecond it reminds her she once saw Carmen Miranda's plastic grapes plastic apples plastic apricots spilling hopeful though bruised through Lodi's clear blue sky the taste of amyl nitrate urgent she thought on her palate that was last August so many temblors ago hello it's Felix Culpa reduced after 25 hours of doubling down at the Blackjack table to Patsy Cline's bolo tie a seashell a tarnished angel hood ornament the sheet music to Roy Orbison's It's Over & a state map placemat He'll never plant a wet one on Miranda like a fallen star floating on top of a cocktail & as for the sky it could have been snow swirling out from one of any number of luminous TV's descending incandescent just then through spheres of fire above Nevada Victor thinks you can look for love in all the wrong places for instance the lobby amongst the smoldering carnations ditched in the sand ashtray Miranda's exasperated with this poem already she tells me point-blank she expected No Exit except in a Motel 6 in Tucumcari one of those Hope-Crosby Road extravaganzas gone wrong like everything else she's been put together Tyrone Power's soul in a zaftig Clara Bow body the Katzenjammer Kids on the loose in her head that's where they vanished to from the contemporary desolation of the Sun- day comics page the sky spits out in the midst of a jazz radio station's confusion having taken a wrong turn off I- 80 west of Provo in this snow- storm Some people are rushing east as if their veins ran crystal meth & memories of the good old days when Albrecht Dürer painted himself as Christ ev- erybody's Christ nowadays this is a problem while the sky spits out Jean-Paul Sartre's spectacles Miranda's vodka & orange juice manifesto Felix Culpa's genuine Navaho barbed wire necktie & bad luck a ticket parts unknown the sky for instance Victor & Dixie wish they could move there like all the other test tube radioactive effervescent infants hooked on Tosca & all-purpose cleaners what do I care I'm a celestial road map no one folded they've got miles to go before they sleep & miles to go before they sleep
His anger looked like a Piper Cub in a downpour off the coast of Santa Barbara Hey it’s January the corn syrup rain is coming down in big sticky sheets It’s true you can move along somewhere I’m going somewhere else A mess kit Shortness of breath The shakes from Folger’s coffee The armchairs circling like frantic helicopters I want to get going I’ve got to get there soon Bejing Forbidden City Phoenix shaking the gray ash from its crimson wings There’s nowhere left There’s a map of North Dakota a tree growing straight thru the map They call that a pine tree American food macaroni & cheese TV dinners a pack of Marlboro light 100's a diet Pepsi It’s hardly worth the effort No one trusts my hangnail-ridden fingers no one trusts my alphabet soup The steam’s rising off the breakers & the plane’s going down
It wasn’t 10,000 unstrung fog beads the half moon perspired yellow It was 10,000 lemon drops most of which tasted like sweat It wasn’t a half moon about to conk out & crash land splat in an ash tree It was a half pint of Four Roses whiskey headed straight for the olfactory cortex it wasn’t Rosebuds babbling about the ineffable it was just me opening my trap which wasn’t a trap at all but a beak warbling Laura is the face in the misty etc it wasn’t A fern bar glimmering with candlelit chlorophyll Holy Smokes Laura looked great in a bowling shirt there it was A greenhouse buzzing with O Thou Art Sublime Evening Star But it sounded like Zippos hissing the first 3 bars to Somewhere a place for us Unless it was the coffee talking
It wasn’t a greenhouse right on the verge of carbon dioxide desperation It was a green chartreuse soused aquarium 10,000 Tonic water bubbles exploded across it splashing shipwrecked on deafening ice cubes they were Desperate to get something off their chests the fact that Laura looks great in a bowling shirt for instance such Tongue-tied effervescence it wasn’t my Body floating thru ocean snow a clownfish stashed in my right jacket pocket it was A Buick Skylark sunk facedown in a ditch amongst 97 impetuous Sea anemones sprouting cowlicks in bad need of combing it wasn’t a cowlick it was a Black comb humming Laura is the face in the misty etc à la Charlie Parker thru green waxed florist paper Unless it was the coffee talking
It wasn’t a black comb hummed thru green waxed florist paper it was a Catbird perched saxophonic atop a phone pole the phone pole being Immaterial just about then there weren’t any phone calls there were crystalline red coral Skeletons longing to do the tango it wasn’t a tango it was The Waltz of the Flowers played backwards though it wasn’t a windowbox full of Waltzing zinnias it was 79 cocoons splitting open inside my innards & Tiger moths seeping out rustling cigarette paper Wings which wings sizzled green in plastic ashtrays like a ditch full of catnip whispering Laura looks great in a bowling shirt Unless it was the coffee talking
It wasn’t a ditch full of catnip whispering Laura looks great in a bowling shirt it was Wheels of Botticellean bicycles whooshing swimmingly taking a wrong turn thru the Tunnel of Love It wasn’t the Tunnel of Love it was my mouth stuffed with waterlogged paperbacks hoping to Speak to the situation Unless it was the coffee talking
Yes, as promised, albeit a bit late, I’m here to announce the second giveaway for The Days of Wine & Roses. Not the blog, of course, but the book. As stated previously on Robert Frost’s Banjo:
“The specs: 92 pages, paperback “perfect” binding (your standard paperback set-up), with cover design by yours truly using three of my father’s photos—ones that have appeared on this blog. It contains 48 poems (the sonnet sequence “A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets” is listed as one entity in the contents, but it’s a series of 19 poems). There’s a bit of old Hollywood, & bit of hard-boiled stuff, a fair amount of surreality, some form, some free verse, some prose poems, long poems, short poems—a bit of something for everyone! These are the poems I wrote while living in San Francisco from 1989 to 1998, plus one from the early 00s in Idaho—so the recent poems that have appeared on this blog won’t be there. But don’t fear: that manuscript is quickly assuming book-length & I’ll almost certainly publish it next year.”
Here’s how to enter: if you’d like a copy of The Days of Wine & Roses signed & inscribed by yours truly shipped to your place of residence, simply leave a comment on—please note carefully—Eberle’s Platypuss-in-Boots blog post for tomorrow, Monday February 22nd &/or on her Theme Thursday post on Thursday February 25th. Please mention the book giveaway in your comment. If you comment on both days, you’re entered twice! However, two entries are the maximum per person. We’ll keep the contest open until midnight Mountain Standard Time on Thursday February 25th, & we’ll draw the winner’s name on Friday morning.
Good luck one & all, & hope to see you at Platypuss-in-Boots over the next few days!
On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of Scotches. They didn’t do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-Wig, and I never saw her again. Raymond Chandler
I haven’t been getting much & there were 19 faces pal in that tumbler & none of them mine some of them looked like night-blooming cacti looming on the outskirts of Tijuana all they’d ever wanted was to grow up as purple orchids lousy break but I was thinking way too much without much to show for it 16 charred valentines in a clear glass ashtray hearts smoldering amongst the stubbed Kents the 5:00 a.m. sky was going to look like an immense pack of Kents the cellophane ripped but I wasn’t there yet I was wearing my hat on my heart & my heart on a frayed black tweed sleeve it hadn’t slept for a slew of dog years the sleeve lay supine in a puddle of cocktail glass sweat the globe lamps broadcast as if the light were just dead trout or tincture of iodine or a fruit cocktail can its lid 3/4 peeled off & jagged & drooling & I was feeling a bit like Marcel Proust myself with this compulsion for scribbling in bed when I should’ve been sleeping with the fishes as if my heart were a cocktail glass humming Born To Lose all by itself when I’d meant to say I’m holding my heart in my hat & my hat’s in my hand & there were 19 faces pal staring & some of them looked like a roadside hot pink neon lit motel 10 miles west of San Berdoo with its pine oil reek & the cable TV buzzing killer bees swarming headlong northwest from Mexacali they’d never had a chance to really live as a Rte 5 fruit stand & I was thinking way too much in the midst of the white white stars’ degenerate matter furious all-night jag they were bawling zircon & Tanqueray as though they thought this was all rock candy & seltzer & streetcars named Desire & Mildred & Russian Lullaby hoved by lugging their Venus on the half-shell frenzies their freight of ampersands their yen for mad love shuddering the cables & I thought this is just asking for trouble the 5:00 a.m. sky will probably look like a dead fish gawking blind from crushed ice in a chinatown market but I wasn’t there yet I was holding my hat in my heart & my hand had sunk gurgling under a capsized gray fedora this hat felt bitter itself it had missed its chance to become a conchshell washed up at Long Beach in the phosphate detergent foam with the rest of the sexy jetsam as if my heart were ice in a cocktail glass humming Rose Of Tralee all by itself as if I’d actually said Scotch & alkali when the sky at 5: 00 a.m. will actually be a flat Fresca green & unbubbly but I wasn’t there yet I was thinking Big mistake when I’d meant to say I’m holding my heart in my hat & my hand’s a tumbler pal holding 19 faces & only one of them actually was a dirty blonde palmtree brooding next to Mission Dolores it’s no one’s fault her brown eyes never got translated into an authentic Manhattan brownstone brimming with Caffé Lattes brimming with steampipes spinet pianos a hardboiled novel in which characters shoot the moon through the actual orchard of spheres I was planted in just then amongst everloving lemontrees the lovebirds squawking their nitrous oxide yuks straight out of Hitchcock clutching discombobulating boughs I was thinking when you’re in this line of lost & found in this sleepless bamboozled eat- your-heart-out universe pal you end up doing a lot more of the first
Rag wings stitched with an F flat stolen from Ma Rainey's throat: in her throat it'd gotten by on desire, it'd lived a poppy's meet me at the Casbah life;
but in the time before time was they were happier maybe, a black tux, an ivory satin gown (that sort of smile that's an unrelenting lunule glaring amongst the crystal candlesticks, that sort of rigorous mouth like a black tie, Mary Egypt remembers these things inhabiting movies) until a diamond stylus inured to tunes wounding the body sewed their tatters to the scapular muscles;
but once patched together they were disreputable as that poppy, as problematically smoky, & when they shuddered it was because they remembered fezzes congesting the speakeasies, Stutz Bearcats, Humphrey Bogart, someone whispering huskily take a message to Garcia, & minarets there in the menstrual twilight announcing God's absence through the palms;
& this photograph seemed as fraught with inside dope as the orange Ford taxi cab that just now sloughs toward Mary Egypt who's loitering dissonantly on the corner blowing soap bubbles;
for lack of kisses she blows them between the needle-like bodies of fish that purl past threading & knotting through her wings C sharps, typewriter ribbons, attenuated spit like strings of pinprick white lights snarled in the cycadeoids;
(Johnny had observed the phenomenon often enough in that Jurassic edifice where he slumped in the most visceral red chair while he thought about gulping lagers amongst humongous fern fronds;
(& they called that joint the Egyptian Book of the Dead, it hadn't stopped raining there for over 10,000 years— however they never lacked for insects there, the insects showing traits of gigantism & a taste for Stravinsky's most violent strains, they were violins pitched sharp as if whipped); then
the fish they get euphoric on her & Mary Egypt can't take it any more, these mouths gulping hunger, spewing bubbles, & the bubbles actually molten charm bracelets the fish disgorged— because it is almost that time;
& the taxi floats past taking on water & churns past water snakes where they thread through the scuttled dressmaker's dummy's wire pelvis & past these hirsute lilypads while it honks dahlias, Storyville Blues, & a sewing machine in ecstasy;
but mostly it sounds like the mynah bird cracking wise at the Greek's deli: above the bouzouki's vibrato it cracks aphorisms regarding the beautiful & the eternity of love, it sounds like the old guy cracking beer bottles with a pop & a rasp;
it's several weeks after midnight, in other words, almost that time, & Johnny lounges in the blue Tiparillo smoke— as if everyone's lips were evaporating— & he's dissolved a priori, he's gray eyes afloat between the brim of a brown fedora & the collar of a trenchcoat;
& the trenchcoat slumps frazzled & wrinkled & without ethics, without honor, without a thought for the wide world's spasmodic splendor;
the world wasn't wide but deep;
& here comes the taxi to take Mary Egypt out...
2
& o yes it takes her out because the wings don't work;
& just then the town seemed more than ever like a Mesozoic morass, its restaurants all reeking catfish, & decaying Da Vinci landscapes loomed— it was frightening how they loomed! you could hear the cabbie remark on the rocks, how they looked like ears & there Mary Egypt sits timeless amongst the rocks & looking for a kiss;
& Johnny feels like an aficionado gulping espresso from a dirty cup— as if he actually had a face, not something ersatz sutured;
how many stitches had he taken? how many chances had he missed? how many windows had his fist shattered allowing the shadows to rush in, back then when movies first created night— & he liked to hiss these scars on my back are Trilobites okay they needed someplace to sleep it off;
he didn't mean much by it, just ossification & night terrors like this 3-D screen distending, its wings thrashing faces watery, wings like an extinct bird's— which is mostly what he feels like paying the tab with a fin— & like venetian blinds creaking exhausted from witnessing sheer lust that often amongst the ashtrays inside the reptilian buildings— until his whole existence reeked gingkoes— then he arrives;
how would they be troubled by this beauty into which the soul with all its maladies has passed? the cabbie asks, though not in those words exactly, he actually says So do you like baseball or Stormy Weather, the latter phrased in a different key & as a question, the way it'd sound through a pawnshop trumpet;
& Mary Egypt thinks I've got the answer: I am rag wings (the fabric was 60% a piano's black keys melted down, it was 40% a movie poster for Casablanca scissored into a collage;
& they called that jazz;
& Mary Egypt arrives;
3
& this moviehouse half-sunk in the swamp: it was a castle a tractor hauled in from the late show's Carpathian tor— it looked that much like a pyorrhetic mouth, it looked that much like a face turned to stone from staring at sleep's face— which Johnny knows something about, as he knows something about what evil lurks in the hearts of men;
where there is water everywhere usually, or bruised black motor oil, & a lightbulb dripping hopeless water which somehow reminds Johnny of a cock getting wrung-out semi-tumescent in an Exxon station's john in the absence of beautiful gorgons' mouths;
they were such embittered tidal pools! what did they care about the Jersey Turnpike's stupendous petrochemical tanks on stilts or the fishscales showering everywhere, & Mary walking in asked Who turned out the lights?
because it seemed more or less insubstantial to her, this darkness complicated with pupae & recluse spiders & the echoes of a Django Reinhardt improvisation trembling near the soda fountain;
not to mention the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the mysticism of the middle ages with its spiritual ambition & imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world & so forth;
not to mention Johnny envisioning silver light & silhouettes trying to break free of it— he knows how they feel, one supposes, because he knows more about vanishing & suffering & suffering & vanishing & crawling amongst the bivalves & starfish & salt water taffy wrappers, crawling through water which seems strangely dead as well as infiltrated with shadows & flashes;
it went something like that;
because the movie screen looked like it had a lot on its almost inert mind besides inertia, besides this mayfly hatch the projector aimed at, it was a bus mired past the hubcaps in quicksand & who knew if anything could ever move again?
The Shadow knows...
4
Nothingness;
& Johnny thought I've got it made— as if the Spanish moss dangling like so many shrunken heads could give a damn &
the theater yacked bacteria & electrodes & appendages with a life of their own: for example thighs, for example ring fingers— meanwhile
Mary Egypt rose so strangely beside the waters—
as if this were the instant she reached inside herself;
as if this were the instant the movie started to roll out the silence without any cigarettes, without any matchbooks;
which isn't silence at all but a phone off the hook spewing insects;
actually it was pterodactyls & a scream shorn from the body: for all the world it sounded like Fay Wray's except it shimmered with tarantellas & luna moths
& they called that jazz
which was the silence Johnny heard like a saxophone's exhaust pipe— it sounded like hearts convulsing in surgically-opened chests— meanwhile
he slumped amongst the theater's emphysemic lungs— they gurgled: hours hours hours ensemble like an aquarium— it only sounded like horror of horrors;
they had their vestigial gills now they wanted wings— their talons were cooked lobster claws grappling with whatever floated past belly-up;
because they lived off hearts & not much else except off various Jack Teagarden riffs & off unmentionables;
& what could you do with these old fuckers? the next thing you know they're waterbugs the hotel's sink spit up as it gasped: loss loss loss— it only sounded sometimes like Eros;
& whatever else Mary Egypt couldn't get off her mind from the wax museum— for instance, dolls' knuckles glued to the backs of their hands as if they gnawed blue veins— & all she can think is one last kiss
5
because a kiss is just a kiss, despite the fact someone's mouth bursts into Japanese Beetles, bowties, & carbonation broadcasting My Funny Valentine through yellow candlelight amongst the tuxes & gowns, & the candles are after all poppies with immemorial recollections;
once upon a time, before time was, they were perhaps happier, but there's no guarantee of that amongst the melting blues platters & the belemnites squirting ink until the entire theater's blotto;
so they step outside into this effusion of music like Green Dolphin Street down which taxis drift through a detritus of photographs, crumpled cigarette packs like someone's notion of crushed gardenias & a detective novel dredged from the swamp dripping volvox, oscillatoria, chlorella, & hyacinths, & the flukes & leeches are inching between the pages;
which summarizes the movie's plot— so who can blame her if her eyelids are a little weary? because all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres & flutes & an entire bandstand jammed with sewing machines whining mechanical yens & a theater full of caged mynah birds cawing beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh;
but Mary Egypt remains unflappable;
but she is thinking about veils, how they spread out across all space for instance like cobwebs or the negative image of a jazz platter bodiless hands push under the Singer Stitch-o-matic's needle & all they wanted to be were wings composed from memories of Ingrid Bergman beside a piano;
though the platters were in fact melting, black vinyl melting into shadows which were not her wings, were distended dismembered bodies like Johnny's which is everywhere & nowhere— along the walls, across the sidewalk, some residue seeping along the theater's floor until you can't help but think about lips dribbling musical notes which are really black dahlias he wants to stitch into his trenchcoat— as if that could help;
as if that could change the fact that the insects are crawling for the most part in a dark room amongst the sounds of plumbing & gulping & the screams of an archaeopteryx ripping up the curtains— there where he marks time while itching for some Duke Ellington cross-hands passenger train solo to shanghai him out of this lagoon—
where the one is becoming the many &
his face, like something he's known for far too long— for instance, fossil Paleozoic dragonflies with 30-inch wingspans enmeshed in fossil cobwebs— when this unravels;
So what if his face is a spider web thought Mary Egypt, & her hand crept off by itself to look for big bloody lips which were not his;
Poems, some short, some long, some in-between; some old, some newer, & some new. The blog title is taken from a manuscript I’ve worked on for close to 20 years—it is a book (see below), but it'salso this blog, one poem at a time (usually), posted each Sunday morning.
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