Heaven #5

Mycenean death masks unearthed in Jersey. Scrambled eggs.

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This morning shimmers with such an aroma of    
volatile organic compounds & bird's nest soup.

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One feels faint like Alice surrounded by a quorum of dodos.

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A croquet game interrupted by sonic booms. The seventh inning stretch.

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An actual quill pen that once rested in Saintsbury's palm.
Aneurysms.

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A gas range, & Djuna Barnes singing All the Things You Are.

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Here's a Rudy Vallee record in a soaked raincoat its life's tragic

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The bus hasn't come

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We're not monomaniacs says Max, she likes country music far too much

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Sometimes she wishes for wallpaper & a train rushing into oblivion somewhere across the Nevada's white skin then

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Tons of crows thrashed the air black & blue

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Santa's Land USA seen from an El Dorado

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A diner in the shape of a rainbow trout swallowing the wet fly, into which a herd of holsteins is transported rosily melting

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Stars & more stars stars with weird monikers for instance egg foo yong or pink flamingo or Mildred

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Praying mantis

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    It could be anybody it could be you




Jack Hayes
© 2010

I Cover the Waterfront

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

Jack Hayes
© 2010

Here Comes Peter Cottontail

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

Jack Hayes
© 2010

Terzanelle 4 Rent

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

Jack Hayes
© 2010