Heaven #6

Once upon a time there was
Once upon a time there was a castle by the
   
    *  *  *

Once upon a time there was a castle by the sea & a percolator bubbling on a faded taupe Formica counter
   
    *  *  *
   
the sand is just so much white sugar
   
    *  *  *
   
this unheimlich clock, this black-ice breaking
   
    *  *  *

Max whispers sharps, she whispers dry-ice stars
   
    *  *  *

The real world had had its day, it ended in a fit of rain & blackbirds
   
    *  *  *

A patch of witchgrass
   
    *  *  *
   
A patch of witchgrass gone to seed in the

    *  *  *

A patch of witchgrass gone to seed in the asphalt & the asphalt looks a little bit like a cracked mirror
   
    *  *  *
   
Max in a black dress in the fractured light
   
    *  *  *
   
Once upon a time there was
   
    *  *  *

Once upon a time there was a german sanatorium swarming with black tubercular sport coats, a novel swarming with purple finches
   
    *  *  *
   
free at last from the wages of sin, Max gets into her car
   
    *  *  *
   
This is the street where we danced last Wednesday—have the streetlights vanished so completely
   
    *  *  *

there’s no sunset there’s only the wet wet heaven

    *  *  *

a last chance to float on wide band radio waves

    *  *  *

Once upon a time there was
   
Jack Hayes
© 2010

Heaven #5

Mycenean death masks unearthed in Jersey. Scrambled eggs.

*  *  *

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

*  *  *

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

*  *  *

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

*  *  *

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

*  *  *

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

*  *  *

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

*  *  *

The bus hasn't come

*  *  *

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

*  *  *


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

*  *  *

Tons of crows thrashed the air black & blue

*  *  *

Santa's Land USA seen from an El Dorado

*  *  *

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

*  *  *

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

*  *  *

Praying mantis

*  *  *

    It could be anybody it could be you




Jack Hayes
© 2010

Heaven #4

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

* * *

The nameless hour
the sky leaning upon the hills


Jack Hayes
© Jack Hayes 2010. All rights reserved

Heaven #3

Hushed as a fishtank amongst the cock-eyed stars

* * *

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

Jack Hayes
© 1990-2010

Heaven #2

Rain’s falling already, I’m waiting to catch hold of an umbrella—

* * *

one of those unavoidable collisions in the midst of stoplights & Black-Eyed Susans

* * *

an unbalanced picnic basket, incorrigibly lonely

* * *

“however extravagant, also shy”

* * *

a castle filled with cuckoo clocks & 2 dozen cases of Diet Pepsi & several ceramic dachshunds with bobbing heads

* * *

a radio tower lost in a blue eyeshadow cloud—a
Plymouth plows thru the pink auroral jungles of Western PA

* * *

Rain’s falling already, I’m waiting to catch hold of an umbrella—

* * *

The moon, of course, looks suspiciously like a glass of 2% milk about to spill, & Catalina is pretty far off, & Max is waiting there, reading a movie magazine amidst an invasion of fog

* * *

a castle by the sea & a percolator bubbling, intemperate as a spoon

* * *

So many unanswered questions, so many drowned ‘78‘s

* * *

so many black rotary phones & bracelets jingling & Max’s theatrical hands

* * *

so much honey dribbled on burnt toast

* * *

a teardrop mandolin in an orchard

* * *

Rain’s falling already, I’m waiting to catch hold of an umbrella—


Jack Hayes
© 1990-2010

Heaven #1

I want to write something that’ll forgive everything

* * *

So what if it was raining—the vines on the
wooden fence had the shakes etc.

* * *

Awnings were everywhere on the margin of existence:
storefronts, eyes suspended in space etc.

* * *

Were they gray were they green?

* * *

The aroma of homemade ravioli

* * *

Here we are in a country the train tracks stitch together

* * *

Yellow raincoats reeking cod liver oil & isolation which has no
        odor whatever

* * *

The stars hidden back of the nimbus clouds & tangerine sun
they were driving up to New York at 11:00 p.m. unlike us

* * *

there are merely an infinite number of ways to say
goodbye like saying goodbye

* * *

The cigarette-smoke gray curtains the actual smoke more
        blue than white

* * *

Max sporting her cat’s-eye shades gone iridescent

* * *

I want to write something that’ll forgive everything

* * *

You could be happy for an hour or two, maybe sleep someplace—
        there’s a
weeping willow & picnics that never quite get off the ground

* * *

Here we are in a country the train tracks stitch together &
there are merely an infinite number of ways to say


Jack Hayes
© 1990-2009