Full Moon Wearing A Fez

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.


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

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 8/1

8/1

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

Jack Hayes
© 2010

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 7/23

7/23

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

Jack Hayes
© 2010

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 7/18

7/18

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

Jack Hayes
© 2010

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 7/16

7/16

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

Jack Hayes
© 2010

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 7/11

7/11

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

Jack Hayes
© 2010

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 7/1

7/1

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

Jack Hayes
© 2010

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 6/30

6/30

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

Jack Hayes
© 2010

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 6/23

6/23

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


Jack Hayes
© 2010

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 6/21

6/21

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

Jack Hayes
© 2010

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 6/20

6/20

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

Jack Hayes
© 2010

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 6/13

6/13

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

Jack Hayes
© 2010

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 6/9

6/9

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

Jack Hayes
© 2010

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 6/8

6/8

Marlowe at 1-something a m on a worknight’s
like a typewriter with a case of yellow fever
a ‘56 Chevy Bel Air rusting in
a humongous ice rink

like a cigarette butt with hepatitis B a
rheumatic 2-slice toaster clogged with
poached eggs & who crammed the
poached eggs into the slot

In the dream Marlowe’d rather have for breakfast
he tells Charlotte all the relevant stuff
like a wedding band made of lips

like a peach crate come down with textbook melancholia
& Spring is springing like nothing off a trampoline
in a wood-paneled rec room


Jack Hayes
© 2010

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 5/30

5/30

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

Jack Hayes
© 2010

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 Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 5/27

5/27

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

© Jack Hayes 2010

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 5/23

5/23

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

© Jack Hayes 2010

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 5/21

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

© Jack Hayes 1996-2010

Canzone

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

Jack Hayes
© 2010