Call Me Ishmael

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.

Jack Hayes
© 2010

Dr. Zhivago

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.

Jack Hayes
© 1990-2010

Love Song #57

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.

Jack Hayes
© 1990-2010

Sketch For A Big Band Balinese Shadow Puppet Theater

First there were the prince & princess. That was a Saturday, everything looked sacred like a charm bracelet: dancing Shiva, a xylophone, a valentine heart. Green cockatoos flew from the mighty pipe organ at the bijou, where the prince & princess arrive just in time for the matinee. Later there was plenty of strawberry rhubarb pie à la mode: it tasted like a clarinet's c# transformed to a kiss. God was satisfied, why shouldn't he be? There were saxophones hanging in trees, you could hear the St. Louis Blues as you ate your focaccia. Both the prince & princess had wings, they weren't much perhaps compared with a Brooks Brothers' suit or a Coco Chanel cocktail dress, but they felt snazzy flapping down the avenues in their zoot-suits out-jitterbugging Ganesha. They both wore fedoras. Drinking cups of java they each thought the other's sex was a tropical florist's.

& there was just one train that went on for hours barreling out of the clouds, & the turbaned engineer, who was himself a face taken from a meerschaum pipe, ruminated on the transiency of existence. Then somebody closed the venetian blinds.

Then god felt so tired he remembered he was only a bamboo stand with arthritis. That's life. He drank green tea. He'd rather smoke american cigarettes, these Gitanes give him an even worse headache. It's not easy having several arms, just think about it a minute. Ok, that's long enough.

In the next scene they travel to a cafe, it's called the Elephant's Bathtub. It's twilight of course because the sky's swarming with several tons of rhododendrons & silk moths & demons of course wearing bowlers & opera hats & puffing on their Garcia Y Vegas. The prince can't remember the words to I Can't Give You Anything But Love which he's supposed to sing at this point. The princess does her dance of rococo pathos. She's a crumpled pack of smokes.

It makes you think of powder blue snapdragons & revolving doors & god feels like an elevator in which it's raining & he has forgotten his umbrella again. It's disturbing. The birds of paradise & the pink flamingoes have broken loose from the zoo.

It doesn't matter how many Hudsons zoom past, the demons grinning gold-toothed from the running boards. There's no more love in the world, there are no more upright pianos the princess can lean on. There's hardly any dry land. It's a fiasco. There are so many eucalyptus trees out after midnight. There are so many cops. The prince is reduced to a hockshop, the princess has to sling hash for a living. The demons are chuckling like Zippo lighters & the ones that don't look like George Raft look like Edward G. Robinson, & no one can help our two lost lovers now it seems, not even Benny Goodman.

God's living on aspirin. One assumes time passes.

In the next scene they meet at the nightclub known as the Moon's Telephone. Under the palm trees etc under the skylight the devas circulate sporting purple orchids in their lapels until the air's awash in orchids & mambo notes some wearing natty sport coats & pleated trousers & what about those amethyst cufflinks, the rest wearing strapless dresses & pumps not to mention musical

questions hoo-hooing mourning doves fluttering out of muted trumpets. There are 7-ups sending bubbles through the roof. Each one becomes a star of course, they make whopping costume jewelry. The prince gives the princess a 16th note spritzed with rosewater from a vaporizer & with the first 4 bars to I Surrender Dear. God remembers that after all he's really a small hotel & he's dazzling with constellations for neon lights at that. He opens his doors into Sunday. There's plenty of ice cream there. There's the moon & it's ringing: hello— hello.

The demons lam, the devas in pursuit. You think it's Packards & Hudsons until the jalopies grow wings.

There's the scene at the train station of course, you can't forget about that. Here come the prince & princess, they both catch the train on the run, floribunda sprouting from the smoke which may be actually fog which is actually their footsteps. The saxophones swing on the arms of the stars, Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire should fox-trot like that. God sleeps at last like a big city sleeps. There's cream & sugar for everybody's coffee. Lotus blossoms float in every cup of course. A new one appears each time the clarinetist extrapolates another superabundant note. In the sleeper car which is really a greenhouse the prince & the princess have sex.

& there's just one train that rises on the Ganges into the infinite, & the elephant-headed engineer, who's himself a face taken from a meerschaum pipe, ruminates on the transiency of existence. Somebody draws the shutters.

Jack Hayes
© 1990-2009