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& 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:
Judy Anderson, Gayle Eaton, Meghan Gehman, Eddie Gehman Kohan, Dani Leone, Brittany Newmark-Klein, Pete Simonelli, Molly Turner, Eberle Umbach, Jonah Winter
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
& 7:00 p.m. is never far off it's
a tramp freighter turning aquamarine as
a ferris wheel taking a spin somewhere
north-northwest of the moon & Forever's
always arriving just a little too soon as
she sells seashells by the seashore
Jack Hayes
© 2010
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
The trees muy ansiosos tried—
they couldn't locate their fingertips the
dehydrated hands
the xylem & phloem cracked skin's surfacing through they
clutched shovels—
& maybe this was the answer— &
stove-pipe hats the crowns ripped up the geese
flew out these chimneys
(grandmama's feathers scattered a mortal cough
rousted—was this my childhood— the
trout à tort et à travers
lacustrine etc air streaked the— why
wicked birds roosted in a
bride's eyes— a wish dizzier was what it was
than a newspaper hat aswirl in the well's
pneumonia— first there was the air
then there was sky too higher—
what comes next
(quartz river with its grave robbers & seamed eyes'
zwitterig red trees— a novena
candle smoldered jaune in that
kitchen window (on
young trees the bark is smooth &
gray-brown becoming scaly
& furrowed with maturity— (my
grandmama's
lace schrecklich curtains waving— what nerve—
inflamed like a hangnail hands burned
campfires— they tried I said
to loiter like toughs smoking
bones— trout streaked
silver shovels shoveling rivers was this
my childhood (hands
splintering grasping the spoon o the
bird's nest soup
(no one sleeps
no one sleeps at last
except grandmama she's the house asleep
in the trees— muy ansiosos— a roost
where is this the Black Forest
Jack Hayes
© 2010
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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