I WANT A SWING!

                          for rosmarie weinlich

O how luscious it is

to glide through the air

like a dandelion seed 

carried on the wind,

floating on the world's 

laughter and defiance:

I want a swing!

Those teeter-totter days,

the  headlong rush into giddiness

and hairswept wonder

of the future! The great beyond!

The wild blue yonder!

Suspended on the hand of god:

I want a swing!

Seesawing to terra ingognita!

The point of no return,

then sweeping back,

receding estuaries

of time! Of space!  The Terror

of cosmic disorder, retrograde

wobbling out of control:

I want a swing!

Oh it was Sabre Jet Ace,

mad sky divers racing

and plummeting, 

X-15's scraping the stratosphere's

edge, the inexplicable pull

of gravity even on earth's halo:

I want a swing!

O Daedalus!  O cunning  father!

Why did I have to grow so old?

Why did you give me those wings

of feathers and wax and string

just so I could escape 

the world's distrust?:

I want a swing!

O America! 

O land of possibility!

The great leap into god's breath,

the headlong rush beyond the soul's ache!

The immensity of being itself,

oscillating and free!: 

I want a swing!

O the flourish 

of to-and-fro and yo-yo!

Newton's pendulum 

and Einstein's Super 

Mario Brothers glide 

on a quantum ride!

Underdog me!

Push me to the limit

so I can parachute

back to your arms,

breathless and free: 

I want a swing!

Notes:

oh look, it's the episode with Barney and the exploding goat -- how was it that the goat ate that box of dynamite anyway?  but here comes drunk Otis wanting his cell back and he grabs the goat by the horns and wrassles his outta the cell, that's the heap of comedy!, Otis wrasslin' a goat bloated with TNT and then Barney plays his harmonica and he and Andy lead that shaggy goat outta town ...

LOVE

You ask me what this is and

the truth is I have never 

awakened beside a woman 

whose name I didn't know

although for years that was

the goal -- to rut with anyone

and everyone, slap your jewels

against some beauty's groin,

to wake beside some stranger

and her tousled hair: that 

moment of awareness -- you 

can call it a sudden insight

if you want, or tumescence --

what spurs the next action?

Do you kiss them gently on

the shoulder, the neck, and

rub the soft kitten whiskers 

of her belly, or do you arise 

discreetly only to fumble 

with your pants, or reach for your robe 

and make coffee and omelettes?

After all, everyone craves 

an omelette after a night 

of raucous banging like a 

billy goat against some kilowatt

dam, or do you lie there feigning

sleep until she musters the dignity

to think through the situation 

before she bares herself?  The theme 

is always rescue me, despite this 

awkward pawing under the quilts, 

the shock of memory, the carnal 

blood, the ache in your chafed loins, 

there was always the promise of 

buttered croissants in a bag, cranberry 

muffins and marmalade, french coffee 

and cream, all of this served with the 

modesty of tenderness and 

amnesia, looking into each 

other's eyes for a trace of wilderness, 

and warmth, and forgiveness, and 

not resort to using your old shirt 

as a coffee filter and last night's 

pud thai and mustard sauce.  This truth

is, all of this happens, and more, 

and whether we call it love or 

lust, amore or shacking up 

or frugging or shagging or fucking 

or just a spring fling or a trollope 

or an indiscretion, a one night stand, 

a hump or just a good ole romp 'em, 

womp 'em session with a fuck 

buddy, I tell you, well, I 

don't really know, son, sometimes it 

seems like such a great idea, to 

couple up when you can, chase a 

whole lotta tail and bray like a jackdaw 

at dawn at how much you've tagged and 

shellacked, and all I can tell you 

is that sometimes all of that is 

involved, it's more than the guacamole 

and kielbasa breath in the morning, 

it's more than the instinctual 

drive to thrust and grind and slobber 

and squeeze, there's more to it than that, 

it's more than champagne spritzers 

or hair of the dog bloody mary's 

and burnt toast and the need for a 

shower to wash off the lovestink,

it's not a poem or an exchange 

of flowers or chocolates--but 

waking up beside strangers?  

We do that every day.

SAND CHIGGERS

Easter Sunday, 2009

On Sundays I carried baskets

from the red Studebaker 

to the Portage Laundromat

and helped my mother sort

loads into washtubs, then

filled the coin slots with silver dimes

and turned the knobs to "Hot/Heavy Wash"

and when the tub of whites began

to churn we opened up the lids

and added a cup of bleach

that stank more than the truck

that pumped sewage from the machines.

It was the grocer who ratted me out.

Given two nickels to spend 

at the Beer and Wine by the creek

I scoured the old highway ditch

for empties, discarded bottles of Blatz

and Drewrys for their 2 cents bounty,

I fished among the weeds for rusty

train line spikes, steak bones,

among the dragonflies and 

the weeds stung my legs, my hands

bled with rust.  At the beer store

I exchanged my loot for Milk Duds,

Necco Wafers and a bag of Be-Mo

Bar-B-Q potato chips and

a bottle O-So black cherry

to wash down the orange fire.

That night the fire spread to my legs

and red welts from my scratching.

I spent hours in the bathtub

every night, soaking while mother

daubed each scab with bleach

and I yelped at my stinging

flesh, shins and calves and ankles,

fierce blisters, laying in  the water

and kicking my skinny legs 

for inspection and more bleach,

an agony with each cotton dab

as my skin bunched into red

knots that bled puss.  "I told you 

about the chiggers," she said, 

and with swab I kicked and

thrashed, splashing water on

her and the linoleum.

Penance, the punishment for

disobedience and gluttony,

the stink of bleach curdling

my stomach like the Bar-B-Q

dusted chips and the chocolate

and soda syrup, stinging flesh,

the nettled fire a reminder

of the wages of sin, the price

of sin, the suffering of 

Jesus Christ our lord and master, 

and the real cost of living 

in this unforgiving world.  

WRITING SENTENCES

Those sentences 

held no meaning

save to induce

punishment, they

were meant to make 

us change ourselves,

inscribe some

awareness of 

our sins.  500 times.

Our hands clenched 

the Bic pens to

punish the college-

rule paper, inflicting

pools of ink in 

the Appollinaire-like

rain of words forming, 

always the syntax 

was declarative,  

I WILL NOT ....

as if to inculcate

good behavior 

through repetition.

The expectation 

that grammar would 

foster grace even

though as the hand

wearied, the sentences 

cascaded, forming 

a waterfall of  illegible

letters, bunched cursive, 

promises never 

meant to be kept:

I will not talk in class

I will not throw spitwads

I will not horse around in the lunch line

everyday misdemeanors

recorded in multiple

scribbles, discipline

administered and

producing pages 

of punitive grammar,

empty cages 

of time spent

begrudging the

written word 

and fantasies 

of eradicating

the world of 

"themes" and "compositions"

and eighth grade

books handed down

from World War II

by grabbing three

pens in one's hand

and scrawling one's

cleverness while 

confessing one's sins

about talking 

in choir, thankful,

in the end, that

a more crafty 

and complex or 

compound or 

compound-complex 

penalty was never

imposed: 

"Upon further reflection I understand 

that throwing spitwads at Randy Orwig

is not only  a violation of  school rules 

but also a humiliating act that I would 

never want returned upon me and, therefore, 

I vow to check my conscience before I 

chew dirty, filthy  scraps of paper into wet blobs 

and shoot them out the straws I stole from the 

cafeteria, and, further, I vow to forever behave 

in Mrs. Garvelink's class as well, which includes 

refraining from setting thick wax crayons on 

the steam pipes so that they melt into rich pools 

of color and fill the classroom up with a horrible 

stench,and also to stop talking out of turn and 

talking in smart-mouthed fashion."   

...sentences, which, 

if scrawled 500 times, 

certainly would have 

crushed our desire 

to craft primer prose 

and would have made 

penitent philosophers 

out of every petty 

lawbreaker, punk 

miscreant and

rude delinquent 

son of a bitch.  

ELEGY

We followed the hawks for years, 

chased them from tree to tree 

across the old county land, 

hiking the swales and ridges 

and river bottom, the 

gardens where Hmong women 

bend among cabbages and 

cucumber vines and scarecrows 

made of tin cans and rags 

fluttering in the wind.  

We walked among  seasons, 

among lost orphan graves 

as we followed the dark 

birds and their lonely flights, 

the slow drift from oak to oak, 

and passed under their stoic 

judgment, as cold and silent 

as our father's eyes.  

We clawed through raspberry 

brambles, fields of milkweed 

and burrdock while hawks circled 

overhead, flashing their red 

tails as we prayed, held hands 

and kissed, poked through the brush 

to pester field mice and 

startle philosophical woodchucks.  

Along the train track, we 

harvested opossum skulls laughing, 

a deer head severed by some poacher, 

a stash of apricot schnapps, 

hypnotized by the sun's gleam 

in the steel rails before the old 

diesels lugged coal and scrap 

from the village -- we were 

blind to the hawks' prescience  --

it was always life and death, 

always the great fear, always 

the promise of redemption 

vanishing.  For months 

machines have scraped that land, 

torn up and denuded history, 

defaced the language, and the hawks, 

seeking kinship of wisdom 

and human wreckage, have 

flown west to the land of 

memory and dying, where,

we know, all of this somehow

started, and we wound up here,

instead.  

MEMORY

I forgot the sandy shore, all the men

surfing, strapped to the pterodactyl kites

soaring, the sky menacing, how they knifed

through the water.

I forgot the heat and intense sun, the

bare-bellied white men in gold chains

walking around like the fish boil buffet

with the newly-endowed women, fierce 

and punishing with their medals 

bouncing.

I forgot all the chatter in Russian,

Greek, Portuguese, Dutch, Serbian,

the polyglot of complaint about

cellphones and corndogs, Jose Cuerva,

plantains and the fear of jellyfish.

I forgot the leeside, beyond 

the insect tower lighthouse, no ancient 

marvel, but marveled nonetheless,

the cool afternoon shade as the slow foam 

crept ashore -- the lovers coupling in 

dinosaur bones -- how no one looked us

in the eye, either the desire was too

raw or the murderous rage of loneliness

spread like contagion.

I forgot how green the water was!  How

luxurious the green waves toppled in,

narcotic, deadly, ancient and new-born.

I forgot how we were too tired to pedal on,

too dehydrated to see beyond 

the migraine glare, we stopped at that cafe

and dined on seared tuna and argula, 

a pitcher of lemon water, and all

afternoon we watched the eagles circling

the gulf sky.

I forgot the grouper salad and

the existential surrender of the sea--

laying in bed sweating and listening to

Portuguese Christmas music, Caribbean

holiday favorites, Andy Williams and 

Jimmy Buffet from  the 13th floor,

the languid bay glimmering in one window

and the islands shrinking with the tide

in the other, and the ghost moon, a terror

in the gulf sky.

I forgot the pathetic cries of the osprey

bringing home their fish, how the flopping

weighed them down while I sat in a cabana chair

not really giving a damn for anything

in the world, and then not giving a damn 

about not giving a damn, and how that 

weighed on me, like the fish in the 

osprey's talons--I felt like whimpering!

I forgot reading poems about that newborn

star in Bethlehem, all the fuss about

the skies, the heavens, the portents, 

and all the palm trees, the sand, the pelicans

swooping across the coastline, and the sudden

blast of Neil Diamond from the sailboats

leaving the docks, and the angry German

father who would not hug his chatterchinned 

son because he was desperate to read 

Heinrich Boll and he was exasperated 

that his wife had abandoned them for the sand.

I forgot you sitting naked on the 

balcony on Christmas Eve, how the humid 

night wet your skin and you smelt of butterscotch

as the distant waves crept in and the pelicans

in the mangroves next to the hotel 

muttered in their sleep -- I forgot how

you spooned the She-Crab soup and stared

at the glittering sea and stars as if 

nothing in this world could possibly

save us from all of this.  

I AM A [click!] PHOTOGRAPHER

I am a photographer [click] -- 

I flatten and [click] frame the world

to lose [click] consciousness, I forsake

my soul [click] to surface and texture,

there is no content [click] in my 

mind or my work or my medium, 

there is no [click] meaning in 

the world for that matter, I am 

no Vermeer, no Avedon, [click] no

I am no impressionist, I

don't [click] care about any 

of it, I just shoot pictures, I [click]

steal images, peel the world's [click]

slick light and [click] obscure shadows 

through parallax processes and

[click] lenses, glass eyes and 

I think through latent processes, 

chemical and [click] electromagnetic

radiation, the stuff that 

penetrates everything we know,

[click] all that business about 

the soul?, there's nothing but [click]

pixels, numerically translated 

[click] 0's and 1's, I am what 

we fear [click] the most, a

mathematician, someone whose

work counts on what what never adds up,

[click] the deep numbers in the heart of

[click] everything since the first big

division, the [click] split of light 

searing the photosensitive

fabric of  the [click] cosmos.

FLIGHT DELAY

All day we are migrating south, 

first a bus that trudges through 

the blizzard, gathering passengers 

who bitch at the driver about 

cancelled flights, delayed trains,

and the fucking cold--"No wonder 

no one takes the Greyhound!" 

as we prowl deeper into the snow.

We make Midway five hours late,

shivering in serpentine rows

hugging our luggage like the roped

and padlocked trunks that steerage

ushered onto Ellis Island.

The gates are stuffed with travelers

stuck, delayed, postponed, the terminal 

looks more like an insane sleepover, 

faces hypnotized by fluorescent

gloom, anxious and apprehensive,

phantasmagorical huddled hordes,

each seeking holiday bliss.

The announcements come in hoarse

rumblings, the delays, the cancellations, 

the gate changes, and with each garbled 

update the chill of discontent

trembles through the terminal.

This should not be happening! 

We deserve better!  This is 

America!  This is the 21st Century!

Jesus Christ this is our Christmas!

And when the plan arrives like some 

vaporous ghost from the falling snow 

and darkness, an ice monster, 

an antediluvian horror, we board, 

in defeat, all of the flamingo dreams, 

the conch shell cocktails and glimmers 

on she crab bisque and sand dollars, 

palm trees and sun-drenched cabanas, 

gator snouts and manatees, all these 

reveries have been rubbed free from 

the mind's wrinkles.  We rise into 

the snowy night, exhausted and vain, 

transported into the absolute 

zero of our lives, into the cold 

above the world's skin, alone and 

drifting into the starless stillness.