This 12 X 18 room

where I spend my days

and nights caught in

the habits of ghosts

the yellow room

with the rollaway bed

and the card table

of paperbacks, a

transistor radio and

a copy of Good News

for Modern Man

no different now

except the window's

larger and the plaster

swirls are grey like

suicide winter

the year spent tapping

keys and washing dishes

reading Giants in the Earth 
and  Liturgies of the Western Church,

taking photographs of

Asylum Lake, the long

walk behind the paper mills,

snowflakes smelling like

the dead river

look, brother, we're not

the revolutionaries we

hoped, it's all disco and

glitter glam and Jesus

catching the the Greyhound

to Ann Arbor, dipping

sardines in ketchup

and passing Old Crow

the proselyte pan handling

in Candy Cane Lane eating

dogpiss snow to heal his

broken teeth, the city's Dutch

Reformed swilling fondue,

Swedish meatballs, and

marshmallow jello

Sunday morning in this

room, behind distorted

glass, like ice fishing

with mealy worms,

a plate of cold toast and

margarine, Taster's Choice

crystals, the dream again

of reading in the dark,

reading in the dark!

eyes penetrating the

unfathomable pages,

ancestral ghosts

loosened from the black

cages

this room I'm in now,

this one you can't see,

the one that I too cannot

see -- once again it is

torpid, unconscious

the death of the world

and you-know-who all

over again, it gets so

cramped -- I don't

want to waken in

the closet blind and

scratching the yellow

plaster, mouth groping

like a bluegill plopped

on the ice again

UNRESOLVED

each time you awaken you

wonder: Who am I?

Where am I? Huh?

all the existential

claptrap, dislocated

memory spattered by

quicksilver dreams--

then the inevitable,

the tyranny that

something means

something

it’s the same

since sweating in

that yellow room

waking to God

the migraine, dust

motes floating in

sun scalpels

relentless, the

autonomic system

awakens, divorced

from the mind, all those

plans–the ceremony,

ghosts fluttering,

thoughts in the wind

waking in

the Florida heat,

children’s voices

riding the salt smell

and rotting crabs,

bonfire tangos,

sunset agony

if the gulf

waking this morning

to what? a bed?

a room? the fear

that you are not

what you seem but

something unknown,

something unknowable,

what language do you

know?

in the end it’s

you and god, the same

unknownness

awakening

WHOOPTEE FUCKIN' DO FOR YOU

for A & A

Whooptee fuckin’ do for you! she said,

this was their first cocktail party, a soiree

in their honor, drinking Grey Goose kumquat quests

and chanting Ferlinghetti’s “Constantly Risking Absurdity”

from the picnic table festooned with paper lanterns

and tiki torches. The guests sulked and slinked

in their sultriness, words slurred in the syrupy

sloops of fireflies and luna moths floating

their carnal syntax across bare shoulders

and breasts, men stripping down to vests, there's dancing

barefoot across the dewy grass -- someone

put on Sinatra so they're dancing -- and

when he said he needed to recite his swan song

they all sang "The Way You Look Tonight" with

Ol' Blue Eyes, they weren’t having any of it, no,

this is not how artists fade away, this

is not how cognitive theorists launch their careers,

there’s too much wisteria curlicued overhead,

she pleaded with every slender braceleted gal

swooning to the crooning she could corner:

Do you think I’m pretty? Do you think I’m smart?

And of course they nodded and danced, yes dear,

of course you are, you are!, kumquat quests spilling

over their hands and down their lovers’ spines

as they danced, cooling the humid sweat and

patience from their fingers, and now he was

holding court by the fountain of Aphrodite

riding a swan, he was telling them all about

the swan, the song, and she, spying him, found him

so luscious, so utterly divine, and there,

among those flush-fleshed calypso dipsos,

she bounced up to the picnic table proclaiming

her right to holiness, to sing the Canticle

of Canticles!, and he, washing his hands in

Aphrodite’s spillage, shouted that he’d

never slurped oysters from their shells. The

lascivious couples slinked off into something

like a fistful of pixie stix poured down one’s throat

when looking at the stars, wax bottles of sugar

water one drinks to quaff their preternatural thirst,

licking the frosting off red velvet cupcakes,

whooptee fuckin do!, she shouted, Is this

all there is? Whooptee fuckin do for you! he sputtered.

This was not their swan song, they knew, but what did

they know? The night was fading and folks were

copulating in the neighbor's hottub, shagging

in the bearded iris, frolicking in the perfumed

French lilacs. They were left with the platter of

Cheez-Its and Triscuits, red grapes, cold asparagus tips,

potato chips and melted brie and the Eurythmics.

Standing there on the picnic table, under

the paper lanterns, they touched each other's lips

with their fingertips. Whooptee fuckin do for you!

baby, Whooptee fuckin do for you!

THIS BEE

This fat bumblebee trapped

at my window, his whole being,

it seems, furious and

trembling, buzzing against

the glass until he fatigued

and resigned himself to

his fate, this transparent

flat pane that detaches him

from reality – his

yellow thorax fur gleams

with slick sweat, as if

the effort of life itself

drains free from him. He lifts

his legs, delicate brushes

fastidiously grooming

his abdomen as if to

release the pollen he’d

collected, combs himself

to look composed for the

inevitable while his honey gut

shivers. He stiffens for

the passing from one state

to another, a cessation

of bumbleness, and so

we see that existence

does not, in the end, precede

essence, at least

not for this bee, it simply

means the end for this bee

is the end of essence

itself, the same old

same old, again.

WHAT IS AND EVER MUST BE

You can feel it coming,
can't you? Even in this
exhibit of former friends
where you wander past walls
of drawings, prints and paintings,
emerald bee-eaters,
fat rust-colored roosters,
naked women leaning
against abstract barns,
a series of houses,
still lives of blood ripe
peaches, exquisite, fruit
prints of a snowy river
while outside the dark
windows the river empties
into the starless night,
it's all line and value,
color and texture,
gravity and grace. You
buy three drawings of
sandhill cranes taking flight,
captured, as it were, as they
escape a slip of marsh ice
and leave the photographs
of powerlines stretched
across a field of rotted
pumpkins, straggled vines,
plein air paintings of the
old County Grounds, those
fields of lavender and
marigold, milkweed and wild
raspberry, hawks and kestrels
thistle and milkweed husks,
the hollow graves where the
nameless and star-crossed
orphans were buried, you
can feel it coming, can't
you, now that they've swept
the leaves in great mounds
so the streets look like
ancient burial mounds,
these nights are all so
elegiac, when the freight trains
rattle and moan, you feel 
a cold front coming in from 
the west, and you know it's coming,
there's nothing you can do,
it's the tide of all things
material and the
inconsequential.

THE SECRET NOTEBOOKS

Everyone, it seems, keeps
a secret notebook in which
they write their most profound
thoughts and ideas, thoughts so
deep they frighten you with
their stunning clarity and
grace, philosophical knives
that cut to the very essence
of what we know, and beyond,
the inexplicable mysteries.
It turns out we all know
how to define beauty, how
to resolve the universal
paradox, the story of
human origin, the
stupefaction of the life
force, we know why we love,
why we pervert love, why
the Babylonians built
a tower and a ziggurat,
we know why the praying
mantis devours her lover
when mating, we know
why the locust swarms, how
the mind translates all signs
and symbols in every
language, why we score our
skin with the truth when stars
burn under the surface,
we know why some of us
are born imbecilic,
stricken by lupus or
leprosy, are devoured by
craving, stung by evil's
honeyed lips, torched by
obsessions, why some of us
drown in schizophrenic seas,
why the agonies of desire
and loneliness scratch us
so horribly, why we
prey on children, lop off
the arms of boys with
machetes, why we pray
to goat heads, blood-stained
altars, ethereal manifestations
of abstractions.

We keep
these words a great secret,
hidden even from ourselves,
every night we scrawl them
with fat pencils, or ashen sticks
pulled from the smoldering,
feldspar, chalk, our blood and
piss, bone, spider silk, our
souls, the traces of our flesh,
our nails, and the tablets, the
journals, the notebooks, they
are everywhere, we surround
ourselves with extraordinary
truths, clarifications, theories
that explain everything, they're
quantifiably certain,
phenomenologically ever-
apparent, they're ontologically
indisputable, and yet,
and yet they're indecipherable,
a great babel, indeterminate,
but the very fact that all of this
truth exists, that we all know,
and what's more that we do this
at all, that we record this,
that we keep these riddles
and divine knowledge, this
esoteric gnosis so private
not only from each other
but from ourselves as well
and that hey, we've always
done this, and that we always
must, knowing that there's no
hope for breeching this innate
indwelling truth, this
instinctive constant we know
as the intuitive gospel,
the preternatural preface,
the undeniable, whether
or not what we know is
sacred or profane, well,
that's the only thing we
don't know, isn't it? I mean,
I'll show you my notebook if
you show me yours.

You first.





,

UNTITLED

Just now I recall that red bug

driving past Boogie Records, the

head shop, the People's Coop,

we were firebombing Vietnam,

burning Detroit, and your roommate,

a Navy rat who eavesdropped

Cuban radio for plots to overthrow

America, you drove to crazy

Haberman's wedding, Pressley rolled

joints while you held the wheel, eyeballed

the centerline in gas fumes.

You stopped off at Hamtramck,

Margie's gypsy Polish bungalow

so they could fuck while you drank Schlitz

tallboys and ate fried pickles and

drowned your head in the sink.

Wedding day was sweltering.

You drank gin and tonics with rich

strangers at Crazy Haberman's

reception, sweating off the beer

and fried pickles and driving buckets

of balls into the depths of the

Birmingham Hills Country Club,

the migraine taking over, the taste

of silver on your tongue, stoned on

hash when Crazy Pete snuck out

behind the kitchen, then Crazy

Pete's father-in-law grilled you--

"What are you doing with your lives?"

and Crazy Pete was thinking Fuck

man, I'm just gonna get fucking

stoned and make love to your daughter

and laughing that crazy-assed laugh

that made you think, shit man, Birmingham

fucking Hills, this guy's fucking

looney tunes, and Pressley thinkin'

I don't know and you were thinking

When did I learn Bolshevik? When

did I become a leper? When did I

turn into Tiresias? stirring the burning

gristle of chickens grilling on the spit,

wielding swords of flaming Greek cheese

in the night, pouring libations, gin,

champagne, Asti, spouting apostate

invectives, proselytizing

to the checkered trousered golfers,

cursing the bastard sons of Ford

and Chevrolet, all the captains

of industry, and when the Greek

boys serving the drinks hauled you

behind Pressler's bug and kicked

and punched your ribs till the fire

raged and emptied your stomach

and lungs, you barked like Cerberus

at the country club gates, the

ancient fireworks exploding

overhead, ashes dying in

punk.

MY FATHER IN CHICAGO

In my dream you're alive again,
I meet you walking Michigan Ave,
panhandling, coffee-stained cup
in your thick wind-worn mitts, nothing
big, just a few bucks, pocket change.
I dip in and search for coins, just
as you did at the Knob Hill Tavern
when I wanted a nickel for
the juke or a slim jim. You
pulled out a handful of dirty
coins, dust-lined rootbeer barrels,
ten penny nails, and sorted
them with a miser's patience
which I later discovered was
just fatigue and too much beer,
you wanted this nickel to mean
something, something you had no
words for, so you just handed me
the coin and I smelt its terrible
mettle, held its heat in my fingers
and placed it on my tongue to taste
the Indian. You drank beers with
carpenters, painters, plasterers,
Cookie, Emo and Jimmie,
black men and white men, men you'd
trust your life with, fuck the politics,
men who dragged their tired souls into
this tavern and confessed their fears
in hopes they might redeem themselves,
knowing their thick callused hands
betrayed the gentleness of prayer.
And so we meet here in the cold
winds of Chicago, father, your
eyes like knot-holes, fierce and distant,
we agree to the old arrangement,
I don't know you, you don't know me,
I reach for my wallet and pull out
some dollars and fold them in your
cup. Here mister, I say, get yourself
something just as you told Cookie
and Emo when they lost everything
and you walked by thinking It's a
shame, a goddamned shame, knowing
there was nothing else you could do
for them, you drove the truck back to
the Knob Hill and buried that in
drafts. Here mister I say, pretty sure
I don't slip when I look in your eyes
and say something like Here dad,
that raw grizzled face, carpenter
greens, then give yourself something,
knowing full well you won't, that
in this dream I keep walking
the cold sun of Michigan Ave,
staring at the slippery reflections
of people in the windows,
muttering to myself like an angry
street prophet, schizophrenic,
promising myself to never return,
to never look back, to never
dream this dream again.

CORPORATE SECRETS

Inside the top secret 

corporate research facility,

under the scan of covert 

cameras. Security 

greets you at the desk 

where you divulge your

identity, sign in and sign 

off your rights to

anything you may see 

or think about anything

you see, your badge

clears you for certain

corridors and labs, 

the complex systems lab

but not the human-centered 

design interface compound,

the cognitive architecture 

facility, but not the 

mainframe endoskeleton, 

when you step into 

comprehensive risk 

management an escort from

human resources shepherds

you to the relative safety

of stylistics, surface analysis,

where all of the desks and

drafting tables are draped

with sheets, as if the joint's

being moth-balled for the 

season, or one of the

company geniuses is 

making tents for some 

fabulous glass-walled

executive sleepover!

Let's face it.  You're no spy,

no undercover snoop, 

no operations espionage 

expert, you wouldn't know

a secret formula from

a secret recipe or a 

secret phrase for $50

on Groucho Marx, is there

some classified code

buried behind that man's

furrowed brow?  Is there

some cryptic truth 

disguised in that woman's

crossed eyes, her cold 

stare behind those cloak-

and-dagger hornrims?

There are scarlet A's

burning on everyone's

breasts, ulterior motives,

darker forces, you avert

your eyes, dare not get

caught gaping at anything,

his handsome carriage, 

her bold calves, you're

just waiting for security

to retrieve you from

your proposed visit 

which was, what?, 

you no longer recall, 

please, relieve us 

of these badges, this

confidence, we're 

breaching security even

now just thinking

about it.

 

FALL

Listen. I don't want to 

get dramatic

or anything like that but

while you were gone

the leaves fell, the yard

denuded itself, now

stripped and naked

to the morning sun

so when I sit here 

drinking coffee and 

watching my breath

into the cold openness,

I wasn't thinking 

of you or me or

all those mornings

we've spent listening 

to the crows howling

in the silver birch splashes,

the woodpecker working

the apple tree carcass,

the splendid cardinal 

swaying in the highbush

cranberry, you spreading

orange marmalade on

croissants, no, those 

are vestigial remains,

what we once beheld. 

No, I was just thinking 

of you sleeping naked 

beside me, twisted

in the sheets, and,

well, so naked, so

lovely, so nude.

THESE DAYS

Here at the local Starbucks you
sit in the college outskirts, wind
ruffling your papers, sky so deep
you're falling, all these ideas
chick-scratched in notebooks, ink-stained
napkins nested in your journal,
blue smoke from Russian dilettantes,
Polish lovers mooning over
the linguistic patterns of starlings
and coffee, Indian physicists
sipping caramel macchiatos,
arguing flights of particle theory
poetics and super colliders,
while scruff-feathered sparrows
beg for cake crumbs. The birds perch
beside a child standing on a
plastic chair, teetering, barely
able to speak, the wind blowing
hair in her lips, her Turkish mother
smoking, studying the season,
the girl picks up her mother's
flip phone and studies its black
odalesque screen as if it's some
talisman to another world:
she licks the screen with her tiny
pink tongue, giggles, puts it to
her ear, "Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!"
while her mother smokes in silence.
The phone clatters to the cement.
Birds scatter like the host.
The wind from their wings
pushes hair off her eyes.
Swaying in the tiger lilies
behind her, she's your wild aesthete,
your soul, your restlessness,
waiting to be loved.

MIDLIFE

Migod it's noisy this morning!
I can hear the ahhh of tires
on the tri-state, the dragonfly drone
of a Cessna scrawling overhead,
the high-pitched yips of chipmunks,
the scrabble of squirrel claws on ash bark,
morning trollops of cardinals
in the dirt and creeping charley,
the flagging moan of the diesel
drifting from the valley with the
steel clatter bouncing off houses.
How can one be so alone out here
among the overgrown lilacs,
the low-slung electric wires, the
leaning and chink-walled garages,
rusted ladders sprawling across
plastic lawn chairs, a misbegotten
apple tree stinking of ferment,
a tree so ugly even the wasps
shun its lurid juices, baskets
of bedraggled impatiens hanging
like twin iridescent squatters
condemned to life without parole,
monstrous swordleaf daisies
horning in on the neighbor's sundeck,
the slack clothesline, backyard jalopies,
rustbuckets, broken down wheelbarrows
invaded by trumpet vine, abandoned
charcoal grills upended, baring
their bent and skinny insect legs
to the sky, and, at long last,
as if to announce the end, a
single blue jay proclaims some
terrible household tragedy, as if
all tragedy were the same,
the bird bath's been tipped over,
the basset hounds are whelping in
the basement or someone finally
found the philosopher's wife dead
as a doornail dead on her lawn
in her robe and slippers, a
metaphysical mystery, she'd
been haunting the sidewalk for weeks
shouting "The darkness! The darkness!" ,
and it's not what she deserved but
it's certainly a sign of the times,
these are all auguries, predilections,
this world is an Old Richard's
almanac warning you it'll be
a hard winter, and this is what
you get for coming out here
in the first place, determined to
think of nothing in particular.