A Little Something for the Weekend

Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species – including man – crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue.

Werner Herzog
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota April 30, 1999

The Reconstruction Falters

Our dictionaries are broken.
“Free” is flung from the roof.
We sweat, pulling vinyl over creaking wooden frames.

“Pleasant” is a riot of umbrellas through the village
of donkey-headed men.
We scavenge the development for bricks to make new walls.

“Speak” is to haggle the price of eyelashes.
Where we pretended predictability there are hooves
and tentacles.

“Night” is erratic stumbling into an imaginary tunnel.
The sequence is off. We are domestic animals rooting
for copper wire.

“Alternating” is the sudden onset of a condition resembling narcolepsy.
Now no one reaches easily into a mailbox. We cringe when the car
starts.

“Litter” is a robin’s nest in the coat closet.
The kids are sealing envelopes full of spores.

* * *

This is what I’ve got for Read Write Poem Prompt #81.

Greeting Cards

Stunned, you raised me from a softball
induced coma. Annoyed, you lifted
a French bread pizza onto a plate shaped
like an orange flower. You cried through
the film you starred in.

       *

We tore down the wallpaper.
Why do mosquitoes still bite you?
Look: real people shake hands.
All you’ve got are elbows.

        *

You pay for the dentist and she drops
what she’s doing for the weather.
Why do you walk into lightening?
Even the giant “EAT” sign flickers and sways.

        *

We never sleep. Faint and nauseous we face
the quartz light. The dome rips. The air is dust.
Body by body, we rate the resurrection.
If they don’t believe, who will?

During Your Absence We Hung a Marionette in Front of the Television

While you slept we lit candles and ate
dinner in silence.

When you were missing, we gave quarters
and oranges to your effigy.

As you fought in the heat, we balanced
our checkbooks.

Waiting for your arrival, we cleaned the living room
and buried the jewelry in the basement.

That time you disappeared, your hat wobbled
above the chair for a second before it fell.

The days you melted we caught you in saucepans
under the card table.

The soil piling above you, we agreed you were lucky
to have the phone.

The bulb cracked and blew. The room was dark. We
rushed for an early summer release.

After you pulled from the driveway, we went to bed
just like every other night.

The smoke, twisting where you stood, seemed
to resemble you.

A leftover leg, the bone slightly chewed, was
the second-to-last thing you touched in this house.

Your net worth remained. It was less than anyone
would mention.

Three Epigrams

Angels and devils the size of rats toss in tantrums on my shoulders.
My ears haul their hectoring weight.
Impositions are poured into each curled socket:
“Only $29.95 a month for the rest of your life.”

*

To prize a purse, kneel under a steady album.
To look forward to a future full of souvenirs.
When you’re gone, what will become of that giant foam finger?
A child will stand on the table screaming, waving it on a tiny fist.

*

I can’t remember the list of chores but the tomatoes are needy and the fern whines.
Why can’t we live like the ants and slowly chew one giant potato chip?
The constant clamor of wither and bud makes my skull throb.
A hornet is trapped under the table and birds fight at the margins of my hair.

* * *

This is what I have to offer this week for Read Write Poem Prompt #77.

Oh Dolorosa…don’t turn out the light!

(after James Tate)

Would you eat the most hurtful thing in the freezer?
The convection oven’s

undecipherable music boils around
a clutter of loaves. 2:30

in the morning and we still haven’t
hit our naked

gallop of heat. Look — the meat
melts: the shape it wore it wore

as mistakes of itself. My questions

go nowhere. What gigantic collisions
tease your earlobe like a lover’s tongue?

That Quarter

was kissed in the lobby of a Chicago hotel.

traveled in a couch in Columbus, Ohio, five blocks
from Neil Avenue to High Street.

was sent turning into the air off the thumb of a man trying
to decide if he should quit his job as a financial analyst
for Nationwide Insurance.

spent seven years in a coffee can secretly buried under
a backyard pine tree.

died in a Detroit casino.

was born again in exchange for a pillowed tooth.

slipped from a pocket on the bus in Pittsburgh.

paid for crucial car repair in Vancouver.

completed the sum of twenty dollars owed to Scott Fenner
by Brian Thompson on January 13, 1969, as the result
of a bet concerning the probable age of the earth.

disappeared into the carpet of a Kansas City brothel.

slept for an evening in a tip jar at the Rumba Café.

tumbled into the condom dispenser hanging on the Men’s Room
wall at the Flying J Truckstop, Exit 5, Interstate 71.

seemed to be pulled mysteriously from your ear by a young man at the bar.

* * *

This is my response to this week’s prompt at Read Write Poem. The topic is “change.”

The Television Watches You With Contempt

The monitor nearly wept when you switched it on.

No one will rescue the blender from your drunken grip.

You lack compassion for gasoline and the car
is pounded by your unnatural desires.

With reluctance the lamp casts an empty
light beside the bed.

That iPod delights in your daily suffering: the missed appointment,
the paper cut, the lost pet.

Each morning when you wake up the coffee maker snickers
at your hair.

If a factory moved next door would you riot? The assembly
floor: another shameful secret you could not live without.

When the cable box fails do you whisper consolation? Stroke
it with the palm of your hand?

Though it rarely complains, you have no empathy for the washing machine.

You never think about that modem, dismembered, dumped
in some field on the globe’s other side.

The lawn mower bides its time, fantasizing about the day your foot slips.

Velocity and Obligation

Always moving, I see every light turn green.
Through clean and shining streets, barely seen,

I never stop but glide like a marble dropped
on a polished floor.

Puppet jumping to the gestures of a hidden hand,
I follow each command to turn

the music up, to keep staring at the comedy
on the portable DVD.

What’s in my suitcase? Cash and caffeine.
I need rest, to stash these used

muscles in some silent room. But I’m confused
and never know my direction.

Fantasies of stillness flash: a backyard afternoon,
an empty museum, the comatose air of the mausoleum.

I find at a crumbling edge an open door,
but stumbling police patrol the stones.

Exhausted, I moan and wish for heavy sleep.
But I keep driving, jealous of those buried bones.

* * *

This is my response to the prompt at Read Write Poem this week. The task was to use rhyme.

Famous Entrepreneurs, Part Two: Ray Kroc

Ray Kroc divided the loaves: soft bread for a nation
with bad teeth.

Ray Kroc took his place beside you. There was awkward
silence at the urinal.

You had opinions about meat.

Ray Kroc fingered the keys, tapping a few sad notes.
A crowd of pigeons descended on the piazza.

                         *

This is the city of gristle and paper cups.
Here every ambulance driver wears greasepaint
and a scarlet nose.

This is the empire of air conditioning.
Here the hours grind and the scent of boiling grease
patrols the parking lot.

This is Pickerington, Ohio. The heat swims above
the driveway. Mansions dwindle into the horizon.
One by one we take our turns and swell.

* * *

Part one in this series, about J. L. Kraft, is here at Mutating the Signature.