wichita

he told me the saddest sttory i ever heard - went to the track, lost his whole welfare check, on the way back, he gets stopped, gets a ticket for speeding

arnold

the terminator was at the uc cinema i thought it might be good for a laugh got there early they were waiting for me my fellow arnold fans with open mouths thick glasses and scraggly beards giants caps on backwards field jackets stuffed with candy bars and stephen king novels a chill passed through me and i continued on down university avenue to serendipity books to buy a nice book of poetry but who was i kidding? i was one of them they were my brothers

pirates

i had a dream last night i wasn't in it myself it was a movie about pirates they had a green flag with a gray rat on it it was the best movie i've seen in 20 years i wish i could remember it better i'd tell you all about it

doing it

"do it, bill." "i'm not sure i want to" ""you have to." "i'm not ready yet." "just do it, bill. it's required." "but - " "you have no choice." "oh, all right." "that's better." bill did it. "next!" "what's your name?" "bob." "what's your number?" "1-3373-7637-6598-6881" "that's a prime number." "so they tell me" "you mean you can't tell yourself?" "not really." "not very bright, are you?" "i guess." "you guess? not really? not much for explicit statements, are you, bob?" "if you say so." "you're a pretty poor excuse for an excuse, did anyone ever tell you that?' "not until you came along. you're a big meanie. " "that's all well and good, bob, but are you ready to do it? are you ready to step up?" "no." "no? just no?" "i was trying to be explicit." "good one. score one for bob." "thank you." "back to square one. seriously, all joking aside, are you ready to do it?" "not really. i would prefer not to." "let there be no misunderstanding here. you are going to do it if we have to sit here all month. but if we have to do that, if we have to sit here for a month or a year, there will be some very annoyed people, only beginning with me. do you understand?" "more or less." "are you ready to do it?" "yes." "good." bob did it. "next!" "what's your name?" "buck." "what's your number?" "2-4595-3941-7845-3674." "that's a pretty tedious number." "whatever." "i like your attitude, buck. are you ready to do it?" "absolutely. put me in, coach." "all right. did you hear that, stanley? buck is a hero. congratulations, buck, you're our first hero of the day." "let's do it." buck did it. "next!" "what's your name?" "buddy." "what's your number?"

sometimes you can't go home again even though you never left

a friendly fish named frank always stayed near the surface of the tank the vast vistas of human faces in his mind always stirred up traces of an empire that long ago sank if the comte de sade came back to earth and saw the new cosmos giving birth oceans of pornography vampire novels from sea to sea what would his dreams be worth? an unknown prophet named slim couldn't swim he was thrown in the water but old pharoan's daughter just turned up her nose at him blind potato murphy played the blues he walked the hills of ireland in his alligator shoes he drank poteen dreamt of fair kathleen and paid his union dues bob, a humble barracuda sought the path of the true buddha a dinosaur banging a big brass gong followed as he walked along and quite destroyed his mood, ah a sunfish named stagger lee lived in the depths of the sea a sea lion named bob (or was it billy?) thought his paraphilological positions were silly and never invited poor stack to tea an electric eel named ed wore a path to perdition on his head he didn't know its approximate cause so he kept it wrapped in gauze and took another med a platypus named roy was no stranger to ecstatic joy he could feel the earths heart beat beneath his wary webbed feet but his demeanor remained quite coy

demon lover

when i was a child in ages dark demons chased me through the park and angels though in charge in me laughed loudly at my misery and when i finally tripped and fell you raised me with the hand of hell angel born and demon bred you introduced me to the dead the dead whose wide and staring eyes were whiter than the winter skies who sat all night on fog wet benches sad sentinels of eternal trenches the dead whose soft and wordless lips twisted like slowly sinking ships in black and bottomless seas in unreverberating reveries

1938

let no man stand aside who has not taken his place in line and waited for the 23673rd bird to sing after the 23672nd but raindrops and grains of dust are not so appropriate as the seat covers of a 1938 packard driven by the lady in red across the canadian border all the way from laredo for a perfect indiana day in the park with a white hat snatched by a bluebird flying to alaska but landing on easter island

raindrops

there is desperation in the greenest trees a secret conflagration in the coolest breeze the kitten at the window the butterfly in the air watch the raindrops follow each other in despair and when the leaves fall yellow in the rain the sidewalk hears them call a whispered name

the unexplainable man: toward midnight

ride the bus see a million stories forget them all mocking eyes sneering lips terrifying teeth hey you don't like it why you take so long? they punch each other they kick each other they laugh at each other lincoln towncar dark and silent surrounded by mcdonalds doggie bags two hundred people pass the bag lady walking one block behind dark glasses checking out the women dreamer or killer? shine of bottles behind a bar like no other light clutching hand from a blanket in a doorway cigarettes better than words now only words death is real it is chasing me through the streets

lion tamer

twenty six miles away and i still want to be one of the class clowns, and if only i could stop the lion tamer from his sad and wandering ways and go back to the broken fence where we first escaped from uncle john and the first law of the blue roller coaster while the clown cried twenty six twenty six miles to east st louis ladies and gentlemen before the white merry go round stops forever and all the red horses run away