Take Off Your Hat, Lennie. The Air Feels Fine.

You get a kick out of that, don't you?  All right:
We'll move this verse from the slum to the city;
we're sick of hearing rain on corrugated steel,
dirt road, dirt floor...alleys in the city,
Holy Mary sleeping on newsprint wall;
I think, you think, isn't it a pity
we got stuck with brains that think at all.

But we'll put every other metaphor on the lottery!

That's right, Lennie.  Now, turn around and listen:
Back down, get off,
come on, you've had your dollar's worth.
See the baby crying with flies on his lips?
Flash Dance, Ft. Knox,
baby in a cardboard box,
Cinderella dressed in yellow, move those hips.
Here's a ditch for a bathroom,
a row of people there.
Don't talk, bend over, cover up your face;
you can't see your own disgrace.
Greenspan, Peter Pan, Jim and Tammy Baker,
politician, businessman, Neanderthal earth shaker.
Up with your pants, dust off your toes,
turn around, hold a nostril, blow your nose.
Roach in your cornmeal, mice in your bed,
nickle in your pocket and nothing in your head...

But it ain't like that with us, is it, George?

No, it ain't.  Turn around, look across to the city.
We'll have a house and a kitchen packed with food...

And ketchup!

Sure, ketchup...and we'll have a garage with cars,
and in the study, we'll have a...word processor.

For the novel!

For the novel.

And I get to proof read the novel!

Yeah, Lennie, you get to proof read it.  No, don't turn
around...keep looking at the city.



(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, July 5, 1987)

The Sirens of October

she said though didn't(& all
along st. germain cafes
were overflowing)that
sound like oh
me oh my i
'm a fool
for you
bab
y

(tall beers
little mugs
of espresso)?

i said yes but
;she said basic
ally(steaming)your a
rguments always begin with agree
ments & i find that so dis
concert(every fifteen minutes)
ing. i said well i
hear a different chord &
be(packs of motorcycles)sides do
you hear crazy crazy crazy

(sirens
waffling)? shh!
she said(blasted
up st. michel)but
the song ended
&(over the seine)
there was nothing left
to do(across ile de
la cite)but

order pommes frites &
read e(chasing).e.(rumors)
cummings:



(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, November 16, 1986)

1. AL's Broken Promise to Alice 2. What AL Told Alice When She Called From St. Louis in 1958. 3. What AL Was Thinking When He Hung Up Twenty Years Later.

1.

Dear, I'll take you dancing
in a club for madmen only.
I move like a falling star--hold tight!
We'll shoot above the dance floor
like swirling shafts of light,
but when we strike the earth, my love,
great heaven splits a seam,
and I'll hand out immortality
like rainbows on a stick,
and all our friends turn into gods
when they partake of it.

2.

The days are hammered in
like mending nails,
working on me, sugar,
like wind on sails,
and I never thought
it could feel so good,
shaking that Faustus hood.

3.

These ties,
enter the heart,
lace through the brain,
entangle the soul in a Gordian knot.
I never was the Alexander type;
I'm a sucker in slow motion.


(Clifton, University of Cincinnati, Summer 1988)

They Do Not Take Heads At Sea

Being raised by the Pacific,
having felt the sand like quicksilver
running beneath my feet in the fringe,
and having fled the breakers
instead of riding them out--
I would change.

Having seen the sailors
with their pandas in San Diego,
and having weighed their pay of dissolution
against this landbound existence
that seethes with desert sand and rain--
I would change.

Having talked with fishermen,
and having walked the hard bound boats
that creak and groan for deeper seas
while pelicans pout on the mast,
and having asked what their nets yield
on this side and that, learning
they do not know all the net yields--
I would change.

Being raised by the Pacific,
having searched for shells with my feet
until my back blistered in the sun,
conscious then and knowing now
that anything at all is one--
I would change, I would change.


(Poems by Poet's Roundtable of Arkansas, 1982)

Exercise in Subterfuge

Of more interest than, say,
time blowing out its stars
is the effect of loving you
in darkness,
talking ourselves to sleep
while the last to speak
hears the heaving cosmos
roll and sigh,
our hearts traversing time,
traversing time for we have loved
inside the silent chains,
eyes closing them away,
and we have loved,
and love remains.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, March 17, 1985)

Shelter in Place

Sitting in a canoe on Chilkoot Lake,

the water a mirror reflecting clouds

and mountains that rose from the lake’s bank,

I listened to the many snowmelt waterfalls

and reeled my lure slowly.

Not far away, a duck and her brood

paddled silently toward shore,

but of a sudden,

the duck quacked repeatedly

while flapping its wings and spinning

at which the ducklings did likewise,

splashing and spinning in all directions.

I then saw a shadow fall through sky,

an eagle, diving into that chaos.

It touched the water, and rose,

its talons empty.

The duck gathered its brood closely,

and they continued toward shore

as silently as before.

The eagle dove again, chaos ensued,

and again, the eagle failed.

On the third attempt,

the mighty eagle rose,

a duckling in its claw.

It flew to a tall stump and perched, ripped

into the duckling and watched.

Before the eagle could strike again,

the duck and her brood reached shore

and disappeared beneath the willows.   

(SKJ 06/2016)

Going MAD

If it does come down to marking minutes,
our masses huddled in cinder block basements,
or blankets in pink porcelain bathtubs,
awaiting that first tinge of vibration
while Air Force One climbs over the Atlantic,
those wide-eyed advisors spitting scenarios
at the president, and he, hands on knees,
nodding this way for civilization,
and that way for a democracy
of bathtubs and basements
where last minutes drip their seconds
back down the ages, a fox terrier whines,
baby plays with a white soap dish,
and a tiny crystalline elephant
falls from its stand on
the knick-knack shelf,
and when it does come down to marking minutes
with no more time to play, pet the dog,
hug your family, and throw the watch away.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, January 13, 1985)

When the Ashes Settled

She was reading Plath
like a Pomeranian
barking at the trashman.
It was new to her, you see,
but when she reached, "Ach, du,"
the words grew like stalactites
on her lip.  "Excuse me," I said,
flicking them off.
I should have known better;
she was rising from the ashes,
twisting her wings, looking for air.
So I told her to fly:
it was a proposal, that's all.
When the ashes settled,
she was painted above the horizon,
and, brushing myself off,
I yelled after her,
"Thanks, Love!  Keep your head out of ovens!"


(Hot Springs News, 1982; Poems by Poets Roundtable of Arkansas, 1983)

The Jagalchi Fish Market

It's as if the Sea of Japan threw up
its entire bounty on the wharf
of the Jagalchi Fish Market,
the largest in Korea, in the world,
from what I've seen,
stall after stall,
alley after alley,
street after street
of fish,
long and shaped like spears fish,
those discus flounders,
mackerel, tuna, red fish, blue fish,
a pile of octopodes draped over cardboard boxes,
tentacles, suckers up, as long as my legs,
a woman, sitting on a bucket, opening oysters,
trays of them on the half-shell, ready to eat,
while another cooks tempura,
another offers sashimi,
while crabs push for space in tanks,
blow fish swim, and below them in shallow basins,
spiny urchins, clams, mussels, spitting anemones,
or something, sea cucumbers,
all smelling like the sea,
as fresh as a breaking wave.

We walked for hours,
looking, photographing, eating.

Three days later in Seoul,
our sneakers began to stink
like the seafood section at Winn-Dixie, Kroger's,
Safeway, Publix, Fred Myers, Piggly Wiggly...


SK/August 2014

Riding the Subway in Seoul

Each toenail a different color,
painted perfectly, some with sparkle,
her feet stand awkwardly on cork platforms,
rocking at stops: Seolleung, Yeoksam, Gangnam.
If those aren't hose, her legs are made of milk.
Except in crossing, the thighs will never meet;
they disappear behind a pleated skirt, beige and short,
into which she's tucked a crisp, white blouse
(there are insufficient adjectives for this),
the waist at best, twenty inches...nineteen?
Up the blouse's buttons, she stares into a phone;
Samsung, of course, as black and shiny as her hair.
Her other hand holds a subway strap, and...uh, oh.
Our eyes meet,
hers without a K-pop smile.


August 2014

Biker's Balls

For all those literary bikers,
airbrush artists, Rimbaud trikers,
who hop their hogs cross rolling hills
and drop them to save daffodils,
who have such scars across the belly,
on which they rest Wordsworth and Shelly,
and O that nose, that broken nose,
to suck in sent of yellow rose, it blows,

because some match the biker's yen
to have their art tattooed on them.
Jackson Pollock splashed his paint,
and Pablo painted cubes,
but once no bitch except their own
had spiders on her boobs.

Still, those fucking Harvard masters,
those gay prancing pre-meds,
those prissy Princeton pussies,
and M.I.T. shitheads,
could not but hold a pubic hair
of one dear biker's balls:
Their fathers cannot buy into
the highway's hallowed halls.


(1987, updated 2013)

Sunrise on a Partly Cloudy Day in Pink and Blue with Jesus Christ Standing between the Israelites and Palestinians

Sun rays fanned above the clouds
like the crown of Christ rising.



SKJ--8/1/14

Angst Redux

A floor fan vibrating in the window,
pulling in the downtown night,
the quiet of two a.m.,
thin ghost of existence,
shadow in a dark room,
the streetlight always with you,
two illuminating life.
If you could see yourselves, you'd sigh,
but are far too blind for that,
so you gaze at each other;
it at your awaiting, and you
its stoic singularity:
your thoughts, its light,
both too late at night,
too late and lost in time,
but it burned your shadow on the wall,
didn't it?
Don't fret: I'm not mocking.
We're together in this,
twisting rhymes for streetlights
singing songs for floor fans,
lighting cigarette off cigarette
to keep the torch burning,
that reverence for life,
when there is nothing
but a naked heart beat,
the streetlight, the night, and
a floor fan vibrating in the window.
No, please, continue:
your anguish bathes the world.


(SK, May 1986) 

Blankets

Of life, I have enjoyed most blankets,
the layered quilts of winter,
summer with a top sheet blowing,
the midnight searchings of spring and fall,
and all the nights of life there dreaming,
they covered, protected me while I was gone,
off to a world I can't recall,
off to a soft reality of actions
where sins disappeared with the opening of eyes
and death truly had no dominion.


(SK/1982, or thereabouts)

Dancing and Aircraft Maintenance

I love to feel the mind dance,
jitterbug with a problem,
anticipate me.
Sometimes,
with my hand
withdrawing from a problem,
and before the fingers
have time to touch the temple,
I see the solution
as clear as any postcard.
At other times,
it waltzes me to my desk
to plod step by step
through a sickening scientific method.


SK/1983

Sour Grapes in Doggerel

A ream of cotton bond, unbound,
blown about the landfill's rotting ground,
and there, at least, by seagulls read,
at night, some sheets, a rodent's bed
for dreams in stream of consciousness.

The author (dead), O had he known
his characters through smoke have flown
beyond chain link and into hands
of his most erstwhile fellow man
who saw profound abstraction.

In morning sun, though sheets were lost,
some badly stained, some wet from frost,
our vagrant bent and gathered those
to denouement, as kismet chose,
bemused without contrition.

He knew the shelves were fully stocked
with movie stars the bookstores hawked,
and talking heads, politicos,
both left and right, the lengthy nose,
blowing social mediation.

As he hoped, indeed suspected,
the manuscript, oft rejected,
required just a tweak or two,
a liberal bent, and off it flew,
from shame to sanctimony.

He cleanly typed it on a stick,
and from the shelter, emailed it
to Pearson, Reuters, Random House,
where each one nibbled like a mouse,
but choked on publication.

Rejection stuck not in his craw;
he sent the work on to McGraw,
and there, at last, the angels sang,
as silver in his pockets rang,
fame and fortune pealing.

The Pulitzer, he bowed and took
but with few words, as his voice shook,
though talk shows, well, he shunned them all--
They clearly lacked the wherewithal
to distinguish art from garbage.


(01/28/2014)

Stepping in Shite

Nothing quite provides
possibilities for synesthesia
like stepping in shit.
Even the president, king for a day,
knows that feeling, sees the image,
the squish, slide and smell,
muttering, "Damn that dog,"
as he, trailing poo,
walks back from the Rose Garden
and hands his shoes to a Marine to clean.
Oh, it's no worse than holding
umbrellas for heads of state,
or having retirements reduced;
the poor Corps (no, not yet a corpse, sir,
but heading in that direction, thank you),
with their staggering, blood soaked brethren,
Army, Navy, Air Force, victors all,
bucking up, awaiting the next call,
while the president departs, strutting in socks,
"Hail to the Chief" bleating.


(01/01/2014)

Sidewalks on Rock Street

It's not so much the sidewalk,
erupting as it is,
jagged plates of concrete
rocking under foot,
not the initials of lovers,
neither never old,
not the stamp of construction
(WORK GUARANTEED: 1908),
not even the oak's demesne,
roots reaching under mansions
while the limbs there blithely shade

(Time lapsed:
sidewalks coming up in waves that
break on generations), but

the results of our planting,
the beauty we create,
the destruction we perpetuate,
all so consequent in time
that we cannot imagine.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, January 19, 1986)

Kissing Cousins

Kisses end, and bubbles...pop.
Eyes avert, or they drop,
but kiss again, you know they will
(the loss there warrants more),
sensation blending all
toward what lies left in store,
tasting touch and smell, too true,
and visions, O!  See the floating orb,
glistening, gleaming there between them
(so seeming kith, yet kin),
a planet's worth of expectations?
Alas, adrift.  It cannot be:
They are first blood relations...pop.


(12/18/2013) 

The Last Match

You can give me the world's last match,
and I'll strike it for you, keep it lit
long enough to light democracy's torch,
or whatever blown out torch you carry,
not that I care that much for planetary fires,
but I've smoked a sun full of cigarettes,
and I can light a match in a hurricane.

I know of others like me,
soldiers, quite serious people,
who make fire for the incompetent,
but you'll give that stick 
to a politician,
and you'll get what you deserve,
the phosphorus wet with perspiration;
at best, the lighting match held head up,
the momentary flame, then a wisp of smoke in history,
the spent head nodding down like a napping president.



(1985)