Writing Selections
Just Words
Do I deign to cause you pain
Subject opinion and held belief
To things I’ve come to know are true
But sure to lead to woe and grief?
Must I settle solid plumbed
Straight in line with stories cast
Ignore the scars upon my sides
My life’s learnings doomed to pass?
If I were to say, you see
All my discretions in you confide
I fear your take would daft me make
And feel certain you’d think I’d lied.
I ask myself what prize be gained
By having you listen to my refrain
A tilted world now come upset
Aslosh with turmoil and great regret.
But, I find, I must not yield
A truth untold is one concealed
So turn your eyes upon my words
Find hope, not fear, in what’s revealed.
Winter Wondermall
I dreamt that I wrote it all down. There was something in the beginning about a walk in the snow. And some street signs. This part I don’t quite remember.
It’s probably too late for you to be John Travolta’s cousin. Hey, how about Neil Young? Maybe you should take a walk in the woods and be his brother, or grandson, or something.
Me, I play Jesus at the Circuit City over in the Italian Pavilion. The shopping here’s great! All the name brands! No crap. It’s all like Something, Something, Beverly Hills. I ride glass elevators all day taking it all in.
All the animals cut weird paths in the snow. Chasing after each other. Prey. Frozen in mid stride, frozen in time, snapping at each other’s heals. We’re all clinging to the wall outside of Saks, suspended up high, fearing to fall. Climbing across imported pine stalks, groping for the passing elevator doors, swinging inside to find a man who says he’s Santa in his spare time and talks with a clean-shaven Jesus from over at the Italian Pavilion. No lie.
After all, everything was Rome then, wasn’t it? Jesus must have spoken Italian, just like in the paintings. But today we know that the world’s not flat. A level playing field if you got great climbing shoes at Holiday time. Or, an Alligator sweater. A slippery slope for others collected at the bottom. All looking up to find Jesus who’s heading off to the Italian Pavilion clutching a straw between his teeth. Sipping mindlessly from his Frosty. Smiling ‘cause he’s not going to be late today. Right on time.
And it’s easy playing Jesus, especially when you don’t have to mention God or anything. You just kind of stand around taking it all in. And people kind of expect you there. They take comfort while they shop. They don’t have to think about the Big Things, like, how they descended from bugs, or, how they look like a hive of ants (Hymenoptera) from above (an inherited behaviour?) as they find really good deals on the latest electronics.
And then, back outside where the wind bites and drives away all thoughts, except for the keeping warm. And, watch out for that idiot who’s misread the street signs and ploughs senselessly onto the curb. A good cop, a family man, just enjoying a little early holiday cheer. And now, he’s behind bars like an animal. Inside with all those real criminals.
I think this story’s gone to(o) far. Better to go home and watch it on the new entertainment center that “fell off the truck,” where everything’s more real.
Lying Snitch
I lie in bed and listen to night sounds,
The hollow drone of highway tires,
The whining whistle of wind through a grill,
And I hear it,
A sound like an eraser
Erasing a small mistake.
Snitch, snitch, snitch, snitch, snitch, stop.
I snap to,
Eyes fixed and ready,
Ears perked.
Drone...
Snitch, snitch, snitch, snitch, snitch, again...
Where is it?
I’ve lived in places with mice; warehouses;
Places where they ran dart patterns,
Sounding like marbles rolling all night, crisscrossing
The half-inch plywood deck where I slept;
Places where they built comfortable nests
And bit at the edges of consciousness,
Like in my sweater drawer,
Where they gnawed quick at the collars,
Stopped to listen for predators,
And gnawed again, and stopped again.
Snitch, snitch, snitch, snitch, snitch, stop.
I sit up straight
Like an antenna trying for better reception,
Searching for a clear signal.
Drone...
Whine...
Snitch, snitch, snitch, snitch, snitch, stop.
I look left.
Maybe it’s coming from the corner.
I stand and stay still—
Hope my rising didn’t startle the miscreant.
Snitch, snitch, snitch, snitch, snitch, stop.
I advance with stealth
Around the foot of the bed and position myself;
Peer down at boxes piled in the corner—
The ones likely to have the tissue paper
Makings for an easy nest.
I stand motionless and stare,
Looking, listening for any tattle in the stack.
Snitch, snitch, snitch, snitch, snitch, stop.
It’s behind me.
I turn and stop and see.
Her foot has escaped the sheet
And the whole of her R.E.M. lives
In those runaway toes scratching for freedom
Against the turned-down comforter.
Snitch, snitch, snitch, snitch, snitch, stop.
Miz Zisby & The Word
Miz Zisby has to protect the word:
SARCASM
The word’s very dimensions are in danger
of taking on hyperbolic proportions
in the way it describes her situation.
Once a budding math whiz,
Miz Zisby now fears the hyperbolic.
She sees hyperbole as paraboloids,
saddle shapes, obliterating Cartesian horizons
in X, Y, and especially, in Z.
In terms of the word,
she is afraid that she is powerless
to do anything about it.
Miz Zisby is a whore.
At least that’s what Mister Z belches at her
late at night, while Philopsy, Mopesy and little Jones
cringe in acute darkness with clutch toys
and piss-stained Dentons.
The word looms large and larger
as it booms from the wall-mounted box.
Miz Zisby is lazy.
She’s a leech on society.
The red-faced man screams this at her
from the monitor in the all-night laundry.
Her situation is the reason for the failures,
for the millions, for the billions, for the 20-plus trillions—
exponential figures graphed out on CNN and FOX—
so it all must be true.
The word weighs metric on her heart.
It threatens to crush it flat.
Miz Zisby cries out, but shows no one.
No one seems to care anyway,
especially about her oldest,
who when fear of bangers banging
gave way to fear from gangers ganging
up without counting him in their numbers…
What, what does the word say about him?
Does his life matter?
“In the infinite scheme of things,”
The Word proclaims from high in the saddle,
“his denominator approaches zero.”
SAW I WAS
I stepped outside, and this is what I found:
The whole world had turned upside down.
I’d bent over to tie my loose lace,
And a sky blue sky was there to greet my face.
A cardinal red bird flitted by on its back.
Off to where?
I certainly don’t know,
But it sure went by down there low.
Somebody’s yellow kite hung
Way down there too.
On a line, like a snagged fish,
Tugging this way and that,
It pulled further and further
Into deep, deep blue.
My head started spinning.
Pink spots swam in my eyes.
I dropped my jaw when I saw
The very house I’d just left
Pointing now down into the sky.
And the bushes, and the trees, too,
Oh, how they now grew—
Green leaves on bottom,
Then limbs standing like legs
Carrying thick trunks up on top
All gnarly and gray.
My stomach did a flip-flop.
I thought in a moment of dread
That I would join
This toppled world
By falling heels over head—
When a copper shimmer caught my eye.
A rather odd sight it would seem,
For it floated there suspended,
Glinting gold edged in a sun up-ended,
Like something from a dream.
When I reached out to grasp it
The flipped world became a murky muddle
And I saw I was pulling
A lucky penny from a puddle.
Fish Eye Lenses
What are all these colors there flickering
On the majestic sky?
What are all the ringlets winking?
What is all the jewel-like twinkling?
Tales have always told they're soles
Gone to by and bye.
Up there with our hopes they're linking,
Looking down upon us blinking,
Helping out the best of us
As we try and try—
Lifting us when hopes are sinking
Towards a sky with circles wrinkling.
When I see these colors flicker there
I lie still and wonder why
Floating in this air we're drinking
If I should trust my small fry thinking.
Something's up above's my inkling
Tinkling on the sky.