Memory says

once upon a time
I was rocking out on the Cape
and saw Carly Simon hitchhiking

Picked her up of course
She and James Taylor
had just had a brutal fight
She walked away and stuck out a thumb
and now here she was in my Porsche…so I

will be polite and non-descriptive
except to say she paid for bed and breakfast

If memory serves I wrecked that Porsche
trying for one last kiss or feel

I remember it all perfectly —
it was a silver 911S
She was wearing the floppy hat
from the No Secrets album cover
and that slip dress thing from Playing Possum

But for the fact that I have never owned a Porsche
and have never slept with Carly Simon
it was the greatest night of my life

See
I heard this story a long time ago
from a woman who claimed
that it happened to her
except
it was James Taylor
who picked HER up
in HIS silver Porsche

and I said
if only that were me
so memory said
we can fix that
and now
I think the song is about me

Accusatory glance.
Something I said.
I do not know her.  Does she know me?
Maybe I’m just another man who appears
dismissive.  Maybe I am,
and don’t realize it.  Don’t believe
it’s so — right now she
has all my complete and fearful attention
but listening is hard
when the language between us is this
fractured.  One word, two words, three and then
there are fifteen different meanings for each
and we are not communicating,
it’s a jaw clap fest at best. So,
I shut up and down.  Crawl into
the snail house inside, as far up
as I can go head-first.  Run away,
away, stay alive, alive-oh, alive, alive-oh;
crying cockles and mussels…maybe I am
being dismissive.  What is common ground anyway —
apparently not a song, not a folk song, not a good old
classic folk song, maybe there’s nothing at all —
when every bit of the culture has long smelled this bad to one
and has started to smell this bad to the other
maybe it is fine that we don’t speak.  I’d like
to think it is curable but I might be too dismissive.
Maybe it is fine if I crawl up in there and die.

Early fall window open 
means 
a fly gets in.

It may be the last big bluebottle
of the season with a droning voice like 
a Dangerbee.  Should look
twice to be sure it’s not
but no time —

kll it with one smack
of a carefully selected
heavy, already read, soon to be recycled
magazine.  Done.  And lo —

learn it was
Honeybee.  How did it seem
so huge?  Tiny, golden thing.  

Quick: brush it into the gutter of the window
and then lift the screen to push it out

onto the ground
with some small regret.

Lie to us, saying
this would have been done
differently
had you recognized
what this was.

My endless boyhood game: try to say something
around Dad without him coming back
with a homespun cliche.  

I’d say, “Well…”
and he’d say, “Deep subject for
such a shallow mind.”  

I’d say “I wish…”and he’d say,
“Wish in one hand, spit in the other,
see which one fills up first.”

“If only…” always led to
“If only a frog had wings, he wouldn’t
bump his ass when he jumped.”

Or my favorite, the all-purpose
“Shut up and give me
that Philips-head.”  In other words:

“Son, you’re better seen than heard,
keep that imagination on simmer,
hand me the damn screwdriver.

There’s real work to be done
for a real man who is busier
than a one-armed paperhanger

with an itch and madder than a sore tailed tomcat
in a room full of rocking chairs.
Real men live in a real world

where we don’t waste time
wishing or dreaming or coming up with weird ways 
of saying the obvious.  That’s

not work.  That’s not real.
Quit thinking of poetry, son.
I don’t know where you get that from.”

Cat
struck hard and fast,
and that mouse was hers.

She did what a cat does
and then went and sat in the window,
purring easily.  

I did not scold her
for choosing a death-path,
or for manifesting a “negative energy.”

Called it what it was — a killing.
Did what was needed — discarded
the body, gave the cat a pat.

She is here in this house
to give and take delight, to love and be loved;
I also expect her to kill for me

as coldly and swiftly
as she possibly can — as only
she possibly can.  

Not every violent act
is taken out of anger.  Some
we even reward.

Thus, I do not pray
for her eternal soul — I provide 
tuna, warmth, an unalloyed

affection born from a kinship with her,
one reflected in my relative comfort
at seeing every torn, stiffening mouse-corpse

as an affirmation
of each of us doing
what comes
naturally.

A barrage called 
“Everything I’ve Ever Screwed Up”
enters the brain as a tickle
that only later starts exploding,
then never stops;

after
comes
the return fire called 
“Every Excuse.”

“Everything I Could Be” and “That Which I Love Most”
die in the crossfire.

When I am tired
of thinking of metaphors
for my struggle,
I drink.  When I drink,
I reload.  When I am reloaded

I sometimes wait
a whole minute
before ending
the truce.  I decide to call this

“Ending The Truce.”  I shall call this
“Being Myself.”  I call this
“Whatever, I’m Too Old To Change.”

Then,
here and everywhere, again comes
the burp
of cannons.

Just let the firetail go, 
said Papa.  But when I did
it singed me and Jalil
while charging toward freedom
and I screamed and Jalil screamed
and Papa aimed his long rifle
but was not able to strike,

and thus it escaped
never to be seen again
and our fear and pain became
a legend; to this day
people speak of the firetail
with awe, wondering how Jalil and I
caught it in the first place, how it came
to be where we were, how we were able
to approach it, what it looked like;

yes, with only this to go on
they wonder what a firetail was anyway,
is it still a threat or just something
long vanished to recall
and wonder at.

In the immediate aftermath
of asking the only question
left to ask 

your eyes stray
to the vase of two-week old
brown-eyed susans
on the kitchen table

to the last quarter-inch
of fouled green gray water
in the bottom 

to the petals and pollen
ringing the vase

to the withering stems
bending with the weight
of their brown flaking burdens

to your card 
flat and face down
next to it

in the aftermath of 
asking a question
that you now realize
did not need to be asked

My neighbor’s standing naked in a window singing a children’s song
Licorice stick, licorice stick, gonna eat one pretty darn quick
Somebody get that man a robe and a couple of Xanax
Another dense day is off to a dense start in Whipsmart City

Last night flung me around my bed between sleep and wake
Oh my aching back and sides, oh my aching heart and mind
I wish I had a river of sleep to drown my aching heart and mind
But it’s too late for sleep to do me any good at all — I gotta go

to my day job describing massacre victims with a sweet vocabulary
with a hey nonny nonny and a robot chip
I almost said “massacred innocents” but then I had to laugh
because if I thought these stiffs were innocent I’d go insane

Two pills for breakfast two more for lunch and a fifth mid-afternoon
I get no kick from God or Country, get no kick from going along
After work a beer or a blood and Jager cocktail so I can drive home enraged
to beat the angel hanging in the corner cobweb till he screams

And then to bed which I’m fond of up to a point
Gabba gabba hey dead man gabba gabba flay
Thank God or Some Monster I stopped dreaming long ago
My neighbor took my dreams away which explains his children’s songs

and him standing naked in the window with them in his mouth
Sweet land of liberty of thee I loudly sing
I can’t get too excited about him being obscene or crazy in my place
when there are so many corpses to talk about here in Whipsmart City

Congratulations on your purchase
of what you just purchased
It will be exactly what you desire
It will meet every one of your myriad needs

It’s the perfect fit for your busy lifestyle
It’s the perfect mix of value and long term return on investment
It’s the perfect size for the modern household
It’s the perfect marriage of green and gold

It has all the potential you’ve sought in such a thing
It has the most power of any in its class
It has a convenient carry case made of leather
It has a tradition of years of handicraft and struggle

It is the Swiss Army Knife of nostalgia for a Golden Age
It is the Volkswagen of nonchalant journey
It is the Stovetop Stuffing of Be Here Now
It is the Light Bulb of What’s In The Closet Mommy

It will be for you a brazen butterfly of last chance dance
It will wipe your mouth of sorrow
It will slay the heart-dragon of childhood regret
It will tell you a nice bedtime story after tucking you in 

It won’t clog your dream pipe
It won’t creep past the window from the corner of your eye
It won’t damage pets or the elves of the hearth
It won’t breathe a word of what it saw in the mud room that day

Congratulations on driving down the New Avenue Of Hope
You’ve made a wise decision that you’ll enjoy for years
You won’t be disappointed even if it betrays you a little later
for it’ll subsume you cough you out and make you new in its way

So much war to be eaten.
So much poverty.  So much
damnable activity to be sucked upon.

Here, she said,
offering the Northern Lights,
Kilimanjaro, the Devil’s Causeway.

Feeling full, turn back
to the slaughter and shuddering.
Not more tolerable —  not that.

Say, instead, less intolerable,
but still that.  Say hope; then,
show someone else there is still that.

in college
we called our empty
bottles of beer
“dead soldiers”

this was in the years
right after
vietnam 
and the active draft —
it meant something then
though the meaning
was already fading
a little

youth of today

do you still call your bottles
“dead soldiers”
or are you starting to?

are you 
part of a privileged set
for whom “dead soldiers”
means only discarded containers
and nothing else
or part of the world
for whom it means

brother
father
sister
mother
comrade
lover
neighbor
empty