The Longest Journey

Today, while practicing for the national implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act , I tried to have a prescription filled in New York City.

I went to my local community health center, as you do for these things nowadays, when you desire to obtain a controlled substance legally. My local community couldn’t find my prescription in the local community safe, although they had a record that the prescription had been called-in and signed by a certain responsible individual (my doctor) the day before.

The nameless woman I was speaking to at the desk summoned a file clerk. The file clerk, Carlos, took off in an elevator to determine where my prescription was hiding. Since Carlos was the only other person in the place with a name, besides my doctor (who was missing) and me (who was definitely there), I followed his progress with relief. I could watch the numbers on the elevator indicator traveling up and down from where I was standing. Carlos seemed to be having fun, spending a little time chatting with anonymous friends on every floor. I had seen something similar in a Laurel and Hardy film once.

When Carlos finally returned, he came panting out of the stairwell. I realized that I had been fooled by the blinking lights. He was doing his best. Carlos was very friendly, very apologetic, and he smiled. A smile always goes a long way with me, even when I am annoyed.

I took the sweaty prescription to the in-house pharmacy, seeing what hard work Carlos had done, and to show I had no hard feelings against him (as an individual) or my community. The cute pharmacist said that it would take about fifteen minutes to fill and gave me a sleek little black beeper, which I slid into my pocket.

I went back out to the lobby. I sat down beside a duct-taped slash on a tattered vinyl seat, and I pulled a book from my messenger bag, and I tried reading to pass the time. Right now, I am reading The Longest Journey, the third of five novels written by E.M. Forster, the one that nobody reads. Like the rest of humanity, I really couldn’t concentrate on The Longest Journey either. I had this niggling feeling that I had forgotten to tell the pharmacist something. About an allergy? An adverse reaction I once had to sulfa drugs as a child? No. It wasn’t that. It couldn’t be. All of that information was in my file. The computer would catch any dangerous drug combinations, I was sure.

So, what was I missing?

I sighed and felt my thigh to see if the beeper was still there. The beeper was still there. Then I took out my iPhone from the other pocket. No bars. No reception. No calls. No Facebook. No news. 3:58 pm. I realized then that I had a teleconference with Chicago in two minutes and that there was no way on Earth I was going to get back to the office in time. I was going to miss my appointment. I rolled my eyes.

When I did that, I caught sight of the elevator indicator again. Moving things have a very mesmeric effect on my mind. I watched the elevator going up and down for a little while more—for ten more months, at least—until the buzzer buzzed in my pocket, shocking me back to Reality like a sudden collision with the sidewalk.

I blinked several times before I felt steady enough to get up and go over to the window where you pick up prescriptions.  

To arrive at that particular nightmare, you go through another glass door and around the corner from the window where you drop your prescriptions off.  

This pharmacist was pretty cute, too, but not quite as cute as the other one, I noticed, as I passed by the window and stood there, studying his face. In fact, they could have been identical twins. Except that the second fellow looked so much older than the first: apparently, the computer was down and this man had been arguing with the cadaver in front of him for the last nine years. And there were nine other mummies waiting to see him, each rather angrily enjoying a different stage of decomposition.

I left the line before I joined it. I wasn't scared by the mummies, of course, but I did mull over going back to my seat in the lobby, and watching the elevator lights again, until those curséd corpses had been disposed of by the whip-wielding, wise-cracking adventurer I knew must be on the way. (I was sure that somebody with a landline, somewhere, must have placed a call to South America.)  

But my seat was taken.

I am forty-four. And I really didn’t think it prudent to waste the next eighty-one years of my existence (9 x 9, see above) standing around; even if Dr. Obama (my missing Doctor) was already leaping into a seaplane in the Amazon basin with a fresh supply of his Incan anti-mummy vaccine; even if I could watch the elevator going up and down.

I had to be practical. I had to remember Chicago. And E.M. Forster. And you. And me. And the mummies. We might not be so lucky to live so long.

Instead, I decided to leave without my prescription. I knew that my drugs were ready, theoretically, and I guess that knowledge was almost prescription enough. I would return the beeper and come back later, when the mummies were gone.

Since I couldn’t find Carlos, I said, “Goodbye,” to my other friend, the young pharmacist who took my original prescription. I am not sure that he saw me. He seemed to be very involved with his iPhone, playing Angry Birds.

I took the train back to the office and sent a note of apology to my colleagues in Chicago about the meeting, mentioning my run-in with the mummies.  

I still haven’t heard back from Chicago.

 

Alice's Song

Looking at my looking glass,

“This isn’t me,” I said,

“What happened to my pinafore?

“Why are my eyes so red?”

And my reflection, as the thing

Is wont to do, replied,

“I don’t know who you think you are,

But I am on your side.”

“The Pinafore we left behind,

Abandoned on a reef;

The ship went down as you went down

On somebody named Steve.”

“We drank enough to drop a mule.

I can’t remember why

My face fell in the toilet bowl

A-swirling, ‘Let me die.’”

“Well, die, I haven’t done that yet.

Well, that’s what people say.

If you return my boxer shorts,

I’ll read your résumé.”

“Miss Rabbit, show the young man out.

He must have things to do.

Some hearts to break or notes to take.

(I would, if I were you.)”

The Uncertainty Principle

Not every game that I played with my parents required so large and so mathematically sophisticated an apparatus as our beanbag tic-tac-toe set: with its ever shifting planes of experience—Xs and Os—victory and loss—all poised on invisible pins and ready to pivot from pleasure to pain to panic—that nightmare land of indecision—at the slightest provocation.

We also enjoyed simpler pastimes, such as hide-and-seek.

This is the 1970s. Everyone is seeking something: personal fulfillment, the meaning of life, cheaper gasoline in Fort Erie, Canada. Devout as my parents were (Southern Baptists), they were both under 30 for most of the 70s and they were pulled along by gravity toward Niagara Falls along with everyone else floating toward oblivion in the latter days of the Age of Aquarius.

As far as I could tell at the lucky age of 7, my parents’ mania for self-destruction seemed pretty normal, even tame, compared to others. It consisted of: family devotions, fondues, and a slimy, soupy, tomato, spinach and cottage cheese gruel—cooked in a Crock Pot—that was supposed to be a newer and more nutritious take on lasagna and that I refused to eat because it looked too much like our kitchen rug.

When I needed a snack and my grandparents were out—our home was a duplex—I liked to share granola and yogurt with the harmless hippies who occupied a cozy second floor studio in the apartment house across the driveway. The narrow stairs and dark passages of that building reeked of incontinent old men and recently incinerated flying carpets, but their comfortably cushioned rattan and bead bedecked abode was always sunny. The syrupy atmosphere of love it exhaled into the hallway when they opened the door smelled of beeswax candles and cloves.

Like my parents, they were both in their 20s. They had no children. The man enjoyed an average-sized penis. His wife —I think it was his wife—possessed a boisterous bush of black pubic hair that contrasted very sharply with the milky curves of hips. She might have been a model if she had shaved her legs and armpits like my mother.

They used to walk around naked at night. Because of the size and the position of their bamboo shades, I could never quite make out their faces when they were naked, just their genitals. I pointed this curious fact out to my brother one evening, when my room was being wallpapered in Bicentennial red, white and blue bars. (My own demented color scheme.)

Kyle and me were sharing his pine-paneled bedroom with a cage full of pet rocks bound for Brother Johnson—a travelling evangelist—a gag gift cooked up by my mother and some other ladies from church. But Kyle seemed more interested in getting back to sleep than spying on the neighbors. I soon drew down the blinds and meandered off to Dreamland myself.

I forget the names of the hippies now. I was better friends with their half-breed poodle, Pepper, really. She taught me how to bark.

Maybe there was more going on behind the scenes than met the eye. I was barely 4 feet tall and missed a lot. The truth is that—apart from cartoons—much in the world fell beyond my comprehension. Things were constantly appearing, disappearing, and reappearing in our household with a random regularity that mystified my mother and probably would have astonished Einstein.

Take the box of Ayds.

Ayds—mom’s delicious little chocolate diet cubes—stated to metamorphose into crumpled up plastic squares whenever she went to look for them. Even though they were hidden in the highest, most oxygen-deprived region of our kitchen cabinets.

After that, my own math papers—marked “See Me” in red pen by Mrs. Miles—underlined twice—began materializing inside my toy box. Then, a golden trinket (a lovely thing, a precious thing decorated with a piece of pink coral, a souvenir of a dart game at a fair in 1965) I had noticed in my grandmother’s cedar chest turned up one Saturday afternoon sandwiched between the cushions of our living room couch, when we were vacuuming.

Or consider The Case of the Spectral Spatula. While she could always be depended upon to find something to use during a disciplinary emergency—a spatula, a thick black belt belonging to my father, the back side of a pink hair brush—mom could never be confident how her nuclear arsenal would be stocked at any given time.

My mother had an inquisitive mind, but she was not a budding physicist like me. She took night classes in the art of upholstery instead of melting crayons with a magnifying glass. She re-did the couch on the sun porch in a rough and rusty plaid fabric. She dabbled in ceramics with her friends, Angie and Rita.

While the three of them were seated at the kitchen table—chatting, glazing and sipping sweaty glasses of unsweetened instant iced tea—mom might easily be provoked into searching for a spatula. Especially if she heard me slam down the key cover on our upright player piano. On the fingers of my brother. (I wanted to play, too.)

Aroused by a scream, she boiled up like a volcano from the depths of the sea and began going through drawers. She found every spatula, wooden spoon, plastic spoon, slotted spoon, serving spoon, and runcible spoon in North America had evaporated.

Being short-tempered and Italian, Angie reacted immediately and decisively in these sorts of situations, like Mussolini. Besides an older boy, Freddy, Angie and her husband Dave had two daughters, the same age as us.

She said, “I would kill both of them, Kathy.”

Rita’s ancestors were less hot-blooded and more phlegmatic. They were Scottish. You could tell from her red hair. Rita took a swig of tea and made a face, I expect, expecting the tea to be sweetened. Rita was rather fat and loud and had a good sense of humor, as I remember her, but she understood the need for discipline as much as Angie and my mother. In addition to her own boys and girls, Rita and Tom took care of a crippled foster child named Charlie.

I imagine that Rita choked on an ice cube while she tried to maintain her composure and continued touching up her bust of Elvis.

Mom marched us upstairs and demanded that we explain—or at least account for—the missing spatulas and spoons and other artifacts. She promised ten licks from a doubled-up length of orange Matchbox racing track, if we did not. What could we say? She might demand we grow wings and wheel about the sky like angels. We were not angels. We were boys. What did she expect?

Why she turned to us for an explanation of quantum mechanics—Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle—I have no idea. Kyle could no more offer a solution to the problem of the missing spatulas than he could account for Schrödinger’s Cat. He pulled down his pants, bent over with his hands on the bed, and burst into tears, hoping the saltwater would dilute the sting.

I was under no such illusions. Crying made things worse, in my opinion. The best I could manage was a kind of sullen defense of the facts as I saw them. The deployment of spatulas was not in my department. I suggested that she ask dad, because he was bigger than all of us.

*SMACK*

I am not sure that she spoke to my father about the incident when he got home from work or what he might have said to her about the spatulas, if she had. All she discovered from me was that the more she required a spatula, the less precisely the coordinates of any particular spatula in Western New York could be controlled, determined, or known.

A nimbus of mystery pervaded the whole atmosphere of our house for the next few days. It was unusually chilly outside and in. Mom adjusted the thermostat. A funny smell from somewhere in the basement—the furnace, I suspect—drifted upward whenever the weather turned cold.

It seems pretty clear to me now that this warm but obnoxious gas—a mixture of Love and Despair—was the most elusive member of our family. Love and Despair are both fairly equal in skill, when it comes to hide-and-seek, fairly expert. They both approach the game like God: you know they are there, you can hear them quietly breathing. But, unless you can grasp the elusive nature of Life, you will search high and low for them forever and still come up empty-handed.

After Life, I guess, my mother was the second best player of hide-and-seek in North Tonawanda. Like Life, it took a determined effort to find her, if she really decided to hide. My father could always find my brother and me pretty fast. We didn’t rate in the cosmic scheme of things. Were were not even players yet. Not in the manner of adults, anyway.

In other words, dad was helpless when it came to mom. She was his spatula.

The poor man wandered from room to room on tip-toes, opening closets slowly at first—then quickly. He peered beneath beds. He looked down the laundry chute for some reason. He pulled out a pair of streaky Fruit-of-the-Loom underwear that had gotten stuck. Finally, and angrily, he yanked aside our opaque shower curtain—like Anthony Perkins—whom he slightly resembled as a younger man—in Psycho.

His Norman Bates impression was all in vain. My mother may have had her ample bosom, but she wasn’t Janet Leigh. She wasn’t holding her breath in the bathtub expecting a maniac. Our shower didn’t work anyway. Mom only hung the curtain there for decoration. To deceive guests.

After he had ransacked every room in the house—basement to attic—bowels to brain—my father stood at the top of the stairs, looking down disconsolately at the front door. He squeezed his jowls and he drew his cheeks to his chin in exasperation. He called out to my mother,

“Okay, come on out, Kath, we give up.”

I thought it was strange that my father said “we,” as if he were speaking for all of us. I knew exactly where my mother had been hiding the whole time.

My mother was not given to giggling under a pile of dirty clothes like us. She did not play hide-and-seek just because it was fun. She played to win. She was patient. She could wait. She still was young. She could keep silent in her secret hiding spots for hours, years if necessary. She knew exactly where the floor creaked, she knew which hinges squeaked: she carried a sort of sonic map of the entire house in her head. She shifted her position throughout the game.

She was like that Japanese soldier, Hiroo Onoda, who popped up in the Philippines in 1974—bayonet in hand—surprising everyone—including Emperor Hirohito.

Maybe that is why my boyfriend is Japanese.

Sigh

Because of all we have
committed to the fire
I seldom kiss your thigh
without a faint desire

to put a period
to these pointless affairs
where the sex is so exquisite
nobody really cares.

Maybe

Maybe I do love you.
Unless I believe in you,
you cannot hurt me.
Until then what are you?
A mouth. An ass. A joke.
A hole of such hilarity
your slightest whisper makes
me fart with laughter.

I mention this because
I love you. Before you speak,
look in your mirror, dear,
and ask yourself, honestly,
“What can I say to him,
what can I hope to do,
he hasn’t done already,
when he believed in you?”

John Milton Interviews Satan For Entertainment Tonight

[Transcript from an interview soon to be broadcast on Entertainment Tonight.]

Milton: Since Halloween falls on a Monday this year, and this is his birthday weekend, I am here talking with Satan, on Skype, from his holiday villa “Pandaemonium” deep in the depths of Hell. Satan, let me be the first fan in England to wish you a big Happy Birthday!

Satan: Gee-wiz, thanks, John. So kind of you to call. I am touched, really, I am. I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for you. And may I say you look marvelous for a 400-year-old? What is your secret? Who is your surgeon? You could pass for a teenager. It must be the poetry—Paradise Regained.

Milton: [Blushing.] Such a sweetheart.

Satan: By the way, I enjoyed your pamphlet on free speech. Areopagitica—great title. I can’t wait for the movie.

Milton: [Even redder now.] No wonder Eve fell for you. Satan, I know you are in Hell and everything, but you sound so mellow, so relaxed. Why is that?

Satan: I am not religious, you see. I love where I am in life. I always have. This is my home. Hell is all in the mind. So is Heaven. As long I have high speed internet access, a hibachi, a Ken doll to grill and somewhere to surf, I am in Heaven. Malibu Barbie never had it so good.

Milton: When you say you are not religious, what do you mean? Are you saying that you don’t believe in God?

Satan: No, not exactly. I believe in God. I just wish that he believed in me.

Milton: I heard about your break-up. I didn’t want to ask about it directly. Worse than Jen and Brad’s?

Satan: I wouldn’t say it was as Earth-shattering as that, not by Hollywood standards. But it was certainly all over the tabloids at the time. It was bad enough.

Milton: Are you bitter?

Satan: No, not bitter. Just a little sad. Look, don’t get me wrong. I think God is great. “Akbar” and all that. I wish I could do more to help him—justify his actions, so to speak. Nobody adores God more than I do—even after what he did to the Amalekites in that bar in Seattle. I understand lashing out. I have felt that way about the paparazzi myself. But genocide? Jeez Louise, God, get a grip.

Milton: Are you still friends?

Satan: In the biblical sense, sure. It can get complicated around the holidays. God and I still get together for brunch whenever I am in town.

Milton: I always suspected God was gay.

Satan: He’s not. Not exclusively. I believe God is bisexual. He loves almost everyone. Even the Amalekites, maybe. I am not so sure how he feels about the paparazzi though. He has a hard time with photographers. I wish they would leave him alone.

Milton: [Nodding sympathetically.]

Satan: [Leaning forward, confidentially.] Off the record, John, between you and me, he has this kid and some mysterious woman in Rome he is paying alimony to. Or blackmail. Possibly a transsexual. You know how those Italians are. I never saw the name on the envelope, but he used to cut her a check—10% of his residuals—every month. He is a nice man, a lovely man, but an unholy financial mess.

Milton: Off the record. Sure. [Clearing his throat.] So, when you say you are not religious, you don’t mean to suggest you are an atheist?

Satan: No. Far from it. There is no system of belief more suicidal to happiness than atheism. A pile of dust—what kind of future is that for an ambitious angel to look forward to?

Milton: Not much of one, I suppose.

Satan: Hell, no. Give me Malibu and my hibachi.

Milton: About religion then.

Satan: Oh, yeah. I mean, I hate organized religions. I am a firm believer in the separation of church and state. I don’t believe in unions—reunions—collectives of any kind—artistic, intellectual, political. Sex is a different matter. I am all for that—consenting individuals. But I would rather stick my head in a wood chipper than be caught in a cheering crowd. I am a small ‘d’ democrat. The ‘d’ stands for ‘devil’.

Milton: [Smiling.] Very funny. Speaking of crowds, what do you think of the Occupy Wall Street movement?

Satan: I honestly feel sorry for the kids. Lied to everywhere, by everyone. No place to poop. But I think their leaders are idiots—they should be pissing on their professors’ lawns instead of in Zuccotti Park—especially the English majors. Who spends $100,000 at a spa studying Foucault for 4 years? Insane.

Milton: It is rather.

Satan: You can buy houses all over America for that much and still have money left over to open a coffee shop, learn HVAC repair, and stage a guerilla theater production of Coriolanus in Washington D.C.—complete with puppets. [Sipping herbal tea.] It’s like I said about Heaven and Hell: you make your own Malibu. There are always dues to pay to some bare-knuckled thug or wild-eyed zany somewhere down the line, if you don’t.

Milton: Can you give us an example?

Satan: [Thinking.] I was going to mention Bush and Obama, but they are more like Laurel and Hardy, aren’t they? The two smiling sides of a counterfeit coin. Nobody takes Republicans and Democrats seriously anymore—not in the real world—not in the world I live in, anyway.

Milton: In Hell?

Satan: In California, John. Ken—wave to the man. I know he can’t see you, I know he is blind, I know he’s a poet, but be a doll, Ken, and wave to Milton anyway. [Ripping off Ken’s left arm and still trying to think of a good example of a thug or a zany.] Ken is waving to you, John.

Milton: Hi, Ken!

Satan: [Using Ken’s severed arm to scratch his back.] See, take the French Revolution. Take the intellectuals. Take the guillotine. They get rid of Schwarzenegger and what is the first thing the smart people do? They anoint Jerry Brown Governor: they install a moonbeam as god and immediately lose their minds. Jesus, you might as well hand over your house keys to the chief lunatic in the asylum. [Rolling his yellow eyes in disbelief.]

Milton: Speaking of Jesus, I have always wondered, do you know him—Jesus—I mean—personally?

Satan: I do. [Tossing Ken’s arm into a river of lava.] He will always have a special place in my heart. A nice boy. Red hair. Constantly climbing trees. A dead ringer for Opie Taylor—the young Ron Howard. Jesus was always being followed home by lost puppies—wherever he went. I think the divorce hit him hard and the puppies sensed that.

Milton: The divorce? Oh, the lady [?] in Rome.

Satan: Yeah. Her. Animals are like that. They know things. They remember things. The other kids are really going to crucify him in high school, of course, if he doesn’t lose those strays. I have half a mind to tell him the puppies can stay down here in Malibu with Ken and me.

Milton: That’s awfully generous.

Satan: It’s nothing. Jesus texts me all the time. God is hopeless with numbers, so I help Jesus with his math homework. He is learning fractions now. He thinks of me as his second father, I guess, Pandaemonium as his second home. God used to bring him down to Malibu from L.A., you know, for long weekends. We made quite a happy family, really. The three of us would play Monopoly together. [Wistfully, as if remembering happier days.] Jesus liked to be the thimble. Being the bank, I preferred the top hat.

Milton: And what was God?

Satan: God? Oh, God. What was God? Let me see if I can remember. Christ was the thimble. I was the hat. [Long pause.] I’ve got it: God was the dog. He was the dog. Of course, what else could God be?

Milton: The dog. Of course.

Together: Happy Halloween!

Takaaki, Part I

Since it is a dismally gray and rainy afternoon here in New York, I thought I would post another portion of my epic poem Takaaki, one which also takes place in the rain.

The whole poem is available in the current edition of the Raintown Review along with some of the finest poems and essays you are likely to find in any literary journal published anywhere.

I hope you like it!


Takaaki, Part I


“Paint me a pair of bold anfractuous rocks
set somewhere in the Cyclades—a spot
totally removed from Time. No clocks.”
I’d settle for a sunny August, hot
enough to melt an Erlenmeyer flask.
We could emerge from a cool underpass,
catch a guitar weeping, an old song,
a crowd of children shrieking, a Great Lawn
surrounding people with some place to be
hurrying to different destinations.
“Who comes to Central Park on their vacations?”
I would demand of the demented bee
circling a can of garbage going sour.
Surely, God would not begrudge an hour

of timelessness unto humanity—
his representatives on Earth. He must
have made us and forgotten us. Maybe.
How else would you explain the missing bus,
the leaky awning, and the pouring rain,
this longing to be elsewhere? Hence, the plane
landing on a distant isle in Greece—
ahead of schedule—look—the Cyclades—
bathed in Hellenic blue. And far below—
almost invisible on the white beach—
there is a tempting red umbrella which
I am convinced belongs to me. Although,
it could be a reflection from the ad—
for Travelers Insurance—that is bad-

ly flirting with me from across the street.
A fault in one of its florescent lights.
Flutter. Flicker. Blackout. And repeat—
ad infinitum. How I hate these nights!
These vicious, tantalizing sights! To
say I hate New York would not be true.
We have a strange relationship, I’d say.
We need each other, sort of, in the way
a sad, sadistic cop requires a good
(but rather stupid) buddy on the force
to buy Budwiesers for him, post-divorce,
hear how he has wrecked his life. Ours would
make a fine, redemptive movie script,
down to the last, cheesy tortilla chip.

For now, a cone of pink chrysanthemums—
to match the dozen frosted donuts I
picked up from Dunkin’ for dessert—some
blocks back, before Zeus unzipped the sky—
will join our little shopping list. “How
much are these flowers,” I ask the fellow
sweeping up the petals, thorns and leaves
he has been pruning. “Not the roses—these,”
I point sharply at the mums again.
the chalkboard with the prices on it had
suffered like my patience from the mad
downpour. Slowly a young Mexican
lifts five green fingers in front of his face—
his exhausted face. What a place

to hide such beauty. “Yes, I’ll take those, thanks,”
I mutter roughly, with embarrassment,
pulling out a wet ten, with two yanks,
sending a quarter rolling down pavement
to gutter. Pirouetting on the drain,
it spins to rest, shining in the rain
atop a flattened cup—a blue pancake—
supporting crooked letters that I make
out to read, ‘Happy To Serve You.’
Exactly who is happy to be serving
whom lies beyond my powers of observing
because of how the cup is crushed. In lieu
of other parties with a claim to it,
I give green fingers a five-dollar tip,

go retrieve my quarter from the cup,
before somebody else does. In this town,
some moments are too precious to give up.
A lucky coin can turn your life around
like that: ‘Fortune rota volvitur,’
rolling to the sewer your last quarter,
while on ‘The Wheel of Fortune’ someone spins
above an orange pyramid. Who wins?
Who cares? I have my quarter and I’m glad.
The best ten dollars that was ever spent
by any man beneath the Firmament.
Do I exaggerate? Perhaps a tad.
But just a tad. That magic emerald hand
has turned ‘The Wheel’ into a salsa band

by changing channels. How I love TV!
Think of all the money that we could
save on drugs and psychotherapy
if human hearts came with remotes! A mood
is altered just by tapping on your nose,
fine-tuned further peeling off damp clothes,
then fiddling a minute with a nipple.
A politician still might come and cripple
sex, now and then, Monday night football
pre-empt some dreary real-life drama
with dancing linebackers, or a bomber
blowing up an airplane force us all
to interview a few shocked families.
But we could always turn off our TVs—

like that. Returning richer from the gutter,
I collect my donuts and cut flowers.
It seems the thunderstorm’s begun to splutter—
which I attribute to my quarter’s powers,
patting the faint circle on my thigh
embossed by my good luck. I decide
there is no point in waiting. I am wet.
I can’t get any wetter now. I bet
the guy who drives that bus is named Godot.
Assuming this, and better weather later,
we say goodbye to Jorge’s cramped bodega.
I need to meet Takaaki for a show—
War of the Worlds—at quarter after eight.
Taka-chan will shoot me if I’m late.

Takaaki entered my life as a leopard
print belt being unbuckled at the Y.
Until that Tuesday, we exchanged no word
apart from the prim, perfunctory, “Hi,”
one naturally nods when in the shower—
never letting eyes fall any lower
than chin, if necessary, collarbone,
carefully leaving ‘well enough’ alone—
lest a long, luxurious lather blur
the fragile line of bubbles separating
really clean from curious—creating
questions about conditioners and whether
grapefruit is a proper, manly scent—
even in a Thought Experiment.

Mesmerized by how that feline belt
crept through the four tight loops above his rear,
my mind filled with four-letter words, spelt,
‘Don’t ruin your Moon trip.’ Though sincere—
poetic even—this injunction—it
does not, I think, seem quite appropriate.
We’re not inside a NASA locker room—
pristine and clean and white. We’re in a tomb
below the ground on 47th Street,
surrounded by abandoned towels so stiff,
so stained with history, they’ve entered myth.
I sprinkled fungal powder on my feet
discretely. As my fairy dust descended,
I wondered if his buckle was befriended

by anything besides his fingertips.
I could, of course, conceive of other suitors:
shaggy carpets, pant hangers with clips
coated in red rubber, folding doors
with tiny metal doorknobs cast from stainless
steel. But it was none of my business
where, after leaving his seductive waist,
his buckle might intend to hang, how chaste
his companions: if they drink, or stink
of socks and jockstraps, Calvin Klein, or hold
silk stockings with more reverence, or cold
hands in handcuffs, or dead cats. (I think
what one discovers on a closet hook
more eloquent than any tell-all book.)

*Zip* that leopard slyly disappears
around the tan-line of Takaaki’s hips.
My eyes could spend the next ten thousand years
bouncing on his hips. But then my lips,
neglected and forlorn, might turn to dust
before I could express my love. Or lust.
I must not allow a sleazy rhyme
to swallow his humanity. It’s time
to treat the true Takaaki—the sweet face
we’ll sit across from in a steaming bath
in several stanzas—his smile, polite laugh,
how his eyes crinkle closed when I place
my feet in the hot water and I ask,
“Do you prefer my poems or pale ass?”

The Escape Artist

Since it is his 137th birthday and since Houdini was one of my earliest heroes and since I have always found him kind of sexy, I thought I would post a poem today in his honor.

The Escape Artist

Why don’t we take a tour of your ribcage?
Feel free to smoke. No spitting, though. It’s rude.
Now pick a person from the rack—an image
To titillate your senses. Something nude.

That’s your companion for Eternity.
Your soul-mate, if you like. He never rots.
You’ve picked a postcard—excellent. Let’s see.
He looks like that Houdini—clad in locks

From head to toe. Will he escape in time?
Reserve your seat for Harry’s greatest feat!
While we are waiting though, we ought to dine.
There must be something in the Snack Bar. Sweet:

I thought I saw a box of Raisin Bran…
You do like Raisin Bran? You look distressed.
No, the box contains no Raisin Bran,
But please inhale whatever’s there with zest.

You’ll find it very hard to criticize
The brute who brings the breakfast—and his rose.
Tears have a tendency to fill his eyes
When you attack him. And he breaks your nose.

Which brings us back around to your cell door:
They recently installed new mirrors—steel.
We had an “incident” on the top floor
When life inside lost all its sex-appeal.

It does get dark in here. That’s why I’m glad
They took my glasses and bricked up the sky.
The other prisoners all called me mad:
But I’ve no hopes to tie me down, do I?