I'm sitting here waiting for Racist Santabelly Handyman to come finish sealing up the kreechur-portal in the bathroom floor. He's almost three hours late. I think he's an alcoholic: his belly is a glob but the rest of him is skinny, and he mentioned that he was going to ask his mom to take him to Home Depot so he could buy caulk and paint. "Just make sure that the paint matches," I said. "Don't worry," he said, bouncing his belly toward me and breathing on my ear, "I'm not going to [nonsensically conjugated racial epithet] it." At which point he turned to the wall and tore off a huge piece of plaster. I had no idea what to do. Normally I would slap his face, but we were alone together in the apartment, and I had the uneasy feeling that it would be unwise to slap a six-foot-eight probable alcoholic who feels comfortable using a racial slur as a verb within two minutes of meeting you. Perhaps I will pin a piece of bacon to him when he arrives and let the cat eat him to death. In the meantime I cannot take a shower, so I feel like a suckling pig with dirty frills in her ears.
To make matters worse, they're going to tear my wisdom teeth out this Tuesday, and I am terrified. I hate the tooth doctors so much; they want to steal all the jewels out of your mouth. Elegant Choice is excited because I promised to make him a necklace out of them, so for him it's going to be a holiday. That is, of course, if I survive.
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THE BLISS OF HER WISDOM, HER BUSTED CUSP
How dreadful, a man in a mask commanding
A woman supine and restrained
To hold her mouth open steady, don’t move!
Continuing, then, in an apologetic murmur,
Just prior to his exertion of full force,
Now this might hurt quite a bit, to extract
Those twisted radicals, talismans
Of gnomic wisdom, in the name
Of his one-dimensional, unambiguous
Cataract blinders, science and knowledge!
A woman cries at the very instant two lovers
Take bites from a crisp apple, kiss and pass
Sweet pulp between their lips as if
Making the promise, none of this
Will involve pain. Has he warned you yet
Of the dangers anent a dry socket?
NOSTALGIE POUR LA BOUE
1.
Actually, John was relic of the late Penelope,
She who took me to what can’t be confirmed
Was the Westminster Pub in South London,
Called The Frenchmen’s after its Free
French patronage during the Second World War,
Then due to its sexually floating clientele,
And the famous authoress instructed me
To order Coq au Champagnes for 60p,
Six times the cost of a pint in 1970,
2.
Year of the coal miner’s strike
(“They can dig their own fucking coal!”
And the Arab oil embargo (“Mafeesh
Moshkila!”), in which the champagne
Was cognac the coq Coke, with a dash
Of cherry liqueur and a swizzle stick
Impaling three rosy maraschinos. For extra
Excitement I was pursued into the Men’s
By a muscular sailor in a striped jersey,
3.
Crimson pompom on his blue beret.
His face was smooth and his cheeks
Appeared rouged. Could he be a woman
Impersonating a gay man? Interested in my coq?
My champagne? One way find out.
I coughed and dropped the harmonica
I always carry into the slate trough
And path of our mutually arched
Horsey exertions, yet instead of murmuring,
4.
“Allow me, s’il vous plait!” so I could gauge
The musicality of his talk and assess
The sway of his haunches as he walked,
He pursed his lips in a moue, a scarlet heart
Outlined in mascara, and I thought,
This is it! Now I’m really going to get it!
But he bent and lifted it from the dubious drink,
Rinsed it off in the sink and slipped it
5.
Into my back pocket with one hand,
Deftly squeezing my nuts with the other–-
For an hour I spoke in falsetto–-“Thanks,”
He rasped, “for the feel, honey, but this isn’t
What you think!” I was left in the dark
With Penelope. We proceeded to a hideous
Performance of CORIOLANUS replete
With dancers in black-face and grass skirts
Pretending to corn-hole each other,
6.
Representing the menace of the Volscians,
Who Shakespeare thought were Italian.
Anyhow, top that, Mister Jee, student
Of Dobyns at Sarah Lawrence, somewhere
Along the grizzly Poughkeepsie. Tricia
Will be busy writing odes for me
And assuaging my nostalgia
For muddier days, Lola, the Kinks,
And those rogues, Dave and Ray Davies.
Dry socket is my worst fear come to life. Or it would be, if dry socket were somehow made out of roaches...or the devil, I guess. I have been warned not to smoke or drink through a straw.
*cross-posted with your enormous NOSTALGIE POUR LA BOUE, which I must address at a later time*
JOHNNY ONE-NOTE
1.
Moments ago, a shout, a cry, a zero
Of alarm, or anguish, the whole
Of my consciousness elate,
Yet with sorrow drawn to it,
Asking the responsible, What? Why?
But its content was gone, as if a rock
Or a tree were uprooted,
2.
The space which remained of it
Contracting inexorably, or else
Pretending to vanish as if an echo
Void of intelligence, a cove
Briefly disquieted, a pond
Ostensibly still, its violet lilies
Insolently avid, their pads placid
3.
And concealing, at least potentially,
An immense fish, its surface
A grave, gray-greenish reflecting agate
Mirror and hint, a flash in the pan,
A spasm inessential, yet insistent
On its significance, me. In the meadow
Was a rabbit, taut stalks of its ears
4.
Immobile, eyes wide as saucers,
As blind, brown, and all-seeing
As this frog pond in its lamentable
Fragility, its theory of stagnant
Security–-if I pretend not to see it,
It will not see me–-its propensity
To erupt in abrupt zig-zags, lightning
5.
Panic, rustle of its absence
Vacuous as a rumble of thunder,
The cosmos clearing its throat,
Sensing the almond at the base
Of its brain, its most primitive place,
The amygdala, equivocally stroked
With poison quicksilver, so cold and aflame.
You wouldn't want me to write an ode for you. It wouldn't scan, and the world would catch fire.
THE GOLDEN DUCK
1.
The stars are what you think they are,
Dots, and the dark of night is when
Every possible line between them
Gets erased and turned into blots.
At dawn, when the sky’s
Violet blossom yields its glimpse
Of the peach’s tender thighs,
2.
The stars are gone, swallowed surely
As Hansel and Gretel’s practical path
Of crumbs was gobbled
By the ravenous laws of reality.
My dear, if the world were on fire,
It would merely become Gloria Swanson’s
Wild mansion on Sunset Boulevard,
3.
Built of stale plaster cake
And bricks of mildewed candy,
The witch of ordinary life and time
Squeezing Hansel’s string-bean
To see if it was yet a sausage.
Clever Gretel, bless her evil heart,
Helped him escape by a ride
4.
Across the lake between the wings
And tail of the missing-link dinosaur,
Peanuts for brains, and an enormous
Gold duck, not smarter by much,
The sun’s country cousin, day star
Of joy’s definitive, amphibious fuck.
Mark your path across the forests
5.
Of succulence with crumbs of desire,
Believe in a firefly’s swarm of sincerity,
And you stand half a chance
Of getting lost. May I ride
On your sunbeam, Miss Duck?
Asked Hansel of Gretel, to stabilize awhile
Their mischievous luck.
FIRE
Fire, like a slug or snail
With its wavering clitoral antennae,
Is a gastropod, but its belly
And feet are everywhere, especially up
In the air, busy making history
Illegible, stark as gallows
And broken glass,
Indifferent to itself as black ash
Or white. Its devastation is peace,
Has to be, smoking all day,
Glowing, waiting for its chance
To reignite, then totally
Goal oriented, doing its hot
Rainbow dance, greedy eat and run,
Ever glad, ever dissatisfied flight.
By the waters of Babylon’s
Rivers of oil, we are dying, killing
And fucking everything up.
Better toss our clothes
In the willows, in the palms,
In a pile like a fire, and studiously,
Solicitously, cautiously fuck.
O daughters of America,
Why would the Bible blame you?
Is this too just another of that womanizer
Psalmist’s chauvinisms?
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