Book Reviewer

I don’t talk
          like that
& I don’t ever wanna
          For that matter,
     Why is the
          counterculture section
     right nexta
          the cash register?

Corner Bar During War

Sitting in my neighborhood bar
     one evening
I was trying to read the paper
     but I had to look away.
The words were swirling.
     I looked back, with my focus
moving in & out: jumbled garb.
     I ordered a double shot of bourbon
and crumpled up the consequence.

Nostro

He stays up late
with his crystal ball of theories
while I fall off to sleep.
The music, still creeping,
feeds him with one hand
as it closes my eyes
with another.  Mad America
hurt him into prophesy.
He shakes with the grip
of an all-night king,
All Night and Every Night
his swirling, yellow motto.
He’s read my palms,
dealt my cards, and
taken my confession—
I pray thee, Nostro,
lead me on a joint venture
through the halls of four a.m.;
Ring this rufous mind
with your crepuscular glassen echo;
Predict my rise in the west
despite the smoke and mirrors;
Help me to politicize
the last dollar spent on blood-shot war.
And give of your wisdom after Christmas.
Especially after Christmas.

Akimbo

          Under the eyes—akimbo.
          You think it’s even a word?

I don’t know,
it sounds familiar.

          Umm,
          literally:
          in keen bow
          i.e. hands on hips
          with elbows out,
          with arms akimbo.

As in,
I look at you akimbo?

          With elbows out,
          with arms akimbo—
          see, the picture?

Star Trick

Patrick Stewart gave me three
pairs of shorts from the
seventies. They were very
short and very tight. He said,
You are to wear these
on the beach, Number One.

Debbie, And Others

It’s like, hi, OK
I love you.
I really did love
     you, you and
     all those other girls—
     the ones I
          fell in love with
     so fast.

Basic

      For some reason, I went back to basic training. There was no one around when I got there, so I set up bunk toward the back of the barracks and poured myself a drink. This girl walks in. She's twenty, she says. Blond, about five-four, very slender; svelte. Her hair was straight, down to her shoulders. Oh, those shoulders. Soldiers and shoulders, soldiers and shoulders.

      She had 'B' cup breasts, which looked perfect on her. She went into the bathroom and came back out wearing only panties. What does she do then but grab a glass and a bottle of vodka , and go back into the bathroom. I follow her in there.
       "You shouldn't be drinking so frequently," I tell her.
       "I do it to forget about what my father did to me," she says, and then right before she downs her drink she tells me that the DS is her father. Cripes. What do you do with that? I take the bottle of vodka and she pulls in close to me. I touch or brush, rather,her breasts, and we kiss. Short, no tongue.

      As I was finishing up with my first three-minute shower, a totally naked woman came in. She was A-1 hot. The mother, I gathered. She went about her business: looking at herself in the mirror, putting some makeup on. Maybe she was getting ready to go out that night, I don't know. But there she was, casually talking to me, and we were both still naked.
      It was like I was watching the scene unfold on TV. Late-night TV on ABC, mystified as to why they were showing so much nudity. But then I feel cold, and wet, and I know it's me on TV that I'm watching, and that I'm not watching this on TV at all, but that it's really happening, through the slightly curved screens of my own two eyes.
      The mother is an alcoholic, in the girl's opinion. In mine? Perhaps. But also a tease and a flirt. I don't need this shower curtain. I can fuck them both, and within the next few days. I know the mom's game. Maybe the daughter, too. Maybe once each. Then both together.

      The next morning I'm already ready to go AWOL again. Ready to climb the WOL, as they say. The girl is coming with me, but there's something I gotta do first. I go back into the barracks and tell the mom that her daughter is being abused.
       "I know," she replies.
       "You know?" I say. "You should have done something."
       "It's too late now," she says.
       "It's never too late," I say, and flip over my bunk as I leave, for good measure.
      I know there'll be hell to pay, if they ever haul me back in. Against regulation, when I returned to basic I pocketed a spare copy of the key to my car...my dad's Olds. The girl and I hopped in and tore hell outta there. I went from zero to one-ten.
      Out of nowhere comes this dinosaur, trying to eat us. I'm going three times the limit down a rural main street and have no choice but to double back, in order to try and shake the dinosaur.

      We pull off the road into some woods, just for a second, hoping that the dinosaur wouldn't see us, because carnivorous dinosaurs can only see what's moving. That's when the DS, and a group of his men, spot us and surround, all holding semi-automatic weapons. I lean slightly out of the window, sticking both of my hands out, and yell, "I'm reaching into my jacket so I can put my gun down." Their reaction to this is to raise their guns. They look like they're about to shoot me, trying to steady their aim but still moving ever so slightly. Right before they fire, I hear the dinosaur's roar.

Tapicommunication

He is wearing a sweater
and his wife comes home.
She gets ready to tell him something
but he stops her.
'It's called tapicommunication, honey,
let's tap!'
So they go gliding across the room
effortlessly, tapping, and I suppose
communicating all the way.

Dream Mantra

I tell my romping mind
to share its dreams, to bring
back a slice of the
surreal pork chop for me.
Licking my fingers I lie down to sleep
stalking the next dream, asking it
to stamp my passport to lucid land.

Next time I’m dreaming,
            I will remember I’m dreaming…

Flipping through photographs I recognize one—
me becoming lucid.  Yes, I’ve been here before.
Is this the house where I grew up?  No, not quite…
I know that somewhere I am sleeping, that
I am wrapped in that somewhere like a present.
The present can be whatever I want it to be…
as long as I can read that it’s addressed to me.

Mischief, Intrigue, and Mayhem

In jail w/ John Lennon & Paul
McCartney. Also nine other Beatles.
I think there wuzzadozen.
Michael Keaton Fell Off a Tower,
was the drummer's new name.
We never knew what the charges were
but someone said it was the the second time
around, and around, and around, and around.

Chablis

for Danny, Pilon, Pablo, the Pirate, and Jesus Maria

We got a
huge thing of chablis
for real cheap.
You hardly even
see chablis anymore.
This stuff we were
trying to get drunk
off of,

trying to get
somethin to read
out of.

James Cameron

If you need to get
           to where I'm at
     you can do that
     you can do
                    (finger pointing)
          that