AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH IN OIL & VINEGAR

I’m sitting on top of a mile-high stack of books

a lot of gray up here

but the flies are few

I can say stuff like now is the whimper of my discontent

in a self-contradictory and dead language kind of way

like a gorgeous woman named Agatha

which sounds like you’ve got something stuck in your throat

Heimlich

the height of modernity and the depth of inanity coming together

like last week when my fishmonger and I

got involved in a heated discussion

about the derivation and usage of the term scrod

on cell phones

fortunately I had my suspenders on that day

A PEAR IS WAITING PATIENTLY

a pear is waiting

a picker snatches

a basket makes room

a truck is rumbling

a manager unloads and organizes

a price is set and paid

an elderly woman checks out

a bag tilts and partially relieves itself

a pear is waiting patiently

the snow begins

BETTIE PAGE IS DEAD!

tonight I have you
in The Garden
loving round ball like me

so close we can smell the sweat
you share your box with me because
I never ask you how you got it

we sing, “Rondo!”
no matter which Celtic scores
and we lead the league in technicals

baby, chests thumping, panting,
needing to be restrained, you know
we don’t leave before the final buzzer

and our police escort -
the whole fucking city of Boston
our locker room

THE SLOW LANE

The Malibu
ahead of me
has Jesus
inside a fish
on its bumper.
Ding! Ding!

ROADKILL

when I ran over the hat
the game changed

think of spinach all loose head
how a seed becomes many leafs

snip snip
and the growing continues

but bury it
under the crash and stink of cars

jobs families schools chores
suddenly the weeds do all the thinking

now we have a walk-behind police
and the choking grows

the greens can no longer get into us
the head is outside the body overgrown

the game becomes the same all over
and the hats smell flat

I GIVE A HEARTBEAT TO THE WEATHER

I GIVE A HEARTBEAT TO THE WEATHER


And, in return, it keeps me grounded, overlooking my smithereens. To be happy would require an Esmeralda under my umbrella. For this continuous being out of sorts there is nothing but Ocean Spray.

It wasn’t always like this. I had a tennis ball once. A greenness and a bounce. Everything was mythological. Dem Bums versus The Giants. In a broken down coliseum bordering Flatbush Ave.

That’s why every hot dog tastes frisky. Even when the precip. is schizophrenic. And the long range forecast is full of arthritis. Show me what you can do with a paper clip.

We have but two choices here: Art or maggots. Raping the statutes, grape juice stains on my shirt, is all I have left. The dreams disturb the sleep so magnificently.

A clearance of throat, a gob of poetry.

AT WORK

and now it's time for
good morning
i said good morning
dint you hear me
i said good morning
this is your final warning
ok boys
kill the bastard

MOMUS: The Greek god of censure and ridicule, who was banished from Olympus for his criticism of the gods.

Sound like anyone you know? Satan, for example.

OOH, I hear the big wind outside; guess I'm done for now!

“julie andrews”


if I were a bosom
and you were a carpenter ant
and he was a bowl of sugar
and she was a tenement
and they were wood chips
and we all had brand new sitars
and were collaborating on the invention of a new pronoun
one that could never be used in a sentence
because it didn’t refer to anything real
oh wouldn’t it just be Julie Andrews

FREE ZONE by Jacques Prevert

I put my cap in the cage
And I left with the bird on my head
So
we no longer salute
said the commanding officer
No
we no longer salute
replied the bird
Oh right
excuse me I believed that we saluted
said the commanding officer
You are entirely excused anybody can make a mistake
said the bird

translated by Harriet Zinnes


THEIR SEX LIFE by A.R. Ammons

One failure on
Top of another


NOT TONIGHT by Hal Sirowitz

She said that I couldn't go back
with her to her place, because
she had to study for a test. And
that I wouldn't be able to help her,
because I wasn't good at mathematics.
The only thing I was good at was
taking off her clothes, but
she already knew how to do that.


LOWKU by Larry

I wonder if my dentist
fantasizes about other patients
when he's inside me

A Recess

wendy farrell
leaves her girlfriends
to offer me a piece
of her cupcake

“sure,” I say
and invite her to sit
right next to Me
on the log

to which
I have recently attached
a big wad
of used bubble gum


A WAFER-THIN CHRIST


passing through the boulder
of my digestive system

I’m worshiping the back
of Angela O’Connor’s knees

all ten commandments
trickling out of my underarms


AFTER SCHOOL


a bunch of us rank amateurs
were sitting around watching
the pros fuck everything up
and one whacked-out eleven-year-
old broad her bra still
in spring training says to me
I’ll flip you a Jeter for your Sosa
and after we drained our cherry
cokes and drove the owner bonkers
sucking air bubbles out of the bottoms
with our flexible straws we went at it
right there on the flooring

OFF DUTY

there's my bus -
hey, hey!


THE #5

She’s in German.
The only word I know is Hitler,
but I’m up on perfume,
so I give her left buttock a squeeze
and then it’s my stop.


GISELA

it took me a few hours
to realize
I want that ocean


97% WATER


that’s me
sitting next to
my big brother the ocean

a salty bathing beauty
on the blankie next door

you better be nice to me girl
or I’ll sick my big bro' on you

he of the rapetide
he of the dangerous undertow


A DOG

with its head out the side
of a moving vehicle,
barking at everything it goes by –
now ain’t that the truth!