Sunday, November 30, 2014

The Pinball Wizard of Las Vegas




(For Larry)


I walked around in a kind of bubble.
I could look out but no one could look in.
I took only shallow breaths, the air was thin,
the oxygen limited.

No one knew 
about the dark thing that held me captive.
In Las Vegas, my favorite cousin 

mangled his hand between the whirring blades of a machine.
All that remained was a partial palm.
I was ten; he was sixteen.
Soon he arrived at my grandmother’s house
and I had to face the horror
of what he had lost. 

His palm was bandaged, 
hidden from view,
wrapped up like a miniature mummy.
He held a white, plastic ball and tossed it to me.

I tossed it back; he caught it

by pulling on the bottom of his shirt,
using it as a kind of glove
for the ball to softly land.

My fears of facing him vanished.
I was free.
How did he know how 

I had suffered?
Later the Las Vegas Sun 

wrote an article about him
and his prowess at pinball
(using just one hand and a palm).
He would often sit
in front of his house, drinking beer,

watching over his muscle car;
and when a can 
was thrown at his metallic prize,
he would be off to the Vegas Strip,
chasing after the perpetrator.

Still later, he worked
for the Department of Defense
at the Nevada Test Site.
He held the highest of security clearances.

He married. But he knew the dark side
of man’s inventiveness, of man’s machines.
He knew that they could bite,
that accidents happen. 
So he quit his job. 
His wife took pills and he drank.
The money ran out, there were fights.
It ended with the suicide of his bride.
He became emaciated and depressed.

His bones poked through his skin like rocks.
Somehow he seemed to hover above us all.
Then the convulsions began and he fell 

through the clouds, a diver, 
free falling, tumbling, without wings
without a chute.



Sunday, November 23, 2014

The Poets



The poets have grown mute, listless.
They have ashes in their mouths.
Their eyes are shut.
They have forgotten the words to the old songs.
I sit beside a green pond. 
The water is cloudy.
It is snowing somewhere but not here.
I’m often awakened by dreams in the night,

by shadows 
that have not yet learned how to speak.
A mother calls out to her child 
from an opened window
but he does not hear her voice.
The world is big and vast.
I scribble these notes in the air
and a cold wind carries them away.



Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Isis (Plan 9 from Outer Space)


Was that the shadow of a giant bird 
or a flying saucer that passed overhead?

Sleeper cells inside the village
provided the names of resistance members.

Houses were burned. 
Women were given away as prizes.

Others were shot.
Black hooded fiends ordered the deaths of many.

They seemingly follow the plot points of a B movie by Ed Wood.
(They kill and use the dead to verify their existence.)

They claim to take their instructions from above,
from the heavens, from outer space.

They practice the theology of death as their religion
and use the tools of pornographers to make their viral videos.

They are bad actors in a make-believe world
cutting off real heads.







Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Night Poem

White stars and a white moon,
snow geese
in a flying V formation cross a blue sky.

I could become as transparent as the wind
and dance
to the beat of a toy drum

and leave all my belongings behind.
I could talk back to the darkness
but would I be heard?

White stars and a white moon,
snow geese in a flying V formation
cross a blue sky.



Sunday, November 9, 2014

Two Lemons on a Train





We were two lemons on a train.
I followed her out into the rain.
We were two lemons on a train.

With her, I never had to choose.
With her, I had nothing left to lose.
She would laugh and say,

'Did you hear the latest news?’
She would laugh and say,
'Did you hear the latest news?

China is sending rockets to the moon.
China is sending rockets to the moon.'
With her, I never had to choose.

With her, I had nothing left to lose.
We were two lemons on a train.
I saw her walk out into the rain.