*excerpt
THE BLUE GUITAR
On
a train, we fly into the night.
Where
there should be a blanket, there is just this empty
space between
us. We are falling now.
We
are like postcards sent from the other side of the world.
Only
Ghosts Enter Here
The hand that held the gun waves to us in the dark.
The
hand that ended the man depopulated a world.
There
is no need to erect new buildings only ghosts enter here.
This
is a dead country illuminated by a white moon
on a winter night.
on a winter night.
We
buy a ticket and make our way to the cheap seats.
The departed are with us now here on the other side
of
an open-air stadium.
We
watch a laser light show. We see an angel suspended
above
us on invisible wires.
The
hand that held the gun waves to us in the dark.
The
hand that ended the man depopulated a world.
(Nowhere Man) The Killing of John Lennon
Red lights flash, sirens blare, a blue
and white police cruiser flies
across Manhattan.
Over his fallen and broken body,
John Lennon floats,
John Lennon
hovers.
His mind flashes back to when he was a boy
and a band played behind the wall of his garden.
Debilitated by paranoia and delusions,
Mark David Chapman harassed Hari Krishnas
and threatened
Scientologists.
He sent telegrams to Satan.
Outside his holding cell, he is fitted with a
bullet proof vest.
“No fuck ups. No Oswalds.”
The police commander calls out.
We are buried beneath falling ashes.
We hear the tinkling keys of a piano.
We hear a voice.
Like a hummingbird, it feeds on flowers and honey.
Our minds flash back to when we were children
and a band played behind the wall of our garden.
John Lennon floats, John Lennon
hovers.
Aurora
Is that the humming of a god or a
fallen angel that he hears?
There is so much white noise that it is
deafening.
It comes in waves.
As he sits in the courtroom,
his hair dyed red and orange, his mind
wanders.
He is not dreaming. He is wide awake.
He sees things no one else sees.
He heard sirens
wailing months before the killing.
He saw pools of blood at his feet.
He saw birds trapped in a cave with no
way out.
(Schizophrenia is a diagnosis but not
an explanation.)
A woman holds a white rose and prays
for the dead,
others join her,
their heads bowed in sorrow.
A newborn baby is placed on his
father's belly.
He does not know his child is there.
He is in a coma.
There is a bandage over his eye where
the bullet
entered his brain.
A ventilator helps him breathe.
He does not know that twelve died
in the back of theater nine.
He does not know how the movie ended.
Is that the humming of a god or a
fallen angel that we hear?
There is so much white noise that it is
deafening.
It comes in waves.
Our minds wander. We are not dreaming.
We are wide awake.
We see things that no one should ever
see.
The Blue Fairy
Pinocchio had blue eyes
but hers are green
and when opened wide
turn black.
She once had a three way
with Woody Allen and Mia Farrow
but is no fan of their movies.
She prefers John Barrymore and Greta Garbo.
She sleeps inside a mirror and is older than she looks.
She recalls
when Marilyn Monroe (in the guise of a blue fairy)
met Sylvia Plath
in a London flat.
Reluctantly, she sells stocks short.
She chats on message boards
using a photo of Ayn Rand as her avatar.
Her thoughts are like books taken from the library
and never returned.
She floats inside a bubble.
She fears oceans and elevators.
But it is the going down that she fears the most.
On Thursday, she wears a wedding veil.
On Sunday, she is widowed.
Pinocchio had blue eyes
but hers are green
and when opened wide
turn black.
but hers are green
and when opened wide
turn black.
She once had a three way
with Woody Allen and Mia Farrow
but is no fan of their movies.
She prefers John Barrymore and Greta Garbo.
She sleeps inside a mirror and is older than she looks.
She recalls
when Marilyn Monroe (in the guise of a blue fairy)
met Sylvia Plath
in a London flat.
Reluctantly, she sells stocks short.
She chats on message boards
using a photo of Ayn Rand as her avatar.
Her thoughts are like books taken from the library
and never returned.
She floats inside a bubble.
She fears oceans and elevators.
But it is the going down that she fears the most.
On Thursday, she wears a wedding veil.
On Sunday, she is widowed.
Pinocchio had blue eyes
but hers are green
and when opened wide
turn black.
George Washington On A
White Horse
Apparitions
line the White House walls,
portraits of presidents,
FDR, JFK and Jefferson,
George Washington on a white horse,
Reagan the first president elected after
a divorce.
Trump and Clinton are there too,
one lied about an intern and a cigar,
another lied about Russian whores and a
porn star.
False gods wear no shoes but walk among
them,
their faces shine, their teeth
glitter with radioactive smiles.
Apparitions are gathering on the border
where once we made land in the dark on an
unknown shore.
We are sleepwalking now (often forgetting
our dreams).
We cannot see beyond the looming
mountain outside our door.
Apparitions line the White House
walls,
portraits of presidents,
FDR, JFK and Jefferson,
George Washington on a white horse,
Reagan the first president elected after
a divorce.
Trump and Clinton are there too,
one lied about an intern and a cigar,
another lied about Russian whores and a
porn star.
The Astronaut
The
astronaut has been drugged. He sleeps
with
his helmet off,
the
particles of his brain altered
in
the blue alchemy
of
space.
His feet, arms, hands and legs
have become
unhinged
His feet, arms, hands and legs
have become
unhinged
from
his torso. He sends out signals,
coded transmissions,
coded transmissions,
that
are difficult to read.
He
mouths the words to a song
only
the deaf can hear.
He
makes a false confession
to
his imaginary therapist
and then takes it all back
and holds fast
once again to the truth.
and then takes it all back
and holds fast
once again to the truth.
He
reads the news.
He watches TV shows
broadcast from an alien planet
revolving around an alien sun.
He watches TV shows
broadcast from an alien planet
revolving around an alien sun.
There
are others with him, hordes of them,
flocks of them, invisible now
flocks of them, invisible now
but
not so far away.
We know some of them.
They are not all forgotten.
We remember those that once
heard our voices
and looked into our eyes.
We know some of them.
They are not all forgotten.
We remember those that once
heard our voices
and looked into our eyes.
When
will they parachute
back in
to our world
of air, land and ocean?
When will they come back to us?
back in
to our world
of air, land and ocean?
When will they come back to us?
Variations
on the Man with the Blue Guitar
"The
strings are cold on the blue guitar" Wallace Stevens
1
A
boy blew out a tune on a toy whistle.
The
moon heard it echo. The wind heard it cry.
The
clouds changed its sound.
In
another country, it fell from the sky.
Unnoticed,
it fell to the ground.
There
are words only heard in the dark.
There
are stories only told to strangers.
We
dance to radio signals warbling
in
the air. We change our faces daily.
We
turn the world over. We sleep when we can.
2
They
wear masks of tin; they glitter in the sun.
Their
rockets blaze; they build warheads by the ton.
They
talk of peace, but it never comes.
A
cloud descends, the lies resume.
Their
minds are empty; their hearts are blank.
We
walk and stumble along a darkened wall.
We
hear a whistle. We hear a call.
But
we can't be sure. There are so many before us,
so
many bodies pushing and shoving,
hordes
of them. We become confused. We fall.
3
The
boy adored the blue guitar.
He
made a kind of shrine.
He
bathed in the light of that star.
The
world glistened and shined.
He
was born again when he heard the blue guitar.
They
are flying drones way up high
(UFOs
whiz around in the dark).
A
robot pushes a button and lives vanish.
Out
here in the white sands of the desert,
after
the blast, the dead disembark.
4
At
midnight , the world turned
to stone;
and
with it, the human head was reduced to bone.
The
mountains turned purple; the sky turned gray.
Rivers
and oceans froze, the land filled with snow.
The
world went to sleep; the world turned to stone.
Architects
silently put their tools away.
The
shape of things had become an empty hole.
The
boy feared his dreams might stop, his vision fade.
The
boy feared he would turn to stone.
The
boy feared he would be reduced to bone.
5
In
his mind, the boy made a shadow box
of
all the things he had known and seen.
He
made a shadow box of violet, blue and green.
He
remembered oceans, clouds and ponds.
He
remembered all the things he had known and seen.
An
X marked the houses of the dead.
Bloated
bodies floated down Canal Street.
The
Superdome was in total darkness.
The
lights were out; there was no turning back.
The
boy painted his fingernails black.
6
Folks
waved white flags from rooftops.
The
president did a flyover.
He
kept his distance; his view was blurred.
Only
Kafka could invent something so absurd.
A
man went up into the clouds.
The
man traversed an ocean for love.
He
could have been an astronaut; he was so far gone.
He
was lost in the air.
He
whirled and tumbled and when he came down,
his
wife was not there.
7
The
man examined the clues.
The
man had a bad case of the blues.
The
man made a trip to the Pale Horse Tattoo
parlor.
He wanted to commemorate
his
years of clandestine service
in
the company of shadows,
when
Peter Lorre was his avatar and guide,
when
the world was dark and blue.
The
man heard the thunder roar.
The
man was weary of war.
8
Children
are gathering in the dark.
An
idea forms and we begin to bloom,
almost
invisibly but not quite.
Think
of the resurrection as a kind
of
second chance, as a kind of blossoming.
Some
died by fire, some died in a blast.
Some
vanished like a vapor, some died in a crash.
We
let go of our secrets
but
our voices seem strange.
We
must move beyond this phantom feeling.
9
History
has abandoned us.
The
old-world fades but the ruins remain.
We
breathe in its dust and it changes us.
We
have no need of sleep.
We
bloom like flowers in the night.
We
know what it is like to shiver in the cold.
We
know what it is like to stumble and fall.
But
our eyes were opened. We heard the call.
We
followed the light of a distant star.
We
heard the sound of the blue guitar.
10
A
boy blew out a tune on a toy whistle.
The
moon heard it echo. Constellations heard it cry.
On
another planet, it fell from the sky.
The
clouds changed its sound.
Unnoticed,
it fell to the ground.
There
are words only heard in the dark.
There
are stories only told to strangers.
We
dance to radio signals warbling in the air.
We
fly by the light of a nameless star.
We
dance to the sound of the blue guitar.
After Reading
a Review of “The Sacrifice” by Joyce Carol Oates
Out here in
the undiscovered dark,
I hear the
voice of a phantom.
(Or is it the
voice of a lost relative
calling out
from the other side
of an
invisible hill?)
Across town,
cameras flash
as a minister
holds a press conference
in the
vestibule of a church.
He drinks
from the poisoned water of his own ego.
His finger
points away from himself.
More children
are dying every day.
Bombs
continue to fall
while the
world sleeps.
No one
controls this cloud we ride on.
No one knows
how to get off.
Higdon Ferry Road
On Higdon Ferry Road, I float
beyond
the red warning lights of a dark
country,
their beacons blinking on and off,
and then vanishing.
I hover above the hospital where my father died.
Here my body has become obsolete,
vaporized and dispersed like a distant echo.
Below this blurred world my father’s body
rests in a silver urn,
his limbs no longer hanging feebly from his torso,
his skin, blood and bones, the hinges
I hover above the hospital where my father died.
Here my body has become obsolete,
vaporized and dispersed like a distant echo.
Below this blurred world my father’s body
rests in a silver urn,
his limbs no longer hanging feebly from his torso,
his skin, blood and bones, the hinges
of his shoulders,
knees and elbows burned to powder
and ash,
clavicle to breast, a box to
clouds.
Will flowers bloom in this fog or
will they wilt?
When I was a boy, between talk of sex and baseball,
I heard rumors of a coming air invasion
from Russia. I was afraid.
I watched the sky. Lightning flashed.
When I was a boy, between talk of sex and baseball,
I heard rumors of a coming air invasion
from Russia. I was afraid.
I watched the sky. Lightning flashed.
Thunder rumbled. I saw airplanes
coming out of the clouds. I hid in a garage.
During the Korean War, my dad
was a radar operator in Alaska; he too
looked for air invaders from Russia.
coming out of the clouds. I hid in a garage.
During the Korean War, my dad
was a radar operator in Alaska; he too
looked for air invaders from Russia.
Often, he worked the night shift
and slept when he could.
and slept when he could.
My mother often dreams my father
is in the room with us.
She says his presence has begun to fade,
not like a ghost but more like a blip on a radar screen,
is in the room with us.
She says his presence has begun to fade,
not like a ghost but more like a blip on a radar screen,
an echo, blinking on and off,
and then vanishing.
She hands me a box of his clothes.
I put them on and so he moves (and so he grows
and so I wake
and so I see and so he walks and so he breathes).
She hands me a box of his clothes.
I put them on and so he moves (and so he grows
and so I wake
and so I see and so he walks and so he breathes).
Plato
Takes Notes
They would
never understand, she tells herself.
She
could have been a revolutionary. She could have been
Homecoming
Queen.
Punk
girl, she poses in a bikini for a fanzine.
She
shows off her latest tattoo.
In front
of the camera, the pain diminishes, but the whirring blades
in her
head spin unceasingly.
There is
no pill that will fix her.
The
stars hang crooked in this universe.
They
twinkle, they glitter.
Facts
are toxic for true believers.
The
propaganda machine is always on.
It has
wings. It is made up of nightmares and dreams.
Conspiracy theories abound.
Conspiracy theories abound.
The lie
detector in the other room
measures
feelings but not truth.
Socrates
suffers from dementia while Plato takes notes.
9/11
and
now, a second and improbable plane, a blip on FAA radar,
United Flight 175, approaches and then plunges
United Flight 175, approaches and then plunges
into
the south tower of the World Trade Center,
igniting
into orange and red flames
while
bodies fall and then tumble like stunt doubles
into
the empty but televised air.
An
egret whirls into the wind,
and
then turns and folds in upon itself and lands
beneath
a cloud of water;
while
in the distance,
airplanes
at the edge of thunder
murmur
and echo
like
the thin mirrors of the ego,
glittering
and lost, and I shudder
in
the dark and consider
the
dead (and all of their voices),
an
unwavering remembrance,
a
delicate descent.
Death Rides in on a White Horse
An electric eye opens. It watches us
while we sleep.
It opens doors and windows and lets the
others in.
We hear them, their voices echoing
throughout the house.
We can’t
quite understand what it is they are saying.
A one-eyed fat man reads from a book of
tarot cards
and a crystal ball.
He looks into the meaning of things.
He sees the towers fall.
He sees flashes of a burning world.
The fool remains but no one is
laughing.
Death rides in on a white horse.
The talking heads have all gone home.
Satellites bounce signals into outer
space.
Who can hear us? Who will save us from
ourselves?
Nuit
Blanche
The
portrait of a man in electric blue,
a
torso actually,
hangs
there on the wall.
and
further down
the
depiction of an electric chair
dangles
in pink, red and violet pastels.
Oh,
how the shadows cry,
the
voices of the dead.
And
turning now we realize too late
that
we have passed through
an
opened door
into
a forgotten room
where
no one ever sleeps
and
no one ever leaves.
With Our
Eyes Closed
Darkness
descends without a sound on the wings
of
an invisible horse.
No
one knows his name, this stranger in love
with
his own shadow.
We
are walking backwards now with our eyes closed.
We
have nowhere else to go.
Oceans & Technology
Out here in this country
of unending sleep,
I inherit horses in
winter
and blowing hands;
above the clouds, and the
televisions of L.A.
(where once a blue whore
danced on a powdered mask),
a woman is broadcast on
air,
a former debutante manipulated by plastic surgeons
and ultimately disposed
of by parapsychologists
in the Pentagon.
Out here in the shadow of
a
paradox,
I huddle in wonder,
decomposed but undiminished
while a hundred warplanes
fly over toxic foam
(oceans and technology),
breast implants found
hidden in the hospital gown
of a surrogate
mother.
On top a white stallion
the Lone Ranger descends,
a masked man,
debilitated and unrehearsed.
What is it that I want to say but ultimately cannot say?
I have become nothing,
a ghost deprogrammed and on parole.
I walk out into the shadows of televised snow,
televised desolation, blue trauma by a descending sky,
man of blankness, man of sighs.
debilitated and unrehearsed.
What is it that I want to say but ultimately cannot say?
I have become nothing,
a ghost deprogrammed and on parole.
I walk out into the shadows of televised snow,
televised desolation, blue trauma by a descending sky,
man of blankness, man of sighs.
TelePrompTer
HOLD US IN A HUMAN
TELECAST
TOP STARS AND BLANK EXITS
WITH TELEVANGELISTS ON
SATELLITES
THE WATER COMES IN
WE UNDERSTAND
IT HAS COME THROUGH THE WIND
HOOKERS BY BLEACH
WHITE WIGS AND U.S. WARHEADS
BILLOWING ON BYLINES
WORLDWIDE
BLANKET US UNMASKED
X TELEPATHS ON TOPLESS
HOUSEBOATS
THIS IS OUR ULTIMATE
BUYER
PARACHUTES BY ULTRA
LIGHTS
HOLOGRAMS BY FOAM
White Orchids & Death
After watching a movie about a
woman
in a sanitarium
obsessed with white orchids and death,
I think about the girl at the pool
in a sanitarium
obsessed with white orchids and death,
I think about the girl at the pool
and all that she said.
She spoke about her father
She spoke about her father
lost in the mountains
of Wyoming,
wandering beneath
wandering beneath
white peaks of heavenly snow;
and she spoke of her two
sisters,
and her mother and all of her
love.
What do I care about Prozac and
depression, price controls
and the unemployment rate (blue voices in a dark room),
while a lost girl wades through drifts and drifts of Minnesota snow
and
apparitions huddle high above the frozen river?
Narcissus
Narcissus declares his death a hoax.
He sleeps in a cave far underground.
He refuses to look at himself in the mirror now
as he puts his wings on backwards
in a darkened corner.
He has not forgotten how everything
once bloomed in the world above him
before the fall.
He does not speak.
He lost his voice long ago in the void.
He paints stars on the ceiling by candlelight
and imagines ocean waves
and billowing sails
and harbors filled with faces other than his own.
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.
A Blue Christmas
Matt
Lauer moves into an empty house
without
walls or windows
and
fills it with rumors and tabloid headlines.
He
looks into a dark mirror and does not speak.
Blackbirds
perch in the trees outside
and
squawk and chatter amongst themselves.
A
TV anchor sits in front of a map
of
the United States highlighted in blue
as
Brian Ross falsely reports that Michael Flynn
agrees
to testify that candidate Trump
directed
Flynn to make contact
with
the Russians.
Charles
Manson dies.
His
son opens a GoFundMe account
to
pay for the funeral expenses.
A
war criminal poisons himself in court.
Wisdom
shines and never fades
but
not here and not now.
The
Night Batman Died We Talked
The night Batman died, we talked.
You told me that the boulder
that stood between us had been removed
and had left a hole
in your world and you fell in.
The shadow of an ogre blotted out the sky.
Long ago, I found you sitting
in Saint Paul’s
in front of the statue of Saint Therese.
You said you were cold
after marching in the streets of Paris
against the war in Iraq.
After that, you gave me a small,
blank notebook.
I scribble in it and fill it with words,
incantations
and prayers. Batman has put away his indigo mask.
I have put away mine.
The ogre is gone.
JFK
Even before I learned
to stand or walk without some help,
I was already able to decipher the paradoxical
truth
of the televised image—that the images
were an illusion.
Ghosts. Snowy pictures that talked.
Faces and pictures I eventually could control
and manipulate with the turn of a dial,
a surrogate memory where whole generations
were consigned to a cathode ray tube;
a world where images were transposed
into myth, and I could become a companion
to the likes of Lois
Lane, Clark Kent,
Hercules and the Lone Ranger.
The rain
had stopped,
so, the
bubble top was removed.
The
president beamed and waved to the crowds.
The
first lady, a princess, in a pink wool suit
and
matching pink pill box hat, smiled.
Together
they floated down Elm Street
in
a midnight blue
Lincoln Continental,
a
carriage for a handsome prince
and his
bride.
Mountain
climbers call the top of a mountain,
the
death zone.
Unknown
to anyone in the crowd,
the
presidential limousine invisibly
passed
into that zone.
Jackie tried to turn back, but it was too late.
Soon after, the rumors began.
There was talk of Castro, the CIA and the mob.
Vietnam was engulfed in flames.
RFK and Martin Luther King were shot down.
Images of the dead were broadcast nightly.
The TV was full of ghosts,
but it wasn't a fantasy,
it wasn't a myth.
It began with the death of a prince
and his widow in a blood stained, pink suit.
They are still with us.
It is going on now.
We see her, we see him, transfigured,
ascending into the clouds.
Some Sense Their Presence
Some sense
their presence;
their
radiance,
luminous in the dark.
Others know their faults,
luminous in the dark.
Others know their faults,
their
imperfections,
but this makes
them
all the more attractive,
all the more attractive,
all the
more
accessible.
accessible.
I cast my eyes on long poems
from books that fall apart
in my hands.
I leap from
one stanza to another
as I descend.
So many
answers
to unknown questions,
to unknown questions,
so many
poems
that never end.
that never end.
I
Spy
In the darkness, he rises like a moonlit shadow.
He imagines himself a king.
He tells himself this is what a man is,
this is what a man does. He teaches, but not this.
The pills make the woman his subject, his concubine.
She offers no resistance.
Words begin to form in fragments but drift away.
She forgets how to speak.
She cannot move.
When we played, I Spy,
I played Bill Cosby’s part.
I assumed my dark-skinned playmate
(whose ancestors came from Africa on slave ships)
would take the role.
But he insisted on playing the debonair spy.
I would be the funny sidekick.
Watching TV, looking at the pictures
in Playboy magazine,
we learned how to become dinosaurs
but not men.
Anna
Nicole Smith in TV Heaven
The flashbulbs are so much brighter here.
After all, this is the land of laugh tracks,
big screen TVs and Cadillacs,
where games shows are broadcast twenty-four hours
a day and everyone is a winner. The thousand-pound
man
and the five-hundred-pound mom, can Doctor Phil
save them?
Her bodyguard said her eyes were fixed and dilated.
The coroner ruled that a combination of pills
and chloral hydrate killed her.
Rumor has it that Andy Warhol
has already commissioned her portrait.
But Einstein wants nothing to do with it.
We open ourselves up to darkness but not to love.
Our heads are getting bigger everyday
while our legs are shrinking from disuse.
Did OJ commit armed robbery in Las Vegas?
Do flying saucers really exist? Can America be
saved?
Stay tuned.
All
Our Own
I am baffled by the fix of her blue eyes and the
subtle way
she clings to me in shades of gray.
I sense there is something missing in each of us,
a kind of faith that we cannot fathom
or rather a kind of trust we think we will never know
even now as we fall into an emptiness all our own.
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