Tsunami

The tsunami is now swooshing its way
back out through the stubbled pine
splinters, echoing arcs of metal flanks,
bulbous elbows, flayed tires
and crinkled appliances.

A little shaggy dog struggles to lap
its way upstream against a tilting
onrush of bloody seawater, oil and
house-shanks. It might say a prayer
to the plunges, groans, shrieks and cracklings
if it could, or to the occasional twinkle
through the mist and smoke.

Fishes are jumping about, passing
by the dog and peeking their little eyes
at him to see what he’s up to. To kill
their boredom they try to nose up
flattened flowers occasionally
floating on the surface.

Nonetheless t-shirt stands are erected
on the floating islands of overturned cars
(immediately declared their own country),
the poles of their huts jammed
into black chasms in the chassis
between the crankshaft and wheel-wells.

Rafters of bloody legs and divided families
are tugged along storefronts
to God-knows-where.

In the distance, the squawking chirps
of a deranged bird.

A CEO tries to delicately balance
his martini on the other side
of the annoying wall-thumps
as he looks up at the pulsating
windows which are bothering him still.

Planes crash into one another
at criss-crossing landing strips,
the protruding, curved shards
of main street’s pavement too sharp
and moon-rough to be scrubbed
down to a smooth makeover.

Cracked computers with their strewn wires
dangling out braid into one another,
trying to fuse into a giant corporation.

A fanatical sports fan somehow still
manages to watch his big screen
by strapping himself into his
chair as everything vibrates
from the rumbling floor.

The ants tumult themselves into
a furious buzz, digging deeper
into the chocolaty soil.

Yet drinks are still served in private
houses away from the heat, the whisping
steam and exploding shrapnel-sprays
of the combustible buildings.

Separated lovers do their damnest
to catch glimpses of old, iconic art
floating by to divert themselves.

A wailing woman is stuck up to her waist
in the flow of sticky brown gunk.

A stoic pelican, glossed and gooeyed,
looking on, cannot open its gummed mouth
to make a peep as occasional small metal
projectiles pellet into its viscous black coat.

Clumps of squashy boots arrive and
depart, influenced by a distant church bell.

Waves try to well up and break on shore
but cannot feel a reef or ledge underneath.

The woman’s blood-flow, the dog’s
adrenalin and the sea’s mid-oceanic drifts
all rise and fall, finally in startled fits
even the ants, fish and flowers respond to.


U.S. City

Art experiences a hundred times vaster
than the cineplexities where jujubes make
the teeth stuck and where board members
build their barracks from the number
of snow-globes they pawn off
from the acropolis ledge.

Groups of playful kids sit in these people’s
houses eyeing their nicotine candy.
Outside a little muskrat sneezes in the glare
of the billboarding Come to Mamma flashes
that wall the thruway.

The limousine drivers want to have
more interesting lives thanks to
open terraces and the arms of the sea
that come close and allow them
to glimpse the depths of
the topography from time to time.

But for today’s up-and-comer, orientation
is baffled beyond all sense of old circuits.
Kebobs of bling-bling are weighing down
hunched women and attempts to connect
with a unifying osmosis from big and flat
screens are trumping lateral moves
whose options are dwindling
with each successive ecstatic binge.

But there’s drama at the corner
underneath the strange new laws
the forefathers would laugh at or pee on
while the new silent automatic cars scare
the eyeballs out of everyone.

Out pops the head of the Corporation
to take a look below from the iron armature
of his unpolluted enclave, thought to be
more spacious inside than a museum
within three hundred miles.

There are so many moving stairways,
it’s hard to judge the depth,
but there are enticements everywhere –
an opera of little lights dancing
with the bountiful rations, and
sparkly blue cascading holidays
flanking the way in – enough to delight,
for a time, in the desert-dusty air.


Historical Inevitability

The mind of a virtuoso is skipping
around the globe while I sit
in my cemented cube playing
tarot cards in a tank of muddy
water ladled with tropical fish.

Laughs have drooped down
from various looks on the sidewalks
and from the awareness of the
entrenched pocket-square coordinates
which allow the masters to thrive.

A country erects a politician
who can do the impossible and so
is quickly sharp-shooted down
on the wide white steps. A buzz
swarms, flashes, fizzles and dies.

Having 87 choices of electricity
and water can make any CEO
limp and shiver in the frame
of the only unlocked door
in the new internment camp
which opens out onto a cliff.

He turns back to the dangerous little
world of ugly statues with no modern
dance nor impossible reversals
of what can happen in the theater.

A pitiless stupid neon equation
traipses by, its coiling right-to-be
won by the CEOs again,
suburban-watering their multi-colored
penis-chomping tulips that look
like dental vaginas, and order
year-long supplies of sugarless
chocolate, decaffeinated coffee
and the “chopper-of-heads” pâté.

The most sand-boxed self knows
it’s no longer possible to submit
oneself to “doing our part” in the
pennies donated from a mocha chai latte
to make ourselves feel good, but also
knows the bell won’t miss its beat
to end recess either.

The oceans snatch away. No more
underground conflagrations? But
this fairy tale is so unlike a fairy tale!

No!!!

Cabbie, now that the ocean’s gone,
bring me to the heaven-on-earth building,
79 rue de Varenne, Musée Rodin.


Occupation

Dear corporate elites,
you play rough love in a Cessna,
but can you have debutantes
climb the stairway
of your heart?

As statesmen, why flip through
the cookbook of your irreproachability
when you could turn yourself
inside out and become
monarch of the clouds?

Unlike our brilliant hopeful,
playing a thousand mini Lincolns
to each swipe of the beast’s
bloody claw, igniting
our ambivalence to new heights,
we no longer believe in
a gimmicky nice.

Monarch of Johnson VT, Jon Gregg:
“It’s like you’ve just put out
a piece of red meat
before the lion.”

Then go on ravaging your staff
and residents in your encampment
if you have to, but why encourage us
to pray for your heart
to go a little more than pitty-pat?

Yet you too can change that.

Where was I?

Men as battered fables
on crooked streets,
Decemberish.

They won’t recognize us
now, kissing in the park.

What if we don’t want to
dip ourselves in bronze
and have our hearts go
clankety-clank from
cold pieces of iron?

The steam from our foreheads
will melt the snow this winter
and the windows of
your out-sized Legoland,
so the towers perforate and
filter the smog-gunk flying by.

Midday runs around
like a gun – enough!

Afternoon rolls around
like a head in Guantanamo.

The hidden stacks of bills
snooze together, wiped out
from all the whoring.

Their snoring dampens out
the cries of young students’
murmurs from the ledge.

An icicle falls
from the beaming head
of the Chrystler’s gargoyle,
jaunting disconcertingly
through the wind gusts
until its sheath is flayed
and it merges with the air.

Finally the service-door
expands – the eye-lid
of a giant cyclopse.

“What do you want?”

Stunned we were to be
asked such a question!

“You stole us!”

“You stole yourselves,
what of it?”

“You have nowhere to hide!”

“Go vomit up your pocket-wares
into the steely mouth
of the depository – or else!”

From this, cracks in
the sizzling foreheads, steam
rising and igniting looks
from a smoldering base.

Declarations, songs and
other orders of the brain
scramble away like nuns
from a burning convent
until the gaunt arms
remaining snag the noonday
gun and shoot holes
in the fat towering cave-walls,
having nothing to lose
but between their teeth
the stale crust
of yesterday’s ideals.

The snow sighs all over
the sidewalks.

In the projects, rain drools
down over exposed rebar
and the crumbling stumps
of ancient asphalt pourings.

How can we gently offer
crammed words into
a metallic ear, being
coughed up
by consuming day?

Who will grab the iron
throat of the doorknob?

Open up!

We’ve still got wax in our
ears we need to ignite!

We have not lived
as long as May
in a heaping poundful
of Decembers!

We won’t take your scraps
like a cat who hesitates
to take a run-over mouse –
we won’t take them at all!

Does the earth really
turn like the head
of the boardroom?

No!

How can we dance
‘til the end of our days
when you’re stapling
our feet?

Open up!

Off with your ties,
we’re coming!

While the hidden bills awake
and slide down the cold
chutes, freshly-freed ears
can hear the rumbling.