Five Shorts

Hair and Nails

Red pajamas on my mama, I mean
girl. Lights are dim, I'm in grey
legs bare and cold. Who waits in a robe in the road
knowing what she wants & who can get it.
Some speeches, some vanishing.
Terrible scarf. Lead deals
a rebel fracas, a five-toed
fricassee. Effervescent moss in my nose,
I sneeze, less to drag me down
to purity of worm trans-copulation.
Who stands on the corner, stunned
& studies the neon protein?
Windswept songs of nightingales
scratch and congregate in corners.
Abandoning the children
we go dancing.

*

Sundays

I feel outrageously contagious
Sundays in the park
the necrophiliac burlesque of
despair become worry

Educated people are the most sentimental.

It means never having to say
you're sorry.

*

Good byes

My former jaundiced farmer Juan
died far away across the sea.
He left in June. It was a month of anxiety
and black wheat. Harry Belafonte sang
Hava Nagila, but no one was celebrating.
We ate snakes and poutine.
I am not being weird. This was in Montreal.
Anyway, he was castrated as a teenager
and could hit those Marias.
Coo-coo-rococo as squalor goes.
Memories sold on the street
sparked with sweet-smelling chemistry.

But I had no money.
My dues were deep as a well.
When I thought of that wayfarer
set sail with no goodbyes—
beery winds swell
in that great heaven of morning
and water come to my eyes.

*

Nights in

His idea, that the concept is
the absence of iron
    — I stop for some tea & a soft nectarine —
a warrior missing a leg
helped by a patriotic gal named Olive Oil
over-wrought by muscles
not even a name, an address, or a recipe ...

Under the circumstances, the erection
of the Obelisk will take more than a capstan
politics & money, guns & talk
A night at the movies?

Eyes closed, nose sticking out
she lies on the couch under wool flowers.

*


The Finals

Holy men on ice-skates growl
now they're getting desperate
How can an intelligent, decent
otherwise human being, etc
you know how it ends &
I fall asleep. No,
dear beauty & her daughter
vanished & froze. Prayers & devotions.

The setbacks were only more evidence of our worth.
It's my second overtime. Hope endures
but if not, what's it to you, wet cherub?
Do you really understand
what may happen? (The shots
show you smiling. Insecure?)

He'll tenderize the goalie from the peppermint stripe.
There is so much sweat!
Has he peed or bled?

I've been staying up late
Someone's fuzzing up the picture
I can't tell the crowd from the ice
My luck from the puck