Red Tin Noodles

Victory lane has gone insane. We’ve sold off our gold for spare parts (and broken ecologists’ hearts). The losers are spilling champagne. The world is awhirl with false starts (and watching the crash simply smarts).

All file cabinets look the same to one in the shoveling game. I was yanked off the mainland, fitted with a tight armband, told to alphabeticize words I didn’t recognize. If I worked for just … Read more

Big die. Small die. Paper playing field. No balls. Sharpened pencils plot solid strategy. Behold the charts! Numerical gods. The roll and click of recognition. Snake eyes and boxcars rule. Another imaginary victory in the … Read more

i am number nine i have been orphaned through a hole in the world’s pocket i am a fatality of the revolution a straight roller gone awry i am a yellow brain on a black … Read more

No sooner had the words leapt from my mouth than they just died. They fell and crashed like eggs on smoke. Perhaps it’s good I lied. My tongue was roped, then given hope, then surely … Read more

The nodding schedule of the world unencumbered exacted a diagram of freeze-free trees and glowing hair. Of wastrel gasses and canned contamination not a peep was heard, fences and walls withstained. Reality had a hardball … Read more

A crowd appears, to peer at piers, and beseeches a beech at the beach, wheeling at the wail of whales. Going, gone, where escargot. Boats bode. Tides abide. Sand is the sentinel, snail, the trail. … Read more

Battered rook and powdered knight, salted bishop, set to fight. King and queen are in the castle. Leave the prawnlike pawns to hassle. In this world of sixty-four, refined moves define each score. Every route … Read more

Olympic mountains hover after midnight on t.v., awaking western watchers with the threat of victory. The Russian peaks resplendent with a snow as white as ours belie a time when megatons, not ribbons, measured powers; … Read more

The voicelessness of mimes in trees, like toilet paper hung on breeze, or choking back an ardent sneeze, the subtle change as droplets freeze, springs into life upon dead air, transmission interruptus there: where once … Read more

Tonight we face our frantic god. Hillbilly period over. Period. Only backfire prevents soaring. The inevitable machine of want. Waves of personnel, dreaming beaches. Triumvirate lighting and smoke deodorant. Cooking with gas. The lawn on … Read more

The cat has used up all her lives. And leaves us with tears in our eyes. Bequeathed soft memories of fur. We’ll miss her knead. We’ll miss her purr.

Boy who squawks meets promise boy above the straight and narrow. Everyone is happy with the tally on the square. Peasants balk perceptively and irk the minefield pharaoh. Massive waste of paper is occurring everywhere. … Read more

I’m walking in the city with my lobster pal. Ragged Claws (after T.S.) always draws bemused stares, and an occasional passerby will stop to ask why he’s green instead of red. This upsets the poor … Read more

I asked the major general to please be more specific. "Which would you rather capture, Atlantic or Pacific ?" He said his plans were secret, which made uncommon sense. For, after all, his only goal … Read more

It was said that Chopin had some ivory in his fingernails. Hemingway’s autopsy showed his entrails were quite stuffed with quails. We must ultimately be resigned to the things we have to leave behind. Better … Read more

What we found was a heart on the ground outside the organ store. Appallingly pink, but emitting no stink, it was squishy but firm, and beating no more. It didn’t look broken or aching or … Read more

He doffs his own abysmal light in petty streets of thieves. He passes by a horse wrapped in pure velvet. He scrapes his nail on carriages that may be made of gold, and everywhere, in … Read more

This infatuation needs examination. A preference for guns amongst the thousand funs indicates a flaw, even for the law. Take the rod God gave you. Bullets cannot save you.

The lizard we beheaded once was wedded. I must say I prefer iguana breaded. Of all the monsters, I prefer the gila, grilled and marinated in tequila. O, dirty gray-brown scaled dinosaur cousin, I’m just … Read more