Red Tin Noodles

Checking their watches by the radium glow,
three dogs salivate same time each night.
Pavlov rings them up with news.
Pound is down. Old bones in Sahara found.
Ears perk. Tails wag. Notes are taken,
lab coats washed and dried. "We tried,"
say the working hounds, knowing humans
respond well to their deliberate behavior.
"But our mouths are dry," they growl,
and ring the bell for water.

My mother’s ebony chopsticks are not in storage.
My George Mikan doll is in storage.
My little basketball plaything that was so complete,
Even to the elastic strap on his teeny safety glasses.
I used to chuck George across the den to my dog, Pan,
Who always licked at Uncle Ed’s shoes.
Uncle Ed had cordovans coated glassy with doggie saliva.
He’d smoke Camels without polish and sit awake
All night hollering, "Bring back Fred Allen!"
Mother loved Uncle Ed like a brother.
She used to say, "If my ebony chopsticks were not
In storage, we could have a real oriental fling."
Uncle Ed was busy picking smoke scraps off his tongue.
Pan knew the score. He saw me kissing
That long-legged doll in the bathroom mirror.
My mother’s ebony chopsticks are not in storage.
No more than my father’s ashes are in that rusty urn
On the mantle near the plaid stamps and the cuff links.

Numerical questions posit
alphabetical answers.
A second hand imposes
sudden death rules.
Best then to accept ties
and play again tomorrow.

There’s no refuge any more
unless your home’s a tower.
The elite just won this war.
Rich folks have the power.
Corporate tax gifts handed out
by Republicans no doubt
help the wealthy, hurt the poor.
Medicare may be no more.
Billionaires who own estates
dance now behind golden gates.
Middle class will take the hit.
Merry Christmas. Eat some shit.
Deficit receives a load
youth will pay for down the road.
They’ll drill in the arctic, too;
soon be eating caribou.
Say goodbye to wildlife parks.
Load endangered onto arks.
Country can’t be great again
when the greedy always win.
Ruling classes don’t play fair.
One percent’s their only care.
Kleptocrats have just one fear:
angry voters come next year.
Rise up, O ye "lower classes."
Throw these thieves out on their asses.

The eggs of infinity
hatch and roll, downhill,
to the season of their choice,
where they are boiled
in an era of reality,
salted heavily in tears,
and served up to the thieves
out in the undergrowth,
who sell ’em back to God,
who never sees ’em.

They offed my favorite soap opera character.
He was poisoned and strangled, found dead in a crashed Porsche.
Could have been his mercenary stepfather, mistress, daughter or maid.
He’d recently argued with them all, though not at once.
And his recent heavy drinking problem was getting in the way of his coke abuse.
Maybe it could have been his dealer or the drifter he’d abused at the station.
They found an eight page suicide note, penned by his spurned wife,
pinned to his pant leg by a large kitchen knife. No fingerprints.
Daughter has disappeared with stepbrother. Were spotted on another network.
Maid and mistress, both beautiful, have grown close and whisper a lot.
Evil stepfather is same suit size and has a huge closet. Drifter was in a union.
Could have been his bookie. Horse tranquilizers were found in his blood.
The only ones who cried at the funeral were his wife and the drifter’s lawyer.

Press the petal to your hand with my heart.
It needs you beyond the mere forest of our limbs.
While bitter tears in barren ground remain,
This seed must grow larger than our sorrow,
Pollinating the dead. Our dreams will rise
In flowers and our fields will join in love.
All the happiness we know will be this earth.

Later for you, paratrooper.
The dawn just ate your target.
Another war will crop up before nightfall.
Otherwise, what will we do with our tanks?
Somewhere, another terrorist is born.
And a schoolkid shaves his head, anticipating.

We all elbowed up to the bar,
thinking Sunday/Monday
in a Tuesday kind of way.
On the t.v. came another launching.
Puppets on the railing
gave us shoeshines.
Everyone was thinking entertainment.
We had many colonies to dream of.
All the while the bottles danced with dust.
Rusty old men climbed inside the jukebox.
Sounded like an earthquake stirring pinballs.
Acolytes were washing hands in draft beer.
Someone passed a monkey begging peanuts.
"Witness the dawn," a paranoiac whispered.
And around us, the night crumbled.

At first there was amorous addition,
soon followed by sexual subtraction.
And then came perverse multiplication,
leading naturally to lewd division.
Some drew the line at pornographic calculus,
after struggling through hot geometry,
Then they put away their slide rules and protractors
and went off on a tangent about the offensive nature
of numbers, how gross they found pi r squared,
and the first time they saw isosceles
in the hypotenuse position. The remainder
is a cube root, to be sure.

Death decks out in painful forms,
staggered hours and waiting lines,
fighting foul earth winds and storms,
searching for more grand designs.

Man is fruitless, funny, hollow,
trapped inside a shell of time.
Leaders fall and nations follow.
Death alone can solve the rhyme.

Tick on, clock with broken hands.
Comfort ages. Sorrow stands.
Hope eternal, spring anew,
as we bid our time adieu.

Push a button for a vision.
Drop a coin into a slot.
Man approaches his decision.
Time is slow but death is not.

Dig ye deep and dig ye plenty.
No one knows his length of stay.
Some bow out at ten or twenty.
Others crawl toward judgement day.

A pit full of waxed nostalgia
awaited the takers of sound,
a groove in the earth like a natural birth,
all the needles gone deep underground.
When a feathery wisp like a dancer
sifted up from the earth to the sky,
a spattering rain, a heartbeat in pain,
etched a music that made the world cry.
And the slow dance of wind that soon followed
brought on night which swept feeling away.
When the curtain of dawn opened up its bright yawn,
there arose the song of a new day.

I love a tall cowboy who’s lovin’ his saddle.
My horse n’ my beer n’ my hungry guitar.
My yard is a mess n’ my dog looks like heaven.
I don’t think my poor neck will stretch very far.
Look away. Look away, muddy water.
The elastic prairie has snapped in my back
n’ the dirt is all risin’ in buckets.
I run from a crime that I can’t even see
n’ my stomach is filled with gold nuggets.
Look away. Look away, climbing river.

One day they’ll teach in public schools
how Republicans were tools
of some evil autocrats,
treating folks like fleas or gnats,
promising the rich more wealth
while the nation lost its health.
They were sneaky. They told lies.
Some of them were even spies.
At their head a demagogue
posed as god but was a cog
in an overarching scheme
to bring down a country’s dream.
They would drill in sacred soil.
Nothing was immune to spoil.
They were always on the take,
called all accusations fake.
Their contempt for all our laws
had the public dropping jaws.
So it was when this cabal
found itself nailed to the wall
citizens sang justice songs.
Traitors were jailed for their wrongs.
History calls it failed coup.
Be aware, they’ll seek re-do.

A very tall man was standing on his roof,
fishing for the moon, which caught the attention
of an insomniac ape who happened to be walking by,
sleep having failed him again.
"I do wish I could catch the moon," said the man.
"I do wish I could get some sleep," said the ape.
"If you help me catch the moon, I will let you
lay down on it," said the man, assuming something
so beautiful and quiet would have to be conducive
to sleep. The ape was atop the roofspot in a flash.
Together they experimented with every hook, line, lure,
rod, bait, pole and reel imaginable, but to no avail.
At last it was decided the moon was being unreasonably
defensive, a fickle temptation no longer worth casting after.
"I am tired," said the ape. "Tomorrow we will try for the sun,"
said the man, "It is much bigger." Right there on the roof,
they started singing like sailors reunited after many years at sea:
"Oh the moon is a prune in a cellophane tree.
And I’ve finally found out it means nothing to me.
I’ve got me a friend who’s as strange as can be.
Together we might hitch a star."

Some of the molding surrounding this world
is now horribly chipped and turning grey.
Time has come for some renunciation.
Much beauty has flown, seeds no longer sown.
Seems participants are on vacation.
The dust of all that’s passed will surely last
until it’s swept away, and even then,
some hangers-on will still insist to stay
to be part of history’s striation.
The aim of reconstruction’s future dreams
is oft to thwart destruction’s aged schemes.
The days are passing, cast toward rising seas.
But infrastructure’s down upon its knees.
It’s at the breaking point. Time help us, please.

You duck walk like a North Korean,
Earlene insists, humorlessly.
Tomorrow we’ll be selling
all my Chuck Berry records.
We’ve only been on meth two weeks
and already there are slashes everywhere,
the couch, the shades, the freaking
coffee table. My shirt. Her high tops.
Next week we’ll hock the jewelry
lifted from her mother’s bureau,
maybe buy some cans of soup
with our week’s supply, get ready
for wrecked teeth. My face is splotchy.
And, for all our closeness,
I never even look at hers.

when i’m watered i feel like a flower
i even drink when i am in the shower
two cups of H2O in every hour
i’m like a steamboat runnin’ paddle power
i’ve got a gallon challenge on a bet
i drink more water than a household pet
i’m just not happy when my throat’s not wet
but please don’t hit me with that water jet