Red Tin Noodles

Angel hair is in my eyes.
What a heavenly surprise.
There are wing tips on my shoes.
Grab my harp and play the blues.
I must be up on cloud nine.
I can see a bright light shine.
Feel a halo on my head.
I assume that I am dead.
I can hear angelic voices.
Guess in life I made good choices.

For all my finger lickin’, I came back as a chicken.
I ate a thousand wings, now I’m one of those things.
I’m paying for those benders when I ate many tenders.
Did not realize how gory was chicken cacciatore.
I am a chicken now for chewing General Gao.
I’m paying for that fling with chicken a la king.
I ate it diced and shredded, now I’m poultry embedded.
I spent life as a guy who craved the breast and thigh.
Now it’s too late to beg, ’cause I am of the egg.
And it’s no use to growl, I ran afoul of fowl.

Old cats in black boots and dirty jackets sit
around a fire, burning tire, pass around a hit.
They talk of Eisenhower, Vietnam and J.F.K.,
of families and old friends who are not around today.
Most are vets and some served in the war to end all wars.
How can we stand by and know their lives will end outdoors?

Robin spied a spotted uncle on her way to the Dansk outlet.
He flitted from branch to branch, his silvered wrists aflutter.
She’d once thought him a nuthatch, but he’d grown into himself.
She would never forget his bright red coat, that one fashionable fall,
or her childhood wonder at his whispered songs of relativity.
His freckles and moles had been enhanced with henna appliques
and a variety of brightly colored small round bandaids.
This is his season, she thought. Perhaps he could be lured by some chai.

Your words have choked
my ambience.
The droll dithers and hithers
in obvious time.
A parlance afar.
Theresay and herespeak.
Leaking meaning to the edges
of suicidal sentences.
Adverbs and adjectives in combat.
Verification intact;
this phrase kills me.
Compounded, astounded,
the rebound, the echo
is grounded, sublime,
and in time with the tune
of your moon. La lune.
My ear is in search of your song.
I hope I’ve not heard it all wrong.

Festering instincts operate
the dead machine.
It crawled out from the swamp
to infiltrate our lives.
Art hoax, junk pile,
alien dropping:
it watches unceasingly.
Nothing now moves
or makes the slightest noise.
But, somehow, it’s still alive,
anticipating our fear,
magnifying confusion,
drawing the darkness down.
Its huge shadow
now defines the borders
of our helpless realm.
Art hoax, junk pile,
alien dropping:
it may never let us know.

The edge of a cloud,
when dark as a shroud,
can cauterize the day,
can sweep the blue to Timbuktu
and stain the sun away.
It can disguise the hour,
or else portend a shower,
and even alter
many minds below it.
It dares to smear the sky,
expose it as a lie,
and drive the point home:
you can never know it.

Sitting on the front porch of our cortex,
numbers shine like highly polished knives,
ready to just jump into the vortex,
bringing great precision to our lives.
All lined up in single file or columns,
marching through the tunnels of our brain,
there to scare out all the pot luck golems,
with their mathematical refrain.
One, one, two, one, three, one, two.
Clouds are white and sky is blue.
Nothing wrong these digits cannot cure.
Life is tainted, but these numbers pure.

No class on lawn tonight.
Too dark for prolonged concentration.
Please set timer for last lesson.
Return all books with pages cleaned.
Marks will be given, then taken away.
Thought cannot be taught or bought.
Graduation occurs at sunrise.

Somewhere between the felt tip and the ballpoint,
waving as its flag a typewriter ribbon,
lies in wait the dreaded inky zone.
Where fingerprints are commonplace
and stamp pads are the norm.
Where the badge of honor is a broken pen in pocket.
Where the fountain pen is king
and the inkwell still defines a way of life.
Where no one except martyrs should wear white.
And where the battle cry is still indelible.

Imagine a box full of answers
falling off of the lap of your god,
spilling out on the ceiling of this world,
where we look up and see them as stars.
While we’re ever unsure of their meaning,
as they flicker and tease us at night,
we are sure they have something to tell us,
and we long for this cosmic insight.
We build rockets and planes to get closer.
We have astronauts floating in space.
And we’re sure that the magnified twinkling
would reflect, circumspect, our lord’s face.

The modern world creaks to a halt.
The sun, frozen, leans toward darkness.
Apocalypse, now a presumption, a former abstraction,
demands a reaction, and the people must vote it down.
Across the oceans, our enemies amass.
They must be placed in words and categories.
Survival is dependent on proper identification.
Secret police walk amongst us and good friends may be spies.
All laws are subject to change. Outlaws cannot prevail.
We are the wild west and time is our jail.
In the old saloon, marshals and sheriffs fight off doom.
The riderless horse on Main Street is just a burning Escalade.

Command control has seized the blue puddle.
All inhabitants are sworn to secrecy.
Thus ends a stressful string of twelve aborted missions
and a flurry of inactivity deemed painfully inappropriate.
All aboard will receive a fearsome medal
and a reluctant handshake from some retired quasi-hero.
No one can know the boundaries of this secret undertaking.
Maps and codes were, of course, delivered by hypnosis.
Everyone wore masks derived from Penny Marshall films.
And the trail of evidence was always covered with sequins.
This spate of colorful waters will no longer be tolerated.
Swimming and splashing have given the region a bad name.
But what that name is can never be revealed.
And the history of this action will be sealed for many years.

Once there was a president who was, in fact, insane.
He thought that the office was meant only for his gain.
His head looked like an orange and his hair looked like a pelt.
His best debating tactic was to hit below the belt.
He made fun of the crippled and besmeared any detractors.
Race-baiting and name-calling were his most defining factors.
He said he’d build a wall to keep the foreigners at bay.
I’m smart, I’m rich and one tough bitch was all that he would say.
And, like a vigilante, his great posse rallied ’round.
America the great became his toxic proving ground.
He got himself elected with some sleight help from the mob.
And when he was sworn in he said, "I’m gonna like this job."
He loosened up the gun laws and made voting laws much tighter.
His White House goal was more control to make the country whiter.
His economic policies rocked Wall Street on its heels.
And underneath the table he was making shady deals.
As, one-by-one, we lost our allies to his madcap schemes,
He criminalized freedoms, from protests to jests to dreams.
He made a world of enemies and pushed them to the brink.
Don’t worry, he said, I will tell you how to act and think.
When finally, backed to a corner by his crazy whims,
He said, "Hey, world, don’t fuck with me, I’ve got ICBM’s."
He’d taken our beloved freedom-based enlightened nation
And brought it to the brink of nuclear annihilation.
And these were his last words from just before the world expired:
He pressed the bright red button, laughed out loud and screamed,
"YOU’RE FIRED !"

Gonna take a ride down to Toxic City.
All the algae blooming there’s considered rather pretty.
Everything is glistening and slimy to the touch.
Particles float in the air. Try not to breathe too much.
Best to wear a plastic suit and mask upon your face.
Despite all its drawbacks, still, it’s quite a vivid place.
Animals that roam the streets are of an unknown breed.
Only plants that grow there now are called the devil’s seed.
Once a week a tour comes by inside an armored truck,
people taking photographs of creatures in the muck.
Toxic City’s on the map, but circled in bright red.
All its former residents reportedly are dead.

Baseball’s back, it’s truly spring.
Crack of bat and fastball zing.
Diamond dirt and outfield green.
It’s a time-remembered scene.
Pleasant memories of youth.
House of David. House of Ruth.
Ground out, pop-up, long fly ball.
In the stands or off the wall.
Called third strike right on the black.
Three-oh green light, back, back, back.
Bullpen up and working hard.
Can they keep him in the yard?
Rookies, vets and walk-off hits.
Knucklers and big catcher’s mitts.
Batter’s up and life is good.
Hear that horsehide meet that wood!