Red Tin Noodles

Jim Lemon was a Senator who never was elected.
He played with great Roy Sievers. Though they lost, they were respected.

George "Boomer" Scott played smooth first sack and smothered many rallies.
He killed Rick Wise and, for his size, had power to the alleys.

Lee May hit fastballs a long way, with curves was not so keen.
He bounced around from team to team, was short term Red Machine.

Bo Diaz bent behind home plate was best described as able.
He died while trying to fix his dish, a perfect ad for cable.

Ramon Martinez always said brother Pedro was better.
He was no slouch himself, had twenty wins and a no-hitter.

Glenallen Hill played outfield flies as if they all were sliders.
He may have used some steroids and was quite afraid of spiders.

Dick Ellsworth once won twenty-two games and played for five teams.
His baseball card in sixty-six showed dead Ken Hubbs, it seems.

Cory Lidle was a righty with a rep as brash.
Got traded to the Yankees and died in a freak plane crash.

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 an hour,
I could take an ice cold shower.
Then, they said, if I worked two,
they would let me sniff some glue.
Random order seemed to reign.
Boss wore masks and looked insane.
Papers filled up several rooms.
I was really zonked on fumes.
Next I knew a fire started.
In the smokescreen, I departed.
Found a boat and rowed to shore.
I don’t wanna file no 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 dream season.

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 pedestal
i am the breakfast
choice of dead men
i am the goddess
of click click click

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 lashed and tied.
I saw a verb against the curb
bleed vowels from its side.
My head’s become a cave
for dying sentences, it seems.
They leak out nightly, gross, unsightly,
prodded on by dreams.
And as the wellspring gives them life
from somewhere deep inside,
just rest assured that every word’s
an oral suicide.

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 factor.
The zen pool soon imploded.
Factual orbits identified
and rerouted groundswells.
Larva covered lava.
And the fish ran away
with baboons.

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.
Ocean flora, coral peace. It’s all they ask.

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 and battle path
boils down to essential math.
Behold now the L-shaped knight.
Salted bishop stays on white.
Pawns move two then hesitate.
King spends life avoiding mate.
While the bold and mighty queen
captures all and in between.
King is like a nervous wreck
waiting to pick up the check.

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;
when missiles sat in silos,
fully dressed, awaiting word,
and mutual destruction
was the only prize assured.

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 was music shrill and loud
now hangs a huge but silent cloud.
Some spark or neuron has extinguished.
Aural lifeline’s been relinquished.
Sound waves flattened, noise turned white,
hearing distant, severed kite.

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 loan.
Banjo on the brine. Tumbling from the sky comes another basement story. Sick feet
down and rising. Here an industrial guitar takes possession of the voice. Crestfallen.
(cut one)
We stand on clouds, tending our rigid definition of sky. Lonely is the bird averse to eggs.
We ride the downhill grain, pretending toward art. Affection is the second step toward
nature. Naturally, we send our best pinch hitter up there and he belts it on the roof.
All is lost. Our lives are sold as advertising, bones torn out for furniture.
Shirley, Goodness and Marcy are drawing straws for the remains. This powder must be.
(the soul)
We chew cud at the post office, spit blood at the tax museum. Four stars fall
out and shoot right through our eyes. We’re back "in the fold," grown old,
and farmed out for pleasure. Too late for hobo life, too early for mourning tea.
The pasts we have wasted now surround us. Our profile’s on the thirteen
dollar bill. Try dancing in elevators for misdirection. Paralyzing anxiety beckons.

Tonight the weeds will finally take control. Central planning will realize
the ghost it fashioned. And we will be standing in wetsuits on mountains,
waiting for the ocean of regret. Singing songs to old teachers and fictional pals.
Remembering the horse that got us to the path that got us to the end zone.
We must watch as the battle floats upward, enveloping all notion of good haven.

We pledge ourselves to grandpa’s bomb. The fury of the vessel intrigues our senses.
Dance this weigh. Tons of love. The heretic’s heredity. Watch someone watching the skies.
Somewhere. In the archive is the essence of an old war. We gear up for retreat.
Tiptoe through a smoking land. The bull loves the blood. More satanic babies buzz
the vatican. The pope is pasted with advertisements. His cherry blossom skirt reveals
old thigh. We make him eat nutmeg and recite the blues. In big clown shoes and pasties.
He’s wasted on the scent of Christ and we’re feeding him clues. Nothing stops this fear.

On the road to something better, led by saints and stock assassins. Skipping stone
with razor edges. We elevate the mean. Without meaning. We escalate and
expectations fall. Bags of garbage, crack and money are exchanged for body bags.
We are a bagged nation, boxed in by our frustration. Gestating clean designer death.
We dance wildly by the grave, waving coupons and pointing away. Not today.
Our hosts have bled us dry and tossed us in the combat ring. Sycophantic
calibrated expedited atrocities. Monstrosities and their machines. We’ve the means.

Foil of Camelot. Discarded packs of spoontime filler. We are lashed to the massed
hysteria. Chewing the fat news. Pulling away. Conditioned to the constant sound
of sirens and the squealing of the muse. In black shoes. We planned to fight the power,
but the power went away. The story awry. We can only lionize the pain. Rock candy rain.

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.
Machines learn to babysit and greed is just a specter.
Somewhere sullen women lip-read Nietzsche on the train.
Automatic autocrats devise a better vector:
Easy on the underground but taxing on the brain.
Past the wash of history, the dirt of time unravels.
Cheaters speak of eloquence and highwaymen of peace.
Politicians pontify the latest scams with gavels.
Liquid loving landlords conjure up another lease.
Man who squawks tells promise man that nothing they did matters.
Crowds who cry at movies unexpectedly take flight.
Leaping lords and devil dogs mad dance as kinship scatters.
Oil-encrusted meaning slowly covers mother night.
Ghost who squawks and promise ghost are fading out of sight.

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 creature to no end.
He blanches to think of friends and acquaintances
who’ve been broken, buttered and consumed.
Bad enough to live one’s life skulking for garbage
on the ocean floor. But to be hunted, scalded, eaten,
was a fate no creature deserved. He calls all humans
"Quasi’s," for Laughton’s magnificent boiling weaponry.
We stop at the occasional store window,
move quickly by pet shops and restaurants,
proceeding toward the Museum of Natural History,
where he’s pledged a shift to protest the new exhibit,
"The History of Deep Sea Fishing in New England."
After that, we’ll get takeout Chinese and head home.
And tonight, again, I will try to extract his d.n.a.
in my fervent attempt to grow a claw of my own,
following my lifelong dream of a career in the WWF.
I’ll call myself Super Snapper, and no hissing sheik,
six-hundred pound farm boy or dog faced muscleman
will withstand the power of my terrible shell.
I envision a red cape, a hood with tentacles,
and, in the corner, my crustacean friend,
egging me on with the frantic wavings
of his own viselike appendages.

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
was national defense.
He said he had some tanks
on hold and bombers in the air.
He had no qualms on killing
those who said this wasn’t fair.
"You tainted souls on union rolls
who protest by the hour,
remember this," I heard him hiss,
"I’ve got the firepower."

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 to be friendly in the long run
than to leave a legacy unkind.