Red Tin Noodles

Showering stars are descending.
Each crater creates a new park.
It’s Meteor Town never ending.
A literal scream after dark.
O where are you now, Stephen Hawking?
The bodies are outlined in chalking.
Who’d guess that a rock
Big as this one could fly?
The townsfolk look up
And get ready to die.
It’s Meteor Town and its sad destiny.
A target for mountains of flying debris.
The chamber of commerce
Appeals to the nation:
“Come visit us,
Make suicide a vacation.”
Its Meteor Town
Where the theme song is “Taps.”
It’s marked not with “X,”
But a hole in most maps.

I remember eating supper
Off of father’s head.
Shallow dive syndrome
Had left his noggin
Flat as a table.
Even the egg rolls
Wouldn’t roll off.
Sometimes he’d cut his hair
In checkerboard pattern,
And let us kids play
Chess and “king me”
While he read his books.
Of course he dominated
Every headstand competition.
And sometimes at night,
When bending down to tuck me in,
I’d find a cup of hot milk
Perched soothingly atop him.

Please excuse
My imported furniture
If it shifts slightly
Toward the east
While we’re eating.
It’s always pining
For its homeland
Or fighting with the china.
One morning I awoke
To discover two chairs
Had made it halfway
To the airport.
Now I pile them
High at night
With heavy books,
Michener mostly,
With whom
They feel at ease.

There is always pastry by the water.
Small wooden men tending cork boats.
Hooked shadows and light knives.
Another bloated body found unbuttered.
A meager crowd of infidels resurfaced.
Specialists and wharf rats hone their chops.
Inevitably, a prayer is smoked.
Peace gods summoned arrest the damned.
And the tide converts each magic stain.

I’ve misplaced my stack of adverbs.
My adjectives have all gone moldy.
Nouns abound, like circus clowns.
But most of my verbs are long expired.
I’ve always been anti-pronoun,
And prone to conjunctivitis.
But I still have several gerunds,
All residing in nursing homes, however.

Bernard Herrmann, Bernard Herrmann, Bernard Herrmann,
Wasn’t German, Wasn’t German, Wasn’t German.
He grew up in New York City, New York City.
And his music wasn’t pretty, was it pretty?
It was Psycho. It caused Vertigo. It made the Earth Stand Still.
It was a thrill, It was a thrill, It was a thrill, It was a thrill.
It was The Wrong Man in the Gray Flannel Suit Who Knew Too Much.
It was a White Witch Doctor in a Garden of Evil on Dangerous Ground.
It was shrieking Birds and Khyber Rifles, Twisted Nerve and Endless Night.
It was an Obsession on a Mysterious Island At the Center of the Earth.
It was the Snows of Kilimanjaro at Farenheit 451.
It was a Torn Curtain on Cape Fear Beneath the 12-Mile reef.
It was The Ghost and Mrs. Muir in a Hatful of Rain.
And it all got started with Citizen Kane.
Citizen Herrmann. Not German. New York City. It was Pretty.

Coach Roswell tipped his hat
to the stars.
Soon they were inside his head.
Every day he grew more
unfamiliar with his skin.
The league said there were limits
to this team thing he envisioned.
But tryouts were open to everyone,
from slugs to superheroes.
They played a game without rules,
and he adored them for it.
Sometimes he felt all buttery inside,
even seasoned with ground pepper.
His playbook consisted of dreams.
And every night he split apart
so the dogs could lick his heart.