April Fool
Just because it’s linearly April the Second,
who’s the boss who says this punk-ass snow—
reduced now to an intermittent drizzle whizzing on the roof—
and this one-tone, tag-along slab of sleepy gray—
since the sun’s just up—
and this white elephant of an extra hour before barreling in to work,
and then the kids coming tonight from their mom’s
for Sorry—
or not,
as’ll happen—
who says it can’t all go perfectly
with this seasonal transition’s shy thunder
clearing its phlegmish voice
over all these leafless trees,
with this mismixed black-and-tan of mismatched Spring?
I’ve let myself grow fond of longing
for set pieces,
for still-lifes requiring
one from Column A,
another number I forget from Column B,
a soundtrack from, I’m only guessing,
Column C,
figuring it has to be this prissy mania
for the alphabetical.
Meanwhile, while the world gets away
with spinning its weighted wheel any which way
it wants, our singed hearts roulette
for whatever weather rolls in off a controlling coast.
But what of these self-tranquilized tendencies,
our domesticated blood?
Couldn’t we eat a rich lunch at ten,
decide on another at two,
boldly call it supper
and be ready for breakfast by five-fifty,
then call it a night
or, even better, a new day?
In any case, couldn’t we be more awake, more
Thoruvian, with “Rock Around the Clock”
our invocative alarum
not some old benedictive ex∙e∙unt?
(I’m beginning to sense some hostility.)
Which reminds me of the time my third good idea—
that one involving literature and the golden summer of ’77,
which we spent largely melting into a solitary beach
until our bones felt as though they’d bake along
and last forever together—
turned out to be just another in a long
but entertaining line
of nice-to-have-known-you usurpations (though by now
it’s taken the form of a couple
tortured
decades),
which was before poetry—
wide-wale cords
worn thin across her bony cheeks—
materialized from the dust, squatting
predictably over an opened road,
and smirked me into this other,
this more welcoming,
dementia.
Swimming
Apparently it has been said
that two lions guard
the door to Enlightenment. But
Paradox and Confusion, two
of the best friends a guy could hope
to leave behind,
seem more like two winos
blocking the door
to your apartment, trying
to avoid enlightenment,
though they don’t know it.
You could step over them
but you’d risk their awakening.
I wish I were an abstraction
in the form of a non-cognizant
but ferocious mammal. Not only
would I be warm-blooded
and highly respected and
sporting a non-thinning mane,
but I could save all the time
I now spend attempting
consciousness. It’s also been said
that I tend more toward
the cold-blooded (possibly
reaching luke-warm when sunshine
heats up the lagoon) and not
regularly regarded, since I’m off
swimming the world, looking
for the world in which I swim.
Which is funny if I think about it.
Which I can’t. I’m like
Prufrock in his flannel pants,
pushed around by a Symbolist,
three teeth cracked on peach pits,
love life always aground
around tea-time, sleeping
just out of earshot
so as not to drown.
The Beatnik Cowboy 