early july, 21st century

irrefutable artifacts of futures we never had



from the broken trunk under a massive bannister:
a scrap of paper, printed in dot matrix

"...by definition a player
is a man who manipulates women
to get what he wants be it sex,
love, an ear to pour his boiling oil
into. i can wash you out of my pussy easy
enough but it's been hell trying to get this stain
out of my hea..."


from under the same trunk, buried in a layer
of dust bunts, a photo of the time
you and i and the kids went to maine, your eldest
sick on lobster, the youngest with root beer
in his hair. the woman who took the picture
thought it was odd, but the boys insisted



this was the way they
 wanted to remember
 us together.



inside a sewing basket
at the top of the bedroom closet
a lock of hair from our son, embroidered
on a tablecloth, in the shape of a jellyfish.
he always loved the aquarium, the icy
water of the touching area, billowing
like sun he'd say, daddy look,
the sun had babies you couldn't tear
him away from the rolling tube
where the filmy bodies roil
trailing fireworks and bits of smoke
leftover from july.



we didn't have a daughter. we had three daughters we had
no children to save these things for, just the cats, there was no
we, there was i and you , look here, this small sand castle
from barcelona, like gaudi's it fills my eyes, how we stood
on queque at the entry, remember the group of small school
children, in uniform , standing so still we thought their teacher
must be a sadist/control freak, you wanted them to laugh
so you began to dance like st. vitus, this castle, our castle
melting into the next moment










a shell from the sands in tahiti
a sea grape leave from the entropy motel
a post card from your life to mine
a slot chip from that time in vegas
a sailor's knot tied around a barbie's wrist


i open the boxes, pour the contents
into a glass bowl big as mind.. the nevers
fall like marbles, river running over gravel,dried
roses rustling in a breeze.




__________________________________________________



























shoebox of taboo






all these reasons you can't be her boyfriend.
she doesn't understand. you had a sister like her.
adopted. familiar. she makes you dredge up yesterdays
then gives you a tour of the facilities. you begin to think
you should have taken the bus with jed or at least
followed jayjay out to las angeles where the women
are hot hot hottest.  his ex is out there in her skin
tight asian java slip, making some rich guy happy.
that could be you, in as little as three weeks.
all it would take would be one hit , one right
strategy. necessities would take care of themselves.

she's pretty sure she'd more invasive
in any other situation but every moment
a bon voyage is beginning to wear .
she wishes  you'd either leave or unpack.
jackson browne is looking mighty young

on the you tube,  hot virginity stealin mojo
captured in your youth, now 40 years gone
but oh , these days, these days, everyone's
living avatar. she sings in quartertones from
your doorway. it's the first year of the second
decade of the twenyfirstt century.she breaks

up during the third verse. moving on. turns
the vacuum. it's clogged. again. things are bound
to be improving. unless they just fall off.
all her philosophy can be found in the movies
since they remade dune as a mini series.

but you're not really listening to that tonight.
tonight you're going to be ready for those fuckers
when they jump out from behind the rocks
and hit you with questions you promised
yourself not to ask.





____________________






__________________

the wicked's resting place if you drive by you'll see a woman under the eaves, with a laptop and butterfly wings. clouds hide the sun for days playing hermit is a cricket's buzz oxen jump at the sound of fireworks off in the distance where they can't be seen. phone calls go unmade beds unslept in ease dis eased. doves coo, children's voices teeter at fighting's precipice . you won't know whether driving more slowly  would bring  a scooter bearing sacrifice, but you're drawn to the possibility. something's quiet in the ocean just over the hump. quiet enough for thunder to make its bed.

____

_____________________________________________










apocalypse of the honeybee







death, inverted...
is that life? no ending
to spring forth from.


sigh. this is the problem. should i bury
the hive or wait for the queen to return?
only my wish stands in her way
a desire fulfilled in the careless way
of cats with canaries.

you say i've hidden my fear
it doesn't show, that i can't feel
the seven hertz signal. look
these five swords in my hilt
thirst for a duet, be it genetic
self preservation or a mandelbrot
hundredth monkey. i think that's
up to us to decide.

so let's work as a team, send out the scouts
find out where she's run off to this time,
and with the prince, no less. i've three
coins in my pocket and three egrets swim
silvery as minnows in the sky before the daily storm.
 .

in the past i thought we'd finished this play
the sets were packed, the curtain pulled aside/
the bones of the stage revealed.  looks like
everyone wants a redux, or at least enough of us
to make the manager open the door again.
the costumes are musty, ill fitting but
let's see if the strings still hold us in flight.


what ho, here comes she comes, shakespeare's
bloody heroine, all flash and surety, looking
for a challenge. i'm sure she'll find it, all dressed
in boy and apprentice. so ready to fight. in the right
she'll find the queen tonite!

of course she does and doesn't
the play continues each nite despite the ending
or suzy baker's front row wish for an alternate
ending. but it doesn't change,  no matter
how many evenings she watches
the script stays the same no matter how much
her daddy pays for the players to change the page
always , the same ending.
so she writes her own play.










catchphrase 53


i have killing on my mind
the fly is in still in the house &
mulitplying. shadow in the window
watches dragonflies in the bahaia
on the other side of the glass.
my mirrors are streakless. the secret:
newspaper. one sec.










i dunno if i killed him, but aimed my AAA
 preappoved hammer  at  his bugly fly eye
dragonfly taunts shadow.
 she hunches, crouches, tilty ears follow
the windblown insect
as i follow memories like a current.
 he says if you love me

you'd make time for me.
i think you were just
checking in.
to see if i still
feell the same. i do.
but stick around
maybe we'll remember why
methadone doesn't work for me.





*9




i'm doing laundry, skip the beach
even tho the oil will be here soon. it looms
like the tsunami of dreams, the big ooze
tuck in the cooze, snakily making a  cum line
with  a hundred billion bounteous black barrels
of dino flavo jism, now what's your ism, prison
time for the criminals/ get the handcuffs for the oil junkies.


o


that would be ummm
me










however, that's not now. now
is the ancient swallowing   of  water by the sky
sea salt on bagel chips, cheese dip scooped up
with infrared lights, predator aliens announced
in the movies instead of the news cuz
we like our facts couched in entertainment
we certainly can't believe the official version.

and you, you're about mad enough
to do it this time. not gonna wait
to cross at the galactic center and you still
don't know what love means. if you were
here i'd bake you a cliche. come on
you know you love processed food.













*(**


much later i've pulled some
weeds, planted some
grass, your door is closed, rent it past
due, what will the future hold for any
of us/you, me, you n me, he and i, but you
could be already dead, you want it so much.
i'll be cutting the heads off grass soon.
my mower's powered by gas
the new black. all of the plants i bought
at the beginning of this season are blooming
and you and i are, at best, a closed bud
with no knowledge of what sun feels like, unfurled.