Last therapy session 

at 30,000 feet,

and dropping 

We arranged for it to happen on a jet plane

both of us going to San Francisco

on the same day

(my psychotherapist for the Gay Pride Parade, me

for the reenactment of the Great 1906 Earthquake)

but five minutes after 

we started the session up there

tray tables down, jet swung out over the sea

(me misty, our final session, 

him taking notes)

the Fasten Seat Belt light came on in RED

the jet ding-donged disaster 

and the pilot said we were going

down. 

Lots of smoke out the window

we strapped in, scared stewardesses

turned Pacific-blue in the face

(cleverly color-coordinating the collision)

and my shrink asked one last question:

“Did your mother read to you when you were a kid?”

“Yes,” I said. “The Riot Act.”

He said, at 500 feet:

“Well, I can see why you're holding onto hating

her as hard as you're holding onto your tray table.

Oh, you probably should put that table up. So, 

have we've reached closure?”

“I’ll say,” I said at 100 feet. “In more ways than one.” 

Fuck the AARP 

Zero to sixty in six decades 

and I’ve still got it floored; 

I’ll get it up to 100 

if I don’t get pulled over. 

Pants in the Pines, Part 1

The woman who said she was my mother

took me down to Macy’s 

the goddamn White Sale, of all things 

went almost all the way inside 

the fitting room with me, where she had one,

then she bought me yellow On sale! polyester slacks. 

Naturally I didn’t like it, she said:

Simmer down!

I kept talking anyway, drowning out

her sad sad sad sad silence staring ahead at 

her sad sad sad sad past.

But I had my hidden Red Corduroys.

That’s right, red corduroys! 

Up on the roof of the Holiday Inn  
up the street from our apartments
in a trash bag, tucked behind humming metal boxes,

some sort of heating & cooling equipment.

“Mom” ironed and laid out the polyester pants 

then, being a little laid-out herself,
she laid out and went to sleep. 

I snuck out of the apartment in moonlight,

climbed up the decorative white cinder block wall

of the Holiday Inn; climbed around the green-glowing
Holiday Inn sign, feet and hands in the honeycomb
design, got the hidden pants, climbed back down,
back home, back in my bedroom;

my cell down the hall from her sherry-flavored

snoring

and then, 

starting to snow ... 

I opened the bedroom window, took aim,

threw my pants into the pine tree outside. 

They landed in the top branch, hung there 

a second, slid off, down down down

to the ground, up against the trunk. 
I waved at my pants: see you in the morning. 

Awake at 6 a.m.; the Today Show coming through

the cardboard doll house walls; breakfast 
with Mrs. Mother (I think that was her name), we shared
blue-yolk eggs and lard-oozy bacon; out the door and down
under the pine tree; 30 degrees, early blue morning light. 

Yellow polyester off, static popping on my teen-boy thighs 
blue in the cold, school bus headlights flashing me, BUT! 

Then, the RED Corduroys. 

Wide wale wild and on the way to school! 

Where I got beat up and flunked anyway

but this was just the beginning.  

Later, I’d learn a lot, drink a lot,

sober up, look back clearly.

But back then, that morning

and a few more years of them,

with the help of the pines

these pants—these red corduroys  

would walk me away.

Mona Lisa on the loose

The Mona Lisa Smile is mysterious, 
he said? No. It's not true. 
Only a curator would say that,

at the head of the family dinner table
no one else moving. 

Mona wasn’t being ethereal 
mysterious 
or even “Earth Mother-esque” 

(I heard that one in a midwestern “school”). 

The Mona Lisa smile was for a guy 

like Harvey Weinstein. 
And all those other nice guys
in disguise. 

That’s a damn confident smile, 

that Mona Lisa smile. 

As in, 

"Hey, you slimy sexist rapist

bar mat of a man, Hey 
Jerkoff—and it turns out that

I mean that literally—you may be 

a big hot shot Hollywood producer 
but who’s in the Louvre?"

It’s so easy 

Van Gogh painted what he wanted 

to, painted like no one else, and

sold one. 

But he painted what he wanted 

like no one else. 

Great Expectorations 

White men in charge

are like boxes of Kleenex. 

They sort of look like that,

and while they’re pretty ubiquitous 

in that way, 

they’re not very interesting

in that way. 

I think maybe the 21st century

will blow her nose on all of them. 

My Teddy Bear from London 

Beneath the family reunion

in a room at the far corner 

of the long tall house of many empty rooms

under the arguing, and under

the even louder silence

I got close to the basement window. 

The glittery but velvety 

blue and white of the night, 

stars and moons and undiscovered planets

came washing through the glass, cold 

as a silver pan of water right in the face

and there he sat, looking at me—my
Teddy Bear from London. 

He’d been there when I was two,

riding with me in the pram 

under Big Ben and the Parliament,

the Beatles and the Rolling Stones 

somewhere around town, and then—

two months later

making me two years and two months old

my dad died. Wham-o!

Well, I was two (and two) so 

I didn’t know him anymore 

than I knew the Beatles and the Stones. 

But he died, so I didn’t know him anymore. 

The Teddy Bear was there, though

in full consciousness. 
His little black eyes shining, 
but things—life, and death—getting in them; 
he saw it happen. 

I had him perched on white pillows

in the moonlight, the black eyes glittering

like they were coming in from the next galaxy, 
but still, a pal, a friend from the baby years. 

By this night, he was a 60-year-old Teddy Bear, 
all his British-made inner works

springs or coils or whatever brass he has inside

must be about to break, so ... 

... with that in mind, I looked him the eyes

snuggled him closer, 
touched the brass twist knob 

in his dirty furry back 

and began to wind him up. 

Silence. Then ... 

Tink   tink   tink   tink   tink, 

trying for a song, but only 

tink   tink       tink                         tink. 

I hugged him, poor little guy, trying

then he started talking. 
In full sentences; I was incredulous, naturally. 
(You'd use that word, too!) 

But when I looked over Teddy's shoulder

out the basement window into the velvet blue and white wash 
of forever, I thought: hell, anything’s possible!

I looked at Teddy. He was talking—

"Your Father had headaches day and night
way before you came to London with your mother and sister. 
I was alone with him, I'd sit with him by the fireplace 
at night (him lighting cigars off the flames, 
my fur warmed up by them) after he bought me for you, 
for your first London Christmas. 

"He'd walk around the flat, through all the rooms,
missing you all, sheets of paper in his hands maybe
from his new job; he didn't look at them, didn't sit down. 
He'd prop me up in the window so he could see me, 
wave up at me, when he came back from his walks 
around London all night. I saw him go up the alley,
shaking his head, talking to himself. 

"Then you all came over and he was better. But not his head. 
I saw him down the hall in the bathroom 
one morning after Christmas
he fell off the toilet, hit his head on the bathtub
on the way down to the floor (it must have hurt him),
you had me by the arm, and you bounced down the hall, 
dragging me down toward him. On the floor he rolled over,
smiled up at us, and said a word to you—PUCK.
He looked at me and said: Tell him! He's puckish! 

"Then, his eyes got like mine.
Your sister and mother came down the hall, crying.
But not us; you stood there, looking at him
I was in your hand, watching you both
and your father was on the floor dead but smiling, at you."

The Bear was finished. We heard the family reunion 
arguing upstairs—measured, precise, and dull. 
Lifeless, and annual.

I got dressed and wound up the bear.

We (mostly me) tiptoed upstairs, down the long 2nd floor
hall to my step-father's (or whoever he is) room,
heard the discussion from the dining room below—

I hear what you're saying but I must do what's good
for me/I respect your boundaries, but I feel abandoned/I'll 
need to process that, oh just a moment, let me get that text/ um,
excuse me, but 

—I found my step-father's car keys, and tiptoed
back downstairs, past the dining room, out to the garage.

The Bear said TINK, I agreed, saw the fusebox, and inside,
the Main Power Switch for the long, tall house.
I waited for a lull in the dining room, noticed the garage door
was wide open. I threw the switch.
DARK. nothing.Yet.

I got into the Porsche, sat Teddy down on the black leather,
sat down next to him, and turned the key.

The car roared out of the house like a rocket with a lion inside,
and the Bear went TINK! tink tink tink tink tink tink
(a song, I think, not sure—maybe a beddy bye lullaby)
his eyes blinking under the space ship streetlights flying by
overhead.


We were many miles and a state away
before I threw the angry-ringing car phone out the window
and turned on the radio.
Out popped a Beatles song—HELP! 

The Teddy Bear was wound up, singing Rolling Stones—
You Can't Always Get What You Want

                                                             
                                                                   
                                                                    but—tink!



Then, he took a turn driving.