White plastic  

Pianos and dancing and hands all over me
I started the morning, before the meeting

in the AME church, floating on inclusion 

and soul, and as I went out the front door

a BIG man with lively old eyes, yellow and open -  
like two harvest moons 
looked into my eyes, gave me a BIG handshake;
he was dressed like a wild and friendly unmade bed
with black & gold suspenders and a brick-red bow tie;

he had complete and unhesitant warmth. 

I drove away filled up, the car floating now too, 
towards coffee at Hole Foods, the other side of town. 

When I arrived, I saw a man at a table in the window 
the man I was to talk to,

he was arranging for me to do a poetry reading
(who me? I asked God, in church, are the rest of the poets busy?)
but now I was doing a reading on him;  
I noticed he was very carefully dressed, very 
carefully cub scout-buttoned up, 
the millennial matinee idol of Wes Anderson movies - 
with a mathematically trimmed beard. 

When I got out of my car 

his eyes went up and down on me 

like an elevator, not wanting 
to get off at any floor, 

then he went back to the white plastic on the table. 

I almost got back in the car. But no, though
I left it running. 

I got inside Hole Foods and heard the NPR jingle.  

My ears must have jumped like crickets
and the man must've viscerally divined it,
because he said (still looking down, typing), 
“You don’t care for NPR?”

“Well, let me put it this way. 

Do you know any black people? Ask them 

if they listen to it, and when you get your answer, 

you’ll know mine." 

He looked back up at me, but only about to the mezzanine. 

“Not that I’m black," I said, "but I’m trying." 

PTSD

Mother offered me food, in her way. 

"Pizza, tacos, stake ... dessert?" 

No, I think I’ll pass on that, I say; 

in hand: my car keys to the airport to 

the next galaxy over. 

The after party 

Worried in the world below

looking for something good from somewhere 

I look up and, up there, the sky - 

- is beautiful and cold and white 

a translucent white sky lighted brightly

like a marble top bar in a  posh cafe 

lighted bright white, and then, 

there’s a great glassy clink way up there 

and a quick swooping shadow, there

and then gone; not weather, not rain,

not snow, though it's all white as snow 

up there, 

then the hovering shadow above the white again, 

and the clink. 

(Anyway, whatever all this is, I’m not worrying anymore!)

It is so intensely brightly lit-up white

up there, I look down, for a break.

The wind, cold too, picks up and blows me

and now this is all out of the blue funny, 

and when I look up again,

the sky reminds me of a white marble top bar

in Wiesbaden, Germany; 

I was blizzarded and trapped in a cafe, the airport 

and all its jets blizzarded and trapping the town, 

and when the sun went down the marble top bar

lit up, from underneath. 

Brilliant, elegant, bright white. 

Like the sky over me, now. 

That night, with the bartop glowing

and me clinking down my 

who knows how manyth? drink, 

I brought out the money to pay and leave

and the bartender said, Relax!
There’s nowhere to go, look out there 
at all that white stuff! Then she said, 

Everyone, drinks on the house!

So, now. Who is up there, above? 

God, the bartender, or something else

relaxing with a slow glass of wine, 

this afternoon? 

Nowhere to go. 

Well, I will too, then. Down here. 

I'll switch over to coffee in a white cup.

But, either way; coffee, wine

up there, down here 

there's nowhere to go

and everywhere.

Relax, said

God the Bartender.

(Clink.) 

Tijuana 

In the middle of the night 

the moon and stars milk and creaming 

the Meandering Meadows buildings, 

down one hall, in Room 77, there’s a pair in bed 

a man and a woman; she starts to turn over 

then he starts 

and as they turn over 

in a simultaneous sleepy rhythm 

they aren’t ( yet ) awake for, 

a sound issues out of their bodies: 

the universal sound heard incontinence 

across many seas

b - r - r - r - r - a - a - a - a - a - a - a - a - a - p ! 

There’s a silence in the room, in the hall,

all over the building; silence except 

for the dripping of moonlight and starlight,

but there’s also the sound of two people 

trying not to laugh 

in the clean serene sheen of sleeping and dreaming; 

that sound is a wheezing, a snorting, then 

an out-loud, late-night hooting. 

“What are we, the Tijuana Ass?” 

“Well, I do love the way you toot, my darling,” says the woman. 

Eventually, they'll fold into each other, spooning, 

lining up the wind instruments in one direction;

then they'll follow the starlight on their pillows 

back toward sleep. But first, tonight - they might 
have some more laughing to do. 

“I had told you that we could laugh at anything,” he said to her. 

He had, and they did; all night long. 

And for the rest of their lives. 

The vatican light bulb

How long until they change it?

It's dim and dull and damning. 

How long for these men

these bishops, priests and archbishops-men

to change it? 

How long will the women, the LGBTQs 

(cha cha cha!)

and the altar boys have to wait?

Thick brown syrup dripping
tradition there, change 

moves slowly; watt else is new?

But how many centuries?

I guess whenever the Holy decides it needs to See.

Deconstructionism 

in the english department, 

part 2

The scholars were all sitting in a circle

evenly spaced, like traffic cones 

around some repair work; I came in

and sat down, below them, to the side. 

I was there to defend a friend. I said, 
"I've read all his books, they made me 
- they still make me - want to get out of bed 
in the morning!" 

One of the cones, probably the department head 

of repair, looked down and to the side, 

where I was, and smiled at my enthusiasm;

I knew I wasn't getting anywhere. 

So, I said some more: 

"He was always doing his best, and even if he wasn't,
always, he was doing it anyway!" 

The head of the circle said, 

“At a certain time in his life, his work 

becomes flawed, uneven.” 

Then, the meeting was over; 

they all left but the department head. 

I gave him a dirty look. 

I said, “How’d you like to be flawed and uneven?” 

Then, I left. But I was serious. 

I could hear him messing around with his smart

phone, it was gurgling and goo-gooing as I 

went out of the room; but I was serious. 

Later, the mortician told the police
(I read this on the free Wi-Fi internet
at the Red Roof Inn, after the free coffee)
that the department head looked a little deconstructed
when they brought him in. The mortician 
must have been an english major, on the side. 

As for me, I'm driving fast away from the police, 

and I've got a UHaul full of those books! 



Or maybe this is all imagination. 
Either way, I got out of bed this morning,
if flawed and uneven. I don't really want 
to kill anyone. Or, me.

DRINK the waterfront 

Riding along, someone else driving, 

I sat up and looked straight ahead 
through the windshield

instead of sideways and up, 

playing the alphabet game with the billboards 

and said, I AM a contender, even if somehow
I don’t contend. 

I got out of the backseat, out of the car

and looked it over - the car - and it was with me, 

on my side
it even threw a rod

(steiger; too depressed; inside himself).

I got up in the front seat

with the key

with the ignition

with the wheel

and then -- well, what would you do?

Right; that! Drive. Floor it. 

To hell with the pedestrian.