Random Access

I was dangling by a slender thread, as Johnathan

Edwards said, with flames of divine wrath flashing
about, when I first saw Abigail seated at the sea wall,
singing Renaissance tunes with a transient on lute.
The space between you and me will surely become
nonexistent as celluloid stars align in our minds.
I will dust myself off and waddle down the runway
like Charlie Chaplin, his pants on fire. Liar, liar,
pants on fire. My mom would never lie about love,
shed rather morph into a locust. And better a locust
than victim of nuclear holocaust. People on the river
are happy to give according to John Fogerty, and so
Little Bo Peep misses her sheep. Id be surprised if
the zillions of angelic specters that intermingle with
tinted light are able to eradicate hatred in their day.
A mystical wind may scan my soul, download it into
an all-knowing computer, and save it in its database.
You see me as I see you, which is to say as frost stuck
to the tip of my nose. From the tip of my nose down
to my toes someone is hot on my nascent trail. I leap
into a sardine can listening to Chopin through earbuds.
The FBI watches my slick moves with their binoculars
thinking they can get the drop on me, but they cant.
If those savages and cannibals out there can get away
with a wink and a whistle, so can anyone. The trail
to paradise is plated with platinum, and doesnt erode.

Wild Eye

Well, what else can you do? Its arid here, and the intense heat is
sucking the land bone dry. Im standing next to the cyclone fence
that prohibits me from wandering across railroad and tram tracks
just the other side of it. X-ray vision? Maybe. But more likely Im
looking all the way to Half Dome through the smoggy sky wearing
rose-colored lenses that need to be reground. Timothy Leary wept
because he couldnt understand people who took life at face value
and never yearned to know why they existed. Above a vacant field
across the road a radio-controlled helicopter performs implausible
feats, zips dipsy-doodle, a technological wonder. Not quite liturgical
the shriveled Bear River this summer, reduced to a trickle. Lightning
always seems to strike in the weirdest places. Then comes the lioness
licking her newborn cub. Now: growing whole new worlds in nuclear
petri dishes. Once upon a time we were able to pack our fables away
in hope chests fashioned from chestnuts and lime. They were lying
to us we all chanted in unison as the bomb exploded on Nagasaki.
Decidedly perpendicular imbedded aesthetic: contemplating our City
College Panthers upcoming football opener, I gaze across the tracks
to above the stadium rim at floodlights that will on the big night make
their black coats shine. This rail town the Big Four crowned capitol.

Pilgrim
Spears sticking up in peat where dead sparrows nested.
Expressway frozen still. My double is your Valentino

thumbing his way back to Alaska. The middle occupied

by abandoned reindeer stranded on your daddys navel.
Its muggy tonight. My Venice, your gondola. Voltaire
disguised as a motley harlequin hiding in the bushes.
When walking the wide Rambla in Barcelona, watch out
or you may be ambushed by the ghost of Pablo Picasso.
Black sandpaper sky. Neighborhood houselights sparkle.
A few scraggly stars through the smog. Hoorah, Uranus.
And then a dry field, parched tinderbox where I watch
jackrabbits morph into zebras before my bulging eyes.
Tis said you felt the essence of your sentencing within
those stanzas you penned, dear poet. Credit hard labor,
dust wrapped in cellophane. My Brutus is your Judas.
The poor ride the metro. The rich pontificate, and stall.
Strolling to the chapel of love, it could be anyplace. Take
this pill and chill out. If just for once go preemptive. Lets
annex music and swing on grace notes. Green Lantern will
make his own way. My enlightenment is your epiphany.
Magritte taut, sweats, casts a big broad smile, hard at work
on a self-portrait, him wearing his typical bowler hat and
black tie, smokes a J-shaped pipe. Meanwhile Rimbaud is
having a ball, rides a comet tail round and round the moon.
The ferry leaves in ten minutes, but who cares? This tidbit
of informations irrelevant, and contrary to the development
of ones understanding. All for one and we equally free-fall,
said thunder hailing ancient Arcadia with a boatload of light.
City rail cars zip past, then a freight train trundles by, both
barely skirting catastrophe. My reality is your fond fantasy, so
were even. I have blood cells and thin air to dish out, although
we wont gain satisfaction this night any more than gnomes.
Grand bedfellows, my indistinguishable cadence coupled with
John Philip Sousa snoozing in the heart of the sun. And the sun
never rises without a prompt, an approval from you, my friend,
my fiend, dark paramour. Now Ill sing my latest song for you.