A Parent's Guide To Raising Piranha

Introduction

This is the 3rd in a poetry series written seasonally
starting in 2004 and ending in Spring 2005
when I began work on a new book

The Last Ohio Morning.......Summer 2004
The New Book Of Endangered Birds.......Fall 2004
A Parent's Guide To Raising Piranha.......Winter 2004/2005

Brass Foot
Lou Jersey Excused Himself
Comic Book Creatures
The Roaming Gnome
Abandoned Television Stars
Porcelain
The #5
The #27
The Second Sleep
Pinning Down the Chimney
A Night in Japan
Two Plastic Bags
Captain Ben
Captain Ben’s House
The Television Bodhisattva
These Morning Dogs
The Revenge of the Dummy Family
Some Other World
With the Moon Carried At Night
The Bazooka Joe Mystery
Furniture
Beehive
Tying Shoes
Bluto, The Hero
Vincent On
What Will We Do
China
Humpty Dumpty in the Haunted House
Spin
An Upstairs Window
The Battle on Earth
The Laurel & Hardy Liberation Army
The Witch of East Maple
Wooden Hand
On the Trail of the Mummy
In the Footsteps of Zorro
Overturned Swimming Pool
Song of the Tin Man
Dark Green Seas
A Couple Mornings This Winter
This Pennyland
Your Show of Shows
Rain Prayer
Diamond Mud Puddle

Brass Foot

“I’m afraid your son has Brass Foot.”
The boy’s mother and father stared at
the sight of his trumpet colored foot.
“As for treatment…” the doctor shrugged,
“I can’t promise that we can reduce it to anything
less than tin. Maybe zinc if we’re lucky.”
“A zinc foot…” the father shook his head.
He dug into his pocket with his aluminum hand,
found his pen to sign the necessary documents.




Lou Jersey Excused Himself

The day began the usual way
eating 40 pieces of pie for breakfast
then Lou Jersey excused himself.
He joined outdoors, the passing clouds
flowed on his slow walk to the contest.
He was there in time at last,
the white clapboard grange hall
welcomed him to a long table,
alone except for a rail thin girl.
She looked like she needed food
she needed it more than he did.
That got him thinking,
where was she from?
What wall did she fall over?
He saw everyone watching him
when he lost his appetite.
At the sound of the bell
Lou stared at the red and white
checkered tablecloth
like a boxer
who can’t knock them down
anymore




Comic Book Creatures

A girl was out in the deep hillside picking
wildflowers to sell along the road. Moving slowly and
steadily, when she had an armful she would turn back
onto the path to go put them in the parked wheelbarrow.
It was quiet work, she was caught in the wind, thinking
and listening to the birds around her.
After only her second trip to harvest more,
Sue heard a high pitched yellow scream come through
the air. She barely had time to react as the noise
became a crash that threw the ground in front of her
around. The cloud of debris settled. A deafened silence
punctured the spot. It was the sort of start to an
adventure Sue had come to expect from reading
comics and watching dreams. She crept up on the
place where the air still shimmered.
She knew to watch out for rattlesnakes, her
father had warned her about them, they liked to wrap
half out of pits in the warm baked earth, but she didn’t
know much about the war, or falling stars or whatever
this was.
Whatever it was shakily grew to stand up out of
a flattened crush. “Ohhh my aching head…” it said,
raising arms to a crumpled cowboy hat. It was a monkey,
not much bigger than her. He slapped his face back and
forth, noticed her, tried to steady his wobbly gaze on her.
“Who you?” He fell back a step and jerked like a puppet
on invisible strings. “Hey!” he smirked, “I’m still alive!”
and he laughed with a loud, “Hah!!”
Sue stood there holding the flowers, watching him.
“Hello kid,” the monkey tried again. He leaned
closer with a worried look, “Do you know me or something?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s okay then. I –” he stopped and shook
the stars in his head. “Wow! That was—that was really—I’m
lucky to be alive I guess…” He grinned again. He pointed
nondescriptly, “They shot me out of a cannon…Wanted to
kill me…They didn’t…” She could see his clockwork
thinking take root to his next reason, “You gotta hide me!”
He lurched a few steps towards her, trampling swirls of
heather underfoot. He stopped and begged, “Please kid,
they’ll be after me. They’ll want to put my skin up for
their show. They’ll charge a dollar, people will pay.
They’ll look at me like a monster!” He panicked
melodramatically. “Oh kid, have a heart, you gotta
help me!” He bent his knee to touch leaf and vine.
Sue beheld his cartoon worry. Maybe she was
the only one who didn’t know who he was, maybe that
made her his lucky break. A thought ballooned before
her though and she told him, “I have a tree house.
You could stay in there.”
“Perfect!” he snapped.
They were in a little wooden planked room
that let in gray and blue slats of light. The monkey sat
on a pillow and chewed on his lip. “I guess…” he
drawled. “It’ll do.”
“Look,” Sue chirped, “You can read my comic
books.” She pushed a ragged cardboard box towards
him.
“Ooh! I love comics! What do you got?”
“Little Lulus. Some Archies—they’re from my
cousin—and Winnie the Pooh I like…” she paged deeper
through, “Pluto…all kinds of stuff.”
The monkey raised his eyebrows doubtfully,
“Don’t you have any superhero ones?”
“No. I like animals mostly. They’re funny and nice.
There’s plenty here to read.”
“Yeah?…I don’t know...”
“You can stay as long as you want and nobody will
know you’re here.”
“I know…It’s just…What am I supposed to do while
you’re out there avenging me?”
“What?”
He huffed, “It’s what I told you on the way here, Sue.
You have to go to the circus and get him!”
“No! I’ll let you stay here, but I have to get back to
work. I have to find flowers to sell, I can’t go running around
for you.”
“You want money?!” the monkey nearly shrieked.
With a quick movement, he reached above under his
wide-brimmed hat and pulled down some money. “Here!”
he waved, “Take this. And I’ll give you more. Heck!” he
shrugged, “I’d go myself, only they know me, they’d get
me right away. Pop!” He let the cash slop from his grip
onto the floor. An Abe Lincoln bill flipped through the
slats. “Help me out, okay kid?” he moped.
“Well…What do you want me to do?”
He smirked, “Oh it’s so simple. You’ll see the
circus, it’s not so far away, all you have to do is buy
a ticket in.” He shoved money at her with his foot.
“Then find that louse who shot me.” He puffed himself
up, “He’s been planning this for a long, long time, I bet.
Used to be, I thought we were partners, but look what
happened!” The monkey scowled, “He’s nothing but
a bad old man. He’s barely alive anyway. All you have
to do is unplug him. His heart will give out, then I can
come back to my circus.” His eyes glittered at her
like one of her comic book creatures.
Red and blue banners flapped against the perfect
sky. As Sue drew near, she heard the calliope and happy
cries whirred by the many stirring arms of the mechanical
rides. The circus was unlike anything she’d ever seen in
the valley. The spectacle had drawn people from all over
and it took her another ten minutes standing in line with
them to get inside.
The monkey’s orders took her wandering past
the hulls of tents held down with wooden stakes. Would
that old man be in there, or in a caravan somewhere?
Sue didn’t know. She slowed.
“Don’t be lost,” someone in a circus uniform waved
her over, “I’ve got what you’re looking for right in here.
Ever see an electric man? A mummy? Something dead,
kept alive by the blue light blood of electricity?”
Of course that rang a bell for her, what the monkey
had said, it must be him.
She gave her last dollar and went into the dark. It
took her a few steps walking to get accustomed to the
gloom. The racket of the circus disappeared, it was only
her footsteps and heart beating.
She made for the strange something pulsing a weak
glow ten feet ahead. The floor sloped towards it, subtly
tipping her to the center.
A big aquarium awaited her. It emitted that blur of
color in the air along with a breathing-like hum. An
illumined button read PUSH. So she did.
She watched a gray tinted film project itself inside
the case. She saw armies going back and forth, cannons
and rifles and explosions. Then the film repeated over
again. She had seen enough, she was about to move
away when the images pitched and swayed. A man sat
up inside the case. That was the dollar scare.
He must have been laying down underneath the
flow of the film. Now she noticed how the case was the
size of a coffin, or an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus. Yes,
and like a mummy, the figure inside the case moved jerkily,
wearily, cast in yellowy light
That would have been a good carnival trick, but
there was more to it, Sue recognized the lean tree-boned
man in black suit, with stove-pipe hat on top. He was
someone everyone used to know in school.
Old Abraham Lincoln had returned through time.
He moved upward creakily and stopped when his hat
tapped into glass, then he turned his eyes towards her.
They regarded each other, she and he, like two zoo
animals.
Then she confessed, “The monkey told me to
come here and unplug you. But I won’t do it!” The thought
of that monkey made her furious now. It was a long way
for him from the tree house window to the ground.
Abe held up a wooden flat looking hand. When his
glowing eyes began to dim, he calmly, slowly reclined
back to wherever he rested, that dark where he lived in
levers and chains, under war movie reels.




The Roaming Gnome

One day I was out there
getting the mail in the rain
when I noticed the emptiness
in the front yard garden

Gone is a stolen lesson
a gnome won’t last long
it took about six months
before he roamed




Abandoned Television Stars

In 2007, Edward John Smith, the captain of the Titanic
was thawed out on a live television broadcast. The host of
the Sylvan Moore Show, reported each slow movement as
the ice melted. Technicians buzzed around the captain,
plugging in the wires, connecting him to a monitor.
“This is it, folks!” Sylvan Moore grinned.
He directed a close-up for his hand pressing the
flashing button that would Frankenstein the man.
All that fanfare and it didn’t work so well.
The captain wasn’t ready for the thrill of television.
His time had come and gone. He walked offstage, he just
wanted to get back to the water so he could go down.
Looking for the way, wearing his Titanic uniform around
the city streets, he stands on bridges, sees reflections,
goes to the aquarium, sits in the middle of Green Lake
on a rented red rowboat, walks through carwashes,
goes wading in creeks after a heavy rain.
When it snowed in January, he took off walking in
it. His footprints led off into the trees.
He walked in a dream this time. Nothing around him
made much sense after Sylvan Moore woke him up. As usual,
he looked for water.
Along the white trail came a man familiar to him, though
he could scarcely believe his eyes.
Edgar Allan Poe looked like the charcoal illustration
in his Tales of Mystery and Imagination. He had been on
the show another week ago, he left and wandered through
America’s future just as lost as the captain.
Edward called out to him.
Edgar turned to see the man standing in the fountain.
Running water kept it from freezing. After a grating pause,
Poe nodded and approached the soaking captain, asked him
if he needed help.
“Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, I presume?”
The dark man nodded.
“I left my copy of your book back on the Titanic.
He stepped out of the fountain, his boots landed on the
cement and water pooled. “I enjoyed it very much.”
Before the next hour, the two men discovered
The Sylvan Moore Show had unleashed more than them.
They found presidents, Frederick Douglass, inventors,
and plenty more abandoned television stars by the end of
the day. In the evening they all gathered in front of
the studio skyscraper. Emily Dickinson wrote a note
for delivery to Sylvan Moore. Wild Bill, Annie Oakley
and Sitting Bull kept an eye on the studio guards.
It was getting tense, it looked like a mob gathering
from the early 19th and 20th century waiting for justice.




Porcelain

We stayed inside
to watch refrigerators
falling from a white sky




The #5

The aquarium bus
goes back and forth
a green glow
carrying people
home from work




The #27

Bad luck follows the guy who throws
Carl Sandburg’s book in the trash.
He slipped on the snow covered ice,
hit the sidewalk and the lights went out.
A bus flattened him like a snow angel,
a casualty of wind and weather.
Now he haunts the streets,
thin as a page of poetry.




The Second Sleep

The snowy tracks had frozen during the night.
The wheels of the buggy rode into them and
pulled her along. Her baby was falling asleep.
By leaning over, she could see his big eyelashes.
Twice a day, rain or shine or snow, Susan Fenton
took her son out through the woods for his nap.
Saturday afternoon they made it past the first
wooden bridge over the creek, a minute further
into the trees. Around the last snowy corner,
it was like stepping into a greenhouse. Heat
and lush colors, suddenly they were in a jungle.
Parrots flew away from them. Little Elliott
woke up and reached for the birds. She knew
this Jules Verne land could only be the work of
Dr. Biocal. She was walking into a missing reel
B-Movie cliffhanger. It wouldn’t surprise her
to see dinosaurs next.




Pinning Down the Chimney

Every sweep in town was brought down to the ground.
They grew from the wet cobblestones like coal pictures.
Widow Templin asked them all if they had seen something
strange on the roofs above the city.




A Night in Japan

Closing the café
late at night
playing Sinatra songs

Letting the candles go
while I mop the floor
and you wait for me




Two Plastic Bags

A wild night of rain
wind has washed away
the snow from our yard

Tomorrow morning
the creek will be full
pouring over the trail

I’ll have to remember:
Bring two plastic bags
to keep my feet dry




Captain Ben

Captain Ben didn’t like to call attention
but it was a fact, he never sat on a chair.
Any summer day he came visiting, he would sit
on the porch with everyone. They’d play cards
with him down on the floor. I used to listen to them
talk and laugh out there. When it was my grandfather’s
orange-lit cigarette and dark green window shadows,
Ben would stand to go home, out through the yellow
light of the kitchen, into nighttime. Did he drive back
standing up, in a convertible leaning into the wind?
No. He walked up the broken seashells on the path
to the road. He didn’t need wheels to get home,
he just crossed the street, no chairs in the way.




Captain Ben’s House

Sometimes we’d go to Ben’s house at dusk,
a brown galleon perched on the vertical cliff.
with a book full of pirates in a room upstairs.
The strangest thing over there was outside,
built in the yard was a big dollhouse likeness.
It seemed less of a wonder than a haunted house,
eerie little lights could click on in the rooms,
making miniature shadows out of real places inside.
We looked for ourselves, trapped on those stairs
and hallways. Mosquitoes came out of the pines
to feed on us. It was always a relief when
summer ended the sight of it, when
a big wooden box was placed over it,
to hide it from the elements.




The Television Bodhisattva

I’ve been thinking about the Television Bodhisattva.
He was ahead of his time, going around America
enlightening. The first time I met him,
he was staying in a tiny silver trailer parked in
someone’s driveway at night. We knocked on
the tin door and he opened up bright light.
There wasn’t much room inside the trailer
filled up with a mattress and a big-screen tv.
When he invited us inside we had to climb
over the thresh to see what he was watching.
Later on he stayed in our apartment up past
Capitol Hill. Bringing only a television with him
he would sit there spread out on the floor
like a candle slowly melting from its flame.
The antenna was rigged with aluminum foil
to get the reception he needed.
I was younger then and quick to judge
and I told him what I thought of all that
propaganda, but he replied so calm
"It’s all in what you choose to let in.
There’s always something you can learn."




These Morning Dogs

"Last week, I was going through ye olde Greenbelte to the bus stop.
It's always very dark, early morning moonlight, and of course,
it always becomes a Grimm’s Fairy tale in my mind. So I was trying
to stop myself from thinking of werewolves. There's a long dark path
with trees overhanging bunched up to either side, and I'm looking
at my feet trying to avoid the really big mud bogs, when up ahead
a ways, where the path splits to right and left, I hear a low growl.
I keep walking straight ahead, because let's face it, you can't outrun
a werewolf, impossible. Then I see it, low on the path, head sticking
out around the brush to the right. A big black growling beast.
I know I'm doomed. It comes around onto my path, I can see all
of it now. It's a wretched creature, black and just like the sad
Werewolf of London ending when he's low and snapping at people.
Then I see the very long leash attached to it, and a guy comes
stumbling after it holding the chain, trying to calm it! It's a black
German shepherd, but for a few moments there I really thought it
was all over. Also another dog dawn moment, last Friday in the dark,
the three legged hound from across the street staggers up to me all
akilter on its feet, barking up the neighborhood. I looked beyond,
I completely ignored him, I walked along as if he didn't even exist.
He came right up to me and swung about me like a rocking chair
and I didn't give him the time of day. That was mean of me,
I know, what with the chip on his poor shoulder, but I'm reaching
my limit with these morning dogs."

January 26th




The Revenge of the Dummy Family

They survived, carried home in a panic
over fences, across lawns in the dead of night.
We flopped them down on the apartment floor
and left them there. The Dummy Family was
a terrible failure. They led to our near arrest
so they spent a week thrown underfoot
like dead shadows beneath a pier.
Then one afternoon, I had a plan.
The father’s fall was just my size.
I took out his newspaper stuffing
and climbed into his Goodwill clothes.
I lay in his place on the floor and waited.
It was a terrible wait, I couldn’t move
I couldn’t laugh and give it away as the door
handle finally rattled. My friend came inside
and sat by a guitar. He started to play and
I watched through a little tear in newspaper
until I couldn’t take it any longer. I leaped up,
shouted, waved my arms at someone
I shocked into seeing a ghost.




Some Other World

Alexander Graham Bell carried his invention
with him wherever he went. And he made a
grand point of stopping on the boulevard
every so often to talk into it. His loud words
would trail off in crowds, into served meals
getting cold, his laugh would bray as he
carried on with his monologue. He seemed
oblivious to the glances around him as if
he was half mad, in contact with some
other world.




With the Moon
Carried at Night

With the moon
I walk sidewalks
home to you

Gardens guard houses
Petals in lights

I reach over fences
a handful of flowers
beautiful colors
a little of each
carried at night




The Bazooka Joe Mystery

It was supposed to be a mystery
rivaling the adventures of Sherlock Holmes
or at least worthy of the Boxcar Children.

Our daughter has been having trouble sleeping
every night her call has us up to go downstairs
to her room. It’s true, it can be noisy
outside her window at night, with people
walking on gravel, cars and headlights.

Looking for the end of insomnia,
we took the bunk apart and brought
her bed upstairs around the stairway.
Maybe she feels too apart from us.

I even started hiding Bazooka Joe gum
under her new pillow. I was hoping
to delight her and make her wonder
if the Tooth Fairy was around.

She must be growing up though
faster than I can keep track of
she knew right away it was me.




Furniture

In February, nights started getting cold again
the house roots creaked with a moaning wind
coming from the starry clear sky.
Awake in bed, I heard the door downstairs
open and shut again quietly followed by
a clicking about on the kitchen floor.
“Another deer?” I wondered.
The moon keeps letting them in,
they’re like furniture wandering around.
I had to get up and see down
the steep stairs let to the kitchen
dark as pulled over cotton.




Beehive

From 8 to 5
she stood in the hall
unpacking the boxes
lining the wall

Stacked cardboard
endless perspective
day after day

She wondered if maybe
the things she took out
were being put back in
by someone else
working 5 to dawn

The only change in routine
occurred one Friday afternoon
when someone next to her asked,
“Have you found the beehive yet?”
She froze with her hands in air…
“One of these boxes has one inside.”

From then on
it could happen
listening for bees
the search for honey
living in expectation




Tying Shoes

I watched from the window.
He wore a puffy coat that gave him
cartoon muscles. He marched down
the path towards a big stone planted
by the road. The bold way he approached
and began to lean towards it, I thought
he was going to reach and grab hold
and toss that granite as far as it could go.
Then his body crooked at the last moment
as he brought his leg up to land on it
and bent to tie his shoelaces tight.




Bluto, The Hero

I take the bus in the mornings.
I wait for it up on the hill in the grass
when the sun is arriving, it takes me
along the winding roads 24th, Douglas,
then 25th and the Parkway up to school.
As the world awakes at that hour,
there are things that make me watch
like that car somebody leaves running,
lights on, in the driveway while they go
around in their lighted rooms getting ready
for work. I’ve seen dawn after dawn of this.
Then, Friday, the fantastic occurred.
The car had rolled free and sat
in the middle of the road. The bus
had to stop. The driver honked the horn,
we sat there waiting for the next thing.
A garbage truck came around the corner
and leaned around the car. An old fashioned
Bluto cartoon hopped out of the cab.
He went to the car, opened the door,
to see if a dead body was in there?
Then he went back to his growling truck
and parked it safely. He returned to the car,
opened the door and got in and drove it up
into the driveway, shut it down and left it.
He shrugged at us stuck in the bus and
went on with his route.




Vincent On

He left his picture
fingerprints on the window
when you look out you see
what he wants you to see




What Will We Do

Why think of things
happening long ago
Is the clock wondering
where the time goes?
Why all the wandering
over to this time now
What can we do?
What we’ve done
is what we will do




China

Yes
we will
have to
listen

Soon
it will
happen

I imagine
it will
blow across
the ocean




Humpty Dumpty in the Haunted House

The round silhouette of him ballooned
in the doorway blocking out the yellow moon.
“Sue?” he called hoarsely. “Please say you’re
in there…Otherwise I’m not taking another step.”
His spindly legs shook with fear of the unknown.
Her voice made him jump. “I’m here Humpty.”
She turned on a lamp beside her. The light
showed her sitting up on the couch.
Humpty Dumpty looked around the lit room
“You told me this was a haunted house, Sue!”
He walked inside onto the wall to wall carpet
and shut the door behind him. He straightened
the tie tucked into the buttoned blue suit he wore.
“This is a nice house!” he clucked in surprise.
“Well, that’s what it looks like,” Sue agreed.
She got off the sofa. “But follow me.”
“Oh no…” Humpty hesitated. He rocked on
his feet ready to spring back outside. His straw
hat fell over his eyes and he jumped.
“Don’t worry,” she laughed, “You’re already
seeing it and you don’t know.”
"Really?!” He looked all around. He had to turn
himself like an egg on a spoon.
“This house was built last year. But wait til you
see.” She grabbed Humpty’s hand and made him
shuffle along. He was fragile from fear.
She knew, but knew too that he could do it.
She would show him how the new house was
built over the ghost of an older one. The cheap
pressboard skin and bones, nail-gunned, sprayed-on
paint assembly was haunted by what used to be.
At any time the old could peer through wallpaper,
family portraits, a creaking stairway bent like a
willow tree, a grinning orange wood stove glow.
She didn’t count on how terrified Humpty Dumpty
would become. In a lurch, he let go of her hand
and ran to the door. He tried to get out but it was
already changing, into a coal chute and down he
cracked.




Spin

Don’t you dare
let it stop

Motion
keeps it
going

It spins
like a whirligig
that needs
your wind




An Upstairs Window

An upstairs window
shows the world
upside down

What sight
you see
depends on
day or night

Stars below
shadows above

Get used to
the opposite
when you
look out




The Battle on Earth

Brought back to
what went on before
a welcome back
war is only over there

It might seem far
from where we are

The battle on Earth
going on and on
it’s simple to explain
if we want a better world
we have a lot to learn




The Laurel & Hardy Liberation Army

Posie Crutchfield, very old on a black creaking
bicycle, turned down an alley and rattled
cobblestones. She rode onto a two by four
slanting up onto scaffolding framing a brick
building. Like a sparrow hopping branches
in a bare winter tree, she went up and up
to the very top. She stopped. A hundred feet
from the ground, she pushed the bike up on
its kickstand so the back wheel was free to
spin. She opened the box latched on handlebars,
a gleaming silver and green projector revealed.
She fed a reel of black film into the spool and
set the switch, pulled a string, then pedaled
the movie into rolling. A little candle yellow
lightbulb was glowing. Across the drop,
images and slogans magically appeared
on the opposite wall. Above the roofs
and traffic, the cold city, tired and dark
and gray from long winter days, was given
a chance to see Laurel and Hardy comedies




The Witch of East Maple

Unfortunately, she didn’t get very far
on the last sunny day of February

Her broom swooped down the incline
from her shuttered house on the hill,
veered into the car wash bay

She got caught in the hot water
evaporation and only the weight
of her broom made it through
to the other end, hitting
the pavement like
a dead branch




Wooden Hand

He was often too tired to raise the hand.
It had been put on during the Second World War.
Sixty year old German carved violin fingers
feebly lifted to turn channels so his daughter
could watch cartoons.




On the Trail of the Mummy

He crumbles
around the library
like pecked suet




In the Footsteps of Zorro

Following Zorro to and fro all around Old Mexico,
the alleys, stonewalled paths and anywhere else
in town he might leave a Z. I tracked that letter.
It got more feathery and faint as it left clues, on into
the hills, over, onto the next valley. They led to
a railroad track and the last Z fell on a rock before
the start of a suspension bridge. When the stone
gave way a little, I could hear the subterranean
gnashing of gears as an entrance woke up under
the girders.




Overturned Swimming Pool

Last month before the cherry trees bloomed
along the path I walk in the morning, I saw a
swimming pool. It was overturned on the road.
Quiet, no cars had run over the blue plastic,
it was sitting there like a trap waiting for me.
I wondered if there was a raccoon underneath it.
If somebody thought to move it off onto the gravel
and nearest lawn, they would be ambushed by
the raccoon leaping out. Anyway, I did it,
I moved the pool off the road and survived
my imagination.




Song of the Tin Man

She wouldn’t let him fall asleep because she heard music.
“It’s jazz,” she said. “It’s the roaring twenties.”
The Tin Man got out of bed miserably and
Clanked to the stairway. He stood there listening.
He even took off his funnel cap to listen through.
Silence. So he went back to the bedroom.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“You don’t hear jazz?”
“Nope.” He got back under the covers.
Four hours later they were awakened at dawn
By the music on the clock radio alarm.




Dark Green Seas

Was he scared of chairs, were there rows
in his dreams, walking on their legs towards
Captain Ben? There’s a forgotten detail
that may not explain. It’s something
that kept him down. His grandson,
the one with the pirate book,
was struck by lightning.
There was no escaping it,
ships ran the tide on
dark green seas
and he was scared
to leave the ground.




A Couple Mornings This Winter

The fog reached up the hill from the ocean
like the tide. Detective weather, clouds on
the ground washing around everything,
ordinary sounds echoed and carried for blocks.
Long forgotten sea anemones were sprouting
crayon colors out of the cracks in cement.
The bus looked like a whale with glowing
yellow eyes swimming up the hill.




This Pennyland

Spotted
two deer
on the hillside
this morning

It’s something
I like to see
it’s a reminder
from beyond
this pennyland




Your Show of Shows

The USS Mekong is twenty two million miles from
planet Earth. At least. I’m not sure exactly, but wherever
we are it’s a long way away and we get further every day.
The Mekong is a 140 ton supply ship, I work on the fifth
deck in shipping and receiving. I sort the mail and send it
on to other destinations.
I was boxing and taping up a package of letters for
PS-09 when Myrna came in. She put her broom against
a duct beam and sat down at the metal counter with me.
She is nine months pregnant and likes to rest whenever
she gets the chance. She turned on the television set.
Out this far from America, we’ve caught up with
the light and sound waves. We both stop working at this
time every night to watch Sid Caesar and Your Show of
Shows. I sit next to her and all three of us are laughing.




Rain Prayer

A prayer
for rain

There
it goes
again

Send
another
thought
adrift
and
we’re
left
waiting




Diamond Mud Puddle

A
perfect
cut
of
shining
sky

cover: rosa frost
writing: allen frost

written during
the winter season
December 21, 2004—March 20, 2005