WAVING AT THE WIND

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

Now you may think me daffy
and ripe for the loony bin
but I see women
walking through walls
and waving at the wind

On the other side
I asked her
if she might be inclined
to show me how she does it
before I lose my mind

She said uh uh
you can't do it
I hate to spoil your fun
but my head is harder than yours
and that's just how it's done

sometimes I sit up late at night
and o'er her words I mull
'bout the vagaries of the sexes
and the thickness of one's skull

my life's the same
I'd have to say
'cept for downing a spot of gin
when I see those women
walking through walls
and waving at the wind 

THE PLOT THICKENS

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

It has come to my attention
as it does from time to time
that I'm much fonder of plot driven
narrative than characterization that goes
on and on and on and on and on and on
and in the end what are you left with
but the same pathetic slob you met in the beginning
in the same place in his life
only he's had some slight epiphany
or not
like all of the postmodern gunk
I used to wade through
hoping against hope
that SOMETHING would happen
anything
but in the end it just ends
and you're left feeling cheated
the way you feel
at the end of a love affair
cuz in the end that's just how it ends

up in the air

so why do we always want more than
what's possible
riding off into the sunset
everything neat and tidy
just give me something messy
The Big Bang will do fine
and I'll keep myself busy
picking up the pieces

Anyway here's what I made away with from my most
recent excursion to the public library's used book sale:

THE PARIS REVIEW BOOK OF HEARTBREAK,
MADNESS, SEX, LOVE, BETRAYAL, OUTSIDERS,
INTOXICATION, WAR, WHIMSY, HORRORS, 
GOD, DEATH, DINNER, BASEBALL, TRAVELS
THE ART OF WRITING, AND EVERYTHING ELSE
IN THE WORLD SINCE 1953 (and that is the title)

750 pages for a damn buck
cheap thrills
goddamn cheap
and there's Updike
Nabokov
Capote
William Burroughs
Ezra Pound
Ginsberg
Mailer
Hemingway
Henry Miller
and Stanley Elkin
whom I've always liked
just to name a few
and did you know that John Updike has a poem called
"Two Cunts In Paris"
oh
and I also picked up Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac Of The Dead
Stephen King's The Long Walk (lotta dead folks in there too)
and Ian McEwan's Saturday (which I finished on a Monday)
and God I swear that plot is so incidental to McEwan
(HE SPENT SEVENTEEN PAGES DESCRIBING A GAME OF SQUASH!)
but I waded through it anyway
I stuck with it cuz that's one of my flaws
giving the benefit of the doubt to
most anyone
till they prove me stupid

which most eventually do...

And I know I'm relinquishing
all claim to literary snobbishness
by telling you this
but I'll guarantee ya Scheherazade
kept things lively and moving
and just like that Persian king
I'm still here
after all this time
starry-eyed and hanging
on every word
with childlike wonder
(or naivete)
waiting to find out what comes next

• 

WILDLIFE

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

Free from the distractions of shame, your body moves
like undulating waves on an oscilloscope.

Time stops in mid sentence like seagulls obliterated on the horizon.

Your perfume is like a soft breeze wafting down from the toxic waste dump.

Do you think the bees sit around all day 
ruminating on to bees or not to bees?

Your breath is like that of a bulldog in heat trying to
scramble over the neighbor's backyard fence.

It's dank down here in the dungeon, waiting for the dragon
to be draggin' his ass back home.

You slink round the barrio like a Siamese cat,
and you listen to Dylan in your leopard skin pillbox hat

I never drink pale ale with a paleface, for fear of reprisals from the Indians.

You drift among the wildlife with their tattoos and their scabs...
 then you come back from the beach full of sand and the crabs.

She had a cleft palate, but it worked just fine for mixing colors.

You roll your eyes like Dionysius  taking in the graffiti on the crapper stall wall while stopping at the gas station to ask for directions to Syracuse.

Old Mayan Proverb: To be successful, 
you've got to make some sacrifices along the way.

I once saw Napoleon's shriveled penis on display at a museum.
It should be noted that they kept it pretty cold in there.

Come and sit, my pet, and I will adjust your flea collar.

Put two and two together and you may have more than you bargained four.

Chimpanzees are almost human. And so are you.

Sometimes I think I'm just too nice to you.

Oh lookit...there goes a person I will never know. And another. 
And another. Disappearing 'round the corner. I wonder if it's too late.

Why do some cats eat plastic...why do some dogs eat shit?
Why do we try to put a square peg in a round hole when it really doesn't fit?

If you lived in Denmark, you'd surely be rotten...
and when I'm senile, you'll be the first to be forgotten.

Some days I really do think I'm too nice to you.

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads