These strange fellows
Still record on videotape
Abroad an outdated
Insufficient spacecraft
The shape of
An interstellar bowling alley

By night they hunt for
New age wine
Radio waves
And a slew of hitchhikers

Some they greet
Some they cheat
Some they mistreat
Some they eat

Convenient store gangbusters
Crop circling has seen its better day
Soundtrack enthusiasts
They've a score to settle
With John Williams

They came from a fruitless world
In search of pomegranate skies
And the Big Apple
Even from the far flung
Reaches of space
Everyone's an actor

Some they unseat
Some they beat
Some they reheat
Some they eat

We're odd to them
Because they're gods to us
In a technologically challenged
Unidentified flying object

It's not war they want
Nor invasion
Just dinner theatre
And a reliable map

Daddy belongs to
an exclusive club,
out beyond
the rules of atmospheric
pressure.

On our precocious little fingers
we count,
on tracer paper
Mommy checks our figures.
Being she was never clever
with math,
she consults with the slide rule.

No crystal ball needed,
we all know where Daddy's been:
at the apogee of his ride,
hanging out in zero orbit,
checking
on his own figures.

He must be
lonely up there, fishing off the dock of a satellite,
until the moment he reels one in.

He does his best philandering
once we've shuffled off to school
and Mommy's found her solace
underneath
the hairdryer.

She's stopped looking up
at night
to observe the starry heavens.
They only made her cry,
which, in turn, made us cry— for her.

One time we heard Mommy tell Daddy
she knew all about his long division
and how he misused
his slipstick.

With the cruel turn of a smile
he reminded her
her math is routinely
wrong.

"Usually...but not always,"
Mommy whispers in her sleep.

Tomorrow is lift off again
for Daddy,
hunting exponentials
from
heavenly bodies.

For us,
the ones left behind in the wake
of his rocket trail,
it's
addition by subtraction.

"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor.
That's my dream. It's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering,
along the edge of a straight razor … and surviving."
–  Col. Kurtz, Apocalypse Now
~

Remember
the golden age, Wally ***?
And the songs
my mother taught me?

We sang about what was.
Or might never be.

Like permanency.
Distinction comes
out of stiff and frozen silences.
Take it with
a spoonful of disdain.
Take it in the eye.
Actors are like breakfast cereals.
They're obvious
and according to taste.
I stopped needing them
long ago.

Beautiful
Tallulah.
Beautiful,
"less to this than
meets the eye"
Tallulah,
dismiss me,
that I may be free
to find Tennessee.

Open windows
and closing doors.
Always a breeze,
but never a way out.
Right on cue
the cards shuffle.

Butter and cotton *****,
tricks of the trade.
I mumble to be heard.
I am legend
to disciples
of the Method.

I wear my friends to bed,
burn them like newspaper.
They call me "Bud"
—cigarettes at dawn
after devouring the night.
And now my song ebbs,
as the stylus hits the leadout groove.

Tomorrow, I'll be better.
Today, I'm just me.

~
This forbidden city
walks on water,
keeps all the undesirables at bay,
it's always a balancing act.

Oh, blighted court
of Catherine the Great,
thy friends are having a hard time,
but horsing around, no less.

Enlightened by summer drugs,
and busting out of
their tops and castles,
thongs on thy feet,
and thongs on thy bottoms,
this zenith and this nadir
come in colorful collages,
everything else is a flash of flesh.

Sped along by
frequent bloodletting,
there's a revolution in
thy teenage mind,
a looking for the hidden
and interested motives,
but no one can live
their life on the skis.

Rulership of heart is far
from recreation,
but you raised
a smile to sin,
until all we could do was
shake our heads and laugh.
~