I thought the guy dressed up like a kingfisher
Didn’t really look like a kingfisher
His beak too long
His legs not yellow enough

But still he did a pretty good job of diving into the water
And coming up with a guy dressed up like a fish
Even though his fins looked a little too stiff to me
(No wonder the kingfisher caught him)

And the bull facing that matador
(who even had a pigtail like the one Hemingway kept mentioning --
Oh, I mean the real man not the man dressed as a bull)
He just looked too scared for a bull
Well that’s what I thought
And I’ve been to a lot of bullfights
Real bulls got more bravery than that
Sure they’re confused
But I’ve never seen one turn tail and run
Oh yeah -- and he forgot to put a tail on his bull suit

All in all it was a wash wasn’t it
Wetter than the guy in the kingfisher suit.
Still it was nice for us to dress up in animal costumes
To give the animals at least one day to have a day off

Maybe next year we’ll figure it out better
Both in our costuming and their cries

The rock slept
Genghis Khan clamped fingers
Over the edge of a land mass
And peeled freedom away from the East

The rock slept
The mob beheaded a woman who aided the American Revolution
Americans denied it later
But every town called Marietta is named after her

The rock slept
A vegetarian who didn’t drink and smoke
Commandeered information technology and chemical engineering
To commit the biggest ******-robbery
In the history of daylight and star-shine

The rock slept
The vegetarian cowered from justice
Committed suicide like the milksop/milquetoast he was

The rock slept
A fourteen-year-old boy clamped his fingers
Around it
Aimed it at High Strength Lexan riot shields
Protecting flesh, blood, and bone minimally paid
Protecting shields of numbers, theories, interchangeable office holders

Until he realized the futility of it
Dropped the rock
Turned south (or maybe north)
And walked away

The rock slept
Snoring unheard through the next spurt of tyranny

I pick up this book of Robert Burns poems
As my great-grandfather picked it up a hundred years ago
I put it down in exasperation
As I guess he put it down

Promising himself
As I promise myself
To give that sentimental Scot
(getting teary-eyed over a mouse)
One more chance maybe

1912
2012

The numbers swirl
As numbers can do

And I find myself
Talking to this man I never met

At a loss for small talk I just say,
“Hey, did you know I googled your surname and my middle name
And our roots are in the Isle of Wight.”

He smirked
Then took me out to his front yard
(If they had front yards back then)
Pressed his hand in the soil
Grabbed something
Hefted it
Pulled on it
And said to me,
“They’re in Texas now.”

Standing on the 10th floor
Staring through a freshly cleaned spotless picture window
At a layer of snow
Over what I remember as
A sidewalk marred with no cracks or graffiti
A lawn going crisp and brown
A street with no potholes
Invaded by a striding
Vertical pile
Of winterwear
Heavy coat scarf ski mask toboggan cap jeans hiking boots
Leather gloves
Sacks of groceries dangling
Like earrings
To preside over a night on the town

Every employee's name was listed in the address field
Except for one
The one I never noticed
That we never noticed

We all marched into the meeting room as ordered
Found the CEO on an extra tall stage
To tell us
"Today is Emma McGurk's last day
But she says it's the first day
Of her tenure
As Director of Forecasting of Unintended Consequences
She's not going
So I need all of you, all 300 of you,
To help me terminator."
(Or was that terminate her?)

So we gave each other Brady Bunch nods
I had to look up to make eye contact (or is that I contact?) with superiors
Then we marched to
The cubicle of Emma McGurk
Me remembering what Santa Ana had said:
"With a few hundred more men like the San
Patricios, Mexico would have won the battle."

And the battle wasn't to be won by us
It was to be won by Emma McGurk
The CEO tried to move her
Ten of us tried to move her
Then one hundred
And then all three hundred
Even I made an effort
But she wouldn't budge

So we had to move...
To another building
Hearing that Emma McGurk was still ensconced
In the position existing only in her noggin
Until finally the old building had to be imploded
A fifth-grader winning the honor of triggering
That dusty downfall of Emma McGurk's cubicle
And the building that sheltered it

It wasn't until Signing Day Eve
That I saw her again
Pouring ink at a haiku-con
"The pay wouldn't be that bad," she told me.
"If it was by the snicker instead of the word."

We clocked in
(Punched in the older guys said)
And sat in a circle of orange plastic chairs
Hubbed by a thin morose
Befuddlement of a team lead

“An hour, just what is an hour?” he asked to begin the weekly meeting
I wanted to say, “A unit of temporal measurement that comprises -- or is that composes? -- sixty minutes,”
But held back
Knowing the obviousness of the query had to be a set-up

The befuddlement sighed in frustration
An understudy to my English III instructor
(the one who gave me an F- on the Emily Dickinson test)
Then said, “Okay, just what can be done in an hour?”

Then the youngest kid who always kept quiet
But who had enough scars -- had to toss in a lurid touch didn’t I --
To imply that he might have more experience than the oldest said,
“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay, then just what is that contraption on the other side of the bay?”

“An assembly line.”

“And what does it do?”

“It makes a 30centaurpower indivertible that runs on Gila monster spit.”

He nodded.

He considered.

“Okay, then, let’s punch out and come back tomorrow. Maybe then we’ll really have something to do.”

(And - oh yeah -- putting on my hat as a frustrated teleplay writer:
Those scars showed that he could handle himself.)

The rust-colored rooster
Hemmed in by rusted mesh wire
The white crane
Looking down on a floor of white clouds
One is boastful
The other humble

On August 31, 2012
at 1:44 PM
Tom bought
Value Meal
VM
Whopper
No Onion
Small Fries
Small Soda
Coke
For $6.27
From Jorge
and then went to the North Village Branch of the Austin Public Library
to check out
Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero
Returning it undamaged, unmarked
So I could check it out
At 15:31
On September 7, 2012

I was just being silly in art class
Me a comedian at age 11
But then on the lawn outside
The kid I thought was my friend
Told me he wanted to fight me
Because he hated me for being a fool
So we grappled shoulders, wrestled
Rolled on the ground
It wasn't much of a fight
But I was still sad that he hated me

Years later I heard he became a doctor
A psychiatrist perhaps
And if he meets a bipolar in a manic state
He says, "Do you wanna fight me?"
So they grapple shoulders, wrestle
Roll on the ground
Maybe one of them,
Maybe both of them
Feel better afterwards

Waitress carrying
Table in from sidewalk smiles
At a skateboarder

Is our ancestors' past echoed
When a hipster
With round ear plugs
A round peace sign
A round cigarette
Glares at me
And dismisses my drab appearance
My functional front shirt pocket
With a plastic protector
And work badge
As what else…

I walk these streets
Where my grandfather walked
From a town on the other side of the state
I walk these streets
Where my father walked
From a town on the other side of the country
And sometimes I can hear my grandfather shouting
Saying, "Do you think this concrete ever gets softer?"
And my father -- his son in law -- turns around
And even though the two of them never met
He replies
No I don't.

The street named after the Spaniard who discovered the Pacific

The drive named after the Spaniard who conquered Mexico

The lane named after the Spaniard who blessed the Americas’ first Thanksgiving

Yielded enough rubber bands from newspapers

To twine a ball

Round enough

Bouncy enough

For a good game of stickball

Until the kid tasked

With finding rubber bands

From the circle named after the Spaniard who painted pictures

An oddball among all those adventurers

And a cluster of dwellings that didn’t subscribe

To rolls of paper

Hit it into the backyard with the dog on a chain

But fear kept us on a chain

As we stood over the rock wall

Looking for a manila spot

On unwatered St. Augustine

And spotting it

Disdaining it for

The angry barks

Bared teeth of the restrained beast

Letting it wait

For an archeologist centuries hence

(Maybe even a few decades from then)

To find it and marvel

“Even back then humans played games -- or so we assume --

With round objects.”

Meagan, Quidnishia, and Pam marched in
Dressed to the nines
(Unlike the other 5-daze)
Amens traded for
"How may I help you today?"

Coo -- cue? -- of mourning
Doves -- day begins -- Hoot of the
Owl starts a new night

Sleeved out with tats
a stud in her nose
tailgating me
in a yellow Mustang
Common blaring
born in 1900
met him in 1855
lost him in 1942
still mourning
still morning
as she throws rocks at wolf cubs
to get to the strawberries
because
for a good meal
call a gatheress
Ancestress
of both
the killers
and the killed

It was a Monday in November 1971
A cloudy afternoon
When the school sent me and another kid out to find work
As part of our vocational-ed class

My companion said, Hey, let's go to Louie's
So we wandered way down near downtown
And I was happy to find myself in an apartment rented by two kids
The first time I had been in a place emancipated from adult suzerainty

We didn't do much
Just listened to albums
Until the evening finally lazed in
And I had to get back on the highway and hitchhike back alone
(I was surprised to learn my companion lived in that far-flung area where we had wandered)

A grim thirtyish woman picked me up
Told me she was going to a job interview
Then she said, "Nah, I'm not going to that interview.
I don't want that job."

So she dropped me off
And made a U-turn

One night after work
A bunch of the guys in the call center
Invited me out for drinks/ice cream/book group
Or something
And though I was sure it was a set up
To get back at me
For having squishy shoes and a dry wit
I went along
First we went to a tiger-kitten fight
I advised betting on the tiger
But they bet on the hundred kittens
ranged against the representative of Siberia
But the kittens lazed where they were
And the tiger fell asleep
No fight
We all got our money back
I said I bet we can win at something
And so we went to a horse race
Lined up was a cayuse, an appaloosa, a Claybank Dun, a Tennessee walking horse, even a Przewalski's horse (aka a Dzungarian)
But the equine competitors just stood in their places
And we were told:
"The race isn't to see which one is fastest. It's to see which one is most long-lived."
A crowd stood around
Waiting to see which one would drop first
But we got tired
And went to a football game
Between the El Paso Patrones
And the Gun Barrel City Daggers
Somehow the ball got lost somewhere
Disappeared into the ground
At least some went digging for it
Or floated up in the sky
Some went jumping for it
But a man who wore a size 15 volunteered his left shoe as replacement
And the game resumed
The El Paso Patrones winning by one-fourth of a point
I then bid my workmates good-bye
Surprised I hadn't been set up for some sort of humiliation
And went sauntering somewhere
Until I found size 15 footprints of a man hopping on one foot in the mud
I idly followed them until I came to
the ravine that separates
misers who hoard silver
from seekers who sift through Coke bottles
And figured that if he could jump across
Hopping on one shod foot
I could do the same
Hoping with two

I'm happy to have a fulfilling job
The only time I'm not happy
Is when I consider how so many
Have unfulfilling jobs to
Support my fulfilling job

Like for instance
There's the guy who shines my shoes twice a day
That's because I have to kick things
And I need good-looking shoes for that
He shines my shoes with a smile
On his face or somewhere on his body
But I can't believe he finds his job as fulfilling as I find my job
When I get to kick something

There's also the guy who looks after my health
At first he was just my taster
Making sure no one poisons me
But then his duties were extended
Up to including reading
The Possible Side Effects
Of all my medications

And there he saw it one day:
And said
“It says here that one possible side effect of this medicine is the delusion that you have a fulfilling job when you don't have such a fulfilling job.”
And then it all went ****

And I found myself back to working an unfulfilling job
Now I just hope I can remember how to do it
Because a long line of angry customers is forming somewhere in relation to where I am positioned now

Footstep 1: It's the biggest mountain in the entire state

Footstep 2: Do I really think I can climb it?

Footstep 3: I bought these boots just to climb it

Footstep 4: Or maybe I should have bought new lungs

Footstep 5: Just start walking forward; just take one step

Footstep 6: Okay so I'm walking, but it's flat ground

Footstep 7: It's going to get harder and more harder

Footstep 8: Still I'm walking forward, it's just eight footsteps

Footstep 9: But still I'm moving, that mountain is waiting

Footstep 10: Don't worry, top of the mountain, be patient

I meet a lot of people
Who talk about the books they read
Mentioning titles that impress me
Praising authors beyond my degraded tastes

Yet I never run into these avid readers
At the bookstore I frequent
At the library branch I visit once a week
Hoping nonetheless

For that meeting cute
When I cinematically place my hand
on that book I've been eager to read
And she puts her hand above mine

And I say Go on -- you check it out
I'll get it when you're finished
Even though I know and she knows
That she plans to never return it

I remember my dad and his friend playing Frisbee in the street
I remember how gently my dad's friend tossed it and how fiercely my dad caught it

I remember my dad and his friend listening to a jazz record
I remember how avidly my dad's friend tapped his shined shoe to it and how patiently my dad watched it spin around

I remember my dad and his friend driving in a convertible
I remember how carefully my dad's friend drove and how hopefully my dad stared into the horizon

We live in a town with an Indian name
An Indian name from a language that's no longer spoken
An Indian name from a people who may no longer exist

Sometimes someone will say what the name of our town means in the Indian language
And we'll marvel at that
More likely we'll just laugh

Because our town is nothing like the way the Indians said it is
It's a place with a lot of fast-food restaurants
And it's a place with a lot of sit-down restaurants where you can't buy anything that costs less than $40

If we leave this town
Sometimes we'll talk about how we're from this town
Or how we're going back to this town
And then when we get back there maybe
We'll get a call from a telemarketer who can't pronounce the name of our town
That's not how you say it we'll say
It's...

And that will be one of the only times that a word from this Indian language is ever said

I saw an acorn
In the corner of the men's room
Kicked in randomly I guess
By workers rushing to escape
Another tardy


So I picked it up
Carried it outside
And tossed it randomly
On the corporate front lawn
Next to where the executives park

Then I waited to see if a tree would grow

I wandered through an empty village
Or amid the litter of a debauched celebration (for a triumph that was only poses)
And then (as a parenthesis between my lonely stumblings) before my visage
Was a mother cultivating three children as a gardener tends his roses
She spotted me, stopped me, and said,
“Stranger, all I ask is that if you find the home of a kindly settler
Who offers you a bed
Or find a summit that shows all the land’s dangers and comforts like a peddler,
Please make a sign or some kind of mark to indicate so,
For one day my children will be walking your lonely trail.”
I told her that if I was lucky enough to find such I would somehow let them know
“I wish you Godspeed in the hope you will not fail.”
“And for showing such kindness to a homeless wanderer I thank you.”
I walked on and she did not watch after me as I disappeared into the new

Stupid
Lazy
Slow
Confused
Incompetent
That’s what you want to call me, don’t you
She said with a mouth that sounded as if it wasn’t accustomed to such aggression

Hungry
Tired
Scared
Unsure
But
Persistent
That’s what I want to call you, I said
With a mouth that sounded as if it wasn’t accustomed to such sympathy

December 1970
I'm 14
Stuck at my grandma's
Tired of the drone of Howard Cosell
I go walking
Jim + Lydia etched on a square
Then up ahead
A dude ten years older at least
Just the age I look up to
But this one holding by the hand
A little girl ten years my junior
"Where's the doggie?"
"It's in the..."
His words fade.

December 2010
I'm 54
Paused in this city where my grandmother lived
Tired of the drone of NPR
I get out
Pass the old house
Hands held up against the memories
Jim + Lydia 40 years on -- Still together? I'd like to ask
Then up ahead
An elderly man 10 years my senior
And a woman 10 years my junior
"Look, they put stained glass on their alcove."
"Yeah, they decided to..."
His words fade.

A long red light
Kick the kickstand down
Lift up your legs
Form into a lotus pose
Palms out to the sun
Meditate

Green light
Kick up the kickstand
Quick turn left
Quick turn right

Into the lane
Graced by a handpainted sign:
Welcome
Noon
AA Meeting

"Do you have any smokes?"
The kid in the Afro asks me.
"No, I don't,"
I tell him.
"Ah, this sun is nice,"
says the woman with what sounds like an African accent.
"Look, Mama, I'm riding him,"
shouts the boy on the sculpture of the frog reading a book
to its spawn.
Then the front door opens
And we walk into the quiet room.

They said hang him high
So they cleared the woods
West of the dried up creek
And the forest
North of the blasted mill

To build a gallows
With a thousand stairs
Some said two thousand
While the master carpenter said
He lost count

So we crowded
To watch the hangman
Escort the condemned up
And we watched them
Rise and ascend

Until they disappeared into the clouds
And we waited to see the body drop
And the hangman descend
But neither appeared
Then the gallows came crashing down

And all we could find in the pile
Were boards, nails, and a noose
But the hangman, the condemned
Or any remnants of them
were nowhere to be seen

Looking out the call-
center window I see blue
jays and cardinals

I saw a slim snake
slither and surmised that such
sparked the letter S

I went to a European restaurant recently
and it may have been in Europe too
It wasn't a bad meal
And the waiter presented me with a bill crowded with euros
Or maybe pounds
I looked at it
Then said to him
"How about paying me the bill you owe me?"
He gawked at me.
"How about paying me the bill for serving as your pressure valve. Do you know how many insurrections, how many assassinations we prevented by taking in your frustrated and disaffected?"
He continued to gawk at me.
So I continued.
"No, really. Do you know how much you owe us for saving you from the Kaiser, from ******, from Mussolini, from who knows how many more crazies?"
He gawked, not knowing whether to call the gendarmes or reach into his billfold.
I continued.
"How about the bill you owe us for showing some restraint? You know we could have hanged every **** and Fascist officer over colonel at least? But we didn't. Instead we turned them into Siemens executives and Fiat general managers."
He still gawked, poised to jump for a phone or maybe just shout real loud.
So I continued.
"How about the bill for making your mediocre artists into rich men and women? You know it's us who turned Abba into stars. It's us who built the Scorpions' mansions."
He finally said something.
"Scorpions don't live in mansions. They live in nests."
I got up and left, then paused outside,
rested the left sole of my Ferragamo shoes on a Ferro Concrete wall
And waited to get arrested by cops without guns

Let's walk across this slippery floor holding hands
And see which of us falls first
Maybe in a moment of playful competition
You'll nudge me
Or I'll nudge you
But I'll grab you before you fall
Or you'll grab me

If we make it to the other side
Let's head back on our hands and knees
(Except then we can't hold hands
You say with your wheezy staccato laugh)

We got out of the car and went to a field that I oddly thought might have made a good place to play baseball or football or soccer even though I never play sports anymore or never really did even as a kid.

I sat on my haunches and...
wondered what was I going to say to her in that long thick silence.

It was night and I heard no cries or calls of animals or machines.

I hoped that Gina wondered the same thing.

I remembered as a boy getting so bored I’d dig a hole that looked something like this         and then I would fill it up again so it looked somethinglikethis just for something to do.

I wondered if Gina had ever dug a hole in her life.

Admittedly, it was a strange thing to wonder.

Big bird the toddler
Shouted but no one looked at
The heron flying

I aim my camera at the cage
wondering where the challenge ran off to
as the creature stands helplessly
like a lightweight squaring off against a circling heavyweight

Sittin' in the 50's
Listenin' to the 60's

You mean decades?
Nah.

A series of streets in Manhattan then?
Nope.

Then a weather trend: This week we'll be in the 50's
but next week it's –
Not even.

I'm talking about the help-desk ranch
(Yes that's what they call it and I probably don't want to know why)
Sittin' in the cubicles numbered 50 to 59
with a bunch of guys stolid durable focused

Am I the only one of them listening to the girls in the 60's
Those lilts, those shatters of laughter
(or laughters of shatter)

Hearing it begin with “Girl!...”
And a punctuation mark and three dots
Never smelled so nice off the page
Never promised so much

And then:
“Thank you for calling IT support. This is Quadnishia. Is this a new or an existing issue?”
And then the spell is broken.

At the 80s dance party
I saw the English teacher
Who gave me an F- for
The Emily Dickinson test

Dancing with his eyes shut
Flailing his arms hard enough
To bruise someone
To a song that I hated when it first came out in 1985

But now I liked it
And so I started dancing
Just by myself like the teacher

And if Emily had asked if she could have
Danced with me
I would have thought

Hey, she asked me
But she didn't ask him

Don't go to school for knowledge, Granddad said
Good teachers
Leave you wondering
The best
Keep you mystified

Through the plate-glass window
Of the Fire Bowl Cafe
I see three women in royal-blue scrubs
Triangulated on the parking lot

One holds a *** of yellow flowers
Thankful
Appreciated
Smiling like I haven't seen anyone smile all day that day
(Not even in the movie I just saw)

They distriangulate
And I watch the appreciated one
Put her *** of flowers on the asphalt next to her SUV
I wait for her to open the back door and put them in
But she doesn't
She just drives away

And leaves them there
Yellow and blue
Becoming yellow and black
As I wait for her to return
As I wait for a stranger to stop and steal them
Finally I get up
And leave

Only an hour left
of summer, a cicada
issues its last call

We walked underneath
Branches dancing with the wind
Yet never looked up

“Oh, my husband has been ill. He just got out of the hospital.”

An unneeded apology for the elderly man's labored pace

I didn't but I should have told the elderly woman that I was in no hurry to collect their newspaper subscription.

I stood patiently

As 40 years passed

And somehow I remembered that old man and old woman in an apartment complex set back in the
desert

Reading about the fall of Saigon, the Mayaguez, Ford to New York: Drop Dead

Fading away

Their names no longer spoken

Like Saigon, Mayaguez, Ford

Only New York persevering

In the same place maybe where

I spot a flicker and a shadow

A young boy and young girl holding hands

A baby girl smiles
As a young girl scowls and a
Crone grins circling through

Look at him
Carrying
A book
Like he hopes it will get away from him.
A textbook for a hated class?
(I try to read the title on the spine, but can't make it out.)

Look at her
Clutching
Her purse
Like she fears someone will grab it from her.
(I wonder if whatever it holds is worth all that tension.)

Look at them
Holding hands
Like they know neither of them will get away from each other.

We had to be there at our moms’ art show
It’s okay sitting around with Ed
But it gets kind of boring
Then the parking-lot attendant got a Coke in a bottle
For his break
Drank it down in fifteen minutes and left it out on the picnic table out front
I threw a rock at it and missed
Ed threw a rock at it and missed
I threw a rock at it and missed
Ed threw a rock at it and missed
I threw a rock at it and smashed it into at least about fifty big and little pieces
I laughed
Ed laughed
Then we went inside
Found a trashcan
And picked up the pieces
And dropped them in
Years later I was still thinking about it
Wondering if we missed a piece
Even just a little piece
And someone sat down on it
Because just a few weeks later
I’d learn that it’s just the littlest things
(That can cut the deepest)

America started working out
Hit the gym every other day
Jogged on the others
Ended up losing 50 nuclear bombs

Russia said, "You're looking good
How do you do it?
I keep trying and trying
And the weight stays."

Iran patted its paunch and frowned,
"You and me both."

Poem scrawled on the back of a MENS Step-Study Sign Up sheet left in a library book, The Use and Abuse of Literature, I checked out today:

The sleeper, though eyes closed and lying
Supine, awakens later only halfly and
The shape of the dawn comes in
Heavy ladders, steel beams
Slabs drying white to gray as they
Harden -- and feels as though
He slept not at all when the
Night was spent in dreams
Of

Trudging up a hill
With a buggy a mom moves
Her baby forward