We are the bearded men in union halls
grown tired of the world as it seems.
Until our demands are met,
there can be no more search for truth.

We’ve grown tired of the world as it seems
from folding chairs in union halls.
There will be no search for truth—
we’ll gaze at our navels and curse.

From folding chairs in union halls
we shall pontificate our malcontent.
We shall gaze at our navels and curse
these indelible holes in the Real.

We shall pontificate our malcontent
at the crack in the wood-paneled wall
that indelible hole in the Real—
it must be filled!

The electric moon in the wall
streams in seductions of blue shadows.
It must be filled!
we cry.

The seductions of electric moonlight
make thinking difficult.
We cry,
but the tears only make un-forgetting harder.

Thinking has become more difficult
with each failed arbitration.
Un-forgetting’s so much harder
when forgetting pays the bills.

All arbitration has failed and
our demands remain unmet.
So long as forgetting pays the bills,
we shall be the tired beards in union halls.

So, it’s three in the morning
and a man in a gorilla suit
is running across my lawn.
Quigley runs figure-eights—yapping, yelping.
The light in McKevitt’s window flickers
on then off—he doesn’t see this ****

stumbling and slopping about the dark yard,
pulling at the plush love handles
of his unwieldy suit—its zipper
just visible in blue moonlight.
He’s trying not to step on the little black dog nipping at his paw.
I pace at the window hoping he will leave.

I pace some more and fumble
at the nightstand for a cigarette.
I beat my chest to scare this thing away
and though I feel foolish, I grunt.
I grunt and expect him to listen to reason—
he doesn’t and collapses near the shed.

Quigley watches him—curiously cocking his head.
He licks the rubber face with his pink tongue
thinking this monkey’s me—not well at all
and sopped in *****.  I get under the cold sheet.
I toss.  I turn.  I curse the ****** ape well into morning.
I hit snooze until I’m sure he’s gone.

This has been going on for weeks
I beat my chest and show my teeth.
I pace the dark room—smoking, grumbling.
I consider buying a bigger dog, a bigger gun.
I send him death threats, then love notes. Nothing works—
I can’t shake this monkey from my back.

So excuse me for calling at this odd hour
to howl about my primate problem—the chimp on my shoulder.
or maybe a bonobo?
(you know, the one that made life with me so hard.)
In any case, he’s my problem now
and tonight he’s knocking at the door

I.

Prideless, they tore railroad men’s brown *******
lurking the thirsty Kenyan banks.
Red moonlight sluiced from brambles and linen skins
pressing upon tawny flesh, igniting fire of feline eye.

Imperious, they patrolled the union jack encampment
lingering in shadows of long-labour’s dreamless sleep
until the smoldering campfire morning
when one hundred hammers lean in one hundred corners.

II.

Maneaters in glass houses can’t throw stony glances—
the power to haunt having run off with the ghost.
Now, they reign over the acrylic savannah
sneering—not out of regal disdain, but mild discomfort
from dust mites nitpicking at tautly taxidermed pelt.

Rebel eyes that halted an empire now cast
dull marble stares at fossils in the floor
and derailed trains of un-terrified school-children
near a hissing robot-box called Mold-A-Rama
spewing magma into plastic tyrannosaurs.

You left nothing, only the Stevens book
That read:  There is not nothing, no, no never…

Nothing and a yellow bicycle:
Two tires on a rickety frame.

When I do pick up a poem,
It’s to hear the gravel cadence of you,

Softer, informed by everything that spins:
A world, a bicycle, a chestnut tumbling

Downhill the city’s painted a roadside path,
My collarbone’s begun to mend.

The house gets drafty late afternoons
So I learn to cook:

Turmeric, cayenne. Hing & coriander.  
cardamom. Cumin & mustard seeds.

Hing’s a pungent flower called asafetida
And corriander’s just cilantro.

Icy fingers spindle wheels on window panes.
I leave the teakettle to boil.

Spokes of trees shiver in the silverish dusk
Taking lessons from everything bare,

I let in the cold to hear
No stones turned in the drive.