In the butcher shop
Bob sees Salvador
Dali, who is carving
a life size figure of
a woman from a side
of beef. When finished
Dali whispers in
her ear the question,
“How do I obtain
a clear mind?” Bob and
Dali wait for an
answer. She is silent.
Bob eventually
gives up, but whenever
he visits the butcher
shop he sees Dali,
sitting, his limpid eyes
wide open, waiting
for the answer
from the woman
of his vivid dreams.

The dog howls
as a dark cloud
slowly passes
overhead, then
lays down, curled-
up, tail wagging
waiting for all to
be still and bright.

She’s renovating
the old house.

The kids are
making costumes

—he’s a ghost,
she’s Cinderella.

The apple tree,
recently dressed

in red and green, is
now nearly naked.

The verbs are living in
caves on mountain tops.

You can only call your-
self on the telephone.

The nouns are wearing costumes
to look like you, or the place

where you live, or the thing
that you bought recently.

Your mail is being spell-
checked by smiling burglars

who ply their trade by
strolling through the front door.

Adjectives have a dress code;
blue suit, white shirt, red tie.

Everywhere you sit there
is a whoopee cushion

that makes a long
repetitive mechanical laugh.

How to describe
awareness: deploy

an adjective and  
a noun that say

nothing, then depict
a keen eyed hunting

dog, then an immense
space, then draw a cat,

slowly on the
prowl, and label it

a verb, then a
sentence about the

vast beauty of the sea
that is left incomplete

because it is so

The sky is
icy and blank.
There is no
one visible,

anywhere.
A phone rings,
from some muffled,

distant location,
as the garage
door
mechanically

lowers.
I stand near
the heater,

gazing out of
the window.
Everything
is stark and

frozen,
like printed
words on a page.

I am sitting on a branch,
near the tree’s top, next to

a Capuchin monkey and
we are watching a man

wrestling an alligator. In
the distance an industrial

truck belches black smoke
as it nearly runs into a

very old man slowly crossing
the intersection. Then the

monkey says, Looks like the
dude’s got the alligator in

a choke hold. And I say,
The old guy barely made

it across the street. Then
the alligator gets free and

scurries away, but gets run
over by the truck. ****, says

the monkey, then, I got a
job, working with a private

investigator. The monkey
peels a banana and hands

me a piece as I ask, Doing
what? The monkey looks me

in the eye and says, Help
solve crimes. I say, Sounds

like a TV show, and the
monkey replies, Yeah, very

much like a television show.
And we watch the old man

very slowly amble down the
street—until he is gone.

The minotaur, trapped for many
years in a labyrinth, is the
sailing master, pilot of the
ship. His mother, a depressed
biologist, is below deck,

lamenting the loss of her
husband, a bull who was
killed by a matador—now a
pirate, chief executive of an
international fast-food company.

The rigger, master of the sails,
tracker of air and ocean
currents, hermaphroditic,
was a juggler, a high-wire
walker in the traveling  circus.

The look-out, with telescope,
in the crow’s nest. An orphan,
raised in a Taoist monastery.
Describes his life as a
journey of wandering solitude,

All looking for—refuge—
a place to live, to be,
an island with fresh fruit,
not sinking into the sea,
and not on any pirate’s map.

I am the dead
woman slumped
against the shower

wall—don’t know
why, but I simply
stopped breathing,

and the water’s pelting
my face, as the dog
sits, staring at me,

as I recall how much
I hated my job,
all the politics, and

the dog is licking
my face, wondering
when I’m going to

go to the kitchen
and feed her, as my
husband is waking,

expecting his
breakfast to already
be on the table.

The sun illuminating
one side of her face. An

argument with her sister
rattling around in her

head like a baby’s toy.
On the counter, a plastic

bottle whose contour is
like an exaggerated

shape of a woman.
A glass of cool water

in her hot, angry hand.
She stands before the

paper-white wall, her
shadow slowly forming.

I am in the house and will be
leaving in a few minutes to
take a walk. Not much on my

mind. The sky is clear and
radiantly blue. The world is
in chaos, as usual. I am old

and at some point in the not
too distant future, I will be
dead and gone. It is spring.

Fall into that
hole in the shape
of your body

and keep
falling until
you reach a

silent, empty
space, where words
have lost their

use, and emotions
pass through,
like tourists

and your name
has a hollow
ring to it.

The Minister Of State
reads the speech
dictated by the toiling

titan of industry,
inventor of the gadget
that everyone needs,

while titan’s wife, the
Baroness, though
talented with an

umbrella and tweezers,
sits idly waiting for a
delivery from the

publicist, who works
into the long night,
crafting the narrative

that all of us fall
into, like the words
in this sentence.

A ***** martini
in the shape of
a Christmas tree,
a Christmas tree
in the shape of
a cup of coffee,
a cup of coffee
in the shape of
a gun, a gun
in the shape of
a man, a man
in the shape of
a ***** martini.

that's the beauty of attention.

They are on a mountain
at the edge of the world,

on her white parachute
draped on the ground under

the cherry blossom trees,
naked, vulnerable, while

down in the valley the
trees are on fire, even as

the oceans are swelling
and flooding the coasts,

and they feel the fever
in the air, the infection

in the atmosphere, and
as soon as they patch

his balloon and ignite
the flame, it will float

away in the hazy air,
to who knows where.

Like everyone in
this place, he’s a
cowboy, riding the
digitized horse, writing

his self-styled myth
with spray paint and
gasoline, a fire
breather, and always

off balance as his
head is seven times
too big for his
body, which, for some

reason, he believes can
be compensated for
by talking very loudly
and continuously, he’s

the sheriff of Main
Street, a seer of
the nonexistent, a
near-sighted marksman,

but in reality, like
most of us, he
is just another version
of a rodeo clown.

Maybe I’m a fraud,
maybe I’m not the
guy who empties the
trash bins, maybe I’m
a theoretical
physicist failing
to piece together
a story of
everything, maybe
my wife is really
dead and I am in
love with a memory,
or maybe I’m the
guy who has a gun
loaded with blanks
ready to fire at
anything that moves.

My little boat and I,
tossed like a juggler’s
eggs, then into the sea,

and as I stagger onto
the beach I see her,
June, my next door  

neighbor who is 95
years old, but somehow
now looks 25, reclining

under the blackest night
sky, as she says, You
survived, the last three

folks went under—and
if you’re going to speak
keep it under 100 syllables,

past that it’s just babbling—
so I sit next to her,
she holds my hand,

my mind goes quiet,
and I can’t think of
anything worth saying.

I am assembling
a new gray tweed
suit. The plodding,

solitary elephant is
wandering on a dark
road. I am not an I.

Pinocchio is missing
an arm and speeding
in a big truck. I am

an eye that floats
overhead, smaller
than a pin-point,

nothing really.
In the murky
night Pinocchio

hurtles toward the
idle elephant, but
swerves at the last

moment, then I’m
wearing the tweed
suit, even though

it’s missing a
sleeve, and all three
of its ivory buttons.

A fly buzzes
madly around

the room, and
ricochets off the

mirror, then
ricochets off the

window, then
lands on a leaf

in a painting
and it resides

there for the
remainder of its

incredibly brief,
minuscule life.

A statuette of Durga,
alluring goddess of

divine destruction
and new creation,

in her sky blue and
cloudy white robes,

on a shelf above the
swirling gray smoke of

a burning unfiltered
cigarette in the

sunny orange ashtray
on the kitchen table-

top the color of the
churning stormy sea.

Glide, loop, float
gulls on a
crisp breeze.

Trudging with
groceries, an
elderly man.

Dim blue glow,
a clock—what
this long in-

complete life
sees in the
wondering dark.

Death, so close
to the mail-
box at noon.

Glide, loop, float
gulls on a
crisp breeze.

The man in the
cellar is forging
the books of

history, as the
ghost in the attic
is starting to

realize that he
is dead, and the
piano tuner in

the den is an
international
spy, and the corpse

is in the trunk of
the car in the vermin
ruled alley and the

ghost sees that he
can simply leave
this world, which

he suddenly does
and all of this—
instantly left behind.

There isn’t a
single

soul on
any of

these dark
deserted

streets,
in these

sleeping
homes, in this

barren
parking lot,

in these
abandoned

stores in
a failed

mall, in
these lifeless

restaurants, and
I don’t know

where I
am or how

to locate
myself on

this dank moon-
less night.

the poet on his
knees holding a

jack-o-lantern
above his head

as the Great
Leader steps

behind it with
its crooked smile

obscuring his
head the eclipsed

blood moon hangs
over the Fool in

green and red
dancer’s tights

holding his book
Chaos Theory—

The Order Within
Disorder and he

opens the gate
of the lion’s cage

and distant
twisting

black smoke
swirling

fires of war
as translucent

Celestial Beings
hold a banner

that reads
Beginnings Are

Endings
below them a

journalist prostrate
in the mud deathly

ill vomiting a
bile black as ink

The drunken shoemaker
falls off his horse late
in the night, and in the
morning awakens to find
all his clothes have been
stolen, except his shoes.

An ardent young
woman captive

in a suburban
basement, now

reported missing
but I’m here

though you don’t
see me, no matter

how loudly I bark                                      
your real name,

sing your secret
needs, or tear

the scab off your
stifled yearning

while you sleep—
I am the obscured

object of your
aching night,

the blackest hole
in your desire.

A salmon now,
I was a man,
a large brain.

My little boat,  
ninth bottle of
beer, trying to

stand, the sun
oppressive,
blinding then

sinking like
a 40 oz can
of malt liquor.

What was I
going to do
once I stood

*****? During
the pondering
I drowned. Now

swimming
back to my
birth-stream to

lay eggs. I may
see lunch, a
worm or herring

then a hook in
my mouth,
I flop onto the

floor of a boat,
one eye looking
up as the

big knife
swiftly
comes down.

ghosts lost have
an aversion

to mirrors
no reflecting

on things
can’t sit still

with music
untenable as

the songs of
sparrows

or the howl
of a house

engulfed
in fire on

a frozen
winter night

Not the knife’s
butcher drunk
in the walk-

in cooler, nor
the finger-
printless gun

in the church
pew next to
a sleepy

hymnal, she
confesses, if
you want to

**** a thing,
strangle its
tender pink

throat—just
give it to
academia.

he enters
timeless
charcoal

suit a hunter’s
ear
just one bullet

point
on a
sheet of

yellowed
paper
filling the

room with
a few tangled
terms

dogs
cats
rain

said with
an amiable
typeface

embattled
masses

somnambulists
foaming at

the mouth
rabid

hallucinating
incurable

and a blurry
figure a

mad scientist
next to his

invention
stainless

steel
automated

animosity as
the thick black

smoke of war
begins to

obscure the
scene a few

yearn to
awaken some

dance the
sacred

kookamunga
some say

the save-me
prayer a scant

few ascend
translucent

eye-ball
shaped the

color of the
sky at sunrise

Like a constipated
mule, the old man
limps toward me

saying, The end is
near—the words
falling from his mouth              

like congealed bacon
fat, then the young
woman emerges from

the churning sea—her
auburn hair, alabaster,
almost translucent

naked skin, fearless
like thunder, casting
a long shadow—The

world ended long
ago, she says, and
we walk onto the

emerald green great
lawn, her in the old
man’s cerulean

sky-colored overcoat,
and she points to the
tower—figures falling

from its large windows—
Fear of truth, she asserts
referring to the bodies

smashing like overly ripe
melons on the ground,
then she says, Your

classroom is on the
sixth floor, and as I
open the heavy door

she states, The class
is on how unnecessary
the class is—then adds

Please do try and not
stumble or trip near
an open window, sir.

a vibrant blue sky
white gulls crying

slowly awaken
naked in

an empty end-
less parking lot

walk past a gray
failed mall onto

a rarely traveled
dirt road at seaside

an old man sitting
perfectly still

in the fading
overcast sun

his wife leads me
to a boat and says

go with the current
it will take you there

the slowly roiling
water gray green

bruise-blue the
sun setting like

a bloodshot
eye closing

I sail into an
unknowable night

as the moon hides
its glowing face

it’s dusk as I
enter the grocery

a jug of distilled
water in my cart

in the cereal aisle
Octavio Paz is

constructing a
boat-shaped

sculpture with cereal                                        
boxes and asks

can we ever
escape this brutal

dream? the air
smells of tequila

and musty pages
of an old book

I say I’m just here
for oat milk and

corn flakes—as my
cart drifts briefly

away from me and
he rushes toward me

kisses my forehead
and leaves the store

tears streaming down
his weary face

he steps out
into the tepid

ambivalent
evening air

the envelope
into the out-

going mail slot
collect the junk

mail ad papers
of an era

already gone
the sky dark

listless clouds
neighborhood

mute asleep
he pauses for

a numb minute
a dog’s long

whiney bark
in the house

he washes the
ink residue

from his
aging hands

I am weighing
the poem and

it’s too heavy
it contains a

great white
shark with a

shoe in its
stomach

don’t know
how it got

there and a
mysterious

envelope
in the mailbox

those stay I
think still when

one looks at the
poem in profile

it resembles a
fat man exiting

a fast food
restaurant

I tried a trash
compactor but

it’s still bulky
maybe the

pregnant woman
should go—it’s

heartbreaking what
happens to her

he’s a man
with his coffee

he’s a ghost
watching him-

self an actor in
a play a

****** mystery
also a slave

toiling in the
fields teaching

himself to read
a woman

murdered the
actor says

I have seen
the large beast

the slave escapes
journeys to the

shimmering sea
pursued by

bounty hunters
the ghost watches

himself wash out
his coffee cup

begins his
day as usual