for sale in the weed-choked yard
veil not included.
Bar in the back of
a Volkswagon microbus,
chairs on the sidewalk.
Grainy game show plays,
red tissue hearts dangle from
cottage cheese ceiling.
Porcelain dragons
and elves adorned Kimberlee’s
living room shelves
An ivy strangled
picket fence guards the tear drop
travel trailer’s door.
They stand in rubber
boots and smoke cigars, hope to
staunch their bleeding souls.
12-man barracks room
all to himself.
In one of the so-called
“temporary quarters”,
French prefab buildings
left over from the
post World War II
occupation of southern
Germany.
The French went home,
it’s American now, Fort Black Jack.
One of the field bases
for the Pershing missile system.
Live ones. Four of them.
Loaded with nuclear warheads
and ready to launch
with a five minute countdown.
Hassel doesn’t have
a job on a missile crew,
he’s in charge of the armory.
Where they keep the M-16 rifles
and .45 caliber automatic pistols.
He got the job after the previous armorer
accidentally shot himself in the chest
while cleaning or fooling around with a 45.
He lived, but never came back to the base.
Hassel has a good stereo
in that big empty room.
And lots of records.
The floors are hardwood
smoothed by years of wax
and hundreds of soldiers’ feet.
Hassel doesn’t dance.
He watches me and Brown
slide and swirl, our boots
stashed in the corner,
our heads full of primo
Afghani black hash.
Our olive drab GI woolen socks
slide as smooth as ice skates
on the polished wood floor.
And oh, as I turn,
as I live inside the song,
as I reach towards the ceiling
as I close my eyes,
and Jagger sings:
May the good lord, shine a light on you,
Make every song, your favorite tune.
May the good lord, shine a light on you,
Warm, like the evening sun.
of navy barracks building F,
one sparkly sunny Sunday,
Kevin dumped his twenty-six hundred dollar
fatboy bike on the close-mowed weeds.
Sprawled his nonfat self beside it
for a warm January afternoon doze.
He drifted into a eucalyptus scented dream
of whiskey-drinking grizzly bears
and schooners abandoned in the mud.
Black-haired children selling oysters
and strips of dried venison. speckled eggs.
A team of chestnut horses tow a Cadillac with a rope
of braided bed sheets and patriotic bunting.
A troupe of monkeys riding dogs follows close behind.
Their queen, a former governor, blows a red kiss
to the plaid flannel-shirted crowd. And a baby
in a bamboo pram points a pudgy finger
at the jalopies, horses and army trucks
festooned with candy characters
fresh from the evening news.
Kevin woke up staring at a Labrador
whose lolling tongue had dripped
a string of dog drool on his cheek.
The sun blazed on,
and up beyond the friendly lab,
on one of the unbroken windows
of the barracks, Kevin saw
a goat-bearded face with horns
spray painted in blue
on the backside of the dirty glass.
A bluebelly lizard
basking on the warm asphalt
of the driveway
scurried under the deck
in front of the house
when he saw me arrive.
I used to catch them
when i was eight or nine
or forty one. I probably
still could. And without
breaking their tails.
It’s enough to see them now,
the first one of spring
on the driveway.
Bluebellies and poppies,
that’s how I mark spring.
Such variety, such looks!
that's what happens inside:
too much ugly, too much
of the same old venom
lingers on their tongues.
Too much red, white, and blue,
oozes down from tall offices
or up from the street to the clouds.
In need of an update of the limits:
Too many customers shopping
for ammo, coffins, and bunting.
A river of vomit pours out the doors
of courtrooms, from pulpit to podium,
down the steps of the state houses.
Too much pavement, not enough
garden. We’ve had plenty of apple
for now, don’t you think? So familiar
with falling that we forget about grace.
is as warm as a body.
Your body.
No breeze stirs the leaves
of the Dutch elms
on Elm street.
Just the songs of crickets,
and a faraway train
hauling cotton or chemicals.
The smell of wild summer grasses
and wet pavement
where the wild broken sprinkler
spits into the street
after a hundred and five
degree day.
The mud in the garden
between the roses
is cool on my toes.
Something frightens the crickets,
they go silent. And the rumble
of the train has faded away.
All I hear is my breath
until I hold it. Now I hear
my heartbeat. Can’t stop it.
