TOM'S POETRY CHANNEL

CHECK OUT TIME

102.5 fm

(for Dave Morrison)

 

Well my time went so quickly,

I went lickety-splitly

out to my old fifty-five　

knowing that... if I could

save time in a bottle...

the first thing that I’d like to do

is wail goodbye yellow brick road...

you know, take off living to run, and

running to live, never worried about

payin’ or even how much I owed

and go lookin’ for

changes in latitude,

changes in attitude... but

all I really ever do is punch up

102.5

where winter spring summer and fall...

all you have to do is call, and I’ll be...

nibblin' on sponge cake,

watchin' the sun bake

all of those tourists covered with oil

where there’s plenty of room

at the Hotel California...

and the piano, it sounds like

a carnival, and the microphone

smells like a beer... and

you can check out...

any time you like

 

OCTOBER SKY

In pj’s we pad over dewy grass

in the October chill

to mount the ’48 Plymouth

lying like a cold black boulder

under a studded nightvelvet sky

(me on the roof—on my back)

 

And we are early

so it’s like the drive-in movies

dark enough for the impatient horns

to start honking, only we’re not out here

for a comedy or cowboy flick

but something dark, something sci-fi

 

Something Flash Gordonish—

because nothing but the Aurora Borealis,

the random meteor, or the blinking beacon

of your occasional prop-driven airliner

ever moves up there

in our nightsky

 

And so we fidget

waiting on that corner of heaven

we’ve been warned to watch

whispering in hushed reverence

and consulting the big radium-dial

Dad keeps in his pocket

 

When suddenly:

There it is! There! Right there! See it!?

The first untwinkling ‘star’

ever

swimming across the big dipper

plotting a geometrically-precise

 

Straight line and clocking

a faster transit of the firmament

than a four-engine TWA—

stunned with awe, we quietly mouth

the holy word…

 

Sputnik…

I, ROBOT

I sing my body electric

state-of-the-art

luxury sports utilty vehicle

of the species

nothing like me ever was

built like a brick shit house

to last

to take a licking

and keep on ticking

modeled on the redundancy principle

extra brain hemisphere, superfluous

kidney, lung, eye, hand, foot

five senses each with its

software-bundled hardware

connected by spaghetti-tangles of

fiber-optic nerves to the

mother of all boards

and every cell vacuum-packed

with its own copy of the spiro-encrypted

double-helix, micro-schematic

blueprint, and every digit stamped

with its encrypted swirl-pattern

‘scan code’

 

Oh, I’m the quintessential

self-replicating

self-healing

self-cleaning

psycho-medical

chemico-robotic

circuit city wonder—

 

Drop me on an alien planet

and watch:

at one-tenth brain capacity

I’ll invent the wheel

steal fire from the Titans

change water into wine

clone myself, and when there’s

enough of me, enough time

and enough typewriters

we

will compose

Hamlet!

TO LEONARD

“You know who I am…You’ve stared at the sun”  — L. Cohen

 

First irresistibly drawn

that dark winter evening in ’72

by the canticle thrumming

in your deep bass

from the back parlor in somebody’s

long-ago-forgotten farmhouse

 

entrancing me down someone’s

hallway past somebody’s rooms

following slivers of your haunted lyric

the rise and fall of your haunting timbre

your imagery of saintly sins

your harlots and holy sisters—

 

your one-man Gregorian chant

spiraling like spun gold from

the ebony groove on the

turntable altar I found there

and before which I

lingered away the evening

 

shunning hosts and company

and etiquette... and there

some ethereal mystery lady

some Suzanne

fed me“tea and oranges...

all the way from China"

There is

hardwired within me

a harmonic homing device

a gland perhaps

that resonates

“like a drunk in some midnight choir”

 

In response to mystical frequencies

of the darker spiritual wavebands…

that compels me to imprint on them

(like the sunflower that “locks” on the sun)

and to follow as a disciple...

as an apostle—

 

I understand now why moths

consume themselves in flames:

if your voice is fire

“then I

I must

be wood”

BROWN EYED GIRL, 1967

With our opening credits soundtrack,
“Brown-Eyed Girl,” cranking from the radio...
three carloads of us rolling into St. George
under a Canadian sunset promising to swallow us whole
in a big neon night of “big Molson!”
and  getting to practice our 3rd-year leçons Française:
“Ou… est… la salle …de bains?”
and the leering bartender taunting,
“You are saying what,eh?
— You wish to take a bath?”

And Jack hauling his sudden “difference of opinion”
with the “goddamn frog” who'd
dançez’d  betty while we were in “la salle”
out onto the veranda, and me
now the drunken peacemaker:
“Jackie Jackie Jackie! We are in a foreign
country, for crying out loud!”

And the night never disappointing us
drinking our way into someone’s lavish
governor’s-mansion wedding reception,
each of us reveling by then in his very own
Sun Also Rises’ Pamplona
sashaying right into the reception line
doling out hugs and handshakes:
instant siblings of the bride...

And in the end, stranding only one ugly American
who wandered away and failed to return
by the Cinderella hour—
leaving him way up there
in that foreign country for crying out loud…

Today, when Van Morrison riffs it up into
“Hey where did we go
days when the rains came…”
I’m back behind that wheel in a heartbeat
rolling downhill into the adrenalin rush
of St. George!

WEEKEND WARRIORS, 1971

 

               “Take a load off, Fanny!”

Tony’s guitar leading us in the chorus

and all of us baying at the moon

               “Take a load for free!”

and Henry’s hash pipe (or Percy’s bong) making

the rounds ‘round Charlie Company’s campfire

bellowing its volleys of Fourth of July sparks

up through the evergreen boughs to the one am stars …

               “Take a load off, Fanny…”

we happy hippies, legal draft-dodgers

                “and…”

in the perfect disguise: identical

fatigues and field-jackets

    “and…”

our non-regulation-length hair

swept clandestinely under our caps

     “and…”

forever hiding out in plain sight in

National Guard armories and summer training

sites in these Maine woods

               “You put the load (you put the load)

                right on me!”

 

Flames glinting wildly in our saucer-wide

pupils off the empty Colt 45 cans and

other dead soldiers cobblestoning

the pine-needled forest floor… and when

the blanks I’d (surreptitiously) unloaded

into the flames finally opened fire

(seemed a great idea at the time)

zinging sizzling brass shell casings

in popcorn bursts to ricochet off

our hapless “happy campers” amid

hoots and yelps and gales and

gales of laughter—

 

Life was warm and wonderful because it was

summer and I was skunk-drunk, because the

Acapulco gold really was magical and because

life was really just this M*A*S*H  comedy

where everything I said was funny as hell

but mostly because I didn’t have even an

inkling that I was really

just some annoying

pain in the ass

SEDUCED!

I was a pushover, ok? And who’d blame me,

the impressionable little innocent

sitting on the floor in front of the TV

waiting out the sit-coms for my

favorite commercial to return?

 

And then there she’d be, in living black

and white waltzing around in her white

high-heel majorette boots made for walkin’

a pair of gams that’d make Sam Spade stutter

legs that went all the way up to that

three-foot-high

pack-of-Old-Golds

costume

(wolfwhistle!)

 

And I guess there was no question that

I was gonna give smoking a try, her hurdy-gurdy

leaving me longing to ditch my hayseed

family values and run off with her

 

Oh I’d be her cute little red-coated bellhop

performing tricks like the very ultra-cool

popping the ol’ Zippo cover with a finger-snap

Hey-presto— the blue-orange finger of flame

 

Or blowing smoke rings through smoke rings

through smoke rings

 

Or performing the ol’ ‘French inhale’ and

like some sexy fire-breathing dragon

releasing the smoke slowly, seductively

from my nostrils’ dual exhaust…

 

Oh, I was gonna be so cool I’d be

fighting the girls off with a broom!

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

Yes, a sleep apneac

a registered sleep offender

condemned for snoring

snores that march to a

different louder drum

and life-sentenced nightly for it

my head saddle-cinched tightly

in hellish halloweenish headgear

My handsome face a mockery now

the man in the iron mask chained to

the nightstand by a garden hose

connected to the creepy black-box

technology humming malevolently on the

nightstand, maintaining my beachball-inflated

skull at 32 pounds per square inch

I roll cumbersomely wifeward

try for a serious I love you behind

the hapless Hannibal Lecter leer…

Can you hear the lambs, Clarisse?

then, gigglesnorting my nose-gear loose,

set off a sibilant pppsssshhh!

another air-leak pissing

off the starboard side

 

Leaving me clawing at my face

blind in the night's scuba darkness,

needing some buddy-system partner

to slap on me her own nose-piece,

to rescue me in the sheets'

riptide so we can ascend to

the rising sun of morning

together…

KLONDIKE RECESS

The spring playground
muddy as a main street
from the forgotten
Klondike Gold Rush days

Peopled with forty little
“dangerous” Dan McGrews
hell-bent, big-time
wannabe-gamblers, all—

Cow-licked hustlers
rubes in little suspenders
beneath mothball-fresh
spring jackets

Some pirouetting spastically
on the heels of their galoshes
gouging casino craters
out of the wet spring gravel

Each with his pinchable
poke of precious nuggets:
cats'-eyes and clearies
and double-centers

Aggies… swirls…
steelies and moonstones…
most bragging manfully
of past conquests

And bankrupted foes…
speculating on
jackpot futures
of marble millions—

First a little game of "funsies"
to draw in the crowd
and then “keepsies” to
separate the men from the boys

And the boys from the marbles…

And there’s a sucker born every minute!

JUMPING INTO SPRING

Rin Tin Tin!
Swallowed a pin!
Went to the doctor
but the doctor wasn't in!

Two girls
two rising and falling
playground pistons
flouncing pigtails and ponytails
between a pair of stoic sisters
cranking the jump rope
weaving the jump rope into
a blurred cocoon
between the snow windrows
and mud puddles

Opened the door!
Fell on the floor!
A that was the end of
Rin Tin Tin!

And the flock of little
mothers' kerchiefed-daughters
sweater-breasted
mitten-winged
recess sparrows
ring ‘round the recess ritual
of early spring

In comes the doctor!
In comes the nurse!
In comes the lady with
the big fat purse!

Someone cackles
Salt & pepper!
And the cadence accelerates

Outgoesthedoctor!
Outgoesthenurse!
outgoestheladywith
thebigfatpurse!