Rehabilitation

Humpty Dumpty
sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty
had a great fall.
All the King’s horses,
all the King’s men
tried to put Humpty Dumpty
back together again
so they could put him
back up on the wall,
where he was miserable,
where he had his great fall.

Victory at Iwo Jima

I met a cognitive behavioral
psychologist in a tunnel.
I recognized the snapping fingers
and smart whistle,
the dry socket
where emotion had been.
“What’s your hurry?” he sneered.
“Childhood,” I replied. “Infancy.”
“Would you like to earn some money?”
“How?” I asked.
“I want to buy your personality,”
“What would you use it for?”
“Fill dirt,” he said, “It works great.”
“Why don’t you use the gravel in your heart,” I said.
“That’s what I made the hole with.”

Communion

The Reverend Lon Whiteside stepped out of his car to stretch his legs at the Chevron station while waiting for his gas tank to be filled. he happened to notice that his neighbor, Franklin Skefield, one of his parishioners, was at the pump in front of him. The Reverend casually approached the open window of Mr. Skefield's car with a smile of friendly recognition and then opened his mouth to speak, bit it was birdsong that came out; precisely the call of the Maine yellow breasted thrush warbler.

The two men looked at each other in a startled awkwardness. The Reverend opened his mouth again and found himself articulating the high-pitched thrill of excitement he had experienced the previous night as his wife's hand had touched the tip of his penis. the sound of his rushing orgasm leaped toward his frightened parishioner. The shaken Reverend tipped his head politely toward Mr. Skefield and weakly escorted himself back to his own car. His small king of consciousness shook on its tiny island.

He pulled out of the gas station hurriedly and headed toward his church, intending to go over his notes for the next sermon, but he couldn't get away from what had happened. He didn't know what to tell himself. He frantically leafed through the index cards from his left hemisphere for a rational explanation, but could find nothing that reduced his anxiety, the terrifying suspicion that he was having a nervous breakdown, that he would begin hearing that dreaded phrase, 'Mental problem' whispered politely among the congregation. The Reverend turned on the car radio and scanned for the network news to distract himself. There was a presidential address about to begin, “...and the President has just entered the room flanked by his Secretary of State and is approaching the podium.”

There was a short silence and then he heard, “ladies and gentleman, the President of the United States.” Reverend Whiteside listened through another short silence and then heard the slight but unmistakable sound of a chuckle come through the radio. It continued and slowly grew into a louder, somewhat awkward sustained giggle, which then turned into a deep, uncontrolled, bizarre laughter, which grew in pitch and intensity into something maniacal. It had a quality about it that recalled something distant but familiar to the Reverend's startled mind. Then it struck him. It was the throated malicious laughter of the hyena. The radio interrupted with a message about experiencing technical difficulties, and then there was the sound of soothing background music.

The Reverend drove right past his church and headed home. He just wanted to crawl into bed with his wife's familiar body. When he arrived home, the lights were out and he quietly let himself in and then gratefully headed upstairs to their bedroom. He went inside and felt a rush of relief and then excitement at the sight of her laying on her right side, peacefully asleep. He took off his clothes, eased himself under the covers next to her, and placed his arm reassuringly over her, letting his hand fall onto her breast. A sound rose slowly out of his wife, a harsh, rumbling growl, a fiercely muted, threatening hiss,
feral, savage and wild.

Resurrection on the Romance Express

You were radiant as a stained-glass Baptist window
when you held out the empty plate of your hungry eyes
for me to fill with the returned sign of my offering.
You said I placed in it only small change from the quarter of my heart,
trembling like a straw man before the risk-filled fires of desire,
not even enough to buy you one night’s lodging in a cold manger
“You’re not leaving me on a lonely cross for one,” you said,
handing back the nails with, “thanks anyway”
then climbing down from travail’s trite transcendence
to continue your search for someone who wasn’t
picking his nose during your 2nd or 3rd or next ‘coming.’
The heart must find the courage to make its choices.
Tonight I’ll rent ‘Trixie and Bubbles Fuck for Fun’ video
then go down to the Nob Hill tavern for
a fish sandwich and a plate of fries,
a meal I can afford,
that will fill me up without threatening,
because you were no angel either
‘counting the ways’ you needed me to shine
like your own private pearl.
But tears aren’t enough to fill anyone
and nobody’s perfect,
even Jesus found it quicker and easier
to resurrect the dead than the living,
besides there ought to be more signs posted
so you know where the hell the
church is and when you’re in it.

Rebuttal to e.e.

Somewhere I have unfortunately traveled, sadly beyond
any experience your eyes have their cunning,:
in your most frail gesture are things which implement their plans,
and which I cannot touch because they are too slippery

Your slightest look easily will undo me
though I have closed myself as fingers,
you open always wound by wound myself as the cell door opens
( slowly, cruelly, absolutely ) at first bell

or if your wish be to close me, I and
my life will shut very obediently, sharply
as when the heart of this prisoner imagines
the sharp blade above him carefully, descending

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the lethal beauty of its sweet hemlock,
rendering death forever with each moment your nearness has abandoned

( I do not know what it is about you that closes
and cuts; only something in me understands
the swift fury of your blade is death to all roses )
nobody, not even the rain, has such small, sharp, claws.

A General Theory of Hate

Dear Gretel:
You took our bread crumbs
and left me in the forest.
Finally I understand why
you had to shit on me,
manure is necessary for growth.
You had to shove another child out of your nest,
get on with your new life of becoming a teacher
filling the off time in your search for the sacred text
by teaching me a lesson.

Now you won’t fuck me any more
and you don’t give a damn about me,
Helen’s face didn’t launch a thousand ships,
hell they were just trying to get away from her.
They’d learned their lesson,
those weren’t sour grapes, they were poison.
It really works doesn’t it,
this wisdom and growth thing.
Best Hansel.

Love in Five Easy Pieces

Love is a poem in rough draft,
a half truth in second draft

love is red in tooth and claw
a blind sea creature on an ocean floor
riding the ebb and flow of the nearest
body like an ancient urgent carousel,

an arranged marriage
of need and illusion
sent by a delinquent God
in cruel jest like
the miracle of life
He gave you that you
may stand before the broken crowd
and say, “Hi, I’m Joe and I’m an alcoholic,”
or ride into the village
naked on horseback with lantern
shouting, “The English are coming,”
only to hear the voice from the tavern
shouting, “This is England, you idiot.”
Love is a joke in final draft.