Garden Gods

Leis festoon my Queen Elizabeth

this morning, so she is both pink and coral,
one unexpectedly. Who would do

such a thing? The contractor next door,
him with the hemi? The SEC lawyer,
retired from niggling? A stranger,

hell bent on whimsy. Saints preserve us
from the drunken fey, the determined oddball
hoping to go Wilde and run to fat.

I think it was Zeus himself, eagled
as he has been bulled and pissed, leaving a gay
reminder that gods are not solemn,

except when they want something special—
grilled bones, sobbing virgins, grim obedience—
and prefer a boner to doctrine.

Bees back off from the paper hanger,
annoyed by mimesis and crude deception.
They own a queen way too fat to care.

Desert Island Discs

With nothing to eat but Kettle Crisps and Spam,

Salt on a salted sea, open always,

I floated along on the wreckage of a Spar,

Partly hydrogenated, like the waves.

What is this shore on which I’m beached? What are

These alte cocker spaniels doing here,

Beyond both bath and bed? I know the sound.

It’s 50s rock n roll up in the trees.

Chestnut is what I think, but I’m not sure.

I hope it lasts. And me. The saints preserve

Berry and Little Richard. Little I

Know of nesting among the spanielled crowd.

Never too late, doo-wop doo-wop, I pray.

Mr. Bones & Attendant Flights

I was thinking Bones, probably thinking
Like Henry. Happens sometimes. And I'm sure
A stewardess is falling, falling, now
A flight attendant, now a slight depression.
They talk back in patois. They have their ways.
They're violent and clinically unsound
And deader than a deaf door jamb. They're closed.
I think of them, though, waiting in the dark,
Collectedly insentient. Such bones
We use for soup, grow strong & tall 12 ways.

When I became a man, I took such bones,
Plucked free of noodles, cast them in the street,
And read my riddles, almost knew the truth,
Although a blue Imperial, false spare
& painted whitewalls, ran them down like dirt.

Dead Grandpa Shops at Wal-Mart at 4 a.m.

Nail clippers, maybe, no more aftershave.
No shiny trainers, sextet of latte cups.
A groundcloth sounds quite nice, and wind-up toys
To fill the void with clackety-clacks and beeps;
But who to wind them up? The waitress said--
Next plot but one--Here, let me freshen that.
Disarming, but without real consequence.
Clean underwear, in case of accident,
Would please The Inner Mom, but accidents
Happen to others now, and he has leaked
And spilled his substance on Aisle 17.
His sepsis seeps away, and all his toys.

Spread Sheets

The cash alone was not enough.
It made the flagstone terrace slick
And all the shutters red and bright;
But consciences are black at night, 
And cash does not afford a light
When even sheets and spreads are rough.
The dead are still, and eke the quick.

Gelt not so much. The dead forgot,
The live forsworn: but in the dark,
Where they go on, but you would not,
You can't buy room. There is a lot
Of that in Zion Perfect Park,
Home to the absent. They were all
Live on the margins. Came the call.