Parakeats

.
Poetry is

a sheet

thrown over a cage 


in which there may or may not be

a bird
.

Scotch Broth

His grandmother would smear ketchup
up and down her arms and bang
open the screen door and scream
out into the yard where he was playing,
saying she'd sliced her wrists.

When he kvetched about his supper,
his mother poured the entire bowl
of Scotch broth over his scalp.
Salty soup ran down his cheeks.
Tentacles of tripe got tangled in his hair.

Every year, for his daughter's birthday,
he'd hold a ribboned parcel before her.
When, after much eye-rolling, she wearily
lifted the lid, she'd find
a severed thumb inside: his own, poking up
through a hole in the bottom of the box,
and stiff for only a moment before
starting to wiggle.
 
After years of silence, he flew out to visit her.
But first, he scribbled his own name on a box 
(she'd been named after him)
and mailed it to her. It contained 
a cheap plastic clock
inside of which was a pistol
so he wouldn't have to spend the entire 
weekend unarmed.

His plane took off from Panama City and landed
without incident, leaving all passengers intact;
no severed limbs, no lacerated wrists,
no innards spilled like soup across the tarmac. 


To prepare for the visit, his daughter dug up
her grandmother's old recipes,
hid the costume jewelry. 
She stuffed the gun with bullets
and shoved it in the glove compartment
as she drove to the airport,
knowing it would be the first thing he asked for
as he staggered, drunk and smiling 
and still somehow unharmed, 
through the gate.

Tlingit Mosquito

All the tribal leaders gathered
in the shell of the abandoned
Trojan nuclear reactor
days before it was demolished.
As has always been the custom,
Physically the men were absent,
All their souls instead embedded
In the effigies of creatures
Hewn by hands of patient shamans.
 
All these beasts sat in a circle
In the concrete cooling tower.
Eldest of them was a sturgeon
Carved from stone and flipping pebbles
From his massive limestone basin.
Speaking first, he led the meeting.
"I have asked you all to gather
Here to talk about a problem.
Our diverse vocabularies
Are becoming obsolete, our
Dialects are disappearing.
Few of us still utilize the
Tongues of our esteemed forefathers.
We must rouse ourselves, take action
Lest our past become forgotten."

Next to speak was the majestic
Wooden elk, whose twisted antlers
Formed a thicket of forked branches.
"We must work towards preservation
Of our speech, we cannot let our
Throats constrict, our words get carried
Off by blowing winds of silence."
Roars of passionate agreement
Echoed through the concrete chamber.
Tarry caws from the pitch raven.
Rattles from the snake of wicker.
Clanking from the big bronze turtle.

Next to speak was Grandpa Grizzly,
With his pelt formed from a bearskin
Rug that had been sewn and stuffed with
Sawdust, patched with furry swatches.
"Though you speak the truth," he offered,
"I can't think of a solution
to this very pressing issue."
"There's no answer," someone whispered.
All of them turned toward the speaker:
Down there stood a butterfly with 
wings of circuit boards and diodes,
silver chips like gems that glittered.

"There is nothing we can do," the
insect said, "it's best that we just
let our languages now languish.
We should look towards our future
rather than the past, it's time to
March ahead. There is no use for
Karankawa or Takelma;
Beothuk or Chitimacha.
We must find a common language.
Rub out all these verbal relics.
Let these obsolete words perish."

"Ditto," said the plastic badger,
As she preened her polyester
Fur. "You're right," the beaded toad said,
Flicking his glass tongue discreetly.
With that, all the room erupted 
As the chiefs began to bicker.
Caught up in the heated uproar,
Bearskin bear grew too excited,
Flung his paw with great abandon,
Knocked the butterfly across the
Room. Its wings became unwired,
It unfurled its curled proboscis; 
Actually, it was a needle. 
Butterfly was a mosquito,
Vermin loathed the whole world over.
 
"Traitor," hissed the clay coyote
Baring fangs of glazed ceramic.
"You're a parasite, impostor
Here to infiltrate our meeting,
Suck the life from all our people."
The mosquito shook in fear as
All the chiefs commenced at once to
Rip apart his fragile circuits,
Smash his thorax, snap antennae.
When they finished, there was nothing
Left but bits of chips and wires.

"Well," said elk, "I hate to say it 
But he's right. The world has changed past 
Recognition. We're just stragglers.
No one cares about tradition.
There is nothing we can do to
Help resuscitate our culture."
Then the Elders' tongues were still, they
Stood around, it was apparent 
None of them knew what to say, had
Lost the words with which to say it.

Escape to Europe!

No, not me, unfortunately; but a copy of my first poetry book made it over the pond with the lovely Melissa. Last I heard she was trying to use it to barter with some homicidal Eurotrash for the life of one of her fellow travelers in some hostel in the Balkans. I don't think it went well.

To get your own copy of Fire Escape, or any of my other books, including the brand new Spit Shine, check out the links on the left of the page. All proceeds from these products are donated to the Ivan & Izzy Cat Food Foundation.

Orange Froth (Mud in Your Eye)

Tide pools of caramel curds coagulate between the rocks. 
The kids swirl their sticks in the goop, fishing out 
syrup-soaked sea-stars and anemones dripping with resin. 
They slap their treasures onto the damp sand, 
prodding each specimen until certain they are dead. 

The sea is liquid candy; root beer barrel, 
creamsicle, marmalade. The children squeal with delight 
at the slop that oozes from their catches; 
puddles form atop the over-saturated sand, waiting to be
reluctantly reclaimed by the glutted tide. The children run 

from the amber waves that shatter into globs of froth and foam 
that instantly reform back into one sticky organism. 
The clouds grow dense overhead, and a breeze skims the fetid water. 
The wind shoves the stench up over the dunes, 
then slams it against the medicated houses whose 
dimly-lit windows stare blankly at the cleaver-edge of the horizon.
The kids run home, leaving the beach pockmarked 

with bare heel prints that swell with miniature seas. 
Around the edges of these little oceans, tiny crews erect 
diminutive derricks. Soon operations will be underway 
to siphon the precious poison from the sand 
drop by drop, to be used as fuel 
for tiny cities. On one of these beaches, 
a group of children plays, laughing and scrambling 
over grains of sand like boulders. The plummeting raindrops 

create ripples that crash in thundering waves 
against the shore, splashing the kids' faces with a greasy spray. 
The children spit and run home, leaving behind nearly microscopic
footprints in the fine dust between the silicon stones. 
These footprints too fill with water, creating filthy seas 
a few molecules deep, through which barges glide, 
laden with vast quantities of carbon and hydrogen atoms 
as the ships steadily chug towards distant refineries too small 
to be viewed with the naked eye...*           


*I am sitting in the elevated hospital bed. My roommate has his TV on, and even with the curtain drawn to separate the room I can still see half the screen. A man in the prow of a boat points out over the slimy water. The camera zooms on a shark that has poked its nose into the air in an attempt to unclog its gills. The shark rolls like a slippery turd, leaving a trail of bubbling orange froth in its wake. The camera lingers as the shark slips once more beneath the surface, leaving nothing but water. Or something like it. I feel knotted up. Everything in the room around me is plastic; I am surrounded by solid oil. There's no sense in trying to clear my body of it; it is keeping me alive. The vents constantly blow air. A machine in the next room bloops urgently. The man in the other bed starts muttering to himself; it takes me a moment to realize he's talking in his sleep. I reach for the plastic water bottle on my tray, take a long drink through the accordion straw. Sucking up liquid from deep in the depths, then gulping it down.   

Flower Drum Song

That slick Summer night, we sat on the hood
of the cocktail shaker car her mother had bought her
as a high school graduation bribe.
We talked beneath the sodium light of the giant
bowling pin streetlamp behind Silk City Lanes,
next to where the Wild Samoans had their storefront office.
She said her mother had first come to America to perform
in the original Broadway production of Flower Drum Song.
It seemed unlikely, but so did the fact
that I was even sitting there with her at all,
with her tight skirt, her slender hips, her narrowed eyes.
There were fireflies, there were stars,
there were the lights of the nearby campus
with the dorm room she didn't want to return to,
where photos of her ex-boyfriend, my spitting image,
hung taped to the frame of her roommate's bunk bed.
We swigged our beer and wrestled on that parking lot island,
the silver hood of her rocket car,
before heading out for sushi.
Even before we suffered together through
that shitty movie about the topless showgirls,
even before she grinned
and pushed her skinny way upstairs,
I knew that this date would be our only one.
All the signs were there, spread before us in that sushi bar;
the way the soy sauce was drizzled across our lotus roll,
the way the fleshy folds of ginger curled in on themselves,
the way the blob of quail yolk shivered atop a plug of rice
that just sat there, choking in a collar of seaweed.
All the signs were there; if only I'd known
how to read them.

Daily Sketch 60110