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mcn's submission for the august 2000 issue of the hold
peanuts
peanuts
to trunk
to ocean liner
to iceberg
to north pole
to santa claus
to not what you wanted
to searching the bars
to boilermakers
to talking politics
to dentist
to coffee dribbling down the chin
to lovely woman laughing
to engaging discussion of poetry
to dinner
to breakfast
to more dinners and more breakfasts
to a tiny package with dinner
to first class tickets
to las vegas
to left at the altar
to losing your shirt at roulette
to the long flight home in tourist
to the free coke
to peanuts
mcn
• TOP
july 2000:
The night after Jimi died
I spent a 360-hour evening
on blue speckled bombers
crouched in the corner
of the living room
of some forgotten
acquaintance
listening to
Electric Ladyland
playing over and over
arm off the turntable
watching the ceiling run
down the walls
following the trails
of my fingers
rolled my hand
up into a ball
hid it in my pocket
so I wouldn't have to
look at it
tried to visualize
a guitar burning
on stage amplifiers like
rockets exploding something
dramatic but
ended up watching tiny
horses and wagons race
one another around
a cowboy lampshade
mcn
• TOP
june 2000:
Crazy Dave
"The ward is against me,"
jokes Crazy Dave, unable to change
the channel on the
Lawrence Welk ward tv.
"The ward is not against you"
answers the serious psychologist.
Dave had been in the ward
before, plenty of times,
always on the borderline.
Drugs brought him close to the
edge. Love pushed him
over.
Crazy Dave got back inside
trying to off himself with a
single-edge razor blade -
woke up on a mattress
soaked with blood,
clothing clotted, stinking,
Morrison still singing "The End"
over and over on the turntable.
Crazy Dave gave up his life,
threw out his art,
and part of his life
came back, unwanted
but his art
didn't.
She would never hear him,
never did hear him, and they
could never understand,
never understand things
they would not see, and with
his art gone, Crazy Dave
couldn't see
those things himself.
The art bled out of Crazy Dave,
and what was left
of his long hair turned gray,
and 30 years later now
he plays guitar
in the one-man ward band,
takes requests, and knows
the ward is not
against him.
mcn
• TOP
may 2000:
My finest hour
In college in the 70s
I managed a skinflick -
we booked German softcore
through a distributor in Denver.
It was cheap but came with
fantastic one-sheets
half the people driving by
would slow down
horns would honk
outside the Cinema 18,
cops would come
make us duct tape up
the good parts
then come inside
stay for the feature.
My favorite was
The Abducted Bride
the star was a dwarf
who smuggled heroin
inside teddybears -
used it to maintain his
harem of teenage concubines -
ran around yelling
my teddybears!
my teddybears!
The owner, Barry Goldberg
wasn't sure you could put
"abducted" in the newspaper
what with censorship and all
so he changed the title to
"The Stolen Bride"
without telling us.
At least he knew what
abducted meant, though
I guess he thought it meant
more than it did.
First time up on the screen,
Artie the projectionist
started yelling for me to come see...
I got up there just before
the title scrolled off the screen
"The Sinful Dwarf."
We lit one up
blew the smoke out through the
lamphouse ventilator
and watched the thing -
it was hilarious.
Suzie at the snack bar
pounded and pounded
on the door to the booth -
"lots of them want
their money back..."
Me and Artie shouted down
"No refunds!"
"No refunds!"
and lit up
another one.
mcn
• TOP
april 2000:
Poemula
that's me over your rooftops
that's me collecting bile
above manhattan
above chicago
above dc
that's me on your bedpost
you only thought you dreamed it
me with my kettle
red black and steaming
with bigtime innercity heat
that's me pouring it into
your rich jealous poemburning
pompous asshole husband's
shell-like ear
mcn
• TOP
march 2000:
dogma
the dogs run
up the sides of mountains
tongues hanging low
some with noses full
of porcupine quills
some with clinging pups
some matted and mangy
and scarred and broken
some dragging their
fallen brothers and sisters
daughters and sons
some with pieces missing
tattered ears bobbed tails
some large and rangy
some tiny, weak and slow
some strain to pull trees
bicycle racks and park benches
some lope freely smiling like fools
tongues hanging dangerously
between sharp teeth
the dogs run
up mountainsides
and those who reach the top
float off into the sky
panting out clouds
howling down the wind
barking up the moon
mcn
• TOP
february 2000:
New Mexico, 74 degrees, January 28th
I broke a beer bottle
she said
I think I cleaned
most of it up
you broke a beer bottle?
over one of the neighbors'
heads
or what?
no on the dumpster
she says
I threw it but
I missed
you missed the neighbor's
head? I ask
and she gives me
that look again.
you threw a bottle
at the dumpster
and it broke
and you cleaned it up?
of course
she said --
I was angry about
the beer bottles.
she goes around picking
up the beer bottles
and cans the neighbors
leave everywhere.
the neighbors
are lowlife dipshits
I guess she's not used
to neighbors like that.
but this is poets' housing
not that the neighbors
are poets but they
are funded like poets
she picks up rocks
out back
and throws them in
the dumpster
I tell her
hey they're just rocks
you can throw them
anywhere
you don't have to take
them out to the dumpster
throw them at
that damn chihuahua
and she gives
me that look again
but I'm smiling
like I didn't mean it
one bunch of neighbors
gave us a sofa
when they moved out
actually lainie said
you taking that to
the dumpster?
thinking it looked
pretty much ok
and I come into the
bedroom from watching
tv and she screams
at me
pointing at my pants
which have a
big fat roach
running up them
the sofa hit the
dumpster very soon
after that but I think
some of the roaches
must have escaped
and she is not happy
about this at all
but the cats love them
fresh meat --
now the little cat
Ninna is in heat
suddenly
assaulting us in the night
with horrible ghostly
moaning sounds
and weird bed dances
bumping her butt
up against us
like we might have
a boy cat hidden
in a pillowcase
and just won't share
now the chihuahua starts
barking again
the chihuahua who
slips through the fence
to shit in
our backyard
the chihuahua who
yips like he's been
stepped on
morningnoon&night
the chihuahua
who comes running
full speed through
his closed back door
in which his owners
have thoughtfully knocked
a big ugly hole
to accommodate him
and I think yeah
I gotta find a way
to make more money
to apply to other housing
cause summer is coming
the neighbors all will throw
open their doors, gifting
our 90 degree summer evenings
with a dozen versions
of the macarena
and boombox mariachi music
and beer bottles will fly
mcn
• TOP
january 2000:
when dogs fly
the first time
I tasted the stuff
I was at a girlfriend's house
I was 15
her parents weren't home
they had lots
of money
we lived in a dry county
north of dallas
but her dad worked in big d
and brought home what
ever he wanted to
they had a full bar
off the kitchen
we made martinis
or she did I watched
she made them for her dad
they tasted weird at first
but they got better
she had two afghans
big damn longhaired
long-eared dogs
they use them to hunt
lions in africa she said
they were a gift from
her uncle who was
lloyd bridges' cousin
I think that was it
they had a 6 ft. fence
and those dogs could fly
right over the damn thing
anytime they wanted to
we took a pitcher of martinis
shaken over ice and strained
out to the pool
and went swimming
and she'd call the dogs
and they'd come running
take off on one side of the pool
and jump all the way across
to the other
sometimes they wouldn't make it
and we'd laugh at them
as they scrambled out
and they'd tear back to the end
of the yard and take
another run at it
floating on our backs
looking up at dogs
flying over us
big blond dogs with ears
like wings
drinking martinis
and laughing at the moon
I remember thinking
this drinking is
pretty good
pretty damn
good
mcn
• TOP
december 1999:
I dream I am a blimp pilot
I pilot my blimp
my big black
blimp down
the river corridor
down the shipping lanes
where weather is
predictable
and navigation
is a breeze
it is night and I pass
blimp hotels and bars
clifftop moorings and
treetop apartments
with dim red
porchlights
and I pull into
the Judy Bar
which offers free parking
for blimp jockeys
and my heels spark
on the metal gratings
as I pass through those
swinging doors
everyone working in Judy's
looks about the same
female and male
waitrons dressed alike
it's a clone bar
and one with copper
hair and that
intractable headache manner
takes my order
white spider with a twist
and as she turns
to go a motion
in black denim
I think of you
walking away from me
and then it all
starts to make
sense
mcn
• TOP
november 1999:
my kingdom for a long slow chance
but I have no horses no men
the battlements are crumbling
humpty is dumped and
nobody is putting anything
back together again
the peasants are ragged
and the smoke from the fires
outside the moat blows in
day and night and day
and coats everything yellow
like cigarette smoke on a low
bedroom ceiling or the fingers
of an old man rolling one at
a bus stop saying I can roll
these now with one hand
on horseback in a windstorm
if I had a horse but before
he can light it the bus comes
mcn
• TOP
october 1999:
I think it was the meth
that came between us
I think this was why
she shaved her head that time
and why another later day
I came home to an empty house
why I became committed after
that to sleeping with as many
people as possible
about whom I cared
not at all and why
my sinuses became
battlegrounds my arms
began to cramp when reaching
for things I did not want
and how my heart slowed down
when I gave this up at last
as there are never enough lines
never a point that does not
jab its way in never
roses when roses are needed
though sitting in a bar alone
at 2 am someone always
comes in and shoves some
under your nose
though I do know when this
happens the solution is
to buy one
put it in your beer bottle
carry it home
after last call
its head down hanging
there from an
unnoticed thorn
mcn
• TOP
september 1999:
Like trains into tunnels
Yeah I saw the whole thing,
that knife slid into him
like he was loose dirt.
Naw I dunno, just a knife.
I dunno, long enough I guess.
They was having
some kinda bitch about somethin
over there by the pinball machine.
He called her a damn whore, I
remember that real clear,
and she yeah she
stuck him good, like he was a
balloon...you shoulda seen
his face pop, like one second
he was in it and the next
he was gone.
like he'd been top dog for so long
she didn't have no way out but to cut him;
and he was so tough and
shitty grinning, and then
gaffed like a fish,
and I ain't surprised he's dead.
Knife slid right easy
through that silk shirt,
right between the ribs so perfect,
the old tongue into the slot,
and he was just so much
meat and she was gone.
I dunno she was...
well kinda average lookin:
about so tall, brown hair, that's all.
I never seen them before.
Hey, honest, but
he sure bought it fast,
it coulda been worse for him;
she knew what she was doin,
you can tell.
Yeah I saw the whole thing. Like he was
loose dirt and been turned over.
No I didn't see her face;
I'da liked that but
I was watchin his at least.
You know even when you covered him up
he still looked surprised.
mcn |