God Is Like Jimmy Durante
Hands
when I hold your hands
it’s love
when I hold my hands
it’s prayer
I feel my fingers slip
through my fingers
when I let go
I want to hold my hands up
up to offer something
because my fingers slip
through each other and flesh
feels
so much like flesh that I want
to offer something up
up because flesh could slip
forever
so my hands hold each other
again
hard
because I’m afraid
and I love your hands
Hemlock Woolly Adelgid
in the woodland
no doubletime
or quick march
matches falling
hanging swinging
squirrels who scatter
leaves twigs
branches shaking
as they somersault
after each other
to decide who
will govern this
hemlock dying
even as they
struggle to rule it
Horoscope
reads “nobody” born this day
has a hand in it
“pep”
virgo
all her life destined to no
body
Mary
mope
handling it like so
and so
all her
dolor
sour
as the lemon flower
Man who Came to Dinner
just as we expected
God is like Jimmy Durante
full of trickery and loathing
eager to assuage
eager to tease
even the best looking of us
will have to watch our backs
because he is ready to poke
or prod us to wrong right
actions we haven’t blocked
scripts we’ll never memorize
and when we’re not looking
he’ll have pharaoh’s coffin
at hand to use as a phone
booth for our last call
Man who Fell to Earth
once upon a time we watched Bowie
slink across the wall at DC Space
search for a clear glass of still
water and let his mind wander
back to that barren sandscape
that might have been Mars or Mojave
whichever he’s just escaped or abandoned
as the first trans trans hermaphro
spacedude allowed to splash himself
onto 35mm without priors or bona
fides to represent his talent as strictly
celeb no vita attached nor no resume
backing a headshot presented to Warners
et Fils instead spread out pistol forth
and glass backward waiting to be
filled at some trough deep in the desert
like another alien in “Petrified Forest”
Leslie Howard he returns love for lead
News
“So I’m tough to work
with?” our friend asks
and pretends this is
news to him
–though people the world
over have been trying
to tell him this, and year
after year they line
up on the first Wednesday
of November to shout
over our town’s only
callbox to his ear:
“Hard, damn hard”
–we don’t know why,
but when it’s meet
we’ll treat each other
to bagels and coffee,
and he’ll ask us again,
“Am I tough?”
“Tough like a horn,”
we’ll say, “Tough like big
freaking cow horns
with that strap of leather
down the middle, so tough
the cowboys piss when
they see you
stampede their way
–you’re so tough
you don’t know.”
