riley dog

One night, when
you return to your childhood
home after

a lifetime away,
you'll find it
abandoned. Its

paint will be
completely weathered.

It will have
a significant westward lean.

There will be
a hole in its roof
that bats fly
out of.

The old man
hunched over
at the front door
will be prepared
to give you a tour,
but first he'll ask
Scary, or no scary?

You should say
No scary.

to replace
Broken Coccyx for Parts repair AS IS
link to page on how-to build pillow garden
google search: how-to stand without using muscles below the waist

i haven't heard a goddamn thing except for the one time
and that was just coincidence; i'm sorry

Out of every hundred people,

those who always know better:
fifty-two.

Unsure of every step:
almost all the rest.

Ready to help,
if it doesn't take long:
forty-nine.

Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise:
four -- well, maybe five.

Able to admire without envy:
eighteen.

Led to error
by youth (which passes):
sixty, plus or minus.

Those not to be messed with:
four-and-forty.

Living in constant fear
of someone or something:
seventy-seven.

Capable of happiness:
twenty-some-odd at most.

Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds:
more than half, for sure.

Cruel
when forced by circumstances:
it's better not to know,
not even approximately.

Wise in hindsight:
not many more
than wise in foresight.

Getting nothing out of life except things:
thirty
(though I would like to be wrong).

Balled up in pain
and without a flashlight in the dark:
eighty-three, sooner or later.

Those who are just:
quite a few, thirty-five.

But if it takes effort to understand:
three.

Worthy of empathy:
ninety-nine.

Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred --
a figure that has never varied yet.

What you want for it you’d want
for a child: that she take hold;
that her roots find home in stony

winter soil; that she take seasons
in stride, seasons that shape and
reshape her; that like a dancer’s,

her limbs grow pliant, graceful
and surprising; that she know,
in her branchings, to seek balance;

that she know when to flower, when
to wait for the returns; that she turn
to a giving sun; that she know

fruit as it ripens; that what’s lost
to her will be replaced; that early
summer afternoons, a full blossoming

tree, she cast lacy shadows; that change
not frighten her, rather that change
meet her embrace; that remembering

her small history, she find her place
in an orchard; that she be her own
orchard; that she outlast you;

that she prepare for the hungry world
(the fallen world, the loony world)
something shapely, useful, new, delicious.

When Emperor Hirohito told the Japanese people it was time to surrender, he never used the word surrender. Instead, he talked about how everyone had done their best, tried so hard, etc. His speech was broadcast over loudspeakers hung outside on electrical poles. People had never heard Hirohito’s voice before—they thought the Emperor was God. He spoke in the highest level of formality—using words so antiquated, ordinary people couldn’t understand a thing he was saying. So imagine: suddenly, one day, a disembodied voice we think is God’s starts talking to people in the streets in booming Shakespeare-speak. “What the heck’s God saying?” the people ask. A man wearing big glasses translates: “He’s saying we all did a really great job…” he pauses, furrows his brow, “but I think He wants us to give up.” This is what most of Randy Newman’s songs are about.

In the beginning there was light
that shone in my eyes and tickled
the hairs of my brows till they fell,
leaving me bald and old
as the oranges withering in the fridge.
My father had come to die in California,
the poppies sprouting on the hillsides.
I wheeled the old man
through the sand to the shore
where we stared into the sun sliding
into the Pacific with the hiss of waves
a chorus of snakes.
She never saw the ocean.
She had loved me, even
in an end without words.
I wanted her feather curls,
her napkin skin, an apology.
My father's wife, my mother,
had been an ice pick, not even the ice,
a device meant to shatter the coldest
of cold into shards for debutante drinks.
I turned him—old as the car
we'd driven, a dimmed classic.
The sunset faded into night. A vendor
peddled orange carnations, the last
bright thing this side of the Earth.

Hero

This is how it started: a man needed work.
He hadn’t had a job for weeks so he took
the civil service exam and got a position
at the Detroit zoo, way down the totem pole,

right at the bottom. He wore blue coveralls
and a blue cap. He looked like a cop without
the badges and hoopla. His work was to feed
the zebras, feed the ibex, feed the bears.

The bears’ cage looked like a stone cave
without a roof, but it had a ledge six feet
off the ground. His boss said: Sometimes
a bear likes to get up on the ledge and jump

on the keeper giving him food. Oh, it hasn’t
happened much, but it’s happened. So keep
an eye out. The next morning the man fed
the zebra; he fed the ibex, but when he came

to the bears’ cage, he paused. No bears in sight.
Where were they hiding? The man entered
the cage and stared at the food trough. Only
ten steps to go. Weren’t a few of those furry

ruffians bound to be sneaking around? He took
a step toward the trough and heard a noise; maybe
a bear, maybe a bus on Woodward Avenue.
The man’s legs weighed fifty pounds. He thought

of his wife and six kids. He wasn’t very big.
He knew what bears could do to little guys
like him. They would chew up even his buttons.
Time passed. People paused to watch the keeper

frozen like a statue. As shows go, it was pretty dull.
The bears were off gallivanting someplace else.
Could the man run to the trough, dump the food
and run back? Sure he could, but he was a thinker,

that was his problem. He had a gift for picturing nasty
scenarios. As in a movie, he could see the bear
leap from the ledge. That would be just the start.
Back behind a rock a bear woke up. It was past

feeding time. He was hungry. He took a peek
over the ledge. No food. He reared up on his hind
legs and roared like mean grizzlies on TV.
Hadn’t the man known this would take place?

He dropped the pail and ran to the bus stop. Don’t
even ask if he shut the gate, that’s another story.
Close call, he told himself. It wasn’t exactly courage,
but it would do the trick. After all, he was alive,

but out of work. He began to tell people the story
of how he’d saved himself from a bear. With each
telling the bear grew bigger, then it was two bears,
then three. His excuse became his new work.

The man showed a scar on his arm from an old
bicycle accident. This was where a bear clawed him.
The man believed every word he said. Although
modest about being a hero, he projected an aura

of quiet strength. He developed a convincing vibrato.
His kids looked up to him. His wife baked him
an apple pie. Dinner invitations proliferated.
These reversals of bad luck that fate drops

on the seemingly unworthy, what does it matter
what really took place? The man’s stories
formed a path to help him through future dark—
lies, lies, the lullabies to help us sleep at night.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of
THE BATH ARTIST
My husband is a philistine. When I woke him at 5:45 this morning to offer a private viewing of my greatest creation to date, he rolled away, stuck his head under a pillow and growled. He therefore missed
(1) the unveiling of my new triple-bubble technique for the highest quality bubbles;
(2) my newly executed theory of twin catalysts (two colors of 99c-store shampoos); and
(3) a veritable Restoration Comedy of light and light-yet-solid, industrial-strength foam. Truly a bath for the ages.
 Technical addendum, 2:15 p.m.: The indestructibility of the bubbles proves detrimental to completion of bath.

the coming of
THE WASHING-UP ARTIST

He is trampling out
THE CLEAN HOUSE ARTIST

where the grapes of wrath are
THE BATH ARTIST (II)
The truth is, I accidentally let out the water, though not the bubbles, from the tub. Refilling, with more soap, is what yielded that superior foam. Art is the genius of utilizing accident.

It must have been the last drink
that made me feel like this.
A woman looking in a store window
stood the way you do;
a man drove a truck with a child
in his lap and somehow this touched me.

I saw everything with such affection,
it had to be that last drink
that made me think of love as a relief
instead of the relief of nothing to love,
and I flirted with a waitress to celebrate
but she never came back.

The women I thought about
always had someplace to go,
and guessing where you were today
only made me drunker:
the loveliness of being held;
the quiet in which you are reading.

I have been known to boat
On the waters of oblivion,
Bucking for a buoyancy

I once knew as a scruff,
You and I rowing over
To the grassy bank to fuck.

You were then taking your orals
In English and I was already out
Working for a firm. Weekends

Were when we lived for then.
Now I’ve freelanced so long
I can no longer tell the days,

Except where a deadline, where money
Is involved. We didn’t stay involved.
You married for money but were soon

Back to your wilder ways, and I stayed
Single, lived in a condo, and then could
Afford an expensive loft. I live now in

A very expensive view
Where I can still see you
Still in the sway

Of our boat, in the sway of
The long grasses along the bank.
You took your ex to the cleaners,

I heard, leaving him only
With a very pressed pair
Of grass-stained trousers.

I can afford and am addicted to
Morphine now, chemically kissed,
And row that boat farther every day.