L' ABSENCE

Impotent, an old Jew
pays hookers
to lie with him
in the same
hotel room
in different cities,
the girls in each
town the same, too,
interchangeable
blonde, small-
breasted parts,
like the bolt
assist mechanism
in a Schmeisser,
the machine pistol
the German guards
carried in Dachau.

Before making
love, the man,
once an artist,
weaves the girls'
long hair
into a single
braid, tied
at the end
with the violet
ribbon worn
by his wife.

From a portable CD
player purchased
in a Wal*Mart,
the man listens
to Rubinstein
perform Beethoven's
Piano Sonata No 6,
"L'absence,"
the music actually
becoming his penis
entering their labia,
while the girls,
not knowing
the difference,
always stoned,
merely think
it odd a trick
could get off on
such like stupid music.
But for an old man
like he sure could fuck.


ZEN HITCHHIKER

A Zen master, now
yellow dust,
explained satori
like this:

"A jet black iron
Ball speeding through
The dark night"

Soon I expect to hitch a ride
on that black iron ball,
struggling to hold on,
until it comes out
the back of my skull.


THE FORFEITER

On the morning
of my suicide
I'll take my
Centrum Silver,
with 400 mg's
of folate to protect
from Alzheimer's;
glucosamine chondroitin,
for stronger joints
when playing tennis;
and ginkgo biloba
for improved
memory, so
on the evening
when our world
will spin on,
a blue/green ball
in the permanent
darkness I desire,
I'll drive my Nissan
Sentra with 88,863
miles on the odometer
that will freeze
at exactly 88,888,
when it smashes
against an ole oak tree
wrapped with yellow ribbons
from Bush War II,
then blows up as if hit by an
       RPG,
the folate still seeking
   Alzheimer's flak,
the glucosamine chondroitin
massaging my joints like
that whore in Thailand,
the ginko conjuring
a country road like this one
and sliding my glowing hand
under Julie Goldberg's bra,
the first tit I ever felt.

When the volunteer firemen
arrive, one of them will turn
away because my burned
skull, packed with folate
resembles an Iraqi's from a
tank that he help kill
in that other war
while a cop picks up
my perfectly intact tennis racket
and swishes it like a fly swatter,
saying: "Looks like this ole hippy's
game tomorrow gonna be forfeited.


THE SALAMANDER

I play Russian roulette
with the remote,
a hurdy gurdy of image,
until I pounce upon
some nature channel,
a whale of a bullfrog
swallowing head first
a crimson salamander,
little knowing
the amphibian's skin
is ablaze with poison.

So, a few hops later,
the frog croaks;
and from its open
mouth, much like
horizontal labia,
excretes a scarlet tongue,
the salamander's tail,
then a wrinkle of red toes,
until all of it is free,
just as my last lover
permitted me to devour
her. Except I wasn't
as lucky as the frog.


UPON READING AN ARTICLE IN A POP SYCH JOURNAL
THAT USED THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD TO PROVE
THERE WAS A METHOD TO OUR MADNESS

So now the experts say
the pain is in my genes,
not my head: despair relegated
to a chromosome; suicide wormed
in DNA. Thus we jump,
shoot ourselves,
play Hansel & Gretel roulette
with a gas stove or
slide silently into the sea
without a seam because
of a peculiar disposition
toward maniac depression. So
I wonder if Homer was a madman
who knocked out "The Illiad"
when he was feeling low
or Sophocles was high
when Oedipus plucked out his eyes.
Perhaps the Bard of Avon
might have been a grinning bookkeeper
if they had Valium in Elizabethan England.

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